The Phenomenology of Spirit
The Phenomenology of Spirit (German: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel described the work, published in 1807, as an "exposition of the coming to be of knowledge".[1] This is explicated through a necessary self-origination and dissolution of "the various shapes of spirit as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge".[1]
Author
Phänomenologie des Geistes
German
1807
Germany
1910
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__subtitleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__subtitleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__subtextDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
The book marked a significant development in German idealism after Immanuel Kant. Focusing on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, ethics, history, religion, perception, consciousness, existence, logic and political philosophy, it is where Hegel develops his concepts of dialectic (including the lord-bondsman dialectic), absolute idealism, ethical life and Aufhebung. It had a profound effect in Western philosophy, and "has been praised and blamed for the development of existentialism, communism, fascism, death of God theology and historicist nihilism".[2]
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__descriptionDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
Referencing[edit]
The work is usually abbreviated as PdG (Phänomenologie des Geistes), followed by the pagination or paragraph number of the German original edition. It is also abbreviated as PS (The Phenomenology of Spirit) or as PM (The Phenomenology of Mind), followed by the pagination or paragraph number of the English translation used by each author.
Criticism[edit]
Walter Kaufmann, on the question of organisation, argued that Hegel's arrangement, "over half a century before Darwin published his Origin of Species and impressed the idea of evolution on almost everybody's mind, was developmental."[21] The idea is supremely suggestive but, in the end, untenable according to Kaufmann: "The idea of arranging all significant points of view in such a single sequence, on a ladder that reaches from the crudest to the most mature, is as dazzling to contemplate as it is mad to try seriously to implement it".[22] While Kaufmann viewed Hegel as right in seeing that the way a view is reached is not necessarily external to the view itself, since, on the contrary, a knowledge of the development, including the prior positions through which a human being passed before adopting a position may make all the difference when it comes to comprehending his or her position, some aspects of the conception are still somewhat absurd and some of the details bizarre.[23] Kaufmann also remarks that the very table of contents of the Phenomenology may be said to "mirror confusion" and that "faults are so easy to find in it that it is not worth while to adduce heaps of them." However, he excuses Hegel since he understands that the author of the Phenomenology "finished the book under an immense strain".[24]
The feminist philosopher Kelly Oliver argues that Hegel’s discussion of women in The Phenomenology of Spirit undermines the entirety of the text. Oliver points out that for Hegel, every element of consciousness must be conceptualizable, but that in Hegel’s discussion of the family, woman is established as in principle unconceptualizable. Oliver writes that “unlike the master or slave, the feminine or woman does not contain the dormant seed of its opposite.” This means that Hegel’s feminine is nothing other than the negation of the masculine and as such it must be excluded from the story of masculine consciousness. Thus, Oliver argues, the Phenomenology of Spirit is a phenomenology of masculine consciousness; the universalist pretensions of the text are not achieved, as it leaves out the phenomenology of feminine consciousness.[25]
Electronic versions of the English translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind are available at:
Detailed audio commentary by an academic:
Publication history[edit]
The Phenomenology of Spirit was published with the title “System of Science: First Part: The Phenomenology of Spirit”.[5] Some copies contained either "Science of the Experience of Consciousness", or "Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit" as a subtitle between the "Preface" and the "Introduction".[5] On its initial publication, the work was identified as Part One of a projected "System of Science", which would have contained the Science of Logic "and both the two real sciences of philosophy, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit”[6] as its second part. The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in its third section (Philosophy of Spirit), contains a second subsection (The Encyclopedia Phenomenology) that recounts in briefer and somewhat altered form the major themes of the original Phenomenology.
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#3__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#3__subtextDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#4__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#4__subtextDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__subtextDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__subtextDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--0DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--1DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--2DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--3DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--4DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--5DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--6DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__answer--7DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
193
B2928 .E5