A Brief Introduction

to the Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology

Robbert A. Veen © 2009

Preliminary remarks
As I have stated elsewhere, the Phenomenology analyzes the "experience" of the Spirit
in its appearance to itself, as it develops into self understanding and approaches this
experience as a dialectic movement of consciousness. That already implies that the
Phenomenology is not just an introduction to the System as J. Hyppolite and R. Kroner
thought it was.

The primary object of the Phenomenology is the immediate knowledge of the Spirit.
The Spirit in its appearance for short. The greek word phainomenon means "appear-
ance" so that explains the title: Phenomeno-logy, science of the appearance. The -logy
part of course refer to "logos" in Greek meaning "science of."

But what does it mean that knowledge appears to itself? It appears to itself in the sense
that every instance of knowing that we have implies some awareness of what know-
ledge is. If it were not so, we would not in our everyday lives know what it means to be
in error and correct mistakes or understand that we sometimes do not know.

We can go even beyond that. To know always means to know at the same time the act
of knowing itself. There can be no unconscious knowing - a dim awareness of a pres-
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ence maybe, but no unconscious knowledge. All knowledge must express itself as "I
know this or that and I know that I know this." You cannot say: "I know this table is
white, but I don't know that I know it." That presupposition is distantly related to one of
Descartes' great discoveries: percipere est se percipere. In a free translation: know-
ledge always implies knowledge of the knower. In other words: all knowledge is reflect-
ive. Ultimately it is Plato that in his Theaetetus developed this idea for the first time.

When we talk about "consciousness" we must make an important distinction. We are

not talking about the "mind" here as some "thing" that is conscious of something. It's not
about "a" conscious individual or one of its mental faculties. Consciousness is to Hegel
a complete idea of knowledge, a structured subject-object relationship expressed in
words and offered as a truthful understanding of our knowledge and the world. It is
therefore incorrect to speak about these modes of consciousness as "epistemologies"
unless one understands that Hegel focuses on the ontological implications of such epi-
stemologies at the same time. Consciousness in the Phenomenology stands for the to-
tality of the reality of Spirit, that appears in separate, seemingly independent modes of
consciousness.

Because it is consciousness that functions in the Phenomenology as the primary mode

of knowledge, - and not the concept and not the historical reality as such - each of its
forms always appears with an emphasis on the (ever-changing) object. Every form of
consciousness, every specific claim of a subject-object relationship, posits its truth as
residing in its object. It has a concept of its object and of itself as correlated to that. It
appears as the expression of the totality of the subject as well as its object. Its claim is a
claim about the totality of the knower and the known. Every consciousness says: this is
what knowledge in general really is, because this is what the knowing subject essen-
tially is and that is what the known object essentially is.

I have said that these modes of consciousness appear to say it all. They seem to be in-
dependent and exclude one another. Precisely this independence however of every
specific consciousness, i.e. every claim of a particular consciousness to express the to-
tality of knowledge, is being tested at every stage. Not by any presupposed and external
standard or criterion, because that would mean we already have jumped to a conclusion
about what knowledge really is, before we examine the various claims to knowledge,
but by its own claimed standard. The examination of modes of consciousness re-
sembles an interrogation in a philosophical dialogue: Someone claims "X" as a standard
and when asked it offers proof by demonstrating it in a form of knowledge, "Y". If I can
show that consciousness actually does "Z" and not "Y" then it follows that the claim "X"
is in error. Sensuous certainty e.g. claims "immediate knowledge" and shows that with
the aid of its understanding of the object: "it is essentially always here and now." If I can
show that its actual object is something that is mediated by a subjective activity, in this
case the actual pointing to an object in the here and now, "Z", then this claim of immedi-
acy is shown to be in error. Its claimed object is not understood properly. Then I move
on to the next consciousness, that solves the former problem by claiming a new stand-
ard "X2" that consists of "X" and the result of the objection, "Z" and offers proof in the
form of "Y2". And then I can show that it actually does something else "Z2" and so on.

The resemblance to Plato's dialogues where Socrates moves the discussion forward by
asking questions, is not accidental. The Socratic dialectics is also a real (or idealized)
conversation and of course that is highly formalized in the Phenomenology. But Hegel
would agree with Plato on the intersubjective nature of all thought, even when it is not
executed in the form of a real dialogue. There are no isolated thinkers.
[Maybe in Plato, but in Hegel’s Phenomenology, the changes in consciousness come
from the contradictions in the concept of the object itself, not from intersubjective ex-
changes.]

The various different shapes of consciousness are but moments of the self-conscious
Spirit, and in that sense they are not independent historical periods or complete philo-
sophical systems but they belong to the whole as abstract elements. As part of the
whole they are the logical conditions or determinations of philosophy as a science, or of
the self-understanding of the Spirit in the present. But that is not how they appear.

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That appearance or "substance" as Hegel calls their being in itself to consciousness -
needs to be examined to arrive at the essence - that Hegel calls "subjectivity", what
they "really" are for itself. In every stage it is shown in the analysis that consciousness
has a claimed objectivity and a real objectivity. Most of the time you can easily see that
the claimed object presupposes something else that is not yet part of the definition of
the object. When confronted with that fact, consciousness expands its definition of the
object and creates thereby a new subject-object relationship. Every new structure that
consciousness accomplishes by means of the new definition of its object, is again taken
as something independent, as an expression of the totality of knowledge instead of an
appearing "moment" of the Spirit as absolute knowledge. Of course, in the form of a
claim it always does express that totality. But it does not do so adequately. There is a
nice Latin phrase for that: totum, sed non totaliter: the totality, but not totally. That
means something like: the whole, but not in its fullness.

The limits of the object of any consciousness are correlated with the limits of that con-
sciousness itself. Any concept of objectivity implies a corresponding concept of the
knowing subject. In itself, every conceived form of objectivity is a reference to the real
world in its totality. In Sense Certainty e.g., the concept of being that is used to express
the immediacy of the object in the here and now, on its own does refer to this totality.

We can show that easily by examining the concept from a logical point of view. It is the
least you can say about the world as a whole, but you can say it truthfully: everything
that is, is. There is nothing beyond or outside being. (But the dialectical counter argu-
ment will be: there is indeed nothing, i.e. the act of negativity, the power of abstraction
that produces this concept, beyond being.) As a category being seems at first to be
merely positive. It includes everything. It also excludes any limitation or difference, and
in that sense it already expresses the identity of subject and object. It includes
everything by excluding nothing. But this exclusion is the problem. That is a logical
activity that is not properly expressed in the concept of being itself, that simply says
what is, is. The claim of immediacy is in contradiction with the mediation of thought re-
quired here. The negativity of the exclusion turns out to be the condition of the positive
nature of the concept of being. There is no such thing as an absolute immediate cat-
egory, because we need mediation to get there in the first place.

Still, "being" does say "everything" so why do we need to move beyond it? Being says
it all however in a limited or merely abstract fashion. It says everything, but does not ex-
press that in its fullness: totum, sed non totaliter. It leaves out the negative nature of
thought which is a condition of its being thought. (Which is shown in Hegel's Logic by
the fact it has to exclude "nothing" to be thought and that exclusion is not expressed in
the meaning of "being" which is pure immediacy and positivity.)

Yet, there cannot be any concept without having this character of immediacy and this
claim to express a positive totality. Every concept presupposes and includes "being" as
an element of its own determinacy. So we must say that every claimed concept of ob-
jectivity, including "being" and "thing" and "force" or whichever concept we are looking at
in the Phenomenology, has some truth to it. Not because it really expresses that total-
ity, but because it refers to the totality that it (a) belongs to as one of its determinations
and (b) from which it derives its own limited meaning.

The development of consciousness is reflected in the development of the concept of an

object, i.e. in the changing claims to truth. In the end consciousness reaches the iden-
tity of self-consciousness and its object, what Hegel called absolute knowledge.

The phenomenology is at the same time a description of a development, and in that

sense an historical description, and an analysis of consciousness, and in that sense a
systematic or philosophical exposition.

The division between subject matter and form, or between subject and object has been
sublated here. That is why we are not dealing with a science or philosophy of conscious
experience that would deal with the empirical contents of consciousness. That is the
difference between Hegel's Phenomenology and the transcendental Phenomenology of
Husserl.

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A. Consciousness
In the first movement of the Phenomenology, called Consciousness, the opposition
between the abstract singular consciousness of the abstract singular object is over-
come. By changing its object from the immediate given, moving through the object as
"thing" to the concept of the world of laws, consciousness indirectly develops itself: it
changes from immediate certainty, goes through perception to reflective reasoning.
Every time the object changes, consciousness changes its own relationship to its object,
and thereby changes itself to become a new form of knowledge.

When consciousness realizes that its object is not a singular object, but a universal, it
sees its own nature reflected in its object. What it does finally as consciousness, is to
differentiate the universal of the objective world, (the physical reality of force), and the
universal as the awareness of universal laws. Consciousness comes to realize that it
only has a world that it can understand, precisely by this activity of making a difference
between reality and subjectivity and relating them to each other. To understand the
world scientifically must mean to discover the universal within appearing reality on the
one hand, and to apply the universal to given appearances on the other hand, or rather
to do both at the same time.

So the relationship between the subject and the object has now become a correlation,
and this correlation is the truth of consciousness. But that correlation that is now the
truth of consciousness, is as such merely subjective. Or to put it differently: the real or
effective object now turns out be the subject itself. Understanding the world implies a
subject understanding itself as world, though this is a position that will only be fully un-
derstood within the realm of Existing Spirit.

B. Self-consciousness
In the final movement of consciousness as Explaining Reason a new mode of being of
the spirit appears: self-consciousness.
Although self-consciousness understands that it is the truth, it appears at the start
simply as Sensuous Desire. As Sensuous Desire the object of consciousness is no
longer a separate and independent world, but rather something that is relative to its own
desiring. Consciousness is aware of its own lack in its object, and thereby it is aware of
itself. By consuming and using the object, it gives itself actively an immediate self-cer-
tainty. It experiences itself in the process of negating the object. (In the sensuous cer-
tainty it experiences the object passively by negating itself as subject, so here we have
reached the opposite.)

However, precisely because it consumes its object when it satisfies its desires, it renews
itself also. No fulfillment of a desire is final. This bad infinite movement is interrupted
when it experiences that the external object can be life and consciousness that appears
as a self-consciousness in itself. Now it sees itself fully reflected in its object as such,
this "other" subject, which however also means that it is alienated from itself. It is no
longer independent. When it desires this other object that is in reality itself a subject,
self-consciousness experiences that it also has become the object for another subject.
Consciousness now experiences itself as the object for another consciousness and the
immediate social relationship is reached.

The alienation that occurs here is crucial: by understanding someone else to be another
subject, I see myself reflected. That reinforces my understanding of my own subjectivity.
But the fact that this other subject is also Sensuous Desire like myself implies that I am
at the same time something that is desired. That is the opposite of being a subject and
makes me understand that I am also an object to this other self-consciousness. This du-
ality is therefore at the same time recognition and alienation (opposition).

Self-consciousness now has two shapes that appear to one another, and what has been
a single self-consciousness is now a double subject. (Not "two" subjects as such, but a
single self-consciousness doubled in itself. Remember we are talking structures, not in-
dividuals.) One and the same true self-consciousness appears to itself as a relationship
between two appearing self-consciousnesses. At first it understands this movement

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metaphorically as the struggle for recognition that is a struggle to the death. That move-
ment is only halted in the relationship between Lord and Slave, ultimately however the
two movements of Lord and Slave are separate shapes of one self-consciousness, they
are in truth the one movement in which self-consciousness recognizes itself in its own
otherness.

And not in someone who is an other. The metaphor of the struggle to the death is pre-
cisely that, a metaphor. Sometimes it is claimed that Hegel refers here to some primor-
dial stage in human history in which people did struggle like this, or it is read as an ex-
planation of the origins of slavery. We find that e.g. in the lectures on the Phenomeno-
logy by Kojève. But the passage is not meant to express any kind of real historical
event. The closest example of this way of thinking is Locke's abstract thought experi-
ment when he talks about humans having to defend themselves against all others in a
war of survival. That wasn't meant historically either. It was a reconstruction of what is
fundamental to human behavior in a process of imaginative abstraction. And that is the
case with Hegel's text too.

Within this new single consciousness that has overcome the duality of Lord and Slave,
the contradiction of the two movements continues.

In Stoicism and Skepticism and finally within Unhappy Consciousness there is an inner
opposition at work between the changeable singular consciousness and the unchange-
able universal consciousness, that is now projected outward as the True Essence.

C. Free Concrete Reason

This secondary opposition must be overcome to reach the truth of self-consciousness
which is the certainty that it itself is the whole of reality. That is the stage of Reason.

As reason, self-consciousness is the singular subject that now has reached the con-
crete universal, it is like the "I" in Fichte's Doctrine of Science or the Synthetic Unity of
Apperception in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Concrete universal self-consciousness in its immediate form is Reason. It is however at
this stage only opinion and awareness. So the movement of consciousness and self-
consciousness is now repeated. Reason as consciousness is present in Observing
Reason. Reason tries to describe nature as its universal object. But it does so self crit-
ically. Sensuous certainty, observation (perception) and reflective reasoning are now the
topics of inquiry.

Observing reason assumes that it is only interested in objects of perception, but actually
it searches for the universal, essential, within the facts of organic and inorganic nature
in order to find itself. Its experience is however, that the concrete universal subject can-
not be simply found in nature. Nature has exceptions and defies our categories and
though in biology observing reason can understand itself as being the rational faculty of
an organic being called human, it does not succeed in understanding its own objectivity
like that. It tries to do so by explaining itself through a theory of logical and psychologic-
al laws. But because the description always remains external, the inner meaning of
these laws remains problematic. Such descriptions of subjectivity do not explain the
process of observation and reasoning itself.

In a second stage reason understands itself as active, corresponding to the previous

moment in self-consciousness as desire. As realizing itself it is reasonable self-con-
sciousness that tries to be the whole of reality by its own action.

Reason then finally comes to the understanding that it is the certainty of being all reality,
though the carrier of that certainty still remains the abstract individual. Universal is not
yet understood as conscious of itself. Only the collective culture of a people can be said
to express the self-consciousness of the Universal.

Reason in its highest shape is individuality that is in itself and for itself real. It under-
stands itself to be a real, it realizes itself, and understands itself in both these shapes.
But precisely because it remains Individuality, it is still merely a consciousness of the

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concrete universal. Only as Spirit can it now in truth be seen as the identity of con-
sciousness and its substance or object. It is therefore necessary to transcend even the
perspective of reason.

D. (BB, VI) Spirit

The ethical community of a people is the adequate shape of consciousness for the con-
crete universal, because it is in itself a universal mode of consciousness. In other
words, if we understand the totality of being as a spiritual entity that is itself and for itself
- e.g. if we state that the universal Spirit is the Spirit of a culture or people, we still posit
something that is substance, not yet consciousness of itself. Hegel defines what Spirit
actually is by positing that the Spirit actually comes to self understanding and self-con-
sciousness within a community of people: the essence that is in itself and for itself is
real as a consciousness and has consciousness of itself (though at first only in the form
of representations) and that is called the Spirit. (p. 314 Hofmeister.)

The truth of the dialectic self movement of the spirit as consciousness is reached in this
chapter on the existing spirit, but still only in the form of the in itself. (By the way, it is
not right to talk about objective spirit here.) this is a concrete and universal form of con-
sciousness that has its full reality in the life of a people. Within that concrete universal
life also the truth of individual consciousness is discovered, implying that now for the
first time we find the notion of a history of consciousness that is at the same time the
history that is remembered as such, because it is now a history of the consciousness of
a people. A movement through stages as for instance in the organic development, is
not yet history. In other words, only if we reach a dialectic relationship between the in-
carnate truth of the universal spirit in a people in opposition to the position of an indi-
vidual, do we have something that can be seen as immediate history. History after all
presupposes the facts that are told and interpreted within the consciousness of people
by an individual that reflects on them and passes judgment. Without this difference
between events as they unfold in the perspective of an observer or participant that con-
sciously aspires to achieve something, there is no such thing as history.
Though in this existing spirit we again have the basic shape of consciousness yet the
world and its history are seen as the immediate objects of understanding. At the same
time there is more than we had before, where individual reason remained secluded in its
abstract individual energy. Now consciousness is aware of itself as the world and un-
derstands the world as itself. Although the Spirit is treated in a later stage of the devel-
opment of the Phenomenology, going beyond the abstract individuality and equally ab-
stract universal that we had before, we have now reached the real ground and sub-
stance of the previous stages.

We can now say that consciousness, self-consciousness and reason are the abstrac-
tions of the truth of the Spirit as incarnate in the culture of a people.

E. Religion
At the end of the chapter on Reason we still have a difference between individual con-
crete reason, and the universal substance. Then in the chapter on the Spirit, Reason
discovers that her own truth lies in the universal consciousness of the ethical world.
The Spirit therefore, as the concrete existing spirit of a people, is still only the truth in it-
self. The shape of consciousness in which the Spirit now comes to self understanding
or self-consciousness is Religion. The spirit that knows itself finds its adequate form of
self-consciousness in religion, because there we have the universal subject and the
concrete universal substance united.

In Religion the absolute becomes conscious of itself in all its previous manifestations.

• It was already present in the chapter on finite reason and understanding. Un-
happy consciousness aspired toward the absolute but did not recognize it as it-
self.
• Reason overlooked the Absolute because it found itself only in what was immedi-
ately before itself.
• In the ethical order the Absolute was an impersonal Fate in which no one could
recognize himself.
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 • The religion of the Enlightenment had only an empty absolute, which stressed
the interest it had in the present.
• Finally, the religious aspect of morality and conscience led to the acceptance of
the inner universal self, but now all differentiation and all actuality existed merely
outside of itself.

In all of these religious moments, the Spirit was just a part of a finite object. Now in Reli-
gion Spirit sees itself objectively as the Universal Spirit that is expressed in an objective
natural shape, that is transparent to its own essence. The immediate nature of religion
however, implies only a partial connection to the universal substance, or in other words
religion in part remains positivist. It does not understand the worldly expression of its es-
sence to be spirit itself. That means that all the previous shapes of consciousness, self-
consciousness, reason, and spirit must be realized in succession, even though as such
Religion contains all of them in unity.

The religious spirit is at first self-conscious in an immediate manner. The movements of

its concrete shapes is driven by the attempt to unify itself with its content. That move-
ment again is a movement from certainty to truth. Ultimately that truth is attained in the
self-consciousness of religion.

Natural religion is the way in which absolute Spirit appears to itself in the manner of
sense certainty, perception and understanding. Hegel refers to be Persian religion of
light and darkness, as the first of these. Perception is present in the Indian religions
where the absolute appears in a variety of independent vegetable and animal forms. As
understanding the Spirit appears in the Egyptian religion, that ultimately expresses an
inner duality in the Sphinx which is part animal and part human and as a whole divine.

In Egyptian religion the role of the artisan is crucial, but not for itself yet. When Religion
reaches the level of self-consciousness, it becomes the Religion of Art I which the artis-
an is the essential self-consciousness at work. As a product of free spirit, Art is the im-
mediate form in which a society that is simply built on customs and traditions, that has a
culture that is treated as nature, is broken up. Ultimately the artist wants to express
himself. The external work of art is basically a form without color - that is how it is re-
membered because its color was lost! - in which the individual expresses his own con-
tent.

The Religion of Art then goes through the separate stages of the abstract work of art,
the living work of art, and the spiritual work of art. Ultimately self-consciousness is
reached in a shape that corresponds to the end of the chapter on Individual Reason.
The truth of Comedy is the self awareness of the individual in his own accidental indi-
viduality. The religious sense of that is the self knowledge of the absolute within it. The
absolute is subjectivity as the identity of the individual to himself within the world of pas-
sions and the accidental.

In Comedy the individual consciousness now appears to be the basis of the absolute
essence, judging and mocking it. Instead of the individual being the manifestation of the
absolute, we now have the reversal of that. In that sense we find ourselves now in the
opposite corner of unhappy consciousness. When we analyze the structure of Comedy,
we can see however that it contains not one but two shapes of self-consciousness. On
the one hand we have self-consciousness judging the absolute, on the other hand we
have the absolute still being defined as a self-consciousness itself, albeit in a negative
form when seen from the first. We have therefore two equal sides of self-conscious-
ness operating in both Unhappy Consciousness and Comic Consciousness.

That is why as the basis of Revealed Religion we must picture a dual movement. On
the one hand we have a substance going out of itself and becoming self-consciousness,
on the other hand we have a self-consciousness going out of itself and producing the
Absolute Spirit. Revealed Religion contains the self-consciousness of God within hu-
man self-consciousness. It combines therefore both perspectives. As the Father we
have the essence or being in itself of absolute self-consciousness. At the same time it
is being for itself for that essence. That is the moment of the Son. And finally we have
the being for itself which knows itself in the other, the Holy Spirit. Ultimately this Spirit,

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is most essentially itself in the religious community or Congregation where the unity of
the absolute self-consciousness and the individual self-consciousness of Christ is trans-
formed into a collective self, a universal self-consciousness of the Universal Spirit. Only
as a community can we say that the self-consciousness of the absolute is realized in its
other. And only as a community can we say that we actually know this absolute as self-
consciousness.

In religion therefore, even though it can never fully identify itself with the object of its
consciousness, and has to use narrative and images of that unity or use projections of
that unity for the indefinite future, the social shape of knowledge that is the absolute
condition of science is finally reached. In that sense one can say that the scientific com-
munity is of necessity a religious community.

F. Absolute Knowledge

In Religion there still is a distinction between the objective form of narrative and image,
and the contents of absolute self-consciousness. Again Absolute Knowing must tran-
scend this distinction and become aware of itself in all forms it has successively gone
through. Only if the content of religion is understood as the action of the self, only if reli-
gion is seen as expressing a stage of its own interior development, can conceptual
knowledge transcend it.

Systematic science can only appear when self-consciousness has any conceptual un-
derstanding of itself and is able to see all objectivity as something conceptual. Only
then we have the necessary unity of subject and object within the concept that is essen-
tial to both. Therefore substance, what seems to be solidly out there in itself, must be
transformed into the conceptual and in that sense become subjective. The Encyclopedia
or System will achieve that conceptual understanding.

Ultimately, systematic science cannot remaining simply conceptual, because it needs to

understand the externalization of the Spirit in nature and political society as well as in
human history. Its ultimate goal is the understanding of Spirit developing itself through a
long procession of historical cultures and individuals, producing its self-understanding
as philosophy.

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