Hegel the first in his context

It has become clear to us in particular that Hegel's initial problem was not in any stage of those stages nor in any turn of those turns, whether theological or "Kalam" science. Hegel's first thinking was not merely a repetition of theological formation defending religion and triumphing in its doctrines and views on ethics and practice in general. The Hegelian problem was decided from its awkward beginnings in Tübingen's text as fundamentally an ethical thinking problem in the modern formations of the spirit... But if the philosopher were to look twice at the current state of modern humanity, is there an ethical bond that connects the part to the ethical totality, whatever it may be, uniting the individual eye with the collective whole belonging to the people? The eye would turn away in disappointment and despair, for it would only find in that the verses of unethics: the practical tyranny of the individual (making the republican matter itself be transformed into a private right), and political tyranny of slavery (making the state turn into a mechanism of control and surveillance, "a single spiral that moves the other wheels alone"), and an intensification of contempt for humanity, gathered by both politicians and theologians. In general, it is a dominance of absolute separation, which makes life, as a result, "purely negative," even "barren life." Thus, Hegel stands on the disappointment of ethics in modernity... But as long as philosophy is at the helm of history, it has no choice but to think about the present of the world as it appears—"gray on gray." It is nothing but the grayness of painful separation, violent contradiction, and mad transformation—an absolute negativity that activates itself at the core of the absolute present of the world. Only contemplative thought, which takes refuge in the thread of time and speaks the language of "dialectics," can grasp some of its understanding.