1968, p. 292). He asked an important question: What is this world in which we live but an image of reason? For Hegel, the "real" is only that which is "rational" and there is an "Absolute" which he described as an Idea which knows itself or the thought that conceives itself (Ferm, 1968).
For Hegel, Nature and Mind were only modes of expression for the forms of pure thought (Ferm, 1968). In speaking of the "Absolute," however, Hegel did not refer to something final and finished; rather he was convinced that man could ultimately know this Absolute only partially (Solomon & Higgins, 1996). Hegel accepted Kant's theory of knowledge as a refutation of skepticism and, incidentally, of Descartes. He decried the extensive focus on questions of knowledge to the neglect of other questions about human history, culture, art, religion, ethics and happiness.
It is important to recognize that for Hegel, the so-called commonsense approach to knowledge was inadequate (Solomon & Higgins, 1996). All knowledge is, in his view, mediated or filtered through concepts and already determined in part by the senses. Knowledge itself is seen as inadequate and must be based in part on a socially constructed self. His complex system suggests that many concepts come into play in knowledge and its acquisition and testing.
Rene Descartes advanced via the method of deduction a fundamental axiom that serves as a premise and which is beyond doubt. That axiom, as stated in his work titled Discourse on Method is the famous "cogito:" I think therefore I am. It is this capacity for knowing oneself because one is capable of thinking that Descartes said differentiated the human being from lesser animal life forms (Solomon and Higgins, 1996). Descartes put a premium on interiority, introspection, or the idea that the mi
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