Abstract

This paper examines forms of theoretical and practical experience that occur within Hegel's Phenomenology at the three levels of Consciousness, Reason, and Spirit. With the help of Hegel's meaning of logic, I show that these three levels actually present a methodological exploration of Reason as expressed in theoretical and practical forms. I identify a parallel structure between theoretical and practical experience by showing that self-consciousness, acting reason, and morality--types of practical Reason--repeat the structure of consciousness, observing reason, and the Enlightenment--types of theoretical Reason. This structure that appears within experience implicitly asserts a cognate relationship between cognitive and practical standpoints. What appears in the Phenomenology as disjointed episodes should be regarded as the systematic working out of particular forms of Reason in their theoretical and practical variations. According to this reading of the text, the Phenomenology offers a treatise on the dialectic between theory and practice. ;The three levels of Reason studied here present three cases of the failure of self-knowledge. Since none succeeds in achieving knowledge or generating purposeful activity, their failures push us towards philosophical clarity. In reviewing these failures, we notice the recurring dualisms that block experience by separating the subjects from their objectives. At each level, mind reaches a state where it cannot know its objects or interact with others. Both cognition and recognition halt, due to this inability to achieve a working unity between subjectivity and its goals. ;This tendency to arrive at dualisms within both theoretical and practical Reason emerges as the chronic disorder of experience. Implicit in the cycle of failures is Hegel's own idea of Reason that achieves theoretical and practical goals by surmounting the stubborn divisions that lead to crisis for other forms of consciousness. I show that the notion of a formative activity establishes the fundamental logic of Reason from which theoretical goals derive. Hegel finds in the experience of work a concrete model for determining the logic of the Idea: the logical category that designates the processes of theoretical and practical Reason