Hegel and Heidegger on the phenomenology of conscience

In this essay, I explore possibilities for phenomenology beyond Hegel with respect to questions of conscience, guilt, and ethics. In the first section, I briefly introduce Heidegger’s phenomenology. The next section provides an interpretation of conscience in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Like Hegel, Heidegger claims that conscience states my guilt prior to any specific wrongdoings; Heidegger’s ideas around the ‘call of conscience’ are thus considered next. Building on differences and connections between Hegel’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies of conscience, the final section outlines implications for a phenomenologically responsive ethics.