Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

By Peter Singer

I wanted to read this volume of the A Very Short Introduction series on Hegel because for a time I’ve been meaning to dive deeper into Hegelian world. From what I know of it so far, and even after reading this book, Hegel’s life and work is not something left in the high corners of abstract philosophy. His work touches everything from social sciences to psychology to history. Even to this day and age where empiricism rules supreme, thinking about fundamental principles of all these disciplines and more with Hegel is at very least excellent mental gymnastics and at very best, can, I believe, lead to breakthroughs.

I don’t want to get into all his work in this entry. The book does an excellent job by the way in summarising each one in a nutshell and it purposefully avoid being chronological because his first few works aren’t easiest to crack through. But that’s the best thing about Hegel. His work is very consistent in each area. So getting to understand one will open the doors to another. I must say such consistency is quite rare among philosophers and intellectuals. Only true geniuses and true doofuses are this consistent in their thoughts. I’m leaving up to you to decide which one is Hegel. But I have my own answer.

I want to talk about his Phenomenology of Mind in this entry. I think this one can be used to illustrate all the rest of his work and frankly it is the most interesting one. The word phenomena means an event or object’s appearance to one. Not necessarily its reality, but its appearance, its conception. So in this context phenomenology of mind refers to conception of [human] mind. But since the mind is the one that does this conceiving, it effectively means conception of the mind to itself.

One small detail to note in here. Hegel uses the German word Geist to say mind. But in German the word Geist can mean mind or spirit. This is apparently a great debate among Hegel’s English translators as to which one to use since Hegel uses the word in both contexts as they appear in English. But I think for our purposes the word consciousness is the best fit to describe this word Geist. So I think I will use consciousness more often than mind and probably not use the word spirit at this stage. Now carry on.

Phenomenology of Mind is a rejection of Kantian understanding of knowledge as distinct from observation. Kant and many other empiricists assert the notion that observation and reality are two distinct things. And therefore observation will be necessarily faulty because of either observer’s bias or observation instrument’s disrupting effect on the reality. Hegel rejects this idea mainly because it is self-refuting. If any knowledge obtained is ultimately distorted, then knowledge obtained about knowledge itself is also distorted. So this view makes geniune knowledge effectively impossible.

His answer to this paradox is simple. Trying to obtain knowledge directly without preconceptions to one’s capacity of obtaining it. This constitutes one’s consciousness. But an examination of one’s consciousness, ie, phenomenology of mind, at this level, or any level (until one obtains genuine knowledge) will inevitably result in what Hegel calls ‘determinate negation’, or in other words, a new, and more developed version of the previous consciousness, revealing knowledge obtained previously to be less than genuine. Hegel argues, through phenomenology of mind, consciousness will develop until it achieves genuine knowledge. So in simple words, trying to obtain knowledge, understanding failure (examination of one’s consciousness) and trying again using one’s understanding.

This idea of human consciousness as a swinging pendulum will later on be developed to describe what Hegel call Dialectics. Which he’ll then use to assert the purpose of history as the progress of consciousness in pursuit of freedom.

There’s much more to Hegel than just Phenomenology of Mind. And there’s much more to Phenomenology of Mind than just this. But this idea of consciousness as a self-observing entity, ever-conflicting entity is the essence of his work. One notable mention is his take on development of history through this lens presupposes ideas come before, and thereby lead to, material realities. Which is opposite of what Marx argued (even though Marx developed his theory of Historical Materialism based on Hegelian dialectics). This is important because dialectics and historical materialism are two distinct theories that lie in the core of all social sciences. Basing oneself on either one of these models, one can arrive at very different conclusions about historical events.