To the first question:
For Hegel, the matter of thinking is: Being with respect to beings having been thought in absolute thinking, and as absolute thinking. For us, the matter of thinking is the Same, and thus is Being—but Being with respect to its difference from beings. Put more precisely: for Hegel, the matter of thinking is the idea as the absolute concept. For us, formulated in a preliminary fashion, the matter of thinking is the difference as difference.
To the second question:
For Hegel, the criterion for the conversation with the history of philosophy is: to enter into the force and sphere of what has been thought by earlier thinkers. It is not by chance that Hegel advances his principle in the context of a conversation with Spinoza and before a conversation with Kant. (Science of Logic, book III, Lasson edition, vol. II, p. 216 fl.) In Spinoza, Hegel finds the fully developed "standpoint of substance" which cannot, however, be the highest standpoint because Being is not yet thought equally fundamentally and resolutely as thinking thinking itself. Being, as substance and substantiality, has not yet developed into the subject in its absolute subjectivity. Still, Spinoza appeals always afresh to the whole thinking of German Idealism, and at the same time
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