“Phenomenology of Spirit” - Marco M.

Phenomenology of Spirit

The title of this post is the title of one of Hegel's most famous books. An intriguing title for a nearly incomprehensible text.

The only thing I understood after reading it a couple of times (not just out of a kind of self-inflicted masochism that I've always had, but because I had to take an exam on it) is that you need to step away from yourself to take a circular journey that brings you back home, only to discover that what you were looking for was already with you.

What I've always sought is experience, the only real knowledge, of something that transcends the everyday, something that lends eternity and meaning to life.

As a kid, I was raised in a Catholic family that required church attendance every Sunday. I ended up praying daily on my own without coercion, often attending church alone. Then, I probably began viewing all of this as just formal and imposed. I thus entered a long adolescence of the soul and became a priest of nihilism, born from an overestimation of the intellect. I believed, like many "teenagers" do today, that authentic answers came from reason. Not finding them for several years, I even became a relativist, which I think represents the darkest, most painful, and farthest point from home. To know oneself, it's also necessary to get lost, and for me, faith in reason was a necessary ignorance.

Today I am much closer to home, living in a state of satisfaction and serenity where life's dramas and difficulties, which are always present, feel like they belong to the distant outskirts rather than the center.

Sometimes, especially through my posts on this page, I lack compassion and understanding for those still in their adolescence who dogmatically believe in reason without any sense of the Absolute. Perhaps they are also on a journey, just still very far from home.

m.m.