Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs's Reviews > The Phenomenology of Spirit

If you were to ask me for my highest-rated Fave work of modern thinking, I think I'd have to say it's this. Working in conceptual language throughout (hint: as you read this, try to treat each concept as a tangible Building Block in the construction of a Dream Home!), Hegel shows us that all of Nature is built on basic building units - call them our intellectual DNA.

But since it's a DREAM Home, like any dream this house will have a Dark Side. The dream of life is completely and annoyingly fluid - and there can be no fixed guideposts. And you're going to run into dark snags in any dream!

But there CAN be happy endings. And Hegel ALWAYS takes one for granted, but, as the Hollies might have crooned,

(His) road is long,
With many a winding turn...

First, he takes Leibnitz (Voltaire's Pangloss) at his word: everything IS for the best in this best of all possible worlds. There will always be a New Dawn - though sometimes the darkest hour before that morning light seems to stretch out forever.

All will be well in the end.

Okay, buddy, you say - PROVE it!

And he says he does, in this book.

Now, hear me out on this: I think he's successful. His three abstract Building Blocks (strands of DNA) are simply threefold, to whit:

Thesis,
Antithesis, and
Synthesis.

All life works in those units he says, for life is a discussion (or even argument) with ourselves, our hearts, or a friend (or enemy). On that foundation is constructed the world!

Now, all my life I've struggled to find my original Thesis - the most basic thing I can say about life. In my old age, I may have found it. It's the same as Buddha's prime fact: life is pain, or, if you will - life is tough and then you die.

Can't get much more basic than that!

Now, to give you a bit of a spoiler on how exactly this same thought made Hegel tick, I've gotta tell you he was a lifelong practising Christian. So, as for me, his building blocks turn out to be:

Thesis - we are all born into the pain of sin.
Antithesis - God has forgiven us by taking our sin on Himself.
Synthesis - salvation is Real.
***

So, as T.S. Eliot wrote in Rhapsody on a Windy Evening,

Memory!
You have the key...

For if you will remember these salient facts about these conclusions his mind always works towards, Hegel's dense, problematic, and unnervingly aporetic arguments will NEVER Daunt you -

Or get you down for too long!

All well and good, perhaps, but life is tough and then you die...

But here Hegel adds his tacit caveat: Faith can always get you through, in the end:

Hegel was convinced of that throughout his hard life.

For the Phenomenology is - teleologically speaking - above all, an airtight case for Happy Endings.