ABSTRACT
G. W. F. Hegel was a part of a larger community of German intellectuals who were all investigating various aspects of the modern world in which they lived. Phenomenology of Spirit deals with issues that were central to the intellectual life of the period. Hegel was working in a complicated field known as Idealism. Hegel's view, known as Absolute Idealism, differs from Immanuel Kant's view Transcendental Idealism. When Hegel wrote Phenomenology, he was aware of the need to have an independent voice in a world that was becoming dominated by ideologies. Hegel was clearly influenced by the work of Kant, whose ideas about a universal "invisible church"—invisible because it was internal and founded on pure reason—are easy to see in Phenomenology. Although Hegel found Kant's emphasis on individual autonomy— the power to make one's own decisions— an inspiring challenge to traditional authority, Hegel's ideas of collective consciousness somewhat diluted the power of that autonomy.
