philosophy, and yet it belongs necessarily to its inner form. This is so because, to repeat what was said earlier, the Phenomenology of Spirit remains the work and the way that not only once but always, and in a definite and indispensable manner, prepares the ground—better: the space, the dimensionality, the realm of expansion—for the encyclopedia-system. The fact that the phenomenology is left out of the encyclopedia-system as a fundamental part of it is not a deficiency of this system. Rather, the omission of the phenomenology—after it inaugurated the system—marks the beginning of the system which has the logic as its only appropriate beginning. This is so because the system of absolute knowing, if it understands itself correctly, must have an absolute beginning. Now, since on the one hand the phenomenology does not begin as absolutely as the logic does and thus must be left out of the beginning of the system, while on the other hand the phenomenology prepares the domain for a possible absolute beginning, the omission of the phenomenology from the encyclopedia-system articulates its indispensable affiliation with and relationship to this system. But sufficient justice is not done to this affiliation when the phenomenology shrinks into a segment of a segment of the third part of the encyclopedia-system, although the system for its part also requires such shrinking. Therefore, the Phenomenology of Spirit occupies a double position in the encyclopedia-system: In a certain way the phenomenology is a foundational part for the system while being at the same time an affiliated component within the system.
This double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit is not the result of Hegel’s failure to gain clarity about this work and its role, but is the outcome of the system. Thus, in the course of our interpretation from now on, we shall have to ask:
1. How is the double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit systematically grounded?
2. To what extent can Hegel accomplish this grounding on the basis he provides?
3. Which fundamental problem of philosophy comes to light in the double position of the Phenomenology of Spirit?
We cannot avoid these questions. But we can formulate them and respond to them only after we have first grasped clearly the primary character and the essential dimensions of the Phenomenology of Spirit.
§2. Hegel’s conception of a system of science
a) Philosophy as “the science”
The foremost character of the Phenomenology can be determined only by considering the intrinsic mission that is initially and properly assigned to this work as a whole, as it stands at the service of the Hegelian philosophy and begins its exposition. But this intrinsic mission for the whole of Hegel’s philosophy is announced in the complete title of the work, which reads: System of Science: Part I, Science of the Experience of Consciousness. (Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit). A preparatory discussion of this title offers a rough and ready understanding of that task and so allows a glimpse of what actually takes place in that work.
Thus, we repeat our initial question: To what extent does the system of science require the science of the experience of consciousness, respectively the science of the phenomenology of spirit, as its first part?
What does System of Science mean? Let us note that the main title is not System of Sciences. This expression has nothing to do with the compilation and classification of various existing sciences of, say, nature or history. The system is by no means aiming at such things. Here we are dealing with the science and its system. The science also does not mean scientific research in general, in the sense that we have in mind when we say: “Barbarism threatens the continued existence of the science.” The science, whose system is at issue, is the totality of the highest and most essential knowledge. This knowledge is philosophy. Science is taken here in the same sense as in Fichte’s notion of the “doctrine of science.” That doctrine is not concerned with sciences—it is not logic or theory of knowledge—but deals with the science, i.e., with the way in which philosophy unfolds itself as absolute knowledge.
But why is philosophy called the science? We are inclined—because of custom—to answer this question by saying that philosophy provides the existing or possible sciences with their foundations, i.e., with a determination and possibility of their fields (e.g., nature and history), as well as with the justification of their procedures. By providing all sciences with their foundation, philosophy must certainly be science. For philosophy cannot be less than what originates from it—the sciences. If we add to the field of that for which it is the task of philosophy to give a foundation, not only knowing in the manner of the theoretical knowledge of the sciences but also other forms of knowing—practical knowledge, both technical and moral—then it will be clear that the foundation of all these sciences must be called “science.”
This view of philosophy, which has flourished since Descartes, has been more or less clearly and thoroughly developed. It attempted to justify itself with recourse to ancient philosophy, which also conceived of itself as a knowing, indeed as the highest knowledge. This concept of philosophy as the science became increasingly dominant from the nineteenth century to the present. This took place, not on the basis of the inner wealth and original impulses of philosophizing, but rather—as in neo-Kantianism—out of perplexity over the proper task of philosophy. It appears to have been deprived of this perplexity because the sciences have occupied all fields of reality. Thus, nothing was left for philosophy except to become the science of these sciences, a task which was taken up with increasing confidence, since it seemed to have the support of Kant, Descartes, and even Plato.
But it is only with Husserl that this conception of the essence of philosophy—“in the spirit of the most radical scientificality”1—takes on a positive, independent, and radical shape: With this conception of philosophy, “I am restoring the most original idea of philosophy, which has been the foundation for our European philosophy and science ever since its first concrete formulation by Plato, and which names an inalienable task for philosophy.”2
And yet if we proceed from this connection between philosophy and the sciences and from philosophy conceived as science, we do not comprehend why for German Idealism philosophy is the science. From this vantage point we also do not comprehend the ancient determination of the essence of philosophy. Granted that the tradition of modern philosophy was alive for Fichte, for Schelling, and for German Idealism generally, philosophy for them and especially for Hegel does not become the science because it should supply the ultimate justification for all sciences and for all ways of knowing. The real reason lies in impulses more radical than that of grounding knowledge: they are concerned with overcoming finite knowledge and attaining infinite knowledge. For it is possible to meet the task of laying the foundation for the sciences, of realizing the idea of a rigorous scientificality of knowing and cognition, without regard for this specific problematic peculiar to German Idealism, namely, how philosophy unfolds of itself as absolute knowledge. If the task of founding the sciences—grasping its own intention more or less clearly—presses in the direction of absolute knowledge, then the above-named task would cease to exist and would lose its own distinctive mark. For then it is not absolute knowledge because it lays the foundation for the sciences, but rather it can be this foundation-laying in this sense only insofar as it tries to found itself as absolute knowledge. But founding absolute knowledge is a task which has nothing to do with founding sciences. In the course of our interpretation of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we shall see and understand what is positively required and what decisions must be made from the very beginning for the founding of absolute knowledge.
In any case, we must from the very beginning confront the confusion that today very easily emerges if one connects current attempts to found philosophy as the first and essential science with Hegel and to regard him as confirming them. When we read in the preface to the Phenomenology that “the true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth”
