ABSTRACT
The purpose of nature is to extinguish itself and to break through its rind of immediate and sensuous being, to consume itself like a Phoenix in order to emerge from this externality rejuvenated as spirit. In the magnificent aviary that was G. W. F. Hegel's new system of science there was room for both the Phoenix and the Owl. Hegel of course labors mightily to embellish this flotsam, portraying it in the glamorous and encompassing language of dialectics. But there is no escaping the conclusion that the idea of dialectical consciousness cannot bear the weight of incoherence placed on it by the sorts of undialectical contradictions associated with oxymorons such as truncated consciousness and partial reason. Hegel's positioning of women in the dialectic, although afflicted with the fallout of ad hoc prejudices, seems potentially radical. Indeed it admits a perspective on women that would not be altogether unsuited to a politics of emancipation.
