Sacrifice: The Gift to Economy

Abstract

The concept of reconciliation appears in the Phenomenology of Spirit at a particularly sensitive moment of transition. This is when finite self-consciousness has finally reached itself and is about to become infinite Spirit. It can be found toward the end of ‘Morality,’ [Die Moralität] the last chapter in the larger section ‘Spirit,’ [Der Geist] which, upon the completion of individual reason, takes upon itself the development of ethical and moral knowledge. The conceptual development of this great overarching section traces through philosophy and religion alike, but the most advanced knowledge, which Spirit only reaches on the final pages of ‘Morality,’ and then recognizes as the highest moral law, is beyond philosophy. This is the reconciliation of Christ. It has not yet been grasped by reason and found itself in its concept, and so Hegel appropriates for the concept of speculative dialectics the word of reconciliation from the New Testament. Conceptual unity in infinite Spirit comes within view. Now, because this concept is determined as absolute morality, and since it is also holding in-and-for-itself the unifying power of the concept as such, the word of reconciliation is a center, a cornerstone, like few others. An account of the movement toward this prominent position requires that our previous onto-epistemological analysis of the dialectical concept is supplemented with an analysis of faith.