Thinking is a Thing: Hegel’s use of Examples

What is the act of giving an example? What kind of thinking is done when a concept is exemplified? Are there different ways of using examples? I have for some time been working on these questions, which I think touches the core of what one could call the method of philosophy. Philosophy is about doing conceptual, not empirical, work, but how does philosophy bring its concepts to live? Maybe one of the most prominent ways of doing this is in the process of giving examples. In this paper, I trace the use of examples G.W.F. Hegel’s masterpiece The Phenomenology of Spirit.