Phenomenology of Spirit

My rating for this book is both more and less than it deserves. To start, Hegel is probably the most difficult of all philosophers to read/understand. I’ve had professors say that Hegel’s Phenomenology is like a phone book from Mars. His influence though as one of the last Western metaphysicians is not to be overlooked, for philosophy is moving in what I would call a backwards progression today. Metaphysics is seeing a resurgence, which is often the result of epistemological dead-lock, and so Hegel offers some warning to that backwards slide. If one takes Wittgenstein’s critique of that which can be conceived from the perspective of language/logic, Hegel is nipped from the very first section in his preliminary discussion of Universals.

His is an interesting and insightful piece though – both philosophically and culturally. Though his dialectical method is dubious at best in certain sections (though I am not by far claiming to fully comprehend everything that he speaks of), he has exerted a great influence in social thought. He not only was the springboard for Marx and Engels, but also provided the necessary sociological insights that led to fascist ideology and organicist ideals. As a matter of fact, in social philosophy WWII is sometimes referred to as the war between left wing and right wing Hegelians. I think that there is a rather simple explanation for this. Due to his dialectical method, anyone can so choose to pick the sections which they find support their position, all the while ignoring the evolutionary character of Hegel’s project. The most intimidating section, on lordship and bondage, can be taken in many ways. The part that is often ignored though is its progression into the moral consciousness that was what Hegel supported: the sublation between the opposing moments that find their particular actualization in the individual who confronts absolute Spirit.

Rather than continue on with a cultural analysis here though, my biggest distrust of the Phenomenology of Spirit lies in its lack of determination. Hegel’s goal was essentially to prove that the Kantian noumena and phenomena could in fact co-exist, that we were not separate from the world in-and-of-itself, i.e. that we are not confined to phenomenal reality alone. Yet, given the cultural and individualistic importance/role in the realization of Spirit, we are given very little to go buy in realizing this. It is presented merely as a progression that Spirit alone knows and will find its justification only in its end. He resorts back to an intuitive justification within the moral individual. Granted, Hegel does not claim to know what this end is himself, he is not presenting a theology and does not try to place himself over and above the Historicity of his philosophy, nevertheless it places a tenuous hole in which the future misapplications of his philosophy have placed themselves. In end of fact, Hegel gives us almost nothing. It’s a project that leads to no further understanding of the Kantian noumenal/phenomenal division that he set forth to dirempt. So far as one wishes to read a philosophy which could justify a secularized vision of religion/morality in the conjunction of universal and particular re-interpretations of what it means to have a “soul,” Hegel gives you just that, but it is no less vulnerable to the theological criticisms, and if one is looking for such a philosophy you would be best suited to read Kierkegaard.

Più che averlo finito, sono stato finito, io. Sono anni che ci provavo ad andare avanti, con una tribolazione infinita. Non so quello che ho capito. Poco, di sicuro.
Ma perché ho voluto cimentarmi in questa lettura, mi domando? Non lo so. Oppure la risposta forse sta in questo apologo.
Nella prima metà degli Anni ’70, ove abito, una cittadina della Marca Anconitana piuttosto viva culturalmente, allora come oggi (forse oggi un po’ meno), c’era un prete, un parroco gran studioso di filosofia e docente alle scuole superiori, osannato ed ammirato per la sua cultura “progressista” dai suoi ragazzi, alunni e non, che era un grande appassionato di Hegel. Soleva dire (non so se è solo un apocrifo o lo disse veramente, comunque allora veniva riportato come vero) che la Fenomenologia dello Spirito (o Phänomenologie des Geistes, che ci si fa un figurone a dirlo) fosse un prodotto dello spirito del sapere umano talmente grandioso, da essere inferiore soltanto alla Bibbia. In quegli anni tenne una conferenza, una delle tante seguitissime da studenti, professori e professoresse, intellettuali cittadini e amanti della cultura in genere, proprio sulla Fenomenologia dello Spirito. Tranne pochissimi (non si sa quanti) che erano già di per sé cultori di Hegel ed avevano letto o studiato la Fenomenologia dello Spirito e che se ne ritornarono in silenzio alle loro case, i più uscirono dal Salone dei Convegni vocianti e alquanto sbigottiti. Appena fuori molti indugiavano e si fermavano in crocchi a discutere fra loro dell’avvenuta dotta conferenza. Non ci avevano capito un bel nulla e sconsolati deprecavano il fatto, evidente e inoppugnabile, che la loro mente fosse del tutto refrattaria alle evoluzioni dialettiche e ai voli metafisici di Hegel.
Era Hegel infatti la chiave di volta e, benché capovolto, il nume tutelare della dialettica marxiana allora tanto ammirata, più spesso citata che capita. Si era infatti allora (quasi) tutti marxisti, gente di sinistra, intellettuali impegnati a parlare e citare Marx ed Engels. Come dunque non parlare e poter citare Hegel? In tanto sconforto giovanile e depressione generale solo una persona sorrideva soddisfatta, compiaciuta anche. Era Gigetto. Un ometto piccoletto, rotondino, pelatino, con un paio di occhialoni da miope, dall’apparente età di sessant’anni (negli anni precedenti e nei successivi sembrava sempre avere sessant’anni) Gigetto era solo al mondo. Senza famiglia, senza lavoro, senza alcun reddito se non una pensione d’invalidità che gli consentiva di vivere da anni al Ricovero per Anziani della città, Gigetto era a suo modo un intellettuale, o di tale ne aveva le parvenze. Non so che tipo di studi avesse fatto, o se anche avesse studiato; non lo so. Con in mano sempre una vecchia borsa di pelle, era sempre presente in ogni convegno cittadino, conferenza pubblica, raduno diocesano o parrocchiale di Azione Cattolica. Nello sbigottimento e disperazione generale Gigetto se ne uscì allora con fare trionfante esternando un bel «Beh, io qualche cò c’ho capido!».
Beato te, Gigetto, che qualche cò c’hai capido!

"If despair overcomes you, always remember that we are in Germany, where we have been able to proclaim as a great mind and profound thinker a mindless, ignorant, nonsense-spreading philosophaster who, through unprecedented, hollow verbiage, thoroughly and permanently disorganizes their brains. I mean our dear Hegel."

Schopenhauer, "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," ed. and trans. by David E. Cartwright, Edward E. Erdmann, and Christopher Janaway (Cambridge University Press, 2012), §20, p. 40 (Hübscher pagination).

Just imagine, you're a tutor and part time lecturer putting the finishing touches on the first big explication of your philosophical system, when a pale gaunt man in a long black coat appears at your door and tells you your book could be famous beyond your wildest imaginings, but at the cost that a couple centuries later it would have a considerable readerbase of pseuds who read it as meaningless poetry. You would too, wouldn't you?

“Out of the chalice of this realm of spirits

Foams forth to him his infinity”

It is difficult to assess just how wonderful I think that Hegel is as a whole, but The Phenomenology of Spirit (sometimes somewhat inexplicably translated mind in older translations)contains all the elements of the later Hegel.
While this statement may be baffling to some (and treasonous to the rest) in saying this I do not mean to say that Hegel had his system completely figured at this point. I do believe that if one studies The Phenomenology carefully, one may glean, in knotted form, all the major issues.
Thus sometimes the focus of this book is very strange; the reader is sometimes forced to stand back and examine what he is saying and, at other times, examine it, as it were, under a microscope. Still, as a whole it is a veritable work of art, a thing of beauty, almost poetry.
At some times, one wonders what the man is talking about; it is necessary to realize that his mind was capable of taking huge leaps from one perspective to another. Sometimes a simple re-reading helps and sometimes Hegel is approaching the same point from a slightly different angle. I can recall my seminar professor reminding us, "There's nothing new going on here! He's talking about the same thing but from a different perspective!"
It was revolutionary (pun intended) to understand the brilliance of the dialectic in Hegel for the first time. While not original with Hegel, Hegel credited Heraclitus with the elements of his logic. Indeed he says at some point that Heraclitus was the first to be able to understand the concept of the infinite. Indeed, it is a subject with which Hegel himself was profoundly affected.
One can hardly read any philosophy for the following century which does not practically steal concepts and ideas from The Phenomenology. This includes not only Marx, but Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and many others. While Hegel's idealism is practically scorned in modern philosophical circles,I often think that it is so treated because without modern disapproval, one might suppose that there was far too much similarity to the ideas which appeared first in this book 200 years ago. It may be an exceedingly difficult work, (and oddly enough the long sentences become quite understandable after the first hundred pages,) but it is, without a doubt, an overwhelmingly worthwhile study.

Absolutelyunbelievable banter from start to finish, Hegel's inimitable wit and heart of gold really shine through here! You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll do both at the same time!

There is absolutely no way I can review this work in any meaningful way without writing a book on this book.

In this regard, I'm stuck in Hegel's own back yard, trying to observe a thing, understanding that I cannot fully understand the thing, but postulating anyway, only to revise after new information comes to light, and postulating again, revising again, postulating again, and revising again until I approach the Truth of what he's saying while never quite arriving at the Truth.

So much of what is spoke of in this towering castle of cards is aimed at understanding the Geist, the whole conceptualization of Consciousness. Doing it, he had to work from Kant and build an entire edifice from practically nothing at all.

So, of course, he goes in some culturally obvious directions that make modern philosophers cringe. For example, he not only works through the cultural bias angle, but he also goes through the entire Religiosity angle, attempting to divorce spirit from religion and winding up at the point where people can have morals without the Church.

With me so far? Well, that's only two angles among many, and we really need a BIG Venn diagram to work out his entire phenomenology.

Just so you know, this BARELY scratches the surface:



I found myself scratching my head at how dense and obscure it was in all the "In itself"s and wanted to strangle him for the needlessly recursive recapitulations.

And yet, for all the things that I, in my own culturally biased way, dismiss in Hegel as being a blind fool, I can still appreciate WHAT HE ACCOMPLISHED.

He basically formulated a non-working AI template.

Cool, right? He worked from what he believed to be base principles, (religion being one of them, including God as an outside restrictive force,) to build a Mind. Or Spirit. Or Geist. The definition always errs toward the Whole Ball of Wax.

He also got pretty close to nearly formulating a complete formal-logic construct. :)

Of course, it's wrong. But we learned a LOT from Hegel. The Hegelian Dialect is something we all use today, bringing up Thesis and Antithesis, figuring out what went wrong, then doing it all over again until we reach The Truth.

Mad props.



Oh, for you weird fanboys out there, I should mention that while I was reading this, I noticed a very cool thing. Asimov worked out his own formulations of all these same points in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in his Robot books. He explained the questions and anti-questions in a much more enjoyable, if not quite as thorough, way.

My appreciation for Asimov just went through the roof.