III.

Dialectic

Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, argued that “what is rational is real and what is real is rational”. This must be understood in terms of Hegel’s further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel’s thought has been analysed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel almost never used these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis, then, might be a concept that is part of the structure of the Absolute, or else it might be a historical form of consciousness. Such a concept or form of consciousness contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting concept or form of consciousness. As a result of the conflict a third concept or form of consciousness arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of metaphysical or historical development is continually generated. Hegel thought that the Absolute itself (that is to say, the sum total of reality) develops in this dialectical fashion towards an ultimate end or goal.

For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfolding dialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoes this development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history. Nature is the Absolute objectifying itself in material form. Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or consciousness. In The Phenomenology of Sprit Hegel traced the stages of this manifestation in the various forms of consciousness from the simplest consciousness of objects, through self-consciousness, rational consciousness, and the various forms of ethical and religious consciousness, to “absolute knowledge”, the form of consciousness in which the subject recognizes itself as fundamentally identical with the Absolute.