024 - Substance is Subject: Hegel's Rose in the Cross

The Cunning of Geist

The notion that substance is subject is perhaps the major tenant of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel said "Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not as Substance, but equally as Subject" (Phen. of Spirit, Miller trans. ¶17). Hegel explains that the self, the subject, is the process of creating a void, a negation, which allows for the purposeful movement of reason.
This process is identical in both thought interrupting pure being and the void interrupting the material world (the space between atoms or the void in which space-time is expanding into). Thought and world intersect here, in this interruption. It is here where subject and substance find their identity in difference.
Slavoj Zizek states: “In order to grasp the radical link between the subject and nothingness (the Void), one should be very precise in reading Hegel's famous statement on substance and the subject. . . the subject . . stands for the incompleteness of substance, for its inner antagonism and movement, for the Nothingness that thwarts the substance from within, destroying its unity, and thus dynamizes it - that the Self is this very unrest.” (Less than Nothing, pg. 378.)
The Rosicrucian symbol of the Rosy Cross was used by Hegel as way describe this intersection: “To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present, and to find delight in it, is a rational insight which implies reconciliation with reality” (Intro. Phil of Right).
This episode explore this important notion.

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