The Architectonic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Abstract

After virulent criticisms of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and much of analytic tradition, systematic philosophy has for most part gone into eclipse in contemporary European thought.' The main target of these criticisms was often daunting edifice of Hegelian system which dominated so much of Nineteenth Century philosophy. Despite a small handful of scholars who try with might and main to salvage this edifice,2 general belief among scholars today is that at bottom Hegel's philosophical project as a system is simply bankrupt and indefensible all around.3 Of all texts in Hegelian corpus, Phenomenology of Spirit with it plethora of themes and troubled composition has been in particular singled out for criticism as a disunified and unsystematic text.4 Typical of this general belief is Kaufmann's characterization: the Phenomenology is certainty unwissenschaftlich, undisciplined, arbitrary, full of digressions, not a monument to austerity of intellectual conscience and to carefulness and precision but a wild, bold, un-