G. W. F. Hegel's philosophical achievement is staggering to all who encounter it. Much of his current renown is premised on a normative, non-metaphysical account of Hegel pioneered in the mid-1970s by Klaus Hartmann (1976) and Charles Taylor (1975), and extended by Terry Pinkard (1994), Robert Pippin (1989) and the Pittsburgh neo-Hegelians. Since the normative account of Hegel has recently become predominant, we shall discuss it as an important aspect of contemporary idealism (see ch. 15). The complexity of Hegel's philosophy supports many accounts that dispute the normative consensus, particularly as regards the philosophy of nature and the logic. Since in this book we are concerned to demonstrate that idealism is not incompatible with naturalism, we shall lay particular stress on his philosophy of nature, within the context and framework Hegel himself sets down in his mature work. By following that framework, we shall attempt to clarify the relations between the Idea, Nature and Spirit that form the three parts of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

LOGIC AND THE DIALECTIC

In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel defines the ambit of that science not as an abstract formalism, but rather as “the science of things grasped in thoughts”. Accordingly, the “concept of things … cannot consist in determinations … alien and external to things. [This is because] thinking things over leads to what is universal in them, but the universal is itself one of the moments of the Concept” (1991: 56).