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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
The fulfilment of Spirit therefore requires the growth of a community which will fully express and embody reason. And since spirit posits the world of space and time in order to realize itself, this fulfilment and hence also the community of reason can be considered the goal of history. This is how Hegel speaks of it in Reason in History:
The goal is that it come to be known that [Spirit] presses forward only to know itself as it is an und für sich, that it brings itself in its truth to appearance before itself – the goal is that it bring a spiritual world to existence which is adequate to its own [sc. the world's] concept, that it realize and perfect its truth, that religion and the state be so produced by it that it becomes adequate to its concept…
(VG, 61)In this passage, both sides of the goal of spirit in history are expressed: spirit is trying to come to an understanding, a knowledge of self. But in order to do this it must bring into existence a reality, a spiritual community which must also be a real community (the ‘geistige Welt’ must be embodied in a ‘Staat’) which is adequate to its concept. Or again:
the goal is this, that Spirit come to consciousness of itself or make the world congruent to itself [die Welt sich gemäß mache] – for these come to the same thing…
(VG, 74)Thus history is to be understood teleologically as directed in order to realize Geist. What happens in history has sense, justification, indeed, the highest justification.
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