Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel's Phenomenology was written, so the story goes, on the eve of Napoleon's destruction of the Holy Roman Empire and at the beginning of the German 'Wars of Liberation.' The book itself is no less dramatic and revolutionary. It is Hegel's grandest experiment, changing our vision of the world and the very nature of the philosophical enterprise. Hegel puts into harmony ethics and autonomy, ancient philosophy and tragedy, Byronic Romanticism, German poetry, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the concept of virtue, the history of religion (including an ambiguous defense and critique of modern Christianity), the beginnings of a new philosophy of science and Kant's moral philosophy. All are tied together with the dazzling if sometimes bewildering leaps in logic that have come to be known as 'Hegel's dialectic.'