Was Hegel a Mystic?

Maurice Merlot Ponte the great 20th century French phenomenologist once wrote all the great philosophical ideas of the past Century the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche phenomenology German existentialism and psychoanalysis had their Beginnings in Hegel according to Martin Heidegger Hegel represented the conservation of the 2500 years of Western philosophy since Plato For Better or Worse though many thinkers across the 19th and 20th centuries try to distance themselves from hegel's philosophy Michelle Foucault warned us about the difficulty of this task quote truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to

detach ourselves from him we have to determine the extent to which our anti-agallianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us at the end of which he stands motionless waiting for us who really was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel this profound philosopher who arguably consummated Western philosophy's 2500 year history who spawned philosophical movements as diverse as Marxism phenomenology existentialism and psychoanalysis who so many are still trying to detach themselves from today only to find him waiting patiently at the end of the road today we're going to take a look at just one dimension of hegel's

philosophy Hegel and mysticism what exactly is hegel's connection to mysticism wasn't Hegel the great philosopher of reason and the great enemy of all mystification wasn't it Hegel who said quote what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational what could that have to do with mysticism of all things in this presentation I hope to convince you that Hegel the arch rationalist was also a great proponent of mysticism as Hegel writes quote everything rational is to be called at the same time mystical and quote my name is Dylan Shaw I'm a PhD candidate in

the department of philosophy at the University of Toronto with a thesis on Hegel titled hegel's concept of reconciliation on absolute spirit but enough about me let's learn about Hegel DWF Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the western tradition born in Stuttgart in 1770 the same year as Beethoven and Wordsworth he studied that the tubing in seminary as a Young Man with fellow future philosophers shelling and holderlin as his roommates Hegel lived at a time of great historical change the French Revolution took place when he was just 19 years

old he would later call it quote a glorious mental Dawn when all thinking beings shared in the Jubilation of the epoch during an academic stint as an unsalaried lecturer at the University of yena Hegel witnessed Napoleon riding through town on his March of Conquest through Europe in a letter Hegel called Napoleon the world's soul on horseback from yena Hagel would go on to work as a newspaper editor in Bamberg and a high school principal in Nuremberg before finally securing a permanent academic position as a professor at the University of Heidelberg and then as the chair

of philosophy at the University of Berlin where he became the most renowned thinker of his day Hegel died in 1831 at the age of 61 likely due to an epidemic of Cholera so what is hegel's philosophy all about if there's one thing you've heard about Hegel it's probably his famous three-part dialectic thesis antithesis synthesis the only problem is Hegel never said that but it is indeed true that hegel's system does have a triadic structure sequences of three terms Each of which can be broken down into three further terms and so on in a nested fractal

triangle of triangles hegel's mature philosophical system can be found in his Encyclopedia of the philosophical Sciences in basic outline at the most General level the encyclopedia is divided into three main parts logic nature and spirit as Hegel tells us logic nature and spirit are the three modes of the absolute idea essentially hegel's technical term for God as the totality of reality more on which in a moment thus Hegel writes quote philosophy has no other object but God and so is essentially rational theology and as the servant of Truth a continual Divine service end quote Hegel

tells us that logic the first part of his system refers to quote God as God is in God's Eternal Essence before the creation of the world end quote nature is the first dimension of creation namely the spatio-temporal world of physical chemical and biological entities as studied by the Natural Sciences finally Spirit simply refers to human beings and everything that human beings uniquely do spirit is divided into three terms Each of which are further divided into three first subject of spirit anthropology phenomenology and psychology second objective Spirit abstract right morality and ethical life including the family

civil society and the state and finally absolute Spirit art religion and philosophy I wasn't kidding this guy really likes his threes the end of hegel's system in philosophy rejoins the beginning of the system in logic thereby completing a grand systematic Circle absolute spirit that is Art religion and philosophy are three ways that human beings can apprehend the absolute idea the whole of reality logic nature and spirit Hagel says that art religion and philosophy all contain the same truth content the absolute but merely Express this content in different forms art expresses the absolute in the form

of sensibility or feeling The Sound of Music the sight of a painting and so on religion expresses the absolute in the form of representation narratives about God and Humanity for example the Bible communal rituals and so on philosophy expresses the absolute in the form of the concept that is rigorous rational arguments in a certain sense philosophy is thus the conceptual comprehension of the same truths felt through ART and represented through religion to take an example Hagel says that his own encyclopedia system of logic nature and spirit is the philosophical conceptual expression of the Christian religious

representation of the trinity logic is the father nature is the Son and spirit is you guessed it the Holy Spirit all three are modes of the absolute idea or God and relate to each other in a circular pericharesis or circumination to use the technical Christian theological vocabulary literally the circulation of the three Divine persons sometimes pictured as an eternal Circle dance for Hegel the whole of reality is this eternally dancing and circulating circle of circles captured in the circle of the encyclopedia system noting the etymology of Encyclopedia itself from cyclical to borrow the old description

God is an infinite Circle whose Center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere but what exactly is the significance of this relation between religion and philosophy in hegel's philosophical system the German Jewish poet and Hegel student Heinrich heinek related an apocryphal tale that hegel's final words were the following only one man understood me and even he did not understand me these words certainly ring true in light of the many debates and disagreements about hegel's philosophy that followed in the wake of his death and that continued to this day immediately after hegel's passing his followers split

into two camps the old or right hegelians and the young or left hegelians regarding the relation between philosophy and religion the old hegelians took hegel's position to be that philosophy ultimately vindicates the claims of traditional religion by showing religion's fundamental philosophical rationality in contrast the young hegelians took hegel's position to be that philosophy overcomes traditional religion by extracting its core rational philosophical truth after which it could be discarded as so much illusion or superstition for Karl Marx hegel's philosophy itself needed to be subjected to a similar operation according to Marx the rational kernel of the

hegelian dialectic must be extracted from its mystical shell in order to yield Marx's own dialectical materialism evidently Marx regarded hegel's system as outwardly mystical a mysticism that is supposedly opposed to an inner rationalism my argument in this video will be that Marx was half right but for the wrong reasons hegel's philosophy is indeed mystical but this mysticism reaches to the core and is identical with hegel's rationalism these early debates between the old and young hegelians are echoed in contemporary Hegel scholarship especially in the disagreements between the so-called traditional metaphysical non-metaphysical and revised metaphysical readings of

Hegel see Paul Redding's Stanford encyclopedia philosophy article on Hegel for a great survey of this debate without going into all the complex details here suffice it to say that Scholars continue to disagree over whether hegel's religious theological and as we'll see mystical language should be taken at face value as per the traditional metaphysical reading or whether it should be understood as a metaphorical way of expressing his ultimately naturalist materialist or even atheist position the non-metaphysical and revised metaphysical readings for Scholars who set out to defend the traditional metaphysical view of hegel's philosophy as one that

affirms the truths of religion and mysticism a crucial strategy is to turn to hegel's own self-professed influences among which there are countless religious and philosophical Mystics to begin with there is Plato and the subsequent ancient tradition of neoplatonism Plato to whom the whole of Western philosophy is but a series of footnotes as Whitehead once said is a true philosophical Mystic if ever there was one for Plato the goal of philosophy is to raise us up from the Shadows of the sensible Material World to the contemplation of the Eternal intelligible world the Divine ideas or forms

and above all the infinite Transcendent light of the good Hegel calls Plato along with Aristotle the greatest teachers of the human race and their influence suffuses hegel's system in its entirety the later School of neoplatonism developed Plato's mystical Tendencies even further devising specific mystical practices contemplative meditation theologic ritual ecstatic prayer and so on designed to assist the initiate in raising themselves up through higher and higher Divine emanations until achieving ultimate Union or henosis with the one in his lectures on the history of philosophy Hegel calls neoplatonism the height and indeed the Zenith of ancient philosophy

as a whole the scholarship of the late Jens hafasen has convincingly shown that neopatonic ideas permeates hegel's system for example hegel's Triad of logic nature spirit is effectively a rearrangement of the three neopatonic Divine hypotheses of the one intellect and soul notably Hegel considers the standard view of an opposition between Plato and Aristotle to be false he writes that neoplatonism could just as well have been called neo-aristotelianism Glenn McGee's 2001 monograph Hegel and the Hermetic tradition traces the influence of numerous mystical esoteric and hermetic thinkers in schools on the development of hegel's philosophy one such

important influence is Kabbalah which Hegel speaks about explicitly in his lectures on the history of philosophy Hegel clearly had significant knowledge of Kabbalah which was not uncommon among his contemporaries for example shelling Gerta and others many of whom shared his mystical and esoteric interests an important kabbalistic idea with deep resonances in Hegel is that of tsim Tsum or Divine contraction as Paul Franks has argued hegel's conception of God precisely mirrors the kabbalistic notion of Tsum God the absolute idea cannot remain content with the Eternal contemplation of God's Own Essence logic and so God negates God's

self contracts or withdraws in order to give rise to a world nature but this first negation of God is itself negated in and through human beings or spirit finally through philosophical contemplation absolute spirit human beings return to and Unite with their Divine Source the absolute idea and completes the process of God's self-actualization within the world McGee also reduces the influence of countless other mystical figures including but not limited to Jacob FC ottinger Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of kuza Hegel goes so far as to call Boma The Humble German Shoemaker turned radical Mystic and Visionary the

first modern philosopher the 18th century theosophist uttinger a devotee of Burma and Christian kabbalism was widely read throughout his and hegel's Native swabia a region in Southwestern Germany exerting a profound influence on Hegel and his contemporaries Hegel was fond of quoting one of Meister eckhart's famous mystical epigrams the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me my eye and God's eye are one eye one seeing one knowing One Love as The Story Goes upon being introduced to eckhart's sermons by Franz von Bader Hegel exclaimed there we have what

we were looking for from Nicholas of kuza the 15th century Cardinal philosopher and theologian Hegel took the fundamental ideas of the negation of negation and the coincidentia appositorum or Coincidence of opposites more about which soon both cornerstones of kuza's mystical theology one of the most well-attested influences on Hegel and indeed on the whole movement of German idealism of which he was apart was the 17th century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza as Hegel says quote you are either a sphynistic or not a philosopher at all before Hegel leibniz and Jacoby had directly identified Spinoza's conception of God

as the one infinite substance in which all finite things are contained and of which they are an expression as a philosophical version of kabbalistic mysticism a controversial reading of Spinoza to be sure Hegel follows in this tradition by tracing Spinoza's philosophical positions to his jewishness though in Paul Frank's words quote Hegel maintained in effect although not in so many words that Spinoza was not kabbalistic enough Hegel was critical of Spinoza for what he took to be Spinoza's denial of individual human freedom and subjectivity but Hegel likes Spinoza still affirms that all things come from God

and return to God that our knowledge of God is part of God's Eternal infinite self-knowledge just as our love of God is part of God's infinite self-love and so on Hegel wasn't critical of Spinoza's mysticism as such rather it would appear that Hegel wanted to develop his own higher form of philosophical mysticism that would understand the absolute freedom of the human subject as the ultimate self-actualization of God within the world in 1828 Carl Krauss would coin the term pentheism to characterize the positions of both Hegel and shelling in order to distinguish them from Spinoza's supposed

pantheism pan-enthism literally means all is in God pan and Theos as opposed to pantheism which means all is God and yes whereas Spinoza directly identifies god with nature Hegel holds that nature is contained within God while God is also more than merely the world of nature though in fact Spinoza's conception of nature is not reducible to the materials facial temporal world but also includes immaterial thinking God's infinite intellect and so on and so puts it closer to panantheism but that is another story it is standard today to regard Kabbalah as espousing a pan-antheistic conception of

God indeed in general panentheism is often considered one of the defining Hallmarks of mysticism across all of the world's religious traditions Hegel then would be no exception all indications are that his philosophy does indeed properly belong to the world of philosophical mysticism not despite but because of his thorough going rationalism let's dive directly into some of hegel's Major Works to see how mysticism may play a role there we can begin with what is perhaps hegel's most famous work his 1807 phenomenology of spirit which is intended as a preparation for or latter to his encyclopedia system

fair warning the phenomenology is one of the most difficult philosophical Works ever written I remember when I first tried to read it I literally had no idea what the words on the page were trying to say but rest assured that once you crack the code the book can become quite clear an introduction to the phenomenology Hegel lays out the goal of the book as absolute knowledge of the absolute or simply absolute knowing as the last chapter of the book is called Hegel explains why absolute knowledge of the absolute has been so hard to come by

in the two Millennial long history of philosophy philosophers have hitherto had a mistaken idea about the absolute or God as an object out there to be known something different from The Knowing human subject but in fact the whole point of the phenomenology is just to show that this subject object dualism or dichotomy is false the truth of the matter is according to Hegel that I The Knowing subject am not distinct from the absolute the object of knowledge rather the knower and the known are one and the same the self and the absolute are one arguably

this is the basic core of philosophical mysticism shared by the great mystical traditions of the world for example as the upanishads put it thou art that much later in the phenomenology Hegel will give an explicit definition of mysticism which expresses the aim of the book as a whole quote for the mystical is not concealment of a secret or ignorance but consists in the self knowing itself to be one with the Divine being and that this therefore is revealed of course it will take the entirety of the phenomenology's grand Journey from the simplest forms of Consciousness

through self-consciousness reason spirit and religion before finally reaching the unity of subject and object self and absolute in absolute knowing as McGee puts it hegel's phenomenology can be conceived as an enormous mystical initiation right transforming purifying and transmuting Consciousness into absolute knowledge gradually unifying the individual with the absolute a Unity that also preserves a distinction between the self and the absolute to be sure the identity of identity and non-identity to borrow hagel's famous formula by reading the phenomenology we ourselves are taken along this initiatory path by following each form of Consciousness higher and higher on

hegel's ladder our own Consciousness becomes purified transmuted and transformed finally attaining the unity of our own self with the absolute through absolute knowing as we mentioned before the first part of hegel's system proper is logic as treated in the science of logic and the encyclopedia logic hegel's logic offers an account of the fundamental categories of pure thinking which is simultaneously an account of the fundamental structures of being together constituting God's Eternal Essence before creation as I see it hegel's logic is replete with Concepts familiar from many mystical Traditions but I'll touch on just a few

Hegel famously Begins the logic with being pure being not this or that being but being itself in its absolute Purity yet Hegel immediately comes to the startling conclusion pure being is indistinguishable from Pure nothing pure being is totally empty and indeterminate so that there is nothing there at all but to make matters worse pure nothing is indistinguishable from Pure being nothingness itself is and so it reveals itself to be the same pure being with which we began this would appear to be a contradiction being is clearly not nothing and nothing is not being and yet

it is also true that being is nothing and nothing is being the resolution to this contradiction comes when we realize that the very movement from being to nothing and from nothing to being is becoming Hegel is telling us that everything that exists is in a state of becoming everything exists through an interplay of being in nothing light and dark presence and absence this is true even of God God is Not merely a static or eternally self-same being but rather also contains nothingness or negativity within God's self which keeps God in an endless process of becoming

including God's manifestations in nature and spirit another important Concept in hegel's logic is the so-called true infinite varhaft Hegel argues that the traditional way of conceiving the relation between the finite and the infinite is mistaken on the traditional view the finite is separate from or opposed to the infinite the finite is here while the infinite is out there so to speak for example on the traditional View we finite human beings live down here in the finite world of creation while God the infinite being dwells out there Beyond this world the finite is always striving to

reach the infinites in this picture but it can never quite get there yet Hegel argues on Purely logical grounds that this entire way of conceiving of a separation between the finite and the infinite is fundamentally mistaken calling this mistaken notion the bad infinite or schlechtel to contrast it with the true infinite by definition the infinite is unlimited if the finite was separated from the infinite then the infinite would be limited by what it is not that is the finite but then this punitive infinite would be merely finite hence a bad infinite not truly infinite quite

unlimited at all to be truly infinite the finite cannot be separated from the infinite rather the finite must be always already contained within the infinite the true infinite is precisely this Unity of the finite and the infinite the infinite would not be truly infinite without this Unity with the finite which is its self-expression just as the finite can only exist as a self-expression of the infinite if God is the infinite being then it logically follows that our finite world and all finite human beings within it must be contained within God but conversely it is also

true that the infinite must be contained within the finite the spark of God the infinite present within every finite Bank indeed for Hegel the true infinite is precisely the circle that starts at the simple or immediate infinite negates Itself by becoming finite and then negates this negation attaining true Infinity which encompasses the whole circular movement from the infinite to the finite and Back Again we can see hegel's conception of the true infinite at work in his philosophical interpretation of Christian mysticism to begin with as Hegel writes quote God before the creation of the world is

alone God is not the true God if he does not manifest himself outwardly for God Is Only God in the act of creating the world end quote in other words God the infinite being must create a finite World in order to be truly infinite this is fully accomplished when the finite World overcomes its own finitude by returning to God in the form of absolute spirit that is with art religion and philosophy this is captured more specifically through the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation classically expressed as follows God became man so that man could become God

the infinite God becomes a finite human being Jesus who suffers and dies so that we finite human beings all of humanity could be raised up to the Infinity of the Divine for Hegel the death of Jesus represents the fact that God is not an alien being out there somewhere this God has died rather God has become the Holy Spirit which descends on and dwells within the community as the Holy Spirit God is fully present here and now within the loving community of the faithful after all God is love and so when two or more people

are gathered together in love God is there indeed God is this infinite presence of infinite love of course for Hegel religion as such remains subordinate to philosophy which is the highest form of absolute spirit Hegel ends his whole encyclopedia system with an untranslated quotation from Aristotle's metaphysics describing the relation between God's Eternal contemplation and human philosophical contemplation God is eternally engaged in contemplation or theoria while we can only engage in it from time to time but when we do it is our highest happiness and pleasure since through it we most closely imitate God God eternally

contemplates God's self specifically God's three manifestations as logic nature and spirit likewise philosophy contemplates this same systematic Triad of logic nature and spirit that is it contemplates God in fact for Hegel through contemplation we become one with God the ultimate consummation of a hegel's philosophical mysticism the absolute idea or God completes its self-actualization through human contemplative activity our self-thinking thoughts becoming one with God's self-thinking thought as the encyclopedia's final sentence States quote the Eternal idea the idea that is in and for itself eternally remains active in genders and enjoys itself as absolute Spirit end quote

in the end the absolute ideas Journey from logic through nature to Spirit and ultimately to Absolute spirit is for the sake of this Divine absolute and infinite enjoyment so far we've considered various mystical influences on hegel's development and the presence of various mystical Concepts and themes in hegel's philosophy but is Hegel really a true Mystic critics from within the mystical tradition will argue that Hegel over intellectualizes or rationalizes mysticism such that it is no longer truly mystical Hegel himself seems to admit as much in the final Edition to the encyclopedias introduction there he writes that

the mystical is normally taken to be synonymous with the mysterious and the incomprehensible but in fact as Hegel goes on to explain the mystical is only incomprehensible for the understanding or verstant hegel's technical term for ordinary one-sided abstract or finite thought for Hegel the understanding is limited to Binary or oppositional thinking it always thinks in terms of the binary oppositions between for example being in nothing the finite and the infinite subject and object and so on in contrast mystical truths convey the unity of opposites the unity of being and nothing the unity of the finite

and the infinite the unity of subject and object and so on since the understanding can only think in terms of abstract binary opposites it must regard these mystical claims to a higher Unity as mysterious or incomprehensible however Hegel maintains that there is something higher than the understanding namely reason or vernumft specifically so-called speculative reason hegel's name for the infinite and concrete thinking contains in his own philosophy for Hegel reason is capable of grasping the unity of opposites in rational and conceptual form as hegel's own philosophy is meant to show the unity of being in nothing

in becoming the unity of the finite and the infinite in the true infinite the unity of subject and object in the absolute So what had appeared to be mysterious and incomprehensible for the understanding is in fact fully transparent and comprehensible for reason hegel's philosophical system as a whole precisely consists in the conceptual rational comprehension of all unities of opposites so that we can say quote the mystical is synonymous with the speculative thus everything rational is to be called at the same time mystical by which however nothing more or less is said than that it goes

beyond the understanding into no way that it is to be regarded generally as inaccessible to thinking and as incomprehensible end quote Hegel would seem to be giving us only a qualified endorsement of mysticism for Hegel mystical truths are indeed true but they remain inadequately grasped so long as we remain at the level of the mysteriousness and incomprehensibility of mystical experience the usual Hallmark of mysticism as such rather Hegel himself thinks we need to use reason to grasp the deeper rational meaning of these mystical truths this transparent rational form alone is fully adequate to the truths

in question overcoming all residue of mystery and ineffability or so Hegel claims is this a betrayal of mysticism Hegel is claiming that his philosophy contains the same truths as mysticism but renders them conceptually comprehensible through his own special method of speculative reason one might think that this runs against the grain of virtually all mystical traditions in which mystical truths precisely are forever mysterious and incomprehensible to rational thought requiring instead a higher form of direct Intuition or experience in order to access them this latter view was espoused for instance by hegel's contemporary and Seminary roommate shellink

who held that the absolute was inaccessible to conceptual or rational thought rather for selling the absolute could only be accessed through a direct Intuition or experience which was necessarily ineffable shelling's absolute as the indifference points between subject and object being in nothing finite and infinite and so on is the point at which all these distinctions Fall Away and so it cannot be conceptually articulated since all conceptual activity requires these oppositions Hegel famously criticized shelling's view of the absolute in the preface to the phenomenology where borrowing an old Yiddish proverb Hegel calls the schillingian absolute quote

the night in which all cows are black that is the empty void in which nothing at all can be distinguished for Hegel if nothing can be said about this absolute then it just is nothing at all what could it be if nothing at all can be said about it but shelling would reply that this ineffability is precisely the point of the direct experience of the absolute it would be a feature not a bug of his View that nothing could be said about the absolute since the absolute is precisely that which is beyond or higher than

all saying all thinking and all reasoning perhaps in the end despite hegel's self-understanding of his own system as the highest achievement of the human spirit hegel's philosophy would only give us the intellectual or rational starting point of the mystical Journey preparing us for it by giving us a conceptual articulation of some of its findings an articulation however that cannot replace the real thing after all it is one thing to conceptualize the unity of being in nothing the finite in the infinite or subject and object it is quite another thing to experience this Unity to directly

experience one's Soul flowing into the universal becoming of all things or to directly experience one's finitude returning into the true Infinity of the absolute perhaps as in platonism we must use the work of the intellect to ascend up from the temporal sensible world into the Eternal intelligible world but from there may still be a further step to be taken beyond the intellect Beyond Reason against his own self-understanding and better judgment Hegel would light the way on the beginning of this journey but to reach the end we would have to leave him behind or carry him

with us forward whatever we may finally think about hegel's relation to mysticism whether he is ultimately faithful to the mystical tradition whether he betrays it by translating it into rational conceptual terms or something in between it is undeniable that he shares with mysticism a fundamental ethical commitment notably to the virtues of love and forgiveness as we saw Hegel sees his own system as the philosophical truth of Christianity whose Central teachings are that God is love and that God has reconciled us with God's self through the Forgiveness of our sins in a sense absolute spirit is

the absolute power of love and forgiveness the very word absolute comes from the same root as absolution hegel's Grand systematic ambition to philosophically comprehend all things is really an ambition to forgive all things for as the old saying goes to understand all is to forgive all but Hegel does not simply have a naive or innocent trust in the goodness of the world he recognizes the inescapability of pain suffering death and so on as he writes in the phenomenology's preface quote thus the life of God and divine cognition May well be spoken of as a distorting

of love with itself but this idea sinks into mere edification and even insipidity if it lacks the seriousness the suffering the patience and the labor of the negative end quote yet it is precisely from out of this negativity that a higher positivity can be achieved only by passing through the suffering of loss can we find true love only by passing through the pain of transgression can we find forgiveness only by passing through death can we find the true life of the spirit in hegel's powerful words quote death is of all things the most Dreadful and

to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest strength lacking strength Beauty hates the understanding for asking of her what it cannot do but the life of spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself Untouched by devastation but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it it wins its truth only when in utter dismemberment it finds itself it is this power not as something positive which closes its eyes to the negative as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false and then having done

away with it turn away and pass on to something else on the contrary spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and tearing with it this tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being only by tarrying with the no of negativity can we convert it into the yes of the spirit only by tarrying with death by staring it in the face can we invoke the magical power perhaps the mystical power to convert it into life thanks for joining me on this short journey through Hegel I hope

you enjoyed some absolute Spirit today I know I sure did and as always keep seeking