Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

kkazan's picture

Perfect

   In William's essay, “Hegel and His Method", he writes, "The absolute is defined as the ideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are admittedly imperfect.” I very much like the idea that the whole can still be perfect even if it is made up of imperfect parts. I am not sure I understand the logic or reasoning that is behind this idea, but I think that I can give a concrete example. If you take orange juice (random I know) it can taste perfect while being made from imperfect oranges, oranges that individually may have been bruised or sour, but together they create the perfect orange juice. 

I think that this could correspond to William's idea of a higher being being perfect. He states in another essay that you cannot teach the 'absolute' anything for it knows all and that it is always ahead of us knowing what we are going to do next. I think that if you combine these two ideas, the absolute, which is perfect, could be made up of individuals, like ourselves, who are not perfect at all. If we consider the absolute to be the universe, or the controlling power over the universe, this stands true. Even if we are flawed on our own, together we create something perfect. 

 

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
11 + 9 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.