Hegel as a young man in the 1780s, first at the Stuttgart Gymnasium then at the Tübinger Stift, was deeply moved by the expressivist current of his time. The image of a whole, integrated life in which man was at one with himself, and men were at one with each other in society, also assumed its paradigmatic form for him in the classical past of Greece.

But there were two other important poles of his thought and aspiration which were already evident at that time and remained vital to him through many transformations: the first was the moral aspiration of the Enlightenment, that man should at last come to the freedom of self-direction through reason. Later he will come to think of Kant as the paradigm proponent of this aspiration, but at the beginning Mendelssohn and Lessing were more important for him. The second major reference point was the Christian religion. That theology was one of his preoccupations might be thought to flow normally from the fact that he received his higher education in a theology seminary. But his interest in Christianity was much deeper. Indeed, the theology he was taught at Tubingen aroused his opposition. It is one of the negative poles against which he defines his position in the early writings. And the fact that his conception of the Christian religion underwent profound changes and yet remained central to his basic views right through to the mature system shows that this orientation was not the result of a passing influence.