2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
te absolvo peccatiis tuis.” Absolute knowing stands in opposition to any form of knowledge
that is relative to something external to itself and to its own act of knowing. Absolute know-
ing is also, indirectly, a “perfect” knowing, but only in the sense of the perfection and com-
pletion (Vollkommenheit and Vollendung, respectively) that philosophy reaches, inevitably,
at the end of its development.
It is important, however, not to interpret this “perfection” as a state, or as a station out-
side of time and space where knowing comes to an end in a post-historical transfiguration.
Hegel speaks of “absolute Wissen”, not of “absolute Wissenschaft” or “absolute Erkennt-
nis”, which would be a contradiction, since he is claiming that Wissenschaft, scientia, sci-
ence, can exist only if and when knowledge ceases to be derived from particular principles
and reaches the level of an absolute knowing, of absolutes Wissen. In other words, we
should pay attention to the fact that “Wissen” is the nominal form of a verb, and strive to
hear the reference to the action that the latter expresses. Absolute knowing is the way in
which the act of knowing continues to be performed after the closure of the dialectical de-
velopment—and finally in the form of a scientific knowledge of the whole production of
the Spirit in both time (history) and space (Nature).
Absolute Wissen represents the closure of the continuous motion that is characteristic
of all the aspects of the Spirit and that Hegel expresses as a duplicity of estraniation/nega-
tion and interiorization/remembering, that is, Entäußerung and Erinnerung. The closure
means that this continuous motion keeps coming back to itself, in the simple sense that
there is no “other” to which it would go. The circle has no outside to which it may point to,
it is totally self-contained. As Hegel explicitly remarks in the final chapter of the Phenom-
enology, the circle is nothing else that this movement:
This movement [that constitutes knowing] is the circle that keeps coming
back to itself, the circle that presupposes its beginning and reaches it only at
the end. 30
30. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller, tr. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1977) 429. The German text is “Sie [die Bewegung, die das Erkennen] ist der in sich
zurückgehende Kreis, der seinen Anfang voraussetzt, und ihn nur im Ende erreicht” (1053/429). Note
that knowing is, here, Erkennen, another substantivized verb, not Erkenntnis.