/lit/ - Literature

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit Part 10
Previous threads >>15734890
Duality of Spirit

>Only this self-restoring Sameness, or this reflection in otherness within itself
>- not an original or immediate unity as such - is the True.
Hegel is saying that the only real contemplation we can have of God is when we hook up to the Absolute ('otherness within itself'), or God as the Subject and creation as predicate. And the way in which we go about this contemplation is via understanding (pure categories of understanding). Thus we have a very simplistic outline of Hegel's Phenomenology, and the rest of the preface (and the rest of the book) is essentially the next stage in the process of hooking up to the Absolute, or in other words, we embark yet again on our journey to 'see God in everything.' Not that any one created thing is God, but how to grow our status as God's image to 'see' or 'read' with consciousness the various created things here on our little home called Earth similar to how God 'sees' or 'reads' the creation.
>It is the process of its own becoming,
>the circle that presupposes its end as its goal,
>having its end also as its beginning;
>and only by being worked out to its end, is it actual.
Hegel is saying that this process of 'seeing how to see similar to how God sees' is how we go about spiritual development. When we develop ourselves spiritually, we naturally reach goals, but these goals are not just ends. They are fresh beginnings as each are a layer of the foundation upon which we can begin to heal ourselves and eventually Earth itself. And then go ever further beyond.

A fresh beginning is, itself, similar to a miniature (or personal) birth-time for an individual in which the individual receives a new method of understanding by which the universe is revealed. For instance, when a young person first learns mathematics, a new world of mathematics is revealed. And when the young person develops, they learn new forms of mathematics such as Algebra and Geometry. The same kind of development occurs when we develop spiritually. As we develop, we grow stronger because the development essentially unlocks the barriers which prevent Spiritual nourishment from 'being absorbed by our roots', or in other words it allows us to participate in the world in new, interesting, and personally fulfilling ways. And eventually this, itself, will translate into healthy growth.

>>10935217
He would say that my works/ideas/attitude encourages us all to see our own lives as worthy of great attention and interest and that its okay to have bad days and feel disappointed sometimes, as he says about every writer.