The Betrayal of Substance

Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit exerts a unique influence on contemporary philosophy. Major figures from Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray to Jean-Paul Sartre and Judith Butler were shaped in large part through their engagement with Hegels challenging masterwork. It unfolds a grand narrative of the ways of thinking and acting that comprise human experience. Along the way, Hegel seeks to incorporate all the fundamental structures of human lifefrom political community to consciousness to selfhoodinto a whole that encompasses the total movement of human knowledge and culture. Mary C. Rawlinson offers a critical reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that exposes three crucial elisions: Hegels effacements of sexual difference, human mortality, and literary style. In attempting to arrive at an absolute knowing that would transcend all differences, Hegel discounts specificity in each of these areas in favor of a generic subject. Rawlinson turns Hegels critique of abstraction against him, showing how his own phenomenological analysis undermines his attempt to master difference. Rawlinsons critique reveals Hegels attempt to erase the difference of his own style, highlighting his images, tropes, and rhetorical strategies. Demonstrating how the power of Hegels phenomenological method goes beyond even Hegels own project of a pure logic, The Betrayal of Substance is a magisterial rereading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that encompasses crucially overlooked sites of complexity and difference.