Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger

       Introduction

       The Task of the Phenomenology of Spirit as the First Part of the System of Science

      The following lecture course is an interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. By discussing the title of this work in its various versions, we shall provide ourselves with a necessarily preliminary understanding of the work. Then, bypassing the lengthy preface and introduction, we shall begin with the interpretation at that place where the matter itself begins.

      Phenomenology of Spirit, the current title of the work, is certainly not the original title. It became the definitive title for the work only after it was used in the complete edition of Hegel’s works, published by his friends from 1832 onward, following immediately after his death. Phenomenology of Spirit is the second volume of the Complete Works and was published in 1832. Johannes Schulze, the editor, reports in his foreword that at the time of his sudden death, Hegel was himself preparing a new edition. For what purpose and in what manner this was a new edition can be gleaned from that foreword.¹

      The Phenomenology of Spirit appeared for the first time in 1807 with the title System of Science: Part One, The Phenomenology of Spirit. The work is thereby given a principal and comprehensive title: System of Science. The Phenomenology is attached to this system and ordered under it. Thus, the content of the work can be grasped only by considering this inner task, which—on the surface—consisted in being the first item in and for the system.

§1. The system of the phenomenology and of the encyclopedia

      To what extent does the system of science require the Phenomenology of Spirit as its first part? What does this subtitle mean? Before we answer this question, we must recall that this subtitle, which later became the only title of the work, is not the complete title. Rather, the complete title of the work initially read: System of Science: Part One, Science of the Experience of Consciousness. The subtitle Science of the Experience of Consciousness was then turned into Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit, out of which grew the abbreviated and familiar title Phenomenology of Spirit.

      In discussing the title, we must obviously stay with the most complete version of it, which appeared in two forms, both of which say the same thing in different ways. From the most complete title, it can be inferred that the first part of the system of science is itself science: it makes up “the first part of science.”¹ What is peculiar about this first part should become clearer when we compare it with the second part. But aside from this first part, no other part of the system of science ever appeared.

      However, soon after the appearance of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807, Hegel began publishing a work known as the Logic. The first volume of this work appeared in 1812/13, and the second volume in 1816. But the Logic did not appear as the second part of the system of science. Or is this Logic, in accord with the matter at issue therein, the remaining second part of the system? Yes and no. Yes, insofar as the complete title of the Logic also indicates a connection with the System of Science. The actual title of this work reads: Science of Logic—unusual and strange, for us as well as for Hegel’s time. But this title loses its strangeness when we recall the complete subtitle of the first part: Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The system of the science is thus 1. science of the phenomenology of spirit and 2. science of logic. That is to say: as system of the science it is 1. system as phenomenology and 2. system as logic. Thus, the system appears necessarily in two shapes. Inasmuch as they mutually support each other and are interconnected, the Logic and the Phenomenology together form the entirety of the system in the fullness of its actuality.

      In addition to and apart from the inner, essential relation which the Phenomenology has to the Logic, Hegel refers explicitly to the Logic in many passages of the Phenomenology of Spirit.² Not only do we find anticipatory references to the Logic in the Phenomenology, but also the reverse: references back from the Logic to the Phenomenology.³ But most important, Hegel writes explicitly in the preface to the first volume of the Logic, first edition, 1812: “As regards the external relation {of the Logic to the Phenomenology of Spirit} it was {!} intended that the first part of the System of Science, which contains the Phenomenology, should be followed by a second part, which would contain the logic and the two concrete [realen] sciences of philosophy, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit, and which would have completed the system of science.”⁴

      Now it is clear that with the appearance of the Phenomenology in 1807, the entire system was originally thought to have two parts. However, the second part was to contain not only the logic, but the logic together with the concrete sciences of philosophy. The entirety of what should be the second part of the system is nothing other than the transformed concept of traditional metaphysics, whose systematic content likewise thoroughly determined the Kantian inquiry: Metaphysica generalis (ontology) and Metaphysica specialis (speculative psychology, speculative cosmology, and speculative theology).

      This second part, which was to follow, would have contained the entirety of general and special metaphysics, that is, traditional metaphysics—transformed, of course, to fit Hegel’s basic position. That transformation can be briefly characterized as follows. Hegel divides the entirety of general and special metaphysics into two parts: I. logic and II. philosophy of the concrete [reale Philosophie]. However, he divides the philosophy of the concrete into philosophy of nature (cosmology) and philosophy of spirit (psychology). Speculative theology (the third part of special metaphysics and for traditional philosophy the decisive part) is missing from the philosophy of the concrete, but not from Hegel’s metaphysics, where we find speculative theology in an original unity with ontology. This unity of speculative theology and ontology is the proper concept of Hegelian logic.

      Speculative theology is not the same as philosophy of religion, nor is it identical with theology in the sense of dogmatics. Rather, speculative theology is the ontology of the ens realissimum, the highest actuality as such. For Hegel this is inseparable from the question of the being of beings. Why this is the case should become clear in the course of the interpretation.

      However, if the second part of the system that Hegel planned was to represent metaphysics, then the first part of the system, the Phenomenology of Spirit, was to be the foundation of metaphysics, its grounding. But this grounding is not an epistemology (which was as foreign to Hegel as it was to Kant), nor does it involve empty reflections on method prior to its actual implementation in the work. It is, rather, the preparation of the basis, the “demonstration of the truth of the standpoint,”⁵ which metaphysics occupies.

      But