The phenomenology of spirit (1st edition.)

Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' is renowned for being one of the most challenging and important books in Western philosophy.

Above all, it is famous for laying out a new approach to reasoning and philosophical argument, an approach that has been credited with influencing Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre and many other key modern philosophers.

That approach is the so-called 'Hegelian dialectic' - an open-ended sequence of reasoning and argument in which contradictory concepts generate and are incorporated into a third, more sophisticated concept.