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This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the "mystical shell" of Hegel´s system proves to be its most "rational kernel." Hegel´s radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel´s thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to "absolute knowing." Comay and Ruda invert this deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. Reading Hegel without presupposition, without eliminating anything in advance or making any decision about what is essential and what is inessential, what is living and what is dead, they explore his presentation of the absolute to the letter.

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Rebecca Comay is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Frank Ruda is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee.

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