There are those who claim that he is Hegel one of the greatest virtuosos of philosophical expression, not only because of his extensive knowledge of the knowledge of his time in areas such as history, art, society and religion, but because of the neat order in which he exposes his philosophical development. Some of the central concepts that allow to address his work are:
Relationships
Regarding the gnoseological problem, Hegel assumes the difficulties observed by Hume (who questioned whether we have objective data to affirm the existence of something) and Kant (which reduced the notion of substance to a category or law of link of our representations operated by understanding), but adds that the existence of the things themselves or substances, has an additional drawback, that of turning knowledge into something relative. In part, Kant had observed this particularity since he argued that knowledge was phenomenic . Hegel will go further and say that Kant's assertion is, at heart, to admit that knowledge is nothing but illusion. If a knowledge is relative, then it cannot be considered knowledge in the full sense of the word in such a way that there can be neither true science nor philosophy.
Consequently, Hegel eliminates the hypothesis that reality is made up of substances and that these are, as Kant postulates, unknowable. It then raises an original approach: reality is a set of relationships, whereas the absolute is no longer the substances but the relationships. The being-in-self (substancialism) disappears to give rise to being in relationship-with (relationism). It is not that Hegel denies the existence of substances but considers that these are the most abstract and immediate aspect of something that later considered in all its full reality, will unfold into a very rich plot of relationships.
Dialectic
Hegel did not want to eliminate the contradictions of reality, but to assume them and understand them. For him, the contradiction is what makes it possible to explain the evolution and the movement:
One thing moves, not because it is at one moment here and another time there, but only because in one and the same moment it is here and not here, because it is and is not at the same time in the same place Hegel, Science of Logic
But in any case, contradiction explains self-awareness and is why Hegel approaches a dialectical conception of reality:
The spirit only conquers its truth when it is able to find itself in absolute tearing. The spirit is not this power as the positive that departs from the negative, as when we say that something is nothing or that it is false, and, done so, we pass without more to something else, but it is only this power when we look at each face the negative and remain close to it. Hegel, Phenomenology
From the Hegelian perspective, anything or thought is, insofar as it considers itself, separate from its relations, is contradictory since it ends up being annulled.
In other words: something is(thesis), as it becomes real as opposed to that which is not(antithesis). For example, a husband is in relation to his wife, while he is not his wife but husband. This means that the affirmation is not suppressed by refusing as independent as it relates to other things, but rather, it is affirmed and realized through its denial in a higher unit of itself and its opposite is nothing more than moments. This superior unit (synthesis) is an integrated composition in which theses and antithesis meet: returning to example, husband and wife make up a couple.
Hegel does not use the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis in his work. However, their exhibitors often resort to this terminology of Greek origin, which seems to be appropriate to describe their thinking. In rigor, he will call them affirmation, denial, and denial of denial. The latter denies the independence of the first two while retaining them by integrating them into a superating instance (aufhebung). It is often claimed that the dialectic is the Hegelian method. However, it is more that, it forms the very structure of reality, completely composed of contrasts and tensions between opposites. However, since knowledge is but an aspect of reality, consequently dialectic is also the method of philosophy.
Reality is thus understood as a set of dialectical relations.
As the different oppositions are gradually integrated into higher conciliatory units that contain them, finally, according to Hegel, there is a final synthesis, the synthesis of all the synthesis that would be nothing other than the systematic totality of all the real, the totality or system of all that is. In this sense, reality is conceived as an organism (a spiritual organism) where nothing happens in isolation but everything ends up relating to each other.
Every body is conceived as a whole of parts (it should be distinguished from other totalities, whereas it is not a summarative whole). For example, a handful of a dozen seeds is a simple accumulation, but if we have them in the soil drawing a geometric figure, say a pentacle, it will no longer be a simple sum but each of the seeds will occupy a necessary place for the whole, that is, a function within the structure (gestalt).
All structural can be either mechanical (machines) or organic (organisms). While machines are composed of pre-existing parts to the whole, in which each one will have a fixed location and present fixed relationships with the other parts, in organisms, the totality precedes the parts, such is the case of living beings that develop from fertilization.
Compared to substancialism, which tends to conceive reality in an atomistic way, Hegel will focus on the system. The totality is the first and the consequent, the parts that arise from the totality. The parties do not have separate existence but are in their relations with each other and with the whole. It is therefore about internal relationships that make up a spiritual organism.
For Hegel, the truth of something, that is, its full reality, exists only in relation to the totality to which it belongs. It is not possible to know what the heart really is, regardless of the organism of which it is part. He will assert that the true is the whole.
Reality is then conceived as a whole articulated in an active process of self-relation. Universal relationality is fully intelligible because the parts that compose it are integrated into an absolute and final unity. The total reality, the true Absolute (God) ends up knotting itself in the form of a circle reconciling all opposites.
Reality is thus understood as an organism of dialectical relations.
For the philosophy that precedes Hegel, the substance (the being in itself) was a kind of mysterious background from which without knowing very well how, the phenomenon, the qualities or the appearances would arise. From the Hegelian visa point, the substance (the being in itself) is just a moment, the most abstract moment of all existence, the one in which it puts itself in an apparent and provisional independence since it has not yet manifested its contradictions which will allow it to achieve its true reality, it has not manifested itself as what it really is (the-being-in-relationship-with). According to this conception, being is nothing hidden, mysterious or inaccessible, but what each thing is manifests it. It is not a being encapsulated in itself, but it comes out of itself and shows itself. Being consists in appearing, in manifesting.
Reality is then understood as a dialectical organism of relations of manifestation
Each singular circle, being in itself a totality, also breaks the boundaries of its element and founds a wider sphere: the Whole. The Whole puts itself as a circle of circles, each of which is a necessary moment; in this way, the System and its peculiar elements constitutes the Idea in its entirety, which also appears in each of them. Hegel, Encyclopedia, Logic
Being, then, is the very process of appearing, which is comparable to an organism that determines and articulates itself. But since appearing implies that something is shown before something or someone, and since nothing is outside the process of appearing (this process is the very totality of reality, while all reality is exhausted in that process), consequently, appearing cannot appear but before itself, it is a process of self-exhibitionism, not there being nothing outside of him before which he appears. It's a self-appearance, a self-monitoring.
All this is what Hegel calls spirit, which in fact is nothing of a mysterious type but the varied manifestations of human life that differentiates it from that of animals: thought, science, art, etc.
In short, the spirit (or consciousness) possesses:
Self-monitoring- the property of appearing before itself.
Self-articulation- the ability to articulate itself.
Reflection: it is both an object and a subject for itself.
The central idea of absolute idealismis then revealed:
It could be said that the Hegelian system is a much broader and more complex category system than the Kantinan one. But it is a system that dispenses with external material to which categories have to be applied (i.e. the prints needed in Kant's gnoselogy). Because for Hegel, content gives itself by establishing dialectical relations.
Reality, consequently, is a closed system of dialectical relations of manifestation. Manifestation is a self-manifestation since being appears before itself. Being is to appear, it is spirit, spiritual life.
So reality is a process of return on itself, in which the object ends up revealing itself identical to the subject, being as identical to thinking.