The understanding determines, and holds the determinations fixed; reason is negative and dialectical, because
it resolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing; it is positive because it generates the
universal and comprehends the particular therein.
Just as the understanding is usually taken to be something separate from reason as such, so too dialectical
reason is usually taken to be something distinct from positive reason. But reason in its truth is spirit which is
higher than either merely positive reason, or merely intuitive understanding.
It is the negative, that which constitutes the quality alike of dialectical reason and of understanding; it negates
what is simple, thus positing the specific difference of the understanding; it equally resolves it and is thus
dialectical.
But it does not stay in the nothing of this result but in the result is no less positive, and in this way it has
restored what was at first simple, but as a universal which is within itself concrete; a given particular is not
subsumed under this universal but in this determining, this positing of a difference, and the resolving of it, the
particular has at the same time already determined itself. This spiritual movement which, in its simple
undifferentiatedness, gives itself its own determinateness and in its determinateness its equality with itself,
which therefore is the immanent development of the Notion, this movement is the absolute method of
knowing and at the same time is the immanent. soul of the content itself.
I maintain that it is this self−construing method alone which enables philosophy to be an objective,
demonstrated science.