Includes bibliographical references and index.

Hegel begins the book by stating why prefaces to this kind of work cannot really be written. The reason is that in this kind of book, there can be no preannounced lesson to be learned, and the idea is that whatever it is that one learns, one has to learn it for oneself in going through the model cases laid out in the book. He says that in fact everything hangs on apprehending and expressing the true not merely as substance but also equally as subject. That "subject" is said to be "pure negativity," which estranges itself and then restores itself. As it moves in that field of estrangement and restoration, it comes to understand that the true (what it seeks) is the whole and that it only comes into view as a result of what the book investigates.