As I scratch at the titanium surface of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (and find myself, as yet, only a sliver less confused than when I started (I can still see the filters I have developed reading more modern philosopher’s at work. I can, for instance, see where Rorty got his distinction between the edifying and systematic:
“What it wants from philosophy is not so much insight as edification.” -Hegel, Georg W. F. (2010-06-24). The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind) (Kindle Location 444). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.
And:
“This easy contentment in receiving, or stinginess in giving, does not suit the character of science. The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinity—he may look where he likes to find this: he will easily find for himself the means to procure something he can rave over and puff himself up withal. But philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying.”
And Hegel makes clear throughout the preface that edification is something to be avoided. Furthermore, even though I cannot pull up the quote, he is very clear about his embrace of systems –that which Nietzsche described as a lack of integrity. At the same time, we can see this as Hegel’s response to the Romanticism of the time:
“When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.”
And his lean to the scientific side of the spectrum: the no man’s land between Science and Literature:
“To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science—that goal where it can lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledge—that is what I have set before me.”
Here we see the roots of the analytic/continental divide (as in Hegel’s smug dismissal of the literary approach quoted above (that characterizes the philosophical culture today. We can see here why postmodernist thinkers so vehemently dismiss him (Deleuze considered him too reprehensible to even consider (while thinkers like Zizek (and I’m guessing Habermas (those who have to believe that the truth is out there (engage in apologetics/revisions of Hegel.
At the same time, from what I gather from the audio book beyond the preface, he does seem to put his money where his mouth is. While hardly understanding any of it, all the self being for itself is its self in itself in relation to the self that was before the self (it is truly a phenomenology), I can’t help but feel he has put together a very articulate and complex system that would make perfect sense if one had the time to break it down to its individual components, assimilate each, then put it back together in a coherent whole. And this confirms the atomistic description of the dialectic offered by my audio book about Hegel.
At the same time, as my respected peer and jam-mate Steven Orslini points out, one might go through all that just to find out that it is little more than mystification.