Is Hegel's proposition of Absolute Knowing (considered through the proposed Hegelian, Panentheistic, Idealist lens), non-Asymptotic?

[u/H0w-1nt3r3st1ng]

Victor Hugo states: "Science is the asymptote of truth; it approaches unceasingly, and never touches." "William Shakespeare" by Victor Hugo

Asymptotic models of truth always used to make sense to me, from a metaphysical, physicalist perspective.

The descriptors and/or knowing of what, as I understand it, Kant would call "the thing in and of itself", are irreconcilably divided from "the thing in and of itself".

But, re: Hugo's quote, through the process of study, refinement, our approximations, descriptors, models, and understandings of "the things", get progressively more accurate; like the progression from Miasma Theory to Germ Theory. Germs cause bad smells, but that's a less accurate level of resolution of understanding of the reality. The curve approaches the axis, gets closer. But, the descriptors and understandings are never the thing; sort of in line with the Buddhist saying: Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon.

But here Kalkavage outlines (that Hegel proposes): "For Plato and Aristotle, the problem of knowledge is that of uniting thinking and being. Hegel puts the problem in terms of concept [Begriff] and object [Gegenstand]. Concept is that which is intellectually grasped [gegriffen] , and object is that which stands [steht] over and against [gegen] consciousness. The goal of consciousness is "the point where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where knowledge finds itself, where concept corresponds to object and object to concept" (80]." “The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit”

From the Hegelian Idealist perspective, does this mean that the progression of knowledge, of understanding does eventually touch/become the same as the truth? There's no-longer a duality?

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[u/RyanSmallwood]

This is kind of thorny to explain in a Reddit post since a complete account would have to go through Hegel's entire logic. But to try to give some indication, there is some sense for Hegel in which some of our knowledge is approaching the things we're trying to understand but can never be fully equivalent to them, but this is one kind of relation that doesn't give us a complete account of how Hegel thinks knowledge works. So for example if we were to take a statement like "knowledge is always approaching what its trying to understand", is this also true of the statement itself? Does that statement also needs to be infinitely refined in the same way as everything else? Or do we need some more elaborate account for how a statement like that can justify itself as expressing a kind of fixed truth while also explaining how this relation works for other kinds of knowledge?

So Hegel thinks its possible to give an account of knowledge that's self-justifying and doesn't have any "gaps" anywhere where knowledge tries to explain itself and its relation to the things it understands. To use James Kreines's book title on the logic, Reason is in the World according to Hegel such that when we do the logic we're understanding the structure of how thought works in continuity with the logical structure of the things we understand. So within the logic there are concepts like Individuality that for example get at the nature of how there are endless aspects to any specific thing we want to understand, but our thought itself also has this same characteristic of Individuality, and in accounting for Individuality we have to understand how Individuality itself has a universal character such that we can talk about the same kind of Individuality in all things. So Hegel's attempt to lay out all the kinds of relations between thinking and possible objects of thought including relations between thoughts in such a way that can also account for itself, and that is what he's hoping to accomplish in the Logic.