On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’: the self-knowing, actual Idea — part eleven.
‘Psyche; or, the legend of Love’
by Mary Tighe (1772–1810)
CANTO I. (continued)
A dream of mingled terror and delight
Still heavy hangs upon her troubled soul,
An angry form still swims before her sight,
And still the vengeful thunders seem to roll;
Still crushed to earth she feels the stern control
Of Venus unrelenting, unappeased:
The dream returns, she feels the fancied dole;
Once more the furies on her heart have seized,
But still she views the youth who all her sufferings eased.
Of wonderous beauty did the vision seem,
And in the freshest prime of youthful years;
Such at the close of her distressful dream
A graceful champion to her eyes appears;
Her loved deliverer from her foes and fears
She seems in grateful transport still to press;
Still his soft voice sounds in her ravished ears;
Dissolved in fondest tears of tenderness
His form she oft invokes her waking eyes to bless.
Nor was it quite a dream, for as she woke,
Ere heavenly mists concealed him from her eye,
One sudden transitory view she took
Of Love’s most radiant bright divinity;
From the fair image never can she fly,
As still consumed with vain desire she pines;
While her fond parents heave the anxious sigh,
And to avert her fate seek holy shrines
The threatened ills to learn by auguries and signs.
And now, the royal sacrifice prepared,
The milk-white bull they to the altar lead,
Whose youth the galling yoke as yet had spared,
Now destined by the sacred knife to bleed:
When lo! with sudden spring his horns he freed,
And head-long rushed amid the frighted throng:
While from the smoke-veiled shrine such sounds proceed
As well might strike with awe the soul most strong;
And thus divinely spoke the heaven inspired tongue.
‘On nuptial couch, in nuptial vest arrayed,
‘On a tall rock’s high summit Psyche place:
‘Let all depart, and leave the fated maid
‘Who never must a mortal Hymen grace:
‘A winged monster of no earthly race
‘Thence soon shall bear his trembling bride away;
‘His power extends o’er all the bounds of space,
‘And Jove himself has owned his dreaded sway,
‘Whose flaming breath sheds fire, whom earth and heaven obey.’
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), ‘Philosophy of Mind’, ‘Subjective Mind’.
§401
‘What the sentient soul finds within itself is, on the one hand, the natural and immediate, as within the soul ideally and made its own. On the other hand, and conversely, what originally belongs to being-for-self (i.e. to what is, when further deepened and absorbed in itself, free mind and the I of consciousness) is determined to natural bodiliness, and is thus sensed. In this way two distinct spheres of sensation emerge. One type of sensation is at first a determination of bodiliness (e.g. of the eye or of any physical part whatever) , which becomes sensation by being driven inward, recollected in the soul’s being-for-self. The other is the sphere of determinacies originating in the mind and belonging to it, which, in order to be sensed, in order to be as if found, become embodied. Thus the determinacy is posited in the subject, namely in the soul. The subdivision into species of the first type of sensation is seen in the system of the senses. The other, inwardly originated, determinacies of sensation necessarily also form a system; and their embodiment, as posited in the living, concretely developed natural structure, takes place in a particular system or organ of the body, corresponding to the particular content of the mental determination’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Hegel associates sensing with finding, since empfinden, to sense, feel, comes from finden, to find, with the prefix ent.- See : §402. Sensation has two aspects, First a psychological aspect whereby it is natural and immediate, ideally or ideal (ideell may be either an adjective or an adverb) in the soul, that is. belongs to being-for-self. And second, a physical aspect, in which it acquires the bodiliness or embodiment necessary for it to be sensed or felt. Being-for-self (Fürsichsein) is the beginning of the ‘I of consciousness’ since, though it is not yet conscious of external objects or able to distinguish itself from its sensations as ‘I’ or ‘me’, it is a unitary centre aware of all its feelings and sensations. The embodiment of sensations proceeds in two directions, from body to soul and from soul to body. First, a sensation, especially a perceptual sensation, is a determination of a part of the body which is then internalized in the soul’s being-for-self. Recollected translates erinnert, the perfect participle of erinnern, to remind someone of something and in the reflexive form, sich erinnern, to remember, recollect, etc. However for Hegel erinnern has the suggestion of internalize, make inner, so he means chiefly that the bodily modification is internalized. And further, a sensation, or more naturally termed a feeling or sentiment, begins in the mind and is then embodied, and hence found (gefundene) and felt (empfundene), situated in the subject, the soul. Mind here appears to be relatively independent of the body while soul is intertwined with it. The senses form a system, different types of sensation originating in different sense-organs and this is also true of the bodily organs that accommodate feelings stemming from the mind, they also form a system and different types of feeling are embodied in different parts of the body depending upon their content.
Thus far in §401 bodiliness has translated Leiblichkeit, from Leib, the word most commonly used for the human body, owing to its affinity to Leben, life, but ‘corporeal functions translates Körperlichkeit, more literally corporeality from Körper, body in the sense in which it applies also to non-human bodies. Körper refers to matter and is applied as an anatomical term to the body of living beings, also to anything considered as an entity for example. the planets. It excludes any implication of human feelings, sentiments and life in its non-physical aspect, it is Leib which conveys this suggestion and is conceived as the vessel of the soul. Körperlichkeit is the correct word here because Hegel regards the senses in terms not chiefly of their bodily organs but of the aspects of external bodies that they apprehend. The corporeality of external bodies is specified or particularized, not by Hegel but intrinsically, into aspects ranged along the ideal–real spectrum. Determinate light, that is light as differentiated into various colours and shapes, and sound are more ideal, their involvement with the bodily material that reflects or emits them is minimal. That there are two such aspects, rather than one has no special explanation, if they were aspects of the mind, of subjective ideality there would have to be some explanation of their twoness and their difference, some logical relation between them, but as it is they are simply different, simply diversity (Verschiedenheit). Smell and taste are closely linked and apprehend aspects of bodies nearer to the reality end of the spectrum, they absorb material particles. Touch apprehends the least ideal aspects of bodies, those most intimately associated with their bodily reality. The aspects apprehended by the senses are more fully discussed in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’ to which Hegel refers. There they are discussed in the order of their development in natural corporeality, that is as they occur in physical bodies and without reference to senses, which are not dealt with until §358. Their order in ‘Philosophy of Nature’ does not correspond to their place on the ideal–real spectrum. So in §401 they are arranged more simply around the centre of sentient individuality.
‘[Remark] Sensation in general is the healthy participation of the individual mind in its bodiliness. The senses form the simple system of specific corporeal functions: ( 1 ) Physical ideality divides into two, because in such immediate and not yet subjective idealiry, distinction appears as diversity: the senses of determinate light (cf. §§3 1 7 ff.) and of sound (cf. §300) . (2) Diffusive reality is for its own part immediately a double reality: the senses of smell and taste (§§32 1 , 322) . (3) the sense of solid reality, of heavy matter, of heat (§303), of shape (§3 1 0) . Around the centre of the sentient individuality these specifications arrange themselves more simply than in the development of natural corporeality’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
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‘The system of internal sensation in the particularization of its self-embodiment would deserve to be treated in detail in a specific science of its own, a psychical physiology. Something of a relation of this type is already contained in the sensation of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of an immediate sensation to the sensory interior with a determination of its own-the pleasant or unpleasant; as also in the determinate comparison in the use of sensations, e.g. of colours, sounds, smells, as symbols. But the most interesting aspect of a psychical physiology would be to study not mere sympathy, but more specifically the embodiment assumed by mental determinations, especially as emotions. We should have to comprehend the connection by which anger and courage are felt in the breast, in the blood, in the irritable system, just as contemplation and mental preoccupation are sensed or felt in the head, the centre of the sensitive system. We should require a more thorough understanding than hitherto of the most familiar connections by which tears, and voice in general, namely speech, laughter, sighs, with many other particularizations lying in the direction of pathognomy and physiognomy, are formed from out of the soul. In physiology the viscera and the organs are regarded as moments only of the animal organism; but they form at the same time a system of embodiment of the mental, and in this way get an entirely different interpretation’.
- Philosophy of Mind’
‘The content of sensation is either a content stemming from the external world or one belonging to the interior of the soul; a sensation is thus either an external or an internal sensation. Here we have to consider the second type of sensations only in so far as they become embodied; on the side of their inwardness they belong to the sphere of psychology. The external sensations, by contrast, are an object of Anthropology exclusively’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Psychical physiology, dealing with the relation of sensations and their embodiment, would consider at least four themes, First, some sensations are pleasant, some unpleasant. An immediate sensation, for example a sound, is pleasant or unpleasant depending upon whether or not it is appropriate to our sensory interior which has a determination or constitution of its own independently of the particular sensations that it receives. This sensory interior also explains why humans and animals are sensitive to different stimuli, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the sensation is itself something felt, giving rise to an Empfindung of pleasure or pain. The relevance of this to the relationship between the psychical and the physiological is this. Sensations are chiefly physiological, stemming from changes in our sense-organs, they are related, as appropriate or inappropriate, to our sensory interior but our sensory interior stems from the soul or mind hence the pleasure or pain derived from sensations belongs to psychical physiology but tenuously not centrally involving only something of a relation of this type. Second, sensations are associated with certain moods and are used to symbolize them, for example black is gloomy and symbolizes grief. Again this belongs to the margins of psychical physiology because what is primarily physiological, sensations, is correlated with what is primarily mental, moods and emotions. Both of these themes are examples of Sympathie, rather than of embodiment. Sympathie is used in its original Greek sense, suffering/being affected with, the idea being that certain feelings or sensations go together with certain others, giving rise to either a feeling of pleasure or pain or to a symbolic affinity.
Third, emotions (Affekte) are felt in certain regions of the body. On the irritable and sensible systems, see §398. Fourth, passions, emotions, etc. express themselves in bodily ways from out of the soul. Physiognomy is the art of judging or interpreting (-gnomy, from the Greek gnome) someone’s character or nature (phusis) from their physical, especially facial, characteristics. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) popularized the idea in his ‘Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe’ (‘Physiognomical Fragments for the Promotion of the Knowledge of Human Nature and the Love of Mankind’, 1775–8). He was a friend of Goethe vividly described in Goethe’s autobiography, ‘Wahrheit und Dichtung’ (‘Truth and Poetry’). Hegel attacks Lavater’s doctrine of physiognomy in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’. Pathognomie is the art of judging or interpreting a person’s passions or emotions from their bodily expressions. Fifth, internal ‘sensations’ (Empfindungen), that isfeelings, are considered in §447–8.
Sixth, two related points show the universal nature of the sentient individual. A single sense can perceive a wide range of qualities for example sight can sense red, blue, etc. and the sense, or the individual, is not tied to a single quality, for example blue, because it can also perceive red, etc., and thus does not take on blue, or any other colour, as its ‘quality’, unlike coloured water, see. §399, and it is universal in the sense of ‘indeterminate’, it remains aloof, at home or ‘together with itself ’ (bei sich), in any determinate perception, and this enables it to perceive any quality in the range. Hegel is influenced by Aristotle’s De anima. Seventh, the sensory, for example perceived colours, is self-external, the colours are spread over a field, such that any given colour occupies a two-dimensional area, not simply a point or a line, and different colours occupy different areas, see ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ §20. Hegel connects this sort of externality with externality of a different kind, the content of sensation divides into different types of sensation, for example colours and temperatures, which are (unlike the contents of a single type) mutually indifferent in that something can be, say, red and hot all over (or alternatively red and cold all over), but not red and green all over. Internal sensations are also mutually external. Anger and grief are felt in different parts of the body, but one emotion, for example, anger, tends to dampen, if not exclude, another, for example grief. Eighth, the three groups of senses correspond only roughly to the three moments of the concept, physical ideality corresponds to universality, real difference [Differenz] to particularity, that is. the division of universality into different particulars or species, ‘earthly totality’ to individuality, the full-bodied, earthy physical entity. See §379.
‘Now why we have j ust the familiar Jive senses-no more and no fewer, and differing in the way they do — , the rational necessity of this must, in a philosophical treatment, be demonstrated. This happens when we conceive the senses as presentations of the concept’s moments. These moments are, as we know, only three. But the quintet of senses reduces quite naturally to three classes of senses. The first is formed by the senses of physical ideality, the second by those of real difference; in the third class falls the sense of earthly totality’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Ninth, each group of senses must form a totality, a whole, since the moment of the concept which it represents is itself a single moment, not a collection of concepts. A concrete (namely grown together) totality is a coherent whole, each of whose parts implies, and is incomplete without, the others. An animal organism for example is a concrete totality, from a single part, or a bone, we can infer a great deal, albeit not of course everything, about the rest of the organism. However, the first group, sight and hearing, do not form a concrete totality. Sight and hearing have something in common, each perceives its object from a distance but the acuteness of sight and hearing vary quite independently of each other. Hence sight and hearing form only a sundered’ totality since they are the sense, or senses, of what is abstractly universal and ideal, that is, abstracted, or cut off, both from each other and from the body that reflects or emits them. Light and sound are ideal in quite different ways, sound results from the negation of the material, that is, from a movement of the object heard and of the intervening medium, whereas light involves no prior negation of what is other than itself, no disturbance of the object seen or of the medium. The second group corresponds to the division of the concept into particulars, and so it is easier to explain why it contains two members, smell and taste, than in the case of the first group. Nonetheless, smell and taste are more closely related than sight and hearing, both respond to the decomposition and dissolution of a concrete body. Smell functions at a distance from the body and senses the abstract process of decomposition, etc, taste requires contact and thus senses the concrete process.
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‘Now the mental sympathies aroused by the symbolic nature of impressions are something entirely familiar. We get that sort of thing from colours, sounds, smells, tastes, and also from what is for the sense of feeling. -As regards colours, there are grave, gay, fiery, cold, sad, and soothing colours. Definite colours are therefore chosen as signs of our present mood. Thus for the expression of grief, of inner gloom, of the nightfall of the mind, we take the colour of night, of the darkness not brightened by light, colourless black. Solemnity and dignity are also denoted by black, because in it the play of contingency, of manifoldness and mutability finds no place. Pure, luminous, serene white, on the other hand, corresponds to the simplicity and serenity of innocence. The proper colours have, so to speak, a more concrete meaning than black and white. Thus purple has ranked from time immemorial as the royal colour; for this is the most powerful colour, the most striking to the eye, -the interpenetration of bright and dark in the full strength of their unity and their opposition. Blue, by contrast, as the simple unity of bright and dark inclining towards the passive dark, is the symbol of gentleness, of femininity, of love and fidelity, and that is why painters, too, have almost always painted the queen of heaven in a blue garment. Yellow is not merely the symbol of ordinary gaiety but also of jaundiced envy. Of course, the choice of colour for clothing can be very much a matter of convention; though at the same time, as we have observed, a rational sense reveals itself in that choice. There is also something symbolic in the lustre and dullness of colour; lustre corresponds to the usually cheerful mood of people in dazzling situations,-dullness of colour, on the other hand, to the splendour-scorning simplicity and tranquillity of character. In white itself there is a difference of lustre and dullness depending on whether it appears, for example, on linen, on cotton, or on silk; and one finds in many peoples a definite feeling for the symbolism of this distinction’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Touch or ‘feeling’ (das Gefühl’) is a single sense, since it senses the ‘concrete totality’, that is the full-bodied object. However, in view of the variety of independent features discerned by touch (temperature, texture, etc.), it is not so clear why we ought to regard it as a single sense. Tenth, the account of light and colour is influenced by Goethe. Newton had argued that colour is a property of light and that all the colours are formed out of white light, he based this on his discovery that sunlight can be bent through a prism so as to give a spectrum of colours. Goethe rejected this view, insisting that white light is not a mixture of colours, he adopted a view close to Aristotle’s, that colour arises in the passage from light to darkness, being a mixture of white and black, or, as Hegel puts it, light’s ‘obscuration by the dark’. See Goethe’s ‘Farbenlehre’, 1810. See also ‘Philosophy of Nature’, §§275–8. The connection of light with space corresponds to the connection between sound and time. Light occupies space that is otherwise empty. Hegel appears to reject the view that ‘empty’ space is filled with ‘ether’, see ‘Philosophy of Nature’, §276. The connection of sound with time depends on the fact that sound requires movement, and movement takes time. (In ‘Philosophy od Nature’ §276, Hegel appears to acknowledge that light takes time to travel, but this is less obvious than the fact that sound takes time to travel.) More generally, Hegel opposes the view that time is a neutral medium, it depends upon features of bodies or other entities such as mind. That sound passes through other substances, besides air, and does not require a medium of a specific constitution is important for the ‘ideality’ of sound, as Hegel explains in ‘Philosophy of Nature’. §300. On smell and taste, see ‘Philosophy of Nature, §§321, 322, and 358.
‘Besides colours, it is particularly sounds which produce in us a corresponding mood. This is especially true of the human voice; for this is the principal way in which a human being discloses his interior; what he is, he puts into his voice. In the melodious-sounding voice, therefore, we believe we can safely recognize the beauty of soul of the speaker, and in the harshness of his voice, a coarse feeling. In the first case, the sound evokes our sympathy, in the latter case our antipathy. Blind people are particularly attentive to the symbolism of the human voice. It is even affirmed that they claim to detect someone’s physical beauty in the melodious sound of the voice,-that they even think they hear pockmarks in faint speaking through the nose’.
— ‘Philosophy of Mind’
‘The main phenomena of this embodiment are already familiar to everyone through language, which contains a good deal bearing on this topic which cannot very well be explained away as an age-old error. In general, it may be noted that inner sensations can be either beneficial or harmful and even ruinous, both to soul and to the whole body. Cheerfulness preserves health, grief undermines it. An impediment arising in the soul from grief and pain and bringing itself to existence in a bodily mode can, if it occurs suddenly and exceeds a certain limit, lead to death or the loss of intellect. Equally dangerous is sudden excessive joy; like overwhelming pain, this gives rise for representation to such a stark contradiction between the preceding and the present circumstances of the sentient subject, to such a rupture of the interior, that its embodiment can result in the fracture of the organism, death, or derangement. A man of character, however, is much less exposed than others to such effects, since his mind has made itself much freer of his bodiliness and has acquired a much firmer composure than a natural man, poor in representations and thoughts, who does not possess the power to endure the negativity of a sudden invasion of violent pain’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
‘Heaviness’ (Schwere) is not simply a body’s tendency to attract and be attracted by other bodies, especially the earth, but a force that makes it a cohesive, solid, independent body, offering resistance’ to other bodies in particular to the sentient subject, it is this solid resistance that is the primary object of touch, even in feeling the warmth of a body, we feel its solidity, since a body’s temperature corresponds to its specific gravity and cohesion. The objects of touch are scattered throughout the ‘Philosophy of Nature’, §§262 gravity; 290–4 specific gravity, 295–9 cohesion, 303–7, warmth, 310–15 shape, with a brief mention of touch in §358. The triad quality, quantity, measure is treated in ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’., in particular §103 on intensive magnitude and §107–9 on measure. Measure (das Mass) is a union of quality and quantity or a restoration of quality, on a higher level, after its passage into quantity. A village for eample may have a varying number of inhabitants but if their number is sufficiently reduced, it ceases to be a village and becomes an isolated dwelling, while if their number is increased sufficiently it becomes a town or a city. Measure involves the idea of due measure or proportion. The intensity of a sensation, for example the loudness of a sound, may vary within limits but if it decreases too far it becomes inaudible, and if it increases too far it becomes deafening. Although loudness is an intensive’ magnitude it also exists extensively as a certain number of decibels. It is not clear why the quantitative side of sensation is of no philosophical interest, maybe because it is the quasi-qualitative measure that is interesting, not quantitative variations that do not proceed beyond measure or because quantitative variations that go beyond the threshold of sensibility lack interest.
‘Besides the indicated qualitative differences, the senses have also a quantitative determination of sensation, its strength or weakness. Here quantity necessarily appears as intensive magnitude because the sensation is a simple entity. Thus, for example, the sensation of pressure exerted by a determinate mass on the sense of feeling is something intensive, although this intensity also exists extensively, measured in pounds, etc. But the quantitative side of sensation affords no interest for philosophical treatment in so far as this quantitative determination becomes also qualitative and thereby forms a measure, beyond which the sensation becomes too strong and therefore painful, and below which it becomes imperceptible’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
‘On the other hand, the relation of outer sensations to the interior of the sentient subject becomes important for philosophical anthropology. This interior is not something entirely indeterminate, undifferentiated. The very fact that the magnitude of the sensation is an intensive magnitude and must have a certain measure, involves a relation of the impression to the subject’s determinedness in-and-for-itself, a certain determinacy of the subject’s sensitivity, -a reaction of subjectivity to externality, and so the germ or beginning of inner sensation. Already by this internal determinacy of the subject, man’s outer sensing is distinguished more or less from that of animals. Some animals can, in certain circumstances, have sensations of something external that is not yet present for human sensation. Camels, for example, can even scent springs and streams miles away’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Hegel’s example suggests that some animals can sense stimuli that humans (without special training) cannot, but not that animal sensibility is wholly unselective and measureless or even that it is less selective than our own, but our sensory measure differs from those of other species. See §401, addition, on the connection between measure and ‘inner sensation’. Hegel gives three cases of the relation of outer sensation to our mental interior. First, a sensation is pleasant or unpleasant according as it satisfies or dissatisfies our independently determined nature, this is treated in §472, within the section of psychology entitled practical mind, see §469. second, sensations arouse our impulses or urges, these are treated in §473. Third, sensations often arouse a mood and moods produced by the general environment, for example climate, were discussed in §392 and 395. A mood aroused by a sensation is more determinate or definite, but still unconscious in two respects. First, I need not be aware of the relationship between the sensation and the mood, indeed I need not, by conscious intelligence, infer from the sensation that for example, things are going badly and acquire the mood as a result. The sensation simply has an inner meaning for me and that arouses the corresponding mood. Second, there is here no external object, distinct from myself, of which I am conscious, I am aware simply of a sensation, and that does not amount to consciousness of something. In virtue of its inner meaning, the sensation is symbolic but it is not a symbol in the strict sense, namely a distinct external object (for example. a black armband) in which I am conscious of an inner determinacy or which I refer to an inner determinacy (such as grief). On symbols proper, see §457. At §458 he distinguishes between a sign and a symbol, here their relationship is this, black symbolizes grief in virtue of its general tendency to arouse grief or at least sadness hence black is conventionally supposed to stand for grief so one chooses black clothing as a sign of one’s present (vorhandenen) mood. One’s grief exists before one puts on black clothing, it is not likely to have been aroused by the sight of black, but by the death of a loved one. Nonetheless black is suitable for the expression of grief though one need not oneself feel any actual grief, what makes black dress appropriate for a funeral is that it is the conventional expression of the grief one is supposed to feel.
The measure of human sensibility suggested that I am not simply a blank tablet but have a determinate inner nature. That external sensations arouse moods confirms this, our interior has a content, to feel which, we need first an external occasion (for example a colour sensation to arouse a mood or possibly Hegel means an external stimulus to produce a sensation), and furthermore an embodiment (Verleiblichung) of the content. Embodiment and symbolization proceed in opposite directions, symbolization goes from outer to inner, embodiment from inner to outer. Moods, etc. must embody themselves, since they belong to the natural soul, hence are simply in being (seiende), and so must acquire an immediate reality (Dasein) in which the soul becomes for itself. Hegel addresses to questions at once, first, why must moods be felt? Because otherwise they would not be states of the natural soul, not states in which the soul is for itself. Second, why is embodiment needed for a mood to be felt? Because a subject cannot directly sense or feel itself. A mood, if it is to be felt, has to be identical with the subject, but also distinct from it, not flatly identical with it. It achieves this through embodiment, but why only through embodiment? Why not by simply distinguishing my mood from myself, or by painting a gloomy picture? The natural soul cannot yet dissociate itself from its inner states, it is not an ‘I, see §381, nor can it yet paint pictures and so its feelings have to be externalized in its corporeal body (Körper). Here, as in §389 (on the communion of soul and Körper), the body is thought of in contrast to the soul and hence in its material aspect. Nonetheless, the body is not for itself, that is, independent, but permeated by soul, for which it is an ideality (ein Ideelles), that is, an inseparable part of the whole living organism, see §387.
Anger is primarily displeasure over some injury or offence to myself, revenge is a desire to retaliate for some offence to myself, envy is displeasure at someone’s doing better than myself, shame is displeasure at my own shortcomings, in particular in view of the actual or possible disapproval of others, remorse or regret (Reue) is displeasure at something that I have done. Each of these emotions involves an essential reference to my- or oneself. Hegel provides no examples of the second type of feeling, but he chiefly has in mind such feelings as respect for or sense of justice, religious awe, love of beauty, and so on., rather than occurrent feelings on specific occasions and directed upon specific objects.
This Law did Jove for human Race ordain:
The Beasts, the Fishes, and the feather’d Train
He left to mutual Spoil and mutual Prey,
But Justice gave to Men.
- Hesiod.
However feelings of the first type can often be modified, so that they too refer to a universal in and for itself . Anger may concern an offence against for example morality or religion, not something I just happen to dislike, nor need the offence be to myself or my associates, but for example the desecration of an altar or a massacre of innocents. Revenge also might be a desire to retaliate for an offence contravening rules of justice, morality, or religion, though it must be an offence to myself or my connexions. Envy is irremediably egocentric, the displeasing advantage is always an advantage over myself, and even if the advantage relates to a universal. I envy, for example, another’s moral superiority to myself, this confers no respectability on the displeasure. Shame always concerns the faults of myself or my connexions. what am ashamed about is usually something conventionally regarded as bad, though it may be either in addition or instead considered as bad intrinsically or in and for itself. If what I am ashamed about is considered as intrinsically bad, by for example moral standards, shame comes close to remorse. Remorse is for something done by myself that offends against morality, religion, and so on, regret, by contrast, may be for something done by myself that offends no universal standard, albeit unlike remorse it may also be for something for which I am not responsible such as the decline of religion or inclement weather. Both types of feeling are such that I ‘find’ them in myself, that is I do not decide to have them, they come and go of their own accord. They come close to each other in two ways. First the second type becomes like the first if its moral, and so on, content acquires the form of individualization (Vereinzelung), if for example the moral norm to which I appeal perhaps to justify my request for a salary increase or my indignation at not receiving it commends itself to me only because it favours my individual interests. Conversely feelings of this type differ more starkly from feelings of the first type to the extent that they involve less of the subject’s particularity. Further, the first type becomes like the second if subject-oriented feelings acquire universal content, if for example my anger at the treatment I have received is genuinely based on moral disapproval of this treatment. In general, the bodily expression of a feeling becomes less important to the extent that the feeling concerns a universal matter rather than oneself. My reddening face and quivering lip adequately express my anger at an insult, but to convey my moral indignation over injustice to others I need to resort to words.
The content of outer sensations is treated in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’, §401. The content of inner sensations is considered briefly in the third part of the doctrine of subjective mind, namely psychology, in §447, but the universal content of feelings of the second type, right, morality, etc., appears in the accounts of objective and absolute mind. Embodiment occurring involuntarily for example the reddening face and quivering lip, is distinct from gestures (Gebärde), for example the shaking of a fist, which are dependent on my will. On gestures, see §411. Involuntary embodiment may become a sign of for example anger, but its involuntariness differentiates it from the wearing of black as a sign of grief see §401.
‘Now just as mind employs the members of its outward-directed life, of its animal life (as Bichat expresses it), the face, the hands, and the feet, for the display, occurring with regard to others, of its interior by means of gesture, so, on the other hand, it is especially the members of the inward-turned life, the so-called ‘precious viscera’, that must be designated as the organs in which the inner sensations of the sentient subject are embodied for himself, but not necessarily for others, in an immediate, involuntary manner’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802), was a French anatomist and pathologist, father of modern histology. For Bichat’s distinction, in his ‘Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort, between la vie animale and la vie organique’, see. §398. The precious viscera or vital organs (edlen Eingeweide) are also considered by Bichat, especially in his sixth article where he relates them to the passions. In his sixth article, cites linguistic evidence for the internal embodiment of the passions and draws attention to their destructive possibilities.
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The connexion between a feeling and its organ is not merely contingent, it depends upon the relation between physiological significance of the organ and the content of the feeling, there may be exceptions to the general rule (Regel) but these stem from the impotence of nature (Ohnmacht der Natur) and do not affect the rule. Hegel invokes the impotence of nature at ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §250 to account for the inability of philosophy to account for the infinite wealth and variety of forms in nature. In German, as in English, usage a rule admits of exceptions, ‘as a rule’, ‘the exception proves the rule’, whereas a law does not. The quality of each type of feeling fits the physiological significance of the organ in which it primarily resides. Hegel assumes that a feeling is felt or sensed in the organ in which it is primarily embodied. Firstly grief, as the soul turning inward, resides in the abdomen, the reproductive system. Reproduktion is not breeding or propagation but the self-maintenance of the organism. Along with sensibility and irritability it is one of the three main functions of life, ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §354, see ‘Philosophy of Mind’, §398. Anger is outward-turning and thus resides in the heart, the centre of irritability but repressed anger involves the reproductive system once more, which vents its own anger or irritability on food, by means of bile and pancreatic secretions, and is hence an appropriate seat for anger, as well as grief, see ‘philosophy of nature’, §§384–5 on digestion, and ‘Philosophy of Mind’, §395, n. 7 on bile. Third, like outward-turning anger, shame is associated with the circulatory or blood system and hence the heart. Hegel puns on appearance (Erscheinung).
‘We propose here to touch briefly on the most universal phenomena concerning this point. It is one of the most undeniable experiences that grief, this impotent burying of the soul within itself, embodies itself mainly as an abdominal illness, hence in the reproductive system, consequently in that system which displays the negative return of the animal subject to itself. Courage and anger, by contrast, this negative directedness-outwards against an alien force, against an injury which enrages us, has its immediate seat in the breast, in the heart, the focal point of irritability, of negative expulsion. In anger the heart throbs, the blood gets hotter and mounts to the face, and the muscles get tense. Here, particularly in annoyance, where the anger remains internal rather than discharging itself violently, the bile already belonging to the reproductive system can of course overflow, and indeed to such a degree that jaundice occurs. But we must remark on this that bile is, as it were, the fiery stuff, by emission of which the reproductive system, so to say, vents its anger, its irritability, on food, dissolving and consuming it with the aid of the animal water poured out by the pancreas. -Shame, which is closely akin to anger, is likewise embodied in the blood system. Shame is an incipient, a subdued anger of a man about himself; for it involves a reaction to the contradiction between my appearance and what I ought and will to be, -thus a defence of my interior against my incongruous appearance. This mental outward-directedness is embodied by the blood being driven into the face, so that one blushes and in this way alters one’s appearance. In contrast to shame, terror, this shrinking into itself of the soul in face of a seemingly insurmountable negative, expresses itself by the blood receding from the cheeks, by blanching, as well as by trembling. If, however, nature is perverse enough to create some people who blanch from shame and blush from fear, science must not let such inconsistencies of nature deter it from recognizing the opposite of these irregularities as law. -Finally, thinking, too, in so far as it is a temporal occurrence and belongs to the immediate individuality, has a bodily appearance, is sensed, and indeed particularly in the head, in the brain, in general in the system of sensibility, of the simple universal being-within-itself of the sentient subject’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
What one is ashamed of is not necessarily one’s physical appearance or how one appears to others, but one’s appearance in the sense of what one has done and made of oneself, the manifestation of one’s essence, see ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ §131 on appearance. Blushing changes one’s appearance but not that aspect of it of which one is ashamed nor is it the only feeling to do so. Fourthly, terror is inward-turning, and hence in consistency ought perhaps like grief reside in the abdomen but instead it too involves the blood which in this case withdraws inwards. That we blush from shame and blanch from fear rather than the other way about, is, despite occasional irregularities, a ‘law’ (Gesetz), albeit perhaps rule is better. Fifthly, thinking, a definite person’s thinking, occurring at a definite time, is felt in the head. On the connection between sensibility and the brain, see ‘Philosophy of Nature’ §354.
Show (Zeigen) refers to embodiment as a sign (Zeichen) of a feeling. Äußerlich werden (externalization) is close to Enta’usserung, elimination, but also one of Hegel’s words for alienation or estrangement’ Here the idea is that by expressing or externalizing a feeling one sometimes gets rid of it. This does not invariably involve vocal externalization. Punching one’s adversary or breaking his furniture relieves anger better than shouting at him, conversely, giving voice to a feeling does not invariably get rid of it, love frequenly outlasts the lover’s sighs. On voice, see §401.
‘To comprehend the connection between these physiological phenomena and the motions of the soul corresponding to them is a matter of no little difficulty. As regards the mental side of these phenomena, we know with regard to laughter that it is generated by an immediately obvious contradiction, by something turning at once into its opposite, hence by something immediately self-annihilating, -assuming that we are not involved in this null content, do not regard it as our own; for if we felt ourselves injured by the destruction of this content, then we should weep. If, for example, someone proudly striding along falls over, this can give rise to laughter over it, because he experiences in his person the simple dialectic that what happens to him is the opposite of what he intended. Hence what provokes laughter in genuine comedies also essentially lies in the immediate veering round of a purpose in itself null into its opposite; whereas in tragedy it is substantial purposes which destroy themselves in their mutual opposition. With the dialectic befalling the object of comedy, the subjectivity of the spectator or listener attains to a serene and untroubled enjoyment of itself, since it is the absolute ideality, the infinite power over every limited content, consequently the pure dialectic by which, in fact, the comic object is annihilated. Herein lies the ground of the gaiety into which we are transported by the comic. But the physiological appearance of this gaiery, which particularly interests us here, is in harmony with this ground’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
The physiological phenomena (Erscheinungen) whose connection with emotions or motions of the soul is hard to explain are vocal expressions, such as laughter, that relieve the feeling. What supposedly arouses laughter is the transformation of an intrinsically worthless or null purpose into its opposite. It is not funny if a hungry man chokes on his food since his end is not intrinsically worthless. It is not funny if a fallen man gets up again, since this is not something self-annihilating. nor is it funny if I fall asleep while love making and is even less funny that I’m not having it anyway (like I said I slip this sort of thing in just to check if anyone is actually reading this stuff… and Hegel doesn’t seem to consider the possibility of laughing at oneself, still he was German.) It is funny if a proud man whose end is say to cut a fine figure, suddenly falls over without, presumably, breaking his leg or skull, tat is the basis of much Laurel and Hardy humour, this is a sort of dialectic, a contradiction, within pomposity, becoming immediately obvious in prostration. Dialectic is for Hegel not primarily an activity that we philosophers engage in but the intrinsic dynamic of concepts, things, and events: see ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ §81. What succumbs to this dialectic is the finite, a limited content, pomposity, say, in contrast to prostration and to other more significant ends and the spectator is not confined to any such restricted content, he or she observes the pomposity but does not associate him or herself with it. If the spectator shares and respects the demeanour of the victim, he or she will not find his fall funny. If he or she were to find it funny this would be like laughing at him or herself.
And so the spectator’s subjectivity is absolute ideality, infinite power iIt stands aloof above the fray, identifying with none of the contestants in the game of life and transcending them all, see §379, on ideality. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) viewed laughter as a self-glorifying gesture of triumph over one’s inferiors. Laughter has two aspects, a lighting-up of the face embodying the pure self ’s enjoyment of itself, and an expulsion of the breath embodying the soul’s repulsion of the ridiculous from itself. A question arises as to why self-enjoyment alone would result in laughter rather than a gentle smile. Hence the repulsion of the ridiculous is required to account for proper laughter but why does the soul need to repel the ridiculous? Suppressed amusement can be painful and needs relief yet Hegel’s account of the pure self ’s self-enjoyment appears to leave little room for such obtrusive mirth and his idea influenced perhaps by Aristotle’s doctrine of katharsis is that laughing gets rid of obtrusive mirth and of its finite object thereby maintaining the purity of the self ’s enjoyment. Hegel’s aversion to loud or involuntary laughter was also held by Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773) (‘there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter’). It holds together with his account of amusement, why should the self ’s pure self-enjoyment produce laughter? Pericles was traditionally regarded as austere.
‘Weeping, as we know, is the opposite of laughter. Just as the harmony of the subject with itself, sensed at the expense of the comic object, reaches its embodiment in laughter, so the internal conflict of the senser, produced by a negative- pain-expresses itself in weeping. Tears are the critical outburst, -so not merely the expression but also the elimination of pain; accordingly, they have just as beneficial an effect on health in the presence of significant tribulations of the soul, as pain that does not dissolve in tears can be harmful to health and life. In tears, pain, the feeling of the rending opposition that has penetrated the heart, becomes water, a neutral, indifferent stuff, and this neutral material itself into which pain is transformed is discharged by the soul from its bodiliness. In this discharge, as in that embodiment, lies the cause of the therapeutic effect of weeping.-But that precisely the eyes should be the organ from which the pain pouring out in tears surges forth, this lies the fact that the eye has a twofold determination: on the one hand, it is the organ of sight, thus of the sensation of external objects; and secondly it is the place where the soul reveals itself in the simplest manner, since the eye’s expression displays the fleeting, as it were exhaled, portrait of the soul, -and that is why people, in order to know each other, start by looking each other in the eye. Now the negativity which someone senses in pain inhibits his activity, reduces him to passivity, clouds the ideality, the light of his soul, and more or less dissolves the soul’s firm unity with itself; accordingly, this state of soul embodies itself by a dimming of the eyes, and still more by a moistening of them which can act so obstructively on the function of sight, on this ideal activity of the eye, that the eye can no longer stand looking out’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Critical outburst is kritische Ausschlag. Ausschlag, from ausschlagen, to knock out, etc., means a rash, eruption of the skin, the swing of an indicator, or the decisive factor that tips the scales. Kritisch, like critical, means skilled in or given to rigorous assessment, censorious, serious, dangerous, decisive, deciding. Hegel may have in mind the sense of separating, dividing, the root meaning of its Greek parent-verb, krinein, also to discern, judge, etc. Hence tears are a selective or discriminating eruption, and this explains why they are not only the expression (Äußerung) of pain, but also its elimination (Entäußerung).
‘A still more perfect embodiment and also expulsion of internal sensations than occurs in laughing and in crying is produced by the voice. For in voice it is not that, as in laughing, something present externally is merely formed, nor that, as in crying, a real material is extruded, but that an ideal, a, so to say, incorporeal bodiliness, is generated, thus the sort of material in which the inwardness of the subject thoroughly retains the character of inwardness, the soul’s ideality that is for itself receives an external reality fully corresponding to it-a reality which is immediately sublated in its arising, since the propagation of sound is just as much its disappearance. By the voice therefore sensation obtains an embodiment in which it dies away j ust as fast as it expresses itself. This is the ground of the higher power present in the voice of eliminating what is sensed internally. That is why the Romam, who were well acquainted with this power, intentionally let women wail at funerals in order to make the pain that had emerged in them into something alien to them’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Voice (Stimme) does not, like laughter, form (formiert) an external object (presumably one’s own face), nor, like crying, discharge a material stuff such as water, but produces an incorporeal bodiliness (unkörperlich Leiblichkeit), which leaves the subject’s interior internal, while nevertheless externalizing it. Voice is especially suitable for ‘eliminating’ (Entäußerung) feelings, because sound is fleeting. Here ideality (Idealität) contrasts with reality (Realität) as inner feelings to their outward expression, though owing to its incorporeality this reality is also ideal (ideelle). In the accounts of laughter and weeping Idealität contrasted not with Realität, but with the finite, see §401.
‘Now the abstract bodiliness of the voice can of course become a sign for others, who recognize it as such; but here, at the standpoint of the natural soul, the voice is not yet a sign produced by the free will, not yet speech articulated by the energy of intelligence and of will, but only a sounding immediately produced by sensation, which, though lacking articulation, still already shows itself capable of various modifications. Animals, in the expression of their sensations, only get as far as the inarticulate voice, as far as the cry of pain or pleasure, and many animals even achieve this ideal expression of their inwardness only in extreme need. Man, however, does not stop short at this animal mode of expressing himself; he creates articulate speech by which internal sensations get a word in, are expressed in their entire determinacy, become an object to the subject, and at the same time external and alien to him. Articulate speech is thus the highest mode in which man eliminates from himself his internal sensations. It is, therefore, with good reason that on the occasion of someone’s death funeral hymns are sung and condolences conveyed; and even though occasionally these may seem or be burdensome, yet they have the advantage, that by the repeated talk about the loss that has occurred they lift the grief over it out of its cramped lodging in the heart into representation and so make it into an object, into something confronting the grief-stricken subject. But poetic composition in particular has the power to liberate from oppressive feelings. Goethe, for instance, more than once restored his spiritual freedom by pouring out his pain in a poem’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Sprache is both speech and language. Hegel’s main discussion of it in §459. Animals have voice (Stimme) but not speech. Speech is usually voluntary; the sounds produced by mere voice are involuntary,‘immediately or directly produced by the feeling. Speech is articulate (artikulierte), divided into significant elements such as syllables and words; voiced sounds admit modifications (a cry of pain differs from a cry of pleasure, and different types of pain elicit different types of cry), but are not articulate. Unlike mere voice, speech expresses feelings in their entire determinacy hence speech more effectively objectifies and externalizes feelings, raising them into representation’ and making them extraneous or alien (fremd) to the subject. Goethe’s ‘Sorrows of Werther’ is the best known Gedicht which can apply to a novella as well as a poem in which he overcame the pain of unsatisfied love by transforming it into literature. It is not the case however that speech can invariably convey a feeling in its entire determinacy, nor can it always convey it more accurately than non-verbal sounds. Intense pain or the pleasure of love-making cannot be described at the time by the person experiencing them, only in retrospect. Even then I cannot express the exact intensity and quality of my pain in words but words can convey some things that a cry cannot, that a wasp has stung my right hand, for example, or that I am upset about the death of my dog, it is also untrue that expressing one’s feeling in words always eliminates the feeling. If this were so no lover could declare his love without thereby forfeiting it. Whether expressing a feeling in words diminishes it, enhances it or leaves it as before depends on such factors as these, can one expect to satisfy the feeling, for example fulfil one’s love, take revenge, revive a sick loved one? If one can, it is not so easy to see why verbal expression of the feeling should diminish rather than enhance it and prepare for its fulfilment. Funeral hymns may reduce the feelings they address, war cries and patriotic songs do not. What is the nature of the verbal expression? A simple profession of love or hatred may only fuel one’s passion but if one writes a novel about it, one’s attention is redirected to one’s new literary enterprise and the raw passion falls into neglect.
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‘Here, however, in Anthropology we can speak only in anticipation of the expression and the externalization of internal sensations by articulate speech. What remains to be mentioned in this place is the physiological aspect of voice. Regarding this point, we know that the voice, this simple vibration of the animal organism, commences in the diaphragm, but then also stands in close connection with the respiratory organs and receives its final formation from the mouth, which has a dual function, first of initiating the immediate conversion of food into structures of the living animal organism and on the other hand, in contrast to this internalizing of the external, of completing the objectification of subjectivity occurring in the voice’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Dedicates as always to my muse ❤️Your voice is sweet music
I hear your voice on the wind
And I hear you call out my name[
‘Listen, my child, you say to me’
I am the voice of your history
Be not afraid, come follow me
Answer my call and I’ll set you free
‘I am the voice in the wind and the pouring rain
I am the voice of your hunger and pain
I am the voice that always is calling you
I am the voice, I will remain
I am the voice in the fields when the summer’s gone
The dance of the leaves when the autumn winds blow
Ne’er do I sleep throughout all the cold winter long
I am the force that in springtime will grow
I am the voice of the past that will always be
Filled with my sorrows and blood in my fields
I am the voice of the future, bring me your peace
Bring me your peace and my wounds, they will heal
‘The Voice’ · Eimear Quinn
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Coming up next:
Feeling soul.
It may stop but it never ends.
