Abstract

This book examines Hegel's presentation of the absolute as knowing and as spirit. McRae construes this absolute both metaphysically, as a self-sufficient existent, the conceptual articulation of which explains the essence and existence of reality, and as truth-oriented, as the conceptual integration of thought and being. He is not, however, aware of the distinction between these construals. He contends that Hegel fails to show that the theoretically inquisitive reader should accept the standpoint of the absolute, because it is presented as self-explanatory in a way alien to what would serve as an explanation for the reader. But he also contends that Hegel's presentation should be accepted both as explaining reality for his time and culture, and as the basis for understanding our own. The reason to distinguish construals, I think, is that it is the absolute's metaphysical status which for McRae seems to make its articulation in purely systematic terms inaccessible to the reader, and it is the truth-oriented absolute which seems to ground his claim that the reader should seek to know it.