Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

by Peter Singer

Reality is constituted by mind. At first mind does not realize this. It sees reality as something independent of it, even as something hostile or alien to it. During this period mind is estranged or alienated from its own creation. It tries to obtain knowledge of reality, but this knowledge is not genuine knowledge because mind does not recognize reality for what it is, and so regards it as a mysterious thing beyond its grasp. Only when mind awakens to the fact that reality is its own creation can it give up this reaching after the ‘beyond’. Then it understands that there is nothing beyond itself. Then it knows reality as directly and immediately as it knows itself. It is at one with it. As Hegel puts it in the concluding section of the Phenomenology, absolute knowledge is ‘mind knowing itself in the shape of mind’.