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 2007.

Was tut man, wenn man im Sommer zwei Wochen frei hat, keinen Urlaub geplant, und es total verregnet ist? Richtig: Man beschäftigt sich mit der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Letztes Jahr habe ich es schon mal versucht, und habe es nach ca. 200 Seiten aufgegeben. Nun nochmal ein Versuch, zwei Wochen lang täglich mehrere Stunden, und diesmal hab ich mich auch durchgebissen.

Zugegebenermaßen habe ich trotzdem nicht das Gefühl, den Stoff richtig durchdrungen zu haben. Dennoch möchte ich meine Eindrücke kurz aufschreiben.

Das Buch erweckt den Eindruck, dass Hegel durchaus ein kluger Mann war, mit vielen schlauen Einsichten und Gedanken. Die Anerkennungstheorie ist nicht umsonst viel rezipiert worden. Die Idee des "absoluten Wissens" hat auch durchaus ihren Charme, wenngleich man sie heute vielleicht als etwas "esoterisch" bezeichnen könnte.

Die "Dialektik", mit der die verschiedenen Sachverhalte, wie ebendieses absolute Wissen hergeleitet werden, ist durchaus erfrischend und beeindruckend, zeigt vielleicht auch gewisse Einsichten in das Leben; mein Eindruck ist aber, dass ihr eine gewisse Notwendigkeit fehlt. Warum genau diese Einteilung in natürliche, Kunst- und offenbare Religion? Warum entwickeln sich Selbstbewusstsein in genau den Schritten wie beschrieben? Vielleicht verstehe ich es nicht so ganz, ich befürchte aber, dass dies Beschreibungen von teilweise kontingenten Pfadabhängigkeiten sind oder einfach der "besten Idee" Hegels entsprungen sind.

Zur Beurteilung der wissenschaftlichen "Haltbarkeit" traue ich mir mangels Verständnis und Wissen über Wissenschaftstheorie keine richtige Einschätzung zu. Jedenfalls vermittelt das Buch schon einige schlaue Gedanken, dir mir sicherlich noch einige Zeit hängen bleiben werden, und wird mir in Zukunft hoffentlich auch beim Verständnis anderer Autoren helfen.

Ohne Sekundärmaterial wäre ich wohl ziemlich aufgeschmissen gewesen. Ich habe "Hegels 'Phänomenologie des Geistes' von Georg Bertram" genutzt und kann dies empfehlen, außerdem habe ich ab und zu die Hegel-Videos z.B. von Gregory Sadler (leider Englisch) angeschaut. Eventuell werde ich nächstes Jahr oder so einen weiteren Durchlauf des Buchs wagen.

I think I understood this book and I do not want to think about it anymore because if I continue to think on it I will start to misunderstand about what I understood and this will bang my head once again.

This book is crazy. I mean this in a couple of senses. It is as difficult to read as everybody says it is. Its final conclusion is absurd and implausible. But it is also as radical and important in the history of philosophy as a lot of people say it is. Ignore the analytic philosophy bros who dismiss it. I’ll try to summarize two points that I found most breathtaking, and then give a quick synopsis.

First, it is ingenious for Hegel to have made explicit the dialectical method. It captures a dominant way by which we think about philosophical issues; a way that has been obscured and hidden by most formalized philosophical methods (e.g., deductive reasoning; conceptual analysis). The dialectical method describes how we think about things when we do not yet know our explanandum. This is most often the case when it comes to philosophical issues. Philosophical topics — like the nature of knowledge and cognition, the topic of the Phenomenology — are not as concrete and identifiable as physical objects, like puppies or pillows. We do not know their identities; so how can we explain something that we do not even know, that we have not really met? The dialectical method has us start from any commonsense position, or best guess, on the identity of our explanandum, and an account of it.

The method asks us to evaluate this position, by drawing solely on this position’s own assumptions and criteria. Inner contradictions will be revealed. This propels us to propose an alternative position, which overcomes those contradictions. Then from this second position, which is conceptually dependent on the first, we gain a new perspective onto the first position, which lets us appreciate features of it under a new light. We can finally arrive at a third position, which is motivated by the same overall question as the first position, but that has found a new precise identity of the explanandum of the first, and offers a new theory of it. We continuously go through these dialectical transitions, refining our understanding of the explanandum, and arriving at greater truth, along the way.

(Here's a tip in approaching the book, that I wish I knew about beforehand: It is super helpful to understand this method and see how it works throughout the book. Looking for the consecutive moments, the inner contradictions in them, and how they are resolved will help ground and guide one's reading through this monstrosity.)

Second, Hegel’s master-slave dialectic is not overrated. It is amazing how he pinpointed the fact that our own self-consciousness depends on the fact that others are conscious of us. Let us say Sylvester recognizes Svetlana, which makes it possible for Svetlana to recognize herself. In recognizing herself, Svetlana can form a self-conception, a story of who she is and where she is going. Sylvester can affirm or challenge this story. She will be motivated to resist Sylvester, if he challenges her. Anyone wishes to maintain their self-identity, a drive that amounts to that for survival.

(This situation interestingly mirrors the conceptual situation that makes the dialectical method possible; a given theoretical position on a matter can be evaluated from that position’s own criterion or ‘perspective’, or from that of a different, opposing position. I still am unsure what to make of this analogousness.)

The master-slave dynamic results if Svetlana gives into Sylvester’s conception of her and surrenders her own self-conception. More generally, Hegel theorizes that the slave must submit to and recognize the validity of all of the master’s conceptions. The master doesn’t recognize the slave at all and denies the slave's validity. It seems that the master has a superior position. But paradoxically, in the master's failing to recognize the slave, the slave’s recognition of the master is rendered meaningless. This story is meant to show that a fully matured self-consciousness requires mutual recognition between subjects.

This lesson can account for how we humans all occupy a shared social world; ‘private language’ is impossible. We are thoroughly encultured. All our concepts, perceptions, and knowledge are made possible by our communities, constrain those that can be formed by other community members, and are constrained by those formed by other members. This fact can account for a range of social phenomena. It gives an interesting starting point in thinking about how language is possible. It sheds light on the nature of social and political oppression. Etc.

The book as a whole takes on this shape. Hegel is fixed on figuring out how to understand the nature of knowledge in such a way that knowledge can be regarded as absolute and unconditional. He progresses towards the final position on the nature of knowledge that does this by using the dialectical method. He starts off with traditional epistemological views that resemble empiricism and rationalism (e.g., "sense-certainty," "perception"). Then, these accounts turn away from proposals that involve only formal, cognitive processes and introduce existential, social processes. It turns out the object of knowledge (e.g., I see a puppy before me; I know it is a puppy, rather than a kitten, and it is cute, rather than mean) is not something external to me, found in a mind-independent world. The object of knowledge is phenomenological, part of my experience. The possibility of this object, and the possibility of understanding how I come to understand this object, all depends on existential and cultural conditions. I need to be self-conscious, and that requires that I am joined with others in a community. Finally, Hegel dedicates the last part of the book to go through different proposals regarding the source of concepts and normativity. These include rationalistic, theological, and political accounts.

All of these positions are successive and naturally fall out from each other according to the dialectical method. Throughout this progression, certain truths found in all preceding positions are supposedly retained. Imagine concentric circles. At the end, we reach the Absolute or Spirit. At this point, we've discovered all our a priori conditions of our knowledge; they turn out to all be knowable unconditionally. There is no subject-object divide, but all is encompassed within Spirit. I honestly do not understand this conclusion. Its plausibility depends on being Christian or committed to other religions that are founded on a principle by which God incarnates Godself in humankind. That sort of idea is necessary for understanding Hegel's conclusion, it seems.

There is much more in this book that I haven’t understood. Unfortunately, this book really is quite unreadable. I was only able to make progress in it by reading it for a class and receiving the enrichment of classroom discussions. I would recommend interested readers to either find buddies who will read it along with them; or to supplement the book with secondary sources (I found Stern’s The Routledge Guidebook to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; Pinkard’s Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason; and Brandom's A Spirit of Trust helpful).

A side note for readers who are especially interested in the master-slave dialectic and the concept of recognition: There's a terrific body of literature in developmental psychology that naturalizes, adds detail to, and supports this view. Look up "joint intentionality." Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny is wonderful, recent book by the psychologist by Michael Tomasello who began this line of research.

Hegel, bro, you nearly killed me with this. I'll write a review when I re-read and digest this better.

Der Versuch einer verständlichen Besprechung folgt sobald ich das Gelesene aufgearbeitet habe.

Vorerst das Abschlusszitat:

„Das Ziel, das absolute Wissen, oder der sich als Geist wissende Geist hat zu seinem Weg die Erinnerung der Geister, wie sie an ihnen selbst sind und die Organisation ihres Reiches vollbringen. Ihre Aufbewahrung nach der Seite ihres freien in der Form der Zufälligkeit erscheinenden Daseins ist die Geschichte, nach der Seite ihrer begriffenen Organisation aber die Wissenschaft des erscheinenden Wissens; beide zusammen, die begriffene Geschichte, bilden die Erinnerung und die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes, die Wirklichkeit, Wahrheit und Gewißheit deines Throns, ohne den er das leblose Einsame wäre; nur -
Aus dem Kelch dieses Geisterreiches
schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit“

Haven't rated this book because that seems to assume I grasped it well enough to do so. I didn't. This was an incredibly difficult text that I don't feel equipped to evaluate, but I do feel like I walked away with two important takeaways.

1) While Hegel, because he's writing in 19th century Germany, frames it as the difference between concept and object, this is largely a book about the trauma of mediation, namely, the fact that mediation itself generates a variety of anxieties about, approaches to, ignorances of, supposed solutions to, and celebrations of the problem that all knowledge is mediated by something. In a sense, then, Hegel is not only the first theorist of semiotics, but also exceeds much of later structuralism and post-structuralism by noting that the absolute (Saussure) or sometimes relative (Peirce) difference between signifier and signified is itself productive of a variety of emotional responses and positions one can take on the question of knowledge. Hegel marks a retroactive step beyond the structural and post-structural insofar as he recognizes that the problem of concept/object does not simply mean we cannot assuredly know anything, but rather that this problem generates a great deal of approaches, some which claim knowledge is not possible, some that anxiously grasp for immediacy or leave behind the material world entirely, some that recognize it is the very fact of mediation that unites knowers with the object of knowledge, generating a great deal of creative output in religion, art, language, etc. To put it another way, the split between concept/object is an original trauma (the Lacanian interpellation into the symbolic, maybe), a productive wound that silently drives the motions of this book from consciousness to self-consciousness, to Reason, to Spirit, and ultimately to the recognition of mediation in what Hegel calls Religion, Art, and Absolute Knowing, where (in my reading) the inability to do away with mediation results in a new creative focus on mediation itself as the means by which concept/object are held as distinct AND as the same. Thus, it is this very trauma that allows us to think the universal, to compare and categorize, and to cognize knowledge as a goal to pursue. This takeaway--that the mismatch between signifier and signified is both a difference and a productive unity--really strikes me as the only answer I have found to poststructuralism. Instead of seeing the trauma of mediation as only and always evincing the fact that we can never truly know anything, for Hegel (and for Marx, in a different way) it is mediation that unites subject and object in both problematic and generative ways. Indeed, one might come away from this text thinking that the signifier-signified distance is in itself a sufficient explanation for the very possibility of change, history, temporality, religion, politics, ideology, etc. But I think in order to get there Zizek is right: we need tools from psychoanalysis.

2) In sections A and B, Hegel is directing us towards the idea that in order to justify knowledge claims or make sense of knowing writ large, the 'shape' with which we approach the question of knowledge must be intersubjective. However, contra Husserl and some social theorists/sociologists who are content to say that knowledge is intersubjective or relational and consider this claim as groundbreaking in itself, Hegel shows us that, although knowledge is relational, there are a lot of intersubjective situations and relations that are NOT constitutive of knowledge. This is especially clear in section B, self-consciousness, with the Lord-Bondsman dialectic, where the problem is both the intertwining of the pursuit of knowledge with desire and the limitations of binary relations. We need at least a triad, but even then--as we see in section C. (BB), Spirit--not all triadic, intersubjective relations work. This strikes me as a significant move forward in the sociology of knowledge.

Final note: could not be more convinced that this book is not worth reading alone. Do it with a group. I would have drowned reading this book alone.

It’s hard to judge a translation of The Phenomenology. Did I understand better? Well, it’s almost as if every time I read the book, it’s the first time. So much strikes me as new and impenetrable. Every time I read it the scope of my not-understanding shifts. Maybe it decreases, but maybe I just come to understand that there’s more that I don’t understand.

Since this is the latest translation of the book, I read it from the standpoint of translation, although it’s impossible, for me at least, not to be drawn into re-thinking my understanding of Hegel’s project here. I’ll talk about that first, and then I’ll get to some comments about the translation.

What is Hegel’s core insight in The Phenomenology? I think his insight comes in response to the same question that motivated Kant’s thought — how is it that we (subjects) understand a world (objects) that, at least at first pass, appears utterly different from us? Why is the way in which we understand and “know” reality successful, given the world’s apparently utter otherness?

And, famously, for Kant the answer was that we supply the conditions of the world’s knowability — the structures, if we can accept that unKantian word — that tie perceptions into coherent, intelligible experience.

Hegel’s insight takes Kant’s answer much farther. The world is knowable because it is not alien to us, because what it is, its intelligible structure, is exactly the structure of human reason. But not, as for Kant, as something contributed by a knowing subject to the world, rather as something constitutive of the world itself. The world simply IS rational, whereas for Kant it was (merely) experienced as rational.

For Kant, that implied a leftover that wasn’t knowable — the world as “thing-in-itself,” independently of the conditions of knowledge provided by knowing subjects becomes something outside the knowable, in fact entirely unintelligible.

For Hegel, there is no leftover, no world as “thing-in-itself” to be contrasted with the knowable world, since the conditions of knowledge inhere in the world itself.

This line of argument certainly makes Hegel an “idealist” in some sense, in that the stuff of mind and the stuff of the world are one and the same — the world is “ideal” in that it is made of the same stuff as the knower.

But Hegel’s idealism isn’t so simple. This is where one of Hegel’s unique contributions comes into play — his historicism. The knower must become a knower — knowing isn’t simply given to us. And hence in the early chapters of The Phenomenology, we see an evolving conception of knowledge in action. Knowing fails, and it evolves itself in its failures.

In the succeeding chapters, this evolving conception of knowledge becomes truly historical, in that it must test itself against the world of its own making — the human world of communities, cultures, religions, sciences, and politics. In that evolution, both sides evolve, as the knower evolves both what knowing is and the (human) reality that it knows.

“Absolute Knowing” then at the end of the process presents us with both an evolved sense of what knowing is and an evolved world that is known.

That known world is, despite our classifying Hegel as an “idealist,” fully real, solid, and tangible. This is not Berkeley’s idealism, or even Fichte’s (as Hegel often implicitly points out). What has happened is that each side of knowledge, the knower and the known, has evolved to become fully conformable with the other. As Hegel is commonly quoted, “The real is the rational, and the rational is the real” (see the Preface to Hegel’s The Philosophy of Right for the quote).

A very interesting and provocative takeaway from Hegel’s treatment of knowledge in The Phenomenology (particularly in the Preface) is, to put it in catchy Hegel-ish style, all knowledge is also theory of knowledge — in the sense that knowing something requires knowing what the activity of knowing that something is. This is in fact the task he puts before himself in The Phenomenology — to in Hegelian terms, make knowledge adequate to its object.

Hegel contrasts knowing as “external” to its object with what he calls “science.” Knowing as external to its object is an application of something (a measuring device, a categorization scheme, or even rules of inference or calculation) to the object. Knowing a thing as “science” begins with the discovery of what it is to know such a thing as it comes to be itself and builds knowledge in accordance with what it is to know such a thing.

For example, world history might be “known” any number of ways. You can count centuries, list populations, categorize events, etc. Or, more preferably, you could begin with an investigation of what historical knowledge is, how someone in the present apprehends something in the past at all, and then build a knowledge of the past on that basis.

Knowing world history as “science” (for Hegel) means discerning the conceptual movement that world history actually is. This is what he attempts in his own Lectures on the Philosophy of History. There is no accounting there of dates and even little of events as such, but rather an account of the rational, conceptual flow that history follows, in Hegel’s understanding at least.

Okay, that’s enough on the content of Hegel’s thought. I had to do that. But now, the translation.

One problem with translations of Hegel is to decide who you are translating for. Translating for a “Hegel scholar” is one thing, and translating for someone reading the book for the first time is another. The latter is a special problem for Hegel’s work, given its inherent complexity and its uncomfortable style. Reading Hegel for the first time is a climb up a very steep ramp. The question is whether this translation helps.

I think it might. Have a look below at one sentence I chose from the concluding chapter on “Absolute Knowing”. It’s just one sentence, and I’m not a German scholar, but we can use it to illustrate some points.

Here is the German: “Die Bewegung, die Form seines Wissens von sich hervorzutreiben, is die Arbeit, die er als wirkliche Geschichte vollbringt.”

Here is the Fuss and Dobbins translation that I’m reviewing: “The process of advancing the form of its self-knowledge is the work that spirit accomplishes as actual history.”

And here are the available previous translations that I have read (I haven’t read Inwood's translation yet) :
Pinkard — “The movement of propelling forward the form of its self-knowing is the work which spirit accomplishes as actual history.”
Miller — “The movement of carrying forward the form of its self-knowledge is the labour which it accomplishes as actual History.”
Baillie — “The process of carrying forward this form of knowledge of itself is the task which spirit accomplishes as actual History.”

Notice a couple of things. While German word order just doesn’t transfer to English, Fuss and Dobbins did their best to transform Hegel’s chunky style into a relatively simple English sentence. For example, they translate “hervorzutreiben” simply as “advancing.” The other three attempt to render the word in a way that retains some of the nuance of the term’s components but that becomes awkward — “carrying forward” or “propelling forward.” From a scholarly perspective, Fuss and Dobbins may be letting something drop from the term, but they do, I think, make the overall sentence more readable.

Notice also that Fuss and Dobbins don’t mess with the typically Hegelian construction, “die Form seines Wissens von sich.” That would be sacrilege, as well as probably misleading to a student of Hegel. In fact, all four translations follow a pretty literal read.

It’s interesting that Pinkard here and elsewhere indulges a more dynamic way of speaking, using the present participle “knowing” for “Wissens” while the others all translate it as a straightforward noun, “knowledge.” He also chooses a more forceful word, “propelling” in translating “hervorzutreiben” than Miller or Baillie.

Okay enough wonkiness. The point is that Fuss and Dobbins do attempt to smooth Hegel out a bit for the reader. It doesn’t make The Phenomenology readable. Nothing could do that and still be The Phenomenology.

Like I said in a review of the Pinkard translation, I think if you are a student of Hegel, it’s worth reading more than one, even all, of the translations, to get various grips on the content.

I’m glad Fuss and Dobbins had their go at it.

I've been reading this book for almost three years now, extremely slowly and meticulously, and I have to say that for all its painful dialectical twists and turns it is grossly incandescent, to say the least. To read this whole thing is almost an education unto itself. It's tought me a lot — first and foremost, to quote Ariana Grande, love, patience and pain. It literally retaught me how to read. It's a painstaking process. It's hard. But it's rewarding, so very rewarding. This isn't a journey you can simply take lightly, it requires diligence and tenacity. Sometimes I felt like I'd never finish this work, but I did, and I'm so glad to have stuck with it. Thanks, old man. It's been a blast. I'll be returning soon, I think.

هذا الكتاب الثاني الذي اقرأه لجورج فيلهلم فريدريش هيغل - من بعد اصول فلسفة الحق ترجمة امام عبد الفتاح -, فظاهريات الروح يعد من بين امهات نصوص الثقافة الغربية الحديثة ففيه بلفت المثالية الألميانية التي بدأت مع كنت اوجها ! وعلى عظمة هذا الكتاب الا ان ترجمته هي اسوء ترجمة قد يقرأها المرأ في حياته - ربما يكون الخلل مني انا - فلا اعلم لماذا يلجأ بعض المترجمين العرب الي مثل هذا الاسلوب في الترجمة حيث يترجم الكتاب بشكل لا يفهم معه القارئ حرفا واحد مما يقرأ - وهذا الكلام اعنيه حرفيا - ؟ عوضا عن تبسيط الكتاب وتذليله امام القارئ .. بدأت بالكتاب منذ اسبوعين على امل ان اتوسع اكثر في فهم المثالية الالمانية و كون كتاب ظاهريات الروح هو المقدمة للنسق الهيغلي الا اني تفاجئت باني لم افهم حرفا واحد من هذا الكتاب ! فالكتاب كله عباره عن المطلق بما هو مطلق ومصطلحات تحتاج ل 1000 سنة كي تفهمها ! على عكس ترجمة الدكتور عبد الفتاح امام والتي لم اشعر معها باي صعوبة تذكر في اصول فلسفة الحق

* لمن أراد ان يقرأ لهيغل عليه حصرا بترجمات الدكتور امام عبد الفتاح امام ضمن المكتبة الهيغيلية

A work beyond reading. A work beyond review. While Hegel's system is a totality doomed to failure, it explodes out so many ideas through the cracks in the system, seeping language and nothing.

I actually do like Hegel. Really, I do. I'll even concede that this book is a masterpiece in some respects. But man, what a roller coaster of self-inflicted punishment awaits those who pick up this almost unbearable prose for the first time.