In contrast to what several recent interpreters suggest, Hegel would reject the labels “naturalism,” “essentialist naturalism,” and “naturalist essentialism” for his philosophy. In light of the architecture of his system, the label “essentialist naturalism” would commit him to a variety of physicalism, which he rejects on the grounds of physics’ inability to establish the compatibility of material bodies and physical form. Second, as his critique of nature’s most concrete category “the death of the individual animal” and the sublation of nature into Geist illustrate, Hegel deems nature incapable of reconciling the individuals’ particularity with the genus’ universality, and therefore associates the realm of nature with death and proceeds to sublate nature into the concept of Geist. Finally, pointing out the inability of objectivist essentialist metaphysics to consistently unite the universal with the particular, Hegel also rejects the metaphysics of “naturalist essentialism” and proposes a concept-metaphysical account of the relationship between the logical idea, nature, and Geist. As all of these are variations of the idea, this proves him to be an idealist rather than a naturalist or a spiritualist.

Given recent naturalist readings of Hegel’s metaphysics and Spinoza’s rather widespread reputation as being the most consistent rationalist, the question arises in what sense Hegel can be called a ‘Spinozist’. An analysis of Hegel’s notion of philosophy reveals that despite Hegel’s and Spinoza’s common commitment to the notion that philosophy is “the self-comprehension of universal and unconditioned truth”, Hegel thinks that Spinoza’s substance-based account renders the finite philosophers entirely explicable in terms of universal truth’s self-causing and thus undermines individual autonomy. In contrast, Hegel’s commitment to concept-metaphysics is supposed to enable him to argue that individual philosophers still exert control over their thought and remain autonomous in their acts of channeling truth. Hegel thus aims to retain Kant’s allegedly anti-spinozistic commitment to individual autonomy by grounding his notion of philosophy on concept- rather than substance-metaphysics.

In 1817, Hegel published a condensed articulation of his basic philosophical commitments, designed to help make his notoriously difficult lectures a bit easier to follow. He titled this compendium the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline and, for the rest of his life, made consistent use of it in his classes, constantly amending it until its last, more detailed version was published in 1830. That Hegel called this text an “encyclopedia” was as bold a choice as it was strange. For on the one hand, it of course suggests that Hegel saw his own knowledge and system of philosophy as encyclopedic. But on the other hand, the text also bears no structural resemblance to any other encyclopedia.