Phenomenology, as we know, is the pathway of the natural consciousness towards philosophical knowledge or the pathway of the soul, which passes through the series of its forms until it becomes Spirit. It is through the most complete experience of its own self that consciousness arrives at self-knowledge qua absolute knowledge. The series of forms which consciousness passes through on its pathway - consciousness, selfconsciousness, reason, spirit - represents the extent history of the formation of consciousness in its growth to (...) the level of philosophical knowledge as a science. In this movement, the dialectical unfolding of the particular stages is at the same time the dialectical movement of the history of the experience of consciousness. Therefore, the dialectic of the particular stages in their progression is nothing but the self-movement of dialectic as history. The Hegelian notion of history is hence a dialectic of the idea, which in its movement is history. Therefore is excluded, so it seems to me, a dialectic of empirical history as such. Thus Hegel says that “the individual, so far as content is concerned, has also to go through the stages through which the general mind has passed.” This does not mean the participation of the individual in empirical history, qua empirical history, but it says that the individual’s own history is part of world history as the universal form of Spirit. This refers us to the Notion of the sense of empirical history as it is expressed in historical experience. (shrink)