Synopsis:
- Knowledge is possible even beyond Kant's antionomies
- Spiritual nature of all reality
- Only the absolute exists, everything else is an illusion
- The absolute is both the infinite universe and infinite pure mind
- Metaphysics is logic ("what is rational is real and what is real is rational")
- Dialectical method (progress is the result of the conflict of opposites)
- Any attempt to state the reality of something else (thesis) results in a contradiction (antithesis) that can only be resolved (synthesis) at a higher level, where both are true, which yields a new thesis, for which there exists an anti-thesis, which can be resolved in a synthesis, etc. All the way to the highest level, the absolute
- Reality (nature as well as human history) is the dialectical unfolding of the absolute
- As we understand more of the absolute, the absolute knows more of itself
- Art investigates the absolute through forms of beauty
- Religion investigates the absolute through symbols
- Philosophy investigates the absolute through logic
- The dialectical process progresses towards the absolute's full self-knowledge, which is the ultimate goal of everything ("God is God only in so far as he knows himself")
- The absolute is thought that thinks itself
- History is due to the conflict of forces/nations
- An entity lays down a challenge, which becomes a thesis
- An antithesis arises
- A synthesis resolves the two on a higher plane
- (eg, "revolution" is opposed by "reaction" and the synthesis is a new social order)
- The human condition is one of alienation, because the individual sees herself as being distinct, instead of being united with the absolute
- Philosophy's mission: to emancipate people from millennia of alienation
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