Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 63

This unaccustomed inhibition is largely what lies behind the complaints concerning the unintelligibility of philosophical writings, when otherwise the individual has in him the requisite mental cultivation for understanding them. In what has been said we see the reason for the specific charge often made against these writings, that a good deal has to be read repeatedly before it can be understood – an accusation which is meant to convey something improper and final, so that, if grounded, would admit of no further reply. The explanation thereby is clear from the above. The philosophical proposition, being a proposition, calls up the view of the usual relation of subject and predicate, and the usual comportment of knowledge. This comportment and the view thereof destroys its philosophical content; the view finds that things are intended otherwise than it thought, and knowledge, by this correction of its view, is compelled to come back to the proposition and comprehend it otherwise.