The structure of the subject of “experience of consciousness” and the way of comprehending the spirit in Hegel’s philosophy: time, history, “recollection”

Abstract

The object of investigation in this paper is the significance of the structure of the narrator in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” for understanding the content of the basic concepts of the work – time, history, “recollection”. This structure is determined by the correlation between the consciousness of the author and that of the reader, consciousness itself as an object of consideration and its own object. Each of the narrators goes through the same path from the point of view of logical content (“сircle” of “experience of consciousness”) but at the same time, objectivity itself is constantly becoming more complex. Time, his­tory and “recollection” are the concepts of “experience of consciousness”, which act as universal object equivalents of experience, corresponding to the specified kinds of narra­tors. They reflect the movement of consciousness towards comprehending the spirit, this movement not only determines the main plot of “Phenomenology of Spirit”, but also re­tains its significance for the entire philosophy of Hegel. The need to recognize the dialog­ical nature of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” is determined by the fact that the meaning of the narrative as a whole is made up of roll calls that arise as a result of the reproduc­tion of the same plots of experience from different points of view, and on this basis there is an ascent to the spirit and the “recollection” that embraces it. The analysis of the con­sideration of time, history and “recollection” as forms of objectivity of “experience of consciousness” shows that Hegel also developed a “Phenomenology of History” that is fundamentally different from the well-known course “Philosophy of History”: the move­ment of images of consciousness acts as a deep layer of the historical process in it, which is reproduced in “recollection” as the historical equivalent of “Logic”.