New Exposition of the Science of Knowledge (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: plation, which, as it is the contemplation of the absolute intel- lectualizing, may well be called intellectual contemplation. W/ are it in the following manner:?In the above described contemplation, absolute knowledge evidently seizes (grasps) itself, in its absolute spirit, in an absolute manner. 1. It has itself from itself, in its absolute nature, in the unity: it is, precisely because it is knowledge, in its existence at the same time for itself. 2. It grasps, contemplates and describes itself in this contemplation in the above mentioned manner, as unity of Freedom and of knowledge, which latter is here viewed in a somewhat different manner, and no longer as absolutely being. But for the very purpose of describing itself, it is necessary that it should possess itself as knowledge (as realized knowledge). Now, what sort of knowledge is this latter ? We have sufficiently described it: a firm, in itself reposing, in and through itself determined (presupposing, in relation to its form, no Freedom, but itself presupposed by absolute Freedom) thought (act of life, of thinking) of the before-mentioned absolute identity of Freedom and Knowledge (the last expression used in its former and broader sense, as the pure form of the for-itself). This living thought is it which views itself in the intellectual contemplation, not as thought, but as knowledge; because the absolute form of knowledge (the for-itself existence, absolute possibility, to be in every Being at the same time the reflex thereof) which lies within it, realizes itself (in making this reflection) because it can so realize itself by virtue of the absolute formal Freedom of knowledge. Thus the thought views itself in this contemplation in an absolute (absolutely free) manner, according to its absolute Essence. This is...