Hegel, Immanence, and Transcendence

Theodor Adorno described efforts to read and understand Hegel as skoteinos, that is, darkness. There is a murkiness in grappling with Hegel’s thought, which from the standard empiricist or positivist position is viewed as elliptical, seemingly going in circles with no real resolution and rendered as ultimately meaningless. I have approached Hegel and phenomenology in ways similar to Adorno’s description: “Where Hegel is emphatically rejected—in positivism in particular—he is hardly even given consideration nowadays.”2 Yet, a thinker as profound as Hegel deserves more thoughtful consideration than this, even if in the end the verdict—my verdict—favors the empiricists or materialists. The intellectual stimulation of working through Hegel’s thought is the ultimate reward, contributing to the securing of the life of the mind.