İlk basılışının iki yüzüncü yılını idrak ettiğimiz eser, Hegel'in, speküla- tif metafiziğe ait zihnin(Geist), tarihî gelişimin araştıran başyapıtıdır. Eserde, metafiziğin ruh, zihin, bilinç, öz-bilinç, tarih ve medeniyet gibi temel kavramları yanında ahlak, siyaset ve kadim felsefenin diyalektik yönteminin yeni bir incelemesi yapılır. Bu özellikleriyle eser, özelde Alman idealizminin genelde Avrupa felsefesinin köşe taşlarından biri olmuştur. Öte yandan Alman filozofu Arthur Schopenhauer'un de işaret ettiği gibi son derece girift olan eser, felsefede okunması en zor yapıtlardan birisidir.

This work is a monument to metaphysics and Hegel's masterpiece. It expounds the epitome of the speculative metaphysical system and deals mainly with the occurrence of consciousness out of the historical development of the mind —the German word Geist has connotations of both 'spirit' and 'mind' in English. It treats the principal questions —like spirit, mind, consciousness, self-consciousness, history, civilization— of metaphysics, ethics, politics and reintroduces philosophy's ancient method of dialectics with a new face-lift. All these factors cause "the Phenomenology of SpiriV to become the milestone of German idealism in particular and, in a more general sense, the modern European history of philosophy. " The Phenomenology of Spirit' is a notoriously complex and even, if we may dare to say so, the most complicated piece of reading in philosophy, so much so that Hegels contemporaneous out-and-out adversary, the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, made the harshest possible commentary on "the Phenomenology ofSpirif: "If I were to say. that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the most hollow and senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right. Further, if I were to say that this summus philosophus [...] scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that whoever could read his most eulogized work, the so-called "Phenomenology of the Mind\ without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for Bedlam, I should be no less right." Arthur Schopenhauer, "On the Basis of Morality", pp 15-16.