Hegel's Concept of Reconciliation: On Absolute Spirit

This dissertation reconstructs and defends Hegel’s concept of reconciliation as the highest goal of the three forms of Absolute Spirit: art, religion, and philosophy. I argue that Hegel’s concept of reconciliation can be expressed by the following temporal formula: to reconcile means to remember and work through the past, in order to comprehend the present, and thereby open ourselves up to a new future. I argue that this constitutes a therapeutic conception of reconciliation, which grounds a therapeutic conception of art, religion, and philosophy. While Absolute Spirit can neither predict what the future will be nor prescribe what the future ought to be, on Hegel’s view, I argue that the point of Hegelian reconciliation is to set us free to create a new future. On the basis of this temporal formula for reconciliation, I reconstruct Hegel’s argument that philosophy alone can fully achieve its goal of reconciliation, from which art and religion fall short. I further argue that Hegel’s therapeutic conception of Absolute Spirit supports the revolutionary reading of Hegel’s concept of reconciliation, against the quietist reading and the reformist reading. On the quietist reading, reconciliation entails justifying the present world, despite whatever suffering or injustice it may contain, while renouncing any efforts to change it for the better. On the reformist reading, reconciliation entails a commitment to the gradual improvement of the present world according to its own constitutive normative standards. I argue that the quietist reading and the reformist reading fail to properly account for Hegel’s famous claim that philosophy always arrives too late to instruct the world on how it ought to be, insofar as philosophy arises only at those historical moments in which a form of life has already grown old. On my view, this claim expresses Hegel’s position that reconciliation performs the therapeutic function of facilitating the historical transformation from an old form of life to a new form of life, as per the revolutionary reading. In other words, the therapeutic work of reconciliation is a necessary condition for the revolutionary decision to create a new future qua new world or new form of life.

Department dc:contributor.department

Philosophy

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Shaul, Dylan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Comay, Rebecca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/130221

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/130221