ABSTRACT
Logic, being the thinking of thinking, stands apart from all other disciplines by proceeding upon the elimination of any difference between the subject and object of its investigation. Because logical thought is its own topic, the method and content of logic cannot be distinguished. For just this reason, logic can begin neither with a pre-established procedure nor with any pre-established content without question-begging. Insofar as philosophy only escapes dogmatism by operating with no unexamined presuppositions about its method and subject matter, philosophy must begin with the same overcoming of the' distinction between subject and object that logic presupposes. More than any philosopher before, Hegel takes seriously these elementary prescriptions, as most evident in his recognition that access to philosophy requires liberating discourse from the opposition of consciousness, which confines cognition to the standpoint where the subject of knowing refers to an independently given object.
