An enlightened consciousness does not lose itself in the hereafter, but rather takes its shape and place in the world. But is it not always already in the world? Not according to Hegel. Tereza Matjková shows that to arrive in the world is a fundamental achievement of Spirit and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is therefore a phenomenology of the world.

Criticism is often levelled at Hegel's philosophy of the absolute spirit for its being conceived at the expense of the world. In view of this, Hegel's regular reference to a "world" in the Phenomenology of Spirit is somewhat puzzling. How then are we to understand the presence of the world, or even numerous worlds? Tereza Matjková contends that at every stage of its journey, consciousness designs a new world-model, each built on central concepts of the respective form of consciousness. Consciousness thus finds itself in a world of contradiction, of life, of struggle, or one of "unhappy diremption". The point of absolute knowledge is not that the world is now derived from consciousness itself, but rather that it conceives a world-model that corresponds with reality, as whose reflection it itself now grasps.

Autorentext
Geboren 1984; Studium der Philosophie und Religionswissenschaft; 2016 Promotion im Fach Philosophie; seit 2016 Lehrbeauftragte für Philosophie und Religionswissenschaft an der Karls-Universität Prag.