Key Vocabulary – Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Pinkard Translation)

These flashcards list core German terms and key concepts explained in the video/lecture text about Terry Pinkard’s translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Mastering this vocabulary will help you follow Hegel’s arguments about consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit as they unfold toward Absolute Knowing.

Phenomenology

A ‘science’ that traces how consciousness and its objects first appear and develop until their truth is grasped; for Hegel, the study of the ‘showing‐itself’ (phainomenon) of Spirit.

Geist (Spirit/Mind)

Self-conscious life in its individual and social formations; the ‘I that is a We and the We that is an I’ whose history is the history of freedom.

Wissenschaft

Systematic, rigorous pursuit of knowledge; Hegel’s term for philosophy as a fully articulated ‘science.’

Aufheben / Sublation

A key Hegelian verb meaning simultaneously to cancel, preserve, and raise up; describes how contradictions are overcome yet retained in higher unity.

An sich (In-itself)

The way something is prior to being for a subject; its implicit, undeveloped being.

Für sich (For-itself)

The self-relating stance of a subject; what is explicit for consciousness and aware of itself.

In sich (Within-itself)

An inner self-containedness distinct from ‘an sich’; often rendered as ‘within itself’ to show internal complexity.

Bei sich sein (Being at-one-with-oneself)

The achieved unity in which Spirit is ‘at home’ with itself in and through an other.

Die Sache selbst (The crux of the matter)

Literally ‘the thing itself’; the substantial issue or core task at stake in a discussion or action.

Bildung (Cultural Formation)

The formative process through which individuals and communities cultivate mind, judgment, and culture.

Sittlichkeit (Ethical Life)

The living network of social institutions, customs, and practices in which freedom is embodied.

Vorstellung (Representation)

Non-conceptual, pictorial thinking (e.g., religious imagery) contrasted with fully conceptual thought (Begriff).

Anschauung (Intuition)

Immediate, sensory or intellectual seeing; for Hegel a ‘representation’ distinct from conceptual grasp.

Verstand (Understanding)

The faculty that fixes distinctions and laws; necessary yet limited stage before speculative Reason.

Wirklichkeit (Actuality)

Reality as effective, fully realized being; not mere existence but what has shown itself effective and necessary.

Entäußerung (Relinquishment)

Kenotic ‘self-emptying’ or divesting; Spirit’s outward movement into alienation prior to return to itself.

In-sich-gehen (Taking-the-inward-turn)

Reflective withdrawal of consciousness back into its own inner realm.

In-sich-sein (Inwardly-turned-being)

The state of self-contained inwardness achieved after the ‘in-sich-gehen’ movement.

Recognition (Anerkennung)

Mutual second-person acknowledgement through which self-conscious subjects gain reality and freedom.

Mastery and Servitude (Lordship & Bondage)

Dialectic showing the instability of one-sided recognition: master demands recognition; slave gains selfhood through labor.

Self-Consciousness

Consciousness that is aware of itself and seeks recognition; the turning point between ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Reason.’

Reason (Vernunft)

Stage where consciousness takes its own thought to be the essence of reality and seeks to actualize itself.

Spirit Alienated from Itself (Entfremdeter Geist)

Historical phase in which cultural forms (e.g., Enlightenment, morality) oppose the unity of individuals and community.

True Spirit

The ethical life of the Greek polis where individual and community initially coincide in custom and justice.

Absolute Freedom and Terror

Dialectic of the French Revolution: pure will of all collapses into violence when it lacks stable institutions.

Beautiful Soul (Schöne Seele)

Subject withdrawn into inner purity, refusing to act; culminates the morality chapter and must be reconciled.

Natural Religion

Earliest religious form where the divine is intuited in natural shapes (light, plants, animals).

Art-Religion

Greek religion in which gods are present in aesthetic works—sculpture, epic, tragedy—embodying Spirit’s self-image.

Revealed Religion

Christianity, where the divine appears in human form and a religious community of mutual recognition emerges.

Absolute Knowing

Final standpoint where Spirit knows itself as both substance and subject, and phenomenology passes into science (logic).

Science of the Experience of Consciousness

Hegel’s early working title for the Phenomenology, highlighting the systematic tracking of consciousness’s own experience.

Sublimate vs. Supersede

English renderings of Aufheben: to abolish while preserving; essential movement of dialectic.