The Role of Philosopher in Hegel's Phenomenology with a Look at Wittgenstein's View

This paper is aimed to address this question: what is the role of the philosopher in transitions experienced by consciousness in Phenomenology? In order to answer that question, in addition to Hegel's Introduction to Phenomenology as the main source, Wittgenstein's attitude concerning the role of philosophy in knowledge will be examined. Since for Hegel, Phenomenology is the ladder to reach a systematic philosophy, I show that Phenomenology is prone to both negative and positive readings. If it is read as a negative one, the role of the philosopher is simply to observe; and if positive, the philosopher has a more active role. Here, Wittgenstein's view about the nature of philosophy is compared with Hegel's to show that the negative aspect of Hegel's dialectical view is similar to Wittgenstein's negative and anti-philosophical one, whereas it is only the positive aspects of Hegel's position which contrasts sharply with Wittgenstein's.