Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger
not appear explicitly under the title of the second part of the system of science? Hegel says: “But the necessary expansion which logic itself has demanded has led me to have this part published separately; it thus forms the first sequel to the Phenomenology of Spirit in an expanded arrangement of the system. It will later be followed by a treatment of the two concrete philosophical sciences mentioned.”6
But does this justify the omission of the main title System of Science? By no means. Precisely when the system is given a larger plan, it becomes more necessary to identify all the detailed parts in their relation to the system. It would not have been contrary to the original or to the enlarged plan of the system if its entirety had been arranged something like this: System of Science: Part I, Science of the Phenomenology of the Spirit; Part II, First Sequel: Science of Logic; Second Sequel: Science of the Philosophy of the Concrete.*
Why is the title System omitted as early as 1812? Because between 1807 and 1812, a transformation was already underway. The sign of the initial transformation in the idea of the system can be seen in the fact that the Logic not only loses the main heading but also stands separately, by itself—not because it turned out to be too detailed, but because the Phenomenology is to take on a different function and position in the fluctuating arrangement of the system. Because the Phenomenology is no longer the first part of the system, the Logic is no longer its second part. The Logic was separated in order to remain free to assume another place in another arrangement of the system which was then unfolding.
We gain an insight into the time between the appearance of the Phenomenology in 1807 and the publication of the first volume of the Logic in 1812 (and the second volume in 1816) if we bear in mind, if only in a rough manner, Hegel’s “Philosophical Propaedeutic.”
When the Phenomenology of Spirit appeared in 1807, Hegel was no longer in Jena, where he had settled in 1801 (having relinquished his tutorship in Frankfurt) in order to qualify for lecturing under Schelling. Hegel indeed became a university lecturer in 1805. But his salary was so insufficient that he did not need the catastrophe which happened in Prussia in 1806 to persuade him to seek support for himself in a different manner and elsewhere. As early as 1805 he applied without success for a professorship in Heidelberg. It was in Bavaria—which was where many others, including Schelling, had moved—that Hegel found employment as the editor of a newspaper in Bamberg. In 1808 he was able to exchange this position for a more appropriate one as headmaster of the secondary school in Nürnberg, where he stayed until 1816, when the second part of the Logic appeared and the call to Heidelberg University came. It was in Heidelberg on October 28, 1816, that Hegel delivered his inaugural lecture,* which is well-known especially for its conclusion, which is characteristic of Hegel’s basic position. That conclusion reads as follows:
We elders, who have grown to adulthood in the storms of the age, consider you fortunate, because your youth falls in these times in which you may devote yourselves to science and truth with less curtailment. I have dedicated my life to science; and it is a true joy for me to find myself again in this place where I may work to a greater degree with others and with a wider effectiveness, in the interests of the higher sciences, and help to direct your way therein. I hope that I may succeed in earning and gaining your confidence. But at first I wish to make a single request: that you bring with you, above all, a trust in science and a trust in yourselves. The love of truth, faith in the power of spirit, is the first condition for philosophy. Man, because he is spirit, may and should deem himself worthy of the highest; he cannot think too highly of the greatness and the power of his spirit; and with this faith, nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself to him. The essence of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power to offer resistance to the courageous search for knowledge; it must open itself up before the seeker, set its riches and its depths before his eyes to give him pleasure.7
Already at the end of 1817, the offer from the University of Berlin for Fichte’s chair, first made to Hegel in 1816, was repeated. What prompted Hegel to accept the call this time was certainly not the prospect of getting involved in all the sundry activities of a professor of philosophy, but exactly the opposite. For in the letter of resignation that he had sent to the government of Baden, Hegel expressed the hope that “with his advancing age he might be able to give up the precarious function of teaching philosophy at a university, in order to be of use in another activity {today we would say a politico-cultural activity}.”8 This is an indication that already in his Heidelberg period, Hegel had made up his mind about philosophy and was done with it: The system was established. On October 22, 1818, Hegel began his lectureship in Berlin. And he remained professor of philosophy to the end of his life, thirteen years later in 1831.
Apart from his Philosophy of Right (1821) and a few book reviews, Hegel published nothing in his Berlin period that was of great significance for his philosophy. In his lectures, Hegel worked out the system which was given its decisive and final form in 1817 in the Heidelberg Encyclopedia. (According to their volume, the lectures of the Berlin period constitute the major part of Hegel’s complete works.) But it was between 1807 and 1816, when he was a newspaper editor and a secondary-school teacher, that Hegel prepared the Encyclopedia and produced his essential philosophical work, the Logic.
As I said earlier, it is through Hegel’s “Philosophical Propaedeutic” as presented to the senior classes of the secondary school that we gain an insight into the work of Hegel between 1807 and 1812. It was not published by Hegel himself. In 1838, seven years after the philosopher’s death, Karl Rosenkranz, one of his students, found the manuscript among Hegel’s literary remains, as he was passing through Berlin. Subsequently, in 1840, Rosenkranz published the manuscript as Volume XVIII of the Complete Edition.
Philosophy instruction at the secondary school was divided into three courses. The first course was for the lower grade and included instructions in law, morality, and religion. The second course was for the middle grade and was made up of phenomenology of spirit and logic. The last course was for the upper grade and was made up of logic in the sense of the Doctrine of the Concept [Begriffslehre] and the philosophical encyclopedia. It is important to note that logic appears here in two different places. In the second course logic follows phenomenology, which is in keeping with the plan of the system in which the Phenomenology belongs and for which it was written. In the last course, however, logic is the foundation for the philosophical encyclopedia, precedes everything else, and is followed by the science of nature and science of spirit.
Then in 1817, while in Heidelberg, Hegel elaborated further on the encyclopedia, in which logic is now the first significant part, and published it under the title Encyclopedia der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse [The Encycbpedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline]. This Encyclopedia presents the new and final form of the System, having three parts:
A. Science of logic
B. Philosophy of nature
C. Philosophy of spirit.
Thus, following what we have said so far, the encyclopedia contains the whole of metaphysics.
But then what became of phenomenology? It became a segment of a segment of the third part of the system, namely, the philosophy of spirit. This is again divided into three parts:
1. Subjective spirit
2. Objective spirit
3. Absolute spirit.
The second section of the first part (subjective spirit) contains the phenomenology, which has now lost its fundamental position and function in the transformed system of philosophy.
In the last years of his life, around 1830, Hegel had to prepare a new edition of both the Phenomenology of Spirit, which had been out of print for a long time, and the Logic. While preparing the second edition of the Logic in 1831, and while editing the preface to the first edition, Hegel added a footnote to the passage mentioned above, where he speaks about the external relationship of the Phenomenology (the first part of the system) to the Logic. This footnote