Abstract

Hegel's most interesting and controversial claims about nonconceptual knowledge arise in contexts of value. This paper examines the relation between nonconceptual and conceptual knowledge in Hegel's Phenomenology, specifically in connection with early Greek aesthetics. I take up Hegel's claim that the ancient Greeks expressed in their myths, religious narratives, sculpture, and artistic materials certain high powered philosophical truths which they shouldn't express in words. I raise a paradox about his claims and show how his claims about ineffable knowledge clash with his general propositional criterion of knowledge, namely, that for something to count as knowledge it must be expressible in words. However I argue that Hegel's thoughts about the matter were coherent and I solve the paradox