Hegel's Entäußerung – Notes on the Kenotic Actualisation

Abstract

The article reads the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit as the unfolding of the first circle in the development of spirit. It starts with a deception, as we become aware of the impossibility of reading the text along the lines of a regular understanding of regular meanings: instead, the speculative presentation needs to be written while reading. Philosophy takes place in this actualisation of the speculative, and Hegel appears within the text not as its author, but as the site of the speculative, in which he disappears at the same time. This first circle creates a model for the development of spirit in which the theological form of the kenosis is actualised. Spirit empties itself and actualises itself as externalised, directing us beyond Hegel’s text to other texts, only to find its actual presentation in other places.