Abstract

Hegel's Doctrine of Essence is the central part of his Logic. The Doctrine of Essence is of central importance, since it is a critical description of traditional categories which functions also as the justification of Hegel's speculative understanding of essence. It is the most difficult text he ever penned, and due to his sudden death in 1831, Hegel never got to carry out its planned revision. This study takes an historical approach, giving flesh to Hegel's often forbiddingly abstract argument by seeing it as a confrontation with his predecessors, especially Fichte and Schelling. Finally, the book shies away from an uninformative reiteration of the Logic's dialectical sequences, choosing instead to show how the Doctrine of Essence intersects with some perennial philosophical questions (above all, the relationship between freedom and determinism).