Hegel’s Phenomenology: Alienation and Abstract Thought

The Cradle of Hegelian Philosophy in Phenomenology

The first concept emerges most clearly in the Phenomenology, as the cradle of Hegelian philosophy. When Hegel sees, for example, wealth, state power, etc., as alienated essences for humans, this occurs only in a speculative manner. They are entities and therefore ideal, just a philosophical estrangement of pure, i.e., abstract thought. All movement ends with absolute knowledge. Abstract thinking is precisely where these objects are missed, and this is just an abstract thought faced with its claim to reality.

The philosopher (an abstract form, then, of alienated man) stands in as the alienated world. The whole story of alienation, and any revocation of the sale, is not the case, but the history of the production of abstract thought; that is, all of logical speculation. The estrangement, which is, therefore, the true interest of this alienation and suppression of this alienation, is the opposition of in itself and for itself, conscience and self-awareness, object and subject, i.e., the opposition within the thought itself of abstract thought and sensuous reality or real sensitivity.

All other oppositions and movements of these oppositions are only the appearance, the wrapper, the esoteric form of these competitions, the only interesting ones, which is the meaning of the other secular opposition. What happens in essence, the set of estrangement, and what needs to be overcome, is not the fact that human beings are objectified in human form, as opposed to itself, but that which objectifies unlike in opposition to abstract thought.

Appropriation of Human Essential Forces

The appropriation of human essential forces, converted into an object, an object transferred, is because, first, an appropriation that takes place only in consciousness, in pure thought, i.e., abstraction; appropriation of objects as thoughts and movements of thought about this. In the Phenomenology (despite its appearance, entirely negative and critical, and despite the real criticism contained in it, which often comes on much later development) as a seed is dormant, as a power is present as a mystery, uncritical positivism and the equally uncritical idealism of Hegel’s later works; such a solution and restore existing philosophical empiricism.

The Claim of the Objective World for Man

Secondly, the claim of the objective world for man (e.g., knowledge of sensitive conscience is not a sensitive conscience abstract, but a sensitive awareness of human knowledge; that religion, wealth, etc. are only alienated from reality, human objectification, of human social forces were born for action and, therefore, only the way to true human reality), the appropriation or the understanding of this process in Hegel is thus presented so that the sensitivity, religion, state power, etc., are spiritual essences, as only the spirit is the true essence of man, and the true form of mind is the thinking mind, spirit, logical, speculative.

The humanity of nature, and of nature produced by the history of man’s products, is evident because they are products of abstract mind and therefore, and to that extent, spiritual moments, essences designed. The Phenomenology is the critical hidden, obscure even to itself and mystifying, but in retaining the estrangement of man (though man appears only in the form of the spirit) are hidden in it all the elements of criticism and often prepared and processed in a way that exceeds the Hegelian standpoint.

Sections of Critical Elements

The “unhappy consciousness”, the “honest consciousness”, the struggle of the “noble conscience and consciousness vile”, etc., these sections contain loose (but in an estranged form) the critical elements of whole areas as religion, the State, civil, etc. Just as the essence, the object appears as the essence thought, so the subject is always consciousness or self, or rather, the object appears only as abstract consciousness, the man only as self-consciousness; the various forms of alienation that emerge there are, this, only different forms of consciousness and self-consciousness.

Since the abstract consciousness itself (the object is conceived as such) is simply a moment of differentiation of self, and also arises as a result of movement of self-identity with consciousness, absolute knowledge, the movement of abstract thought and not going out, but only within itself, that is, the result is the dialectic of pure thought.