ABSTRACT
Charles Taylor's interpretation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel provides a very useful starting point for an understanding of both Hegel's place in the growth of a philosophy of labour, and the role labour plays in his philosophy. He describes Hegel's basic position as "expressionism". Taylor thus perceives the role of labour in Hegel's writing as one of the media which man uses to simultaneously transform his surroundings and thereby produce himself, and his interpretation includes Hegel's concept of labour in its key concept. Hegel, K. Marx and J. P. Sartre agree with Leroi-Gourhan, since they show how technology creates mental and physical routines which are engrained in the subject and are not spontaneous or original. In Hegel, the contours of a concept of active sensation are beginning to emerge. Consciousness was for Hegel, as it was for I. Kant, grounded in self-consciousness, i.e. the relation of consciousness to the self.
