A Narratological Examination of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Narratology is a nascent science that emerged in the 1960s through theorists such as Gérard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov. This discipline specifically addresses the methodology of narrative structure and method, and its primary domain of operation is literature. On the other hand, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, in which Hegel, in a sense, examines all the minutiae and stages of human thought and history, integrating them all dialectically within the womb of Spirit. The subject of this book, in a word, as its title suggests, is the story of the phenomenology of Spirit. In the more than two centuries since the book's publication, numerous and diverse commentaries and interpretations have been written about it in various fields.

The present article attempts, regardless of philosophical and content-related discussions, to focus its attention on the mode of narrative progression and the logic governing it, and consequently, to at least outline a sketch of the narratology of certain aspects of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the narrative method of this book. As a result, relying on narratological classifications, this article examines Hegel's work from three perspectives: narrator, narratee (audience), and narration. At each stage, it also demonstrates how, and in what respects, Hegel—in addition to his numerous and decisive philosophical innovations—has also made creative, unique, and sometimes even unprecedented innovations in the field of narratology within the history of human narrative.

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A Narratological Examination of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Authors:

Mohammad Mahdi Ardebili (PhD graduate in Western Philosophy, University of Tabriz)

Samira Rashidpour (PhD candidate in French Literature, Shahid Beheshti University)

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