From Practical to Absolute Knowledge

Several authors have connected Hegel’s view on action with Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge. This chapter first develops the notion of practical knowledge in Kant and Fichte, noting their similarity to Anscombe’s view. Practical knowledge is a knowing of what one is doing in acting. Yet Hegel’s idea of absolute knowledge in the Phenomenology of Spirit goes beyond this. Practical knowledge yields products or “works” ( Werke ), which are also products of concepts. Conceptual knowledge of such works, which often stem from institutional histories, is what Hegel calls “absolute knowledge.” It is argued that Hegel’s idea of absolute knowledge is qualitative rather than quantitative: it concerns a transparent form of knowing rather than a certain massive extent or even finality of knowing. The constellation between the topics of concepts, artifacts, and social-historical realities present in the Phenomenology becomes a precedent for the more abstract argument for concrete conceptual truth in the Logic .