selection one - Sound and Signifier

History and Phenomenology / 45
Thus absolute knowledge is not accessible to individual
consciousness unless that consciousness becomes consciousness
of the spirit of its times. But conversely Hegel does not conceive
of this absolute knowledge only as what is usually meant by
knowledge. It corresponds to a new stage in world history. And
we cannot understand certain passages in the last chapter of
the Phenomenologif2 if we do not see that for Hegel humanity,
having just undergone profound upheavals, has entered a new
stage of its history. Absolute knowledge corresponds to this stage
of history and is its expression. "Moreover, it is not difficult to
see that ours is a til-ne of gestation, a time of transition to a new
age. Spirit has broken with the world of its Dasein and of the
representation that has lasted until now; it is on the point of
burying this world in the past; it is engaged in. the labor of its
own transformation" (PE, I, 12; PG, 15; PM, 75).
IV. INDIVIDUAL COUNSCIOUSNESS AND UNIVERSAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
WE CAN NOW SEE the full scope of the task the Phenomenology
set for itself, and the obstacles, perhaps insurmountable,
that stand in its way. As we have seen, the task is
to lead individual consciousness to become aware of the spirit
of its times, to become aware of its own substance, its inorganic
nature, and simultaneously to rise thereby to an absolute knowledge
which claims to transcend all temporal development, to
surmount time itself. "This is why spirit necessarily manifests
itself in time. And it does so until it grasps its pure concept,
that is, until it eliminates time" (PE, II, 305; PG, 558; PM, 800).
Is there not a contradiction here? How can consciousn.ess on the
one hand surmount the continuous call to transcend itself,
which is essential to it, and coincide absolutely with its truth
while that truth becomes self-certainty-truth and life-and
on the· other hand be the consciousness of a particular stage in
the history of spirit? Are we to think that this stage is precisely
the end of time and that Hegel naively thought that history came
to an end with his system? Although this accusation has often
been made, it seems unjust in certain respects. The difficulty
22. The section on absolute knowledge, which concludes the
Phenomenology.