Though useful given the current state of Hegel scholarship, I do not care for the distinction between a non-metaphysical and metaphysical interpretation of Hegel.

The metaphysical interpretation tends to identify Hegel’s absolute with god while the non-metaphysical tends to demote the absolute to a concept and demote concepts to nondialectical abstractions.

In my view, both are mistaken interpretations.

Hegel separates his account of rational activity from his account of the human animal who is the rational actor. But rational activity remains decidedly cognitive in the human sense.

So, for instance, while there is infinite thinking there is no such thing in Hegel as an infinite intellect except as a representation of a god. And we (should) know that representations are not speculative truths.

Intellect as human is finite in that a distinction can be drawn between the cognitive act – thinking - and the cognitive object – the thought.

Given how Hegel conceives infinite thinking, only a finite intellect is capable of infinite thinking.

So, thought thinking itself is what happens to finite reason at its own limits.

Prior to Hegel, such limit thinking was seen as problematic. As either a regress or a circle – as an impasse of reason – reason itself at its own limits appears to be irrational. It appears to be a reason unable to express a determinate thought.

It is a reason that equivocates as it goes back and forth between two thoughts that appear to mutually implicate in this way generating an unwelcome infinite movement – in this way generating a dialectic.

So, infinite thinking as it first comes on the scene appears as a dialectic that marks a breakdown of reason.

Hegel identifies infinite thinking in the Phenomenology as the dialectic that marks the breakdown of consciousness.

But he then says that this negative result can also be viewed in a positive manner. This is the same dialectic reconceived as what he calls the truth of consciousness for us.

With this, Hegel indicates how he is going to view the seeming irrationality of an infinite thinking – the dialectic identified as an impasse of reason – as itself a thinking with reason.

Thus, we get reason that as dialectical is taken to abide contradiction. Otherwise put, the very indicator of irrationality prior to Hegel is reconceived as an infinite self-generating reason. Or, what had always been problematic about human reason is shown by Hegel to be reason as infinite.

The Logic acts out this infinite self-thinking. This is a decidedly human thinking because infinite thinking is finite thinking unable to pin down a finite determination. What is experienced by the understanding as the failure to pin down its thought as determinate – what is experienced as a troubling regress or circle of reason – is when taken positively the manifestation of speculative reason.

We do not have to shift from the human to some imagined divine intellect to get infinite thinking. All we need to do is change our point of view on the dialectic.

Thought thinking itself is for the understanding a paradoxical and self-conflicted thinking.

And Hegel says that precisely because this dialectic of thought thinking itself is paradoxical and self-conflicted is it rational. Infinite reason is the inverse side of a finite reason that as infinite is viewed to be irrational.

As speculative, reason is not solely the runaway bad infinite of the understanding. It also can be viewed speculatively as the true infinite that exhibits an infinite self-generating form.

Thought thinking itself when comprehended speculatively is not a vision of the absolute. It is a thinking that becomes its own thoughts. It is a reason that first appears mad.

There is a method to this seeming madness. In fact, comprehending the method to this madness is the absolute idea.

This is why the absolute idea has nothing to do with god and everything to do with what Hegel presents in the Logic which is an extended discourse on the method of thought thinking itself – the very method employed by the human readers of the Logic who by using this method are able to be infinite self-thinkers or as humans see how their own limitations play a crucial role in the generation of infinite self-thinking by the finite rational human intellect.

• Alan