Spirit’s change is a qualitative leap, not gradual accumulation.
Evidence
Spirit is never at rest but always engaged in moving forward (in immer fortschreitender Bewegung). But just as when the child after its long, silent nourishment takes a first breath, breaking (abbricht) the gradualness of merely quantitative growth – there is a qualitative leap – and then the child is born; so likewise spirit in its self-formation matures slowly and quietly into its new shape, dissolving bit by bit the structure of its previous world, whose tottering state is only indicated by scattered symptoms; the frivolity and the boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, are the heralds giving the signs that something other is in the offing (im Anzuge ist). The gradual crumbling (Zerbröckeln) that left unchanged the physiognomy of the whole, is broken through by the sunrise which, in its flash (ein Blitz), illumines the features of the new world in one moment (in einem Male). — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1253
Categorization
- DEFINE: Quoted Hegelian text defining the qualitative leap, the birth-sunrise imagery central to plasticity as explosion.
- XREF: The qualitative-leap vs quantitative-change distinction connects directly to reader’s plasticity/brain-work framing — change that is sudden structural reconfiguration rather than incremental increment. — connects to: Totalities are approached through accumulated duration, not flash-like revelation. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 234; Historical change arrives as a qualitative leap, not gradual growth; Transformative change is gradual within continuities, not clean breaks (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Historical change arrives as a qualitative leap, not gradual growth
#corroborates(0.95) - Transformative change is gradual within continuities, not clean breaks
#contradicts(0.92) - Resilience marks irreversible psychic change, not a return to prior equilibrium
#qualifies(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 3800