Phänomenologie des Geistes Add a review

The Phenomenology of Spirit (or The Phenomenology of Mind; German: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the first published book by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel described the 1807 work, a ladder to the greater philosophical system of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, as an "exposition of the coming-to-be of knowledge". This development traced through the logical self-origination and dissolution of "the various shapes of spirit as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge".

The text marks a development in German idealism. Focusing on topics in consciousness, metaphysics, ethics, and religion, it is where Hegel develops well-known concepts and methods such as speculative philosophy, the dialectic, the movement of immanent critique, absolute idealism, Sittlichkeit, and Aufhebung. It continues to influence Western philosophy, and "has been praised and blamed for the development of existentialism, communism, fascism, death of God theology, and historicist nihilism".