ABSTRACT
Hegel can be seen in a number of ways: as a metaphysician on the grand scale, as a source of insights into the history of art, religion and society, or as an acute commentator on the culture of his time. Without wishing to deny that he is all these things and more, I have preferred to stress the metaphysical elements of his thought, to see him as trying to disclose the fundamental nature of the universe. I am unsympathetic to attempts to underplay this aspect or to reduce it to a more familiar, commonsensical view of things. My reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, it seems obvious that Hegel regarded logic as central to his system, that he believed, or at any rate half-believed, that the world was a product of pure thought, that God or reason was in the world, and so on. His consideration of art, his concern with the details of science, history and society, are subordinate to this. Secondly, Hegel’s peculiar fascination for subsequent generations is primarily due to our predilection for the grandiose, perhaps insane, ambition of the metaphysician over the commonplace, even where the commonplace happens to be true. I have therefore tried to bring out the strangeness of Hegel and of his enterprise, to retain and emphasize the oddity of what he is saying rather than to dilute it to something which, though sensible and possibly true, no longer seems worth saying.
