Hegel famously says in the “Preface” to The Philosophy of Right that that outline or Grundriss presupposes “the speculative mode of cognition.” This is to be contrasted with what he calls “the old logic” and “the knowledge of the understanding” (Verstandeserkenntnis), a term he also uses to characterize all of metaphysics prior to his own. He makes explicit that he is referring to his book, The Science of Logic, but he does not explain the nature of this dependence anywhere in the book. This chapter attempts to explain the nature of this dependence, and to show that it is indeed crucial to understanding the argument of the work.
