Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 58

Hence what is important for the student of science is to imbibe the effort of the concept. This demands attention to the concept as such, to simple determinations, e.g., being in principle [des Ansichseins], being-for-itself [des Fürsichseins], equality with self, and so on; for these are such pure self-movements, which we might call souls, were it not that their concept denotes something higher than this. The habit of running along in imaginations is as difficult to be broken with by the concept as is formal thought which argues [räsoniert] back and forth in unreal thoughts. The former, that habit, may be termed material thinking, a fortuitous consciousness, absorbed in the material, and hence finds it disagreeable to lift itself clear of that matter and to be with itself [bei sich zu sein]. By contrast, the latter, argumentation [das Räsonieren], is freedom from content, and vanity with regard to it; what is wanted here is the effort to give up this freedom, and instead of being the arbitrarily moving principle of the content, this freedom should sink into and pervade the content, should let itself be moved by its own proper nature, i.e., by the self as what pertains to it, and to contemplate this movement. To abstain from interrupting the immanent rhythm of the concept, to refrain from interfering with it through caprice and wisdom acquired elsewhere, such restraint is itself an essential moment in the attention to the concept.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 57

This nature of the scientific method, which consists partly in being unseparated from the content, and partly in determining the rhythm of its movement by itself, has, as we mentioned before, its actual exposition in speculative philosophy. What is here stated does express the concept but cannot hold for anything more than an anticipatory assurance. The truth it contains is not to be found in this exposition, which is in part narrative in character, and therefore is as little refuted when anyone assures us on the contrary that this is not so, but that the matter rather stands such and such, when accustomed imaginations are recalled as conclusive and well-known truths and are retold, or dished up afresh and reassured from the shrine of inward divine contemplation. Such a reception is wont to be the first reaction of knowledge: to oppose something unknown, in order to salvage freedom and its own insight, its own authority against what is foreign (for it is in this shape that what ends up being received first appears). This attitude is adopted, too, in order to do away with the semblance and the kind of disgrace which would pertain to something having been learned. Thus also, the reaction whereby the unknown is accepted and regaled with acclamation is of the same kind; in another sphere, this would be ultra-revolutionary declamation and action.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 56

In this nature of that which is – in its being, to be its concept – is what comprises logical necessity generally. This alone is what is rational, the rhythm of the organic whole: it is as much knowledge of content as that content is concept and essence. In other words, this alone is the speculative. The concrete shape, put in motion by itself, makes itself into simple determinateness; thereby it raises itself to logical form, and is in its essentiality; its concrete existence is merely this movement, and is immediate logical existence. It is therefore needless externally to inflict formalism upon the concrete content; the latter is in its very nature a transition into the former, which, however, ceases to be external formalism, the form being the indwelling becoming of the concrete content itself.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 55

While in the foregoing the significance of understanding was indicated from the side of the self-consciousness of substance, its significance in terms of the characterization [Bestimmung] thereof as existent is made clear by what is here stated. Existence is quality, determinateness equal to itself, or determinate simplicity, determinate thought: this is the understanding of existence [der Verstand des Daseins]. On this account it is nous, as that which Anaxagoras first recognized as essence. Those who succeeded him grasped the nature of existence in a more determinate way as eidos or idea, i.e., as determinate generality, as sort [Art]. The expression “sort” seems indeed too common and inadequate for ideas, for the beautiful and holy and eternal, that are the vogue these days. As a matter of fact, however, the idea expresses neither more nor less than sort. But we often find nowadays that a term that precisely designates a concept is disdained and another preferred to it which, used only because it belongs to a foreign language, shrouds the concept in mist, thereby sounding the more edifying. Precisely for the reason that existence is designated as sort, is it simple thought: nous, simplicity, is substance. It is on account of its simplicity, its equality with itself, that it appears fixed and permanent. But this equality with self is likewise negativity, for which reason that fixed existence goes over into its own dissolution. The determinateness appears at first to be so solely through its relation to something else; and its movement seems forced upon by an alien power. But because it has its own otherness in itself, and is self-movement, these are contained in that simplicity of thought itself; for this is self-moving and distinguishing thought, inherent inwardness, the pure concept. For this reason, reasonableness [die Verständigkeit] is a becoming, and as this becoming, it is rationality.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 54

Because generally, as expressed above, substance in itself is subject, all content is its own reflection into itself. The existence [Bestehen] or substance of anything that exists [eines Daseins] is its equality with itself [Sichselbstgleichheit]; for its inequality with itself would be its dissolution. But equality with itself is pure abstraction; and this is thought. When I say quality, I state simple determinateness; by means of quality one existence is distinguished from another, or is an existence; it is for itself, or exists with itself through this simplicity. But thereby is it essentially thought. Herein is comprehended that being is thought: here pertains the insight from which from the ordinary non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being tends to deviate. In virtue, further, of the fact that the existence of what exists [das Bestehen des Daseins] is equality with itself or pure abstraction, it is the abstraction of itself from itself, or is, itself, its own inequality with itself and its dissolution – its own inwardness and taking-back into self – its becoming. Because of this nature of the existing, and to the degree that the existing has this nature for knowledge, knowledge is not the activity that handles content as something alien, not reflection in itself from the content outward; science is not that idealism which arises in place of purporting dogmatism as an assuring dogmatism or the dogmatism of certainty of itself; but because knowledge sees content go back into its own inwardness, its activity, rather, is both sunk in the content, it being the immanent self of the content, and, as well, gone back into itself, for it is the pure equality-with-itself in otherness; so is it the cunning that, seeming to contain the activity in itself, watches how the determinateness and its concrete life therein, precisely because it believes it is pursuing its self-preservation and particular interest, is the inverse, activity dissolving itself and making itself into a moment of the whole.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 53

Science shall only be organized through the concept’s very own life. The determinateness which was taken from the schema and stuck on to existing facts in external fashion is, in science, the self-moving soul of the fulfilled content. The movement of the existing is on the one hand to become something else and so its immanent content; on the other hand, this movement takes this unfolding or this, its existence, back into itself, i.e., it makes itself into a moment, and simplifies itself to determinateness. In this movement, negativity lies in distinguishing and positing existence; in the return into self, negativity is the becoming of determinate simplicity. It is in this way that the content shows that its determinateness is not to be received from something else, and stuck on externally; rather, it gives itself this determinateness, and of itself ranks itself into moments and to a position in the whole. The pigeon-holing understanding reserves to itself the necessity and the concept of the content, that which constitutes the concreteness, the reality, and the living movement of the matter which it ranks, or rather, it does not reserve this to itself, but does not know it; for if it had this insight, it would show that it did so. It is not even aware of the need for such insight; if it were, it would drop its schematizing process, or at least would no longer be satisfied to know by way of a mere table of contents. A table of contents is all that understanding gives; the content itself it does not furnish at all. If the determinateness (e.g., even such a one as magnetism) is in itself concrete or actual, it all the same gets degraded into something lifeless, since it is merely predicated of another existing entity, not known as immanent life of this existence, or known how it has in this its intrinsic and peculiar self-generation and expression. Formal understanding leaves this main issue to others to add later on. Instead of making its way into the immanent content of the matter, understanding always takes a survey of the whole, assumes a position above the particular existence about which it speaks, which is to say, it does not see that existence at all. True scientific knowledge, on the contrary, demands abandonment to the very life of the object, or, what amounts to the same thing, to have before it the inner necessity thereof, and to express that. Steeping itself in its object, it forgets the overview, which is merely a reflection of knowledge from the content in itself. But being sunk in the material and following its movement, it returns back into itself, yet not before the content in its fullness is taken into itself, is reduced to the simplicity of being determinate, drops to the level of being one aspect of an existence, and passes over into its higher truth. Hereby does the simple, self-overseeing whole emerge from out of the wealth within which its reflection seemed to be lost.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, paragraph 52

The excellent can not only not avoid the fate of being thus deprived of life and spirit and, flayed in this manner, to see its hide wrapped around lifeless knowledge and the vanity thereof. Rather, there can be recognized in this fate the violence exercised on the hearts, if not the spirits, as well as the constructive unfolding into generality and determinateness of the form, which comprises its fulfillment, and which alone makes it possible for this generality to be applied to superficiality.