Infinite and life in Hegel

notes from the third chapter of the phenomenology of spirit

Abstract

One of the biggest setbacks for the understanding of Hegel's dialectical logic is the peculiar relationship it establishes between finite and infinite. More precisely, the thesis of the dynamic immanence of the finite in the infinite, which allows Hegelian thought to sustain and understand the inherent of the real, not dissolving nor fixing them, for example, in the Kantian way. This problem appears more explicitly, for instance, at the end of the third chapter of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, and marks one of the most important inflections of the work, precisely at the moment when the conscience is faced with infinity and, therefore, with Life as a movement of the Spirit itself. It is this relationship, which helps to unveil some of the strength lines of Hegel's dialectic, that will be reconstructed in this article.