2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
The problem is that we are not allowed that switch. More precisely, Hegel is urging us
to consider all the problems that such a switch would entail for philosophy at large, its end
and its completion. We cannot switch from one perspective to the other because there is one
and only one process and one and only one perspective from which to look at it. We can, of
course, try to imagine that the life of the Spirit “might even be considered” as a form of
play. But that thought is, as Hegel says, just an edifying thought, whose efficacy is nil.
Why? Because we live on this earth and cannot pretend to switch places with God. That is
why such a thought is pure “edification” (Erbaulichkeit): it is a mere construction that may
bring some consolatory psychological benefit but has no efficacy on the real. Such a
thought, therefore, has no philosophical value, if philosophy is to have loftier goals than
consolation.
The difficult and perhaps impossible issue confronting Hegel (and us confronting the
Hegelian text) is to understand how both sides can be thought together. All Hegel’s argu-
ment requires is contained in that “likewise” of the previous quotation:
the divine essence is not to be conceived and expressed merely as essence,
[...] but likewise (ebensosehr) as form.
This “likewise” is an arrow that points in both directions: to the essence of divine life as
play and to its form as the movement carried forward through the work of the negative.
Both dimensions have to be present, and at the same time. 6 To reduce Hegel’s conception
to one of its dimensions does not work: if we forget the side of the negative, then we have
just an edifying thought; that is, we are left with a conception that renounces any effort to
understanding the world, —since it excludes itself from it by looking at it from above, as it
were, from a distance where the concrete struggles disappear in the uniform fog of a mean-
ingless bickering— and substitutes it with the “pleasant” image of a divine play. Such a
thought is pure edification in the literal sense of the word: it builds up, it concocts an image
to put in place of concrete work and of knowledge thereof. 7 Such a thought will never be
knowledge, let alone absolute knowing, and philosophy, were it to surrender to this temp-
6. See also Phenomenology VIII: (490) “The spirit cannot be reduced to either moment but has to be considered
as both.”