Introductory session (J.N. Findlay’s Foreword, v-xxx)*
Notes by Marton Ribary and Neil
MacDonald
In this introductory
session, we discussed some of Hegel’s key terms and concepts: Geist, Bewusstsein,
Phänomenologie, Wissenschaft. We also discussed how Hegel’s Phenomenology
relates to the Hegelian enterprise as such (approximately the one embraced by
the Encyclopaedia), to Hegel’s predecessors (especially Kant), and to
the 20th century phenomenological tradition.
Geist:
There is no one-to-one
good translation of Geist in English. The terms associated with inner/mental
life in German and those in English overlap each other, but the semantic maps
do not fully cover each other. Geist is not restricted to “mind” and
mental processes, it also means the life force driving the self through time. In
this sense, Geist comes close to the French esprit. Geist can
be understood as the object of psychology and positivist knowledge, but it also
means “soul” and “spirit” with all of its psychological and religious
connotations. Geist is real and present, yet transcends the sphere of
sensory experience.
Bewusstsein:
The term appears in the
original title of the Phänomenologie which was Wissenschaft der
Erfahrung des Bewusstseins. We discussed how Geist and Bewusstsein
relate to each other, and how we could distinguish between the possible English
translations “awareness” and “consciousness”. One suggestion was that while awareness
relates to the crude sensory experience, consciousness is a mentally processed
form of it. What is important is that Geist covers much more than the
individually constrained Bewusstsein as Geist has the capacity to
transcend the individual. Geist is the manifestation of the universal in
the uniqueness of the individual.
Phänomenologie:
Hegel rejects the
dichotomy between subject and object. Kant had to resort to the solution that
the sensing subject can never reach the object themselves, that is, there are
such things as the “limits of reason” as described in Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason. According to Kant, there is no point of breakthrough from the
sensing self to the objects. The object is transcendent to the subject, and the
subject can only reach them by postulates and by setting the laws of perception.
However, Hegel would
rather agree with the words of Alain Badiou who says that “everything is a
presentation or else it is nothing”.[1] Hegel
rejects that there are such things as noumena existing in a realm
outside human knowing. Hegel is a true phenomenologist who, unlike the early
Husserl or the early Heidegger, emphasises the historicity of the philosophical
enterprise. Phenomenology is a process which needs to be done and done again. Once
the dialectical process reaches the end-point (call it Absolute Idea in
Hegelian terms), the process has already changed the subject-matter of the
inquiry, because the thinking process is inside its subject-matter. The
phenomenologist is never an external observer.
Wissenschaft:
The English term “science”
is an insufficient translation of the German Wissenschaft which keeps a
close etymological tie with the verb “to know” (wissen) and does not
convey a positivistic method which is suggested by the English term “science”. Knowledge
in a wissenschatlich sense is ordered, it aspires to be systematic, and it
includes a method which, yet, this method does not have to be unitary nor needs
to be set from the start. In the Hegelian system, finding the method is a
result of the thinking process, and not something which is readily available.
*Page numbers in these notes refer to G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) and its reprints. A document collecting the notes of the reading session is available on the group's dropbox. Please e-mail Marton Ribary (marton.ribary@gmail.com) to join the reading group and gain access to the group's dropbox folder.
