The Phenomenology of Spirit is not only a decisive work in the history of philosophy: it is also, alongside Shakespeare's theater or Dante's Divine Comedy, one of the major works of Western culture. Completed in a hurry, published in 1807 in a Europe agitated by the Napoleonic wars, it had a late success: in France, it was not until the 20th century that we recognized in it the summit of German idealist philosophy – both a dense and dazzling recollection of all philosophy, and the beginning of a new way of thinking about life, history and thought itself. The present translation restores the poetic dynamics specific to this moment when Hegel's dialectical approach is exhibited for the first time: by endeavoring to preserve the singular economy and fluidity of the author's language, it offers a new reading of this crucial text.