[17th Paragraph]
Why do many people not feel at home in their world? They have reason within themselves. Outside them is actuality. The two do not seem to fit together.
Hegel says: what separates the two is a fetter. One clings to an abstract thought one has not yet thought through. Think it through, and the fetter falls away.
Then one achieves what Hegel describes: to recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present. The cross stands for what is hard in the present, for suffering and toil. The rose is reason, blooming right in the midst of it. One need not deny the cross to see the rose.
Whoever sees this can delight in the present. Hegel calls this the reconciliation with actuality. Philosophy grants it to those who want to comprehend. They do not lose their own freedom in doing so. They find it precisely in what endures.
Hegel’s text: Preface, paragraph 17 →