Humanities & Social Sciences 8 (2015 8) 1769-1787 ~ ~ ~ УДК 130.122 Problem of Self-consciousness and Conceptual Thinking in the Theory of Vigotsky: in the Spirit of “The Phenomenology of Spirit” by Hegel and “Ethics” by Spinoza Eiji Kamiya* Kyoto-Tachbiana University 34 Yamada-cho Oyake, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto 607-8175, Japan Received 16.04.2015, received in revised form 21.05.2015, accepted 30.06.2015 The article discusses the connection of the philosophy of Hegel and Spinoza in L.S. Vygotsky’s theory, one of the modern psychological theories. <...> Our study is inspired by the desire to enrich his theory, which remains unfi nished due to his short life. <...> Speaking more precisely, Vygotsky took from the philosophy of Hegel not only the dialectical way of thinking, but also the idea of self-consciousness as understanding of the concept and spontaneous thinking. <...> Therefore, in Vygotsky’s theory we fi nd two big philosophers intersect in the idea of self-consciousness. <...> This is the beginning of the enrichment of Vygotsky’s theory, which leads not only from the consciousness to the birth of self-consciousness as the second birth of man, but back from the second to the fi rst birth of consciousness. <...> In one of his books, the psychologist wrote the following: Our research of the concept on the basis of Spinoza’s studies Eiji Kamiya. <...> Problem of Self-consciousness and Conceptual Thinking in theTheory of Vigotsky: in the Spirit… Kruger, Kцhler: emotion in perception The emotion’s concept is an active state; it is freedom: Freedom: emotion in concept. <...> Sch: emotion decay The great picture of personality development: the way to freedom. <...> Revive Spinozism in marxist psychology (2006, p. 295) As we can see from the quotation, Vygotsky does not only adopt the emotions theory from Spinoza; he also attempts to study the relations between “concept” – “emotion” – “freedom”. <...> When this fundamental question is clearly answered, we can understand the phrase “The great picture of personality development: the way to freedom”. <...> As it is demonstrated below, I believe that we can fi nd the answer to this question in “Ethics”. <...> But as Vygotsky, obviously, relied on the dialectic logic of Hegel in his studies of the concept and the conceptual thinking (see Chapter 5 “Thinking and Speech”), we cannot interpret the quotation above as a switch from Hegel to Spinoza in the psychologist’s <...>