Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel was a central figure in the philosophical movement of German Idealism. To understand Phenomenology of Spirit, it is important to understand how his ideals fit within the context of his contemporaries. The movement dominated European philosophy from the 1780s to 1840s. German idealism is known for its complexity and obscurity. Although philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Hegel, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte are criticized for projecting irrationalism—a reputation driven by the difficulty of their writing and ideas—German idealists helped form the foundation of modern logic and scientific thought. Hegel, along with thinkers like Kant, Fichte, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, developed radical ideas about reality and the nature of consciousness.

The movement began with Kant’s transcendental idealism, a philosophy which argues that space and time are merely appearances. This means that human understanding of the external world and reality is limited and intuitive. Humans only perceive the external world through the filter of their own consciousness. Hegel and his contemporaries built upon Kant’s ideas by suggesting that all things are made up of contradictions and that for something to exist, it must be a figure of human consciousness.