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ОглавлениеIntroduction
The Task of the Phenomenology of Spirit as the First Part of the System of Science
The following lecture course is an interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. By discussing the title of this work in its various versions, we shall provide ourselves with a necessarily preliminary understanding of the work. Then, bypassing the lengthy preface and introduction, we shall begin with the interpretation at that place where the matter itself begins.
Phenomenology of Spirit, the current title of the work, is certainly not the original title. It became the definitive title for the work only after it was used in the complete edition of Hegel’s works, published by his friends from 1832 onward, following immediately after his death. Phenomenology of Spirit is the second volume of the Complete Works and was published in 1832. Johannes Schulze, the editor, reports in his foreword that at the time of his sudden death, Hegel was himself preparing a new edition. For what purpose and in what manner this was a new edition can be gleaned from that foreword.1
The Phenomenology of Spirit appeared for the first time in 1807 with the title System of Science: Part One, The Phenomenology of Spirit. The work is thereby given a principal and comprehensive title: System of Science. The Phenomenology is attached to this system and ordered under it. Thus, the content of the work can be grasped only by considering this inner task, which—on the surface—consisted in being the first item in and for the system.
§1. The system of the phenomenology and of the encyclopedia
To what extent does the system of science require the Phenomenology of Spirit as its first part? What does this subtitle mean? Before we answer this question, we must recall that this subtitle, which later became the only title of the work, is not the complete title. Rather, the complete title of the work initially read: System of Science: Part One, Science of the Experience of Consciousness. The subtitle Science of the Experience of Consciousness was then turned into Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit, out of which grew the abbreviated and familiar title Phenomenology of Spirit.
In discussing the title, we must obviously stay with the most complete version of it, which appeared in two forms, both of which say the same thing in different ways. From the most complete title, it can be inferred that the first part of the system of science is itself science: it makes up “the first part of science.”1 What is peculiar about this first part should become clearer when we compare it with the second part. But aside from this first part, no other part of the system of science ever appeared.
However, soon after the appearance of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807, Hegel began publishing a work known as the Logic. The first volume of this work appeared in 1812/13, and the second volume in 1816. But the Logic did not appear as the second part of the system of science. Or is this Logic, in accord with the matter at issue therein, the remaining second part of the system? Yes and no. Yes, insofar as the complete title of the Logic also indicates a connection with the System of Science. The actual title of this work reads: Science of Logic—unusual and strange, for us as well as for Hegel’s time. But this title loses its strangeness when we recall the complete subtitle of the first part: Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The system of the science is thus 1. science of the phenomenology of spirit and 2. science of logic. That is to say: as system of the science it is 1. system as phenomenology and 2. system as logic. Thus, the system appears necessarily in two shapes. Inasmuch as they mutually support each other and are interconnected, the Logic and the Phenomenology together form the entirety of the system in the fullness of its actuality.
In addition to and apart from the inner, essential relation which the Phenomenology has to the Logic, Hegel refers explicitly to the Logic in many passages of the Phenomenology of Spirit.2 Not only do we find anticipatory references to the Logic in the Phenomenology, but also the reverse: references back from the Logic to the Phenomenology.3 But most important, Hegel writes explicitly in the preface to the first volume of the Logic, first edition, 1812: “As regards the external relation {of the Logic to the Phenomenology of Spirit} it was {!} intended that the first part of the System of Science, which contains the Phenomenology, should be followed by a second part, which would contain the logic and the two concrete [realen] sciences of philosophy, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit, and which would have completed the system of science.”4
Now it is clear that with the appearance of the Phenomenology in 1807, the entire system was originally thought to have two parts. However, the second part was to contain not only the logic, but the logic together with the concrete sciences of philosophy. The entirety of what should be the second part of the system is nothing other than the transformed concept of traditional metaphysics, whose systematic content likewise thoroughly determined the Kantian inquiry: Metaphysica generalis (ontology) and Metaphysica specialis (speculative psychology, speculative cosmology, and speculative theology).
This second part, which was to follow, would have contained the entirety of general and special metaphysics, that is, traditional metaphysics—transformed, of course, to fit Hegel’s basic position. That transformation can be briefly characterized as follows. Hegel divides the entirety of general and special metaphysics into two parts: I. logic and II. philosophy of the concrete [reale Philosophie]. However, he divides the philosophy of the concrete into philosophy of nature (cosmology) and philosophy of spirit (psychology). Speculative theology (the third part of special metaphysics and for traditional philosophy the decisive part) is missing from the philosophy of the concrete, but not from Hegel’s metaphysics, where we find speculative theology in an original unity with ontology. This unity of speculative theology and ontology is the proper concept of Hegelian logic.
Speculative theology is not the same as philosophy of religion, nor is it identical with theology in the sense of dogmatics. Rather, speculative theology is the ontology of the ens realissimum, the highest actuality as such. For Hegel this is inseparable from the question of the being of beings. Why this is the case should become clear in the course of the interpretation.
However, if the second part of the system that Hegel planned was to represent metaphysics, then the first part of the system, the Phenomenology of Spirit, was to be the foundation of metaphysics, its grounding. But this grounding is not an epistemology (which was as foreign to Hegel as it was to Kant), nor does it involve empty reflections on method prior to its actual implementation in the work. It is, rather, the preparation of the basis, the “demonstration of the truth of the standpoint,”5 which metaphysics occupies.
But why did the Science of Logic not appear explicitly under the title of the second part of the system of science? Hegel says: “But the necessary expansion which logic itself has demanded has led me to have this part published separately; it thus forms the first sequel to the Phenomenology of Spirit in an expanded arrangement of the system. It will later be followed by a treatment of the two concrete philosophical sciences mentioned.”6
But does this justify the omission of the main title System of Science? By no means. Precisely when the system is given a larger plan, it becomes more necessary to identify all the detailed parts in their relation to the system. It would not have been contrary to the original or to the enlarged plan of the system if its entirety had been arranged something like this: System of Science: Part I, Science of the Phenomenology of the Spirit; Part II, First Sequel: Science of Logic; Second Sequel: Science of the Philosophy of the Concrete.*
Why is the title System omitted as early as 1812? Because between 1807 and 1812, a transformation was already underway. The sign of the initial transformation in the idea of the system can be seen in the fact that the Logic not only loses the main heading but also stands separately, by itself—not because it turned out to be too detailed, but because the Phenomenology is to take on a different function and position in the fluctuating arrangement of the system. Because the Phenomenology is no longer the first part of the system, the Logic is no longer its second part. The Logic was separated in order to remain free to assume another place in another arrangement of the system which was then unfolding.
We gain an insight into the time between the appearance of the Phenomenology in 1807 and the publication of the first volume of the Logic in 1812 (and the second volume in 1816) if we bear in mind, if only in a rough manner, Hegel’s “Philosophical Propaedeutic.”
When the Phenomenology of Spirit appeared in 1807, Hegel was no longer in Jena, where he had settled in 1801 (having relinquished his tutorship in Frankfurt) in order to qualify for lecturing under Schelling. Hegel indeed became a university lecturer in 1805. But his salary was so insufficient that he did not need the catastrophe which happened in Prussia in 1806 to persuade him to seek support for himself in a different manner and elsewhere. As early as 1805 he applied without success for a professorship in Heidelberg. It was in Bavaria—which was where many others, including Schelling, had moved—that Hegel found employment as the editor of a newspaper in Bamberg. In 1808 he was able to exchange this position for a more appropriate one as headmaster of the secondary school in Nürnberg, where he stayed until 1816, when the second part of the Logic appeared and the call to Heidelberg University came. It was in Heidelberg on October 28, 1816, that Hegel delivered his inaugural lecture,* which is well-known especially for its conclusion, which is characteristic of Hegel’s basic position. That conclusion reads as follows:
We elders, who have grown to adulthood in the storms of the age, consider you fortunate, because your youth falls in these times in which you may devote yourselves to science and truth with less curtailment. I have dedicated my life to science; and it is a true joy for me to find myself again in this place where I may work to a greater degree with others and with a wider effectiveness, in the interests of the higher sciences, and help to direct your way therein. I hope that I may succeed in earning and gaining your confidence. But at first I wish to make a single request: that you bring with you, above all, a trust in science and a trust in yourselves. The love of truth, faith in the power of spirit, is the first condition for philosophy. Man, because he is spirit, may and should deem himself worthy of the highest; he cannot think too highly of the greatness and the power of his spirit; and with this faith, nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself to him. The essence of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power to offer resistance to the courageous search for knowledge; it must open itself up before the seeker, set its riches and its depths before his eyes to give him pleasure.7
Already at the end of 1817, the offer from the University of Berlin for Fichte’s chair, first made to Hegel in 1816, was repeated. What prompted Hegel to accept the call this time was certainly not the prospect of getting involved in all the sundry activities of a professor of philosophy, but exactly the opposite. For in the letter of resignation that he had sent to the government of Baden, Hegel expressed the hope that “with his advancing age he might be able to give up the precarious function of teaching philosophy at a university, in order to be of use in another activity {today we would say a politico-cultural activity}.”8 This is an indication that already in his Heidelberg period, Hegel had made up his mind about philosophy and was done with it: The system was established. On October 22, 1818, Hegel began his lectureship in Berlin. And he remained professor of philosophy to the end of his life, thirteen years later in 1831.
Apart from his Philosophy of Right (1821) and a few book reviews, Hegel published nothing in his Berlin period that was of great significance for his philosophy. In his lectures, Hegel worked out the system which was given its decisive and final form in 1817 in the Heidelberg Encyclopedia. (According to their volume, the lectures of the Berlin period constitute the major part of Hegel’s complete works.) But it was between 1807 and 1816, when he was a newspaper editor and a secondary-school teacher, that Hegel prepared the Encyclopedia and produced his essential philosophical work, the Logic.
As I said earlier, it is through Hegel’s “Philosophical Propaedeutic” as presented to the senior classes of the secondary school that we gain an insight into the work of Hegel between 1807 and 1812. It was not published by Hegel himself. In 1838, seven years after the philosopher’s death, Karl Rosenkranz, one of his students, found the manuscript among Hegel’s literary remains, as he was passing through Berlin. Subsequently, in 1840, Rosenkranz published the manuscript as Volume XVIII of the Complete Edition.
Philosophy instruction at the secondary school was divided into three courses. The first course was for the lower grade and included instructions in law, morality, and religion. The second course was for the middle grade and was made up of phenomenology of spirit and logic. The last course was for the upper grade and was made up of logic in the sense of the Doctrine of the Concept [Begriffslehre] and the philosophical encyclopedia. It is important to note that logic appears here in two different places. In the second course logic follows phenomenology, which is in keeping with the plan of the system in which the Phenomenology belongs and for which it was written. In the last course, however, logic is the foundation for the philosophical encyclopedia, precedes everything else, and is followed by the science of nature and science of spirit.
Then in 1817, while in Heidelberg, Hegel elaborated further on the encyclopedia, in which logic is now the first significant part, and published it under the title Encyclopedia der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse [The Encycbpedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline]. This Encyclopedia presents the new and final form of the System, having three parts:
A. Science of logic
B. Philosophy of nature
C. Philosophy of spirit.
Thus, following what we have said so far, the encyclopedia contains the whole of metaphysics.
But then what became of phenomenology? It became a segment of a segment of the third part of the system, namely, the philosophy of spirit. This is again divided into three parts:
1. Subjective spirit
2. Objective spirit
3. Absolute spirit.
The second section of the first part (subjective spirit) contains the phenomenology, which has now lost its fundamental position and function in the transformed system of philosophy.
In the last years of his life, around 1830, Hegel had to prepare a new edition of both the Phenomenology of Spirit, which had been out of print for a long time, and the Logic. While preparing the second edition of the Logic in 1831, and while editing the preface to the first edition, Hegel added a footnote to the passage mentioned above, where he speaks about the external relationship of the Phenomenology (the first part of the system) to the Logic. This footnote reads, “This title {namely, the initial main title of Phenomenology of Spirit: System of Science} will not be repeated in the second edition, to be published next Easter. In place of the projected second part, mentioned here, which was to contain all the other philosophical sciences, I have since brought out the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the third edition of which appeared last year.”9
This remark by Hegel needs clarification. What does it mean to say that the encyclopedia has taken the place of the second part of the system as projected from the vantage point of the phenomenology? However accurate this may be, it does not truly reflect the facts pertaining to the new form of the system. It is correct to say that the encyclopedia corresponds to the second part of the system and was planned to follow the phenomenology as the first part. However, the encyclopedia functions neither as the second part of the old system, nor as part of the new system. Rather, the encyclopedia presents the whole of the new system. It recognizes the phenomenology neither as an independent nor as a foundational part of the system, but only as a segment of a segment of the third part. Therefore, we shall from now on call the system which has two parts and is defined in terms of the phenomenology, but is not exhausted by it, simply the phenomenology-system. We shall distinguish this system from that presented in the encyclopedia, which we shall call the encyclopedia-system. In each case logic takes a different position and fulfills a different function. The following diagram offers a representation of what has been said so far:
The change in the position of logic is nothing less than the transformation of the idea of the system. But this transformation is not a rejection of the previous standpoint as untenable, which is the judgment that the professional pen-pushers like to record in their history of philosophy. Rather, it is the transformation of the system enforced by the initial realization of the phenomenology-system. It is thus that the Phenomenology of Spirit itself comes to be regarded as superfluous.
If we do not differentiate both systems as first and second, it is because another system, the so-called Jena-system, precedes the phenomenology-system. This is, of course, only a general designation. The various indications are that it was precisely in the Jena period that the specifically Hegelian idea of system matured; and accordingly the drafts took many forms. Although the sources are still insufficient, there is reason to believe that already prior to his Jena period in Frankfurt, Hegel projected his entire philosophy—the system. This took place in close connection with a systematic and penetrating confrontation with Hellenism, with which Hegel had familiarized himself at that time, especially because of his friendship with and close proximity to Hölderlin. The effect of the confrontation with Hellenism—and philosophically with Plato and Aristotle—is so fundamental and lasting for the Jena-system that no one who has ever made a similar attempt would imagine that anything like it could be accomplished in one semester, even if he could apply the full force of Hegel’s mind to it. That confrontation must have begun and developed its essential clarity already in Frankfurt. Therefore, one can with some justification speak of a Frankfurt-system. One can also assume, in judging Hegel’s philosophical existence as we must, that he left Frankfurt for Jena for more than simply becoming a university lecturer and embarking upon an academic career. When he left Frankfurt, Hegel knew what he as a philosopher sought in Jena; he knew it as any 31-year-old can know what philosophy intends to do with him, if he happens to be Hegel.
Thus, in summary we have the following sequence of systems and plans for systems: the Frankfurt-system, the Jena-system, the phenomenology-system, and the encyclopedia-system. Hegel’s final and proper system, the encyclopedia-system, shows much more strongly a relationship to the earlier plans for system than to the phenomenology-system. The phenomenology-system has a singular place in the whole of Hegel’s philosophy, and yet it belongs necessarily to its inner form. This is so because, to repeat what was said earlier, the Phenomenology of Spirit remains the work and the way that not only once but always, and in a definite and indispensable manner, prepares the ground—better: the space, the dimensionality, the realm of expansion—for the encyclopedia-system. The fact that the phenomenology is left out of the encyclopedia-system as a fundamental part of it is not a deficiency of this system. Rather, the omission of the phenomenology—after it inaugurated the system—marks the beginning of the system which has the logic as its only appropriate beginning. This is so because the system of absolute knowing, if it understands itself correctly, must have an absolute beginning. Now, since on the one hand the phenomenology does not begin as absolutely as the logic does and thus must be left out of the beginning of the system, while on the other hand the phenomenology prepares the domain for a possible absolute beginning, the omission of the phenomenology from the encyclopedia-system articulates its indispensable affiliation with and relationship to this system. But sufficient justice is not done to this affiliation when the phenomenology shrinks into a segment of a segment of the third part of the encyclopedia-system, although the system for its part also requires such shrinking. Therefore, the Phenomenology of Spirit occupies a double position in the encyclopedia-system: In a certain way the phenomenology is a foundational part for the system while being at the same time an affiliated component within the system.
This double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit is not the result of Hegel’s failure to gain clarity about this work and its role, but is the outcome of the system. Thus, in the course of our interpretation from now on, we shall have to ask:
1. How is the double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit systematically grounded?
2. To what extent can Hegel accomplish this grounding on the basis he provides?
3. Which fundamental problem of philosophy comes to light in the double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit?
We cannot avoid these questions. But we can formulate them and respond to them only after we have first grasped clearly the primary character and the essential dimensions of the Phenomenology of Spirit.
§2. Hegel’s conception of a system of science
a) Philosophy as “the science”
The foremost character of the Phenomenology can be determined only by considering the intrinsic mission that is initially and properly assigned to this work as a whole, as it stands at the service of the Hegelian philosophy and begins its exposition. But this intrinsic mission for the whole of Hegel’s philosophy is announced in the complete title of the work, which reads: System of Science: Part I, Science of the Experience of Consciousness. (Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit). A preparatory discussion of this title offers a rough and ready understanding of that task and so allows a glimpse of what actually takes place in that work.
Thus, we repeat our initial question: To what extent does the system of science require the science of the experience of consciousness, respectively the science of the phenomenology of spirit, as its first part?
What does System of Science mean? Let us note that the main title is not System of Sciences. This expression has nothing to do with the compilation and classification of various existing sciences of, say, nature or history. The system is by no means aiming at such things. Here we are dealing with the science and its system. The science also does not mean scientific research in general, in the sense that we have in mind when we say: “Barbarism threatens the continued existence of the science.” The science, whose system is at issue, is the totality of the highest and most essential knowledge. This knowledge is philosophy. Science is taken here in the same sense as in Fichte’s notion of the “doctrine of science.” That doctrine is not concerned with sciences—it is not logic or theory of knowledge—but deals with the science, i.e., with the way in which philosophy unfolds itself as absolute knowledge.
But why is philosophy called the science? We are inclined—because of custom—to answer this question by saying that philosophy provides the existing or possible sciences with their foundations, i.e., with a determination and possibility of their fields (e.g., nature and history), as well as with the justification of their procedures. By providing all sciences with their foundation, philosophy must certainly be science. For philosophy cannot be less than what originates from it—the sciences. If we add to the field of that for which it is the task of philosophy to give a foundation, not only knowing in the manner of the theoretical knowledge of the sciences but also other forms of knowing—practical knowledge, both technical and moral—then it will be clear that the foundation of all these sciences must be called “science.”
This view of philosophy, which has flourished since Descartes, has been more or less clearly and thoroughly developed. It attempted to justify itself with recourse to ancient philosophy, which also conceived of itself as a knowing, indeed as the highest knowledge. This concept of philosophy as the science became increasingly dominant from the nineteenth century to the present. This took place, not on the basis of the inner wealth and original impulses of philosophizing, but rather—as in neo-Kantianism—out of perplexity over the proper task of philosophy. It appears to have been deprived of this perplexity because the sciences have occupied all fields of reality. Thus, nothing was left for philosophy except to become the science of these sciences, a task which was taken up with increasing confidence, since it seemed to have the support of Kant, Descartes, and even Plato.
But it is only with Husserl that this conception of the essence of philosophy—“in the spirit of the most radical scientificality”1—takes on a positive, independent, and radical shape: With this conception of philosophy, “I am restoring the most original idea of philosophy, which has been the foundation for our European philosophy and science ever since its first concrete formulation by Plato, and which names an inalienable task for philosophy.”2
And yet if we proceed from this connection between philosophy and the sciences and from philosophy conceived as science, we do not comprehend why for German Idealism philosophy is the science. From this vantage point we also do not comprehend the ancient determination of the essence of philosophy. Granted that the tradition of modern philosophy was alive for Fichte, for Schelling, and for German Idealism generally, philosophy for them and especially for Hegel does not become the science because it should supply the ultimate justification for all sciences and for all ways of knowing. The real reason lies in impulses more radical than that of grounding knowledge: they are concerned with overcoming finite knowledge and attaining infinite knowledge. For it is possible to meet the task of laying the foundation for the sciences, of realizing the idea of a rigorous scientificality of knowing and cognition, without regard for this specific problematic peculiar to German Idealism, namely, how philosophy unfolds of itself as absolute knowledge. If the task of founding the sciences—grasping its own intention more or less clearly—presses in the direction of absolute knowledge, then the above-named task would cease to exist and would lose its own distinctive mark. For then it is not absolute knowledge because it lays the foundation for the sciences, but rather it can be this foundation-laying in this sense only insofar as it tries to found itself as absolute knowledge. But founding absolute knowledge is a task which has nothing to do with founding sciences. In the course of our interpretation of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we shall see and understand what is positively required and what decisions must be made from the very beginning for the founding of absolute knowledge.
In any case, we must from the very beginning confront the confusion that today very easily emerges if one connects current attempts to found philosophy as the first and essential science with Hegel and to regard him as confirming them. When we read in the preface to the Phenomenology that “the true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth” and “to help bring philosophy closer to the form of science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title love of knowing and be actual knowing—that is what I have set myself to do,”3 and when Hegel states similar things elsewhere, then the word science has a different ring altogether, and its concept an entirely different meaning. And in fact, this meaning of the concept of science arises from and is the final development of that approach which Western philosophy already adopted in antiquity as its guiding question. In contrast to this very intrinsic intention of bringing the guiding problem of ancient Western philosophy to its completion, the propensity toward laying the foundation of the sciences and toward the thus oriented formation of philosophy as rigorous science is of lesser significance.
But the guiding problem of Western philosophy is the question, “What is a being?” The shaping of this question stands in an inner, de facto relation to λόγος, νοῦς, ratio, thinking, reason, and knowledge. This does not mean primarily and simply that the question, “What is a being?” is dealt with by an intellectual procedure and is known theoretically. Rather, the thesis according to which the inquiry into beings is related to λόγος says something about the factual content of this question, namely, that a being as a being, i.e., regarding its being [Sein], is grasped from the λόγος and as λόγος. It maintains that fixing an interconnection between a being, ὄν, and λόγος already represents a decisive (not a random) answer to the guiding question of philosophy.
This answer, which was of necessity prepared at the start of ancient philosophy, was brought to completion in a radical way by Hegel. That is, by really carrying through the answer, he brought to real completion the task which was implied in ancient philosophy. (Accordingly, a being as such, the actual in its genuine and whole reality, is the idea, or the concept. The concept, however, is the power of time, i.e., the pure concept annuls time.4 In other words, the problem of being is properly conceived only when time is made to disappear.) The Hegelian philosophy expresses this disappearance of time by conceiving philosophy as the science or as absolute knowledge.
Now, in claiming that philosophy is not science, I am saying that, considering the actual content of philosophy, its guiding question cannot be left in the form that it had for the ancients, nor, consequently, can it be left to stand on the foundation provided by Hegel’s problematic. Thus, I am suggesting parenthetically that philosophy can find its way back into its fundamental problems less than ever as long as it is primarily conceived on the model of the idea of a rigorous scientificality and in terms of the founding of knowledge and of the sciences.
By seeing the task of philosophy as lying in the thesis that “philosophy is not a science” (a thesis which sounds negative but whose positive character comes clearly to the fore in the title of my book Being and Time), I am not suggesting that philosophy should be delivered over to fanaticism and to the proclamation of any opinions about the world whatsoever (in other words, what currently carries the eminent title of “existential philosophy”). In this view, all strict conceptuality and every genuine problem are reduced to the level of mere technique and schematic. It was never my idea to preach an “existential philosophy.” Rather, I have been concerned with renewing the question of ontology—the most central problem of Western philosophy—the question of being, which relates to λόγος not only in terms of method [Mittel] but also in terms of content. One cannot decide whether or not philosophy is the science by considering some epistemological criterion or other. This decision can be made only from out of the actual content and the inner necessities of the first and last problem of philosophy—the question of being. If we suggest that philosophy cannot and should not be the science, then we are also not saying that philosophy should be made a matter of whim. Instead we are saying that philosophy is to be freed for the task which always confronts it whenever philosophy decides to turn into work and become actuality: It has become free to be what it is: philosophy.
Philosophy should strike an alliance neither with the scientific nor with the unscientific, but rather simply with the matter itself, which remains one and the same from Parmenides to Hegel. And what about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche? We should not say offhand that they are not philosophers; much less should we hurriedly say that they are philosophers and thus are part of the genuine history of philosophy. Perhaps in both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—and we cannot take them seriously enough—something has been realized which in fact is not philosophy, something for which we as yet have no concept. Therefore, in order to understand them and their influence, it is crucial that we search for that concept instead of pitting them against philosophy. We must keep the possibility open that the time to come, as well as our own time, remains with no real philosophy. Such a lack would not be at all bad.
In these preliminary observations, it had to be said that the goings-on of contemporary philosophy are confused and vacuous in terms of genuine relations to the philosophical tradition and to the actual presence of its spirit. This must be mentioned only to suggest that, no matter how much this activity interferes with us at every step, we must push it aside if we wish to understand anything at all regarding the problematic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
b) Absolute and relative knowledge. Philosophy as the system of science
The preceding clarifies, at least in a negative way, the overall sense of the System of Science, which is the main title of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In a positive way the title means: system of absolute knowledge. But what does “absolute knowledge” mean? We shall find that answer only by interpreting the Phenomenology of Spirit. However, even at this stage we can—and must—illustrate the expression “absolute knowledge” by offering a preliminary concept of it.
The term absolute means initially “not relative.” And what does the expression relative mean when it is applied to knowledge? Knowledge is first of all obviously relative if it is a knowledge of this or that thing while not being the knowledge of something else. This knowledge is relative because it is related to something and not related to something else. Knowledge is said to be merely relative (without being aware of its own relativity) when there is still something else about which that knowledge knows nothing. Relative knowledge is that which does not know everything there is to know. However, such a concept of relative knowledge would be only quantitatively relative, since it means not knowing everything that there is to know. Correspondingly, the idea of an absolute knowledge would also be quantitatively absolute, since it would mean knowing everything that there is to know. But for Hegel the concepts of relative and absolute, as characters of knowledge, are to be understood not quantitatively but qualitatively. It is possible that a quantitatively absolute knowledge, which knows everything so far as range is concerned, could nevertheless be relative in accordance with the character (quale, qualitas) of knowing involved. In what way? What then does the term relative mean when it designates the how, the character and manner of knowing? Is not every kind of knowing, in its own way, a relative knowing, in the sense of being in itself a relation to that which is known? Is not knowledge as such a knowledge of something? This is precisely what Hegel denies and must deny when he claims that there is a knowledge which is qualitatively not relative, but absolute. To be sure, we fail to grasp the Hegelian notion of the relativity of knowledge if we understand it to be in itself a relation to something. I shall attempt to clarify, if only provisionally, exactly what Hegel always means by the terms absolute and relative as qualitative characters of knowledge; and I shall do so by drawing upon the lexical meaning of these designations.
A scientia is relativa as scientia relata. It is relative not simply as related to something but as a knowledge which in its knowing attitude is a relatum, in the sense of being carried over to that which it knows. Carried over and across, this knowledge remains knowingly in what is known. It knows it precisely so as to be held fast by what is known. Thus, as a knowing of that which is known, this knowledge is consumed by it, surrenders to it, and is knowingly lost in it. Even if such a knowledge is a knowledge of everything, lacks nothing quantitatively, and is therefore absolute, it is still relative according to the kind of knowing involved. For example, if we think of all the beings which exist and think of them as created by a God who also exists, then the totality of beings known in this way would still only be relatively known. Such a relative knowledge would be caught up in and imprisoned by what it knows. Hegel calls such knowing “consciousness.”
But we must ask if there is a possibility of knowing which is qualitatively different from this. It is obvious that we can come to a proper decision about this only if we take it up in terms of the quality of knowing. This means that we have to ask whether the quality of relative knowledge as such allows for something qualitatively other than relative knowledge. For knowledge to be qualitatively other than relative knowledge, for it to be other than a knowledge which is carried over to what is known and bound there, it must not remain bound but must liberate and ab-solve itself from what it knows and yet as so ab-solved, as absolute, still be a knowledge. To be ab-solved from what is known does not mean “abandoning” it, but “preserving it by elevating it.”5 This elevation is an absolving which knows; that is, what is known is still known, but in being known it is now changed.
Obviously such an absolving presupposes the attachment of relative knowledge. And absolving as a detaching which is aware of itself must first of all be a knowledge in the sense of relative knowledge. The possibility, as it were, to free the so-called relative knowledge is given in our capacity to know it again, to become conscious of that which is extant in the broadest sense. In the process of its unfolding alongside things, consciousness absolves itself in a certain way from them as soon as it becomes aware of itself as consciousness. Becoming aware of itself, this consciousness turns into what we may accordingly designate self-consciousness. Here in the nature of relative knowledge lies a possibility for detachment; and herein lies the question—and it is one of Hegel’s most decisive questions in his confrontation with the philosophy of his time and with Kant—whether in relative knowledge this detachment actually takes place or whether relative knowledge is still consciousness, albeit self-consciousness.
Is not this knowledge, which knowingly absolves itself from consciousness and knows it (consciousness), in turn also a relative knowledge, bound now, of course, not simply by what is known in consciousness, but by consciousness as the known? Thus, we quite appropriately grasp the knowledge which absolves itself from consciousness as self-consciousness. Yes indeed, but the first consequence of this is that although self-consciousness is absolved, it is still relative, and therefore not absolute knowledge. What is known through such absolving is that that knowledge itself is a way of knowing, is aware of itself, and is a self-consciousness. Thus, in self-consciousness we realize two things: (1) that knowledge can be detached, and (2) that there is a new form of knowledge which can only be consciousness—such that now knowing insists on the I and remains entangled with itself, such that it gets tied to the self and the I. Thus, this knowledge is relative and bound in two ways: (1) This knowledge knows itself as self, and (2) it distinguishes this self from existing things. In this way self-consciousness remains relative in spite of the detachment that has asserted itself.
Nevertheless, it is just this self-consciousness, relative in one respect and not relative in another, that reveals the possibility of a detachment or liberation. This liberation is indeed such that it does not discard that from which it liberates itself; but in knowingly absolving itself—knowing it—it takes and binds to itself, as that which frees itself. This self-conscious knowledge of consciousness is, so to speak, a relative knowledge which is free; but as relative it is still not absolute, still not genuinely free.
Obviously the pure kind of non-relative knowledge will be primarily that which absolves itself even from self-consciousness, which is not fettered to self-consciousness and yet is aware of it—not as existing for itself, next to which there is still simple consciousness, but as self-consciousness of consciousness. The unbounded origin of the unity of both self-consciousness and consciousness, as they belong together, is a knowledge that is aware of itself as the purely unbounded, purely absolved absolute knowledge, which provisionally we call reason. This knowledge, absolute and absolved as it is, is a knowledge which, while not relative, holds onto, possesses, and retains that which it knows relatively.
Hegel designates all three—consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason—as consciousness. Thus, consciousness means three things:
1. Any kind of knowledge
2. A knowledge which is related to things without being aware of itself as knowledge
3. Consciousness in the sense of self-consciousness.
Whatever is known relatively—in the qualitative sense, not merely quantitatively—is known as something limited. But whatever is limited is, in its multiplicity, related to the absolute, as that which has no limit. That is why Hegel, in his essay of 1801 on the difference between the systems of Fichte and Schelling, writes:
But because the relation of the limited to the absolute is, like the limited, manifold, philosophizing must aim at relating to this manifold. The need necessarily arises for producing a totality of knowledge, a system of science. By this means the manifold of those relations will first be released from being accidental, in that they will preserve their places in the context of the objective totality of knowledge, and their objective completeness will be brought about. The philosophizing which fails to construct a system represents a continuous escape from limitations. It is more like reason’s struggle for freedom than reason’s attaining pure knowledge of itself, in its certainty and clarity about itself. Liberated reason is identical with its action, and its activity is a pure presentation of reason itself.6
Absolute knowledge is genuine knowledge, the science. That science which knows in an absolute way “knows the absolute.”7 Science as absolute knowledge is in itself system, according to its most essential character. The system is not an optional framework or an ordering of absolute knowledge by way of addition. Rather, absolute knowledge is conceived and is exclusively aware of itself only when it unfolds and presents itself in and as system. Thus, we must not rewrite the main title of the Phenomenology of Spirit—“System of Science”—to read “System of Philosophy.” Rather, philosophy itself means nothing but the science in system or system of science (as absolute knowledge). (Hence it becomes clear how absurd it would be to say, with regard to this Hegelian concept of philosophy, that it expresses a striving for a “scientific philosophy” in the conventional sense of this word.)
§3. The significance of the first part of the system with regard to the designation of both of its titles
What does it mean to say that the first part of the system of science requires the science of the experience of consciousness, or the science of the phenomenology of spirit?
To begin with, we must not lose sight of the fact that the first part is science, which cannot now mean some scientific discipline or other. Rather, science means absolute knowledge, and this in turn means the system. The first part of the system of science, as science, is itself the system, the system in its initial presentation.
What must this initial presentation of science be like? The answer is provided by both titles used for designating the first part of the system of science. These titles are worded differently, say something different, and yet they mean the same. We shall first try to elucidate each of these titles separately, in order then to determine what unites them in sameness. Subsequently we can grasp the specific character of the first part of science.1 But this calls for a preliminary look at what is peculiar to the second part of the phenomenology-system; and in accord with what was said earlier, that in turn means taking a look at the first constitutive part of the final encyclopedia-system.
a) “Science of the Experience of Consciousness”
The first title used for distinguishing the first part of the system of science reads: “Science of the Experience of Consciousness.” The words which make up the title are familiar to us as long as we take the title in its outward appearance, and particularly if we know the philosophical terminology. And yet this familiarity does not help us; on the contrary, it misleads us. If we do not keep in mind, both from the outset and subsequently, that “science” here means “absolute knowledge,” then we are already hopelessly led astray. Only by keeping that meaning in mind can we grasp what is meant by “experience,” “consciousness,” “experience of consciousness,” and finally by “Science of the Experience of Consciousness.”
To be sure, a real title, which does not stem from out of perplexity or with a view to appeal and the like, can be understood only on the basis of a thoroughgoing appropriation of the work so entitled. Such an appropriation is also necessary for understanding the introduction of that work. Therefore, even if in discussing the titles we now refer above all to the introduction2 to the Phenomenology, and to its important preface,3 then we gain a limited and provisional understanding of the titles. But above all we must do without a complete interpretation of the pieces just mentioned.
Insofar as we have provisionally explained what the concepts of “science” and “consciousness” mean in Hegel’s sense, we can now inquire what the expression “experience” in “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” means. We are familiar with this expression as a technical term in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. One of the formulations of the problem of the first Critique is the question concerning the possibility of experience. Here experience means the totality of the theoretical knowledge of existing beings (nature). In this sense even today the natural sciences are called experimental sciences.* It is this kind of experience which, in terms of its essence, is the object and theme of philosophical knowledge. That is why the Critique of Pure Reason could be taken as a science or theory of experience, a theory about what experience is.
But if Hegel characterizes the Phenomenology of Spirit as the science of the experience of consciousness, then (1) experience is not taken in the Kantian sense, and (2) phenomenology as the science as such does not mean a knowledge of or about experience. This holds particularly true when we grasp experience as Hegel does. What does experience mean for Hegel? Is there any connection at all between Hegel’s concept of experience and that of Kant and his problem? If the answer is in the negative, from where does Hegel get what is then obviously his own concept of experience?
We must ponder what the word experience means generally, prior to its terminological use in philosophy, in order to see that it is not arbitrarily and without reason that Hegel uses the word in this central place.
For example, we say: I have learned or experienced [erfahren] that such and such has happened, for example, that lightning has struck a house. “I have learned or experienced” means that I have not merely heard something about it, but rather that I heard it from someone who knows it and was there, or who heard it from those who were there. I have heard, I have learned. Again, someone is sent out to inquire about something—e.g., the condition of a patient—and returns with the response that “there was just nothing to find out [erfahren].” Here the term erfahren means to find out, to establish how certain things are. In this and in similar cases, erfahren means to learn and to establish how things are, what is happening and what has happened. Experiencing [in Erfahrung bringen] means to pursue the matter itself in a certain way and to see whether what has been said or believed can be confirmed. Experiencing means to let an opinion be confirmed by the matter itself. Accordingly, experiencing is a knowledge which is confirmed by someone who goes directly to things and sees them. Such knowledge makes a person who lets himself be guided by it an experienced human being. Because he is experienced, he can be regarded as one who has been proved to be, for example, an experienced physician. To say that someone is experienced is to say that he knows what he is doing, observes how things must be going if they are to take the right and not the wrong course.
The issue for us is not to list and explain all of the differences, nuances, gradations, and interrelations of meaning in the term experience. Rather, we would like only to find out in which direction Hegel’s use of the word goes. And in this respect it should be pointed out that the use of this term by Hegel is not in line with the meanings we have mentioned so far. If we bring these meanings into a first group, then experience means the immediate demonstration of an opinion or a knowledge by way of returning to things in the broad sense of the term, i.e., by seeking recourse in the intuition of some thing as the means of its confirmation. There is a second group of meanings which does not focus exclusively on the element of seeing for oneself or on taking a view of one’s own in order to confirm an opinion and to be guided by it. Rather, in this group of meanings experience connotes the process of undergoing experiences in the course of which the experienced matter itself will be confirmed and its comportment verified by determining whether or not the matter is what it is, or how the matter is joined to something else. Experiencing here means testing the matter itself in and for the context to which it belongs. Expressions such as “to undergo experiences with something,” “to have to undergo experiences with something,” “to have become richer by certain experiences,” always convey two senses: First, they indicate a certain sense of having been disappointed and surprised because things turned out other than expected. Second, they suggest an additional learning of something new that is increasingly verified.
Let us briefly distinguish both groups or concepts of experience. 1. Experimenting in the sense of demonstrating and proving an opinion about something with recourse to sense perception of that thing itself. 2. Undergoing an experience in the sense of letting the matter itself demonstrate itself and so be verified as it is in truth.*
According to the first group of meanings, we speak of the sciences of experience as “experimental sciences.” Depending on whether we conceive the notion of a demonstrating-intuition in a narrow or a broad sense, we change the concept of experience. If we do not limit demonstrating-intuition to what is sensible—and is obtained primarily through the sense organs—but conceive of this intuition simply as the manner of confirming an opinion on the matter at hand, then the concept of an intuition of essences may emerge. For example, such an intuition is required in determining the structural relation of a subject and a predicate in a proposition, a relation which can neither be seen by the eyes nor heard by the ears. Even less will we invent something arbitrary about it. Instead, we must demonstrate the structural relation in a living proposition as such. We must render this relation evident for what it is, we must render its essence “evident” as it emerges out of the relationship itself. The intuition which delivers the essence in this first sense, is the phenomenological intuition. Because such an intuiting can be confirmed in terms of the things themselves, as they are in themselves, the phenomenological intuition can also be called experience. It was in this fundamentally extended sense that Scheler used the expression “phenomenological experience” in his early important works over twenty years ago. Recently Husserl too seems to have taken up this extended concept of experience whenever he uses that word—a practice which is in keeping with his conviction, held by him for a long time now and mentioned often, that phenomenology represents empiricism and positivism, properly understood.4
The Hegelian concept of experience as it appears in the title of his Phenomenology, “Science of the Experience of Consciousness,” does not go in the same direction as the aforementioned contemporary phenomenological concept of experience. In Hegel the emphasis is not on the moment of significance in confirmation by intuition. Saying this, I am saying at the same time something whose mention is really superfluous from the first, namely, that “science of experience” has nothing at all to do with the “experimental sciences” in the current sense, e.g., biology or history. With the expression “science of experience,” Hegel does not want to emphasize that this science should be confirmed and proved in the experience of either a sensible or an intelligible intuition. Therefore, it is quite misleading to try, from this point of view or in general, to establish a connection between contemporary phenomenology and that of Hegel—as Nicolai Hartmann does, as if Hegel were concerned with the analysis of the acts and experience of consciousness.
The Hegelian concept of experience moves much more in the direction of the second group of meanings which the term experience has, namely, experience as denoting, both negatively and positively, undergoing an experience with something in such a way that this something is verified, experiencing it as not being what it first seemed to be, but being truly otherwise. However, what proves to be different will not be thrown aside. Rather, the appearance in such and such a way [das So-Scheinen] belongs precisely to that which is experienced and is included in that which renders the experience richer. For Hegel this way of undergoing an experience is certainly not related to events, tools, or people. So to what is it related? The answer is given in the title of the Phenomenology: Science of the experience of consciousness. If this means that the experiences are experiences of consciousness, then this consciousness is the object of experiencing. But it is questionable whether the term “of’ in the expression “experience of consciousness” is to be interpreted as an objective genitive, however much the ordinary meaning of the title may suggest such an interpretation. “Experience of consciousness” does not mean primarily experiences that are in and about consciousness. Rather, this expression suggests that it is consciousness itself that undergoes these experiences. Consciousness, as Hegel says, is “comprehended in the experience itself.”5 If we ask in what consciousness undergoes its experiences or with what it must undergo its experiences, the answer is: In and with itself [an ihm selbst, mit sich selbst]. So maybe consciousness is the object of experience, and the above interpretation is correct? By no means. On the contrary, only because consciousness in the quite specific sense of absolute knowledge is the subject of experience is consciousness the object of experience and can undergo an experience with itself—not the other way around. To the extent that consciousness as subject undergoes the experience (consciousness and experience understood in the Hegelian sense), it cannot do this other than in itself. If, on the contrary, we take consciousness initially as an object, then it is indeed possible that consciousness can be experienced and described differently, e.g., as phenomenological experiences with [am] consciousness, which have nothing to do with what Hegel means by the “experience of consciousness.”
Experience of consciousness is, therefore, “the experience of itself which consciousness goes through.”6 What sort of experience must consciousness undergo with itself? We have already delineated the basic features of such an experience. Initially consciousness is relative knowledge to such an extent that it knows nothing about itself, about what it is. Consciousness knows only about its own object, and only insofar as it is in consciousness. It does not even know the object as such, where the object stands opposite the knowing of it. As soon as knowledge knows its object, it already knows that the in-itself is object for consciousness. This is to say, being-for-consciousness is a being-known [Gewußtsein]. This being for … is knowledge. To the extent that consciousness is aware of itself as a knowledge of … that allows the object to take a position opposite consciousness, to that extent the object loses its character as in itself and becomes something else, turns into something for consciousness, into a knowledge. And as a knowledge that is known, this knowledge becomes something other than what it formerly was when consciousness was simply absorbed in the knowledge of the object. There emerges now another mode of knowledge; and what was known formerly, the being in itself of the object, becomes different.
When consciousness undergoes its experience of itself as knowledge of the object and thus also undergoes its experience in terms of the object, then consciousness must experience that it becomes something other for itself. Consciousness verifies to itself what it really is, in the immediate knowledge of the object, which is not further known. In this verification consciousness loses its initial truth, what it at first thought of itself. However, in this verification consciousness not only loses its initial truth but also undergoes an experience and becomes richer by it, in that consciousness obtains a truth about itself. Thus, “the new true object”7 issues forth for consciousness. And inasmuch as consciousness and its knowledge are the sole object of this experience, consciousness becomes richer by a knowledge of knowledge, a knowledge of what knowledge is. Through this experience knowledge increasingly discovers the way to itself and to its ownmost essence.
Thus, the experience which consciousness undergoes with itself has a negative and positive aspect, corresponding to the second concept of experience we discussed earlier. Through the experience which consciousness undergoes with itself, consciousness becomes other to itself. But this becoming-different-to-itself is exactly a coming-to-itself. As Hegel puts it: “And experience is precisely the name we give to this movement, in which the immediate, the unexperienced, i.e., the abstract {relative}, whether it be of sensuous (but still unsensed) being or is only thought of as simple, becomes alienated from itself and then returns to itself from out of this alienation, is only then revealed for the first time in its actuality and truth, and becomes also a property of consciousness.”8 Hegel calls experience a “movement,” and in the introduction to the Phenomenology he says explicitly that consciousness undergoes this experience, that “consciousness exercises … this movement on itself.…”9 This experience is the experience of consciousness which is possible only when consciousness is the subject of experience.
In the experience which consciousness undergoes with itself consciousness must undergo its experience with itself. Thus, consciousness experiences itself as that which must undergo such experience with itself, i.e., consciousness experiences the inevitability of its own essential character. Because consciousness as knowledge is essentially absolute and not relative, it must undergo the experience that the relative knowledge exists only because it is absolute. Absolute knowledge which is aware of itself purely as knowledge and knows of its self—and through this selfhood knows itself as true knowledge—is spirit. For spirit is nothing but being-alongside-itself which comes back to itself in becoming something other than itself. Spirit is this “absolute restlessness,”10 but understood properly as absolute restlessness to which nothing more can “happen” in principle. Later Hegel calls this restlessness “absolute negativity,” and “infinite affirmation.”11
Thus, what emerges out of the experience which consciousness has of itself—what shines forth or appears—is spirit. In experience as the movement of consciousness that has been characterized as becoming-other by coming to itself, there takes place the coming-to-appearance of spirit, or the phenomenology of spirit.
Thus, by elucidating the first subtitle of the work, “Science of the Experience of Consciousness,” we are unexpectedly led to the second subtitle: “Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit.” In this way the inner connection of both subtitles becomes clear.
b) “Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit”
To understand the second subtitle and thus the entire work, it is crucial that once again we determine correctly what the genitive means in the expression “phenomenology of spirit.” This genitive must not be interpreted as a genitivus objectivus. Easily misled by current phenomenology, one might take this genitive to be object-related, as though here we are dealing with phenomenological investigation of spirit that is somehow distinguished from a phenomenology of nature or that of economics. Hegel uses the term phenomenology exclusively in reference to spirit or consciousness. But he does so without conceiving spirit or consciousness as the exclusive themes of phenomenology. It is Husserl who speaks this way about phenomenology as “transcendental phenomenology of consciousness,” which investigates consciousness in its quintessential self-constitution and in the constitution of the totality of consciousness of objects—an investigation whose agenda would be set up for decades and centuries to come. In Hegel’s conception of the phenomenology of spirit, on the contrary, spirit is not the object of a phenomenology. Here “phenomenology” is by no means a title for an investigation of or a science about something like spirit. Rather, phenomenology is not one way among many but the manner in which spirit itself exists. The phenomenology of spirit is the genuine and total coming-out of spirit. But before whom does it come out? Before spirit itself. To be a phenomenon, to appear means coming forward in such a way that something shows itself which is other than what previously showed itself, in such a way that what comes forward does so in opposition to what previously appeared, and what previously appeared is reduced to mere illusion [Schein].
Experience, properly understood in Hegel’s sense, as having-to-undergo-an-experience-with-oneself, means appearing as a self-showing of knowledge which comes forward as what becomes-other-than-itself by coming to itself. To appear means to come out in the twofold sense of something’s showing itself and thus showing itself in opposition to what has already shown itself by showing it to be a mere illusion. To appear means that consciousness in its knowledge becomes something other to itself.12 Accordingly, six years before the publication of the Phenomenology, Hegel writes in the essay of 1801 entitled “The Difference between the Systems of Fichte and Schelling” (in connection with the question as to how the absolute should be posited and conceived): “Appearing and separating are one.”13 By separating Hegel means becoming other than oneself in the sense of moving apart and standing in opposition.
In Hegel, appearing and appearance are also primarily and exclusively related to that which already emerged in his concept of experience: the emergence of something negative, in its contradiction to something positive. The contradiction is what appears, a no and yes with regard to the same thing. Spirit or the absolute appears in the history of appearance. Hence, Hegel states quite clearly in the Differenzschrift of 1801: “… the purely formal appearance of the absolute is the contradiction.”14 In that the absolute becomes something else, something simultaneously arises and passes away. That is why Hegel states in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit: “Appearance is the arising and passing away that does not itself arise and pass away, but is in itself [an sich] and constitutes the actuality and the movement of the life of truth.”15 But truth—if we add what was said earlier about the concept of experience—verifies itself only in the experience of consciousness as absolute knowledge, as spirit. Appearing in the sense of manifesting itself is not something fortuitous and accidental which happens to spirit, but is its essential character.
Now we see that the complete subtitle—“Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit”—is by no means the tautological expression which one tends to take it to be nowadays. For according to current notions, phenomenology means the science of consciousness, and the Hegelian title means only science of the science of spirit. Such a view is out of the question. In expressions such as science of experience and science of phenomenology, the term “of” is not to be taken as a genitivus objectivus but as an explicative genitive and means: science is absolute knowledge, i.e., the movement which consciousness exercises on itself. This movement is the self-verification of consciousness, of finite knowledge, as spirit. This self-verifying is nothing but the appearance of spirit, or phenomenology. Experience, phenomenology, is the way in which absolute knowledge brings itself to itself. For this reason this experience is called the science. This science is not a science of experience. Rather, it is the experience, phenomenology as absolute knowledge in its movement.
We have now said explicitly how both subtitles of the first part of the system of science complement each other. The first subtitle indicates what it is that verifies and represents itself in its truth: consciousness—in that it undergoes the experience. The second subtitle indicates as what consciousness verifies itself: as spirit. The manner of verification is experience in the sense of undergoing-an-experience-with-itself, which is what happens in phenomenology. The experience which consciousness undergoes in science—by bringing itself to absolute knowledge—is the experience according to which consciousness is spirit and spirit is the absolute. “The best definition of the absolute is that it is spirit. One can say that finding this definition and grasping its meaning and content was the absolute direction of all education and philosophy, that it was toward this end that all religion and science was driven, and that it is only out of this drive that world-history can be grasped.”16
Thus, we have clarified the complete title of the work: System of Science: Part I: Science of the Experience of Consciousness, or Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. We see now that the proper concept of science is decisive for understanding the title. We arrived at this concept by defining what “consciousness,” “relative knowledge,” and “absolute knowledge” mean. Absolute knowledge and only absolute knowledge is in itself system. Then we had to clarify what “experience,” “spirit,” and “phenomenology” mean. The outcome of all of this was that we had to understand the genitive in the subtitle as subjective—an understanding which at the same time shows the connection of both subtitles. In the preface to his work, Hegel once used a title which connected the decisive terms of the titles we discussed so far. He took the term system (from the major title System of Science) and the term experience (from the subtitle Science of the Experience of Consciousness), and the term spirit (from the subtitle Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit) and formulated a new title, which read: System of the Experience of Spirit.17 This means that the work represents the absolute whole of experience which knowledge must undergo with itself and in which knowledge becomes manifest to itself as spirit, as absolute knowledge, which fundamentally undergoes the experience.
§4. The inner mission of the phenomenology of spirit as the first part of the system
Our clarification of the complete title of the work has still not provided us with an answer to the question: To what extent does the system of science require as its first part the science of the experience of consciousness, or the science of the phenomenology of spirit? As long as this question is not answered, we have, strictly speaking, not explained the full title, for we have left unexplained the meaning of the phrase “first part.” Or to put it differently, as long as this question is unanswered, it remains unexplained why “Phenomenology of Spirit” stands simultaneously as a main title and a subtitle.
a) Absolute knowledge coming to itself
We mentioned already that the function of the first part can really be grasped only by considering the second part. And yet if the discussion of the title brings to light the inner thrust of the work, then the inner mission assigned to the first part of the system must also become intelligible. In its first exposition, science allows absolute knowledge (the absolute itself) to come out in its becoming-other-than-itself, in which it returns to itself, in order to grasp itself as absolute knowledge in its essence and nature. Hence, Hegel writes at the end of the introduction to the Phenomenology in one of his magnificent sentences in which language has become one with a mind which has been philosophically molded: “In pressing forward to its true existence, consciousness will arrive at a point at which it gets rid of its semblance of being burdened with something foreign to it, that is only for it and as some sort of other. Appearance becomes identical with essence and at just this point the exposition of consciousness will thereby coincide with the science of spirit proper. And finally, when consciousness itself grasps this its own essence, it will signify the nature of absolute knowledge itself.”1 Thus, the exposition of spirit as it appears in its character as movement itself reaches the point of becoming and of being actual, absolute knowledge. In and through its character as movement, the exposition becomes itself what is to be exposed. The exposition and what is to be exposed coincide, not by chance but necessarily. It should discover that absolute knowledge as the knowledge that it is, exists, and so itself knows itself absolutely. (Absolute self-knowledge is not a free-floating theoretical comportment, but the manner of actuality of absolute spirit; and as such it is knowledge and will at the same time.)
What does absolute knowledge gain by this? The gain for absolute knowledge is that it is with itself, i.e., it is in its own element, where it now unfolds itself absolutely as absolute knowledge for the purpose of knowing absolutely what it must know as such. But knowledge unfolded thus is presented in the second part of the system, i.e., in the second exposition of absolute knowledge. Accordingly, the first exposition has the inner mission of preparing itself for the element or “ether” in which absolute knowledge as such breathes. As Hegel says: “In it {the Phenomenology} it {spirit} prepares for itself the element of knowing.”2 Only in this way is consciousness transposed into its genuine element. “The spirit that has developed in this fashion and knows itself as spirit is science. Science is its actuality and the realm which it builds for itself in its own element.”3 Thus, the first part of the system has the inner mission of bringing absolute knowledge to itself and into its realm (element, ether); and in this realm it should unfold its supremacy as the second part.
What takes place in the first part is the coming of spirit to itself on the path which is appropriate to the character of its own possibility of movement (experience, phenomenology). The realm
