Saturday, October 26, 2013

Money Wisdom #219

The Phenomenology of the Spirit [ Hegel ] leads to the overcoming of that form of freedom which derives from the antagonistic relation to the other. And the true mode of freedom is, not in the incessant activity of conquest, but its coming to rest in the transparent knowledge and gratification of being. The ontological climate which prevails at the end of Phenomenology is the very opposite of the Promethian dynamic:
The wounds of the Spirit heal without leaving scars, the deed is not everlasting: the Spirit takes it back into itself, and the aspect of particularity (individuality) present in it... ...immediately passes away.
Mutual acknowledgement and recognition are still the test for the reality of freedom, but the terms are now forgiveness and reconciliation:
The word of reconciliation is the (objectively) existent Spirit which apprehends in its opposite the pure knowledge of itself qua universal essence... ...a mutual recognition which is Absolute Spirit.
Herbert Marcuse Eros and Civilization (1956 [1998]) p.115
quotes are from GWF Hegel The Phenomenology of the Spirit (trans. Baille p679-680)