I shall suggest in this paper that this "inverted world" is exactly that: an absurd position. This is not to say that it is to be ignored or condemned as "fantastic," but rather that its importance and intelligibility lay in its very absurdity, in its appearance as an unintelligible inversion of what previously was taken to constitute the intelligibility of the world of appearance. More precisely, I shall suggest that this inverted world is a misunderstanding and perversion of the conclusion (...) to which we should have been brought at this point in the Phenomenology. It is Hegel's intention, underscored by the conditional rather than indicative construction of this section, that we see this misunderstanding as a misunderstanding. When on the other hand the inversion is correctly understood, it brings to the phenomenological "we" undergoing the Bildungsprozess of the Phenomenology of Spirit the explicit realization that consciousness is not merely finite intentionality, but as such is infinite. Consciousness is self-consciousness, consciousness limited by nothing but itself. (shrink)