The Phenomenology of Spirit

The Phenomenology of Spirit (or The Phenomenology of Mind; German: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most consequential philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel described the 1807 work, a ladder to the greater philosophical system of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, as an "exposition of the coming-to-be of knowledge", in other words, the Odyssey of consciousness from the most autochthonous assembly of the Notion to its "highest" development in the Absolute. This is traced through the logical self-origination and dissolution of "...the various shapes of spirit as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge".

The text marks a significant development in post-Kantian German idealism. Focusing on topics in logic, epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, ethics, history, religion, perception, consciousness, existence, and political philosophy, it is where Hegel develops well-known concepts and methods such as speculative philosophy, the dialectic, the movement of immanent critique (Ex. the lord–bondsman dialectic), absolute idealism, Sittlichkeit, and Aufhebung. It continues to have a profound effect in Western and Eastern philosophy, and "...has been praised and blamed for the development of existentialism, communism, fascism, death of God theology and historicist nihilism".