Hegel understood the world as process rather than as made up of entities. He believed that we need to get below the appearance of things (i.e., to get to the essence) in order to really know them. The essence negates the appearance. The key is to look for tensions and the contradictions that are apparent and inherent to each stage of the process.

          For Hegel, the State is the highest embodiment of the Divine Idea on earth and the chief means used by the Absolute in manifesting itself as it unfolds towards its perfect fulfillment. Hegel argued that the State is the highest form of social existence and the end product of the development of mankind, from family to civil society to lower forms of political groupings.

          The State is a superorganic whole made up of individuals grouped into local communities, voluntary associations, etc. These parts have no meaning except in relation to the State, which is an end in itself. The State can demand that its parts be sacrificed to its interests. Each man is subordinate to the ethical whole – if the State claims one's life then the individual must surrender it. Because everything is ultimately one, the collective has primacy over the individual. Hegel's State has no room for the idea of individual rights or a liberal theory of the State; instead it provides an ethical underpinning for totalitarianism. The State is an independent, self-sustaining, superorganism made up of men and having a purpose and will of its own.

          Because men across different groupings (nations) disagree in their moral feelings, each State rightly legislates its own moral code – true morality is expressed in and through the laws of the State that must be obeyed by the citizens of that State but not by the members of other States. The State expresses the universal will and therefore the true will of every individual within it. Obedience to the will of the State is the only way for a man to be true to his rational self, because the State is the true self of the individual. Freedom, the right to act rationally, consists in acting in conformity with the orders of the government. The State has supreme right against the individual whose highest duty is to submerge himself into the State. Hegel calls for an antidemocratic authoritarian State that has absolute right over its component members precisely in order to attain maximal freedom.

          In any particular era, one State may become the preferred vehicle of the Absolute. This favored State can be recognized by its dominant position in the world arena. That nation has absolute right over all the others, including the right to launch wars. For Hegel, wars among nations are unavoidable and healthy representations of the evolution of the Absolute. The nation that wins the wars during a particular period is the one preferred by God. This position is not a permanent one. Each victorious, conquering nation comes closer to the ideal State than the one defeated-each represents a more perfect incarnation of World Reason.

          The form of Hegel's collectivism is nationalism rather than the majority or mankind as a whole (i.e., a World State). Pitting one nation against another makes possible the even more perfect realization of the Universal Idea. Hegel argues that a World State would not have a contradiction and thus a resulting synthesis would be impossible. However, perhaps it could be argued that a World State would have a contradiction in anarchy with a potential resulting synthesis of freely chosen voluntary communities and associations.