I'm quietly building a case for the importance of Hegel in an age that cares neither for him or his direct descendant, Marx. A part of the case will, one, link Hegel's concept of geist and its movement in time (world history) with the idea of the evolution of noosphere in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Phenomenon of Man; and, two, link Hegel's idea of absolute spirit with the ideas expressed in Alva Noë's new book Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness—some of these ideas can be heard on the Brain Science Podcast.

Noë's project basically boils down to a liberation of the brain from the prison of Cartesian internalism. For him, the brain is seen not only as a part of the body but also a part of the outside world. The two, internal and external, can not separated. The mind is not a static container of impressions but a constant engagement with what is outside. The mind is you, your body, and world around your body.

I will go even further and say (or theorize) that any point or object outside of you is spatially oriented by mental self-projection and self-replication. A thing is out there because you are out there. You see this thing because you are where that this is. Your mind, which is the idea of your body, fills all of the space around you with copies of yourself. You are the measure of all things. What is called an out-of-body experience is in reality a malfunctioning of the normal way of seeing things in space and through experience. The inside of yourself is always outside of yourself. Hegel's absolute is this understanding.