The PhG, written at the end of the Jena period (1806–7), can be thought of a kind of introduction to Hegel's system, whose function would be to take the reader from where he is, buried in the prejudices of ordinary consciousness, to the threshold of true science. But this cannot be the whole story. The very nature of Hegel's system of thought is that it shows all partial reality to be dependent on an absolute which in turn necessarily generates this partial reality. From this point of view, there is no reality, however humble and fragmentary, which can be thought to fall outside the system, and no transition between levels of reality whose explicitation could be considered a kind of hors d'oeuvre.

And this applies a fortiori to modes of consciousness, in a system where the absolute is spirit. Spirit comes to know himself, and the vehicles of this self-knowledge are finite spirits. The course of Geist's development towards self-knowledge lies through the initial confusions, misconceptions and truncated visions of men. These cannot therefore lie outside the system. Rather this initial darkness reflects something essential about the absolute, viz., that it must grow through struggle to self-knowledge. Hence there cannot easily be an introduction to the science of the absolute which is not also part of that science, no mere clearing of the ground which is not also a partial construction of the building.

This goes some way to explaining why there has been so much debate and uncertainty over the status of the PhG.