The Conceptualisation of Life in Hegel’s System Structure

This article is aimed to elucidate the conceptualisation of life and to demonstrate its significant role in the construction of Hegel’s system. Hegel has developed a conceptualisation of life structured around the Idea of Life. Furthermore, this conceptualisation of life consists of three distinct types: Life categories in the field of pure logic, the natural organism, and the manifold forms of spiritual life. In speculative logic, the idea of life is formed in its final stage and transformed into the life of the absolute idea. In the natural world, the life-idea is manifested as a form of outward movement. Initially, this idea is only internal or potential in inorganic nature. Then, it gradually externalises and realises itself in organic nature. In the system of spirit, passing through the stage of the soul in anthropology, the opposition of spirit and life in phenomenology, the rationalised state organism, the ideal and beauty in aesthetic, and the forms of God, finally, in pure logic as the last science, it is reborn in its original form. Compared with the philosophy of nature, the manifestation of the life-idea in the domain of spirit represents an internalisation process in an ideal direction. Therefore, the natural philosophical realisation and the spiritual philosophical manifestation of the life-idea can be characterised as two symmetrical, diametrically opposed movements. Nevertheless, they are fundamentally two dimensions of a continuous and unified process of the life-idea itself. This process of life-idea returning to itself in a realisation-manifestation movement constitutes a significant circular movement within Hegel’s system construction.