Spirit Summary and Analysis

Hegel starts by telling readers that Reason is Spirit. There are notes at the bottom that explain why it is that the English word Spirit is being used in this translation. Spirit does mean Mind, but only when Mind has achieved a "higher and very special level of functioning." The primary condition of this mind that is Spirit is its unity with the truth and the truth being understood to be in unity with the world and with life. This is a reiteration of Hegel's earlier wisdom that the universal exists with content.

Spirit does what earlier stages of mind did, in that it has a twofold function. It serves an observational type of function wherein it is ever able to make itself an object to itself while simultaneously existing as subject and substance within the world of which it is...