Its funny, I was always under the impression he was a idealist, but he is the total opposite, reading this text, which is a really good one.

Overall the idea is that experience is primary. At the beginning, we are only a potential, or a principle, and then end is but a desire, or purpose, and the middle is where things truly happen, what he calls the Spirit. So it is only when doing that you truly learn anything, and the notions or knowledge we get from it, are only moments in time. We create forms as we go along, but they are obsolete as soon as you move along. They become mere recollections of things past. An actuality of the potential, but what makes the self one, is that underlying principle, not the concrete forms it takes.

What happens today, is people have forgotten how to learn. They want the definite and "final" answer to things. In so doing, it becomes lifeless, and not understood properly. So he is against those Absolute ideas that are not integrated in experience.

So in order to get a good understanding of science, you would have to actually go through the process of it, just like it was done in the past, with errors and all. Its only then you can really grasp the truth. Same with morality, or put together, philosophy.

Just one example, some people will say God is good, but that is a kind of dogma, which is not obvious to experience. Its only by living existence, that you realize it is good, and in which way, and that it is a process, not a finality. If someone is simply taught God is good, then they will look around and find faults with the world, and say it is a lie, but the reason is because they haven't lived goodness, or don't realize they do. Putting it in the absolute like that, suggest that everything is perfect, while this perfection is not in the present, but in the future. Its only by taking the whole that it becomes perfect and good. Taking it as absolute stops the process of learning and living. You could say the same of any type of value or truth.

Its not dissimilar to what Plato was doing, taking his student where they are, and making them realize what they already knew, but had "forgotten". Or that they should have known if they had thought about it in the first place. They thought they knew, because some concepts were familiar, but what the dynamic of those concepts are, they didn't know until they lived it, or thought it.

Hegel adopts another approach though, which is more about narrative or stories. He is counting stories here, but they make his words live for those that follow it. Just in that preface, he is covering a lot of ground, but they are the beginning, and it is a beginning philosophy totally misses, the way it is taught today. It seems to cover the basics though, or what it is to learn. Quite classic, I like it.