ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the antique problem of universals within Hegel's logical project as a core metaphysical and animating concern. This bi-polar logic is rejected by the speculative premise. This said, in his critique of Spinoza, Hegel imposed the philosophical demands of modernity on the metaphysical tradition, a revolution in thought he identified with Leibniz's principle of individuation and the dawn of a modern era of thought. The explication of the metaphysical basis of Hegel's logical project in this chapter implicitly challenges authors such as Robert Pippin and Klaus Hartmann who have sought to recast Hegel as a non-metaphysical thinker primarily engaged either in neo-Kantian epistemology or category theorization. Hegel's shorter logic, his Encyclopedia Logic, is best understood in terms of its continuity with his earlier work in The Phenomenology where his system of universals is concerned.
