SOURCE: Buckley, Michael. “Irony and the ‘We’ in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.” CLIO 31, no. 3 (spring 2002): 279-300.

In the following essay, Buckley surveys the use of “we” in The Phenomenology of Spirit and claims that Hegel employs the term as an ironic component of his portrayal of consciousness in the work.

Although all readers of the Phenomenology of Spirit are familiar with Hegel's device of the “we” (wir) that is employed throughout it, very little commentary exists on the meaning of the “we.” None of this commentary has noted the connection between this device and the trope of irony, a trope that since Socrates has been associated closely with philosophical modes of experience and thought. In this essay, I will consider what has been said about the “we” and suggest that irony is the best way for comprehending how the “we” ultimately functions in Hegel's portrait of consciousness.

When...