From “the Journey of Discovery of Consciousness” to “the Odyssey of Spirit”

Abstract: Bildung of the individual has been the core of German humanism since the Enlightenment. Under the basic framework of the concept of Enlightenment, the German Bildungsroman and Phenomenology of Spirit can be regarded as different representations of the same ideal: the former resorts to literary narration, while the latter relies on philosophical speculation. In the common context of the history of thought, the structural elements of the Bildungsroman are internalized into the content construction of Phenomenology of Spirit, which is presented as the process of self-education of individual consciousness through in pursuit of knowledge. Nevertheless, Hegel did not make it stay in the journey of consciousness but wanted it to prove itself as the deduction of a purely scientific concept. The spirit as a whole establishes the inevitability of education of individual consciousness through recollection and constitutes the unique speculative statement form of Phenomenology of Spirit. The process by which the Spirit as a concept examines its formation can be called “the Odyssey of Spirit”. In this way, Hegel established the method of self-construction of concept, surpassing the limitations of literary narration, thus testing the absolute consistency between the Bildung of the individual and the deduction of scientific concepts, and constructing the internal unity of Phenomenology of Spirit and Hegel’s system.