本书摘要

本篇摘要是一项课程作业。一开始选择读这本书的原因，是因为《精神现象学》的“前言”一章实在太难读了；而既然这本疏解式的作品基本只针对“前言”与“导言”一章，所以也许会对理解“前言”有所帮助。实际上，这本书有一定难度，需要读者对黑格尔的《精神现象学》有初步的了解后才能够比较顺畅地读下去。与此同时，虽然论述有理有据，但是我自己依据对所谓“十字架上的玫瑰”与“密涅瓦的猫头鹰”（见《法哲学原理》）的理解，实在不敢苟同本书对“自然意识”与“现象知识”的区分以及“现象知识”所具有的某种甚至可以说是规范性知识的地位。因此，当阅读到这本书的最后两章时，我已经基本失去了耐心。这篇摘要因而主要复述了本书一到五章的内容。希望对想阅读本书的读者具有一定参考价值。不足之处，恳请读者善意批评。 Werner Marx's Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Commentary Based on the Preface and Introduction is an interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology. It presumes that "Preface" serves as a supplement to "Introduction" and that they together are basically sufficient to shed light on the main ideas that Hegel wants to express in the entire book of Phenomenology. Due to its meticulousness in analyzing these two sections almost exclusively, Marx's book appears challenging to comprehend if readers do not have a minimum familiarity with Hegel's Phenomenology. In Chapter One, Marx argues for the importance to understand the term "natural consciousness" and its difference from "phenomenal knowledge" so as to comprehend the meaning and the aim of "the science of the experience of consciousness." "Natural consciousness" is a historical consciousness of the cognitive relation between the self and the objecthood. It is yet to be educated to become able to unify the subjective and the objective without losing the subjective point of view. With this understanding of natural consciousness, Marx begins in Chapter Two to analyze the meaning of "phenomenal knowledge," claiming that this knowledge is a specific and qualified mode of natural consciousness that serves as the pathway that leads natural consciousness to absolute knowledge. It is necessary because natural consciousness may not reach this absolute knowledge by itself. To understand the function of phenomenal knowledge as the pathway to absolute knowledge and why natural consciousness ought to tread this path, Marx argues that, for Hegel, philosophy becomes necessary at his time in order to liberate natural consciousness from the false dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity. Only with this liberation can natural consciousness finishes its education, and it requires a science of consciousness to replace mere Kantian analytical understanding. Therefore, if phenomenal knowledge can serve as the liberating pathway, Hegel must show that this knowledge is itself scientific -- this constitutes the main task of Phenomenology. Chapter Three turns to analyze the relationship between natural consciousness and science. Marx begins by reconstructing Hegel's justification for the phenomenology: if it can guide every unscientific natural consciousness (i.e. every individual) to science, it must convince natural consciousness that it is itself a process, in which natural consciousness as particular individual necessarily participates and through which natural consciousness is elevated to universal spirit and ultimately reaches the end of science. In this process, particular individuals assimilate the universal spirit as the inorganic nature outside them, and thus make it part of them. This assimilation, as well as its inheritance by later individuals, is the pre-condition for further scientific education of natural consciousness. Phenomenology, therefore, bridges the gap between science and natural consciousness, showing to natural consciousness that within it the "element" consisting of the ground of science (i.e. "reflection") can be found. Chapter Four examines Hegel's account of reflection as the way to ascend from mere understanding (hence from the separation of the subjective and the objective) to reason (hence to the unity of the subjective and the objective). The discovery of the absolute knowledge depends on subject rather than substance. Taking reflection as an activity working on both the side of subject and of substance, Hegel argues that substance reflects itself and gives itself self-consciousness, by which argument he overcomes the contemporary dichotomy between subject and substance/object, and points to the dialectical method for subject to return to itself. Chapter Five endeavors to explain how phenomenal knowledge is able to actively take issue by its self-realized skepticism of all sorts of untruth, hence to ascend to the concept of knowledge and to persuade natural consciousness of the necessity of this ascending: phenomenal consciousness is in its nature a concept itself. To understand this, we need to understand that the phenomenology of spirit is both a science of experience and a science of spirit, which further requires our understanding of the concept of spirit. Spirit is the unity of substance and subject, and this unity lies not only in religion, but also, and essentially, in logic. Having clarified the content of the phenomenology, Marx then explains in the rest of Chapter Five what Hegel's method is to resolve the tasks that the science of experience and the science of spirit set. This method suggests that it is necessary for there to be phenomenologists who are able to discern the transitions of natural consciousness from one stage to another, which are otherwise unknown to natural consciousness. Thus, Chapter Six turns to examine the role of phenomenologists in the education of natural consciousness. Chapter Seven discusses how Phenomenology is not only relevant to the interpretation of Phenomenology per se, but also to post-Hegelian philosophies.