To Read Hegel

Part 1
Robbert A. Veen @ 2009
All rights reserved
 The Structure of Hegel's Philosophy
and
the Idea of the Phenomenology of Spirit

by

Robbert Veen
To Read Hegel

Foreword
Let me start by saying what you will not find in this volume. I will not
provide you with any references to Hegel's biography, historical circums-
tances or dealings with other philosophers. Not only because this has
been done before - Pinkard's excellent work on Hegel treats the philoso-
phy as well as the man as did Rosencrantz before him in his volumes on
Hegel and the State - but because Hegel himself warns us in the opening
paragraph of the Preface to the Phenomenology, that all of this is super-
fluous in understanding the nature of the concept.
In the case of a philosophical work it seems not only superfluous, but, in view
of the nature of philosophy, even inappropriate and misleading to begin, as writ-
ers usually do in a preface, by explaining the end the author had in mind, the
circumstances which gave rise to the work, and the relation in which the writer
takes it to stand to other treatises on the same subject, written by his predeces-
sors or his contemporaries.

In this series under the title "To Read Hegel" I will do exactly this: read
Hegel and show you what I found. This first volumes of the series are
devoted to the Phenomenology, especially its position within Hegel's
philosophy as a whole, and I will try to give you an understanding of its
method. In a summary of the Phenomenology I will try to outline the
whole of the work, providing a road map for what lies ahead. Much of
this work was already available on the internet, with the exception of the
final essay on Substance and Subject that was especially written for this
volume.

R.A. Veen, September 2009

Huizen, the Netherlands

5
 Robbert Veen

6
To Read Hegel

1. Why Do We Still Need to Read Hegel?

Summary Hegel can be read in order to improve one's skills at inter-

preting difficult philosophical texts, to improve one's own understanding
of the world and to appreciate much of modern philosophy that is in di-
alog with him. To understand Hegel one needs a "voice" that can provide
the necessary context for deciphering Hegel's sometimes obscure ways of
thinking.

A Personal Response
You can make a delicate and complex argument why it is necessary to
understand Hegel's philosophy. You can write about the importance of
his logic, his dialectics, to the understanding of human communication
and social institutions. You can show elaborately how Hegel was the first
to understand the nature of modern society, and construct a critical posi-
tion on current issues from his philosophy of right. And even though we
have found Hegel to be incorrect in many of his positions on the natural
sciences and history - he found no room e.g. for the concept of biological
evolution1 - the way he constructed a philosophy of nature and the history
of the Spirit is still exemplary in many ways.
Even if you cannot accept Hegel's approach and findings, it's still a good
thing to know about him anyway, because so many contemporary philo-
sophers have taken his insights as a starting point. Slavoj Žižek is certain-

1
Apparently however he did understand the necessary "reflective" character of
chemical processes long before these were discovered to be essential for the
understanding of biology, in what we now know as the capacity of DNA mole-
cules to replicate themselves.

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 Robbert Veen

ly the best known of them in the present - he compared his relationship to

Hegel, with that of Martin Luther to St. Paul - but you could also men-
tion Jacques Derrida, Vitorio Hössle and many others.

The Complexity of Hegel is Fascinating

What makes Hegel so fascinating? I am not ashamed to say that I be-
came obsessed with Hegel because it takes so much time and effort to
understand him. It would seem that the complexity of his work and some-
times even the obscurity can be fascinating on a personal level, but that in
itself is not very inviting. To me personally however it was and still is
quite true. The art of interpreting a philosophical text reaches its highest
level in the case of Hegel's writings.
All of the labor that you need to put in to understanding Hegel has how-
ever also a solid revenue. Understanding Hegel is always accompanied by
an improved understanding of the world, our culture and ourselves. One
might disagree with him in every respect, but you get the feeling that
nothing is overlooked. It's dazzling. Everything is there. There is hardly
any original thought that we have, that Hegel did not anticipate, formulate
and showed to be inadequate. Some people, especially in the Dutch tradi-
tion of neo-Hegelianism, didn't even try to be original. Philosophy to
them meant rewriting and editing Hegel, applying the system to new
problems. "Understanding Hegel means understanding that he cannot be
surpassed," said German philosopher Richard Kroner in the 1920s. That
goes even beyond the famous dictum that the entire history of philosophy
consists of nothing but footnotes to Plato.
It doesn't mean that Hegel is the only philosopher one should read. I
have read Plato, Aristotle, Thomas and Kant extensively, and I try to keep
up with contemporary philosophy as well. I always had a special interest
in the Jewish philosophy of Martin Buber, Immanuel Lévinas and Emil
Fackenheim. I like reading Heidegger, Derrida, Badiou, Agamben and
Žižek. And lately I had a renewed interest in English philosophy: Locke,

8
To Read Hegel

Hume but also Rawls and others. I am indebted to all of them. But none
of them have pages that are so delightfully complex, so cramped with
obscure brilliance as Hegel's.

Understanding the World Better

All of these arguments however remain rather superficial. If philosophy is
about understanding the world, then the only good reason for reading
Hegel must be that he makes us understand the world better than anybody
else. Ultimately there is no fun in interpreting texts just for the heck of it.
Now does he do that? I think there are at least three basic principles in
Hegel's philosophy that we need in our contemporary efforts.
First of all, though mostly misunderstood, we need to understand He-
gel's thesis about the identity of the concept and its reality. It is badly
misunderstood if we just take that as a statement of principle by itself.
That is, if we mean by that, that the subjective idea that we have is iden-
tical to the material reality out there. Hegel never said that. Understand-
ing what he did say turns out to be a very prosperous enterprise.
Let me try briefly to sketch it out to give you a preliminary idea. At least
you can say that our modes of thinking and the reality that we live in are
not fully divergent. Our way of thinking and knowing is part of the world
we know. You can approach that from many perspectives: as a specimen
of nature we find within ourselves a growing understanding of the world,
that is in some way a product of the world itself. Nature comes to self
understanding within us. Hegel himself stressed the idea that the Absolute
is Spirit, and that this Absolute Spirit is involved in a process in which it
realizes itself both in nature and in the historical cultures of humanity.
(Here Hegel might have been tempted to understand "nature" in its own
specific historicity, as natural selection and biological evolution, but un-
fortunately for him as well as for us, Darwin came too late.) But there are
many other ways to approach this.
Second, and to me quite important, is Hegel's analysis of European cul-

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 Robbert Veen

ture, society, religion, and history. All of these have "objective" characte-
ristics, and yet they are derived from and dependent on human thought.
At least here it is safe to say that thought and reality are in identity.
That is not without consequences! Especially because the concept in
Hegel is not just a justification of things as they are. The concept for in-
stance of property is not simply an expression of the status quo, but it is
also a basis for critique. Critique of the way we think, act and live within
our contemporary social institutions. Critique of current ideologies (in-
cluding the so-called neo-liberalism that Fukuyama ascribed to Hegel),
critique of the illusions of our modern political culture. This critical as-
pect of Hegel social philosophy and ethics is not immediately apparent,
but it is required by the very nature of Begriff, the concept. And by the
way, this explains why Hegel could say that whenever the concept dif-
fered from reality, it was too bad for reality. That was not an expression
of subjective idealism, but a strong affirmation of the normative value
inherent in the pure concept.
My third point is the most personal. Of course philosophy is and should
be a science. As such its aims and contents go beyond the purely person-
al. Nevertheless philosophy remains a search for wisdom, and it attracts
many people beyond the pale of academic pursuits precisely because it
expresses the universal human quest for truth, goodness and beauty. Of
course Hegel warns against any philosophy that tries to be reassuring or
comforting or entertaining. Not because those aims are unworthy, but
because comfort can only be found in the truth, and truth can only be
found in the hard labor of the concept. I found that understanding Hegel
also meant understanding my own life. Of course not in its psychological
and social particulars, but in its universality as a social being, as a product
of European culture, as a spiritual being.
That is why, ultimately, Hegel is worth the effort. And there is a simple
dialectical argument to prove that, even if you're not convinced by my
three previous arguments. They say that Hegel is the most important phi-

10
To Read Hegel

losopher that ever lived. He is certainly the most difficult to refute. So

there you have it: precisely by arguing with and against Hegel, you can
develop your own position to its highest possible level. Hegel is the best
sparring partner you can imagine. He is the most critical interrogator you
can ever hope to find. If you really understand why you need to differ
from Hegel, chances are that you have stumbled upon a meaningful truth
for the present.

How to Study Hegel?

How best to study Hegel? Just reading him would be a nice start. But that
is an awesome task. The 500 odd pages of the Phenomenology alone,
with its often obscure style and condensed - and sometimes mystifying -
references to contemporary history, might turn you away from Hegel for
good. Nevertheless, with some stamina it can be done, say, in a year.
You could rewrite paragraphs in your own style, you could try to write
down the flow of his arguments, you could make small lists of the various
meanings of Hegel's terminology, you could read series of introductions
to the Phenomenology. Your notebooks would soon be filled with a lot of
question marks.
I remember sitting down with a friend when I just started reading phi-
losophy at the University of Amsterdam. We tried to read the preface to
the Phenomenology together. We couldn't understand what Hegel meant
after the fifth or sixth paragraph of that preface. So we skipped that part,
and tried the introduction. We couldn't understand the first paragraph.
Then we decided to go straight for the first chapter on consciousness.
And then of course we found that we couldn't agree with anything Hegel
said. It did not fit in with what we thought we had learned from Kant,
Wittgenstein and Heidegger, who were popular at the time in Amsterdam.
But at least we thought that now we had some understanding of what he
was trying to say. But the chapter was so complex that we wanted to drop
it too and then we looked at the table of contents to find something a little

11
 Robbert Veen

easier to read. We discovered that Hegel had written a chapter on phre-

nology. We began to laugh at the silliness of this 19th century philoso-
pher who believed in the science of measuring skulls to reach a psycho-
logical understanding of human nature. Needless to say that after just
three sessions we decided to skip Hegel.
Fortunately we had a wonderful teacher in our second year whose
classes were compulsory who showed us where we went wrong. When he
explained the preface and introduction and the section on consciousness,
it was as if Hegel himself was among us. Hegel needed a voice! To this
day I have found no better way to understand Hegel than by becoming
"initiated" by someone who went before us, but it also holds for Plato,
Aristotle, Thomas or Kant for that matter. Classical texts of such com-
plexity require the knowledge of a body of literature, a context in which
you can understand what is going on. Hegel needs a personal guide. I had
the good fortune to be taught Hegel by two of the cleverest minds I've
ever encountered: professors of Modern Philosophy at the University of
Amsterdam Jan Hollak and Kees-Jan Brons.
I will end this chapter on a personal and contingent note. I have been
teaching classes on Hegel on the internet since may 2009. The experience
described above is what prompted me to do so. For me it is a privilege to
teach (or rather read together with others) Hegel in this manner. WiZiQ,
Sclipo, Edufire and other educational facilities on the Web gave me the
opportunity to reach out to people in the world that already have gained
some access to Hegel, but now search for a living dialogue to advance
their understanding. In teaching Hegel and sharing ideas with such a di-
verse and select company, everything becomes new again.
The World Wide Web may be one of the objective realizations of what
Hegel called the world spirit. 19th century thought and 21st-century tech-
nology come together. We live in a fascinating age. Now it is up to us to
really understand it.

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To Read Hegel

2. And Now to Move On

A Recent Perspective in Understanding Hegel

Summary The structure of Hegel's philosophy as a whole cannot simply

be described from Hegel's own statements. Hegel was still wrestling with
the general outline of his work when he died. In Hollak's thesis of 1962
the matter - though dealt with by others before him like Richard Kroner,
Nicolai Hartmann and Martin Busse - the issue was resolved. Hegel's
System as a whole consists of three parts: Phenomenology, Encyclopedia
and the Philosophy of History.

In the current stage of reflection on the meaning of Hegel's philosophy, it

is no longer necessary to focus on the understanding of the process and
method of speculative dialectics as such. In the work of Kroner, Lasson
and Hyppolite and many others we can safely say that the general laws of
Hegel's dialectics and system are fairly well known.
The next stage of reflection was opened up by Nicolai Hartmann's ques-
tion in 1935, concerning the inner structure of the whole of Hegel's sys-
tematic works. Hartmann contended that although each of the various
disciplines of philosophy was clearly understood by Hegel himself - their
methods and objects being sharply defined and distinguished from each
other - the whole system of Hegel's thought was still "in-it-self" and not
"for-it-self". From the external shape of Hegel's dialectics, we needed to
turn to the inner dialectics at work between the various "sciences" that
make up Hegel's philosophy as a whole.
This inner dialectic structure of Hegel's philosophy became the theme of
the 1962 thesis of a Dutch (then) assistant professor of philosophy called
Jan Hollak (1915-2003), who taught History of Modern Philosophy at the
University of Amsterdam and the Catholic University of Nijmegen. In

13
 Robbert Veen

his thesis entitled The Structure of Hegel's Philosophy (De Structuur van
Hegels Wijsbegeerte) Hollak for the first time went beyond what he
called the one-sided responses to Hegel's philosophy, present in the
works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Kierkegaard and Marx. They approached
Hegel's system not from within, but from without by assessing it with an
external yardstick - a procedure that according to Hegel was the handi-
work of finite reason. Even though Hegel's system was admired greatly
in the 1960s - especially his Phenomenology was present in most philo-
sophical debates in Europe from 1920 up to the 1970s - without an ade-
quate understanding of the structure of Hegel's dialectics, it would be
impossible to make any significant connection between Hegel's thought
and the problems of our contemporary philosophical reality.
What came out of the Hegel-renaissance in France and Germany were
for the most part straightforward denials of single propositions that were
represented as Hegel's views on particular issues, without examining
structure and method of the system they were derived from. The stifling
result was that Hegel became a philosophical milestone of the past. But
that of course made Hegel at the same time irrelevant and contradicted
one of his major theses, that in contemporary philosophy as well as in the
history of philosophy we do not deal with the past as such, but with the
present.
We cannot say that his thesis effectively changed the paradigm of con-
temporary understanding of Hegel. The work done by Hollak on Hegel
remained mostly unknown even in the Netherlands, where only a handful
of his students examined and applied his findings. One-sided responses
to Hegel remained with us, from the interpretation of dialectics by neo-
Marxist humanism in the 50s, through attempts to reinterpret Hegel's
dialectics as a theory of intersubjectivity and communication under the
influence of Habermas (Theunissen and others), to Slavoj Žižek's reinter-
pretation of Hegel with a theory of concrete subjectivity as found in La-
can. In between there were many attempts to use Hegel in contemporary

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To Read Hegel

reflection: either dealing with the actuality of Hegel's philosophy of na-

ture (Vitorio Hössle) or to turn Hegel into the institutionalized foe: the
need for a straw man produced the well-known image of Hegel as the
champion of abstract identity and systematic totalitarianism.2
Is it possible now to enter a third stage? Or rather, do we see the dawn
of a new stage in the interpretation of Hegel? In this stage we would no
longer look for a critical response to Hegel from a fixed standpoint or
principle, nor would we need again to deal with questions concerning the
inner dialectic structure of Hegel's work. It would require us to accept at
least these two principles as adequately established foundations for any
reflection on Hegel:

1. The whole of Hegel's philosophy consists of the dialectic unity of

three basic shapes of the idea. The first of them, and not to be considered
just the extrinsic introduction to the system, would be the Phenomenolo-
gy of Spirit that deals with the appearing concept, the experience of the
Spirit coming to itself, arriving at an understanding of it self. Secondly,
the Encyclopedia contains the pure logic as it realizes itself in nature and
spirit, and finally, the synthesis of these both, we have the philosophy of
history in which logic and consciousness come together as the under-
standing of the history of the world.

2. Hegel's philosophy, though a closed system like any other consistent

effort at understanding the world, is in principle not only open to the ap-
pearance off a new stage in the history or humanity, about as such its

2
Derrida or Lévinas can be mentioned here. But note that it is not so much in
these responses as such that Hegel has been misunderstood, but by the attempt to
deliver a reconstruction of Hegel that grounded the response. Arguing against a
possibility of thought that derives from Hegel is not the same as arguing against
Hegel.

15
 Robbert Veen

announcement. Precisely the finality with which Hegel managed to phi-

losophically understand the history and principle of the Germanic-
Christian world (i.e. Europe), announces a new principle without either
prophesying it nor demanding it to be realized in practice (as in Marx-
ism), signifies the emergence of a new era. To us, for whom this era has
already appeared in political history, art, science and technology, the
understanding of this new principle allows for something other than ab-
andoning Hegel as being outdated.
In this series I will try to present Hegel's Phenomenology from this
perspective. Diverging from Hollak, I will try to raise also some objec-
tions to Hegel's position. But to contradict Hegel is no mean task. Most of
what is said against Hegel is simply irrelevant and doesn't get to the issue.
A true contradiction to Hegel is a dialectic achievement of the first order.
But to phrase the matter in distinction to Kroner: to understand Hegel is
to (truly) contradict him.
That qualifies my position as standing within the large realm of so-
called left-Hegelianism. I'm not an orthodox neo-Hegelian, certainly not
in the honorable tradition of Dutch Hegelianism that merely tried to pa-
raphrase the Master. In many respects I side with Theodor Adorno and
Slavoj Žižek who emphasized the concreteness of Hegel's critical and
negative dialectics. Ultimately I will have to make clear what my position
is regarding Hegel as a whole. But is it really relevant? Maybe it is im-
portant first and foremost to try and understand Hegel. And to that end I
have to make clear how important Hollak's thesis is for this endeavor.
How then must the structure of Hegel's philosophy be understood and
why does it matter?

How Not to Construct Hegel's System

The usual structure of Hegel's philosophy as taught in Universities all
over the world, is sometimes at least based on a (flawed) reading of the
last paragraph of the Encyclopedia. There we find the three logical syl-

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To Read Hegel

logisms of philosophy.
(Par. 575) The systematic treatment of the nature of the concept ultimately de-
velops into the idea of philosophical sciences and thereby affirms the beginning:
the circle is complete. This concept of philosophy is the self-thinking idea, truth
aware of itself or logic with the significance that it is generality preserved in
concrete content. In this way science returns to its beginning, with logic as the
result. The presupposition of its concept, or the immediacy of its beginning and
the aspect of its appearance at that moment, are suspended.

Now, does this paragraph deal with the separate Phenomenology, as

many have argued? Or is it about the specific concept of philosophy as
contained in the Encyclopedia? Or is it about philosophy in a general
sense? I would choose the second option. What Hegel seems to be refer-
ring to is the circular movement of the encyclopedic system. The "self-
thinking idea" is both the start of science and the end result of science.
The concept is part of a syllogism - as is obvious from the basic structure
of the System, starting with the Logic, moving through nature to Spirit -
but also its mean and its result, its other extreme. The three possible
movements within the System show that and these are expressed as syl-
logisms. Each of them expresses the whole with a different emphasis.
These are then the three logical syllogisms of the System (Encyclope-
dia), and they express philosophy as (1) subjective knowledge, (2) objec-
tivity, and their synthesis as (3) complete self-knowledge (=philosophy).
Most often however the second syllogism is interpreted as the Phenom-
enology of Spirit, the first is correctly identified with the Encyclopedia as
a whole, and the third is thought to be the summary of a philosophy of
Absolute Spirit that Hegel never wrote.
Let's take a look at each in turn.
§ 575 This initial appearance is formed by the syllogism, which has logic basi-
cally as its starting point, with nature for the middle term and is linked ultimately
to spirit. Logic becomes nature, and nature becomes spirit. Nature, which stands

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 Robbert Veen

between the spirit and its essence, divides itself though not to the extremes of
finite abstraction. For the syllogism is in the idea and nature is essentially deter-
mined as a transition point and negative moment. But the mediation of the con-
cept has the external form of transition, and science takes the form of being.

So in essence we have here the whole of the movement of the Encyclo-

pedia, starting from the Logic, going through the philosophy of nature
and ending with the concept of absolute Spirit as it is being expressed in
the concept of philosophy as the self-understanding of the Absolute Spi-
rit.

§ 576 In the second syllogism this appearance is suspended, for the spirit is the
mediating factor. This is a syllogism which is already the standpoint of the spirit
itself, presupposes nature and joins it with logic. It is the syllogism of reflection
on the idea; science appears as subjective cognition.

So now we start with nature (the Spirit presupposes nature), go through

Spirit and then end with the Logic. This is the same as the Systenm or
Encyclopedia, only now the syllogistic structure of the whole is different:
Spirit is the intermediate, and logic the conclusion.

And finally:
§ 577 These appearances are suspended in the idea of philosophy, which has
self-knowing reason, the absolutely general (the logic), for its middle term a
middle which divides itself into spirit and nature, with the former as its presup-
position (spirit), and the latter as its general extreme (nature). Thus immediate
nature is only a posited entity, as spirit is in itself not a presupposition, but rather
totality returning into itself. In this way the middle term, the self-knowing con-
cept, has as its reality primarily conceptual moments and exists in its determina-
cy as general knowledge, persisting immediately by itself.

So in this case we start with the Spirit, go through the logic of the (self-
knowing) concept which is now the middle term and end with nature.

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To Read Hegel

Why the System is Not the Whole

The system of Hegel's philosophy as a whole cannot be identified howev-
er with the “system” that is expressed in and as the Encyclopedia of Phi-
losophical Sciences. Hegel's entire philosophy should be seen as the di-
alectic unity of three major disciplines:

 the separate Phenomenology of Spirit,

 the System of Philosophy or Encyclopedia,
 the Philosophy of History

All three of these disciplines have the notion of the Idea in common. But
in each the Idea is treated differently, in such a way that these three again
form a single syllogism:

1. In the Phenomenology the idea moves from its immediate shape as

substance (immediacy for and of consciousness) to self-reflecting sub-
jectivity and produces the notion of pure science. (The self-thinking
idea.)
2. In the System the idea is expressed as science, as systematic know-
ledge, i.e. as the pure concept, moving from the subjectivity of the
concept in logic, through the externalized objectivity of the concept in
nature to the complete and absolute self-expression of the Absolute
Spirit as (the concept of) Philosophy.
3. In the Philosophy of History however, the Idea is understood as ab-
solute Spirit and shown to be actively realizing itself within and as the
history of humanity and the world, in the course of which it also devel-
ops its self-understanding as the history of philosophy.

Starting from the appearance of the Spirit as consciousness (Phenome-

nology of Spirit) we move through the middle term of philosophy as con-

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 Robbert Veen

ceptual science (Encyclopedia; the "System") to its other extreme: the

absolute Spirit realizing itself as coming to its self-understanding through
its own real history (Philosophy of History and the History of Philoso-
phy).
Only in that perspective the whole of reality is expressed without leav-
ing out any essential perspective. That is why Hegels philosophy as a
whole should be seen as an attempt to understand the Idea as History
(self-realizing Spirit).
That is also why the separate Phenomenology of Spirit is so different
from the section on the Phenomenology of Spirit within the Encyclope-
dia.
In the separate Phenomenology the totality of all reality is conscious-
ness, and the independent shapes of the idea are present as constantly
changing objects. In these different objects we find a reflection of a pre-
supposed subjectivity. In a continuous process of the self-correction of
consciousness, the dialectic identity of the consciousness and its object
appears.
The systematic Phenomenology on the other hand merely discusses the
logical elements of the Phenomenology. That is why it only deals with
three separate categories: consciousness as such, self-consciousness and
reason.
The separate Phenomenology then continues beyond reason with a more
"substantial" notion of reason, i.e. immediate Spirit. Here consciousness
is seen as embedded in the life of a people. Only by remembering the
shape of consciousness as it existed in Greek civilization - but still only
by remembering it as it is present in contemporary culture i.e. as part of
contemporary Bildung, as cultural awareness or education - it begins to
understand that consciousness is not a property of an individual, but basi-
cally a collective awareness mediated within an historical society.
In the following chapters Roman culture, the Renaissance, the Enligh-
tenment and the French Revolution are used to provide the historical pa-

20
To Read Hegel

radigms in which the inner structures of consciousness can be expressed.

Even though these historical stages are also to be understood as stages in
which this type of consciousness was produced, they are not dealt with as
such. They are remembered or immanent history, not history understood
in a conceptual mode. That is left to the Philosophy of History.
It stands to reason that in the so-called syllogisms of the System, at the
end of the Encyclopedia, only the concept of philosophy as such is dealt
with. Philosophy is the method of understanding that is presupposed at
the beginning of the Logic and has to move on toward understanding
itself - which is identical to the construction of the whole of philosophy.
(That is, it is not an introduction to but an integral part of philosophy.) At
least in the sense that the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences
presents the main concepts of philosophy in their intrinsic order and im-
manent relationships.
Obviously, one cannot identify the separate Phenomenology with any
one of these syllogisms at the end of the System. The meaning of the
syllogisms is to show, how the System of Speculative philosophy must be
Encyclopedic: one can start from the logic going through nature and end-
ing up with Spirit. One can also start with the external concept, nature,
then develop a philosophy of Spirit and finally end up with the concepts
of the subjective science of logic. And equally we can start with the pure
concept of the Spirit, then develop the formal concepts of the logic and
then finally reach nature as the external realization of those concepts.
The system of Hegel's philosophy however is not complete if we just
consider the Phenomenology that produces the notion of consciousness as
science, nor if we identify philosophy with the system of philosophy, i.e.
the Encyclopedia. In both cases the concept of the absolute Spirit is part
of the analysis yet as such it is not developed. We would be left with the
idea that Hegel worked towards the notion of Absolute Spirit without
ever reaching it. The Absolute within the other parts of philosophy is
fragmented to say the least.

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 Robbert Veen

In the separate Phenomenology e.g. a whole chapter is devoted to the

demonstration of how all the previous modes of consciousness, i.e. con-
sciousness, self-consciousness, reason and Spirit, should be understood
through the medium of the absolute, in this case the absolute as it is in
and for consciousness, as religion. Likewise in the System, the notion of
the absolute Spirit is present when Hegel discusses objective spirit in its
highest shape, i.e. the State and the political history of states. Remem-
bered history as education and the political history of the objective Spirit
however do not exhaust the infinity of absolute Spirit.
Only in the Philosophy of History does Hegel deal with the absolute
Spirit (the Eternal Spirit developing itself through time to its present and
opening up a future) realizing itself as world history. Only in world histo-
ry we have the reality of the Spirit in its totality, both subjectively and
objectively - including the perspective that was worked out separately as
the philosophy of (the history of) religion.
The system of Philosophy as a whole is therefore for Hegel a triad of
three different disciplines:

 The Idea in its appearance as consciousness: Phenomenology

 The Idea in its pure conceptual form as philosophy: Encyclopedia
(or “System” of Philosophical Sciences.)
 The Idea in its historical realization: the philosophy of History.

In these three books, the basic topic is the idea in its development, and
all three of them develop the whole of philosophy in a specific aspect.
"History" is present in each of them.

1. The separate Phenomenology of Spirit deals with the history of con-

sciousness, but gives a linear development. What the Spirit experienced
in separate stages is now remembered as succeeding momentswithin one

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To Read Hegel

movement of thought.
2. The Encyclopaedia treats history as a logical concept of the interac-
tion between states (within the transition of objective to absolute Spirit).
The basic viewpoint of the System is static: the concepts are set in their
order and remain for-themselves. (The separate Science of Logic shows
that there is an inner dialectic to it that can be expressed as such. A sep-
arate philosophy of nature or a philosophy of Spirit never reached ma-
turity.)
3. And finally the Philosophy of History deals with the spirit as the
whole of the developing reality of humanity and the world, i.e. with his-
tory as a whole and as such.

The other works can then be understood from this basic concept as sepa-
rate or minor philosophical disciplines, focused on a single element of the
system as a whole.

* The Science of Logic. The first section of the Encyclopedia gets a sep-
arate treatment in the Science of Logic. Now the dialectical deduction is
presented that was not worked out in the Encyclopedia.
* The Philosophy of the Fine Arts deals with the notion and reality of
Fine Art in various ways. Its starting point and premise is not the notion
of Art as it is present in the Encyclopedia! The status of this work is not
completely clear.
* The Philosophy of Right develops the idea of “Objective Spirit” al-
ready scrutinized in the third section of the Encyclopedia. History is
present as the relationship between States and the World-Judgment.
* The Philosophy of Religion does the same with the second stage of
Absolute Spirit, Religion, which is mentioned both in the Phenomenol-
ogy (as the antithesis to Consciousness – Spirit) and in the Encyclope-
dia. History is present in the sense that there is an order in which various
shapes of religion ultimately come to full expression in the revealed Re-

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 Robbert Veen

ligion of Christianity.
* The History of Philosophy deals with the historical process, part of
world history, in which the self-understanding of the Absolute Spirit
realizes itself. In a way it is the "subjective" mode of the Philosophy of
History.

I think this overall picture of Hegel’s whole philosophical enterprise is

crucial in understanding its elements.

3. The Method of the Phenomenology

As I have stated elsewhere, the Phenomenology analyzes the "expe-

rience" 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 "appearance" so that explains the title: Phenomeno-
logy, science of the appearance. But you might wonder if it doesn't also
mean: the appearance of science. The -logy part of course refer to "logos"
in Greek meaning "science of." We have therefore a science of the ap-
pearance, and the appearance of science. So what do we have? The Phe-
nomenology is the science of the appearance of (or becoming of) science
to itself.
To know always means to know at the same time the act of knowing it-
self. There can be no unconscious knowing - a dim awareness of a pres-

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To Read Hegel

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: knowledge always im-
plies knowledge of the knower. In other words: all knowledge is reflec-
tive. Ultimately it is Plato that in his Theaetetus developed this idea for
the first time.
But what does it mean to say that science appears to itself? It appears to
itself in the sense that every instance of knowing that we have implies
some awareness of what knowledge should be. We are not just aware of
our act of knowledge, but we are also aware of the requirements of know-
ledge when we claim something to be true. So when we talk about
science we are talking about a method in which our knowledge is justi-
fied with reference to its origin and the process in which we reached it. 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. Scientific knowledge is knowledge of things in which explicitly
we know about our act of knowing it. We have an explicit method by
which to arrive at the truth, an explicit criterion of truth with which to
measure the truth of statements and principles. The 'self-awareness' of
knowledge is the basis for its claim to truth.
In the Phenomenology this "science" appears as "consciousness". We
must make an important distinction right at the outset. 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. Con-
sciousness is to Hegel a complete idea of knowledge, a structured subject-
object relationship expressed in words and offered as a truthful under-
standing of our knowledge and the world.
This inclusion of the 'world', of an ontological dimension, is important
as well. Hegel understood the Phenomenology to be the explanation of a

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 Robbert Veen

reality. It is confusing to speak about these modes of consciousness as

"epistemologies" unless one understands that Hegel focused on the onto-
logical implications of such epistemologies at the same time. Conscious-
ness in the Phenomenology stands for the totality 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 ob-
ject. 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 essentially is (e.g. immediate
sensuous awareness) and that is what the known object essentially is (e.g.
the immediate given here-and-now).

Testing consciousness
I have said that every one of these modes of consciousness appear to say
it all. They seem to be independent and exclude one another. Precisely
this independence however of every specific consciousness, i.e. of every
claim of a particular consciousness to express the totality of knowledge,
is being tested at every stage. Not by any presupposed and external stan-
dard or criterion, because that would mean we already have jumped to a
conclusion about what knowledge really is, before we examine the vari-
ous claims to knowledge, but by its own claimed standard. The examina-
tion of modes of consciousness resembles an interrogation in a philosoph-
ical 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

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To Read Hegel

"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 es-
sentially 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 imme-
diacy is shown to be in error. Its claimed object is not understood proper-
ly. Then I move on to the next consciousness, that solves the former prob-
lem by claiming a new standard "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 discus-
sion forward by asking questions, is not accidental. The Socratic dialec-
tics 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 for Plato the real (Socratic) dialogue is essential to method -
even though metaphysical insight is not construed as dialogical, because
it is the lonely insight of the philosopher who has gone beyond the con-
fines of the Cave. If anywhere, dialogue is to be found superficially in
the rhetoric of the Sophists who explain the shadow images to a literally
captive audience. In Hegel’s Phenomenology, the changes in conscious-
ness come from the contradictions in the concept of the object itself, not
from any dialogue of truth as such. That is, the real dialogue is the devel-
opment over time of a self-consciousness that includes others in itself and
is truly universal. The participants in such a dialogue would be the histor-
ical agents through which the Spirit speaks to itself.
The various shapes of consciousness are but moments of the self-
conscious Spirit, and in that sense they are not independent historical
periods or complete philosophical systems but they belong to the whole
as abstract elements. As part of the whole they are the logical conditions

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 Robbert Veen

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.
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 ob-
ject presupposes something else that is not yet part of the definition of the
object. When confronted with that fact, consciousness expands its defini-
tion 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 "mo-
ment" 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 adequate-
ly. There is a nice Latin phrase for that: totum, sed non totaliter: the total-
ity, 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 consciousness 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.

The Example of 'Being'

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 argument will be: there is indeed noth-
ing, i.e. the act of negativity, the power of abstraction that produces this

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To Read Hegel

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. But this positive
universal is not a given but a result. It includes everything by excluding
nothing. This exclusion is in contradiction to its claimed absolute posi-
tive nature. Exclusion is a logical activity that is not properly expressed in
the concept of being itself, that simply says what is, is. Being means the
positive universal, but we can only mean that, by doing something that is
not included in the category. Being turns out to be based on a negation
(the exclusion of limitations) that is itself negated (because we state it as
a pure positive). The claim of immediacy is in contradiction with the
mediation of thought required here by this double negation. The negation
of the negativity of the exclusion turns out to be the condition of the posi-
tive nature of the concept of being. There is no such thing as an absolute
immediate category, because we need mediation to get there in the first
place.
Even if we accept its pure positive nature, the category is also deficient
in another, more "metaphysical" sense. We could run into this counter
argument: "being" does say "everything" so every determination is a
determination of being. All other categories could be said to express
modes of being. So why do we need to move beyond it? The answer lies
in the pure content of the category that is unable to express what it means.
Being says it all but it does so in a limited or merely abstract fashion. It
says everything, but does not express everything in its fullness: totum, sed
non totaliter. It leaves out the negative nature of thought which is a con-
dition of its being thought. Which is shown with regard to being in He-
gel'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 im-
mediacy and positivity.
This notion of expressivity is vital. A notion that refers to the totality is

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 Robbert Veen

just a 'name'. What we need is a category that expresses that totality in its
inner development, including all its previous stages. In such a category
the totality would become explicit.
This does not mean that the notion of being is completely set aside.
There cannot be any concept without having this character of immediacy
and universality and this claim to express a positive totality. Every con-
cept presupposes and includes "being" as an element of its own determi-
nacy. We can even say in general that every claimed concept of objectivi-
ty, including "being" and "thing" and "force" or whichever concept we
are looking at in the Phenomenology, has some truth to it - that truth will
be analyzed as such in the Logic that follows the Phenomenology. Not
because it really expresses that totality, 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 con-
sciousness reaches the identity of self-consciousness and its object, what
Hegel called absolute knowledge. The Phenomenology is at the same
time a description of that development, and in that sense an historical
description, and an analysis of consciousness, and in that sense a syste-
matic 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 He-
gel's Phenomenology and the transcendental Phenomenology of Husserl.

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To Read Hegel

4. The Movement of Consciousness

A. Consciousness
In the first movement of the Phenomenology, called Consciousness, the
opposition between the abstract singular consciousness of the abstract
singular object is overcome. 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 final-
ly 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 differ-
ence 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, subject and object determining each other and this correla-
tion 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 its ways of thinking and its
experiences or more to the point itself as a (physical) world, though this
is a position that will only be fully understood within the realm of Exist-

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 Robbert Veen

ing 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-certainty. It
experiences itself in the process of negating the object. (In the sensuous
certainty 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 "oth-
er" 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 un-
derstanding 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-

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To Read Hegel

consciousness. This duality 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 individuals.) One and the same
true self-consciousness appears to itself as a relationship between two
appearing self-consciousnesses.
At first it understands this movement metaphorically as the struggle for
recognition that is a struggle to the death. That movement 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 precisely that, a metaphor. Sometimes it is claimed that Hegel
refers here to some primordial stage in human history in which people did
struggle like this, or it is read as an explanation of the origins of slavery.
We find that e.g. in the lectures on the Phenomenology 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 expe-
riment 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 con-
sciousness and the unchangeable universal consciousness, that is now

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 Robbert Veen

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 concrete 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 con-
sciousness is present in Observing Reason. Reason tries to describe na-
ture as its universal object. But it does so self critically. Sensuous cer-
tainty, observation (perception) and reflective reasoning are now the top-
ics of inquiry.
Observing reason assumes that it is only interested in objects of percep-
tion, 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 cannot 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 facul-
ty 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 psychological laws. But because the description
always remains external, the inner meaning of these laws remains prob-
lematic. 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

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To Read Hegel

is reasonable self-consciousness 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 ab-
stract 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 understands 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 concrete universal. Only as Spirit
can it now in truth be seen as the identity of consciousness and its sub-
stance or object. It is therefore necessary to transcend even the perspec-
tive of reason.

D. (BB, VI) Spirit

The ethical community of a people is the adequate shape of conscious-
ness for the concrete 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 univer-
sal 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-consciousness 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 edition.)
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 consciousness that has its

35
 Robbert Veen

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 incarnate truth of the
universal spirit in a people in opposition to the position of an individual,
do we have something that can be seen as immediate history. History
after all presupposes the facts that are told and interpreted within the con-
sciousness 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 consciously aspires to
achieve something, there is no such thing as history.
Though in this existing spirit we again have the basic shape of con-
sciousness 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 under-
stands the world as itself. Although the Spirit is treated in a later stage of
the development of the Phenomenology, going beyond the abstract indi-
viduality and equally abstract universal that we had before, we have now
reached the real ground and substance of the previous stages.

We can now say that consciousness, self-consciousness and reason are

the abstractions 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 concrete reason, and the universal substance. Then in the

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To Read Hegel

chapter on the Spirit, Reason discovers that her own truth lies in the uni-
versal consciousness of the ethical world. The Spirit therefore, as the
concrete existing spirit of a people, is still only the truth in itself. The
shape of consciousness in which the Spirit now comes to self understand-
ing 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 under-
standing. Unhappy consciousness aspired toward the absolute but did not
recognize it as itself.
 Reason overlooked the Absolute because it found itself only in
what was immediately before itself.
 In the ethical order the Absolute was an impersonal Fate in which
no one could recognize himself.
 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 Religion 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 essence to be spirit itself. That means that all the previous shapes of
consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit must be realized in

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 Robbert Veen

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 movement again is a movement from certain-
ty 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 re-
fers to be Persian religion of light and darkness, as the first of these. Per-
ception 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 in which the artisan is the essential self-consciousness
at work. As a product of free spirit, Art is the immediate 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 ex-
press himself. The external work of art is basically a form without color -
that is how it is remembered because its color was lost! - in which the
individual expresses his own content.
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. Ulti-
mately 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 individuality. The reli-
gious 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 passions and the accidental.

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To Read Hegel

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-consciousness 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. Re-
vealed Religion contains the self-consciousness of God within human
self-consciousness. It combines therefore both perspectives. As the Fa-
ther 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, is most essentially itself
in the religious community or Congregation where the unity of the abso-
lute self-consciousness and the individual self-consciousness of Christ is
transformed 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 abso-
lute 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

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 Robbert Veen

social shape of knowledge that is the absolute condition of science is

finally reached. In that sense one can say that the scientific community is
of necessity a religious community.

F. Absolute Knowledge
In Religion there still is a distinction between the objective form of narra-
tive and image, and the contents of absolute self-consciousness. Again
Absolute Knowing must transcend 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 religion is seen as
expressing a stage of its own interior development, can conceptual know-
ledge transcend it.
Systematic science can only appear when self-consciousness has any
conceptual understanding 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 essential to both. Therefore sub-
stance, what seems to be solidly out there in itself, must be transformed
into the conceptual and in that sense become subjective. The Encyclope-
dia or System will achieve that conceptual understanding.
Ultimately, systematic science cannot remaining simply conceptual, be-
cause 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 un-
derstanding of Spirit developing itself through a long procession of his-
torical cultures and individuals, producing its self-understanding as phi-
losophy.

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To Read Hegel

5. Why Substance Has to Become Subject

toward a negative dialectics

Summary. Hegel’s project in the Phenomenology is determined as “substance

needs to be expressed also as subject.” In the Preface, par. 17 and 18, this is
explained as both an epistemological and an ontological principle. Substance
means the immediacy of the object and of consciousness, but it also means the
“living substance”, i.e. reality as absolute. But what if the Subject that is the
Truth and goal of Substance is not understood as divine and infinite? What if this
Divine Subject is a way of expressing the excess in human subjectivity? Sub-
stance that should also be expressed as subject then comes to mean these three
things:1.Being is only present within human discourse about being. 2. Being
speaks about itself in the human discourse about being. 3. Being is continuously
falsified by a subjectivity that is finite and false or rather mad, i.e. posits itself in
an exclusive particularity. Without the onto-theological presumption of Hegel’s
system – the idea that religion teaches us that the absolute is divine to which
Hegel remained fettered – we can discover the full critical and “negative” poten-
tial of Hegel’s dialectics again.

According to the preface of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit the True

should not only be conceived and expressed as Substance but equally as
Subject. Now what does that mean?
If we start from the position of Immanuel Kant we can ultimately find
three distinct meanings of this thesis.
To summarize the philosophy of Kant we can say: there is no reality
without activity by the human subject. To which Hegel would reply: quite
true, but the human subject is not a neutral and universal agency, what
Kant called transcendental self-consciousness, that constitutes reality
directly. According to Hegel, human subjectivity is in itself finite and
imbalanced, limited and confused. (Verstand) Precisely for that reason
the human subject tends to see reality as something that is completely

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external to him, a position that is still relevant to Kant in as far as he po-

sits at least the notion of absolute (and distinct, external) reality as the
Thing in Itself. In other words, human subjectivity is divided in itself
between a consciousness that is prone to accept whatever it is immediate-
ly given as positive reality and a transcendental reflective subjectivity,
that understands the world as being constituted by itself. Nevertheless,
despite the insight that reality is constituted by the subject, we somehow
need the concept of the thing in itself to prevent us from thinking that
human cognition is productive. (This duality of consciousness is basically
what Hegel's chapter on Lordship and Bondage is all about. )
The first meaning of the thesis is therefore epistemological: what con-
sciousness accepts as reality as such (substance in the metaphysical
sense) is actually merely formal, i. e. it is the fact of the object being
given to consciousness, in particular the immediacy of what is present to
consciousness. (Because consciousness knows its object to be other than
itself, the difference between objective reality and consciousness becomes
an obsession!) This epistemological reading of the thesis repeats the main
Kantian thesis but also prepares for its destruction. If the presupposition
of the duality of object and subject can itself become questionable, at
least in so far as we begin to doubt the deduction of a metaphysical prop-
osition from a phenomenological observation, we can move to another
level of questions.
What if there is no such duality? What if this duality is merely an ap-
pearance? What if the presupposition of this duality is not vital to main-
taining the meaningfulness of human cognition? And beyond that, what if
the duality between the thing in itself and the reality as constituted by the
subject is in itself a part of reality? That would lead to an ontological
transformation of the thesis. Substance as such must be expressed as
Subject because it truly is subjectivity in itself, and subjectivity is truly
Substance. But that would somehow combine Kantian subjectivity with
Spinoza's substance and would draw on insights derived from the Chris-

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tian tradition. If we take a look at the preface we can see how Hegel
moves forward from the first to the second meaning of his theses.
In paragraph 17 he says:

In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the system itself,
everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only at Substance, but
equally as Subject. At the same time, it is to be observed that substantiality em-
braces the universal, or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as that which
is being or immediacy for knowledge.

In these sentences Substance is reduced to something formal, both the

object for consciousness, and the consciousness for which it is the object,
are now called substantial. There is no substance, i. e. no immediate ob-
ject for consciousness, without the activity of consciousness, i.e. what in
its repressed or abstract form is the immediacy of consciousness. Both
being and consciousness of being in their separateness as well as in their
unification are immediate, i. e. positive, expressed without the conditions
of their possibility.
In paragraph 18 Hegel goes beyond this epistemological and Kantian
interpretation to give an ontological twist to his thesis. Now both the im-
mediate separateness and unity of being and consciousness is inscribed
into the fabric of reality itself. Hegel writes:
Further, the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the
same, is in truth actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is
the mediation of its self-othering with itself.

What Hegel here calls the living Substance is reality, absolute being. It
is this substance that posits its self in language, as concept, as subject. In
human language being speaks about itself. It is actual in so far as it reach-
es truth because without it is simply not there, and it is true because what
is expressed is indeed actual. But it speaks in such a way that the appear-

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 Robbert Veen

ance is created that it is just man speaking about being. This appearance
however is part of the reality, it is an element of the way that being
speaks about itself. The alienation of being in its other, that creates this
appearance, is vital to its own dynamics. That is why Hegel could say that
we should express the true not only as substance but equally as subject.
That does not constitute a complete denial of the possibility to express the
true as substance. Moreover, the phenomenology of Spirit is actual evi-
dence that humanity has to speak about the world in various ways of im-
mediacy. Immediacy is not something that can be discarded or surpassed.
Or in other words, philosophy can never divest itself from all traces of
human subjectivity nor should it try to do so.
How can there be a third meaning to this thesis? Such a third meaning
would have to be about the nature of subjectivity. Let's summarize what
we have so far. We have the Kantian thesis that being is only meaningful
because the human subject speaks of being. There is no reality without
the activity of the subject. We then have the Hegelian turn, that points to
the duality contained in the Kantian thesis of being on the one hand and
consciousness on the other, ultimately maintained by the empty gesture of
the thing in itself. Now the duality is inscribed into reality itself. Sub-
stance truly is expressing itself as subject. The absolute substance is di-
vine subjectivity. But what does that say about the human subject?
To Hegel this second meaning of the sentence was the ultimate thesis
that opened up the possibility of his philosophy. I would suggest that just
as in Kantianism an empty gesture (the notion of the thing in itself) pro-
tected the system from falling into an one-sided subjectivism, the empty
gesture of the divine absolute prevents Hegelianism from doing the same.
Let's consider this argument. What can prevent us from repeating the
question as to the ground in reality of the thesis? The ontological inter-
pretation of the thesis merely posits that human subjectivity is the way in
which substance, i.e. absolute reality, comes to self understanding. It
promises that the system as a whole provides for the evidence. It guaran-

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To Read Hegel

tees that human subjectivity is constitutive of reality without becoming

subjectivist, because that subjectivity is itself constituted by the absolute.
But this is merely a contention, even after the systematic Darstellung has
run its course. The notion that human subjectivity is ultimately consti-
tuted by the absolute itself, is itself a subjective idea. It remains in es-
sence analogous to the Cartesian argument, that a finite human being is
unable to conceive of an absolute being – because the finite cannot be the
cause of the infinite - and that thereby the objective reality of such a
being is guaranteed by the presence of such a concept itself. Hegel him-
self pointed to the fact that this could be construed as an illusion precisely
because the idea of absoluteness here was abstract, i.e. reached by simple
negation. The weakness of the theological presumption must therefore
necessarily bring us back to the first meaning of the thesis.
Hegel can only prevent this subjectivist outcome by arguing that the ab-
solute substance that constitutes us and reality is in itself subjective, i.e.
Spirit and that human subjectivity is the fragmented way in which it ap-
pears to itself. The revolutionary thesis of Christianity, that God has
become human, is thereby exploited to the full. In the way his entire
system becomes analogous to the ontological argument for the existence
of God as was presented by Anselm. The totality of reality that surpasses
human subjectivity, is not dependent upon human cognition to be there.
The incarnation is a representation of that fact. Human subjectivity is the
embodiment of the divine. The common origin of substance and subjec-
tivity in the divine substance that is in itself subjectivity guarantees the
possibility of speculative philosophy itself. By identifying reality with
the divine substance, Hegel can evade Kantian skepticism.
What however if the thesis in both its meanings does not refer to a
process that has an ending, but to a continuous movement? Substance,
i.e. immediate reality, is continuously being sublated by a new shape of
subjectivity that tries to posit itself in its exclusive particularity and the-
reby falsifies both its object and itself. But this exclusive particularity is

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precisely its untruth. Every mode of consciousness and every human act
of cognition is therefore both true and false at the same time. And the
same goes for the presumed object of human consciousness. By inscrib-
ing human subjectivity into reality, reality as such becomes untrue. The
impossibility of cognition is no longer a failure of human subjectivity nor
a weakness of reality, but precisely a precondition of knowledge. We
know because we don't know. Without the guarantee of divine subjec-
tivity, Hegel system boils down to the most damning critique of all pre-
tended knowledge. The negative force of Hegel’s system needs only be
turned against its theological presuppositions, to become this fully nega-
tive dialectic.
You might say that we try to move away from both the Platonic and the
Aristotelian presuppositions of Hegelian philosophy. A daring but never-
theless intriguing prospect! The Aristotelian connection between scien-
tific knowledge and the divine absolute is intrinsic to his definition of the
objects of metaphysics. Being as being defines the perspective of the
gods that philosophy can achieve. Plato before that defined the idea or
concept as the inner essence of reality, by which the latter is measured.
The immortality and universality of the soul was a mark of a divine lega-
cy and origin as well as a precondition of mathematical and philosophical
insight. Hegel's dialectical philosophy reaches its apex where it criticizes
the ontological and epistemological roots of Western philosophy, and in
that sense moved beyond its Greek roots. Hegel's critique of essentialism
in the second part of the science of logic deconstructs both the Platonic
and Aristotelian metaphysics. The analysis of the Greek city state as
immediate Spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit, shows it to be self-
contradictory. Of course Hegel never renounced on the importance of
Greek philosophy as a constituent part of its methods and tradition and
neither do we. But it is important to stress the radical renewal of philoso-
phy that came to light within German idealism instead of allowing the

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To Read Hegel

gravity of history to confuse the revolution of Hegel's project with its

failed execution.
Can we then produce an Hegelianism that moves beyond Aristotle? It
would require us to reinterpret the notion of divine substance as a social
construct, that derives its reality from social and political mechanisms. In
his Philosophy of History Hegel comes very close to expressing the view
that the notion of God is expressive of the self understanding of a people
or a community. In his early work he considered Christianity to be a
religion of the people, in which statehood, i.e. the legitimacy of power,
and social morality were firmly rooted. In Hegel's philosophy religion
was the representational form of the collective awareness of historical
truth in a particular people. Nowhere do we find any “realistic” affirma-
tion of a transcendent divine being.
And why not also epistemologically? If we accept the Hegelian thesis,
that being is only expressed through its other or rather its becoming its
other, we are one step away from accepting that otherness or difference is
crucial to being as being. We can say that being can only be expressed as
its other, i.e. the concept, without at the same time arguing that it magi-
cally returns to its own identity in the concept. The relationship between
being and its concepts must be maintained as dialectical itself, which
signifies that at the same time the concept or human cognition remains
other, i.e. the alienated or negated form of being. The discarding of the
moment of otherness as if it were a ladder that we can dispose of when
reaching a higher level, relegates negativity to the status of a provisionary
instrument. What if this negativity truly is the essence?
The idea that substance has to become subject, would ultimately mean
that the human endeavor to understand the world is a continuous transi-
tion between substance and subject. A movement that can never come to
rest, and is therefore marked by an unsurpassable historicity. Substance
inevitably has to become subject, not just because then alone it realizes its
truth, but also the opposite. Only the negativity of the subject produces

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 Robbert Veen

the untruth of substance. And of course the opposite of both would be

that subjectivity that realizes itself as social substance can never be fully
true either.

Huizen, the Netherlands, May - July 2009

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To Read Hegel

Contents

Foreword ......................................................................................... 5

1. Why Do We Still Need to Read Hegel?........................................... 7

A Personal Response ................................................................ 7

The Complexity of Hegel is Fascinating .................................. 8

Understanding the World Better ............................................... 9

How to Study Hegel? .............................................................. 11

2. And Now to Move On ................................................................. 13

How Not to Construct Hegel's System ................................... 16

Why the System is Not the Whole .......................................... 19

3. The Method of the Phenomenology ............................................ 24

Testing Consciousness ............................................................ 26

The Example of 'Being'........................................................... 28

4. The Movement of Consciousness ................................................ 31

A. Consciousness .................................................................... 31

B. Self-consciousness ............................................................. 32

C. Free Concrete Reason ........................................................ 34

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 Robbert Veen

D. (BB, VI) Spirit ................................................................... 35

E. Religion .............................................................................. 36

F. Absolute Knowledge .......................................................... 40

5. Why Substance Has to Become Subject ....................................... 41

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To Read Hegel

Still to come:

Prefacing a Philosophy - To Read Hegel - part 2

Analysis of the Preface of the Phenomenology.

About the author:

Robbert Adrian Veen was born in Amsterdam in 1956. After his studies
in philosophy, theology and Semitic Languages he became a minister for
the liberal Mennonite Church in the Netherlands. After teaching philoso-
phy for many years as a fellow of the Dutch Philosophical Society, he
received his doctorate in the Humanities in 2001 on a dissertation called:
The Law of Christ, Christian ethics from a Mennonite perspective. In that
same year he was appointed assistant professor in Christian dogmatics
and ethics at the Free University of Amsterdam, a position from which he
resigned in august 2008. Since then he has worked as a freelance author
and teacher of philosophy and theology, for Philosophy.org and the Ol-
terterper Kring in Friesland, and recently also on the internet
(www.WiZiQ.com).

Besides his studies in Hegel and Barth he is also working on his third
novel, the first to be published in English.

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