Hegel by Klaus Vieweg;

Author:Klaus Vieweg;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Insofar as the concept as idea achieves its freedom, the idea must carry the “hardest opposition within itself” and “endure” it (GW 12:177). The process of the idea, based on the negativity immanent in the concept, includes (a) the stage of the (logical) life of the idea, (b) the stage of cognition and will, wherein the opposition of the theoretical and the practical, of the theoretical and the practical idea, is built up and overcome, and finally (c) the stage of the idea as absolute knowledge of itself, its unification with itself. Within the treatment of the unity of the theoretical and the practical idea, the idea of the true and the good, Hegel emphasizes the “practical” dimension specifically in the “syllogism of action,” the conception of the idea as action, as free subjectivity, which becomes identical with itself by virtue of its actualization, has as its object in the other its own objectivity, and can thus be understood as free. In the idea we thus have the unity of the theoretical, of cognition, and of the “veritably existing objectivity” (wahrhaft seiende Objektivität). According to Hegel, the latter differs in principle from the “merely appearing and thus in- and of-itself void, nonobjective reality.” The found reality must be taken at the same time as the executed absolute purpose, to be distinguished from the seeking cognition, wherein the objective world is exposed without the subjectivity of the concept but “as an objective world whose inner ground and real actualization is the concept.” This is the absolute idea, the sole object and content of philosophy. By its self-determination or particularization, again the exposing of particularity, it returns to itself from its various forms. The business of philosophy now consists in recognizing the Idea in these its formations, by means of the particular philosophical sciences (GW 12:235).

In the idea, the whole development of the logical sphere itself becomes its content and form; the true is thus the whole, the whole unfolding in the form of a circle. Summing up, Hegel emphasizes once again that the essential moment of the concept lies in the thinking of the contradiction, that the thought of negativity forms “the turning point of the movement of the concept,” the “negative relation to itself, the innermost source of all activity, living and spiritual self-movement” (GW 12:246) of the concept. The hitherto generated constituents of the concept now find their unification; the Idea is exposed as the one, the rational par excellence, the Absolute in the broad, nonreflective logical sense, the true in and for itself. The idea stands for the adequate, pure concept, the “free concept determining itself and hereby to the logical actualization itself” (GW 20:216).

In the idea the absolute unity of logical subjectivity and logical objectivity is established, the unity of the concept with itself. In the pure concept as the end point of the idea, the concept attains its complete freedom, its perfect being-with-itself; it is now, in the highest and final sense, the free, the highest formation of the self-relation.

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