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Absolute Knowing and the Historicity of Spirit

According to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Spirit becomes itself only in and through history. Yet the concluding section on "Absolute Knowing" has left many interpreters wondering whether Spirit in Hegel's eyes is only penultimately historical. Does Hegel ultimately relativize Spirit's historicity within an ahistorical framework? At the extreme, is absolute knowing the conclusion that brings historical movement to a halt? If not, what is the relation of history to Spirit in absolute knowing? I shall seek to respond to that question by looking closely at the role of time and history in the concluding pages-chiefly the final two-of the Phenomenology. Hegel employs a common dichotomy to specify the two sides of Spirit's coming to be itself: history and nature. Nature is Spirit's immediate process of coming to be itself. History is the self-mediating process of Spirit coming to be itself. These two processes, though, do not simply exist side by side. Movement is common to both of them. History "presents a sluggish movement."' Nature is "the movement that produces the subject. "2 Corresponding to thejuxtaposition of nature and history is thejuxtaposition of space and time. Again, the members of this latter juxtaposition do not simply exist side by side. Time is Spirit's externalized self. Space is Spirit's externalized being. In their externalized existence, they are both the objects of Spirit's intuition. Together they constitute Spirit's exposition of its process of coming to be itself. Space and time are externalizations of Spirit. So too are nature and his-