Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the Dialectic of Consciousness

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on August 27, 1770, in Stuttgart, and studied from 1788 to 1793 at the Tübinger Stift, a Protestant seminary, alongside the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, both of whom would remain central to his intellectual development. After years working as a private tutor (Hofmeister) in Bern and Frankfurt, Hegel joined Schelling at the University of Jena in 1801, where he lectured and, with Schelling, co-edited the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie. It was at Jena that Hegel completed the manuscript of his first major work, the Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit), finishing it in October 1806 as Napoleon's troops occupied the city following the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt on October 14, 1806. In a letter to his friend Immanuel Niethammer dated October 13, 1806, Hegel described watching Napoleon ride through the streets as seeing 'this world-soul (Weltseele), riding out to survey his realm.' The book, originally conceived as the introductory 'First Part' of a larger 'System of Science,' was published in 1807 by the Bamberg and Würzburg printer Joseph Anton Goebhardt.