The Speculative Method

Abstract

Presenting the first full statement of his system of philosophy in the Encyclopedia, Hegel says in the Preface to the first edition (1817) that he is offering a “new treatment of philosophy on a method which will, as I hope, yet be recognized as the only genuine method identical with the content.” ¹ This is the “speculative method,” which comprehends the development “of all natural and spiritual life” as resting “solely on the nature of the pure essentialities which constitute the content of logic.” ² These logical essentialities are “pure thoughts,” the “immanent development of the Notion.” Their “self-movement” is “their spiritual life” and that through which “philosophy constitutes itself and of which it is the exposition.” But although philosophy constitutes itself through the pure essentialities of logic, it goes on to apply the method of the logic to the concrete sciences of nature and mind. Since the essentialities of logic comprise the moments of the Notion, however, demonstration in the concrete sciences “does not behave like external reflection” but “takes the determinate element from its own subject matter, since it is itself that subject matter’s immanent principle and soul.” ³ The method, therefore, is both “soul and substance, and anything whatever is comprehended and known in its truth only when it is completely subjugated to the method; it is the method proper to every subject matter (jeder Sache selbst) because its activity is the Notion.” ⁴