The Phenomenology of Spirit

G. W. F. Hegel, John Dobbins, Peter Fuss

Description

The Phenomenology of Spirit, first published in 1807, is G. W. F. Hegel’s remarkable philosophical text that examines the dynamics of human experience from its simplest beginnings in consciousness through its development into ever more complex and self-conscious forms. The work explores the inner discovery of reason and its progressive expansion into spirit, a world of intercommunicating and interacting minds reconceiving and re-creating themselves and their reality. The Phenomenology of Spirit is a notoriously challenging and arduous text that students and scholars have been studying ever since its publication.

In this long-awaited translation, Peter Fuss and John Dobbins provide a succinct, highly informative, and readily comprehensible introduction to several key concepts in Hegel's thinking. This edition includes an extensive conceptual index, which offers easy reference to specific discussions in the text and elucidates the more subtle nuances of Hegel's concepts and word usage. This modern American English translation employs natural idioms that accurately convey what Hegel means. Throughout the book, the translators adhered to the maxim: if you want to understand Hegel, read him in the English. This book is intended for intellectuals with a vested interest in modern philosophy and history, as well as students of all levels, seeking to access or further engage with this seminal text.

It is natural to suppose that in philosophy, before getting on with one’s main concern, that of actually knowing what in truth is, one first has to understand the intellect, this being commonly regarded as an instrument with which to get hold of the absolute truth or as a medium through which one beholds it. There seems good reason for concern whether there might be various kinds of knowledge, one perhaps better suited to this end than another, so that by choosing the wrong one—or, assuming the intellect to be a faculty finite in kind and scope, by failing to determine with precision its nature and limits—one might embrace clouds of error instead of the clear skies of truth. Such concerns are bound to lead to the conviction that the whole idea of undertaking to secure for consciousness what things are in themselves by means of the intellect is absurd, and that between the intellect and absolute truth there lies a barrier that quite simply separates them. For, supposing that the intellect is an instrument for apprehending what absolutely is, it readily occurs to us that when we apply an instrument to an object we aren’t letting it be what it is in its own right but are undertaking to alter it or change its form. Supposing, on the other hand, that the intellect isn’t a tool we actively employ but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then once again what we receive isn’t the truth as it is in itself but only as it is in and through this medium. Either way we’re employing a means that brings about the direct opposite of its purpose—which is to say that the absurdity lies instead in our making use of a means at all. –It might of course seem that we could find a way out of this predicament by figuring out exactly how this “instrument” works, since that would enable us to take the representation of absolute truth that we obtained by means of it, subtracting the portion of the end-product that’s due to it and thus leaving us with what’s clearly true. Yet a remedy such as this would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. For were we to subtract from anything whose form has been altered by an instrument whatever effect is due to the instrument, then the thing (here absolute truth) becomes for us exactly what it was before this consequently pointless effort. Even supposing absolute truth to have somehow merely been brought closer to us without alteration by the instrument (like a bird caught with a lime twig), then it itself, were it not by its very nature and of its own accord by our side all along, would doubtless find this artifice laughable. For an artifice is just what the intellect would then be, pretending through elaborate labors to accomplish something altogether different from what would be achieved merely through a direct and hence effortless relation. –Or again, supposing the intellect to be some sort of “medium,” were we to examine it to ascertain the “law of its refraction” so as to remove this effect from the result, once again we’d gain nothing. For knowledge isn’t a refraction away from the ray through which truth reaches us, but rather is that refracted ray itself; and were this removed, nothing would be indicated to us but a sheer direction (namely that of our gaze)—in effect a blank spot. If, meanwhile, worry about falling into error makes one mistrustful of science, which goes right to work without such misgivings and actually does come to know, it’s hard to see why one shouldn’t instead mistrust this mistrust and be concerned as to whether dread of error isn’t itself already an error. Indeed it takes a good deal for granted, basing its doubts and conclusions on assumptions whose truth is itself in need of prior critical scrutiny. It presupposes that the intellect is validly represented as instrument or medium, and even as something distinct from ourselves. But above all it assumes that ‘what absolutely is’ stands fixed on one side and the intellect by itself on the other—separated from it, yet somehow still reliable—in other words takes for granted that an intellect excluded from it, and hence from the truth as well, nonetheless holds true: a presupposition whereby what calls itself (M59) fear of error sooner gives itself away as fear of the truth. The basis for so concluding is that only what is absolutely is true, i.e. that the truth alone is what absolutely is. One might disregard this, subtilizing that an intellect that doesn’t comprehend what absolutely is in the way that science does may nonetheless be true too, and that, even if the intellect were to prove incapable of grasping such, it might still be capable of truth of another sort. But by this point it’s obvious that all that comes of such mealymouthing is a murky distinction between absolute truth and some other kind of truth, and that the terms ‘absolute,’ ‘intellect,’ etc., presuppose a meaning that’s yet to be ascertained. Instead of troubling ourselves with such useless notions and locutions concerning the intellect as ‘instrument for apprehending what absolutely is’ or ‘medium through which we behold the truth’ (the sort of relations one ends up with when the intellect is thought of as cut off from the absolute and the absolute as isolated from it); instead of putting up with the evasions that scientific incompetence concocts once having presupposed such relations in order to avoid the rigorous demands of science while still appearing to be earnestly and zealously engaged; instead of bothering to refute all this, we could simply reject these arbitrary notions out of hand. And the concomitant use of words like ‘absolute’ and ‘cognition,’ ‘objective,’ and ‘subjective,’ and countless others whose meaning is presumed to be familiar to all, could be regarded as just so much cant. For the claim that their meaning is generally familiar, or even that anyone is in possession of their concept, has every appearance of an attempt to avoid doing what matters most, namely to provide this concept. With greater justification we could instead just ignore such locutions and notions whose effect would be to preclude scientific knowledge; for the vacuous appearance of knowledge they provide vanishes so soon as science emerges. (excerpted from Introduction)

Acknowledgments

Translators’ Introduction

Preface

Introduction 1 Sense-Certainty: the This & Meaning

2 Perception: Things & Illusoriness

3 Force and Understanding, Appearances & the Supersensuous World

4 Self-Certainty’s Truth

4.A. Self-Consciousness Dependent & Independent: Mastery and Servitude

4.B. The Freedom of Self-Consciousness; Stoicism, Skepticism, & the Unhappy Consciousness

5 Reason: its Certainty and its Truth

5.A. Observational Reason

a. Observation of Nature

b. Observation of Self-Consciousness in its Purity & in Relation to External Actuality: Logical & Psychological Laws

c. Observation of the Relation of Self-Consciousness to Immediate Actuality: Physiognomy & Phrenology

5.B. The Self-Actualization of Rational Self-Consciousness

a. Pleasure and Necessity

b. The Law of the Heart & Arrogance Run Amok

c. Virtue & the Way of the World

5.C. Individuality that Deems Itself Genuinely Real In & For Itself

a. A Realm of Intelligent Animals and Deceit: the Abiding Concern

b. Legislative Reason

c. Reason Putting Law to the Test

6 Spirit

6.A. Pristine Spirit: the Ethical Way of Life

a. he Ethical World: Law Human & Divine, Man & Woman

b. Ethical Action: Knowledge Human & Divine, Guilt & Destiny

c. Legal Status

6.B. Spirit Estranged From Itself: Culture

1 The World of Self-Estranged Spirit

a. Culture & Its Sphere of Actuality

b. Faith & Pure Insight

2 Enlightenment

a. Enlightenment’s Struggle with Superstition

b. The Truth of Enlightenment

3 Total Freedom & Terror

6.C. Spirit Certain of Itself: Morality

a. The Moral World-View

b. Misrepresentation

c. Conscience; the Beautiful Soul: Evil and its Forgiveness

7 Religion

7.A. Natural Religion

a. The Divine Light

b. Plant & Animal

c. The Artificer

7.B. Art-Religion

a. The Abstract Artwork

b. The Living Artwork

c. The Spiritual Artwork

7.C. Manifest Religion

8 Absolute Knowledge

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Métaphysique
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Movements
• Modern
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology
• Modern history
• Existentialism
• History
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268103521
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Phenomenology of Spirit
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
--------
G. W. F. HEGEL
Translated by Peter Fuss and John Dobbins
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945179
ISBN: 978-0-268-10349-1 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10350-7 (Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-268-10351-4 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10352-1 (Epub)
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
To our students at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, who suffered through many of our drafts and helped us more than they could know.
The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Translators’ Introduction
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
Preface
Introduction
CHAPTER I. Sense-Certainty: The This and Meaning
CHAPTER II. Perception: Things and Illusoriness
CHAPTER III. Force and Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensuous World
CHAPTER IV. Self-Certainty’s Truth
IV.A. Self-Consciousness Dependent and Independent: Mastery and Servitude
IV.B. The Freedom of Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness
CHAPTER V. Reason: Its Certainty and Its Truth
V.A. Observational Reason
a. Observation of Nature
b. Observation of Self-Consciousness in Its Purity and in Its Relation to External Reality: Logical and Psychological Laws
c. Observation of the Relation of Self-Consciousness to Its Immediate Matter-of-Fact Reality: Physiognomy and Phrenology
V.B. The Self-Actualization of Rational Self-Consciousness
a. Pleasure and Necessity
b. The Law of the Heart and Arrogance Run Amok
c.Virtue and the Way of the World
V.C. Individuality That Deems Itself to Be Self-Containedly Real and Realistically Self-Oriented
a. A Realm of Intelligent Animals and Deceit: The Abiding Concern
b. Reason as Lawgiver
c. Reason That Puts Laws to the Test
CHAPTER VI. Spirit
VI.A. Pristine Spirit: The Ethical Way of Life
a. The Ethical World: Human and Divine Law, Man and Woman
b. Ethical Action: Knowledge Human and Divine, Guilt and Destiny
c. Legal Status
VI.B. Self-Estranged Spirit: Culture
1. The World of Self-Estranged Spirit
a. Culture and Its Realm of Actuality
b. Faith and Pure Insight
2. Enlightenment
a. Enlightenment’s Struggle with Superstition
b. The Truth of Enlightenment
3. Total Freedom and Terror
VI.C. Spirit Certain of Itself: Morality
a. The Moral World-View
b. Misrepresentation
c. Conscience; the Beautiful Soul: Evil and Its Forgiveness
CHAPTER VII. Religion
VII.A. Natural Religion
a. The Divine Light
b. Plant and Animal
c. The Artificer
VII.B. Art-Religion
a. Abstract Artwork
b. Living Artwork
c. Spiritual Artwork
VII.C. Manifest Religion
CHAPTER VIII. Absolute Knowing
Conceptual and Topical Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We’ve learned much from our predecessors, in particular the pioneering and thoughtful Baillie, but also Hyppolite and Miller. What they experienced taught us early on what we were letting ourselves in for. Special gratitude goes to the acute readers of all or portions of our manuscript as it evolved across four decades: H. S. Harris, J. G. A. Pocock, Tamara Yamamoto, Steven S. Schwarzschild, Timothy Lambert, Geoff Lambert, Patrick Murray, Jeanne Schuler, Henry Shapiro, and Kristin Akey. Ongoing encouragement came from the late Richard Popkin. And of course we have profited from the labors of an ever-enlarging legion of Hegel scholars, no less when we didn’t in the end see things as they do. Finally, we are grateful to the University of Missouri–St. Louis for substantial financial assistance when it was needed most, during the project’s initial stages.
TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit examines the course of experience in progress from ephemeral matter-of-fact appearance, through mounting evidence of an underlying coherency, to a comprehensive result so critically thought through that the inner logical dynamic of the real is manifest. In the preface of his book Hegel says (in paragraph 12, using the word ‘expression’ in its older sense of pressing or compelling out into the open): “The power of spirit [ Geist ] is only as great as its expression, its depth only as deep as it dares to extend and expend itself in disclosing what it is.” And in his lectures entitled The History of Philosophy 1 he writes that “Spirit is absolute genus,” that is, wholly a principle of generation—which is why he doesn’t treat Geist as a logical or ontological category, it being neither a metaphysical nor classificatory universal. Rather is it a term used not just to explain but to tease out the animating principle pervading all modes of activity. Spirit thus includes for instance the subject of a given predicate, that is, the thinking behind a judgment leading to a decision to act, or on the other hand the brute logic integral to some matter-of-fact phenomenon (a logic perceived and grasped only by a subject observing it).
‘Spirit’ is the word Hegel chooses to epitomize the intelligible dynamism at work in everything, and, as ultimately becomes clear, it is virtually synonymous with conceptual experience, both as met with in conceptualizing as such and in the objectively conceptual nature integral to—indeed constitutive of—the logical dynamic of all actual reality. Each of the two is in its own way a demonstration of the other, there being no move that spirit/mind can make in its conceptualizing, whether rational or unrealistic, that isn’t an instance of the natural processes of organic functioning, and there being no phenomenon of nature, however chaotic (including the historical facts of human nature at its most irrational), that isn’t logically comprehensible. (Consider Spinoza’s concise yet sweeping proposition vii in book 2 of his Ethics : “The order and interconnectedness of ideas is the same as the order and interconnectedness of things.” 2 )
Like Platonic dialogue, Hegelian phenomenology leads to an appreciation of the wholeness of thought coming to terms with the fullness of life. Students of Hegel (scholars included), weaned on treatises, tend to expect something other than what he gives them, and end up missing the artistry with which he gets inside phenomena. Critics keen on demolishing what they construe as dogmatic assertions in Hegel’s work—whereas what he’s actually offering are telltale self-disclosures from within the phenomena he’s examining—would do well to ponder an idea he presented at the outset (preface paragraph 28), namely that refuting a fundamental proposition or principle doesn’t just consist in exposing deficiency, but to be thoroughgoing should be derived or developed from the principle itself rather than from extraneous counterassertions. For then the refutation would actually be remedying the deficiency and developing the principle to adequacy. As he later noted: “True refutation has to engage the opponent’s strength and situate itself within the ambit of his power.” 3
The ever-present protagonist of Hegel’s Phenomenology is human consciousness, which by nature is recurrently inchoate and (as Melville would say) needing to subtilize itself—having thus to develop through successive self-embodiments to attain its full potential for self-clarity. But while broadly retracing some of the more memorable developments of Western culture, this book isn’t a historical analysis or commentary, nor even an examination of intellectual history. The collapse of the commonsense world, the convoluted path that consciousness in servility takes toward emancipating itself, the successive implosions of scientific reductionism, the anything-but-smooth evolution of culture (from the ethical community of Antigone, through Enlightenment’s conflict with Faith, and the still unresolved sociopolitical paradoxes left in the wake of the French Revolution, to the Kantian moral world-view)—these and such other historical moments as Hegel chooses to examine are best understood as paradigms: conspicuous examples of failure and success as our species, goaded by its own critical imagination, successively surmounts natural and self-imposed thresholds of oblivion.
Hegelian phenomenology is among other things the correction of a long-standing error: equating appearance with illusion. As was once said, the apparent has a parent, and that parent is the real—or as Kant put it in another context, there cannot be an appearance without something that’s actually appearing. For Hegel, appearances are essences-in-waiting, silently petitioning the mind to extract them: “the essence must appear,” in other words cannot but appear (or as Shakespeare might have put it, “the essence will out”). In keeping with the inscription from Einstein cited above, we might summarize Hegel’s venture by inverting the thrust of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: As a given phenomenon is being conceptualized, its noumenal latency begins vanishing—the last trace of which is that phenomenon’s manifest essence.
If there’s a discipline other than philosophical attentiveness to appearances that’s to be found recurrently in the Phenomenology , it is psychoanalysis, or perhaps better psyche-analysis. Our psyches balk at, as often as they embrace, reasonableness, and Hegel’s focus is constantly on the trials and tribulations of consciousness as it emerges from its most simplistic and evolves toward its more nuanced forms. En route he engages consciousness’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity for confusion and error, self-deception and self-deceived manipulation of others, forgetfulness both willful and “unconscious” (not infrequently neurotic or sociopathic), lordly grandiosity and arrogance alternating with ludicrous self-abasement and self-contempt—and for bogging down in a slue of wrong-hea