Phenomenology of Spirit

“The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development.”

This statement represents the core of Hegel’s concept of absolute knowing. Truth can be found through the examination of consciousness and its connection to the external world, or object. However, Hegel is not asserting that truth is concrete or final. Instead, it is constantly evolving and changing.

“The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.”

Although Hegel begins by suggesting that he will not follow in the philosophical tradition of explaining how his work fits into the canon of philosophical thought or refuting specific arguments, his theory does challenge innatism or the priori, popular epistemological principles. In this passage, Hegel asserts that it is not enough to simply accept ideas because they are familiar or because they feel innate. Instead, one must use a scientific system to uncover and unify contradiction.

“For it is not the refraction of the ray, but the ray itself whereby truth reaches us, that is cognition; and if this were removed, all that would be indicated would be a pure direction or a blank space.”

This quote emphasizes Hegel’s devotion to action and intention. He deviates from those philosophers who suggest that human cognition and knowledge are endowed by the divine. Instead, Hegel proposes that cognition is a tool for the construction of reality through experience: If cognition is taken away, then reality ceases to exist.

“From this standpoint it can be regarded as a path of the natural consciousness which presses forward to true knowledge; or as the way of the Soul which journeys through the series of its own configurations as though they were stations appointed for it by its own nature.”

This sentence represents the heart of the theme The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness. Rather than viewing consciousness as a singular act of cognition, Hegel views it as a bloom that slowly unfolds, each petal leading to the other in a slow process of emergence. Throughout the text, he explores individual and collective consciousness and shows how both contribute to self-actualization.

“For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content.”

Hegel’s triadic forms emphasis antithesis, or negation, as a necessary step toward elevated consciousness. Basic forms of cognition require the recognition that there is a distinction between the self and the object. Sense is made from this distinction, and universalities are developed when negations and similarities are shared.

“The question must therefore be considered whether in sense-certainty itself the object is in fact the kind of essence that sense-certainty proclaims it to be.”

Some philosophers suggest that sensory learning is the truest form of conscious experience. Hegel argues that sensory experience is a lowly form of human consciousness, viewing it as one of the most basic building blocks of cognition. To move forward in The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness, the individual must move past sense-certainty toward perception.

“With the emergence of the principle, the two moments which in their appearing merely occur, also come into being: one being the movement of point-out or the act of perceiving, the other being the same movement as a simple event or the object perceived.”

Hegel challenges innate knowledge by following his peers in their interpretation of knowledge as a result of the interaction between human consciousness and experience. Perceiving is a fundamental and basic tool of cognition, which focuses on negation and distinction between the subject and object. Self-consciousness occurs when the individual recognizes that this act of perceiving is taking place.

“Since the object is the True and universal, the self-identical, while consciousness is alterable and unessential, it can happen that consciousness apprehends the object incorrectly and deceives itself.”

Variations of German idealism emphasize the role of individual experience and cognition in the making of the exterior world. In this passage, Hegel explains that—while the external object is reality—humans can never surpass their own making of reality through individual cognition. In other words, the world is what people make of it. Due to this limitation, human consciousness has different levels and continuously makes mistakes in understanding.

“The Understanding, which is our object, finds itself in just this position, that the inner world has come into being for it, to begin with, only as the universal, still unfilled, in-itself.”

Hegel’s work builds in levels of understanding through The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness. In Chapter 3, he examines understanding as a simple tool of cognition. Initial understanding involves the recognition that the other, anything that is not the self, does not merely exist for the individual. Rather, objects are things in-itself, independent of a singular person’s experience.

“Self-consciousness exhibits itself as the movement in which this antithesis is removed and the identity of itself with itself becomes explicit for it.”

Early forms of consciousness are engaged in a constant struggle between trying to understand the self and trying to understand the true essence of the exterior world. Through distinction and negation, self-consciousness emerges, revealing that the self is separate from the object and, therefore, has an individual identity.

“Self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself. This has a twofold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other for it does not see the other as an essential being.”

One of the most basic forms of conflict that all humans face is encountering the other. The lord-bondsman dialectic illustrates the power struggle that occurs when two self-consciousnesses attempt to make sense of one another. Hegel proposes that the relationship of power and submission is interdependent. A more elevated tier of consciousness engages both parties in a spirit of mutuality—each sees the self in the other.

“The manifold self-differentiating expanse of life, with all its detail and complexity, is the object on which desire and work operate.”

In basic forms of self-consciousness, humans operate through desire and pleasure. In this passage, Hegel draws a contrast between the limited scope of human consciousness and the complexity of the object—external reality and truth.

“Reason sets to work to know the truth, to find in the form of a Notion that which, for ‘meaning’ and ‘perceiving’, is a Thing; i.e. it seeks to possess in thinghood the consciousness only of itself.”

As Hegel explores The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness, he draws attention to how both consciousness and reason grow over time. Reason transcends initial observation and perception. Observation passively takes in information about the subject, but reason sees the “I” in the subject.

“In his own self, therefore, there emerges the antithesis, this duality of being the movement of consciousness, and the fixed being of an appearing actuality, an actuality which in the individual is immediately his own.”

This passage is just one example of Hegel’s use of the triadic form. Here, he uses the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model developed by Fichte (See: Index of Terms). Hegel views all forms of consciousness as processes of this model. The antithesis reveals conflict and tension, while a movement to a higher level of consciousness always reconciles this conflict through synthesis.

“Reason, in the role of observer thus turns to this wisdom, turns to Spirit, to the Notion, existing as a universality, or to purpose existing as purpose; and henceforth the object before it is its own essence.”

In this chapter, the role of observation changes and moves beyond mere perception and sensory experience. With reason, observation has an aim to make meaning of the cognitive object. It watches to learn rather than passively taking in information. This concept of observation contributes to The Science of Logic and Absolute Knowing, playing a key role in the development of a system of science which can be applied to human consciousness.

“Instead of the heavenly-seeming Spirit of the universality of knowledge and action in which the feeling and enjoyment of individuality are stilled, there has entered into it the Spirit of the earth, for which true actuality is merely that being which is the actuality of the individual consciousness.”

In his discussion of reason, Hegel argues that all humans are driven by desire. Before they reach Spirit—a level of collective consciousness—they must grapple with their own desires and struggles for power. Individual consciousness, as described in this quote, is focused on pleasure for the self rather than pleasure for others. In later chapters, Hegel explores how a more elevated level of consciousness involves the mutuality of self and other.

“Action is in its own self its truth and reality, and individuality in its setting-forth or expression is, in relation to action, the End and for itself.”

This passage proposes that ethical actions are indicative of the true state of consciousness: In short, people are what they do. Hegel turns this inward by suggesting that people do not really know themselves until they act and then reflect upon their actions. This theory by Hegel reflects several influences, including Fichte’s argument that all activity is inherently social.

“Spirit is the ethical life of a nation in so far as it is the immediate truth—the individual that is the world.”

Hegel’s theory of The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness follows an interesting path. First, the individual confronts their own distinction between the external world and makes meaning through negation and reason. Then, the individual recognizes itself as part of Spirit, a collective consciousness made up of a group of people. As he moves through religion and absolute knowing, Hegel then suggests that the most elevated form of consciousness is a return to self-awareness and self-knowing. Throughout the text, Hegel plays with the interior and exterior experience as components to human consciousness.

“It is in knowing that the law of his own heart is the law of all hearts, in knowing the consciousness of the self as the acknowledged universal order; it is virtue, which enjoys the fruits of sacrifice, which brings about what it sets out to do.”

Hegel proposes that when human law merges with divine law, then consciousness is elevated. In this passage, he describes a relationship between individual ethical consciousness and collective communal consciousness. When the two are in alignment, humans experience happy consciousness.

“This Spirit constructs for itself not merely a world, but a world that is double, divided and self-opposed.”

Hegel’s discussion of Self-Awareness and the Spirit emphasizes that, even within Spirit, there are levels of consciousness at play. As people live and work together in communities, they engage with both unity and division. Hegel argues that mutuality and unity are a higher tier of collective consciousness.

“The self-knowing Spirit is, in religion, immediately its own pure self-consciousness.”

The structure of Phenomenology of Spirit mirrors Hegel’s development of the theme The Evolution of Truth and Consciousness. He details different levels of consciousness, moving from sensory experience to reason to Spirit to religion. The movement from one level to the other requires self-awareness. Here, Hegel argues that when the collective Spirit begins to become conscious of itself as a substance, it then connects to the divine through religious consciousness.

“The dead divine Man or human God is in himself the universal self-consciousness.”

As Hegel explores deeper levels of consciousness, his arguments become more convoluted. In this passage, he equates collective human consciousness with the self-consciousness of the divine. Liberal interpretations of Hegel’s writing conclude that he sought a science of logic that was independent of a spiritual God and that he believed humans could reach a level of self-awareness that was equal to the divine.

“It does truly become a spiritual being for consciousness when each of its individual determinations is grasped as a determination of the Self, or through the spiritual relationship to them.”

Hegel develops a theory of spirituality that equates the individual with the divine through Self-Awareness and the Spirit. When humans understand how the external world—including divine reality—is connected to the self and phenomenology, then they achieve a new state of consciousness called absolute knowing.