2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

might find in cognitive activity:
78
T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
it is not intellect whose relationships always leave the manifold as manifold
and whose unity itself are oppositions; it is not reason, which opposes
its own determining to the determined; love is not determining, nor it is determined
nor finite. [529/379] 33
On the other hand, love provides a form of union which is truer than those afforded by in-
tellect and reason because
true unification, true love, exists only between living beings who are the
same in power, and who therefore live for each other in the most complete
way; and from no side one is dead for the other. […] In love the separated
still exists but not as separated anymore, rather as united; and the living feels
the living.[529/379] 34
In love, however, and in earthly love above all, the unification finds an ultimate resistance,
as Hegel notes, in the properties of the lovers and in their mortality. True unification would
require a total communion, while in love the lovers have also something else beyond the
love for their lovers: they have goods to take care of, their thoughts, and ultimately bodies
that resist total unification. This form of love must therefore be superseded by a more com-
plete one. In the Phenomenology this transformation seems to have taken place: Love,
God’s love now, is still at the center of the speculation, but the focus has shifted from the
unification of the lovers through love to love itself and its playing with itself. The process
continuously posits and surpasses the “agents” that are secondary with respect to love itself.
Love is playing with itself because it is constantly engaged in an action that opposes the
players but only within the limited scope of the game being played, an infinite game that,
having come full circle, finds an end only to start all over again.
33. G. F. W. Hegel, Early Theological Writings (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1948): “It is not the understanding,
whose relations always leave the manifold of related terms as a manifold and whose unity is always a
unity of opposites [left as opposites]. It is not reason either, because reason sharply opposes its determining
power to what is determined. Love neither restricts nor is restricted; it is not finite at all.” (304)
34. Engl ed.: “True union, or love proper, exists only between living beings who are alike in power and
thus in one another’s eyes living beings from every point of view; in no respect is either dead for the
other. […] In love the separate still remain, but as something united and no longer as something separate;
life [in the subject] senses life [in the object].” (304/305).