Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

ABSOLUTE KNOWING

ABSOLUTE KNOWING AbstractHegel’s “Absolute Knowing” and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida are tragi-comic consternations. They are theatres of ethical panentheism: they present dramatic “absolute” ethical interpretations and actions, each of which is at once ungrounded and completely seeded. I start with the etymology of “consternation.” Then I discuss the comic vs. tragic interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, arguing it is a consternating tragi-comedy. I analyze the predicate “absolute” in terms of consternations, in a few passages of the book. I elaborate especially upon phenomenological reasoning’s Sache selbst (the “absolute thing”). In the Phenomenology, reason develops by thinking the absolute thing through culture, politics, morality, and religion, reaching completion in “Absolute Knowing.” That absolute is reason’s comprehensive insight into its phenomenological absolutes, and (is) its own absolute sublating (aufheben). Northrop Frye’s cited claim about myth can be understood in this phenomenological way. With all this in hand, Hegel’s science of experience is formally complete. But the experience of Absolute Knowing is still consternation. To capture the consternating essence of sublation – a consternation by which experience becomes something it was not before – I season this formal science with Shakespeare’s “comedy” Troilus and Cressida, revealing its structural roots to be consternations (scattering, dispersal, alarm, throwing into confusion, army, war; strata, stratagems, stars; sowing, thatching … ). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities Taylor & Francis

ABSOLUTE KNOWING

Download PDF

ABSOLUTE KNOWING

Abstract

AbstractHegel’s “Absolute Knowing” and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida are tragi-comic consternations. They are theatres of ethical panentheism: they present dramatic “absolute” ethical interpretations and actions, each of which is at once ungrounded and completely seeded. I start with the etymology of “consternation.” Then I discuss the comic vs. tragic interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, arguing it is a consternating...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/absolute-knowing-TyWsOzyccr
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
ISSN
1469-2899
eISSN
0969-725X
DOI
10.1080/0969725X.2016.1205260
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractHegel’s “Absolute Knowing” and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida are tragi-comic consternations. They are theatres of ethical panentheism: they present dramatic “absolute” ethical interpretations and actions, each of which is at once ungrounded and completely seeded. I start with the etymology of “consternation.” Then I discuss the comic vs. tragic interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, arguing it is a consternating tragi-comedy. I analyze the predicate “absolute” in terms of consternations, in a few passages of the book. I elaborate especially upon phenomenological reasoning’s Sache selbst (the “absolute thing”). In the Phenomenology, reason develops by thinking the absolute thing through culture, politics, morality, and religion, reaching completion in “Absolute Knowing.” That absolute is reason’s comprehensive insight into its phenomenological absolutes, and (is) its own absolute sublating (aufheben). Northrop Frye’s cited claim about myth can be understood in this phenomenological way. With all this in hand, Hegel’s science of experience is formally complete. But the experience of Absolute Knowing is still consternation. To capture the consternating essence of sublation – a consternation by which experience becomes something it was not before – I season this formal science with Shakespeare’s “comedy” Troilus and Cressida, revealing its structural roots to be consternations (scattering, dispersal, alarm, throwing into confusion, army, war; strata, stratagems, stars; sowing, thatching … ).

Journal

Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 2, 2016

Keywords: Hegel; Shakespeare; comedy; Troilus; Cressida; consternation

References

  • Hegel’s Instinct of Reason and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice
  • Organic or Inorganic Freedom?
  • Introduction
  • What is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?
  • Analysis of the Text
  • The Times of The Signs
  • Round-Table Discussion on Problems of Translating Hegel