Division of Subject

There can be but one method in all science, since the method is the self-unfolding Notion (Begriff) and nothing else, and this latter is only one.

In accordance, therefore, with the moments of the Notion, the exposition and development of religion will be presented in three parts. In the first place, the notion or conception of religion will be considered in its universal aspect; then, secondly, in its particular form as the self-dividing and self-differentiating, notion, that is, under the aspect of judgment, [Ur-theil = separation of subject from predicate] of limitation, of difference, and of finiteness; and thirdly, we shall consider the notion, which encloses itself within itself, the syllogism, or the return of the notion to itself out of the particularity in which it is unequal to itself, so that it arrives at equality with its form, and does away with its limitation. This is the rhythm, the pure eternal life of Spirit itself; and had it not this movement, it would be something dead. It is of the essential nature of Spirit to have itself as object, and thence arises its manifestation. But here Spirit is to begin with in the relation of objectivity, and in this relation it is something finite. The third stage is reached when it is object to itself in such a way that it reconciles itself with itself in the object, is “with itself,” and in being so has attained its freedom. For freedom means to be self-contained, or at home with oneself.

But this rhythm, within which our science as a whole, and the entire development of the Notion moves, reappears in each of the three moments specified, since each of these is potentially totality in its determinateness, until this totality is made explicit as such in the final moment. Therefore, when the Notion first appears in the form of Universality, then in the form of Particularity, and lastly, in the form of Singularity, or when the movement of our science as a whole is that in which the Notion becomes judgment, and completes itself in the syllogism, in every sphere of this movement the same development of the moments will show itself, only that in the first sphere it is held together within the determinate character of universality, in the second sphere within that of particularity, where it exhibits the moments independently, and it is only on arriving at the sphere of individuality that it returns to the real syllogism, which mediates itself in the totality of determinations.

Such, then, is the division of the subject, representing the movement, nature, and action of Spirit itself, of which we, so to speak, are only spectators. It is necessitated by the Notion; the necessity of the progression has, however, to present, explicate, prove itself in the development itself. The division, the different parts and content of which we shall now indicate in a more definite way, is therefore simply historical.