The Absolute Spirit as the Consummation of Hegel's Concept of Truth

Abstract

For Hegel the specific content of philosophical science is truth. But when we take a closer look at what Hegel’s understanding of truth is, we see that he argues for an objective or ontological concept of truth. Truth, according to Hegel, is not a property of theoretical judgements, but it belongs to the form of existence of a being. The kind of truth is denoted in Hegel’s terminology as ‘Idea.’ Whatever exists as Idea exists in the form of the unity of notion and reality and, thus in the form of truth. What makes Hegel’s concept of truth exceedingly complex is that his concept allows him, on the one hand, to graduate the unity of notion and reality in an object and, on the other hand, to conceive different objects dependent upon their notions as existences which realize different degrees of truth. The highest existence of truth, then, is the absolute spirit. Since Hegel’s concept of truth repeatedly raises problems which counteract an adequate understanding of his whole system, the aim of the following remarks is to profile Hegel’s concept of truth.