Phenomenology of Spirit

How do humans think? How do they make sense of the external world? What is the origin of knowledge? Philosophers in epistemology seek answers to these questions. Hegel saw these explorations as part of a greater structure of consciousness. Rather than separating the science of knowing and the philosophy of being, Hegel sought to converge both intellectual realms in a system of logic. However, Hegel deviates from his contemporaries by criticizing universal laws in science. He argues that laws deny and ignore the specificity of individual human experience. For Hegel, consciousness is unique and varied, and the collective study of conscious experience leads to absolute knowing.

While Hegel touts the need for a science of logic that can be applied to cognition and consciousness, the closest he comes to a structure in this text is the reiteration of Fichte’s work on thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In this model, a concept is explored through its conflicts and negation. A higher level of human consciousness is achieved when the conflict is reconciled. Hegel applies this triadic form to each level of consciousness: sense-certainty, self-consciousness, reason,

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