History, Our Creator

Many find Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit daunting to read. I don’t pretend that it’s easy sledding. But the main thrust is not difficult to grasp. The work offers a genealogy: What explains the world in which we live? Where does truth come from? 

Most answers throughout history have been theocentric. In one fashion or another, God (or the gods) gets things going. The power that forms reality comes down from above. Hegel was and remains seminal for modern thought, because he answered genealogical questions without reference to the transcendent. Our circumstances, conditions, identities—indeed, our truths—are emergent. The power that fashions all things comes from below.