This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to hisPhilosophy of Mindthat mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’sLogic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of Hegel’s (...) method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)