Thought and Reality in Hegel's System

Thought and Reality in Hegel’s System/51arguing is true, namely, that the Notion is genuinely objective and universal,this conclusion is forced upon us: the Absolute Idea would theninclude in itself the fullness of Nature. And Hegel teaches us that thetransition is only logical. For he insists that the Idea cannot be thoughtof as existing anterior to or independent of Nature; and that, when itpasses into Nature, it does not come into possession of a content whichbefore was alien to it. 131 On the contrary, we are informed that the Ideais nothing but completed Being, the abstract immediacy of Being madeconcrete. 132 And so such an account of the relation between the Idea andits manifestations as the following from Falckenberg may be dismissedat once as at best misleading; indeed, if it means what it says, it isridiculously false: “The absolute or the logical Idea exists first as asystem of antemundane concepts, then it descends into the unconscioussphere of nature, awakens to self-consciousness in man, realizes its contentin social institutions, in order, finally, in art, religion, and science toreturn to itself enriched and completed, i.e., to attain a higher absolutenessthan that of the beginning.” 133 As Hegel conceives the matter, theIdea does indeed enrich itself by passing through these various stages ofits existence, or, rather, by exhibiting these differentiations of itself, butit does so only by showing that these differentiations are essential aspectsof itself and by disclosing itself as inherent in them from the first.The Idea is prior, not in point of time, but solely in the logical sense.In the second place, as Vera suggests, 134 the true significance of theproblem involved in this transition, as well as the correct solution of theproblem, can be had only in the light of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole.In a very important sense the Phenomenology of Spirit is the presuppositionof the entire Encyclopedia. As has already been pointed out, theaim of the Phenomenology is simply to show what are the implicationsof knowledge, and to prove, against Kant, that in knowledge as thusdeveloped we have the expression of ultimate reality. Now, as I think wemust conceive the matter, the Encyclopedia simply attempts a moredetailed investigation and a more elaborate exposition of this position.We might put it thus. In the Phenomenology we begin with all the realitywe know anything about, namely, experience, and we proceed todevelop its implications as regards its nature as a subject-object relation.The Logic abstracts from this concrete whole and examines oneaspect of it, which here we might call the subject-aspect; while the Philosophyof Nature and the Philosophy of Mind deal with other aspectsof the same whole, that is, they might be said to define reality in its