Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit

I took an undergraduate course in social and political philosophy at Penn State in 1968. The syllabus listed four books as required reading: Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, DeBeauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity, Plato's Republic, and Hegel's The Phenomenology of Mind. None of the books was light reading, and findiing common themes that intimated their kinship for inclusion on the same reading list was not at all easy. Of the four, the one that was far and away the most difficult was Hegel's Phenomenology. Fortunately, the instructor and his teaching assistant took Hegel very seriously, and they spent a good deal of time helping their students understand his extrordinarily convoluted and determinedly dense prose offerings. Otherwise, I can think of only one member of the class of about thirty students (definietly not me!) who would have been able to get through The Phenomenoloy with even a modicum of understanding. As it was, I still had trouble grasping the way the instructor wanted us to understand crucial ideas such as the unhappy consciousness and the master-slave relationship. Nevertheless, perhaps because I was majoring in sociology and had taken a couple of courses in social psychology, Hegel's treatment of the emergence of an individuated self struck me -- and still strikes me -- as simply brilliant. In the beginning, one experiences one's self as everything. There is no other. Inevitably, however, resistance is encountered, and the notion of an other -- something alien to the all-econmpassing self -- becomes apparent. This, in its most basic Hegelian form, is alienation, meaning in the abstract, the reality of otherness. The dialectical process, involving repeated encounters with, and accommodations to otherness results in the emergence of a concrete, self-aware, and individuated consciousness that knows that alien social terrain is inescapable. The very idea of an individuated self and the necessity of its emergence had not occurred to me before I read The Phenomenology. It is, after all, something we take for granted, recognizing it unself-consciously, but without awareness. The fact that Hegel could use the dialectical method to identify and explain its emergence was, in my view, a manifestation of unqualified genius in speculative philosophy. It remains true, however, that those who complain that Hegel could have written with much greater clarity, making The Phenomenology accessible to a broader eighteenth century (and now a twenty-first century) audience have a point. Perhaps Hegel anticipated that his only readers would be scholars such as himself, but even in his day, that was not the case. After all, Kant had earlier written the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics to assist readers with The Critique of Pure Reason. As it is, I cant imagine getting though The Phenomenology without a good deal of help. Having come to terms with The Phenomenology, however, one will recognize Hegel's influence on important twent

In this debut novel, the multi-talented Georg Hegel gives an edge-of-your-seat, no-holds-barred, rip-roaring ride through the dark and mysterious caverns of the criminal mind. This romp-em-stop-em tale traces the journey of a strapping, curious, yet fickle young man named Spirit (Geist in the original German) as his godlike intelligence leads him from the rough-and-tumble, animalistic mean streets of an unknown Caribbean island, through the French Revolution, to the clean and well-ordered cities of present-day Japan. (For a fuller account of the book's enigmatic conclusion, plus some alternate endings and commentary, see Alexandre Kojève's stunning compendium.) Many readers may know Georg Hegel as a humble high-school teacher and occasional babysitter, but make no mistake: Hegel is a masterful storyteller. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (popularly called P.O.S.), he thrills us with the twists and turns of a deeply complex character's development, stopping on the way to wow us with fights-to-the-death, to illuminate the perils and attraction of religious fanaticism, and even to weigh the pros and cons of arcana such as phrenological metaphysics and systematic racism. Like so many of our best novels, Hegel's narrative is of course completely implausible, yet even when the story stretches the bounds of believability, its constant movement from one point of view to another---followed so often by a graceful synthesis of the two---makes Hegel's P.O.S. one of the best reads of the twenty-first century.

and also with understanding. Without referring to prior reviews (see GUIDELINES) I wish to thank the learned professor for indicating why this is the most important book to read. And I thought that was Finnegans . . . (another book which is, well, to quote the good professor: "this book is in many places difficult and obsure, and becomes clear only with great difficulty. The payoff for such effort is enormous." In our materialist age, in which we go to remote control war over material resources, how are we certain the material exists, without, as Boswell reported of Dr. Johnson, striking our foot soundly against a stone? Excellent translation for those prepared for thought.

I just noticed the other review of this book, giving it one star and claiming it is not worth the effort; I wanted to add something to counterbalance that review. First, the other reviewer is right that this is a very difficult book to read on your own, especially if you don't have a significant background in philosophy. But that is not necessarily an objection to the book. It would be silly for me to criticize a book of theoretical physics just because I didn't have the background necessary to understand it (and wasn't prepared or willing to learn from others who do). In spite of the difficulty, this is a very important book. In terms of scope and level of insight it is almost without parallel in the history of philosophy. The argument begins with an investigation of the experiential basis of objective knowledge, proceeds to show that our experience of objects is rooted in our understanding of ourselves and that this is inseparable from our relationships with other people. The text aims to show the interconnections between a wide range of social and historical or institutional forms of knowing and acting, and concludes with a demonstration that thinking is inseparable from the intersubjective and socialized formations of reality it aims to describe (and that the history of these formations is essentially a history of the thinking that gave rise to them, i.e. that "thinking and being are one"). On another note, it is worth celebrating the fact that Baillie's translation is now back in print and being published by Dover. While not technically as accurate as the more popular Miller Translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Baillie version is a nice complement that in many cases reads more clearly than Miller's and serves as a helpful tool to illuminate difficult or obscure passages (Note that in spite of the apparently different title, this is the same book as the Miller translation that Oxford publishes under the title "The Phenomenology of Spirit" -- just a different translation choice for the German word "Geist" = "Mind" or "Spirit"). There is, though, no getting around the fact that this book is in many places difficult and obsure, and becomes clear only with great difficulty. The payoff for such effort is enormous. (A helpful guide to reading Hegel, called "Reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit" by John Russon, was recently published.)

For over 180 years students have complained that Hegel's best-known book of philosophy, the PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND (alias PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT), is too difficult to read. A few have tried to summarize Hegel's book, and often their summaries were longer than the original, and just as difficult to read.The PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND is a study of appearances, images and illusions throughout the history of human consciousness. More specifically, Hegel presents the evolution of consciousness. Hegel traces the evolution of consciousness from savage and barbaric forms. Hegel's aim was to set forth a philosophical system so comprehensive that it would encompass the ideas of his predecessors and create a conceptual framework in terms of which both the past and future could be philosophically understood. Such an aim would require nothing short of a full account of reality itself. Thus, Hegel conceived the subject matter of philosophy to be reality as a whole. This reality, or the total developmental process of everything that is, he referred to as the Absolute, or Absolute Spirit. According to Hegel, the task of philosophy is to chart the development of Absolute Spirit. This involves (1) making clear the internal rational structure of the Absolute; (2) demonstrating the manner in which the Absolute manifests itself in nature and human history; and (3) explicating the teleological nature of the Absolute, that is, showing the end or purpose toward which the Absolute is directed. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel's thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The goal of the dialectical cosmic process can be most clearly understood at the level of reason. As finite reason progresses in understanding, the Absolute progresses toward full self-knowledge. Indeed, the Absolute comes to know itself through the human mind's increased understanding of reality, or the Absolute. Hegel analyzed this human progression in understanding in terms of three levels: art, religion, and philosophy. At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. The extensive and diverse impact of Hegel's ideas on subsequent philosophy is evidence of the remarkable range and the extraordinary depth of his thought, this book is a masterpiece!