Final Four Videos in "Absolute Freedom and Terror"

With these four videos, covering seven paragraphs, we finish up with a very long part of the even more massive Spirit portion of the Phenomenology of Spirit.  As noted earlier, this section is really a culmination of the long dialectic of rational self-discovery, effectively producing and unfolding modernity in the West, that has its trunk in the Enlightenment (though the roots may be said to go further back).

Enlightenment involves a transformation of human consciousness, in Hegel's view.  It changes the world - and to address Marx's complaint - it definitely does not change it only in the realm of ideas or understanding.  Enlightenment's transformation of human existence does not merely have practical consequences.  It takes place through the medium of the practical, within the realm of politics, culture, institutions, and government.

It also leads, as the very name of this section indicates, both to Absolute Freedom and to a Terror that is inextricably linked to it at this stage of dialectical development of consciousness.  And, as we shall see in the last paragraphs, it opens up a new path before us, one Hegel will call the Moral Consciousness - which we shall soon start exploring.

Here are the four videos finishing this section:

• Lecture 248 - paragraphs 589-590
• Lecture 249 - paragraphs 591
• Lecture 250 - paragraphs 592-593
• Lecture 251 - paragraphs 594-595