Absolute knowledge can be seen as the combination of our two highest stages. It is the final unity of subject and world, or from another point of view, of finite subject and infinite subject, or of absolute substance and subjectivity. But this union is there implicitly (an sich) as religion; whereas the moral consciousness which was the highest stage of the chapter on Spirit contained explicitly (für sich) the notion that the subject's will is at one with the universal.

The result is a unity of the self and the essence or substance of things; which unity as always can be seen as a convergence from each direction; the self is lifted up to essence by seeing itself as the vehicle of Geist; but the essence or substance ‘comes down’ to the self in a sense in coming to grasp itself as subject (and therefore needing a finite subject as its vehicle).

When this comes to full consciousness it yields a form of knowledge, which Hegel calls absolute knowledge. What is this? It cannot be expressed in one proposition, for it is simply a grasp of the true nature of things, and this can only be expressed dialectically. Absolute knowledge is the full understanding that substance must become subject, that subject must go beyond itself, become divided, be over against itself as object, in order to return to unity with itself.