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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Excerpts from Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817)

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#11.
The whole of science is the presentation of the idea; its division, therefore, can only be conceptualized on this basis. Now since the idea is reason identical to itself, which, in order to be for itself stands in opposition to itself and is itself an other, but in this other is identical to itself, science falls into three parts: (1) logic, the science of the idea in and for itself; (2) the philosophy of nature, as the science of the idea in its otherness; (3) the philosophy of spirit, the science of the idea as it returns to itself from its otherness.

(1) The division of a science that is projected in advance of itself is at first only an external reflection of its topic, for the differentiation of its concept can be achieved only through knowledge of the concept, which, however, that very science is. Thus the division of philosophy is an anticipation of what is produced by the necessity of the idea itself. (2) As observed in #6, the differences among the various philosophical sciences are only determinations of the idea itself, and it is thus only the idea that manifests itself in these different elements. In nature it is not an other that needs to be recognized as the idea; the idea is in the form of alienation; in the spirit, the same idea has asserted itself as being for itself and becoming in and for itself. Every such determination in which the idea appears is, however, a fleeting moment, and therefore the individual science must not only recognize its contents as an existing topic, but must also recognize in the same act, at once and directly, the transition of its contents into its higher circle. The representation of the relation between the contents as a division is therefore inconsistent in that it places the particular components or sciences next to each other as if they were merely at rest and their differences were substantial, like the differences between kinds.

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