IS ‘THE ABSOLUTE’ OF HEGEL GOD?

Fray Anthony P. Irineo, OAR

1.1 Background: The German Idealism

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was one of the protagonists of
German Idealism1, a classical German philosophy, that began with Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804). With his ties with Johann Gottlieb Fichte2 (1762-1814) and Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling3 (1775-1854) who were both ahead of him in the
University of Jena, Hegel, who also became one of the university’s professors in 1801
where he published his first philosophical work, The Difference between Fichte’s and
Schelling’s System of Philosophy (Differenzschrift), offered to improve on the “letter”
of Kant’s work in the name of its “spirit,” and developed a system of thought after the
other.4 Though Kant was into the “critical” or “transcendental” idealism, that of
Hegel’s group was often referred to as the “absolute” idealism.
Even with Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), it was quite clear that
the German philosophy was greatly influenced by Platonic tradition rather than by the
skepticism of the British tradition. Idealism is seen as adding rather than subtracting
significance, as emphasizing the reality that whatever things brought to existence on a
common-sense level have a set of entities in a higher, yet rather limited, or more
“ideal” nature.5
Absolute idealism, the most often summary or label referred to the metaphysics
of Hegel, attempted to transcend the various dualisms that permeated the philosophy
of Kant. In his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (published in the year
1817 and revised in 1827 and 1830), Hegel described absolute idealism in contrast to
the “subjective idealism” of Kant:

Objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is again to a certain extent subjective.

Thoughts, according to Kant, although universal and necessary categories, are only
our thoughts − separated by an impassable gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from
our knowledge. But the true objectivity of thinking means that the thoughts, far from

1
German Idealism came into existence because of the crisis of the Enlightenment and the
“pantheism controversy” that began towards the close of the 18th century. The basic principles of
Enlightenment were rational criticism and scientific naturalism. While criticism seemed to end in
skepticism, naturalism itself resulted in materialism and they were unacceptable. Idealism assumed
different incompatible forms but it wanted to save criticism from skepticism and naturalism from
materialism. See Karl Ameriks, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 18.
2
Fichte became a chair in the University of Jena in 1794, the position formerly occupied by
Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823), also a defender of Kant’s philosophy.
3
Schelling was a classmate of Hegel in Tübingen from 1790-1793.
4
Ameriks, 2.
5
Ameriks, 8.
 2

being merely ours, must at the same time be the real essence of the things, and of
whatever is an object to us.6

It should be noted that Hegel rarely used the term ‘absolute idealism.’7 It seems
that Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) was the first to use the term.8 Later,
Schelling adopted it to define his position.9 However, Schelling used ‘absolute
idealism’ in the works he co-authored with Hegel; thus, Hegel did not reject the term
himself.10 In fact, based on his lecture notes, he used the term ‘absolute idealism’ at
least three times to point out his stand.11 In his published work too, Hegel sometimes
referred to the term ‘idealism’ to define his philosophy.12
In this paper, as a direction, it is appropriate to explore first the meaning of the
term ‘the absolute’ (das absolute). Afterward, Hegel’s concept of God will be
discussed to arrive at a conclusion whether this term, ‘the absolute’ of Hegel, simply
refers to God or something else.

1.2 The initial understanding of ‘the absolute.'

The term ‘absolute’ means “not dependent on, conditional on, relative to or
restricted by anything else; self-contained, perfect, complete.”13 In contrast with what
is ‘the absolute’ is the fact of ‘the real’ which is ontologically material and natural,
epistemologically empirical and phenomenal. Also, every real being is dependent,
conditional and relative.
In the natural world, no being can be said as self-contained, perfect and
complete by itself because it is a world of dependent, conditional and relative beings.
For the German idealists, the absolute is immaterial and spiritual. Particularly for
Kant, the absolute is the unconditional and the ultimate reality which cannot be known
theoretically. The absolute is Ding-an-sich or noumenal reality beyond phenomenal
reality which can be known in a theoretical way. He said: “[…] I shall use the word
‘absolute,' opposing it to what is valid only comparatively, that it is, in some particular

6
G. W. F. Hegel, “Logic”, from Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §41, (2). See
www.blackmask.com, 38.
7
Frederick C. Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 57. However, it must be noted
that Leibniz already used the term ‘idealization’ in his work, Monadology, §§1-4. See G. W. F. Hegel,
The Science of Logic, trans. and Ed. by G. di Giovanni (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2010), 130.
8
F. Schlegel, Philosophische Lehrjahre, KA XVIII, 33 (no. 151), 65 (no. 449), 80 (no. 606),
85 (no. 658), 90 (no. 736), 282 (no.1046), 396 (no. 908). See F. Beiser, Hegel, 58.
9
F. W. J. Schelling, Fernere Darstellung aus dem System der Philosophie, Sämtliche Werke
IV, 404. See F. Beiser, 58.
10
F. Beiser, 58.
11
G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophiscen Wissenschaften in Werke (1830), vols. 8-
10, §45A, §160Z and §337Z. See F. Beiser, 58.
12
G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, I, 145. See F. Beiser, 58.
13
Michael J. Inwood, “Absolute”, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992).
 3

respect. For while the latter is restricted by conditions, the former is valid without
restrictions.”14
For Fichte, the absolute is the pure or the transcendental ego. It is the starting
point of all things and the “self-evident presupposition of all knowledge.” Moreover,
the pure ego is the absolute ground for all natural things and the absolute condition of
all conditional beings.15 The pure ego is the absolute ego or Ich-an-sich beyond
phenomenal reality. Schelling, on his part, emphasized than Fichte did on physical
nature as the objective form of the absolute. The absolute is described as the
indubitable, all-encompassing, self-creating, unifying principle of reality that fills
nature. He stressed that man could understand nature because it is made up of the
same spirit that is in him.16
Hegel was, at first, just contented to describe Schelling’s concept of the
absolute as “[…] the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black […]”17 He
admitted that “of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in
the end is it what it truly is […] the beginning, the principle, or the absolute, as at first
immediately enunciated, is only the universal.”18 For Hegel,

[T]he absolute is not grasped by intellectual intuition but by conceptual thinking and
rational philosophical system; […] the absolute cannot be absolute if it does not
manifest itself in the form of relative and conditional world. The absolute is absolute
only in its phenomenological manifestation.19

The term, ‘absolute’, if predicated20 to various subjects such as being, idea,

notion, spirit, religion, and also idealism becomes another concrete concepts
themselves: ‘absolute being’, ‘absolute idea’, ‘absolute notion’, ‘absolute spirit’,
‘absolute religion,’ and also ‘absolute idealism’. However, these concepts, taken

14
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by N. K. Smith (New York: 1965), A326.
15
Frank Thilly, A History of Philosophy (New York: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1952), ---.
See Enver Orman, “On Hegel’s Concept of the Absolute” [Accessed: April 24, 2016],
www.acarindex.com/dosyalar/makale/acarindex-1423907326.pdf · PDF file.
16
William F. Lawhead, The Voyage of Discovery: A History of Western Philosophy
(California: Wadsworth Publishing, 2006), 368.
17
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, ‘Preface,’ trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), 9.
18
G.W.F. Hegel, 11.
19
G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, 541. See Enver Orman, “On Hegel’s Concept of the
Absolute”. PDF file; See Michael Inwood, “Absolute”, A Hegel Dictionary.
20
Predicate, in this sense, is not in the same context as it is used in English grammar. In Logic,
it means a property, characteristic, or attribute that may be denied or affirmed of something (for
example, the subject) or related to something (the subject or the object) which is predicated. For Hegel,
“the predicate as universal is self−subsistent, and indifferent whether this subject is or not. The predicate
outflanks the subject, subsuming it under itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject. The
specific content of the predicate alone constitutes the identity of the two.” See Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, §192.
 4

separately, are distinct from each other. As stated above, Hegel just understood and
referred to the term, ‘absolute,' in the beginning, as a universal and limited concept.
As he continued to immerse himself into his thinking, most particularly, taking into
account the necessity of negation, there he realized that there were extensive
differences among those concepts. In the end, he found out that he had to return to
where he started and discovered that those concepts could mean or refer to the same
subject. He thus wrote:

It may seem as if philosophy, in order to start on its course, had, like the rest of the
sciences, to begin with a subjective presupposition. […] It is by the free act of thought
that it occupies a point of view, in which it is for its own self, and thus gives itself an
object of its own production. […] The very point of view, which originally is taken
on its own evidence only, must in the course of the science be converted to a result −
the ultimate result in which philosophy returns into itself and reaches the point with
which it began. In this manner, philosophy exhibits the appearance of a circle which
closes with itself, and has no beginning in the same way as the other sciences have.21

The main concern of this paper, however, is not to discuss the signification of
those concepts (although there would be some elucidations to be cited in the middle
part of this paper) but to be able to get hold Hegel’s concept of ‘the absolute.' Hence,
to understand better Hegel’s broad and profound grasp of the term, ‘the absolute,' it
fits to express it in its logical and ontological contexts, as well as, and necessarily, as
stressed by Hegel, in its phenomenological context.

1.3 The ‘absolute’ in the logical and ontological contexts

Man, because he is rational, has the capacity, and it is part of his nature, to
think. Hegel claims, “in point of time, the mind makes general images of objects, long
before it makes notions of them, and that it is only through these mental images, and
by recourse to them, that the thinking mind rises to know and comprehend
thinkingly.”22 Hegel did not deny the validity of experience but for him, it is not
sufficient for two reasons:

In its own field, this empirical knowledge may at first give satisfaction; but in two
ways it is seen to come short. In the first place, there is another circle of objects which
it does not embrace. These are Freedom, Spirit, and God. They belong to a different
sphere, not because it can be said that they have nothing to do with experience; for
though they are certainly not experiences of the senses, it is quite an identical
proposition to say that whatever is in consciousness is experienced. The real ground
for assigning them to another field of cognition is that in their scope and content these
objects evidently show themselves as infinite.23 […] But in the second place, in point

21
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §17.
22
G.W.F. Hegel, §1.
23
G.W.F. Hegel, §8.
 5

of form, the subjective reason desires a further satisfaction than empirical knowledge
gives; and this form is, in the widest sense of the term, Necessity.24

It is clear that for Hegel, the mind, not experience, has the faculty to
comprehend that which are infinite. The Thought has the task of apprehending the
absolute objects: God, Spirit, and Freedom. He said,

The mind or spirit, when it is sentient or perceptive, finds its object in something
sensuous; when it imagines, in a picture or image; when it wills, in an aim or end. But
in contrast to, or it may be only in distinction from, these forms of its existence and of
its objects, the mind has also to gratify the cravings of its highest and most inward
life. That innermost self is thought. Thus, the mind renders thought its object. In the
best meaning of the phrase, it comes to itself; for thought is its principle and its very
unadulterated self. But while thus occupied, thought entangles itself in contradictions,
i.e., loses itself in the hard and−fast non−identity of its thoughts, and so, instead of
reaching itself, is caught and held in its counterpart. This result, to which honest but
narrow thinking leads the mere understanding, is resisted by the loftier craving of
which we have spoken. That craving expresses the perseverance of thought, which
continues true to itself, even in this conscious loss of its native rest and independence,
'that it may overcome' and work out in itself the solution of its own contradictions.25

Due to this “cravings of thought”, philosophy came into existence. Through

this discipline, Hegel pointed out the situation of an antagonism to the phenomena of
sense that would lead to the affirmation of the necessity of the universal essence of
Idea which, for him, is the Absolute:

The rise of philosophy is due to these cravings of thought. Its point of departure is
Experience; including under that name both our immediate consciousness and the
inductions from it. Awakened, as it were, by this stimulus, thought is vitally
characterized by raising itself above the natural state of mind, above the senses and
inferences from the senses into its own unadulterated element, and by assuming,
accordingly, at first a stand−aloof and negative attitude towards the point from which
it started. Through this state of antagonism to the phenomena of sense, its first
satisfaction is found in itself, in the Idea of the universal essence of these phenomena:
an Idea (the Absolute) which may be more or less abstract.26

Simply, Hegel first considered the concept of Thought of which from it flowed
his elaboration on Idea. However, as he continued to ponder on, he came to the issue
of the concept of the ‘absolute’.

24
G.W.F. Hegel, §9.
25
G.W.F. Hegel, §11.
26
G.W.F. Hegel, §12.
 6

The ‘absolute’ (das Absolute) is the technical term referred to by Hegel for the
subject matter of philosophy. He said in his Differenzschrift “that the task of
philosophy is to know the absolute.”27 In his book, Encyclopedia of Philosophical
Sciences, § 86, he wrote that “[t]he Absolute (das Absolute) is Being. This is (in
thought) the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted.” Moreover, in
§ 87, he stressed:

But this mere Being, as it is a mere abstraction, is, therefore, the absolutely negative:
which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just Nothing. Hence was derived the second
definition of the Absolute: the Absolute is the Nought. In fact, this definition is
implied in saying that the thing−in−itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form
and so without content.28

As indicated in the introductory part of this paper, the term, ‘absolute,’

basically means not dependent on, conditional on, relative to or restricted by anything
else. Thus, at the level of the logical idea or the Idea itself, the term, ‘absolute’, are
conceived as being, essence, and notion (concept) which are the names of the three
main parts of Hegel’s Science of Logic.29 Hegel pointed out that the truth of being is
essence, and the truth of essence is concept.
In the logical system of Hegel, the first name of the absolute is being. Being
is the immediate meaning of the absolute because every determination in the universe
is a kind of being. However, being, in its universal and absolute meaning, is not a
finite and determinate being that can be limited by any other determinate being. How
come that Hegel arrived at those considerations?
Before going further, it is proper, at this point, to introduce the process of
sublation (Aufhebung)30 in Hegel’s dialectical thought and how this process influenced
his ideas on being. Sublation has three stages:31 (1) in itself (An-sich); (2) out of itself
(Anderssein); and (3) in and for itself (An-und-fur-sich). This process of sublation
implies that every prior part or concept, as the basis of the latter one, gives its

27
G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, II
(New York: State University Press, 1988), 25/93.
28
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §87.
29
It is divided into three books, dealing with the topics of being, essence, and the concept,
which appeared in the years 1812, 1813, and 1816 respectively when Hegel was the headmaster and
philosophy teacher in Nuremberg.
30
The German term “aufheben” (“to sublate” in English) has a twofold meaning: it equally
means “to keep,” “to ‘preserve’,” and “to cause to cease,” “to put an end to.” See G. W. F. Hegel, The
Science of Logic, 82-83.
31
W. Turner, “Hegelianism.” [Accessed: May 12, 2016],
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07192a.htm,. In A Hegel Dictionary by M. Inwood (1992), sublation
“has three senses: (1) ‘to raise, to hold, to lift up’; (2) ‘to annul, abolish, destroy, cancel, suspend’; and
(3) ‘to keep, save, preserve’.”
 7

determination to this latter one, not in an immediate form, but in a mediated form. 32
For Hegel, sublation and mediation are analogous concepts.
Applying this process to Hegel’s doctrine of being, pure being (reines Sein) is
mediated with determinate being (Dasein) and both of them are sublated by being-for-
itself (Fürsichsein). This pure being is indeterminate being and in its being
indeterminate, it is absolute and infinite. Because it has no determinate content, it is
identical to nothing. Hegel claimed, “Being, the indeterminate immediate is, in fact,
nothing, and neither more or less than nothing.”33 But if considered in a purely
speculative manner, indetermination is also a determination because it has its meaning
or determination in contradiction to determination. In other words, pure being (reines
Sein), as indeterminate being, has its determination in contradiction to and about
determinate being (Dasein). According to Hegel, it makes a pure being (reines Sein)
not having any meaning at all apart from determinate being and it could be understood
in this sense as not absolute.34
Moreover, determinate being (Dasein) is finite being and as a limitation, it is
also not absolute. Hegel said, “the limitation of the finite is not something external to
it; on the contrary, its own determination is also its limitation.”35 Enver Orman stated
in his article, “On Hegel’s Concept of the Absolute”:

This identity of indeterminate and determinate being means that they are absolutely
different but in this very difference, they have a concrete and true identity. A
determinate being is qualitatively and quantitatively determinate being and it can be
reduced to its determinations. So in its very determination, it is a finite being, and
when it loses its determinations, it also loses itself or its very being. But being-for-
itself as the synthesis of determinate being and pure being (reines Sein) cannot also
be seen basically as the sum of its determinations and cannot be reduced to its
determinations. […] For Hegel, there always remains a ‘thing-in-itself’ for a ‘being-
for-itself’ which has its determinations. […] Being-for-itself has qualitative and
quantitative determination, but it is indeterminate and unfixed to its determination.

32
Here is a clear explanation of Timothy L.S. Sprigge in his book, The God of Metaphysics
regarding this method of Hegel: “[..] formulating the one concept in one’s mind as clearly as one can,
will force one on to a formulation of the next concept, whether as correcting some incoherence in the
first or as a necessary implication of it. The mind’s passage from one concept to another is not according
to psychological laws but to logical laws. What is more, the concepts do imply each other quite apart
from this becoming clear to any mind, though eventually minds must arise which grasp this. Moreover,
the earlier concepts do not just vanish as the line moves on beyond them; rather, are they ‘sublated’ in
it, which is how Hegel’s expression aufgehoben is usually translated. It is part of the genius of the
German language, according to Hegel, that the single word aufheben has the double meaning of
‘abolish’ and ‘preserve’, and it is in this double way that earlier concepts are abolished by later ones in
the dialectic process. That is, they are abolished as initially and unsatisfactorily understood, but are
retained as elements in richer subsequent concepts.” See: Timothy L.S. Sprigge, The God of
Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 110.
33
G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 59.
34
G.W.F. Hegel, 59.
35
G.W.F. Hegel, 59.
 8

And because of its indetermination to determination, it is indifferent to the process of

becoming. This side of indeterminateness makes being-for-itself infinite being which
is called now essence.36

Essence is another reality for the term ‘the absolute’ (das Absolute). In the
‘Doctrine of Essence’ in his Science of Logic, Hegel claimed, “The truth of being is
essence (Wesen).” All finite and material beings, with its qualitative and quantitative
determinations, belong to the world of appearances. They are relative, but the absolute
beings are not due to their essence. Hegel enunciated:

Being thus comes to be determined as essence (Wesen), as a being in which everything

determined and finite is negated. So it is simple unity, void of determination, from
which the determinate has been removed in an external manner; to this unity the
determinate was itself something external and, after this removal, it still remains
opposite to it; for it has not been sublated in itself but relatively, only with reference
to this unity.37

Since pure (reines Sein) and indeterminate being cannot be conceived as real
and true inner connection with determinate beings (Dasein) and appearances, the
category of essence (Wesen) is more determinate and concrete. Essence (Wesen), as
the new name of the absolute (das Absolute), is also the ground of all relative and
accidental beings or the phenomenal world. However, as Hegel continued in his
Doctrine of Being, he elaborated:

Essence stands between being and concept; it makes up its middle, its movement
constituting the transition of being into the concept. Essence is being-in-and-for-itself,
but it is in the determination of being-in-itself; for its general determination is that it
emerges from being or that it is the first negation of being. Its movement consists in
positing negation or determination in being, thereby giving itself existence and
becoming as infinite being-for-itself what it is in itself. It thus gives itself its existence
which is equal to its being-in-itself and becomes a concept. For the concept is the
absolute as it is absolutely, or in and for itself, in its existence. But the existence which
essence gives to itself is not yet existence as it is in and for itself but as essence gives
it to itself or as posited, and hence still distinct from the existence of the concept.38

Timothy L.S. Sprigge, in The God of Metaphysics, has a clearer and more
systematic way of explaining this quite complicated matter. He stressed that for Hegel,
in his dialectical method,39 reality as a whole has three stages or ‘moments’: (1) the

36
Enver Orman, “On Hegel’s Concept of the Absolute” [Accessed: April 24, 2016],
www.acarindex.com/dosyalar/makale/acarindex-1423907326.pdf · PDF file.
37
G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, 337-338.
38
G.W.F. Hegel, 339.
39
This method “consists in the construction of a series of triads which follow one upon another
with a peculiar kind of necessity. This turns on the fact that each triad consists of a thesis which requires
 9

logical idea or the Idea in itself, (2) the idea outside of itself or Nature, and (3) the idea
in and of itself, or the Spirit. The first application of the term ‘the absolute’ is the
notion of Idea as used in the so-called ‘Absolute Idea’. Sprigge defined ‘Absolute Idea’
as “the summatory concept or notion in a line of concepts in which each concept so
modifies the previous concept, or a pair of concepts, that it removes contradictions
within them.”40
The general character of this line of concepts starts with the concept of Pure
Being (reines Sein) and ends with the concept of the universe understanding itself as
the self-realization of the Absolute Idea. According to Sprigge,

‘Concepts’ or ‘notions’ are ‘moments,' stages in the reality of what God was before
the creation. That is, they are the ideas which must be true of all that actually exists.
They have a kind of being apart from the world of concrete existence, and yet the
world of concrete existence is nothing but their self-actualization.41

In other words, Hegel believed that all reality is Idea. But this Idea does not
remain in itself. It continues to evolve, to transform, and to correct itself to arrive at a
concrete existing reality. The beginning of this line of Idea is the concept of Pure Being
(reines Sein) which he called as the Idea Itself or Logical Idea and ends with the
concept of the universe understanding itself as the self-realization of the Absolute Idea.
How can these concepts realize themselves? Here is the explanation of
Sprigge:

They do so just as every concept in the line of concepts leading to the Absolute Idea
corrects a certain abstractness and deficiency in what preceded it, so that finally the
Absolute Idea itself, qua mere idea, must have its own abstractness corrected by
something which exists as a concrete reality rather than as a mere concept. And, just
as the line of concepts develops from its beginning till its end by its own inherent
necessity, so it leads to an actually existing world which these concepts describe. And
since the concept of anything leaves the details of what answers to it to some extent

correction by an antithesis, and that the two together require a synthesis which retains the merits of each
while moving beyond its limitations. (Hegel does not actually use these expressions, but they are useful
as an expository device for explaining the most usual pattern of these trials.) Then the synthesis, or its
close associate, becomes the thesis of a new triad of the same general pattern which similarly leads on
to a further triad. Sometimes the thesis is a concept whose contradictions are supposed to be corrected
by the antithesis, which, however, has its own problems, so that both need to be rescued from their
deficiencies by the synthesis. Sometimes the thesis changes before our conceptual eyes into an antithesis
which is, on the face of it, its opposite, while the synthesis combines them more harmoniously, but with
its own deficiency, which calls for a fresh thesis.” See: T.L.S. Sprigge, The God of Metaphysics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 113.
40
T.L.S. Sprigge, 108.
41
T.L.S. Sprigge, 109.
 10

unsettled, the actually existing world must have all sorts of empirical details which
give it a richer texture than its mere concept can describe.42

With that, beginning with the Idea in itself or the Logical Idea, as all reality for
Hegel, there are three main concepts falling under it namely, Being*43, Essence
(Wesen)*, and Notion* (Concept), as mentioned above, from Hegel’s Science of Logic.
Being* is the concept of things as immediate, simply presented to the experience with
either no, or minimal, inference. The region where mediation (Aufhebung, or
sublation) is involved is the Essence (Wesen). Its distinctive character is that Essence
(Wesen) consists of concepts or pairs of objects one of which is somehow in the
foreground, while the other is in the background and somehow more ‘real’. Notion
(Concept) comprises of concepts that characterize the world as an object of thought or
depicts man’s ways of thinking it.
Being*, in this consideration, has three main phases: Quality, Quantity, and
Measure. Quality, in itself, has three main phases: Being**, Determinate Being
(Dasein), and Being for Self of which this Being** has another three main phases:
Pure Being (reines Sein)***, Nothing, and Becoming. This Pure Being (reines Sein)
is the simplest concept of the universe. It consists simply of what is just there and
nothing more can be said further about it. Thinking deeply about this Pure Being
(reines Sein), it transforms itself into mere Nothing because Pure Being (reines Sein)
cannot be expounded furthermore. The universe cannot just be understood as Nothing
or a nonentity. An idea can be formed by combining the concepts of Pure Being (reines
Sein) and Nothing, but these concepts can, somehow, be the same yet retain their
differences. The concept that does this, for Hegel, is Becoming. Thus, Pure Being
(reines Sein) and Nothing keep changing (Becoming) into each other.44
The category of Essence is primarily that with which the natural science works.
But it is to be noted that it also plays a role in one type of (ultimately inadequate)
religious thought. However, the level of thought which mainly uses the categories of
Essence (Wesen) is natural science rather than religion. In Hegel’s terms, Essence
(Wesen) is the realm of fast and hard distinctions where each thing is sharply
distinguished from each other thing. These are the categories of understanding
(Verstand) rather than of reason (Vernunft), while the categories of Being* were those
by which one apprehends the purely immediate by intuition (Anschauung).45
The first stage of Essence (Wesen) * is Essence as Ground** of Existence, and
it includes the Pure Categories of Reflection***. The Pure Categories of Reflection
consist of Identity, Difference, and the Ground****. Regarding this use of the term,
Ground, Sprigge explains,

42
T.L.S. Sprigge, 110.
43
The number of asterisks (*) after the name for each concept indicates the level to which it
belongs (below one of the three master triads) in the unrolling of the dialectic.
44
T.L.S. Sprigge, 116.
45
T.L.S. Sprigge, 119.
 11

The examination of the Categories of Reflection explains how ground and grounded
easily change places. For the ground is meant to be that on which the grounded
depends on, yet it turns out that the ground requires something it grounds in order that
it should be at all. So the distinction between the two breaks down, and they are no
longer two but one. Yet, after all, they are two, for otherwise there would be nothing
between which the distinction could break down. For it takes two to be the same, as
also to be different. Thus for the first time in the dialectic we encounter relational
concepts rather than what are essentially one-place predicates.46

This multiplicity of mutually grounding things is the system of existents which

constitutes the category of Existence (the second stage of Essence as Ground**).
Existence (Wesen) is something more than Being (of any kind), for the assertion that
‘something simply is’ or a thing simply within its bounds expresses merely a dumb
sensory acquaintance with it. To conceive of it as existing is to conceive of it as an
element in a world of interacting elements. This conception of reality as a system of
interacting things has introduced the concept of the Thing. This concept has its usual
three subcategories which are the Thing and its Properties, the Thing and Matters, and
Matter and Form.47
The second phase of Essence (Wesen)* is the category of Appearance** in
which its world, nothing is quite what it seems. Hegel associates this contrast with two
others: those of Content and Form***, and Relation and Correlation***. Passing over
this is the third main category of Essence*, which is Actuality**.
The general character of Actuality** is that it is an attempt (in the end,
inadequate) to resolve a tension between the categories of Being* and the categories
of Essence (Wesen)*, of which it is the final stage. For Being*, each thing is complete
in itself, with nothing indicating a relationship to anything else. For Essence (Wesen)*,
by contrast, each thing is there only as a component of a larger system of things and
seems to lose any independent character whatever. For Actuality**, which attempts a
synthesis of these two, the supposed contrast between the inner independent being of
something and its standing about other things diminishes into almost nothing.48
Actuality** has three subcategories: Substance and Accident, Cause and
Effects, and Reciprocity. But these subcategories cannot ease the tension between
conceiving things under the category of Being* and conceiving them under the
category of Essence (Wesen)*. Appearance** ends in the category of Inner and
Outer***. The inner was the underlying reality of anything, while the outer was the
face it turned to the world. The problem was how these two items, the inner and the
outer, are related. Thus, Actuality intends to solve the problem by regarding it as
essential to the Inner that it should have an Outer expression, and essential to the Outer

46
T.L.S. Sprigge, 120.
47
T.L.S. Sprigge, 120.
48
T.L.S. Sprigge, 121.
 12

that it should express something Inner. In this way, the plain contrast between inner
and outer is solved. Hegel regarded Actuality as bound up with necessity—which first
enters the concept of the world here. It is because the Inner must be manifested in the
Outer, and contrariwise. So to conceive the world regarding Actuality is also to begin
to see it as a necessary system.49
The first subcategory of Actuality is that of Substance and Accident. These are
specific forms of the relation of inner expressing itself in the outer. However, this
contrast between Substance and its Accidents cannot be thought of for long without
its turning into a relation of Cause and Effect. Hence, the contrast between Substance
and Accident melts into the contrast between Cause and Effect. But if one seriously
thinks about the relation between cause and effect, the two concepts are barely
distinguishable. A thing which is acted on causally by something else can only thus be
acted on in virtue of being what it is.50 Thus, a better way of conceiving the world than
as a series of cause and effect relations is a system in which everything is in reciprocal
relations to other things. Reciprocity then replaces the category of Cause and Effect as
the finale of Actuality.51
Reciprocity is the end-point of Actuality, for it can only be understood
(according to Hegel) if the world is conceived as a system of thought. And this
conception constitutes the category of the Notion (Concept), which is the third great
phase of the Logical Idea.52
Notion* consists itself of the three main triads namely, the Subjective
Notion**, the Objective Notion** and the Idea**. The Subjective Notion** is the
concept of the world as consisting in conceptual thought; the Objective Notion** is
the thought of the world as physical; the Idea** is the thought of the world as thought
thinking itself. To conceive the world under the categories of the Subjective Notion**
is to conceive it as consisting in conceptual thought. And the most obvious way to do
this is, in terms of the way in which it addresses itself to reality, first by way of
concepts (category of The Notion as Notion***), then by way of judgements (category
of The Judgment***), then by way of reasoning (category of The Syllogism***). It
should be noted that the most important thing to emerge in the discussion of the Notion
as Notion*** is Hegel’s distinction between the Universal Notion**** (Der
allgemeine Begriff), the Particular or Specific Notion**** (das besonderes Begriff),
and the Individual Notion**** (das Einzelne).53
Indeed, the universal, the particular or specific, and the individual or singular,
are three basic features of reality for Hegel and were present in his thought about
almost everything. However, so flexible was his use of the terms that it is not too easy
to define them. Their general character may be expressed similarly to this. The

49
T.L.S. Sprigge, 122.
50
T.L.S. Sprigge, 122.
51
T.L.S. Sprigge, 123.
52
T.L.S. Sprigge, 123.
53
T.L.S. Sprigge, 125.
 13

universal is some undifferentiated unity; the particular is some differentiation within

this unity, which destroys it as a unity; while the singular, or individual, is something
in which unity is restored without differentiation being lost. This, it tends to do, by
showing the differentiation as issuing from the unity rather than negating it. Thus it is
famously referred to as ‘the negation of the negation’. For, as Hegel saw it, the
universal is positive and immediate, the particular is negative, while the singular, or
individual, negates the negativity of the particular and resumes the positivity of the
universal, but enriched by the negativity of the particular. More generally, the
distinction between the Logical Idea, the Idea Outside Itself, or Nature, and the Idea
in and for Itself, or Spirit, illustrates this pervasive triad. It is because the Logical Idea
is a unity (universal) which differentiates itself into Nature (particulars) and is finally
united in Spirit (the individual for which the Idea and Nature and Spirit itself are
grasped as a necessarily self-differentiating One).54
The category of The Syllogism*** (which prompted the discussion of
universal, particular, and individual) is the third and final category of the Subjective
Notion which exhibits the different levels at which Reality is conceived as consisting
in conceptual thought. As such, it exhibits the breakdown of this conception of reality
and pushes the dialectic on to the category of the Objective Notion. Hegel managed to
‘deduce’ various forms of syllogism, one from another. The last main head of this is
what he called the Syllogism of Necessity****, which has, as its three subcategories,
the Categorical Syllogism*****, the Hypothetical Syllogism*****, and the
Disjunctive Syllogism*****. In the last of these, the syllogism turns against itself,
since the process of mediation (Aufhebung, or sublation) between the terms gives way
to an immediate identity between them. And in terminating its character as a process
of mediation, the syllogism ceases to be a form of thought, and becomes rather ‘a
thought object’, in short, the Objective Notion**.55
The Objective Notion** consists of the categories under which the physical
world is thought of. But how can the physical world pertain to the Notion, since this
is the stage at which the world is seen as thought? The answer is that the Objective
Notion is the physical world, not as an ‘objective’ reality, but as man thinks it. And
the objects which first present themselves to thought are physical objects, processes,
or substances. The categories which pertain to the Objective Notion are initial concepts
of Mechanism, then of Chemistry, (the Sciences) and finally of Teleology. The most
elementary way of thinking of the physical is to conceive it as a Mechanism, a way of
thinking the inadequacies of which it shows the need to advance to conceptions of a
more ‘chemical’ nature. These conceptions reveal, in turn, the need for an expansion
to conceptions of a more teleological kind, though not the kind of teleology which
belongs only to the mind.56

54
T.L.S. Sprigge, 127.
55
T.L.S. Sprigge, 129.
56
T.L.S. Sprigge, 129-130.
 14

The teleological conception of things in its more primitive form sharply divides
Means from Ends. What is more, it requires an intermediate term, that of the activity
which leads from the one to the other. This is external Teleology. However, this is an
inadequate conception of teleology, which is only really intelligible when that to which
it applies includes both means and end in unity. Thus to conceive physical processes
as teleological is virtually to conceive them as living, and life is, in fact, the humble,
initial form in which the category of the Idea** (which culminates in the all-covering
conception of the Absolute Idea) presents itself. For to conceive of the physical as
living leads inevitably to conceiving of it as possessing Cognition***. And this is the
second category of the Idea** (the third synthesizing category of the Notion**).57
Cognition*** has two subcategories rather than the usual three: namely,
Cognition Proper**** (thinking that something is the case) and Volition**** (desiring
or willing that something shall or should be the case). Either way, it involves a contrast
between subject and object. However, the conception of cognition and volition as two
distinct things is incoherent, since neither can be what it is without the other. Cognition
and Volition are, finally, unsatisfactory concepts. For one conceives of the object as
determining the subject, and the other of the subject as determining the object. These
are contradictory conceptions, which cannot be true of the world. Thus the ultimate
category regarding which reality is thought of should not be that of a subject
confronting an object, whether as something thought or as something willed, but of a
unitary reality from which subject and object are abstractions, without independent
reality. But to conceive reality in this way is to conceive it as the Absolute Idea, or as
Spirit grasping itself, qua spirit, as what the universe is. As Sprigge expressed it in
another way, “it is the conception of the universe as a self-experiencing Whole in
which all oppositions between its parts are sublated; that is to say, their opposition to
each other remains as a kind of throb within the Whole without threatening its unity.”58
This is the final phase of the Idea, and thus the climax of the whole realm of
the first member of the master triad, the Logical Idea. As such, it is the all-
comprehending concept (the Absolute Idea) under which reality must be thought.

1.4 The meaning of ‘the absolute’ in its phenomenological context

Hegel’s phenomenological conception of the absolute is taken from his
Phenomenology of the Spirit.59 Hegel’s absolute is the Hegelian spirit which is also
the Hegelian truth. He declared in the Introduction, “the Absolute alone is true, or the
truth alone is absolute.”60

57
T.L.S. Sprigge, 130.
58
T.L.S. Sprigge, 130.
59
It was completed in the late 1806 and published in 1807 when Hegel was a professor in the
University of Jena.
60
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977), §75, 47.
 15

How does one know this Absolute? Cognition (refer to the previous
discussion) is the instrument to get hold of the Absolute (das Absolute), or it is the
medium through which one discovers it. It is a faculty of a definite kind and scope.
Hegel admitted that instead of troubling about cognition, its ideas, words such as
‘absolute,' objective’, and ‘subjective’, and countless others associated with them, they
should be rejected right away as adventitious, arbitrary, and deceptions. To him, those
ideas were intended to protect against Science itself as an empty appearance of
knowing. Hegel proposed that Science must liberate itself from this appearance, and
it can be done only by turning against it. When confronted with a knowledge that is
without truth, Science can merely reject it as an ordinary way of looking at things
because Science is a different sort of cognition. This situation assures Science to
declare its power to lie simply in its being. But untrue knowledge also appears that it
is, and it is an assurance that Science knows nothing about it. Because it has only the
phenomenal knowledge for its object, Science is no longer admitted, in this case.61
Spirit, the third great triad of the whole dialectic, is eventually the medium
through which the Idea understands itself consciously. But before it can do this, it must
pass through a series of subordinate forms. Or rather, these subordinate forms must be
perpetually present in reality as undergirding Spirit in its highest form (Absolute
Spirit). There are three levels of Spirit, constituting its great triad. These are Subjective
Spirit*, Objective Spirit*, and Absolute Spirit*.62
The categories of Subjective Spirit* are the categories used by individual
psychology. The dialectic progression follows a series either of ways in which the
individual mind may be conceived or of ways in which individual minds of greater
and greater sophistication exist in nature. The three great phases of Subjective Spirit*
are the Soul** (discussed under the heading of Anthropology), Consciousness**
(discussed under the heading of Phenomenology), and Mind** (Geist) (discussed
under the heading of Psychology). Soul, consciousness, and mind refer just to what
they are at this level. The first of these is concerned with the animal soul. It is
consciousness of the type possessed by animals, and subsisting as a basis on which all
the subtle aspects of human consciousness rest. Each category here is an aspect of the
way in which an animal organism feels its bodily existence.
After Soul** is the stage of Consciousness**. This stage has three phases:
Consciousness Proper***, Self-consciousness***, and Reason (Vernunft)***. The
three grades of the first of these are Sensuous Consciousness****, Sense
Perception****, and Reason (Vernunft) or Intellect****.63
Hegel recognizes the path of natural (proper) Consciousness –

61
G.W.F. Hegel, §77, 49.
62
T.L.S. Sprigge, The Metaphysics of God, 134.
63
T.L.S. Sprigge, 135.
 16

[A]s the way of the Soul which journeys through the series of its own configurations
as though they were the stations appointed for it by its own nature, so that it may
purify itself for the life of the Spirit, and achieve finally, through a completed
experience of itself, the awareness of what it really is in itself.64

Hegel claimed that natural (proper) Consciousness will show itself to be only
the Notion (or the Concept) of knowledge or not be real (or absolute) knowledge. It is
the first form of Spirit in his search of absolute truth. Why? First, Consciousness has
sense-certainty about individual objects in the phenomenal world. Sense-certainty
immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge, the truest knowledge, yet this
very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. Hegel described,
“Consciousness […] is in its certainty only as a pure ‘I’; or I am in it only as a pure
‘This,’ and the object similarly only as a pure ‘This.’65 However, he further explained
that Pure Being (reines Sein) remains as the essence of this sense-certainty because
sense-certainty has manifested that truth of its object is the universal.
Second, Consciousness has the power of perception about individual objects.
Perception takes what is present to the ‘This’ (pure being or reines Sein) as a universal.
In itself, the universal as the principle is the essence of perception. Consciousness is
determined as the percipient in so far as this ‘thinghood,’ ‘pure essence’, or the Thing
is its object.66 Third, Consciousness has the power of understanding that recognizes
what is behind the content of perception, that is, the human mind and its abstract and
universal categories. Moreover, the Spirit (or absolute) takes the form of Self-
consciousness after Consciousness. As Self-consciousness, it has a double object, the
immediate object, that of sense-certainty and perception (of the world), and itself,
which is the true essence (Wesen).67
Furthermore, Self-consciousness is Reason (Vernunft). “It is certain that it is
itself reality,” said Hegel, “or that everything actual is none other than itself; its
thinking is itself directly actuality, and thus its relationship to the latter (itself) is that
of idealism.”68 Finally, “Reason (Vernunft) is Spirit when its certainty of being all
reality has been raised to truth, and it is conscious of itself as its own world, and of the
world as itself.”69 Hegel believed, “when this Reason (Vernunft) which Spirit has in
intuited by Spirit as Reason (Vernunft) that exists, or as Reason (Vernunft) that is
actual in Spirit and is its world, then Spirit exists in truth; it is Spirit, the ethical essence
that has an actual existence.”70 This ethical spirit’s world is its present world and
breaks into two – the world of reality (through culture and absolute freedom) and that

64
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §77, 49.
65
G.W.F. Hegel, §91, 58.
66
G.W.F. Hegel, §116, 70.
67
G.W.F. Hegel, §167, 105.
68
G.W.F. Hegel, §232, 139.
69
G.W.F. Hegel, §438, 263.
70
G.W.F. Hegel, §440, 265.
 17

which Spirit constructs for itself in the aether of pure consciousness (through morality)
and religion. Pure consciousness is not only the element of faith but equally of the
Notion (or the Concept).71
T.L.S. Sprigge explained that the Soul was an immediate unity. Consciousness
is distinguished between a conscious subject and the external objects of which it is
aware. Psychology (Spirit) restores the unity, but it is a unity enriched by the
adventures in an apparently external world which constituted consciousness. Thus it
is Spirit engaged with itself, rather than anything outward, but enriched by its apparent
adventures with something other than itself. Spirit (at the level of Psychology) is,
therefore, free—that is, self-determinative—as it has not been in its previous phases.
Psychology (Spirit) has three phases: Theoretical Spirit, Practical Spirit, and
Free Spirit in which it fully realizes its freedom. Theoretical Spirit divides into
Intuition, Representation, and Thinking. Intuition is the most elementary form of
thought, in which an object somehow simply hovers before men without any explicit
awareness of oneself as thinking of it.
An adequate form of thinking is Representation. Here, Spirit (again, at the level
of Psychology) is aware of the objects of its thought as having been brought into it
from outside. They are therefore no longer external. A perceived rose flower, for
example, is something external to Spirit (at the level of Psychology), but when the
flower is thought of, it becomes internal to it, and becomes, in fact, a Representation
(Vorstellung). Hegel discussed this as though in being, brought into thought; the object
ceased to exist outside.
Representation itself has three modes: Recollection, Imagination, and
Memory. Recollection is simply the transforming of an external object into something
thought of or imagined. In Imagination, the mind becomes more fully aware of itself
as creating its objects, since it can do so without assistance from anything outside.
Memory seems to be an advance on Recollection and Imagination since it requires no
imagery but can be conducted in words alone. Words, however, are not mere sensuous
noises, but mental contents somehow essentially imbued with meaning. Stripped of
meaning, they become mere noises.72
Memory, in this sense, develops into Thinking Proper. The most important
feature of thinking is that it involves judgment. The previous types of mental activity
established only a problematic relation between their objects considered as universals
and as particulars. Thinking settles the problem, since it consists in seeing the
Universal in the Particular, and this is what judgment is. As such, it ceases to employ
concepts which are sharply distinct from each other in a manner untrue to their
exemplification in fact. Instead, it moves fluidly from one concept to another by their
dialectical relations.73

71
G.W.F. Hegel, §487, 297.
72
T.L.S. Sprigge, 139.
73
T.L.S. Sprigge, 139-140.
 18

Thinking (the third mode of Theoretical Spirit) is aware that its objects are its
creations, and thereby assumes control of them! It thus becomes Practical Feeling. As
such, it molds objects to its wishes. It does so, at first, in an immediate fashion.
However, it is an immediacy which yearns after something more rational. This leads
on to the level of choice between different immediate objects: that is, the category of
Impulses and Choice. At this level, the Spirit has no clear way of making its choices
and is merely the chaotic scene of impulse struggling against impulse. For Hegel, this
means that it is a self-contradictory state of Spirit. To resolve this contradiction, the
Spirit passes into its next phase, which is Happiness.
Impulses and Choice exhibit the Spirit as dividing into a multiplicity of
particulars. To avoid this contradiction, the Spirit directs itself to the universal under
which these particulars fall, and this universal is Happiness, a state in which it hopes
to find compatible satisfactions for all its impulses. But this poses a problem for Free
Spirit. For this, getting after happiness proves in vain, since satisfaction of all these
opposing impulses is impossible. And this is because the Spirit is a universal, and
cannot find satisfaction in any object which is not truly universal too. But this, the
Spirit can do if it objectifies itself, and this means that it must fulfill itself in something
objective. This will, in one sense, be external—it will not be mere subjectivity. Rather,
it will be subjectivity actualized in the objective world. As such, it becomes Objective
Spirit, the Spirit realizing itself in an external world, but consciously so, not
unconsciously as in Nature. The Objective Spirit constitutes the third phase of the
Spirit (in the largest sense), coming between the Subjective Spirit and the Absolute
Spirit.74
The concrete universal within which a group of human beings is unified by the
categories of Objective Spirit is called by Hegel the ‘Ethical Substance.' The main
triad of categories of Objective Spirit is Abstract Right, Morality, and Social Ethics.
As in most of Hegel’s treatment of human life, the series of categories is not primarily,
if at all, chronological. What the categories pick out are the main features of human
life in all societies (or all societies that are not barbaric). These features may be more
dominant in some actual societies than in others, but each is present in at least an
embryonic form in all even minimally civilized human life. And in true dialectic
fashion, each of them makes up for the limitations inherent in the others.75
The Absolute Spirit arises because the Geist (Mind) can completely fulfill itself
neither in the mere person (the Subjective Spirit) nor in Objective Spirit. The first is
too subjective and internal, the second is also too objective and external. Moreover,
each of these is a form of mere finite existence, while Geist is, in essence, infinite and
can therefore only actualize itself in the infinite—an infinite, of course, which is
pervasively present in the finite. As such, each form of the Absolute Spirit shows Geist
trying to grasp its essential nature; that is, each is an aspiration to become conscious

74
T.L.S. Sprigge, 140.
75
T.L.S. Sprigge, 141.
 19

of Absolute Reality, in fact, to become conscious of it as its essential being or

substance.76
The Absolute Spirit is, of course, itself a triad—indeed, a master triad, with
three great moments: Art, Religion, and Philosophy. According to Sprigge,

Each of Art, Religion, and Philosophy is a way of conceiving the Absolute (das
Absolute), in the recognition, dim or lucid, that the Absolute is Spirit. However, they
differ in the way in which they comprehend this. Art sees the Absolute (das Absolute)
through sensory objects; Religion sees it through mental pictures; while Philosophy,
finally grasps it conceptually in its true essence, without the distortion which the
previous two involve.77

Hegel considered the following types of Arts as adequately revealing the

Absolute (das Absolute) of which the basic is the Art manifested in the Beauty of
Nature. The next two phases of the dialectic are the Types of Art and the Particular
Arts. Hegel said that the Types of Art that the Absolute is depicted are the Symbolic
Art of which, strangely, architecture is the prime example, the Classical Arts of which
sculpture is a prime example, and the Romantic Art of which painting, music, and
poetry are the main examples. However, the Art remains at the sensory level and for
that reason, it does not fully grasp the Absolute (das Absolute).
Religion lies between the Art and Philosophy. It grasps the Absolute in the
form of Vorstellungen, or a kind of pictorial concept. It is not a full sensory reality,
like a sense presentation or a sensory image, but it is still pictorial in a manner which
the concepts of philosophy have transcended.78 This is how Sprigge articulated it:

We must continue to bear in mind that for Hegel, unlike many other philosophers,
conceptual thought, when the concepts are those of Reason (Vernunft) rather than of
Understanding (Verstand), grasps reality in a more full and concrete way than does
any other form of consciousness. Many philosophers (e.g. Bergson, James, and in
Hegel’s own time Schopenhauer) have thought of conceptual thinking as necessarily
giving us only a thin awareness of reality, in comparison with its character as revealed
in some more sensory or immediate way. But for Hegel, there is something too thin
and abstract even about thinking in the form of religious Vorstellungen. It is only when
we grasp all this in philosophical terms—that is, follow the dialectic of Hegelian
philosophy, or at least something close to it—that we get at the full concreteness of
reality.79

Thus, for Hegel, the most adequate medium to reach the realm of the Absolute
(das Absolute) is the purely conceptual which is provided by Philosophy. Philosophy

76
T.L.S. Sprigge, 145.
77
T.L.S. Sprigge, 145.
78
T.L.S. Sprigge, 148.
79
T.L.S. Sprigge, 148.
 20

is, for Hegel, the supreme achievement of Geist (Mind) in human history. And
religion, more specifically Christianity, for philosophically educated people, should
be understood regarding Hegelian philosophy. It remains true that philosophical
thought is the coping stone of everything. Indeed, Hegel even described Philosophy as
itself a form (the highest form?) of worship.80

1.5 Hegel’s Concept of God

According to Beiser, Hegel’s concept of God affirms the traditional definition,
that is, that God is an infinite Being, but it denies the orthodox definition of the infinite
as a supernatural being that exists apart from the finite world that it created. For Hegel,
if the infinite were conceived in opposition to the finite, then it would be finite itself
because it would be limited by the finite. It is impossible to have a greater reality than
the infinite – the unity of the infinite and the finite. Thus, the true infinite must include
the finite so that the divine encompasses the entire universe. This concept of the
infinite then is contrary to the established concept of God.81
God, for Hegel, is also immanent. God reveals Himself in the finite world, and
He is inseparable from His embodiment in nature and history. However, God, in
another reality, is irreducible to the world because He is the foundation, substance, and
source of its embodiment. Hegel wrote, “God must be simply and solely the
ground of everything, and in so far not dependent upon anything else.”82
As a consequence, Hegel naturalized and historicized the divine but due to its
irreducibility to the world, he divinizes history and nature.83
In Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion84, he elaborated his concept
of God. According to him, as the concept of God ‘develops’ in the Christian religion,
it unfolds in three ‘elements’, ‘moments’, ‘spheres’, or ‘kingdoms’: the idea of God in
and for itself, the idea of God in representation and appearance, and the idea of God
in community and as the Holy Spirit.85 In the first moment, God subsists in abstract
universality; then the universal ‘sets itself forth’ or appears as finite, particular,
differentiated, separated; and finally, the now embodied universal returns to itself as
absolute subjectivity, absolute presence-to-self, or Absolute Spirit. By this Trinitarian
self-mediation, God goes from being Absolute Substance to Absolute Subject.86
This is what Hegel said in his 1827 lectures:

80
T.L.S. Sprigge, 157.
81
F. Beiser, Hegel, 142-143.
82
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, § 19.
83
F. Beiser, 143.
84
There were three known instances that Hegel had his lectures on Philosophy of Religion: in
the years 1824, 1827, and 1831.
85
This part is discussed in a systematic way by T.L.S. Sprigge in his book, The God of
Metaphysics and some pertinent ideas on this matter are already tackled above and also, in the ensuing
section.
86
Peter C. Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, A Reading on the Philosophy of Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 127.
 21

(1) First, in and for itself, God [is] in his eternity before the creation of the world
and outside the world.
(2) Second, God creates the world and posits the separation. He creates both
nature and finite spirit. What is created is, at first, an other, posited outside of God.
But God is essentially the reconciling to himself of what is alien, what is particular,
what is posited in separation from him. He must restore to freedom and to his truth
what is alien, has fallen away in the idea’s self-diremption, in its falling away from
itself. This is the path and the process of reconciliation.
(3) In the third place, through this process of reconciliation, the spirit has
reconciled with itself what is distinguished from itself in its act of diremption, of
primal division, and it is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit [present] in the community.87

From those concepts mentioned above and other notions not tackled here, this
is, according to P.C. Hodgson referred to as Hegel’s compact definition of God: ‘God
in his eternal universality is the one who distinguishes himself, determines himself,
posits an other to himself, and sublates the distinction, thereby remaining present to
himself, and is Spirit only through this process of being brought forth.’88

1.6 Is ‘the Absolute of Hegel’ God?

This query had already been put forward by William Desmond in his book,
Hegel’s God: A Counterfeit Double? where he argued that the God portrayed in
Hegel’s philosophy of religion is not the true, and real God as believed in by the
Christians but as an idol, a counterfeit.89 The following are some of his arguments:

(1) In place of the transcendent God of monotheism, Hegel offers a philosophy

of immanence based on human self-transcendence and a critique of God who is
‘beyond’. […] Hegel’s mistake is to think of God’s transcendence in terms of human
self-transcending, and thus he posits God as an absolutely self-determining being in
which a relating to an other occurs, but in that relating a fuller self-relating comes
about such that no ultimate transcendence as other is found, only a self-completing
immanence, or holism.90
(2) Hegel’s Trinity is a trinitarian monism, not a trinitarian monotheism. His
economic Trinity is subordinated to the immanent Trinity in such a way that God’s
real relations to the world are simply epiphenomenal to God’s ideal self-relations.
Nothing is really outside the divine life but simply more complete expressions of its
absolute immanence.91

87
P.C. Hodgson, 128.
88
P.C. Hodgson, 128.
89
P.C. Hodgson, 248.
90
P.C. Hodgson, 251.
91
P.C. Hodgson, 253.
 22

(3) The God-world relation must be understood to be asymmetrical. God’s

relation to finite creation is not assimilable to the relation of the finite creation of God;
it cannot be made homogeneously symmetrical with it. Instead, God’s relation to the
world has the character of ‘hyperbolic goodness’, which means the gratuitous descent
of the superior into finitude. This entails a different sort of kenosis than that envisaged
by Hegel, who is unable to grasp the genuinely agapeic character of the divine
goodness – its gratuitous, non-necessary, superabundant self-giving.92

To those critiques expressed by Desmond, the following are the counter

arguments posed by Peter C. Hodgson as his defense for Hegel:

(1) This interpretation of Hegelian holism as tantamount to a philosophy of

immanence or a ‘mystical monism’ is a gross caricature. For Hegel, as for Plato, the
whole is not simply the one (a philosophy of identity), but the one and the many. A
whole comprises parts. […] Without genuine difference and otherness, without
transcendence as well as immanence, there is no whole, no system of relations, no
spiraling into novelty, but simply as eternal repetition of the same. God is this whole,
the whole in which everything finite comes into being and passes away, the whole in
which time and history transpire and God becomes concretely self-determined.93
(2) As regards Hegel’s Trinity, it is not the immanent Trinity that is primary for
him but the inclusive Trinity, the Trinity that comprises God and the world together,
both God’s ideal self-relations and God’s real relations to what is not-God. These
relations are not the same.94
(3) For Hegel, the relationship between God and the world is not homogeneously
symmetrical. Rather, the relationship of the absolute to the finite has an irreversible
primacy. It is the infinite that overreaches the difference between the finite and
infinite and includes finitude within itself; finitude cannot do this. […] The religious
relationship entails a negation of self as finite and an elevation of self into the divine
milieu. The basis of this elevation is not human self-projection but the divine descent
into finitude. God as an ‘affirmatory infinitude’ is the condition of possibility for the
relationship with God and for knowledge of God.95 Then, for Hegel, God is both self-
creating and other-creating, both erotic and agapeic. After all, creativity is the divine
nature. God is not a static entity but a spiritual process, a coming-to-be, and a
bringing-into-being.96

Hegel's thought about this matter can be read in his elaboration of the Definite
Religion under the topic of the Absolute Spirit as Revealing Itself in Religion. Hegel

92
P.C. Hodgson, 254.
93
P.C. Hodgson, 252.
94
P.C. Hodgson, 254.
95
P.C. Hodgson, 254.
96
P.C. Hodgson, 256.
 23

characterized a series of religions which present an increasingly adequate Vorstellung

(pictorial concept) of the spirituality of the Absolute (das Absolute). The first of the
definite religions is the Religion of Nature which finds the Absolute in nature. Its most
elementary form is Magic.
The next form of religion is the Religion of Substance. This form appreciates
that the Absolute is the universal, but it is the blankness of the abstract universal rather
than the riches of the concrete universal which it pictures. This Religion of Substance
is followed by a transitional triad of religions which forms the transition between
Religions of Substance and Religions of Spiritual Individuality. These are half-way
between conceiving the Absolute as Substance and conceiving it as Spirit. This triad
is followed by the Religions of Spiritual Individuality in which the Absolute is grasped
as Spirit, though not quite adequately.97
But what is the difference between conceiving the Absolute (das Absolute) as
Substance and conceiving it as Spirit? Here is the explanation of Sprigge,

To conceive the Absolute as substance is to conceive it as an essentially sterile lump

of being, or mere abstract universal, from which all the rich differentiation of the
world has been creamed off, leaving it as that low level of Being which is scarcely
distinguishable from Nothing. This is much what Hegel very unfairly thought of
Spinoza’s substance as being.98

In Hegel’s Introduction to Aesthetics, he said that the Absolute (das Absolute)

‘is the universal, which preserves itself in its particularizations, dominates alike itself
and its ‘‘other’’, and so becomes the power and activity that consists in undoing its
[self-imposed] alienation [from itself].’ The Absolute had lost sight of its true
character when it alienated itself from itself in Nature, and for this to be recovered,
Nature had to produce human beings as the medium through which it could grasp this
again in a fuller form. For it is through human beings that the Absolute (das Absolute)
grasps Itself Self-consciously as the real source of everything that is.99
Moreover, Hegel claims, the Religions of Spiritual Individuality came near to
representing, in the pictorial manner of religion, the spirituality and personality of the
Absolute (das Absolute). But each did so to some degree defectively. Judaism
conceived God and Man as too remote from each other. Greek religion joyously
celebrated all aspects of life through its multiplicity of gods but lost anything but a
dim sight of the unity of God; while Roman religion divided the divine into two ill-
unified parts, that of private family life and trade and that of the state.100
It is only with Christianity that religion arose which expressed the real truth
about the world in the imaginative mode peculiar to religion. Each of the main

97
T.L.S. Sprigge, 148-149.
98
T.L.S. Sprigge, 149.
99
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures 1827, 318-388. See T.L.S. Sprigge, 150.
100
T.L.S. Sprigge, 150.
 24

doctrines of Christianity provides an image of the literal truth about the world (as
finally discovered by Hegel). For the difference between the final and absolute religion
and the final and absolute philosophy—that is, between Christianity and
Hegelianism—consists not in the truths about the world which each grasp, but in the
manner of this grasp. Christianity understands the truth about reality in a quasi-
pictorial or mythical manner, while speculative philosophy grasps it in a purely
conceptual manner.101
Thus each of the main doctrines of Christianity provides an image, or
Vorstellung, of the literal truth about the world. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity
is particularly significant from this point of view. The literal truth of this, which is
grasped conceptually and adequately by philosophy, and that what is symbolized by
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are the three moments of the
great triad of the dialectic: namely, the Logical Idea, the Idea Outside Itself, or Nature,
and Spirit. T.L.S. Sprigge described these three moments and related them to the
doctrine of Trinity in this manner:

(1) The Absolute Idea necessarily actualizes itself in a concrete world. Thus God’s
creation of the world is not really a temporal event; rather, the concrete world eternally
proceeds from him. However, the Vorstellung of a temporal event of creation is an
appropriate expression of it. (2) This world which issues from the Absolute Idea (God
the Father) is the kingdom of the Son, consisting in the natural world together with
the world of human institutions and interacting persons. (These are at an apparent
distance from the Logical Idea, and their apparent otherness from it is what is signified
by the doctrine of the Fall of man.) (3) Finally, the human mind becomes the home of
Absolute Spirit (Holy Spirit) and grasps in increasingly adequate ways (i.e., the
various phases of Art, Religion, and Philosophy) its identity with the Absolute Idea of
which it and the world are the necessary actualizations.102

Moreover, Sprigge claimed,

Hegel is able to associate this interpretation with the fact that the first moment of a
dialectical triad is universal, the second particular, and the third the individual. Thus:
The Logical Idea as the first, The Universal, moment of the triad necessarily
differentiates itself into a world of particulars, and this is the creation of the world by
God the Father. These Particulars constitute the natural world or The Idea Outside
Itself. This is the habitation of humankind, and may be called The Kingdom of the
Son in so far as it is here that the Idea takes on the form of a man who through his
sufferings allows humanity to move on to a higher plane. On this higher plane, the
true Individual emerges as Spirit coming to recognize, through the medium of the
human mind, that through all the Particular vicissitudes, defeats, and triumphs of

101
T.L.S. Sprigge, 150.
102
T.L.S. Sprigge, 150.
 25

humanity, it is the one Universal Reality coming to fruition and to knowledge of itself
as, in all its many manifestations, the one ultimate reality.103

1.7 Conclusion
To quote P.C. Hodgson, “the real God is the revelatory, self-giving God,
knowing Godself in our knowing, realizing Godself in the ambiguities and tragedies
of history, surrendering the status of abstract divinity for the sake of our salvation and
the redemption of nature.”104 Although Hegel had some limitations such as his
depiction of Christianity as the ‘consummate’ religion; his lack of clarity about the
reciprocity between representation (religious symbols) and thought (philosophical
concepts); his difficulty in accounting for radical, irrational evil; his argument for a
single supreme incarnation of God; his selective account of the realization of
reconciliation in the world culminating in speculative philosophy; and his attempt to
construct a unitary history of religion105, he definitely claimed that “God is, or in other
words that this universal, which is in and for itself, embracing and containing
absolutely everything, is that through which alone everything is and has subsistence –
that this universal is the truth.”106
In the introduction of the Encyclopedia, Hegel clarified this truth: “the objects
of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole same as those of religion. In both, the
object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.”107
Thus, the Absolute (das Absolute), Absolute Idea, Absolute Being, Absolute Spirit,
Absolute Subject, the Indeterminate, the Universal, the Concept, the Infinite, the
Eternal,108 and the Truth, for Hegel is, indeed, without a doubt, God, the Christian
God.

103
T.L.S. Sprigge, 151.
104
P.C. Hodgson, 257.
105
P.C. Hodgson, 258.
106
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. I., edited by Peter C. Hodgson
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 367.
107
G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §1.
108
G.W.F. Hegel, §64.