Henri.R94

Spirit is itself the wound it tries to heal, that is, the wound is self-inflicted: there is no res cogitans, no thing which also thinks. Instead, the paradox is that there is no Self that precedes the Spirit’s “self-alienation”: the very process of alienation generates the “Self” from which Spirit is alienated and to which it then returns...

Once we are in negativity, we can never leave it and regain the lost innocence of the origins; in the “negation of the negation” the origins are truly lost, their very loss is lost, they are deprived of the substantial status of that which has been lost. “The wounds of the Spirit heal, and leave no scars behind.” It is not that Spirit heals its wounds so perfectly that, in a magical gesture, even the scars disappear; but that, in the course of the dialectical process, a shift of perspective occurs which makes the wound itself appear as its opposite— the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint.