ABSTRACT
A handful of reviews of G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit appeared in the first few years following its publication. The reviewers were united, both in their verdict that Hegel's style was extremely dense and obscure, and in their general misunderstanding of the book. The misunderstandings the critics displayed were so fundamental they hardly deserved detailed responses. One of the criticisms leveled was that Hegel had simply returned to the philosophical approach of rationalism of the thinkers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff, which had dominated German philosophy for most of the eighteenth century. The review from 1807 in the Oberdeutsche Allgemeine Literaturzeitung ("South German General Literary Newspaper") mistook Hegel's philosophy for a version of that of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Critics have since frequently leveled the charge that Hegel swallows up all reality in his theory of the Absolute. Nevertheless, Hegel's developing conception of his own philosophy does not owe anything to contemporary critiques of Phenomenology.
