EXCERPT Nietzsche once said that a great error is worth more than a multitude of trivial truths. A truly great mistake is one that we can learn from, where we gain new understanding from explaining why it is an error, where we are either forced to make explicit our previously vague intuitions or forced to acknowledge properly counterintuitive results. Hegel understood this point well, as his analysis of the logical and historical development of human thought shows, for he takes each moment within this development to be a position which, while showing itself to be inconsistent, passes over into a more detailed position that incorporates its truth. It is my opinion that Hegel may have made the greatest such error in the history of philosophy to date, and this means that understanding why it is an error is of the utmost importance. To do this, it is necessary to examine the nature of Hegel’s position, which he calls Absolute Idealism.…