Towards the beginning of his Encylopaedia Logic, Hegel states that ‘logical determinations in general, can be regarded as the definitions of the absolute, as metaphysical definitions of God’ (§85). And accordingly, he often suggests that cognition of the absolute gives us knowledge of God. This position implies at least three claims: First, that there is a distinct, philosophicalform of cognition; second, that the object of this cognition is the ‘absolute’; and third, that the ‘absolute’ is what we do – or should – understand by ‘God’. But how exactly are these claims to be understood and what justifies them? And how do we get from Kant’s identification of the ‘Ideal’ of pure reason, an object that would bring reason’s demand for the ‘unconditioned’ to rest, with God and his denial that we can have theoretical knowledge of this object, to Hegel’s assertions? In this year’s summer school, we will be addressing these questions via close readings of selected texts from Kant, Hegel, Schelling and Fichte.