Customer Reviews

Phenomenology of Spirit

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

It doesn't make any sense to rate this work at anything less than 5 stars, since it's one of the most influential works of the last 200 years. It was written in 1806, and it is Hegel's attempt to demonstrate the systematic way in which human experience develops, from its simplest roots in sensory life to its highest fulfilment in scientific, political and religious experience. This was a work that took Kant's revolutionary insights and produced a new philosophy of the human person that prefigured the developments of Marx, Freud, existentialism, deconstruction and so on. Human experience is here understood in a rigorously anti-reductive way: Hegel will not allow meaningful dimensions of human experience to be ignored in the way that they typically are in too-facile theories of experience (like sense-data empiricism, physicalist reductionism, possessive individualism, etc.). Experience is also understood dynamically: because of its own internal reason, experience develops into progressively more complex forms. It is a masterful work, and it takes years of serious study to master this book. It is a very difficult book to work with, because it is written in a very daunting manner, which means it is not realistic to imagine reading it outside of a university course in which someone can lead you into the reading of Hegel's phenomenology. This translation by Miller is also imperfect. This translation was meant as an improvement to the older Baillie translation but, while this one is marginally more "literal," it does not do as good a job as Baillie at communicating the sense of what's being said. If you can only have one translation, this is probably the better choice, but if you are studying the book seriously, I highly recommend hunting down a copy of Baillie's translation as well.

For over 180 years students have complained that Hegel's best-known book of philosophy, the PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND (alias PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT), is too difficult to read. A few have tried to summarize Hegel's book, and often their summaries were longer than the original, and just as difficult to read.

The PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND is a study of appearances, images and illusions throughout the history of human consciousness. More specifically, Hegel presents the evolution of consciousness. Hegel traces the evolution of consciousness from savage and barbaric forms. Hegel's aim was to set forth a philosophical system so comprehensive that it would encompass the ideas of his predecessors and create a conceptual framework in terms of which both the past and future could be philosophically understood. Such an aim would require nothing short of a full account of reality itself. Thus, Hegel conceived the subject matter of philosophy to be reality as a whole. This reality, or the total developmental process of everything that is, he referred to as the Absolute, or Absolute Spirit. According to Hegel, the task of philosophy is to chart the development of Absolute Spirit. This involves (1) making clear the internal rational structure of the Absolute; (2) demonstrating the manner in which the Absolute manifests itself in nature and human history; and (3) explicating the teleological nature of the Absolute, that is, showing the end or purpose toward which the Absolute is directed. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel's thought has been analyzed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The goal of the dialectical cosmic process can be most clearly understood at the level of reason. As finite reason progresses in understanding, the Absolute progresses toward full self-knowledge. Indeed, the Absolute comes to know itself through the human mind's increased understanding of reality, or the Absolute. Hegel analyzed this human progression in understanding in terms of three levels: art, religion, and philosophy.

At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. The extensive and diverse impact of Hegel's ideas on subsequent philosophy is evidence of the remarkable range and the extraordinary depth of his thought, this book is a masterpiece!

Let me start by addressing some misconceptions you'll see as you roam around these reviews.
First of all, there are a couple of low reviews that refer to Hegel as being "anti-reason," "anti-truth," a socialist, a collectivist, etc. These are written by Objectivists - followers of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand has about the same relationship to serious philosophy as McDonalds does to good cooking. She hated Hegel (as all who consciously or unconsciously know they do not have sufficient intelligence to understand him), but never quite seemed to understand him. No surprise - he's hard.
Which is the second point. This is not an easy book at all. That's why it's most often assigned to graduate students. Even undergrads can easily get a philosophy degree without ever touching this book. It's bloody hard. This is because, well, its ideas are radical and difficult, and because Hegel is a careful philosopher.
It is not, and this is my third point, because Hegel is a bad writer. Quite the opposite. He's a great writer. The fact of the matter is, though, that his subject matter is not exactly a page-turner. But, I mean, what do you expect. You're reading academic philosophy. There are a handful of academic books that are both worthwhile and fun to read, and that's just a fact of life. Hegel, however, is quite clear - indeed, believe it or not, his style is didactical! (As another reviewer pointed out). Unfortunately, it's all too common on Amazon to bash academic books because they're (supposedly) hard, obscure, or poorly written. The fact of the matter is that these books are not for everyone. They're for specialists and scholars (or enlightened auto-didacts), and are written in a language that is appropriately technical to that task. You don't go and bash medical and scientific books for being too hard for you. Give philosophy a break, and recognize this book as what it is - one of the most important contributions to a scholarly field ever

The following comments pertain to the Miller translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit published by Oxford University Press. Arguably the Phenomenology is one of the most significant works in modern philosophy, certainly in German idealism. While clearly an important work, even by the arcane standards of German idealism it is a difficult read for the non-Hegelian. And, can be nearly impenetrable if approached without the assistance of a skilled guide (or two). The following comments are limited to the respective quality of the Oxford University Press edition, and, to offer some potential resources that may be helpful for readers new to Hegel.

First. In addition to the text of the Phenomenology a foreword and para by para commentary by Findlay is also included. Though he is a capable thinker, Findlay's commentary is rather terse and may be of limited help to first time readers. From a physical stand point, while the font is of an adequate size, the margins are relatively small and not conducive to copious note making.

Second. With regard to additional resources, Robert Stern's commentary in the Routledge Philosophy Guidebook series is quite good as a starting. It is readable, short, and clear - not overly laden with technical jargon and its citations are referenced to the Miller translation. A modest drawback to Stern is the lack of a glossary. Hegelian terminology can be difficult and some assistance in this regard would be useful. More advanced students may wish to augment Stern with a more detailed commentary from the likes of Harris, Hyppolite or Lauer.

Third. J. Bernstein has a wonderful yearlong graduate-level course discussing the Phenomenology available on-line for no cost at BernsteinTapes.com. Kudos to the folks who have made this available it is an outstanding resource.

Overall, this is a solid version of the Phenomenology that offers good value to the purchaser.

This work by Hegel is a masterpiece but the Miller translation is awful. The rendition by Bailee (a 19th century British interpreter of Hegel) is far superior. Why you ask? Well, the Bailee translation captures the lyrical flavor of Hegel's highly belabored prose while Miller is content to chop and pulvrerize and parse into totally incomprehensible short-range English sentences Hegel's adventurous and self-involved prose.

Don't get me wrong. When I was much younger (circa 1980) I welcomed Miller's translation (I like his rendition of Hegel's 'larger' Science of Logic, with a co-translator). But the Phenomenology by Miller is simply completely unintelligible. (Even with the end-notes--opacity raised to the 3rd power!). Hegel's Phenomenology is a work of allusion, or if you like 'description,'not epistemological clarification, or explication, like Kant's Critique. So, don't be fooled by a newer translation. Good luck!

However, should you decide to focus only on the famous Preface do obtain W. Kaufmann's excellent translation.

In spite of the difficulty, this is a very important book. In terms of scope and level of insight it is almost without parallel in the history of philosophy. The rigor and importance and originality of Hegel's project is matched only by that of Plato and Aristotle, among the ancients, and Kant (possibly also Descartes), among the moderns.

This is primarily a work in epistemology -- though it covers a much broader range of topics than contemporary works in the theory of knowledge -- a book that asks, like the Meditations of Descartes, how we can know anything at all. The argument begins with an investigation of the experiential basis of objective knowledge, and proceeds to show that our experience of objects is rooted in our understanding of ourselves and that this is inseparable from our relationships with other people. To have knowledge is to subject one's own thinking to a systematic and comprehensive scrutiny, and this is only possible given that we are social beings, having arrived at a point in history where we can reflect self-critically upon the ways in which we have claimed to know the world. The text aims to show the interconnections between a wide range of social and historical or institutional forms of knowing and acting, and concludes with a demonstration that thinking is inseparable from the intersubjective and socialized formations of reality it aims to describe (and that the history of these formations is essentially a history of the thinking that gave rise to them, i.e. that "thinking and being are one").

This translation is the standard one, and is indispensable for serious readers of Hegel (especially given that the paragraph numbers in this translation are what Hegel scholars use as the standard way to refer to Hegel passages for English readers). Miller does make some unfortunate choices, the most obvious being his decision to translate Hegel's "Begriff" as the vague and subjective term "notion" rather than as "concept." He occasionally leaves out important words that can change the sense of a sentence, and glosses over important distinctions such as the distinction Hegel makes between "individuality" (Individualitaet) and "particularity" (Besonderheit) and "singularity" (Einzelnheit). On the whole, though, this is a faithful translation and you could get quite far in your understanding of Hegel using this book alone -- though it is not really advisable to approach this book on your own: take a class or, after grappling with the text a bit, read a commentary (my favorite is John Russon's Reading Hegel's Phenomenology -- a book I have also reviewed).

A professor once told me that nearly every major work of philosophy since the time of the Greeks could be pared down to one small pamphlet. The rest is filler. He said this with the exception of Hegel. I disagreed with him about a few more exceptions but I very much agree about Hegel. His works are long and complex but they are digesting a subject that is in itself long and complicated. The nature of human existence(metaphysics) is one that cannot be trimmed down neatly or explained in the language of a children's book. Hegel is very difficult to read, I understand that very well. Hegel himself said that only one person ever understood what he had to say. The works of Joyce, Faulkner and Woolf are also difficult to digest at times but what a sad state literature would be without them. Anyone who dismisses this work without regard is simply stating that they cannot understand it. And rather than say that, they mask their ignorance by attacking the book. Every major new artistic and philosophical movement was approached this way by those who were in the status quo. I had trouble the first time I read this book, but it was more than worth that trouble. Dialectics is one of the most fascinating and important philosophical movements that has ever come along. Most people skip straight to Marx who took Hegel's philosophy and created his own theories. I would however, highly recommend that you read this first and then move on to Marx. Hegel's solving of classical problems in philosophy is outstanding and this book is a must read for anyone interested in philosophy. Don't listen to those who guise their ignorance with attack at this book. It is well worth the time.

I had the great pleasure of taking a class on German Idealism where the teacher was a Hegel scholar. During those lectures the book seemed to be impossible to understand. It was ungainly and unweidly. Even a bit of understanding of German couldn't help me pierce this titanic work.

"Spirit" lacked the naive elegance of Descartes, the roots appeal of the Greeks, and the ominous quality of Deconstructionism. It was a boulder sized work making what, at the time, seemed like trivial improvements/updates to Kant.

Yet, I've only truly come to appreciate his gift in the light of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, French Existentialism, Habermas, Husserl...the list goes on. He was the architect of phenomenology, of the dialectic solution, of the vision of mankind transcending mind.

When one speaks of Hegel, one feels a Beethoven-like phraseology, a fluidity of verse and composition. When you consent to give your attention to Hegel give it wholly. He is a tour guide to a tidal wave of optimism, revolution, and a new type of man. Don't pick him apart like a Bach fugue, let the brazen brass of his Chorale like battle sweep your resistance away.

While the work ends in an absurdly upbeat way, it was a fascinating way to end philosophy. His dialected created a whole new phenomenal world in which the rest of philosophy would have to play.

It is a challenge, a terror, and a masterpiece.

I've not described the book as a philosopher should. I've described it as it ought be read - passionately, violently, and deafeningly brave.

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 the twenty-first century.

What is the Phen. of Spirit about? Essentially it is Hegel's answer to Kant and his strong disagreement with Kant's unwillingness or inability to close the gap between the subject and the so called "thing in itself" (the "truth" of any external object). Kant developed an epistemology that argued for certain conditions in order for any object to be experienced. These included the "pure" forms of intuition (space and time), which are, by Kant's account, inside of us and imposed by the mind on sensation (they may or may not be also real, we don't and can't know), the pure categories of the understanding- logical constructs such as cause and effect we impose on experience in order to have any coherent experience at all and the transcendental unity of apperception (understanding that my manifold of experience is "mine"- a non-reflective sense of subjective ego- not who I am or anything about "me" but simply an innate "sense" of continuity of experience, of personal subjectivity). We create our experience through judgments of the understanding by marrying the categories of understanding with our sensations, both altered by the pure forms of intuition and we understand this as our own unique experience through apperception. This then is our reality. These transcendental elements of experience are beyond and prior to (constitutive of) direct experience and understood by us only indirectly through logic.

Hegel objected to Kant's dualism of the subject who "creates" the world of experience and the unknowable "object" of experience (that is, the objective truth of that object). Since Kant left it there without any hope of grasping "reality" (the reality we know is intersubjectively true because we all think the same way but we have no idea if that is the reality of God who can see things intuitively as they really are) he was widely felt by the next generation of German philosophers (who had grown up in reverence to his philosophy) to have only come half way.

Hegel approached the goal by emphasizing the subject as the determinant of any truth statement. The self conscious subject (a form of "Spirit" when combined with like thinking self-conscious subjects in a community of belief) does have the Kantian experience conditions of categories (notions to Hegel) that he/she applies to external objects of sensation (although not the pure forms of intuition) and the element of "self-consciousness", the transcendental unity of apperception of Kant, emphasized by Hegel to the point of being the pivot to forming truth statements. Hegel also apporopriates Kant's "pure reason", a feature that for Kant is only "regulative" and not constitutive of experience (reason, for Kant, is at play in the fields of the Lord so to speak and engaged in manipulation of the pure categories of the understanding to create ideas of theory that, disconnected from the input of the senses, do not apply to actual experience and so do not directly further our knowledge of reality ). In Hegel's view reason is the key element of self-consciousness that moves our evolving understanding of truth.
The book examines various immediate epistemic positions such as "sense certainty" etc. and, using the Hegelian dialectic, that is, examining how the idea matches up with itself in a test of internal consistency to determine if it has done what it sets out to do or explain what it sets out to explain, finds each of these logically inadequate to provide us with an account of the "truth" of external reality. Finding these empiric or realist positions to be untenable he proceeds to "self consciousness" or Spirit and examines how, through history, forms of consciousness, and the grounds they have used to support their beliefs, have matched up with this test of internal consistency. Hegel begins anew with his dialectic in an examination of self consciousness and we seem to see a pattern of forms of consciousness developing grounds for belief that are more and more effective. The "self", in its desire and grasping for purchase in the world defines the external world (and importantly other consciousness) in terms of its own making (notions). Like a form of epistemic evolution, those definitions that work best are selected and others discarded over time. The conditions of experience, immutable for Kant, are subject to change according to Hegel as the successive forms of spirit work through something like his dialectic and finally come to the Absolute, the final Notion that provides us with reality. Not a divine metaphysical reality but the achievement of human self-consciousness in finally reaching a point where its transcendental notions define the truth of the objective world in a way that best satisfies the needs of (social)consciousness. This then provides a closing of the subjective-objective divide that Kant was never able to bridge. Hegel, a firm idealist, never argues that we have the means to go beyond the conditional limitations Kant described but rather that what objective truth is for us is defined by the best set of beliefs about it that serves to satisfy our innate desires and requirements. A very speculative philosophy but certainly not outside the realm of reasonable possibility.