What I learned by reading “Phenomenology of the Spirit”.

“Phenomenology of the Spirit” was written by Hegel. Below, I share what I learned from reading this book.

1. The fact that philosophy gives different answers to the same question does not indicate a lack of method or seriousness.
2. Science must be universally intelligible.
3. If we keep repeating what has already been said, we will not go beyond the beginning of the investigation.
4. When a philosopher speaks against formalism, he may end up creating a new formalism.
5. A subject without predicates is unknown.
6. All principles, when they are considered basic and universal, expose themselves to error.
7. The object of the Phenomenology of the Spirit is the birth of science.
8. The path to a higher science passes through the search for knowledge in ourselves.
9. Knowledge that was considered complex in the past is common sense today.
10. Each moment in the rise for knowledge is necessary, one can not skip steps.
11. You should take your time in each step for as long as it takes.
12. One should not put as a reasoning principle something that is not well known, just because it is something that one is accustomed to.
13. Dogmatism, the philosophical tendency to hold that there are immutable truths, works only for certain things (such as mathematical truths).
14. Even obvious information needs to be researched or tested, because no one is born knowing something just because it is obvious.
15. Truth is not necessarily obvious.
16. To know something without experiencing or seeing the demonstration is to know only from the outside.
17. The results of a theory can validate it or disprove it.
18. Philosophy should not aspire to be like mathematics, because mathematics offers only quantitative information.
19. Mathematics alone is superficial, but coupled with other knowledges, such as physics and chemistry, it shows its real potential.
20. Working without mathematics isn’t the same as working without reason.
21. It is typical of the idiot to accept what he does not understand as a truth, as long as it’s said by someone with “authority.”
22. There are people who are ashamed to learn.
23. If philosophy makes little to no progress, that is because many philosophers are presumptuous .
24. Such presumption is characterized by the hasty study of things and the use of superficial data as unquestionable truth.
25. Not everyone can dedicate themselves to philosophy, but only those who have an interest in obtaining clear knowledge about something.
26. There are those who think that it is not necessary to study to practice philosophy.
27. Philosophizing “with the heart” leads us to say what everyone already knows or to say things that we suppose to be latent in the hearts of others.
28. This philosophizing with the heart is presumptuous in the extreme: “it is true because I feel it is.”
29. When philosophy concludes something far from common sense, the conclusion is taken as folly, even if it is right.
30. Thinking without reason, but with feelings alone, is to think like an animal.
31. Sometimes you make less mistakes when you are not afraid to make a mistake.
32. The fear of error prevents a man from believing himself.
33. Hegel wonders if the fear of making mistakes is a mistake in itself.
34. The fear of making mistakes is a fear of truth: “If things aren’t like how I think they are, I will suffer the consequences.”
35. Do not assume that others always know what you are talking about.
36. Not being sure is called “doubting”.
37. Being sure that it’s impossible to reach a true answer to a problem is called “despair”.
38. Trusting oneself is safer than trusting an authority if an authority does not satisfy .
39. The art of the skeptic is to doubt, to look for errors of reasoning and to criticize.
40. Knowledge ends when the concept corresponds to the object, that is, when the idea we have of something is completely correct and there is nothing else to know about it.
41. There is no problem in taking notes: they will not be less real because they have been written down.
42. The “here” walks with us and its content changes depending on where we are.
43. There are truths that are only valid for me.
44. Time can be infinitely divided.
45. Also the space can be divided as much as you like.
46. We have to determine the extent of the “here” and the extent of the “now”.
47. To perceive is to feel characteristics.
48. General laws are superficial.
49. A thing is not their function: I can act in another way and continue being what I am.
50. The natural state of consciousness is life.
51. Stoicism is very general in preaching that truth is in rational action.
52. Consciousness is unhappy when in contradiction with itself.
53. I’ll do a bad job if I don’t know what goal I aim to achieve.
54. The reason is capable of reliable generalizations.
55. Generalizations fail so often that it is possible to generalize that generalizations are flawed.
56. “Probable” is not the same as true.
57. Abstraction allows us to separate elements from their accidental conditions.
58. Superficial rules easily find exceptions.
59. Two related concepts are not always interdependent, even though concept A depends on B; concept B, which is necessary to A, may well subsist on its own.
60. Two related concepts may be independent from each other.
61. The problem of the superficial occult sciences, such as astrology and chiromancy, is to relate things that can not be related: personality with constellar influence, for example.
62. The hand is related to destiny because it is by hand, or by equivalent, that we act in the world: we take, we make, we touch, we transform, but it is only in that sense that we can relate hand and destiny.
63. The timbre of the voice, the calligraphy, these things are external manifestations of our interior.
64. Something must be explained by its action and not by its appearance.
65. The spirit (mind) is one extreme, the external object is the other extreme and the body is the middle ground.
66. The mind interacts with the world through the body.
67. There is a tendency to make hasty connections between actions and certain parts of the body: prophecy comes from the liver, anger comes from the gall bladder, love comes from the heart, lust comes from the kidneys, because we feel those organs when we have such or such a state of spirit (though I feel lust elsewhere…).
68. It is really possible to think until you have a headache.
69. A single symptom does not give diagnose.
70. A phenomenon is indifferent to the laws we stipulate about it.
71. By saying that a person is in such a way because of, for example, his zodiac sign, you are saying that the person is a date.
72. We are not our signs of the zodiac, nor are we any detail of our body, such as physiognomy or hormonal configuration.
73. You can not analyze a person if you consider only one aspect, especially if you disregard that person’s actions.
74. It is possible to justify a prejudice with scientific arguments and this has been done many times in history.
75. If you hate science and philosophy , that is, if you reject reason, you have surrendered to the devil and will likely end up going to hell, says Hegel, with Goethe.
76. There is no middle ground between life and death.
77. If everyone acted only according to their own laws, there would be no harmony.
78. When you make a speech knowing that a particular word needs to be ambiguous for the speech to work, you probably will not explain the meaning of the word that has to be ambiguous.
79. If someone asks what that word means, the person giving the speech could dismiss the question by saying “Ask your heart.”
80. You can not act without a goal in mind: think about what you want before you think about how to get there.
81. Something is “bad” when it fails to be good.
82. Everyone should speak the truth if they know …
83. “To lie” is to say something incorrect knowing that the information is incorrect.
84. The usefulness of love is to provide good to the beloved, at the same time as it removes the evil from said beloved.
85. There is no “inactive love”: if it is love, it is active.
86. To love someone, you have to treat them according to the knowledge of what is good for that person.
87. The absence of contradiction doesn’t ensure justice.
88. No one is innocent because everyone is responsible for their actions as agents.
89. We would not recognize our mistakes if they did not cause suffering .
90. An impostor priesthood takes advantage of the stupidity of the faithful to instil superstitions that favor an ideology.
91. An impostor priesthood often sits on the side of corrupt rulers and acts like a perverse think tank, not unlike the traditional media .
92. An impostor priesthood can only do what it does because the people are ignorant .
93. “Concept” is a simple information that explains a thing and its opposite.
94. If something is real, it is thinkable.
95. “Faith” is knowledge that depends on testimonies, but which can not be proven by you.
96. Faith may or may not depend on text.
97. Why would someone regard an impossible goal as “virtuous”?
98. It is not enough to erradicate the lie unless truth is established in the process.
99. One can only count on reason to know for sure if something is lacking or in excess.
100. The man needs to be useful because everything is useful to him.
101. Helping others is helping yourself.
102. Some people say that fasting can help you to dominate the hunger, but it doesn’t change the fact that you will need to eat eventually.
103. Thinking about the usefulness of things is not reprehensible, even in matters of faith or feeling.
104. Sometimes we do things without knowing that such actions could bring us joy… or suffering.
105. If you are poor, you can only be happy for free, not that your happiness would be stable.
106. It is permissible to be a coward if it does not go against your duties as a person.
107. The wounds of the spirit heal without leaving a scar.
108. It is only possible to know God by reflecting on what he reveals of himself .
109. Thus, although it is possible by reason to infer that God exists, the exact characteristics of God are not within the reach of simple reason.