TOTAL REALISM WITH MYSTICAL MODESTY: A COMMENT ON GREGORY MOSS’ ‘HEGEL’S FOUNDATIONS FREE METAPHYSICS’

In my comment, I focus on Gregory Moss’ thesis that Hegel’s Concept is self-particularizing and, thereby, existentially implicating. While I am extremely sympathetic with this reading, I will raise two worries. The first one concerns Moss’ identification of the Concept’s self-particularization with self-instantiation, which I believe is too austere to satisfy the need for the Concept to produce its own existence as Absolute. By reconstructing Hegel’s discussion of essence as absolute negativity and reflection, I will suggest that Hegel presented an understanding of the Absolute as self-differing, rather than as self-instantiating, or self-repeating. My second worry concerns Moss’ identification of absolute existence with absolute knowledge, the latter being the knowledge produced by philosophy. I argue that this identification makes the Absolute finite. Thus, I conclude that Moss’ «total realism» needs to be mended with what I call ‘mystical modesty’.