Transcendence of Thought, Impersonality of Consciousness

Hegel, Th. H. Green and the Criticism of A. Seth Pringle-Pattison

Abstract

Starting from an indication by Deleuze, according to which even transcendental philosophy would not arrive to an adequate concept of immanence, the paper tests this assumption by studying the way in which, in the history of idealism, thought was understood as “transcendent” with respect to individual thinking selves. This feature emerges with particular clarity in the path that goes from Hegel to the founder of British Idealism Thomas Hill Green – whose theory of eternal consciousness was criticized by another idealist philosopher, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, as a modern form of Averroism.