Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger
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of Hegel published so far. Bypassing the preface and the introduction to Hegel’s work, this lecture course explicates Sections A (“Consciousness”) and B (“Self-Consciousness”) of the Phenomenology of Spirit.3
The Character of the Text: A Reading. What distinguishes the following text, setting it apart from a commentary in the usual sense, is the fact that in this lecture course Heidegger offers a simple reading of Sections A and B of the Phenomenology of Spirit. If one looks at Heidegger’s reading of Hegel from the outside, without taking into account what actually transpires in it, then the reading might be characterized as an interpretation of the chapters “Sense Certainty,” “Perception,” “Force and Understanding,” and “Self-consciousness.” But what actually transpires in this interpretive reading is a careful and meticulous unfolding of the movement of thinking that is called “the phenomenology of spirit.” This reading reveals the phenomenology of spirit as a thinking which gathers itself up in a gradual, always conscious and always self-assured manner. The emergent unfolding of this gathering of “the phenomenology of spirit” marks the simplicity of Heidegger’s reading.
What we read in the text presented here in translation is not the establishment of a position or the expression of an intellectual superiority that is out to score points for or against Hegel. The interpreter of those sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit finds here a reading in which the process of the phenomenology of spirit becomes alive again. That Heidegger intended this—rather than a survey of various interpretations of Hegel’s thought—is shown by the fact that he assigns a limited space to the discussion of works about Hegel. The process of the phenomenology of spirit can come to live again independently of an extensive and thorough treatment of the Hegel literature. As the work of thinking progresses, and as we are drawn into the movement of thinking, it becomes increasingly clear how little this movement depends on the vast and growing literature on Hegel.
This does not mean that Hegel scholarship should be forfeited. Rather, in its powerful stroke, Heidegger’s reading reveals from within how necessary it is to inaugurate one’s reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit prior to and independent of the debate created by the secondary literature on that work. What we learn from the example that Heidegger provides is that the movement of thinking that occurs as the conditio sine qua non of coming to terms with the Phenomenology of Spirit needs to be initiated each time anew. Instead of being on the lookout for what this or that one has said about this work, the reader should initiate his or her own reading. What safeguards this reading from deteriorating into a subjective rendition of the Phenomenology of Spirit is not the authority of the secondary literature, but the essential character of this work as a work of thinking.
The simplicity of the reading which is at stake here and the movement which this reading is to bring about can be reached only when the Phenomenology of Spirit is taken as a work of thinking. The phrase “work of thinking” should not be mis-taken as a platitude on the basis of which the Phenomenology of Spirit might be seen as the product of Hegel’s intellectual efforts. The phrase “work of thinking” refers to the work-character of the work Phenomenology of Spirit, to its ἔϱγον, which is never experienced in a mere reading of the text.4 It is important to bear in mind that this ἔϱγον (in which the attentive reader participates) is not something added to the work as a supplement. A philosophical work such as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit exists as the ἔϱγον which it brings to light from within itself.
The priority which Heidegger ascribes to the work as a work of thinking helps us to understand why the familiar characterization of the Phenomenology of Spirit as a product of Hegel’s intellectual efforts is far from adequate. When we take the work to be the product of Hegel’s intellectual effort, then we are immediately confronted with the question: Who is Hegel? Is he the focal point of any number of biographical studies? What is fundamentally objectionable in this characterization is that it immediately opens the door for an assessment of the work in terms of biography—in terms of a correlation between work and life. By considering the work as a by-product of life, we reduce the work to an outgrowth of subjectivity, thus blocking access to the ἔϱγον (to what is going on), which is summed up in the word work.
We might, then, distinguish the several meanings of the word work—and along with that the concomitant root issues involved: (1) the work that we have as a product of Hegel’s efforts, (2) the work as the book that we have (the Phenomenology of Spirit as a text-work), and (3) the work of thinking that is going on in the text-work, a work of thinking that our attentive reading can participate in. The first meaning of work—as product—Heidegger dismisses as peripheral, nongermane, and utterly external to the movement of thinking that his reading is intended to stimulate. The second meaning of work—as text-work—comes up whenever Heidegger makes reference to the work as text. The third meaning of work as process, as the movement of thinking, is the root issue and is central to Heidegger’s concern in this lecture course. Because of a certain style used in German—of not necessarily italicizing titles of books—these last two meanings (the ones that actually bear on Heidegger’s reading) are not distinguished in the German edition: The words “die Phänomenologie des Geistes” (not italicized in German) can refer to the book Phenomenology of Spirit or to the process or movement of “the phenomenology of spirit.” In order to provide an English translation in accord with standard English style, we had to determine in each instance which of the two senses was meant. This became a matter of interpretation, a task that the German edition could avoid.
In order to see the originality of the work, we must go beyond the legacy of Romanticism and historicism, which assumes a direct correlation between life and work and reduces the work to an accomplishment of human subjectivity. When Heidegger began a lecture course on Aristotle, instead of giving the customary account of the philosopher’s life, he chose merely to say: “Aristotle was born, he worked, and he died.”5 Thus, he intimates that biographical data do not provide a reliable starting point for entry into the work of a philosopher. Any view which assumes that a work is born out of life is an explanation offered about the work instead of an attempt to come to grips with its originality. The notion of the “history of the evolution of a work in the course of the development of the life of an author” tends to lead away from what occurs in the work—it is a mis-leading notion. The unexamined assumption concerning the nature of the work as a by-product of life is a way of explaining the work away rather than coming to terms with its original character. This explanation tends surreptitiously to annihilate the work’s questioning power.
As Heidegger returns to the originality of the work as a work of thinking, as he demands that the reader be guided by the ἔϱγον (which is the work) rather than by the desire to place the work alongside other biographical peculiarities of the author, he leads the reader back to the original togetherness of thinking and questioning. Thus, Heidegger points beyond the correlation of life and work to the work’s independent stature as a work of thinking.
It is certainly naive to want to explain anything in the Phenomenology of Spirit by going back to the events of Hegel’s life in Jena before 1807. For understanding what goes on in this work, curiosity about Hegel’s life in that period is a bad guide. Rather, it is the Phenomenology of Spirit as a work that made that life to be Hegel’s life. As a work of thinking, the Phenomenology of Spirit inheres in itself: Its independence forbids external and biographical explanations. It is good to pause for a moment and to wonder about the phenomenology of spirit as that which claimed Hegel’s “attention” in the midst of the events that made up his life in Jena. What is it that occurs in the work of the phenomenology of spirit that made this life to be Hegel’s life? Is it not the overriding concern with the phenomenology of spirit that stamps life with a Hegelian mark? The response to this question should come from a direct exposure to the ἔϱγον of thinking, which, as the phenomenology of spirit, leads the way in Hegel’s life. This is to suggest that, in opposition to romantic and historicistic views, we should see life in the light of the work. If we take up the questions that make up the very fabric of the phenomenology of spirit (or of the Phenomenology of Spirit), then we gain access to a plane from which the