Kommentar zum subjektiven Geist, Chapter 16
Why This Part Is Named After Another Book
The name is neither accidental nor an embarrassment. Hegel deals here with the same subject matter as in the first section of the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807 — consciousness, self-consciousness, reason — and in the same sequence.
The reason lies in the matter itself. Where consciousness begins, the distinction from an other that is not I begins. That is the location described by the 1807 book, and it has now been reached.
And Hegel says so himself. In the 1825 transcript stands the sentence that explains the shared name:
“The form of consciousness is appearing, it shines into the object […] It is thus the standpoint of the relation, of appearance, and that is why the more comprehensive lecture course on this subject was named by me Phenomenology.”[1]
Phenomenology means: the doctrine of appearing. And appearing here does not mean semblance, but the constitution in which something stands opposed. Both texts bear this name because both treat the same standpoint — that of relation.
With the qualification distinguishing the versions: Hegel calls the book “the more comprehensive lecture course on this subject.”
What the Anthropology beforehand accomplishes is something else: the dealing with the body and the stepping out of nature. There nothing was yet distinguished — the soul had its determinatenesses, related to them, made them its own. Only when this succeeds and the body offers no more resistance must a counterpart appear.
And what distinguishes the two versions: the 1807 book presents a course an I actually goes through — it is a path of experience the reader travels alongside. The Encyclopedia shows the same shapes systematically, as positions within a whole.
It is the same circle, once as path and once as location. [KF]
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes, transcript by Griesheim, lecture course 1825: GW 25.1. ↩︎