Abstract

No battles occur between philosophy and its adversaries. Rather what happens is that philosophy seeks to be philosophy while remaining non-philosophy, i.e. a “negative philosophy” (in the sense of “negative theology”). “Negative philosophy” has access to the absolute, not as “beyond,” as a positive second order, but a another order which must be on this side, the double, inaccessible without being passed through. True philosophy scoffs at philosophy; true philosophy is a-philosophical.

According to Hegel, one attains the absolute by way of a phenomenology (the appearance of mind; mind in the phenomenon). This is not because the phenomenal mind is on one level of a scale, after which one moves on to the absolute, but because the absolute would not be absolute if it did not appear as absolute.