Preface

 

When the content of the interest in which one is absorbed is drawn out of its immediate unity with oneself and becomes an independent object of one's thinking, then it is that spirit begins to be free, whereas when thinking is an instinctive activity, spirit is enmeshed in the bonds of its categories and is broken up into an infinitely varied material … because spirit is essentially consciousness, this self-knowing is a fundamental determination of its actuality … the loftier business of logic therefore is to clarify these categories and in them to raise mind to freedom and truth.

—Hegel, The Science of Logic