Abstract

Merold Westphal has attempted to resolve here the perennial problem of the unity of the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. He has not only confronted the thesis of Haering and others that there is no unity, but also the particular claim, stemming from Haym, that the specific failure lay in the tension between the “historical” and the “psychological.” The task is taken on in a direct manner; for although there is some discussion of the earlier Jena writings, Westphal’s strategy is not to engage the Entstehungsgeschichte problem, but rather to show the unity of the historical and epistemological or psychological as emerging from the text itself.