As Hegel sees it, the ultimate step in human self-consciousness is the infinitizing of that consciousness such that not only does its content (object) know no limits, neither does the consciousness itself. Only a consciousness which knows God as Spirit knows itself as spirit, which is but another way of saying that only the spirit which knows itself and God in one act of knowing truly knows. (p. 20)

"Absolute Knowing" is a science residing in the human spirit which...has passed beyond all the limitations besetting it; out of all these "spirits" "its own infinity gushes forth," the infinity of a "reason" which acknowledges no barriers to its knowing, a human knowing which is also divine. (p. 299)

... it [absolute knowing] can be considered a "form of consciousness" in the sense that it is a "gathering-together of the singular moments, each of which in its principle manifests the life of the whole spirit". (p. 292)

"To know opposition in unity and unity in opposition, this is absolute knowing." (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I-III, ed. Herman Glockner, Sämtliche Werke, XVII-XIX, XIX 689) (p. 297, n12)
(S.J. Quentin Lauer: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, New York 1993)

Absolute Knowing, as I understand it, is the identity of the knower and the known, of thinking and being, of subject and object. The intrinsic dualism of our mind is transcended by absolute thinking. For the meaning of the terms "absolute" and "absolute thinking", see respective entries.

According to the most widely accepted definition, knowledge is justified true belief. That it is a kind of belief is supported by the fact that both knowledge and belief can have the same objects and that what is true of someone who believes something to be the case is also true, among other things, of one who knows it. It is obvious and generally admitted that we can have knowledge only of what is true.... It is urged, on the ground that beliefs that merely happen to be true cannot be regarded as knowledge, that knowledge must be justified.
(Paul Edwards, ed.: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Publishing, Vol. IV, p. 345)

(in epistemology) Philosophers recognize three main kinds of knowledge.
(a) Knowledge that, or 'factual knowledge'.
(b) Knowledge how, or 'practical knowledge'.
(c) Knowledge of people, places, and things, or 'knowledge by acquaintance'.
(Antony Flew: A Dictionary of Philosophy, St. Martin's Press 1979)

1. Collectively, the body of information possessed by a group of persons or a culture.
2. Those mental components that result from any and all processes, be they innately given or experientially acquired. The term is used in both senses here with the clear implication that knowledge is "deep" or "profound" and that it is more than simply a compendium of dispositions to repsond or a collection of conditioned responses.
(Arthur S. Reber: Dictionary of Psychology, Penguin 1985)

[in Hegel:] Each phase of history is the expression of a conceptual scheme, in which the gradual articulation of the concepts leads to a realization of their inadequacies and contradictions, so that the scheme is replaced by another higher and more adequate one, until finally Absolute Knowledge emerges and the whole historical process is comprehended as a single logical unfolding.
(Paul Edwards, ed.: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Publishing, Vol. IV, p. 337)

[Absolute Knowledge] involves an insight into the various forms of spirit and of their interrelationships that no previous form of spirit had....
(Michael Inwood: A Hegel Dictionary, Blackwell 1992, p. 219)

All information acquired through learning or experience and being part of an individual's empirical character is acquired knowledge. It depends on the capacity of the memory and other intellectual faculties. Acquired knowledge is subject to oblivion unless continously re-acquired or refreshed. The quality and quantity of acquired knowledge varies from individual to individual and can therefore never be absolute or whole, but only relative and fragmentary.

Knowledge related to analytical thinking and the philosophical method of anlysis, characteristic of much twentieth-century philosophy and science. Analysis is "... a process of investigation into the structure, functioning, and connections of a particular matter under scrutiny." ( Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995 ). It is reductionistic in so far as it decomposes a whole into its components in an attempt to find the fundamental building blocks of a structure or organism.

This kind of knowledge is used synonymously with Transrational Knowledge and holistic knowledge. It is holistic knowledge since it embraces the whole entity or structure of a known object rather than its components as in analytic knowledge. It is also related to holistic or synthetical thinking.

About the completeness of knowledge, see Essay Self-Referentiality of Reflective Thought:

As a bottom line, it can be stated fairly generally, that we can have complete knowledge of an object only when we are independent and outside of it at the moment of observation.

But complete knowledge is not possible as long as we acquire our knowledge from the outside of the objects and processes. Transrational Knowledge, on the other hand, is direct knowledge of the object-process, from "inside" the object, from its very nature

Conceptual Knowledge means the possession of concepts acquired by the process of internal appropriation of a given sensuous representation of a physical or mental object. It is also called rational or intellectual knowledge , although the latter is on a higher level of sophistication than the conceptual knowledge of everyday thinking processes.

This knowledge is descriptive of features and facts that are observable and accessible to our empiric experience. It is always knowledge from "outside" of an object, about an object, process or event in the world and in our consciousness. In the latter sense it is phenomenological knowledge in the former sense it is also called ostensive knowledge . All three belong to the type of referential knowledge explained below.

Knowledge through feeling, emotion, sympathy or empathy often operates unconsciously in our mind. To know the emotional state of a person demands a high level of empathy and psychological finesse. Therefore, this kind of knowledge, predominant in children, is mostly substituted for rational or descriptive knowledge in adults.

External knowledge simply means knowledge of the extrinsic properties or qualities of an object, as constrasted with internal knowledge that is knowledge of the intrinsic properties or the essence or substance of an object. For instance, primary and secondary qualities of an object constitutes external knowledge. Generally, it means knowledge of the world and other people.

We never know all properties and factors of objects and processes but only specific fragments, particular aspects or perspectives of the whole. Attentive and selective processes of our consciousness monitor the amount and reliability of information reaching our consciousness. Therefore our knowledge of the world and ourselves remains fragmentary and indirect, unless we adapt a higher faculty of thought such as Transrational Thinking.

Also called complete knowledge and contrasted with fragmentary knowledge. Holistic knowledge tries to comprehend the whole instead of the components. For example, modern Deterministic Chaos Theory attempts to understand natural processes in a non-reductionistic fashion, because Nature is not an accumulation of single, analytic entities but a complex, interrelated whole. Understanding this complex system presumes holistic knowledge.

Used synonymously with rational, analytic or conceptual knowledge and contrasted with Transrational Knowledge below. I usually connect intellectual knowledge with academic research and science. An well-educated or erudite person is characterized by profound intellectual knowledge, either generally as so-called common knowledge or specifically in a special field of science or study.

Internal knowledge - as contrasted with external knowledge defined above - is knowledge of the essential and intrinsic properties of an object. It may also mean Kant's "inner sense", a knowledge of one's own mind or consciousness.

As the opposite of subjective knowledge, it is knowledge of facts and processes that appear to occur independently of any subject, such as physical events in Nature. But objective knowledge is also knowledge of the facticity of mental matters, such as scientific facts, ideas and theories, the whole common knowledge of mankind that is believed to be true and empirically verified knowledge.

Knowledge that correlates words or ideas to actual things that are representative instances of the original idea is called ostensive. To know something in an ostensive way means to know it non-verbally, by means of direct reference to real-world entities.

Noetic knowledge is used synonymously with Transrational Knowledge, derived from the technical term Hyponoesis (Universal Mind) and Exonoesis (Individual Mind). Paranoesis is absolute and pure thought and produces therefore Paranoetic Knowledge as apriori synthetic knowledge in the realm of philosophical thinking.

The basic distinction between rational and paranoetic thinking, also called Transrational Thinking, leads to the double-aspect of knowledge: rational or acquired knowledge vs paranoetic or transrational knowledge. The latter is grounded in the Primary Mind or Hyponoesis and is the product of a higher faculty of our mind: Transrational Thinking. (see Essay Paranoetic Knowledge)

Paranoetic Knowledge is not experience but a cognitional or supra-intellectual activity of the mind, transcending rational and logical thinking.

Philosophical knowledge is opposed to scientific, rational, analytic and other kinds of intellectual knowledge. Philosophers, or rather metaphysicians, try to synthesize all the different views into a grand holistic system of thought. Philosophical knowledge is produced through applying speculative thinking and through inner contemplation of the world and our mind.

Another kind of intellectual or conceptual knowledge. It is the knowledge intrinsic to every human being that is educated according to Western traditional systems of thought. Rational knowledge predominates our world since the 16th century, when science and scientific thinking started to conquer our mind. Compared to higher forms of knowledge, such as transrational or holistic knowledge, rational knowledge is the most primitive and is tightly correlated to our consciousness and our perceptive faculties. It is the interface to the world and other minds.

Knowledge that refers to either actual things (similar to ostensive knowledge ) or to concrete cognitive objects of our mind. It may also be called intentional knowledge, since in intellectual thinking, every act of thought has an object of thought, is directed to some mental or sensuous object. Referential knowledge is very limited, though, because it cannot overcome the artificial gap or schism of subject and object, which only Transrational Knowledge is capable of.

The knowledge of science and science-related fields of study, as contrasted with philosophical knowledge. Scientists claim objectivity, inter-communicability and experimental verification are perhaps the most important characteristics of scientific knowledge, although the claim for objectivity or observer-independency has been tumbling down in the last decades since the ascent of quantum physics.

Knowledge related to the subject of knowing and contrasted with objective knowledge . It is knowledge that depends on the individual mind or the observer and is therefore relative and not absolute or objective. It may also refer to the personal, opinionated views of an individual that are affected by a multitude of psychological and social factors. Collectively, it means the experience of a human being that is different from every other human.

Synonyms are holistic, complete and Transrational Knowledge. As opposed to analytic knowledge , it extends the mere factual givenness of the world to higher intellectual concepts and ideas of reason which unite the multitude of sensuous representations into an apprehension or holistic understanding (see also Kant's differentiation between analytic and synthetic propositions).

Besides these two kinds of knowledge [opinion and reason] there is a third, as I shall show in what follows, which we shall call transrational knowledge (scientia intuitiva). Now this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.
(Spinoza: Ethics, Everyman's Library, 1989, Part II, Prop. XL, Note II)

To know immediately, then, or intuitively, is for mental content and object to be identical.
(John J. McDermott: The Writings of William James, Random House, 1968, p. 157)

[William of Ockham] Intuitive knowledge (notitia intuitiva) of a thing is knowledge of such a kind that one can know by means of it whether a thing is or not... Intuitive knowledge is thus the immediate apprehension of a thing as existent....
(Frederick Copleston: A History of Philosophy, 1983, Volume III, p. 62)

Und wenn mein Geist mit einemmal und deutlich alle ursprünglichen Bestandteile eines Begriffes erfasst, so hat er von ihm eine intuitive Erkenntnis, die sehr selten ist...
(Leibniz: METAPHYSISCHE ABHANDLUNG, MEINER, 1985, p. 61)

Transrational Knowledge (also called Paranoetic Knowledge) is knowledge produced by Paranoesis (Transrational Thinking). It is complete, all-encompassing, supreme and most profound knowledge of every aspect of the universe. Through Paranoesis we arrive at transrational knowledge of Hyponoesis (Universal Mind), i.e., pure and absolute knowledge that is independent of our empiric experience or any sensuous perceptions.

Complete knowledge is not possible as long as we acquire our knowledge from the outside of the objects and processes. Transrational knowledge, on the other hand, is direct knowledge of the object-process, from "inside" the object, from its very nature. By thinking the object, we know the object as object, as it is, from its inner perspective. We have whole, complete knowledge of an object or process. (see Essay Nature and Development of Transrational Thinking)

Transrational knowledge is quite different from rational knowledge as we know it in our everyday thinking. Rational knowledge is fragmentary and mostly analytic, whereas transrational knowledge is holistic and synthetic.

All that is Intellectual-Principle has its being- whole and all - in the place of Intellection, what we call the Intellectual Kosmos: but there exist, too, the intellective powers included in its being, and the separate intelligences... (IV 8,3,8)

In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division. There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all - nothing of it distinguished or divided - and in that kosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination. (IV 1,1-2)
(Plotinus: Enneads)

Plato's term for the intelligible realm of the intellect (dianoia) and transrational thought (noesis). This intellgible realm is opposed to the visible or physical realm (Topos horatos), where belief (pistis) and illusion (eikasia) dwell. Plato distinguished between the intellections of our mind, such as mathematical reasoning, and the higher faculty of thought, that he called dialectic. This is pure transrational apprehension of the Ideas or Forms.