Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel's work Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) is called The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind in English; the German word Geist has connotations of both spirit and mind in English. It is one of Hegel's most important philosophical works; he himself regarded it as the foundation of his later works. It explores the nature and development of mind/spirit, showing how it evolves through a process of internal contradiction and development from the most primitive aspect of sense-perception through all of the forms of subjective and objective mind, including art, religion, and philosophy, to absolute knowledge that comprehends this entire developmental process as part of itself. Thus it also lays out an entire system of metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy.

Related Topics:
Hegel - 1807 - English - German - Spirit - Mind - Philosophical - Subjective - Objective - Metaphysics - Ethics - Political philosophy

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The Preface to the Phenomenology, all by itself, is considered one of Hegel's major works and a major text in the history of philosophy, because in it he sets out the core of his philosophical method and what distinguishes it from that of any previous philosophy, especially that of his German Idealist predecessors (Kant, Fichte, and Schelling). This Hegelian method consists of actually examining consciousness's experience of both itself and of its objects and eliciting the contradictions and dynamic movement that come to light in looking at this experience. Hegel uses the phrase "pure looking at" (reines Zusehen) to describe this method. If consciousness just pays attention to what is actually present in itself and its relation to its objects, it will see that what look like stable and fixed forms dissolve into a dialectical movement. Thus philosophy, according to Hegel, cannot just set out arguments based a flow of deductive reasoning. Rather, it must look at actual consciousness, as it really exists. Hegel also argues strongly against the epistemological emphasis of modern philosophy from Descartes through Kant, which he describes as having to first establish the nature and criteria of knowledge prior to actually knowing anything, because this would imply an infinite regress, a foundationalism that Hegel maintains is self-contradictory and impossible. Rather, he maintains, we must examine actual knowing as it occurs in real knowledge processes. This is why Hegel uses the term "phenomenology". "Phenomenology" comes from the Greek word for "to appear", and the phenomenology of mind is thus the study of how consciousness or mind appears to itself. In Hegel's dynamic system, it is the study of the successive appearances of the mind to itself, because on examination each one dissolves into a later, more comprehensive and integrated form or structure of mind.

Related Topics:
German Idealist - Kant - Fichte - Schelling - Epistemological - Descartes - Foundationalism - Greek

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An influential section is the discussion of the dialectic of the lord and the bondsman. To become free every man must engage in a life-death struggle. Those that shirk from this struggle, those that live in fear of losing their life, become the bondsman under the domination of the lord. However, by working and laboring on the world the bondsman begins to understand its temporal nature and sees his own role in changing it, while the lord essentially loses the world by failing to engage it except through his servantile bondmen. This, for example, is at the root of the lord's faculty of desire -- the only way in which he relates to the world is not by working on it and altering it, but by desiring something that he may have enough power to acquire. The bondsman, according to Hegel, will one day rise up and realize that this life is nothing to him, thus risking his life and usurping power from the lord. Only by risking one's life is one able to achieve freedom in the full Hegelian sense.

Related Topics:
Dialectic - Lord - Bondsman - Free

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The master and slave relationship was much discussed in the 20th century, especially because of its connection to Karl Marx's conception of class struggle as the motive force of social development. One of Hegel's most influential interpreters, Alexandre Kojève, argued that Hegel's intentions were to illustrate that overcoming the fear of death was the only way to achieve true freedom. This was not actually stated by Hegel (in truth at points in this work he makes a direct argument against the use of force as the manner in which history develops). The most recent work that uses this argument is Francis Fukuyama's, "The End of History and the Last Man". Fukyama admits in the work that his understanding of Hegel is mostly Kojèvian.

Related Topics:
Karl Marx - Alexandre Kojève - Francis Fukuyama

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