In brief: Yes — if it means that spirit is the principle and the goal of actuality. No, if it means that matter, nature or the individual are thereby denied or disparaged. The three great objections to Hegel presuppose exactly this dualism — and it is the dualism that his absolute idealism disputes.
The three reproaches
The materialist reproach runs: Hegel makes spirit — thinking, ideas, the state — the first thing and has it bring forth the world. In truth it is the reverse: material being brings forth spirit as a superstructure. „Philosophy of spirit“ means here: a veiling of real relations of power.
The naturalist reproach runs: „spirit“ is a ghost in the machine. Empirical research finds the brain, neuronal processes, causality — and nothing else. „Philosophy of spirit“ means here: unscientific metaphysics (on this, the answer on brain research).
The existentialist reproach runs: absolute spirit swallows everything singular. In the course of world history the individual — singular, suffering, existing — goes under. „Philosophy of spirit“ means here: a betrayal of subjective truth.
What the objection presupposes
All three presuppose that spirit and matter — or spirit and individual — are two separate, mutually alien quantities, one of which displaces the other. Hegel’s position is the opposite of this dualism, and that can be shown from the texts.
Against materialism
The philosophy of right does not deny the economy — it is the analysis of the economy. § 189–§ 208 describe the system of needs, § 241–§ 245 the connection between wealth, poverty and the rabble. The finding in § 245 — that civil society is „not rich enough“ to remedy its own poverty — is not idealism but an aporia that Hegel leaves standing.
Nor is spirit for him a thought outside the world. The Preface says expressly that philosophy has to comprehend what is, and regularly comes too late for that (see the owl of Minerva). Whether the answer Hegel gives holds — mediation through corporation and state — is another question; that he overlooked the contradiction is not one.
Against naturalism
Hegel’s position is no dualism but the express attempt to avoid one. The philosophy of nature leads towards spirit; § 381 of the Encyclopaedia determines spirit as that which has nature for its presupposition and is „its truth“. Spirit is accordingly not a second thing alongside the brain, but the form in which a natural being relates to itself — „to be with itself“ (§ 463 Remark).
The price for this is high, and it should be named: Hegel must then claim that nature is laid out towards spirit. That is a metaphysical thesis which can neither be supported nor refuted empirically. At this point the naturalist has a real objection — only it does not hit the ghost he takes himself to be hitting.
Against existentialism
The objection confuses two individuals: the abstract one, which is merely arbitrary will, and the concrete one. § 260 expressly demands both — that personal particularity have „its complete development and the recognition of its right for itself“ and pass over into the universal. Ethical life is accordingly not the place where the individual disappears, but the one where conscience (§ 137), choice of occupation (§ 206) and the family have objective validity.
Kierkegaard’s objection is thereby not settled, only displaced. It is directed not at the programme but at what the system actually does with the individual — for instance in § 324, where the nullity of the individual in war appears as an ethical moment, or in § 347, where the spirits of whole peoples are called „without right“. Whoever has read these paragraphs will not hold the reproach to be groundless.
What „spirit“ therefore means
Not the denial of matter, nature or individual, but the claim to comprehend their logical structure: that which actualizes itself in matter, through nature and as a free individual. Hegel’s own formula for it stands in the Phenomenology and is more concise than any explanation: spirit as „the I that is We, and the We that is I“.
Sources. Encyclopaedia (1830) §§ 381–384 (the concept of spirit), § 463 Remark, §§ 573–577. – Phenomenology of Spirit, chapter IV („the I that is We, and the We that is I“). – Groundlines, Preface; § 137, § 189–§ 208, § 206, § 241–§ 245, § 260, § 324, § 347. – The three objections in their classical shape: Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1844) and The German Ideology (1845/46); Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843); Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) — there the sentence that a logical system is possible, a system of existence not. – In the glossary: spirit, absolute idealism, objective spirit.