“Hegel comprehended quite correctly the abstract character of revolutionary self-consciousness of-Fichte's 'Ego = Ego' and French 'egalite'. However, the transition from the abstract to the concrete he interpreted not as a continuous revolutionary process in which the citizens become differ­entiated and class interests concretized, but on the contrary, as an advance from the turbulence of the cosmic spirit in its 'years of discipleship' to bold reconciliation with reality.
Hegel's cosmic spirit goes through all the successive stages of the post-revolutionary 'transitory period' of bourgeois society — from Thermidor to constitutional monarchy. True enough, he subjects bourgeois society to sharp criticism; but not in its historically determined form — rather as the material aspect of a society par excellence. This negation is next declared to be abstract and in its transition from the abstract to the concrete is declared to be a return to material, sensuous existence, i.e. to bourgeois society­ with this difference, however, that the prosaic and sordid character of bourgeois relations here acquires a deep mys­tical significance as the embodiment of the active essence of the spirit. Such, briefly, is the meaning of the 'speculat­tive methods' of German idealist philosophy.”