IRC-Galleria

"reason is the certainty of being all reality. this its inherent nature, this reality, is still, however, through and through a universal, the pure abstraction of reality. it is the first positive character which self-consciousness per se is aware of being, and ego is, therefore, merely the pure, inner essence of existence, in other words, is the category bare and simple. the category, which heretofore had the significance of being the inmost essence of existence - of existence indifferent to whether it is existence at all, or existence over against consciousness - is now the essential nature or simple unity of existence merely in the sense of a reality that thinks. to put it otherwise, the category means this, that existence and self-consciousness are the same being, the same not as a matter of comparison, but really and truly in and for themselves. it is only a onesided, unsound idealism which lets this unity again appear on one side as consciousness, with a reality per se over against it on the other."

- G. W. F. HEGEL

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
(1807)