Preface to the first edition

The need to provide my listeners with a guide to my philosophical lectures first prompted me to let this overview of the entire scope of the philosophy come to light earlier than I would have otherwise thought appropriate.
The nature of an outline not only excludes a more exhaustive elaboration of the ideas in terms of their content, but also restricts in particular the elaboration of their systematic derivation, a derivation that must contain what is otherwise understood as a proof and that is indispensable for a scientific philosophy. The title was supposed to indicate the scope of the whole as well as the intention to reserve the details for the oral presentation.
In the case of an outline where the aim is to present an already presupposed and familiar content in a deliberately succinct manner, more consideration is given simply to the external purposefulness of the ordering and arrangement. The present exposition is not in this position. Instead it sets up a new reworking of philosophy according to a method that will some day be recognized, I hope, as the only true method, identical with the content. For this reason, I would have considered it more advantageous for the exposition, as far as the public is concerned, if circumstances would have allowed me to have a more elaborate work about the other parts of the philosophy precede it, a work of the same sort as I provided the public in regard to the first part of the whole, the Logic. Moreover, although it was necessary in the present exposition to limit the side of the content that lies closer to representation and empirical familiarity, I believe that, in regard to the transitions (which can be nothing other than a mediation effected by means of the concept), I have made this much evident: that the methodical character of the progression is sufficiently distinct from the merely external order that the other sciences look for, as well as from a mannerism that has become customary in treating philosophical objects. This mannerism presupposes a schema and in the process sets up parallels among the materials just as externally as – and even more arbitrarily than – the first way does [i.e. the way of the other sciences]. Through the most peculiar misunderstanding, this mannerist method claims to have done justice to the necessity of the concept with contingent and arbitrary connections.
We have seen the same arbitrariness also seize control of philosophy's content, setting out on the adventures of thought and imposing itself for a while on sincere and honest striving, but otherwise taken, too, to be a foolishness that had risen to the point of madness. Yet instead of being imposing or mad, its basic content more readily and more often displayed quite familiar trivialities, just as the form displayed the sheer mannerism of a deliberate, methodical, and easily procured witticism involving baroque connections and a forced eccentricity, just as generally, behind the visage of seriousness, it displayed deception towards itself and the public. By contrast, on the other side, we have seen the sort of shallowness that stamps its lack of thoughts as a scepticism that regards itself as clever, and a critical position that is modest about reason's prospects, a shallowness whose arrogance and vanity mount in tandem with the emptiness of its ideas. – For some time these two directions of the spirit have simulated German earnestness, wearied its deeper philosophical need and brought about an indifference to the science of philosophy – indeed, even a scorn for the latter – with the result that now a self-styled humbleness even thinks itself entitled to enter the discussion and pass judgment on the profoundest dimension of philosophy and to deny it the rational knowledge whose form used to be conceived in terms of proofs.
The first of the phenomena touched on can be regarded, in part, as the youthful pleasure of the new epoch that has blossomed both in the realm of science and in the political realm. If this pleasure greeted the dawn of the rejuvenated spirit giddily and went straight for the enjoyment of the idea without deeper work, revelling for a time in the hopes and prospects that the idea presented, then this pleasure reconciles us all the more easily with its excesses, because a strong core underlies this pleasure and the fog of superficiality that it poured out around that core dissipates necessarily on its own. The other phenomenon is, however, more adverse [to the idea] since it reveals fatigue and feebleness and strives to cover them up with an arrogance that finds fault with the philosophical spirits of every century, mistaking them all, and, most of all itself, in the process.
Yet it is all the more gratifying to perceive and to mention in conclusion how the philosophical interest and the earnest love of higher knowledge have maintained themselves, impartially and without conceit, against both of these orientations. If this interest now and then thrusts itself more into the form of an immediate knowing and feeling, it attests, on the other hand, to the inner drive of a rational insight that goes further and alone gives human beings their dignity, and attests to it, above all, by the fact that that standpoint comes about for it [that interest] only as the result of philosophical knowledge [Wissen], so that what it seems to despise is at least recognized as a condition by it.
To this interest in knowing the truth I dedicate this attempt to provide an introduction or contribution to satisfying this interest; may such a purpose procure it a favourable reception.
Heidelberg, May 1817