Reading

This is part of the reading assignment for Wednesday's ProSeminar class:

"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development. Should it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consideration will set this appearance of contradiction in its true light. The beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal..."

I'm actually really enjoying it - how perverse is that?!? It's from the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, the full text of which can be found on a very thorough Marxist database. Saved us all from having to buy the book :-).