This book, in and for itself, is probably a classic of philosophy for a reason. But for my poor addled brain it was just a sea of confusion from which I surfaced every once in a while to the possible “understanding”of some small detail. I can’t say I understood any of it really though I did read a few other books on interpreting Hegel. It feels like people add a fair amount to their interpretations without clarifying much for me. Who knows and who cares? Should I care? Hegel changed philosophy I assume in a substantial way or we wouldn’t keep reading and interpreting his writings.

I am so thrilled to have finally completed my first book on Hegel's work after more than a month. Unfortunately, I believe this might be the last book I read for awhile since my Kindle stopped working; what poor luck! Even though it is bittersweet, here are some notes and reflections from myself regarding the material that had been studied.

The Phenomenology of Spirit is structured into three core components: "Consciousness", "Self-Consciousness" and "Reason". In the first section, Hegel delves deeply into the various stages that consciousness moves through as it develops. Starting with what he refers to as “sense-certainty” - which represents a basic level in which we are only aware of our immediate physical environment without any concept beyond this; moving on to “perception” whereby one starts perceiving things around them not just as singular objects but rather part of an organised system; before finally reaching understanding where one can comprehend the world has meaning and purpose behind its structure.

Hegel in "The Self-Consciousness" section examines the process of forming conceptions of one's self. He claims that our sense of identity is not something innate, but rather developed as we grow and mature. Furthermore, Hegel implies that this understanding is tightly connected to how we relate with other individuals since it comes into fruition through interaction between people.

Section three, "Reason," is the most complex part of Hegel's work and might require careful reading. It goes into detail about how we humans come to understand our world thanks to reason being the highest form of thought. Additionally, it looks at art and religion as having an important role in the development of our self-consciousness.

In the end, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is an extensive and plausible analysis into the nature of human consciousness. Although his musings can be complicated to comprehend at times, it makes for a meaningful read that truly pays off in understanding humanity further. It serves as an eye-opening piece with stimulating ideas sure to leave readers better informed about life itself.

What's left to be said about Hegel? There are virtual infinities encoded within formal limits of this text, but all I can say is that the dialectic is now the deep grammar of my thought.

This book made me feel very small, like I'm twiddling my thumbs on the chthonic precipice of our nameless epoch, waiting helplessly for our Volksgeist, for history on horseback, the avenging angel of the world historical spirit. Which one of you is going to complete the system of German Idealism?

Just read it, it could change your life. It did mine.

Hegel, you just alienated a consciousness who spent days reading you because it desires reading-in-itself and reading-for-itself, or philosophy-in-itself-and-for-itself, which is merely reading understood as subject, or self-conscious reading. Spirit can get so dizzy reading you that it gets turned around on itself and inverts its own dialectic. Take this consciousness, for instance, who went back to picture-thinking in picture-books with my two-year-old daughter after reading you. (I guess this consciousness got religion).

I know you were a brilliant philosopher, seriously. But can't you have philosophized more accessibly and with less repetition? Do remember, there is a very fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot.

Ok. End rant.

For other readers, I do highly, highly recommend the Oxford edition with the foreword by Findlay (ISBN: 0198245971 [ISBN13: 9780198245971]). There is about a 100-page section by section summary/synopsis of the work in the back of the book, which is gold. It really helped make the book accessible.

So here we finally are. In January I kind of decided that this was the one book I wanted to have read by the end of the year. It's been an interesting experience, but the last few days of focus did me well. If I might be permitted to be smugly aphoristic - there is no initial reading of Hegel. At least so it seems to me. Like Finnegans Wake, it seems to be one of those rare texts wherein an essay could spring from any or every sentence alone.

While reading this I was reminded of Allen Wood, one of the intrepid translators of Kant. w/r/t the 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals', Wood claims 'the first fifty times I read the Groundwork I did not understand it at all.' Let's hope it wouldn't take that many reads for this. But as Hegel himself points out in the Preface, it is ridiculous to expect understanding from a single run-through of a philosophical text.

I really loved the Religion section here. Anywhere that Hegel comes to discuss language deserves plenty of attention. But Religion was kind of special - at one point H traces the development of consciousness through tragic heroes, from Oedipus to Hamlet. I couldn't help but wonder whether Ernest Jones hadn't been reading the Phenomenology when he came to diagnose the great Dane. Also special commendation for the brief analysis of Paradise Lost.

I took the route of skipping the preface and saving it for last. Not sure how controversial that is as an approach, but it worked quite well for me. Would recommend. I also dipped briefly into Hyppolite and Kojève for this, but didn't quite stick to either. Couldn't say I've read either as a result. I found the extraordinarily comprehensive Sadler lectures on this text to be the most helpful. Seems a lovely fellow.

"Schoppenhauer [sic!] and Hegel are very readable and exciting and have not dated. What they talk about is part of the foundation modern philosophy is built on. I am hoping Madron will make it easier to get books-"
from WSG's Letters

I have never read a better written book then this one. Hegel's style of writing reflects the way I process and think. It was one of the few books where I could only listen to for only half of my daily two hour bike ride. I would get overwhelmed with what was being said and would have to switch my mind off and listen to something else on my return ride.

The 'how', the method the author uses to explicate, is the reason why I love this book as much as I do. He relates an abstract to a notion then to a concept and stays away from the doing and our actions when he gets at what he means by Being. He'll explicitly contrast Being with truth, man (all people), becoming, world, actuality, thought or ought. When I'm forced to interact with people, I do my best to stay away from talking about what others have done, or the sports teams they love, or the politics they have, or where they have been, but I always try to bring the conversation to Being, the nature of truth, or the meaning of our existence, or to use the language from this book the essence or reality.

Hegel can not stand relativism, but he really likes Parmenides and his 'One' (one can tell he likes him by how he starts his book with Parmenides). The essence is in the existence and existence is necessary for Hegel. In this book, Hegel doesn't directly say the Being is the "indeterminate immediate" (he'll do that in "Science of Logic"), but does hint at it and will say things equivalent to that statement. He's dancing around Spinoza in that both say there is a single substance and many attributes (infinitely many with Spinoza) and is using the formulation that 'every determinate is a negation' since for Hegel we live in an infinite and eternal universe. This is how he gets at Being from nothing. Hobbes, for examples, says that the moral is relative to what the individual believes is good and pleasurable or what is bad and needs to be avoided therefore he would be called a relativist. Locke, for example, will say there is an intrinsic good and bad within us that needs to be discovered through rational thought and God as revealed by nature or divine revelation therefore he would be called an absolutist (or 'realist'). With the 'One' as the only substance and as Karl Popper has pointed out, you'll get the block universe of Einstein and time will be an illusion (and everything has happened with certainty already) and the only moral truth would be relativistic like a Hobbes, but Hegel gets around this by invoking his dialectic which invokes 'the insistence of existence" as Caputo would say in his book, "The Insistence of God".

The Being from nothing or in the language of Hegel, the in itself and the for itself (the subjective and objective) only becomes aware of itself when it is for itself then it loses its in itself. He'll use self-conscious and conscious and at times he'll introduce a third item with alienation that leads to a for itself for another. Oddly, Sartre gets this part of Hegel very well as outlined in his book "Being and Nothingness" and in his play Huis Clos ("No Exit"). I say oddly because Sartre is not really a deep philosopher ("Pierre is not a waiter, he is just acting like a waiter", "don't be a girl, get up and be a man", or "there are no homosexuals there are only homosexual acts", or just try to read his last last section of his book and try to make sense out of his existential psychology).

There are five relationships that Hegel plays with and he definitely gets to play around with the ambiguity within the time period because 'spirit' and 'mind' where the same word. 1) Within the self there is the 'self conscious' and the 'conscious', 2) within the family or the community, there is the between you and me, 3) the us and the them, 4) the community and the nation, and 5) and all of the first four relationships across time.

There is no here and there is no there our Being just is. He doesn't use the word Bayesian but he's got the concept. Everything that contributes to our essence is based on how we experience the now based on our prior beliefs as they relate to our expectations as we weigh them appropriately according to our likelihoods. The nearer we get to something the further away we are in our understanding until we resolve the antithetical with the the thetical by the synthesis of the two. Hegel seemed to have a model that would fit into a quantum universe (a universe made up of packets of energy, quanta) that have discrete steps and gets resolved through stepping through a large Monte-Carlo (but deterministically derived random numbers, look it sounds like a contradiction, but ultimately all random number generators are deterministic except, perhaps, for those that rely on quantum effects) computer simulation. Of course, he can't talk like that since that would be anachronistic.

Hegel really leveraged himself off of Kant, but I don't think he mentioned Kant directly or if he did it was only in passing. Kant would say 'the thing in itself' and the 'thing as it appears to an observer' (Noumea or Phenomena) and Kant puts our morality into intrinsic duty. Hegel accepts our separation from truth but resolves it with his dialectic, a syllogism that appeals the universal to the particular and the general to the specific. "Cigarettes cause cancer, but we never say that a particular cigarette cause a particular person's cancer". Kierkegaard in Anxiety will say something along the lines that "the particular is not the universal and the universal needs the particular, or Adam is not the race but each man is a member of the race. Every man is different but yet we think of them as part of a race or as humanity. Each individual is only like the others but is not the others. Adam, the first man, or what we call a man, is part of the race". Hegel does his best in squaring the circle and resolving the paradox that is inherent in our understanding of the Being of truth.

My favorite book for 'what' is told is "Being and Time". A whole lot of that book (especially Division I) is contained in this book. The spirit (Hegel's word), that which "is in itself and for itself and aware of itself', that is in the world through one of the five relationships itemized above is that which keeps us from becoming our authentic selves and are own most non relational selves, 'everyone is the other and no one is himself'. Heidegger after B&T finds a place for the thought between the thoughts, or what he calls the 'ontological difference' that which lies between the being in itself and the being for itself. Heidegger will say that metaphysics ended with Hegel. It takes Heidegger after B&T before he changes his emphasis from 'dasein', that which takes a stand on its own understanding, and the 'meaning of being' into being as presence, or truth as what is. Similar to St. Thomas Aquinas as shown in his Selected Writing, or very similar to the way Hegel does in this book.

Hegel will end this book on science as spirit. Therefore, he would say science does think and does know itself. Heidegger never gets to that point, but everything Heidegger wrote about had to do with the problems, the essences and the limitations of science (Mehta says that in "The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger"). Does science think and know itself? or not? You decide, but before you do I would recommend this book and then Heidegger's "Being and Time".












Review first time I read book:
This is the single best Audible book I've ever listened to. I've tried reading "Phenomenology of Spirit" through out various times during my life, and like most people I couldn't get past the first two pages. This audio version brings magic to this perfect work of art.

All summaries or short commentaries on this book get it wrong. Everything you think you know about this book is probably wrong. There's no way to understand it except for actually listening (or reading) it. Forevermore, from now on I'll look askance at any statement that starts "Hegel says....".

I had just listened to "Soul Machine" by Makari (a book I liked very much, but it reads somewhat like an encyclopedia), and he ends his story with Hegel and I was intrigued by what he had to say about this book. On a lark, I decided to listened to the sample of "Phenomenology" that audible provides. I had never listened to an audio book sample before. I realized from the 3 minute and 24 second sample exactly what Hegel was trying to say and I actually understood what he was saying! I strongly recommend listening to the sample, and see if it makes sense to you.

I came to listening to philosophy by way of running out of science books and Great Course lectures. Most of the popular science books I've been listening to lately just seem to repeat themselves (or worse yet, they enter the world of Deepak Chopra's Woo Woo land).

To me, listening opens up a gateway for which reading doesn't always allow. I'm not suggesting that this book is an easy listen. It's not. Almost everyday, I take a two hour bike ride onto isolated desert roads, and I almost never could process more than an hour of this book at a time. I had to rest my mind. The reading of each paragraph number helped me immensely since I knew when a paragraph had ended and a new thought was starting. There is a strong abstract nature to this book where the author will relate an abstract to another abstract before he goes to the concrete.

There's a certain magic the author employs in his writing technique. Mathematics is the study of the changeless, and at its core it is at most a collection of items which get their meaning from the relationships which they each have with each other. This is how the author will think about the Universal of Absolute Being. It's important to realize that for the author the group of the individual species which make up the genus can only be understood from considering the genus as a whole. Or in other words, it's not the collection that gives understanding but it's the totality.

This is the exact opposite approach for which Heidegger uses in "Being and Time", he thinks understanding the parts that make up the whole provides for understanding (or using his nomenclature, gives an ontological foundation). Heidegger's book is actually my favorite book overall, but unfortunately I had to actually read it since there isn't an audio version, but there is an excellent lecture by Hubert Dreyfus freely available on Itunes. But, I like "Phenomenology" as much as I do because in the end there aren't truths but only perspectives, and Hegel gives a fabulous perspective.

I would actually suggest listening to these three Great Courses and this fictional book all available on Audible before listening to "Phenomenology". Great Courses: 1)Science Wars, 2) Philosophy of Science, and 3) Redefining Reality, and the fictional book, "The Signature of All Things", by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'd recommend the book because it's one of the best fictions I've read, and it illustrates Hegel's belief that any determination gives negation (one can paint a rose by painting everything but the rose or just as beautifully by only painting the rose and ignoring everything else).

The Great Course lectures speak loudly on the foundation of science and the nature of knowledge. Themes Hegel elaborates on significantly. Hegel's perspective is to think of our place on the "earth" (his expression) as "universal, necessary, and certain" as opposed to particular (to the data), contingent (dependent on outside factors), and probable (not certain). I recently listened to "A Beautiful Question" by Frank Wilczek, and "To Explain the World", by Steven Weinburg each a Nobel Prize Winner in physics. The first book, favors Hegel's perspective. The world is understandable as a whole (the atoms which make up our world are 'emergent properties' of the mathematics which describe them). The second book favors Heidegger, the parts that make up the whole are understandable. (Our understanding is defined by how science describes and explains based on the contingent ideas derived from particular observations).

At the time this book was written German did not have a word for 'mind' therefore any translation must take a viewpoint whether the author meant 'mind' or 'spirit'. Hegel starts the book by considering the mind within the individual, and then the spirit between individuals, and then he will go across time for both the individual and the groups (at the core of understanding for any stochastic process there are only two independent variabilities, 'within' and 'between').

When Hegel says 'objective spirit' as a thing, I took it to mean a culture with a world view. The "idle chatter', the items that make the social norms, and the items that come from outside of us, and the things that make us the they ('inauthentic' using Heidegger's word) within ourselves and between ourselves. Hegel will say the alienation we have within us and between us gives us our true knowledge.

He really seems to get Godol's incompleteness theorem (all formal systems are incomplete and have true items not provable), the Copenhagen Interruption (the measurement problem due to the wave/particle duality), Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal (knowledge of one thing means lack of knowledge elsewhere), and his teleological system is more Darwinian than not (hence it's not really teleological). Obviously, he doesn't use modern language when he describes those things, but I as a listener I read my own interruption into what the author was saying.

I noticed in the first half of the book, the author really seemed to have a wry sense of humor and sprinkled it through out the book. He'd say stuff like "it's been said in Latin and bad Latin at that" or paraphrasing 'if someone says they can tell you that you behave erratically from bumps on your head, you should box them on the ears', or 'it's like when a naughty boy gets boxed on his hears for being obnoxious, it's exactly what the boy wanted'.

I enjoyed the 6 hour commentary attached to the book. It made me realize I was understanding the book fairly closely. It's possible to be completely non-religious and be overwhelmed by the author's methodology. He'll demonstrate the problem with faith (I'd be fairly certain that Kierkegaard and his 'leap of faith' come from this book). Our duties which come from our own selfishness can lead to ethical behavior in society as a whole (the author definitely seems to embrace Mandeville and his "Fable of the Bees"). He ends the book with religion within nature and then segues quickly into the truth (certainty) of systematic science.

The book is probably not what you think it is. It is definitely not "impenetrable'. The author explains, amplifies and provides a grounding for what he is saying. There are many ways to look at and understand this book. I do it from a philosophy of science point of view. I like books that take me out of my comfort zone and open up a whole new world for me. I suggest listening to the sample and see if you get what he's saying. If you do, get this book. If not, but your still intrigued, I would suggest the lectures and book I referenced above.

G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the densest, most profound, and influential works in Western philosophy. It is also, at points, one of the most incomprehensible books I have ever read. About half way through this nearly 600-page book, I thought to myself, "There is no way that I am going to be able to finish reading this!" I did finish it, however, and it was well worth while.

Phenomenology of Spirit is notoriously difficult for a number of reasons. This book was, first of all written in a rush and delivered to the publisher without revision. Second, it is written in a "continental" style that pays little attention to clarity of argument. In order to tolerate Hegel's writing, I found that I had to become comfortable with following the rhythms of his thinking rather than worrying too much about formal argumentative structure. However, one of the most major reasons why this book is difficult to understand is because it deals with very difficult philosophical issues. Difficult ideas sometimes just require difficult language.

The book is an attempt to think through the unfolding of the history of world consciousness from beginning to end. Hegel uses the German word Geist in order to designate the substance of the universe. Geist is an ambiguous term that has been translated into English as both "mind" and "spirit." The idea is that the universe is a conscious, living substance that unfolds and grows the way that an organism grows. In the Preface (which, by the way, offers the most clear and concise summary of the ideas in the book), Hegel likens the universe to a plant that sprouts forth and progressively overcomes its early manifestations in order finally to produce a flower, which is the plant's ultimate goal and purpose.

The "flower" of Geist is what Hegel terms "the absolute idea." This is the point at which Geist comes to fully understand itself. The universe is like a mind that has become self-alienated, according to Hegel, and the history of thought represents the universe's attempt to return to self-consciousness. Over the course of the book, Hegel traces out the convolutions that Geist manifests as it reflects upon itself and struggles to come to terms with its own essence.

Perhaps the most famous and influential section of the book describes the master/slave dialectic. This is one of the early junctures in the unfolding to Geist. It occurs when a mind reflecting upon itself comes to value the sort of recognition and identity that it achieves through self-reflection. As a result, this mind seeks out other minds in order to see itself reflected in the consciousness of others. However, in so doing, this mind inaugurates a "life and death struggle." When two consciousnesses come into contact with one another, they struggle for domination and control, according to Hegel. One mind becomes the master and the other becomes the slave. The irony is that in mastering another mind, the master reduces it to a kind of property that is less than human, and so no longer capable of furnishing the sort of recognition that the master desires. The slave, on the other hand, in becoming enslaved, is forced to work and to creatively alter the world. It, thus, incorporates part of the master mentality into its essence and becomes transformed into something more than just a slave; it becomes a worker.

This example illustrates an ongoing dialectical process that governs the unfolding of all reality, according to Hegel. This process is one in which opposite forces come into conflict, but instead of simply contradicting one another, they instead become synthesized into something more than the sum of their parts. Over the course of the book, Hegel multiplies examples from the history of consciousness, showing the various ways the world's struggles have contributed to the forward movement of history. History, it turns out, is an ongoing synthesis of various conflicts, all of which are inevitably leading to the full self-consciousness of Geist. Once Geist has come to understand itself, history (as conflict) comes to an end in the freedom of self-understanding.

Hegel worked out the details of his dialectical logic in other books, but the Phenomenology of Spirit is where he first showed how this logic plays itself out in the unfolding of the world's history. The influence of Hegel's vision has been enormous, stretching from his own lifetime to ours. Karl Marx applied the Hegelian dialectic to his analysis of class conflict; existentialist thinkers adopted much of Hegel's terminology in order to describe the unfolding of lived, human existence; psychoanalytic thinkers incorporated Hegel's views on conflict into their understanding of human consciousness; and political thinkers have applied Hegel's ideas to the relationships between nations and ideologies.

Though it was a slog to get through, in completing this book I feel as if I have read something incredibly substantial, important and profound. The world looks different after seeing it through Hegel's perspective.

I usually write long summaries to go with my readings of Hegel, but I will refrain to do so this time since I’m so exhausted from typing around 80 pages of notes surrounding ‘The Phenomenology’—I’ve been leading a discussion of ‘The Phenomenology’ for the library, you see! Reading Verene’s ‘Hegel’s Absolute’, Rockmore’s ‘Cognition’, and Magee’s ‘Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition’ have been indispensable companions to help me give little digestible introductions to the material, which has been discussed in four parts.

I am convinced that this is one of the most misunderstood works *ever* by one of the most misunderstood philosophers. When I first read ‘The Phenomenology’ I don’t think I was ready for it. This time around has been much more of a joy, since at this point I’ve spent a lot of time with Hegel’s other works. Its beauty was completely lost on me the first time, and was marked by utter confusion with scattered *very intense* moments of comprehension. This time was much different, as I was able to string along the thread of Hegel’s argument as it wound about like links in a chain, each section becoming more and more interesting and just absolutely breathtaking in complexity. For anyone who reads this for the first time in frustration—your persistence with be rewarded!

Probably the most profound insight is that the estrangement from the world is commonly perceived as a separation form subject and object—the gap between a fully formed subject and its object of perception can never be bridged and thus spins its wheels eternally in ceaseless skepticism, unless one clings to faith in fear of the world's meaninglessness. For Hegel, this separation is false—the true split, or "twoness" is the subject itself, as well as that which is perceived, constantly torn by the inwardness of the universal and the particularity of the moment of expression, which gives truth to the universal. The subject and object are then not so much individuals as *dividuals*... and this pattern pervades the entirety of the whole and accounts for its movement. If we begin reading with this insight firmly planted, we are ready to traverse the road "in the light of truth" rather than wander "the highway of despair"...

ok. so the trick is i step out of myself and into something else, and then that's consciousness?

OK I'M GONNA GO READ KANT REAL FAST AND THEN I"LL COME BACK TO THIS ONE, ALRIGHT!

Delirante. Le doy la segunda estrella solo por lo del amo y el esclavo.

It is ultimately a very intuitive reading - you have to live with the words, join them, dance with them, slip through the spaces, enter the terms, and experience what it feels like to move like them and see the panorama. Then, from inside their shell, come out on the other side, look at them upside down, come back, and slip into the sentences as we lie in the pool basin. You have to have a very free spirit, not to let yourself be impressed by sentences that appear to have no meaning, as you are forbidden to pay attention to the gazes of swimmers in the other lines. But then, as you were forced to move at your own pace, without pressure, with concentration and humility to gain ease of movement and free the mind from all that obstructs it, seek with strength only the pleasure of water. So - or words - gliding along your body, you feel more peaceful. You can progress without thinking about anything but moving with ease. There it is; now it comes by itself.

Consciousness: I can't know what is other without knowing myself.

Self-Consciousness: I can't know myself without knowing myself in an other.

Reason: I can't know myself in an other without knowing myself and an other in social-historical context.

Spirit: To know self and other in social-historical context (i.e., Spirit) is ultimately to know the common identity of self and other in/as Absolute Spirit (i.e., God).

Religion: To know God, conversely, is ultimately to know the common social-historical identity of self and other (i.e., Spirit).

Absolute Knowing: To know absolutely is [1] to reconcile the parallel discoveries of Spirit and Religion (namely, the discoveries that "Spirit = God" and that "God = Spirit"), and thereby [2] to transcend the underlying opposition between knower and known that both those discoveries assume. Transcending this opposition requires/enables me to let go of an assumption that has undergirded the entire investigation thus far: namely, that "I" the knower am something self-standing, something that exists over against what/how I know. And in letting go of that assumption, I'm required/enabled to radically reevaluate my relationship to the investigation as a whole. To give up on the opposition between knower and known is to accept that "I" (the journeying phenomenologist) am nothing more than the process I've been investigating (the phenomenological journey); and yet it is also - for the very same reason - to discover that I am nothing less than God himself (the destination and ultimate 'truth' of that journey). What it means to attain Absolute Knowing, then, is (in Simone Weil's terms) to attain the triple-awareness that "I am nothing," that "I am everything," and that these are"correlative truths" (Notebooks, p. 120).