Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ