forwardly toward beings. An “introduction” to philosophical thinking is impossible; for there exists no steady and deliberate gliding-over from everyday thinking into thoughtful thinking, because the latter deals with being and because being can never and nowhere be encountered among beings as a being. The only thing that exists here is the leap and the leap into it. An “introduction” can only serve as a preparation for the leap, i.e., to bring the rift between the comportment toward beings and the thinking of being that we need to leap over into the field of vision, and to not make the approach to the leap too short. (Why is this possible? The pre-philosophical understanding of being.) But every introduction “into” “philosophy” still has to come to an understanding with those who do not stand in it and has to get involved with their horizon of understanding. In doing this, the “introduction” acts always and necessarily against its own intention.
Nevertheless it does not have to be in vain—as a preparation for the leap into the thinking that thinks the being of beings. However, in Hegel’s metaphysics—and in the metaphysics of German Idealism in general—we not only have to think being but it is necessary to think beings in their being as the absolute absolutely, in an absolute manner. This requires a leap that, in turn, must still leap over itself: the absolute leap into the absolute. The presentation of the Phenomenology of Spirit dares to accomplish this leap.
From these remarks it becomes clear that our attempt to elucidate what the Phenomenology of Spirit is remains in all respects thought-provoking. How are we to proceed if on top of this we presuppose neither the knowledge of the work itself nor that of the “Preface” and of the “Introduction”? We use the help that Hegel himself provided in the form of the “Introduction” to his work. By doing this, we must, however, take these few pages in advance as that which they must eventually be recognized and understood to be. For they are the explanation of the title that stands before the entire work and that is: Science of the Experience and Consciousness. Now, it was precisely this title that Hegel dropped during the printing. It remained only on a few copies of the first edition (1807). Hegel replaced the crossed- out title with the ultimate version: Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In the edition of the Phenomenology that is part of the collected works (1832), which is the one that is most commonly used, the crossed- out title is missing, so that the “Introduction” which refers to it is left without any explicit mention of the respect in which it speaks. Moreover, in comparison to the massive “Preface” the “Introduction” appears to be of minor importance, so that at most one occasionally takes this or that passage from it as a “quotation”—and they are always the same uncomprehended passages. The “Introduction” lays out why the Science