Hegel had once expressed himself in such a way that the force of spirit is only as great as its expression and its depth goes only as deep as it trusts itself to disperse itself and to lose itself in the explication of itself. Accordingly, the broadness of spirit also depends on how deeply it has descended into its depth. The absolute is this descent and the dispersion that goes along with it. Starting from thought as the principle of objectivity and thus the beginning point of the determination of the absolute, the author sets forth how thought develops from ‘Being’ via ‘Essence’ to ‘Concept’. The concluding chapter on ‘Nature and Spirit’ is about comprehending the world in which we live as a realization of the absolute.
Due to the systematic nature of the essay, the reading does not require any special prior knowledge on the part of the reader. The concepts used obtain their meaning in the context of the line of reasoning unfolded in the text.