Hegel takes the philosophy of Kant to its fullest implications and gives us the grandest metaphysics that ever appeared on Western soil. Reason or Spirit becomes in Hegel the be-all and end-all of philosophy. The logical categories become the framework of reality itself. The logic of the mind is the same as the metaphysics of reality. The real is the rational and the rational is the real. Mind and Nature are not two distinct realms but phases of the evolution of the Absolute which manifests itself everywhere in the universe, in matter and mind, in the individual and society, in history, science, art, religion and philosophy, all at once. The Absolute is the Reality. Its essence is Reason. The universe is conceived as a logical or rational system, a process of the workings of the Absolute Reason. The Reason is the supreme. Everything is an embodiment of Reason. There is the Reason exhibited in every action, every movement, every thought; the life of the universe becomes the more rational, the more it unfolds in itself the Absolute Reason. In Logic, Nature and Spirit can be discovered the three stages of the evolution of the Absolute towards the realisation of Self-consciousness. The Absolute Spirit is the goal or the consummation of the activity of the Reason. All the parts of the universe are organically determined by the purpose of the whole which is the Absolute and which is logically prior to all the parts. No part has meaning or reality apart from its organic relation to the whole. Hegel’s system is the famous logical or absolute idealism.

Kant made a metaphysics of reality an impossibility. Hegel makes it supreme above all things. For Hegel, to know the Reason is to know Reality. The laws of Reason are the laws of Reality. Hegel’s Reason is in a process of evolution. Every higher stage in this evolution includes and transcends the lower and thus becomes the purpose, intention, meaning and truth of the lower. The higher is the self-unfoldment or the self-realisation of the lower. In the higher is the real being of the lower made more explicit and conscious of its being. Every stage in this rational evolution reflects a universal situation, every stage has in it elements which speak of the past and predict the future, for the Absolute is implicit in every stage. This process of the self-development of the Reason, Hegel calls the dialectic of the Reason.

Hegel observes that everywhere there is change in the universe. Nothing persists in the same condition forever. Everything tends to and passes into something else. Every particular state is negated by factors contradicting it or rather raising it from its present being; and then there is another state in which this contradiction or negation is reconciled and made once again a consistent whole. This process of being, negation and reconciliation continues perpetually in all things in the universe, until the Absolute is realised in Self-consciousness. Hegel calls these three stages of affirmation, contradiction and fulfilment the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The different parts of the Absolute Whole which act as the theses, antitheses and synthesis in evolution have no meaning in relation to themselves taken separately or independently. When viewed as discrete elements they appear as mere contradictions or discrepancies, but they all have a great meaning in relation to the Whole or the Absolute in which they seek their fulfilment and being, and the dialectical process is the way in which all things proceed necessarily towards this realisation of Self in the Absolute. In every stage of this development the materiality, mechanism, inertness and rigidity of things get transcended and the entire Nature engages itself in disclosing its essential immortal being in Absolute-Consciousness. But Hegel makes a remark that the Absolute realised in the end as a result of evolution is not as such the complete whole; the Absolute, together with the process of evolution constitutes the complete whole. Here is a snag in his philosophy.

Hegel makes Nature or the universe necessary for the Absolute. But the tendency seen in his universe to overcome materiality and put on immortality in Self-consciousness proves that materiality is not real, that ultimately the real is consciousness, that consciousness is the only reality and that Nature which is another name for the externalised existence of material bodies is only an appearance which is gradually transcended at every stage, till at last the Absolute consciousness is realised. Thus the material universe loses its meaning in the Absolute, and so it is an indefensible position to say that the universe is necessary for the Absolute to give the latter its completeness or perfection. If by this necessity for the universe Hegel means that it is necessary for the evolutionary process, he ought to have said that it is necessary for the purpose of relative evolution and not for the Absolute which transcends the relative.

Another error of his is to have conceived the Absolute itself as subject to evolution or change, for an Absolute that has internal or external changes would become perishable. Evolution stops at the realisation of the supreme Self-consciousness in the Absolute, for that is the final goal of all motion and action, physical or mental. It is illogical to say that the perfection of the Absolute depends even in part on the existence of the universe, for the universe loses itself in the being of consciousness the moment the Absolute is realised. If there is a universe different from the Absolute, the Absolute is contradicted and it cannot even be. If the universe is non-different from the Absolute, the question of a necessity for the universe does not arise, for then the Absolute alone is. The Absolute is not something that is realised in the future by the dialectical process; it is eternally present at every stage of the process, though it requires to be realised in Self-consciousness attainable through such a process. Hegel fears that the Absolute would be rendered an abstract nothingness if it is divested of the universe. This fear is due to his false notion of concreteness derived from the unconscious belief that substantiality and reality mean some kind of solidity or tangibility which belief is an unfortunate lingering of the irrational instinct that affirms the authenticity of the deliverances of the senses. The Absolute is the being of the universe too, and the universe would become non-existent if it is to be deprived of the reality of the Absolute. Evolution is a phenomenal process which cannot be stretched to the constitution of reality. If the Absolute is to be the sole reality, its being should be unconditioned and should consist in non-relative, intuitive experience, which also means that it should be without any change or modification in its being, that it should not stand in need of anything from outside, should not involve internal development or evolution. It should in a way be undifferentiated, but not a bare abstraction devoid of content. All content is transformed and ennobled in the Absolute, and its existence is identical with its content. It is existence, content, consciousness, freedom, infinity, eternity, all at once and in one. Human reason cannot comprehend it, it is known in super-rational intuition or Self-realisation. The absoluteness of the Absolute implies also that its existence does not consist of plural entities or moments, that it is secondless, non-objective, through and through.

Hegel’s difficulties are mostly due to his confusing the categories of the human reason with the Absolute consciousness. As we have already observed, the logic of the human reason is far from being identical with the constitution of Reality. The human reason is discursive, dividing subject and object, proceeding in a mathematical fashion, impossible without the concepts of space, time and causation. Kant was right when he said that human understanding is bound to the phenomenal categories and cannot correspond to reality as such. Hegel is right in holding that the Absolute Reason or consciousness is the essence of reality, but he is wrong in stretching the laws of human reason or intellect to the realm of reality. The logic of the ordinary human reason is not the metaphysics of reality; metaphysics is a study of the wider universal implications of human experience. Hegel’s attachment to the powers of human reason is too strong to allow him to concede any superlogical intuition. This is why he thinks that pure being is equal to nothing, that reality is a becoming or a synthesis of being and nothing, that a non-dual, undifferentiated Absolute is inconceivable, that the Absolute is dynamic change and process, in a state of flux or evolution, and that there is development in the Absolute Reason. Hegel attributes to the Absolute what he observes in Nature through his human sense and reason, and then makes a categorical declaration that a logical necessity is the same as metaphysical verity. Logic could become metaphysics if we understand by logic the laws of the deeper implications of human experience, the laws either of the governing principles of the cosmic Reason which may be said to represent the true plan of the Absolute, or of the eternal Nature of the Absolute itself. Phenomenal evolution can be attributed to the cosmic Reason, but not to the Absolute. But Hegel does not make any such reserve in his concept of evolution, and sees in Reality itself the dynamic changes of evolution, an empty abstraction when Nature is removed from experience, and causation even in the essential constitution of Reality. All these are imperfect notions of the human reason working in relation to the phenomenal Nature but not attributable to the perfection of the Absolute. Change is a symptom of want, an imperfection, which we cannot ascribe to the self-complete Absolute. Hegel’s logic is the logic of the phenomenal reason, and if he is to stick to his logic in constructing metaphysics, even supposing, as he says, that this logic is super-individual, he would only be giving us a metaphysics of the cosmic Reason, and not of the Absolute. Hegel never became conscious that there can be a Consciousness more real and unifying than the phenomenal reason, whose implications take evolution to the cosmic Reason, and boldly began to build a metaphysics with the material made available by sense-experience and the logical categories. Though his Reason is made the essence of Reality transcending sense-experience, this is done only after material is already drawn from sense and understanding. Hegel’s system can become a monument of the genius to which reason can ever rise, if only his prejudice in favour of the phenomenal functions of reason is removed from his metaphysics of Reality. Yes; the real is the rational and the rational is the real, provided we, even when raising the Real above sense-experience, do not introduce the relative categories of the understanding, with its concomitant notions of duality, plurality and change, to the essence of the Real, and understand by the Reason and the Real the immutable universal Consciousness implied in all experience. Otherwise, the Real has to be limited to the cosmic Reason. The Absolute is complete even without any reference to evolution or development, for the latter is meaningful only in phenomenal perception and not in the experience of eternal completeness. If Hegel would restrict his dialectical process to the work of the cosmic Reason in the relative universe, and not take it to the Absolute itself, his system would join hands with the Vedanta.