Summary: The Phenomenology of Spirit (page 7)

Since the time of Spinoza, monisms—theories which hold that All is One—have been regarded with suspicion, as they are thought to lead to pantheism, and thus to atheism. Hegel reassures any potential critics on this point—and avoids censorship—by showing that one can conceive a form of monism that preserves the idea of God. It suffices to define the Whole not merely as substance, but as spirit:

To conceive God as the one substance offended the age in which this definition […] was first articulated; the reason […] lay in the instinct that self-consciousness was not preserved in it, but had simply been submerged. ¹

It is important to note, however, that Hegel is not opposing substance to spirit—that would remain within the framework of dualism, incapable of synthesising two contrary terms. On the contrary, Hegel defines the true, the Absolute, as follows: It is spiritual substance.

In fact, Hegel does not claim originality in defining the Absolute as spirit. He attributes this decisive insight to Christianity, which, in his view, constitutes the truth of its age: The Absolute as spirit: the most sublime of all concepts, and one that rightly belongs to the modern age and to its religion.

Truth, as we have seen, is concrete—and only the spiritual is actual. Everything else is abstract—merely a determination of spirit that has been separated from it by abstraction.

We may now recentre our interpretation around this key notion of spirit. At the beginning of our explanation, we said that Hegel's project is to examine the various successive forms that truth may assume. We can now reformulate this more precisely: what we are really investigating are the various shapes that spirit takes through history in its dialectical becoming.

In truth, the two things are inseparable: truth is that which appears as truth to a spirit—or, put differently, there is no truth without a spirit that discovers it. To speak of the successive forms of truth is, in fact, to speak of the successive forms that spirit itself takes in its quest for truth.

And since Spirit is the Whole—the Absolute, the One in 'All is One'—we may offer this final formulation: the aim here is to describe the successive forms that spirit takes in its quest to know the truth of what it is.

To accomplish this, spirit must appear to itself—in other words, it must become conscious of itself. A fundamental link thus emerges between consciousness and spirit.

At first, spirit is only in itself (an sich): it is what it is, without knowing itself as such.

Gradually, spirit becomes conscious of itself—it comes to appear to itself. At first this self-consciousness is imperfect; spirit is thus led through a series of successive figures, in which it gradually clarifies and deepens its self-understanding.

Hegel calls this reflexive process for-itself (für sich). For him, consciousness and for-itself are synonymous.

But this consciousness has not yet risen to the dignity of science. One can be aware of a phenomenon without fully understanding it. When we attain an absolute and systematic knowledge of the unfolding of spirit throughout history, we reach the stage of the in-itself for-itself (an und für sich), which synthesises the two preceding moments—the stage of science:

Only the spiritual is actual; it is essence, or that which is in itself […] or again, it is in-itself and for-itself. But at first, it is in-itself and for-itself only for us […] It must also be this for itself—it must be the knowledge of the spiritual and the knowledge of itself as spirit; that is to say, it must have the status of object for itself, but in such a way that the object is also immediately its mediated object—in other words, an object that is abolished, reflected into itself […]. Spirit, thus developed and knowing itself as spirit, is science. Science is its actuality and the kingdom it builds for itself in its own element.

To summarise, we must distinguish between what a thing is (in-itself), the consciousness one has of it (for-itself), and the scientific knowledge that may be built upon it (in-itself for-itself). The latter both transcends and includes the two earlier stages. Thus, science must include consciousness, otherwise it is merely in-itself, and not truly spirit—it is only spiritual substance. This in-itself must manifest itself and become for-itself. For this reason, science must posit self-consciousness as one with itself.

This is a long process that takes time: in order to complete it, knowledge assumes different forms, and spirit passes through various figures. This is why there is a becoming of knowledge.

We can now grasp the project of the work—the meaning of a Phenomenology of Spirit:

It is this becoming of science in general, or of knowledge, that the present Phenomenology of Spirit [as the first part of its system] sets out to present.

We are now in a better position to understand the meaning of the title of the book we are studying. What does it mean to undertake a Phenomenology of Spirit?

To understand this, we must turn to the end of the book. In the final chapter, devoted to Absolute Knowing, Hegel observes that nothing is known that is not in experience, or again: Nothing is known that is not already present as a truth that is felt.

Here, in the preface, this idea is summarised as follows: Consciousness knows and understands nothing other than what is in its experience.

A clear project now emerges: we must attempt to describe what consciousness experiences—what appears to it in its progressive development.

This is moreover precisely the project that would later be taken up by the phenomenologists (in the strict, or 'orthodox', sense), such as Husserl.

Now, what appears—appearance itself—is what philosophy calls a phenomenon, from the Greek phainomenon (appearance). The study or science (logos) of such phenomena is phenomenology.

And so the study of the successive forms in which Spirit appears to itself, experiences itself, becomes conscious of itself—this is the Phenomenology of Spirit.

This book therefore sets out to present the successive stages of the development of spirit as it becomes what it truly is:

Spirit unfolds and organises its various moments; all of them appear as figures of consciousness. The science of this path is the science of the experience that consciousness undergoes.

We now better understand the links between these elements—phenomenon, experience, consciousness, and spirit—and why Hegel chose such a title for his work.

To summarise: it is because nothing is known that is not in experience that one must present a science of the experience undergone by consciousness, and therefore write a Phenomenology of Spirit.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Hegel: A Close Reading