Spiritual development is simultaneously an appearance and an explosion of form

Evidence

38 In the conclusion of his essay on Natural Law, Hegel shows that spiritual development in its different moments (still characterized in this epoch with the Schellingian term Potenzen) emerges at once from an appearance and an explosion of form: … The absolute totality restricts itself as necessity in each of its spheres, produces itself out of them as a totality, and recapitulates there the preceding spheres just as it anticipates the succeeding ones. But one of these is the greater power… . It is necessary for individuality to advance through metamorphoses, and for all that belongs to the dominant stage to weaken and die, so that all stages of necessity appear as such stages in this individuality; but the misfortune of this period of transition (i.e. that this strengthening of the new formation has not yet cleansed itself absolutely of the past) is where the positive resides. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1311

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘explosion of form’ is the germ of Malabou’s famous third sense of plasticity as explosion/promiscuity that she later develops against Derrida in ‘plasticity at the dusk of writing’. — connects to: Spiritual simplification is both a death-bringing erasure and an organizing abbreviation — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1021; Spirit develops by externalizing and returning to unite with itself — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 281; Spirit presents itself differently in nature, art, religion, and philosophy (+3 more)
• QUESTION: The phrase ‘where the positive resides’ — the misfortune of transition as the locus of positivity — seems worth chasing: why does Hegel locate value in this uncleansed transitional moment?

Broader Connections

• The eternal becomes spirit by self-differentiating and sublating its own difference #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 700
• Spirit develops by externalizing and returning to unite with itself #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 281
• Spirit’s revelation is the double externalization of concept into time and back into self #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 910
• Revealed religion marks spirit’s becoming-subject through self-revelation #expands (0.78)
• Spirit presents itself differently in nature, art, religion, and philosophy #expands (0.75)