The final chapter of the Phenomenology is "Absolute Knowing." Consciousness has passed through all its shapes; it has reached the point where the opposition between knowledge and truth, subject and object, collapses. What was represented in religion as a beyond is now known as the self-moving concept.

Absolute knowing is not a mystical union or an ineffable intuition. It is the standpoint from which the content of the Phenomenology can be grasped as a single, necessary progression. The "we" that has been observing consciousness can now recognise itself in the movement. The pathway of despair was the pathway of spirit coming to itself.

From here, Hegel will go on to the Science of Logic and the system proper. The Phenomenology is the ladder that is kicked away once one has climbed it—or rather, it is the ladder that is taken up into the system as the first moment of spirit's self-knowledge.