phenomenology of the Spirit

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The Phenomenology of Spirit is the first major work by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , published in 1807 . It represents the first part of his system of science . The " phenomenology " should be followed by the representation of the "real sciences" - the "philosophy of nature" and that of the " spirit ".

Title page, 1807

In this science of the modes of appearance of the spirit, Hegel develops the ascent of the spirit from simple, naive perception via consciousness , self-confidence , reason , spirit and history , revelation to the absolute knowledge of the world spirit . He examines the development of science as a unity of content and method as well as the appearances of the spirit as the realization of our self, as a unity of being and nothing as well as as an absolute wholeness. The place of truth is the concept in the scientific system and not the perception . The knowledge of truth lies in the insight that the opposition of subject and object is dialectically abolished on a higher level, since one does not exist without the other, i.e. both form a unit.

The work deals with epistemological as well as ethical and historical-philosophical basic questions. Of particular importance is the reception of the chapter on self-confidence, which contains the dialectical consideration of domination and servitude and was an essential starting point for Marx's concern with the analysis of class relations in bourgeois society.

The phenomenology of the mind is considered the first typical work of Hegel, to which he later refers again and again. Here Hegel tries to systematically work out all the important topics that preoccupied him. In it, he deals with the positions that dominated the philosophical discourse of the time: the Kantian dualism , Jacobi's directness of thinking and Schelling's philosophy of identity . The work was initially conceived by Hegel as a systematic introduction to his philosophical system. The first three parts ( consciousness , self-confidence , reason ) were later included in the system of the encyclopedia (1817) in an abbreviated form, as the second moment of the subjective mind .

In 1812 Hegel published the science of logic , which in the preface refers to phenomenology. In the encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences (first published in 1817) he worked many of their questions into the "science of mind".

Content overview

The table of contents provides an overview. The first edition already had two content structures, originally I-VII and later added by Hegel AC, DD.

  • preface

The phenomenology program is presented.

  • introduction

What does knowledge mean?

  • I. Sensual certainty; or this and my / (A.) consciousness
  • II. Perception; or the thing, and the delusion / (A.) consciousness
  • III. Power and understanding, appearance and supersensible world / (A.) Consciousness

Consciousness: Its levels are sensual certainty, perception, and mind.

  • IV. The truth of self-assurance / (B.) Self-awareness

The self-confidence makes the experience of independence and dependence, carries out the conflict between master and servant and gains a first feeling of freedom. The unhappy consciousness of the Roman imperial era, which culminated in Christianity, is the preliminary stage of reason.

  • V. Certainty and truth of reason / (C.) (AA.) Reason

By observing nature, she comes to the first forms of self-knowledge, realizes her self-confidence and develops individuality.

  • VI. The spirit / (BB.) The spirit

Morality is the real substance of the mind. As a right, the spirit is in its objective form. In its estranged form it appears as education and enlightenment. Morality is the reflected unity of law and morality. In it the awareness that the spirit is the only substance appears as pure knowledge.

  • VII. The religion / (CC.) The religion

In Christianity, the revealed religion, consciousness comes in the form of the idea that God is basically spirit.

  • VIII. The absolute knowledge / (DD.) The absolute knowledge

The absolute spirit is basically only in the form of knowledge of itself and not of something external to it. The mind is thus subject and object at the same time. As he becomes aware of this, his knowledge of himself becomes absolute knowledge.

Advertising copy

Advertisement in the intelligence paper of the Jenaer Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of October 28, 1807:

“This volume represents the developing knowledge . The phenomenology of the mind should take the place of the psychological explanations or the abstract discussions about the foundation of knowledge. It looks at the preparation for science from one point of view, which makes it a new, interesting, and the first science of philosophy. It grasps the various forms of the mind as stations on the way through which it becomes pure knowledge or absolute mind. Hence, in the main departments of this science, which are again divided into several, consciousness, self-consciousness, observing and acting reason, and spirit itself, are considered as moral, educated and moral spirit, and finally as religious in its various forms. The richness of the appearances of the spirit, which at first sight presents itself as chaos, is brought into a scientific order, which presents itself according to their necessity, in which the imperfect dissolve and pass into higher ones, which are their closest truth. They find the ultimate truth first in religion and then in science, i.e. the result of the whole.
In the preface the author explains what seems to him to be the need of philosophy from its present standpoint; furthermore about the presumptuousness and nonsense of the philosophical formulas, which at present demeans philosophy, and about what matters in general for philosophy and its study.
The second volume will contain the system of logic as speculative philosophy and the two remaining parts of philosophy, the sciences of nature and spirit . "

Preface and introduction

preface

The preface to the phenomenology of the mind is not only extensive, but also complex in content. Therefore, only central ideas should be presented here.

The preface begins with Hegel's disappointment, surely surprising for some readers, of the usual expectation of a preface that it outlines the intentions and results of the author's research and that it delimits and distances itself from all previous misrepresentations by others. Hegel first illustrates his conception of philosophical science, which goes beyond this, by comparing it with the growth of a plant and at the same time lets us experience what he intended in his preface, namely the gradual introduction of the reader to his unfamiliar dialectical way of thinking, without which his science cannot can be understood:

“The bud disappears when the flower breaks out, and one could say that the flower is refuted by the latter, just as the flower is declared by the fruit to be a false existence of the plant, and as its truth the latter replaces the latter. These forms not only differ, but also suppress each other as incompatible with one another. But their fluid nature makes them at the same time moments of organic unity, in which they not only do not conflict, but one is as necessary as the other, and it is this same necessity that constitutes the life of the whole. "

The whole of truth cannot be meaningfully understood without the apparently contradicting development of the "parts" apart from an inner goal, just as the truth of philosophy can only be developed and represented as an evolving wholeness of apparently contradicting modes of thought. Therefore, the preface cannot sketch out "results" and cannot distance itself from earlier false opinions, but must depict the movement of thought itself in its living development, even if the representation of opinions, goals and intentions as a prerequisite and beginning of science retains its value . Hegel sees himself at a turning point in thinking, in which a qualitative leap occurs after the previous ways of thinking have exhausted each other. The result of this leap, however, is not yet the fully developed new system of science, but rather its simple concept, which can appear incomprehensible and esoteric. The opposing philosophical currents of his time, Kantianism, Fichte and Romanticism, especially Schelling, therefore initially reject the new:

"One part insists on the richness of the material and the comprehensibility, the other at least disdains this and insists on the immediate rationality and divinity."

What is new in Hegel's understanding of science compared with the formalistically conceived substance (A = A) or the felt substance is the special subject character of the absolute.

"According to my insight, which must be justified by the representation of the system itself, everything depends on understanding and expressing truth not as substance, but just as much as subject."

In particular, Hegel tried to overcome the Kantian dualism that prevailed in Germany at the time. Hegel finds all previous philosophies inadequate because they persist in opposing standpoints. They fall apart into contradicting positions and fail to understand the contradiction that arises between them as an essential moment of truth. His program is to establish philosophy as a science. But this scientific point of view, according to Hegel's diagnosis, must first be won. So he understands it as a guide to science or as science that is still in its development.

"This becoming of science in general , or of knowledge , is what this phenomenology of mind represents."

He examines the consciousness as it is immediately there in order to advance from it to true or absolute knowledge. In order to achieve this, the mind must see what knowledge itself is. Consciousness as it is immediately there is for Hegel the appearing spirit. He is the subject of phenomenology. His principle is:

"The truth is the whole. But the whole is only the being that is perfected through its development. It is to be said of the absolute that it is essentially a result , that it is only in the end what it is in truth; and this is precisely where its nature consists of being real, subject or becoming oneself. "

Hegel here alludes to Kant's transcendental dialectic in his Critique of Pure Reason , in which reason aims at the totality of the conditions of knowing and, as a result, at the conditioned unconditioned. According to his prognosis, Kant only achieves a subjective philosophy of reflection , because for him the unconditioned cannot be an object of objectively valid knowledge and, as Hegel says, it remains in infinite opposition to the absolute. For Hegel, totality is not only the object of reason, not just a superordinate principle, but the "movement of reason itself in its self-apprehension, which is at the same time the apprehension of its condition." So he says that truth does not consist in holding on to a rigid result, but only the interplay of the result and the development of the whole constitutes the truth. For him, the true is only real as a system and it only has to express the spiritual as the real. In the knowledge of the spirit about itself, for Hegel, knowledge seems to have gained its absolute standpoint. Only the spirit, by going out of itself, remains in itself at the same time. In order to be able to guarantee this introspection of the spirit and not to linger in empirical intuition or to take it over without criticism, philosophy must take on the effort of the concept. The method of this science must be able to represent the movement of the thing itself .

introduction

The subject of the introduction to the Phenomenology of Mind is first a critique of Kant's distinction between things in themselves and things for us. Hegel thinks that this distinction blocks our way to the knowledge of the absolute and that it is meaningless. Hegel prefers a completely different path, namely one that he calls the "path of despair". By this he means that the philosopher only has to describe the course of so-called natural self-consciousness without interfering. The consciousness has to take on different forms, the inadequacies of which it has to understand and thus can come to a different form. According to Hegel, the goal of this movement is the absolute spirit, where consciousness finally sees itself as the end and beginning of its own movement.

awareness

The starting point of the phenomenology of the spirit is the transcendental philosophy of Kant, in which the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in the interaction of intuition, understanding and self-awareness (synthetic unity of apperception ) are examined. Hegel now does not want to see self-consciousness as simply viewed by Kant, but rather to understand his historical process of becoming in order to demonstrate how consciousness advances to consciousness of itself in order to realize itself as spirit in this retrograde self-transgression.

In his thinking man reveals not only the logic of being, but also his self.
The most elementary consciousness of the knowledge of existence is the "sensual certainty". Through “desire”, things appear to the subject as an external reality split off from him. As an actively active self, man negates existence through his actions, and with the transformation of existence he changes himself. With this nothingness , the negation in itself, he is a becoming in time and history. With animal desire, he only develops a physical sense of self, only insofar as his desire is not only related to a given consumable object, but to something that does not exist, that transcends his existence to self-consciousness that can free itself from the prejudice in existence and to autonomy and freedom got.

Self-confidence

Domination and bondage

In the multitude of desires that can be mutually exclusive, man comes into conflict with his fellow man. In the struggle for recognition, the loser becomes dependent on the victor, which leads him into bondage. It is through the work of the servant that the master gains freedom over nature. But the work of the servant brings about an increase in thought, technology, science and art and a progress towards an idea of ​​freedom that can free the servant in a revolutionary way from dependence on his master.

History is a process of work and the struggle for recognition, a history of the dialectic of domination and servitude that culminates in a synthesis of domination and servitude.

Absolute knowledge

The “absolute knowledge” is presented at the end of the work. This is not all-encompassing or perfect knowledge in the sense that nothing more can now be known. In the end, according to Hans Friedrich Fulda, thinking is rather “an 'activity knowledge' or a knowledge in the movement of reflection, because it is only about its other, i.e. H. is expressed in the determinations of the object. ”In absolute knowledge, subject and object coincide. Not that there is no longer any difference between consciousness and the object of consciousness; but in such a way that the movement of self- mediation becomes fully conscious and the mind thereby recognizes itself as the substance or the reason for this mediation . The forms of absolute knowledge exist as revealed religion and philosophy. Only in the revealed religion does the awareness arise that God is in truth spirit. “The content of imagining is the absolute spirit”.

“Science contains in itself this necessity to renounce the form of the pure concept and the transition of the concept into consciousness . Because the self-knowing spirit, precisely because it grasps its concept, it is the immediate equality with itself, which in its distinction is the certainty from the immediate , or the sensual consciousness - the beginning from which we proceeded; this release of himself from the form of his self is the highest freedom and security of his knowledge of himself. "

The absolute spirit is presented in revealed religion as that which underlies the historical process. It shows that it is possible to grasp reality as substance. So religion passes over into absolute knowledge. "It therefore turns out that reality, which is thought of as substance, must be understood as subject."

Standpoint of idealism

Hegel's phenomenology of spirit is mapped out from the standpoint of idealism , as it is already expressed in Fichte's thinking, in that all knowledge there is traced back to the spontaneous self-certainty of the absolutely posited I (self-consciousness). According to this, all certainty about the world is laid out in the absolute of our self-consciousness; it is the first cause and the absolute ground of the world.

According to Hegel, perception and sensation are to be brought into a linguistically formulated general, that is, to general concepts; and here they experience their dialectical movement. In what Hegel calls “reason” in the eponymous upper chapter, thinking is finally identified with being. "Reason is the certainty of the consciousness of being all reality: this is how idealism expresses its concept." (GWF Hegel: Phenomenologie des Geistes , p. 179)

As a “spirit”, “absolute identity” becomes moral self-confidence. In the Christian religion, finally, the “incarnation of the divine being” is interpreted in a general way: as a revelation of the unity of human self-consciousness with the divine.

Critics of the Hegelian dialectic such as Bernhard Lakebrink (see, for example, his work "Hegel's dialectical ontology and the Thomistic analectic") refer u. a. on the fact that Hegel wrongly ascribes an active power to nothing. With that, however, nothing would not be nothing, but a form of being. If one really wanted to equate being with non-being, every statement and its opposite would ultimately be true and (Hegelian) science at the end.

expenditure

  • (1807): first edition. Bamberg / Würzburg: Verlag Joseph Anton Goebhardt ( System of Science. First Part, the Phenomenology of Spirit ), digitized and full text in the German Text Archive
  • (1832, 2nd edition 1841): Works , Vol. 2nd ed. From the Association of Friends of the Eternal
  • (1907, 2nd edition 1921, 3rd 1928, 4th 1937, 5th 1949, 6th 1952): Philosophical Library , Vol. 114. Ed. By G. Lasson, from 4th edition ed. by J. Hoffmeister, Leipzig, from the 6th edition Hamburg: Felix Meiner
  • (1970): Theory work edition , Vol. 3. Ed. By E. Moldenhauer and KM Michel, Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp (today as stw603 ), ISBN 3-518-28203-4 )
  • (1970, 2nd edition 1973): With an afterword by Georg Lukács as well as selected texts and commentary on the history of reception v. Gerhard Göhler, Frankfurt / M .: Ullstein No. 35505. ISBN 3-548-35055-0 .
  • (1980): Collected Works (historical-critical edition) , Vol. 9. Ed. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften , Hamburg: Felix Meiner
  • (1988): Philosophical Library , Vol. 414. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, ISBN 3-7873-0769-9 .

literature

Web links

Text editions of the phenomenology of the mind

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
  2. ↑ GWF Hegel: Science of Logic I , Vol. 5/20, stw, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, p. 42: “In the phenomenology of the spirit I have consciousness in its movement from the first direct contrast between itself and the object presented to absolute knowledge. This path goes through all forms of the relationship of consciousness to the object and has the concept of science as its result. "
  3. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenologie des Geistes , Vol. 3/20, stw, Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 33. as well as: p. 26, after Ullstein, see bibliography
  4. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit , p. 33.
  5. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenology of the Spirit , p. 24.
  6. ↑ cf. and see Andrews Arndt: Totality , in: Paul Cobben [et al.] (ed.): Hegel-Lexikon. WBG, Darmstadt 2006, p. 446 f.
  7. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit , p. 28.
  8. ^ Paul Cobben [et al.] (Ed.): Hegel-Lexikon. WBG, Darmstadt 2006, p. 499.
  9. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit , p. 575.
  10. ↑ GWF Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit , p. 579 f.
  11. ^ Paul Cobben [et al.] (Ed.): Hegel-Lexikon. WBG, Darmstadt 2006, p. 54.