I have long seen a need for a short introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but at the same time I have been acutely aware that such an introduction faces severe obstacles. The first of these are immediately obvious to anyone who even thumbs through the book: the work is especially long, and it is written in a dense, abstract language that seems as if it could be comprehensible only to Hegel himself. For all of that, the work is deeply connected to themes in the history not just of philosophy but also of religion, politics, and literature, and it has been highly influential in all of those areas. One would expect that a proper introduction to any philosophical work would have at least something to say about its terminology, its particular arguments, its historical background, and its subsequent historical influences. But in this case doing justice to even one of these topics would lead to a prohibitively long book.

The situation is only partially helped by a decision to focus on a specifically philosophical introduction, by which I mean to focus specifically on what the work can be said to attempt, and to accomplish, as an argument. That sort of focus relegates the matters of historical background and influence, and even the issue of terminology, to supporting roles: the task is to convey, in clear language accessible to contemporary readers, what Hegel's main claims are meant to be.