On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’: the self-knowing, actual Idea — part five.
‘Psyche’
by Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (1749–1832)
THE MUSES, maiden sisters, chose
To teach poor Psyche arts poetic;
But, spite of all their rules aesthetic,
She never could emerge from prose.
No dulcet sounds escaped her lyre,
E’en when the summer nights were nigh;
Till Cupid came, with glance of fire,
And taught her all the mystery.
Tangerine Dream — Journey Through a Burning Brain
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). ‘Philosophy of Mind’.
§385 The development of mind is as follows:
I. In the form of relation to its own self: it has the ideal totality of the Idea arise within it, i.e. what its concept is comes before it and its being is to be together with itself, i.e. free. This is subjective mind.
II. In the form of reality, as a world produced and to be produced by it; in this world freedom is present as necessity. This is objective mind.
Ill. In the unity of the objectivity of mind and of its ideality or concept, a unity that is in and for itself and eternally produces itself, mind in its absolute truth. This is absolute mind.
Zusatz. Mind is always Idea; but initially it is only the concept of the Idea, or the Idea in its indeterminacy, in the most abstract mode of reality, i.e. in the mode of being. In the beginning we have only the wholly universal, undeveloped determination of mind, not yet its particularity; this we obtain only when we pass from one thing to something else, for the particular contains a One and an Other; but it is just at the beginning that we have not yet made this transition. The reality of mind is, therefore, initially still a wholly universal, not particularized reality; the development of this reality will be completed only by the entire philosophy of mind.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Mind is always Idea and yet the first stage is associated with the concept, the second with reality, and the third with their combination, the Idea proper. The third is said to be in and for itself and so the first is implied to be in itself and the second for itself. The freedom of Subjective Mind is thus far excused from the social and ethical constraints that in Objective Mind merge freedom and necessity. In the second stage world refers not (as elsewhere) to the natural world but to the human world that we create. The development is chronological but not in a simple comprehensible manner for in all stages of human history, Subjective, Objective, and, albeit in a rudimentary form, Absolute Mind go hand in hand, and for a long time prior to a child displaying all the capacities considered under the heading of Subjective Mind it has been initiated into the social and cultural life of its community and the development of one’s own thought runs alongside to the development of the object of one’s thought.
The undeveloped indeterminacy of the mind in its earliest stage is associated with the concept, the indeterminate seed in contrast to the plant, with the being common to everything that is, the opening phase of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia logic, and with universality in contrast to particularity whereby the seeds of different types of plant and plants themselves at the start of their growth do not differ at first glance as much as full grown plants. Their concepts may well differ yet what we observe of them, their reality, does not. A seed is hence universal manifesting the common features of a group of plants but no particular plant for particularity involves a One and an Other in that one particular thing such as a primrose contrasts with another such as a tulip, nonetheless the particular aspects of a single organism are more germane here first in a seed the particulars (leaves, stem, root, and so on) that will emerge in contrast with each other in the plant are not as yet differentiated, and by analogy particular aspects of the mind (memory, recollection, reason, and so on) are not yet discernible in the embryo or, in their full development, in children. As for children Hegel describes the early stages of Subjective mind rather than Subjective Mind as a whole.
‘The concept of mind necessarily advances to this development of its reality, for the form of immediacy, of indeterminacy, which its reality initially has, is a form in contradiction with the concept; what seems to be immediately present in the mind is not anything genuinely immediate, but is in itself something posited, mediated. Mind is impelled by this contradiction to sublate the immediate, the Other, the form, that is, in which it presupposes itself. By this sublation it first comes to itself, first emerges as mind. Consequently, we cannot begin with mind as such, but must start from its most inappropriate reality. Mind, it is true, is already mind at the beginning, but it does not yet know that it is. It is not mind itself that, at the beginning, has already grasped its concept: it is only we, we who contemplate it, who know its concept. That mind comes to a knowledge of what it is, this constitutes its realization. Mind is essentially only what it knows itself to be. Initially, it is only mind in itself; its becoming-for-itself forms its actualization’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’.
The concept of mind has two realities corresponding to it.
- Its first quasi-natural reality which is immediate in the sense that it is not mediated by a preceding development.
- The totality of the developed moments, that is to say, aspects of the concept, the adult mind, in which the concept is still the unifying soul of these moments.
The mind’s advance from 1 to 2 is driven by the contradiction between the concept itself and and the immediacy of reality 1. ‘What seems to be immediately present in the mind is not anything genuinely immediate, but is in itself something posited, mediated’ refers to reality 2, the adult mind, that appears immediate but results from a transition from, a sublation of, reality 1. Yet they could in addition mean that reality 1 is posited, not as it seems immediate. Reality 1 is posited or mediated by the concept of mind which has initially to appear in this simple guise as a prince may have to assume the guise of a beggar before he ascends the throne but mind must advance to reality 2 driven on by the contradiction between its concept and reality 1 and so also the prince has to shed the beggarly garb that contradicts his regal destiny and then reality 1 can be divested of its immediacy, posited in another way, and when we advance from, for instance, simple natural hunger to rational self-control then hunger can be posited or pre-posited in the form or as the ground of a rational decision to eat and indeed mayhap the king shall employ the humility learnt as a beggar in regal decision making.
And then the mind parts company with the prince since the prince knows all along that he is a prince, but in reality 1, mind does not know that it is mind, has not grasped its concept, does not know what it is, and because mind is ‘essentially only what it knows itself to be’, at stage 1 it is only mind in itself or potentially and it becomes for itself, actual, yet also self-aware, by particularizing itself. It advances to reality 2, which is not universal and indeterminate, like reality 1, but differentiated and determinate, and then it considers reality 1, that is not merely its past state but persists as the natural foundation of the mind not as itself but as its presupposition, as its other, and at first it treats 1, for example, its hunger, as simply other than itself, but then it sublates it as other by transforming it into for instance a rational decision to eat and thus incorporating the hunger into itself.
Mind is subjective when it is related to itself as an other, that is to say, when it is not wholly absorbed in reality 1, yet has not yet sublated it, and in ‘grasping itself as itself ’, not as an other, mind sublates reality 1, rendering it ideal and thereby proving itself to be its ideality, and upon attaining this and becoming for itself it is Oobjective Mind. The contention that Subjective Mind is unfree or free only in itself does not contradict the contention that at the first stage mind is free for free is employed in an alternate sense from together with itself, that is to say, cut off from the other and mayhap it merely contends that freedom is in the concept of Subjective Mind.
Objective Mind is free in the alternate sense that it has sublated or taken over the other and hence knows that it is free, objective thereby brings together two notions, that the mind objectifies or realizes itself in the world and that the mind hence becomes objective, or an object, to itself. The two notions are related for the other, nature, is sublated, by the transformation of natural objects into property and in general by the construction of a human world and in this world mind discoversand knows itself, not merely alien nature, and perceives its own freedom objectified. Other refers to two seemingly distinct things, natural aspects of the mind, for example raw urges such as the need for sex, or for food, and external nature, and both are sublated, first by the development of the rational self, and second by the construction of a human world. Thus we explain the connection between the twin sublations.
The Person, constituted by ownership, is the initial phase of Objective Mind and . Mind is not here exclusively objective it is also subjective: ‘we see a subjective entity’ and also ‘an external reality of this freedom’. The freedom or freedoms one has in a society are conceived as the reality of the concept of freedom, of one’s intrinsic freedom or free will. Absolute Mind does not merely unify subjective and objective mind, Objective Mind is also subjective in any case, and . Absolute Mind releases the world which as an ethical world is posited by mind so that it is now conceived as ‘having an immediate being’, that is to say, as existing independently, as well as at the same time posited by mind.
As Hegel explains later: ‘Religion, as this supreme sphere [i.e. Absolute Mind] can in general be designated, is to be regarded as issuing from the subject and situated in the subject, but is equally to be regarded as objectively issuing from the absolute spirit, which as Spirit is in its community’, The ethical world is obviously a product of human beings, and is regarded by us as a product of human beings. God, the theme of art and philosophy, as well as religion, is not so evidently a human product, at least God is not regarded by worshippers as a human product. To declare, as did Voltaire, that humans are made God in his own image, naturally implies that God does not really exist whereas to say that humans create the state does not imply that the state does not exist.
§386 ‘The first two parts of the doctrine of mind deal with the finite mind. Mind is the infinite Idea, and finitude here means the disproportion between the concept and the reality-but with the qualification that it is the semblance within the mind, — a semblance which the mind implicitly sets up as a limitation to itself, in order, by sublating the limitation, explicitly to have and be aware of freedom as its essence, i.e. to be fully manifested. The various stages of this activity, which, with their semblance, it is the destiny of the finite mind to linger on and to pass through, are stages in its liberation. In the absolute truth of this liberation the three stages-finding a world before it as a presupposed world, generating a world as posited by itself, and gaining freedom from it and in it- are one and the same. To the infinite form of this truth the semblance purifies itself to become knowledge of it’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
Mind as subjective and as objective is finite, that is displays a concept–reality mismatch as do flatly finite entities such as the Sun and the solar system yet unlike such entities, mind as such is infinite Idea able and fated to have its concept and reality in accord so the mind’s finitude, its inadequate reality, is a barrier or limitation set up by the mind itself enabling it eventually to recognize its own freedom which is not sharply distinct from its infinity because it too consists in the adequacy of mind’s reality to its concept. Mind erects the barrier, an exploitation Schein and scheinen which mean both glow, shine; to shine and semblance, illusion, show; to seem. Light also needs an obstacle, a material surface or medium, to manifest its nature, though it does not itself posit the obstacle.
Mind’s activity of erecting and clearing hurdles involves three main stages. First, finding a world before it as presupposed, that is Subjective Mind, second, generating a world, that is Objective Mind, third, liberation from and in this world, that is, Absolute Mind. These are stages of mind’s liberation, it has to linger in, and pass through, each stage. The third stage is the complete fulfilment, the absolute truth of its liberation, and this stage involves the identification of all three stages, the realization that they are one and the same, that is are all necessary parts of a single process. The semblance, that is, subjective, objective, and perhaps the early phases of Absolute Mind, purifies itself and ends up as the ‘infinite form’ of this truth, i.e. as philosophical ‘knowledge’ (Wissen) of the truth. By this stage it is no longer ‘semblance’.’
On ‘reason’ (Vernunft) and understanding or ‘intellect’ (Verstand). Hegel’s adversaries make two contentions, that first the human mind is unable to know the infinite, and second the human mind is not, as Hegel contends, both finite and infinite, but exclusively finite. The first contention was endorsed by Immanuel Kant and his followers, with added support from the religious objection that it is impious to attempt to know too much about God. The second claim is maintained by the intellect, anything must be either finite or infinite, and that nothing can be both finite and infinite. Hegel and his antagonists concur that the mind is not exclusively infinite and this also derives support from morality and religion to ascribe infinity to the human mind is to liken ourselves to God. Hegel and his contenders concur that the two claims entail each other for if the human mind can know the infinite then it is itself infinite and if the mind is infinite then it can know the infinite. Hegel contests such claims because they consider the finite as fixed and absolute and they render our knowledge superficial by confining it to the finite, to what has its ground in something else, namely the infinite, not in itself. Hegel has no particular reticence in likening humanity to God. It mat be objected that there may still be something infinite, for instance God, the universe as a whole, even if it is not the human mind and even if we do not know much about it, and this is enough to prevent the finite from being absolute. And further, knowledge of the finite however shallow is the most we can hope for.
‘The determination of finitude is applied with especial rigidity by the intellect in relation to mind and reason: it is held not just a matter of the intellect, but also as a moral and religious concern, to adhere to the standpoint of finitude as ultimate, and the wish to go beyond it counts as audacity, even as derangement, of thought. Whereas in fact such a modesty of thought, which treats the finite as something altogether fixed and absolute, is the worst of virtues; and to stick to what does not have its ground in itself is the shallowest sort of knowledge. The determination of finitude was a long way back elucidated and explained in its place, in the Logic. Logic then goes on to show in the case of the more determinate though still simple thought-forms of finitude, what the rest of philosophy shows for the concrete forms of finitude, just this: that the finite is not, i.e. is not what is true, but is simply a transition and a passage beyond itself. This finitude of the previous spheres is the dialectic in which it meets its end at the hands of an Other and in an Other; but mind, the concept and what is in itself eternal, is itself the accomplishment within itself of the nullification of the null and the reduction of the vain to vanity. The above-mentioned modesty is attachment to this vanity, the finite, in opposition to the true; it is itself therefore vanity. This vanity will emerge in the development of the mind itself as the mind’s extreme immersion in its subjectivity and its innermost contradiction and thus its turning point, as evil’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
On finitude. Logic considers ‘thought-forms of finitude’, such as ‘whole and parts’ and causality and such categories are themselves finite in that they are bounded or limited by other categories into which they tend to mutate owing to their internal incoherence. They in addition apply to the concrete forms of finitude, the finite entities and stages studied by the philosophies of nature and mind. The finite, that is the forms themselves and the entities they apply to, are shown not to be true, that is their reality does not correspond to their concept. Therefore finite entities dissolve into other entities and finite thought-forms pass over into other, usually equally finite, thought-forms and this is the dialectic immanent in things and forms that makes them pass away through and in an other, yet some things are exempt from this dialectic. The concept itself embraces all the thought-forms of finitude and hence albeit it develops in accordance with their transitions it does not change into something else in the manner that they do, neither can the concept itself be characterized in terms of any of the finite thought-forms that it embraces and in like manner the mind cannot be adequately described in terms of causality or as a whole consisting of parts. The mind develops and expands as its finite stages succumb to dialectic, yet it does not itself succumb to this dialectic or change into anything other than mind hence mind and the concept endure to demolish things and forms that are intrinsically easily crumbled. The German eitel means vain both in the sense of conceited and in the sense of futile and to insist that the mind is merely finite denies the mind this power of demolishing the finite and thus retains the finite intact and in clinging to the finite, what purports to be modesty is actually a kind of vanity.
Evil is an overvaluing of the finite.
Conrad Schnitzler ‘Meditation’:
On the inseparability of gold from its specific gravity see previous, and elsewhere animal species are stated to be classified according to their teeth and claws, because these are what the animals themselves use to distinguish themselves from other animals. But the two cases differ for no piece of stuff with a specific gravity other than that characteristic of gold is gold yet a toothless and clawless animal may well be a freak or damaged tiger. Such a tiger would not survive for very long.
The mind is not simply indeterminate and enters into various determinate states and such states are finite, distinct from, and excluding, other states. Sensation is distinct from thought for if I am doing arithmetic I cannot at the same time be wholly absorbed in contemplating a sunset, yet no given state constitutes the mind in the way that a certain specific gravity constitutes gold or teeth and claws constitute an animal. The finite states into which the mind enters are sublated or reduced to a moment, an element, of the mind and its genuine infinity, the infinity that does not exclude but embraces the finite.
On infinity and ideality. The definition of the finite presented is to an extent the converse of the earlier definition of truth as agreement of the concept with its actuality. Finite is thereby equivalent to untrue, a definition with liberal applicability, as for instance the Sun is finite since its reality expands beyond its concept to include the solar system without which the sun cannot be thought, the solar system itself is finite for the different reason that, while its concept, like any concept, is essentially ideal, its reality disperses into seemingly independent bodies. The reality of the mind by contrast is ideality, the mind does not tolerate independent elements in itself but sublates them and it is thereby in absolute unity with the concept or at least it fulfils one condition of such unity. That the mind can be thought without other entities and is not finite in the way that the sun is finite has yet to be demonstrated, and the response to this is that any other entity which the thought of the mind involves is itself taken up into the mind, by being thought and hence reduced to a moment of mind.
There is a suggestion of a seemingly different definition of finitude, to have a limitation (Schranke). If the limited entity is not aware of its limit it is merely finite and not infinite and if the limited entity is aware of its limit it is primarily infinite, though secondarily and temporarily finite. The third possibility, a wholly unlimited entity, would be a case of bad infinity and entirely indeterminate, as, for instance, a mind that has no definite thoughts. There are three lines of thought intertwined. First, the connection between this definition and the previous one should be as follows, a finite entity like the Sun, is divided by a limit from other things, from, for instance, the rest of the solar system. What is beyond the limit helps to determine the nature of the sun and so the Sun is not fully determined by, but exceeds, its own concept. A mind also is divided by a limit from other things than itself, rocks, trees, desks, and so on, yet it becomes aware of the other by receiving it into its consciousness and hence transcends the limit and the mind’s infinity then consists in its ability to become aware of things other than itself.
Second, unlike the Sun the mind does not have a determinate intrinsic nature, contrasting with the natures of other things, it is thereby intrinsically infinite (unendlich), lacking an end or limit, hence when it becomes conscious of an other such as the Sun it does not thereby overcome finitude but rather makes itself finite, limits itself, it gives itself a determinate nature contrasting with other possible natures, such as being conscious of rocks, trees, and so on. It overcomes this limit and displays its infinity not by its continuing consciousness of the Sun, by knowing this other, but by knowing its own limit, by knowing, that is, that it is conscious of the Sun and knowing one’s own limit is a sufficient condition of transcending it. If one knows that one is conscious of the Sun then one does not have to be conscious of the Sun but can become conscious of other things instead, and conversely if one’s thought were permanently fixed on some single object, one could not be aware that one was thinking of that object. Thirdly, there can be no known limits to our knowledge of the sort postulated, for instance, by Kant. As soon as one knows of a limit it ceases to be an impassable barrier, for to know of a limit is to know what is beyond the limit, that is, to cross the limit.
‘It is only the reality of mind that is itself ideality, only in mind therefore does absolute unity of concept and reality occur, and hence genuine infinity. The very fact that we are aware of a limitation is proof that we are beyond it, proof of our unlimitedness. Natural things are finite simply because their limitation is not present for the things themselves, but only for us who compare them with one another. We make ourselves into a finite entity by receiving an Other into our consciousness. But by our very awareness of this Other we are beyond this limitation. Only he who does not know is limited, for he is not aware of his limitation; whereas he who knows the limitation is aware of it not as a limitation of his knowing, but as something known, as something belonging to his knowledge. Only the unknown would be a limitation of knowledge; the known limitation, on the contrary, is no limitation of it; therefore to know of one’s limitation means knowing of one’s unlimitedness. But when we pronounce mind to be unlimited, genuinely infinite, we do not mean to say that there is no limitation whatsoever in the mind; on the contrary, we have to recognize that mind must determine itself and so make itself finite, limit itself. But the intellect is wrong to treat this finitude as a rigid finitude,-to regard the distinction between the limitation and infinity as an absolutely fixed distinction, and accordingly to maintain that mind is either limited or unlimited. Finitude, properly conceived, is, as we have said, contained in infinity, limitation in the unlimited. Mind is therefore both infinite and finite, and neither only the one nor only the other; in making itself finite it remains infinite, for it sublates finitude within itself; nothing in the mind is a fixture, a being, rather everything is only something ideal, only appearing. Thus God, because he is mind, must determine himself, posit finitude within himself (otherwise he would be only a dead, empty abstraction) ; but since the reality he assumes by his self-determining is a reality perfectly conformable to him, God does not thereby become a finite entity. Therefore, limitation is not in God and in mind: it is only posited by mind in order to be sublated. Only momentarily can mind seem to remain in a finitude; by its ideality it is raised above it, it knows that the limitation is not a fixed limitation. It therefore transcends it, frees itself from it, and this is not, as the intellect supposes, a liberation never completed, only ever striven for endlessly; on the contrary, mind wrests itself out of this progression to infinity, frees itself absolutely from the limitation, from its Other, and so attains to absolute being-for-itself, makes itself genuinely infinite’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
The first and second can be reconciled, that the mind can become aware of a variety of things suggests that it is in some sense indeterminate, like the eye that does not see itself. And the third? That a limit is known does not in all cases imply that we can cross the limit, knowing that I cannot for instance bench press 1.5–2 x my bodyweight does not increase my strength and we may ask why it should fare any better with knowledge than with bench pressing. Knowing that I cannot know the exact contents of every philosophical text Hegel ever wrote does not remove this limit. In such cases I know that there is a limit but I do not know precisely where the limit lies, that I can bench press 0.75–1 x my bodyweight but no more, or read precisely ten thousand books but no more, and yet this suffices for my powers to be finite.
Hegel perhaps differentiates God from the human mind in respect of finitude, he declares that mind ‘as mind is not finite, it has finitude within itself’, this makes us like God who posits finitude within himself yet does not become a finite entity, but he also declares that we make ourselves into a finite entity and this makes us different from God. Furthermore, even if both God and a human avoid becoming a finite entity they do so for different reasons, God avoids finitude because the reality He adopts is ‘perfectly conformable to Him’, but if I contemplate, for instance, the Sun, the reality I give myself is not perfectly conformable to me. The Sun is only one of the many things I can think about and is far beneath me in the ontological hierarchy, and what bars me from becoming a finite entity is my awareness of all this, my knowledge of my limit. Even at the level of traditional theology it is not evident whether or not the finitude God posits is perfectly conformable to Him for if God thinks then He thinks about everything at once, and not like us about different things successively. He creates the whole world, though it is not so evident that the world is perfectly conformable to him for were that the case then it would be a second God. Christ is more or less finite albeit a finitude that it is totally appropriate for God to posit but at the level of subjective and objective mind, we are different from God, the realities we posit are not perfectly conformable to us and what delivers us from the Sun’s sort of finitude is our awareness of our limit and our consequent tendency to overcome our limit and eventually we ascend to Absolute Mind and then we converge with God, and like God, we become aware of the whole of reality in art, religion, and above all philosophy. According to traditional theology this still leaves a chasm betwixt ourselves and God and God is never completely disclosed to us, we perceive merely the tip of the iceberg and not its hidden depths. Hegel however is of the view that eventually God is entirely disclosed to us and in receiving this revelation we approach a kind of Godhood.
The detail that the mind overcomes every limit that it sets itself does not imply that it will ever attain complete liberation from limitation for every line of thought we are considering here suggests an infinite progression. First, the mind becomes aware of one object after another to infinity, second, in the case of any object of which it is aware it knows of its own awareness of it and therefore transcends this limit only to become aware of another object and another limit, and so on to infinity, and third it surmounts one hurdle on its path to complete knowledge simply to encounter another hurdle and so to infinity. The intellect denies that we can escape from such infinite progressions, we make progress but we will never reach the final goal, a view attributable to Kant and Fichte, nonetheless the mind wrests itself out of such progressions. In philosophy and in a less satisfactory manner in art and religion mind attains a state which is not one of finitude where its reality fully matches its concept.
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§387 ‘Mind, developing in its ideality, is mind as cognitive. Cognition, however, is conceived here not merely as a determinacy of the logical Idea (§223), but in the way in which the concrete mind determines itself to cognition.
Subjective mind is:
(A) In itself or immediate: a soul or natural mind- the theme of Anthropology.
(B) For itself or mediated: still as identical reflection into itself and into the other: mind in relationship or particularization: consciousness- the theme of the Phenomenology of Mind.
© Mind determining itself in itself, as a subject for itself-the theme of Psychology.
In the soul consciousness awakes: consciousness posits itself as reason, which has immediately awoken to become self-knowing reason; and by its activity reason emancipates itself to objectivity, to consciousness of its concept’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
How are we to understand these sentences? Is the mind cognitive throughout its working life or only at a particular stage? What is the force of ‘cognitive’ (erkennend)? Frequently albeit not invariably Hegel contrasts Erkennen, as scientific knowledge or ‘cognition’, with Wissen, as merely knowledge or awareness. Does it implicitly contrast with wissend here or is the point that the mind knows itself and is not only known by an external observer? What is the relevance of these sentences to what is to follow this passage? Do they relate to the mind’s own development, or to our philosophical cognition of this development? the principle notion at work is that because the mind develops in its ideality it does so in virtue of knowledge, since knowing things, both itself and other entities, renders them ideal. Cognition as a feature of the logical Idea is primarily scientific knowledge, the mind does not have scientific knowledge throughout its working life but determines itself to it by way of various more rudimentary forms of knowledge attaining cognition proper in the third stage of Subjective Mind. Cognition’ (das Erkennen) is a determinacy of the logical Idea, and cf Erkennen or Erkenntnis in philosophy of Mind.
Subjective Mind begins as soul (Seele) which is self-enclosed and dimly aware of its own states rather than its surroundings and it subsequently bifurcates to become identical which is to say even-handed reflection into the mind itself and other things with which it is in relationship and of which it is conscious, and finally it withdraws away from objects back into itself, as a subject that is for itself, that is independent and self-reflective and this triad exemplifies the following pattern, simple unity, opposition, restored unity. Reason (Vernunft) emerges later in which context reason combines subjectivity and objectivity thereby forming the transition to the Psychology section wherein mind is conscious not of external objects but of itself.
A determinacy (Bestimmtheit) is a specific feature or differentia which upon being added to a concept renders that concept more specific, for instance if we begin with the concept animal and then add to it the determinacy herbivorous we make an advance of development of the concept animal towards the concept duck albeit we must needs have to add other determinacies to the concept animal before we attain our goal, yet the thought here is not principally of such concepts as animal or duck but of the logical Idea of which cognition is one determinacy among others. Something similar occurs to the mind, as the mind develops it acquires more and more determinacies, such as sensation, as we will see later, and each such determinacy is an advance towards the mind’s long-term goal of becoming for itself what it is in itself, that is to say, to attain complete self-knowledge. Furthermore, each stage within this long-term process, such as the stage of soul, is itself a process of the same type and at the start of the stage the mind has a certain character in itself or implicitly. We philosophers can see that it has this character, but the mind itself cannot yet by the end of that stage the mind itself in the form that it has at that stage perceives what it is and has implicitly been all this time, but such self-knowledge is limited and does not constitute the final goal of the mind, it impels the mind on to the next stage of its development.
Ordinary psychology treats what the soul, here equivalent to mind, does simply as expressions of faculties that it has all along and hence such psychology can describe the soul simply in a narrative fashion, that is to say unsystematically. It regards the faculties in no methodical order nor are there any systematic pathways between different faculties and yet by contrast, the soul is not a ready-made subject, it develops. To begin with it has a certain character or determinacy and then it expresses it whereby this expression is not just for the benefit of psychologists, not merely their means of telling that the soul has a certain character, it also presents the soul’s own character to the soul itself, it does not present it to the soul very explicitly but simply in its concept, in germ. The soul does not as yet know as much about itself as psychologists do but it knows enough to be promoted to a higher level and now we have a systematic way of studying the soul, beginning with determinacy no. 1, the expression of this leads to determinacy no. 2, the expression of no. 2 leads to no. 3, and so on. The chief difficulty is making evident whether this development is a development undergone by the soul over time or whether it is merely a logical development enabling us to describe what is in effect a ready-made subject. At times the development of an Hegelian account of the mind appears to coincide to a greater or lesser extent with the development over time either of the individual mind or of the human mind in general, yet at times it does not and an account of the relationship between the two types of development is thereby needed.
Hegel emphasises that education ought to initiate individuals into the general culture of the time, that is the Universal Mind. Philosophy is concerned not with individuals but with the mind as such asking not how the universal mind comes to exist in individuals but how does the universal mind arises to begin with. What is its structure and mode of development? How is it related to the individual minds that participate in it? This goes some way to answering a problem raised earlier whereby the concerned is not so much with the development over time of a human individual or not at the very least after the time at which education proper begins.
Mind is to begin with subjective’ for two reasons, first its concept or concept is undeveloped, that is to say the mind here is comparable to an acorn or a sapling, and second it has not made its concept an object for itself (sich . . . gegenständlich). These are connected, the mind becomes aware of its concept not by direct inspection of it but in view of its development rather as we learn the species of the seed from the full-grown plant, and at least in later stages it develops by becoming aware of its current state. The mind is never exclusively subjective, even at the beginning it is Idea, concept plus reality, therefore both subjective and objective, yet this immediate reality is inadequate and has to be be overcome if the mind is to apprehend its own concept or subjectivity. Why does this suggesr that we could ‘just as well say that mind is. . . objective and has to become subjective’? Well, consider the acorn, it has two aspects. First it contains implicitly the concept of a full-grown oak, this is its subjectivity, second it is a small brown lump and not in the least like an oak-tree, this is its reality or objectivity. and since the concept is so inadequately expressed by its current reality, that is the small brown lump, we can declare that the acorn in respect of being a concept-container is subjective and has to become objective, that is to say develop a reality adequate to the concept it contains, and since the acorn so inadequately expresses the concept we can declare that the acorn in respect of being a small brown lump is objective and has to become subjective, that is to say develop into a reality adequate to the concept. Unlike an acorn or oak-tree a mind is also subjective in another sense, it has an inner life, a dim awareness, even if not consciousness in an Hegelian sense. This is very different from the concept the mind contains, the inner life of, for instance, an infant falls far short of its concept, of the full-grown mind of a rational adult and the mind’s inner life may not be very adequately expressed in its outer life, its bodily form and behaviour, in which case the mind may also be described as only subjective in virtue of its ill-expressed inner life or as only objective in virtue of its inadequately expressive outer life. Such a sense of subjectivity may be in view here but it is not the dominant sense in this context.
The series of formations are indicated empirically yet they express a series of determinate concepts, the series is necessary in that it has a fixed order, and no term in it can be absent, rather like the series 1, 2, 3, . . . n, n + 1, . . . The determinate concepts are segments of the logical Idea and are thereby less specific than the formations that express them and the details of a formation that go beyond its corresponding concept are known to us empirically yet the determinate concept is a priori. The mind in all its details is not deduced from the logical Idea, a similar account of the collaboration of experience and a priori thought is given in the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’.
On universality, particularity, and individuality. The concept develops in Hegelian Logic from abstract universality to individuality by way of particularity and at the most basic level a generic concept, for instance animal, is universal, specific concepts, for example ‘dog’, ‘duck’, are particular and ‘Bess’, ‘Donald’ and so on are individual concepts. Yet this account involves further complexities that assist in explaining if not in justifying the use made of the triad here, in particular mind that is for itself is not individual in the sense that it is the mind of Heinrich and Konrad, it is individual in the sense that, unlike the soul, it is intrinsically determinate and, unlike consciousness, not dependent upon external objects, it is independent and delivers what is needed without assistance.
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Ideality frequently refers to the mind’s ability to surmount or negate distinctions, and in that sense does not contrast with reality except in so far as reality presents the distinctions that are to be surmounted. Conversely, reality frequently refers to the specific stage of development that the mind has currently reached and reality in this sense contrasts with the concept but not with ideality in the afore-mentioned sense but now ideality and reality are contrasted and are roughly equivalent to inner life and outer life or to mind and body. Two different questions arise, first as to whether we can start with the concept of mind, that is to say, with a general account of the mind that does not specify any particular stage of it or maybe with an account of the fully developed rational mind, and why we must begin with the soul. Similar questions are to be found in Aristotle’s De Anima.
Furthermore the issue arises as to why we have to subject to consideration the physical side of the soul, its body, in addition to its inner, mental side. The two questions come together in that upon deciding that we have to consider not just the concept of mind but the first stage of its actualization we have to consider its physical embodiment. For the mind has just emerged from nature and from nature it inherits a body that is not yet mediated or posited by mind, it has not been moulded or guided by mind, nor downgraded by abstract thinking in the manner that, for instance, philosophers attach relatively little importance to their bodies (when being philosophical that is) and the body is still abstract, that is ill-formed and undifferentiated as is the ideality or inner life that it has its hold over.
Anthropos is Greek for man covering both sexes and Anthropologie is the study (logos) of man. Man (Mensch), or anthropos contrasts with mind in that it also includes the body and psychical features directly related to the body. Anthropology for Hegel as it was for Kant is not restricted to ethnology. Anthropology involves a movement from immediate unity (the ‘natural’ soul) through opposition (the feeling soul) to restored unity (the actual soul). Quality is the first division of the Logic and hence the mind is initially qualitatively determined, marked by qualities impressed upon it by its natural surroundings. Racial differences,, somnambulism, insanity, the body as a sign of the soul, all are to be discussed later, while for now the distinction between ideality and reality approaches the distinction between soul and body, the reality is posited ideally in so far as the soul is expressed by bodily deportment, gestures, and so on.
While the natural soul was aware of nature only by way of the qualities nature impressed on it the mind now extrudes the natural aspect of itself out into the external world and pares itself down to the bare I or ego (das Ich, from the first person pronoun, ich), which is conscious of its Other. The natural mind is now an object for the mind itself, not just for philosophers yet the I does not as yet recognize it as the natural mind. The I thus has being-for-self (Fürsichsein), in that it is now detached from nature and has some self-awareness yet it is not for itself, (Für sich), completely independent and aware only of itself, since it depends on an other, (on freedom, see previous).
Phänomenologie, from the Greek logos (doctrine, study, and so on) and phainomena, things that seem, appear, are manifest, is the doctrine of appearances. Other philosophers like Edmund Husserl employ the term with reference to things that appear to the mind but for Hegel it is principally the mind itself that appears and not its objects. Appearance (Erscheinung) and appear (erscheinen) are different from semblance (Schein) and seem (scheinen). That the mind simply appears’ does not imply that it only seems to be mind nor does it imply that the mind is manifest, rather it means that the mind is merely emerging or coming into view and is not yet fully actual.
The I is reflected back, rebounds off, the other into itself and the subjective and the objective are no longer as in anthropology mind and body but the I and its other, that is to say its objects. The mind’s objective as in anthropology is to equalize and harmonize the two sides and this is attained in particular by a rational culture that informs both the mind, filling up the empty I, and the external world, making it subjective as well as objective. The mediated universality of self-consciousness thereby attained is quite different from the abstract universality of the natural soul, consciousness here follows the pattern of immediate unity, the I, opposition, the I and its other, restored unity, self-consciousness.
An object translates gegenständlich, German has two words for object, das Objekt and der Gegenstand, and two words for objective, objektiv and gegenständlich. When objective is contrasted with subjective (Subjekt, subjektiv), Hegel uses Objekt or objektiv. What is objective in this sense, need not be known to the subject or be its object and when he means that an object is known to, or is the object of, the mind, he uses Gegenstand and gegenständlich. Subjective Mind as a whole like each of its three forms follows the pattern, immediate unity (soul), opposition (consciousness), restored unity (actual mind), which is also the movement: universality — particularity — individuality. On truth, see previous.
Reason (Vernunft) is essential to mind as weight is essential to a body and freedom essential to the will, a mind is always rational, though it is only ‘mind as such’, the mind studied by psychology, that recognizes this. Hegel had defined truth as ‘agreement of the concept with its actuality’. ‘Idea’ is the concept together with its corresponding reality, hence ‘truth’ and ‘Idea’ roughly coincide. ‘Reason’ is sometimes equated with ‘Idea’. What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational may be rephrased using true instead of actual or instead of rational but reason is not in Hegelian usage always equivalent to truth and Idea. Reason, both as a mode of thinking and as an objective process, has a negative, sceptical or destructive, role as well as a positive role, only in its positive role can reason be assimilated to truth or the Idea, in its negative role it sublates untrue thoughts or things that fall short of the Idea. In its positive role it reaches the truth or the Idea itself. This will happen later whereby the mind combines subjectivity and objectivity by imposing its own rationality upon what is initially other than itself.
Mind as such exemplifies the pattern: immediate unity, opposition, restored unity and it starts by embracing both subjectivity and objectivity but then bifurcates into a subjective side, intelligence (Intelligenz), that is theoretical mind, and an objective side, will or practical mind. Intelligence imposes rationality upon the scattered material given to it, that is to say simply presented to it, and transforms it into a concrete universal, that is to say not an etiolated abstract universal, whether it be a universal derived from the logical Idea such as being or a universal applicable to the untransformed empirical given such as red, but a complex universal, such as ‘animal’, ‘duck’, and so on. A different but related conception of the abstract universal will be presented later. What the intelligence then knows is not an abstraction, that is, the untransformed given or maybe the abstract universal, but the objective concept, that is to say, the conceptualized world that it has helped to create.
Such an account of intelligence sheds some doubt upon the contention that it is subjective. Theoretical and practical mind are considered respectively as subjective and objective since they are seen as proceeding in opposite directions, theoretical mind receives content from the external world while practical mind discharges its own content into the world and thereby changes it, but such a sharp dichotomy is to be rejected for theoretical mind proceeds in the same directions as practical mind, it also projects its own content onto the world and hence transforms it and only then does it receive the content into itself. Intelligence thus seems objective as well as subjective. Because intelligence imposes rationality upon the content presented to it it may be said with some hyperbole to derive the content from itself, and upon intelligence becoming aware of this it decides to concentrate upon itself, especially upon its urges, inclinations, material which is like the pre-conceptual external material, individual and disorderly, yet which mind immediately recognizes as its own prior to any conceptual processing. Its treatment of this material is analogous to its treatment of the external material, it reflects itself into itself out of these urges, and so on, that is to say, it distinguishes itself from them and does not automatically endorse them, it delivers order into them by relating them to a universal, in particular the idea of happiness. In the end it wills the universal in and for itself and so on, a rational social order that coincides with its own freedom, an order whose determinations are not natural but conceptual and then mind has returned to a unity with itself comparable to the unity of the natural soul and of actual mind before its bifurcation into intelligence and will, but a unity on a higher level, and this is Objective Mind.
ANTHROPOLOGY: THE SOUL.
§388 ‘Mind has come into being as the truth of nature. In the Idea in general this result has the meaning of the truth and of what is prior, rather than posterior, as compared with what precedes it. But, besides this, becoming or transition has, in the concept, the more determinate meaning of free judgement. The mind that has come into being means, therefore, that nature in its own self sublates itself as what is untrue, and mind thus presupposes itself as this universality that is no longer self-externalized in bodily individuality, but simple in its concretion and totality. In this universality it is not yet mind, but soul’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
What is meant here is not that mind came into being in time, one has but a foggy conception of the temporal origins of mind, but that it has emerged in the logical order of things. Mind is the truth of nature. The Idea in general is the logical Idea as a whole in which a result is always prior to and the truth of what it results from, roughly in the way that the oak-tree is the truth or fulfilment of, and thus prior to, the acorn. Applied to the mind, this means that mind is the truth of and prior to what went before, namely nature. The concept, on the other hand, is here the third section of the logical Idea, in which the transition from one stage to the next is a development’ or unfolding as illustrated in the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ by the development of a seed into a plant. Nonetheless this third section of the logical Idea also contains as one of its subdivisions, the judgement. The German for judgement is Urteil, Hegel takes this to mean an original division from ur- (original) and teilen (divide), a dubious etymology but no matter. So the development characteristic of the concept can be perceived as a kind of self-division of a primitive unity, in the way that a unitary seed divides into the various parts of a plant. Analogously nature can be regarded as dividing in two, one of the divisions being nature itself and the other division becoming mind, and further we can distinguish several types of judgement. The highest type of judgement is the judgement of the concept, in this kind of judgement a thing is assessed or evaluated by comparison to its concept. For instance a painting is judged to be good or bad according to whether or not it accords with the concept of a painting and this suggests that what leads nature to generate mind is an evaluation of itself, the judgement that it is untrue, that this judgement is free means at least that nature judges itself, and so sublates itself.
Nature is untrue not so much in falling short of the concept of nature for it does what we would expect nature to do but nature embodies the logical Idea, the concept, and this concept is not adequately expressed in nature, it is outside itself, self-externalized, in various bodily individuals. Something is needed to draw it back together again, something that, owing to its concretion or concreteness, embodies the whole of the concept in a simple form. The mind’s emergence from nature already involves mental functions such as self-evaluation and this implies a somewhat literal interpretation of the contention that mind presupposes itself, namely that mind is at work in nature all along. The mind elevates itself by means of its own exertions alone.
§389 ‘The soul is not only immaterial for itself. It is the universal immateriality of nature, its simple ideal life. Soul is the substance, the absolute foundation of all the particularizing and individualizing of mind, so that it is in the soul that mind finds all the stuff of its determination, and the soul remains the pervading, identical ideality of this determination. But in this still abstract determination, the soul is only the sleep of mind-the passive nous of Aristotle, which is potentially all things’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
For itself (Für sich) means by itself, independently whereby the soul is not simply one solitary immaterial entity among many material entities, it is the universal immateriality of nature in two senses:
‘In the introduction to the philosophy of mind, we noted how nature itself sublates its externality and individualization, its materiality, as an untruth which is inadequate to the concept dwelling in it, and by thus acquiring immateriality it passes over into mind. That is why … immediate mind, the soul, is determined not merely as immaterial for itself, but as the universal immateriality of nature, and also as substance, as unity of thinking and being. This unity constitutes the fundamental intuition even in orientalism. Light, which in the Persian religion was regarded as the absolute, had the meaning of a spiritual entity just as much as a physical entity. Spinoza conceived this unity more determinately as the absolute foundation of everything. Even though mind may withdraw into itself, may take its stand at the extreme point of its subjectivity, yet it is implicitly in that unity. But it cannot stop there; it attains to absolute being-for-self, to a perfectly adequate form, only by developing in an immanent manner the difference, which in substance is still simple, into an actual difference, and by bringing this difference back into unity; only by doing this does it break free of the state of sleep, which belongs to it as soul. For in soul, the difference is still shrouded in the form of undifferentiatedness and therefore of unconsciousness’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
First, nature itself as it develops, becomes increasingly immaterial, the soul is the culmination of this development, and second, the soul overarches and transfigures the whole of nature.
Aristotle makes a distinction between passive and active intellect (nous) in De Anima, passive intellect is ‘potentially all things’, it can acquire the concept of anything and think about anything but it requires the active intellect to supply concepts to it and maybe to goad it into thinking about something in particular. Nonetheless the passive intellect is not much like the soul as Hegel characterises it for it does not supply the stuff from which the active intellect forms concepts. Stuff = Stoff, material mayhap would have more elegance yet is too readily mixed up with material in the sense in which it contrasts with immaterial whereas Stoff is used here for matter in the more Aristotelian sense in which matter or material contrasts with the form it takes and according to Aristotle stuff is supplied by the five senses and then converted into concepts by the active intellect. And furthermore, the passive intellect does actually think, even though under the guidance of the active intellect, whereas the Hegelian soul is the lowest level of the human mind and it does not think about anything, rather in some manner it absorbs material from its surroundings without selection or discrimination, it does not differentiate itself from the external world. This distinction is drawn only with mind’s particularizing, when the mind becomes conscious of objects which it distinguishes from itself and these objects are composed of the stuff that the mind absorbed as soul and which it now projects out into the external world, but this does not imply that the objects are merely subjective, they actually are in the external world, only the soul did not realize this, nor does the soul distinguish itself from other souls, this transpires only with mind’s individualizing, when the mind becomes self-conscious and in particular when it becomes actual mind.
Hegel assails the notion that matter is or is considered as something true (ein Wahres) by contending that types of matter form a series the members of which become progressively thinner, shedding one after another the features characteristic of matter. That the soul is not a thing is argued for later. Heat and light and maybe space and time lack weight or gravity and the power of resistance and a lighted or hot room is no more difficult to enter than a dark or cool room yet may be too bright or hot to enter, but heat and light remain perceptible and self-external as they spread throughout an area. Vital matter (Lebensmaterie), the matter supposedly responsible for the life of plants and animals, implicitly lacks self-externality too.
‘The question of the immateriality of the soul is no longer of interest, unless matter, on the one hand, is represented as something true, and mind, on the other, is represented as a thing. But in modern times even the physicists have found matter grown thinner in their hands; they have hit upon imponderable matters, such as heat, light, etc., to which they could easily add space and time as well. These imponderables, which have lost the property (characteristic of matter) of weight and, in a sense, even the capacity of offering resistance, have still, however, a sensory reality, a self-externality; whereas the vital matter, which may also be found counted among them, not only lacks weight, but even every other reality which would lead us to count it as material. The fact is that in the Idea of life the self-externality of nature is already sublated in itself, and the concept, the substance of life takes the form of subjectivity, but only in such a way that its existence or objectivity is at the same time still under the sway of self-externality. But mind is the concept whose existence is not immediate individuality, but absolute negativity, freedom, so that the object or the reality of the concept is the concept itself. So in mind self-externality, which constitutes the fundamental determination of matter, has completely evaporated into the subjective ideality of the concept, into universality. Mind is the existent truth of matter- the truth that matter itself has no truth’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
If one’s leg is amputated the leg at once ceases to be alive whereas it does not at once lose its temperature which implies that vital matter or whatever it is that animates the whole body is not spread out through the body in the way that heat is. Nonetheless animal life is still closely attached to the body that constitutes its existence or objectivity and such is also true of the soul, the lowest phase of human life. Hence we now speak of the mind instead of the soul whereby self-externality has vanished altogether because the mind or the concept is not related to an extended body in the way that the life of an animal is, it is related to itself, hence mind is not material at all, it demonstrates that matter has no truth because it is the terminus of progressive dematerializations of matter, that is to say the truth of matter.
Hegel’s argument draws upon somewhat outdated science. Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) considered light and heat to be elements and hence material, heat was an imponderable fluid designated caloric, heat and light are now considered to be non-material in the sense that they are not stuffs. The idea of vital matter or vital force was endorsed by Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), but is now generally rejected. Nonetheless the force of the argument does not depend in essence upon such obsolete doctrines but it may be objected that the mind can transcend the body in the sense that it can think about things that are remote from it in space and time or not even in space and time at all. The mind can also think about itself and Hegel is inclined to run together two relations that are prima facie distinct, that is, the relation of the mind to the body and the relation of the mind to the object of which it is conscious. The mind’s relation to itself as an object does not replace its relation to the body, the mind cannot think without a body, and furthermore this body is not imponderable, it has a weight, along with many other properties characteristic of matter.
Two responses are contemplated with regard to the question as to how the soul and body combine. Soul and body are two distinct substances but then they cannot combine, except like two pieces of matter by fitting into each other’s pores or interstices and then they make no real contact. Epicurus (c.341–270 BC) located the gods not in the pores of bodies but in the interstices between worlds, hence they take no interest and play no part in human affairs albeit they do appear to us in dreams. Descartes, (1596–1650), Malebranche (1638–1715), Spinoza (1632– 77), and Leibniz (1646–1716) located the body/soul relation in God, if body and soul were still regarded as independent substances, God would merely be a name for the mystery involved in how they combine, yet their dependence upon God implies that the finite soul and finite matter are not really independent substances and this enables God to relate them in a comprehensible way, as their identity. But the God of Spinoza is insufficiently creative and Leibniz’s God as the monad of monads is creative yet merely by a judgement, it does not advance to the syllogism or conclusion. Urteilen, Urteil, judgement, is interpreted as original (ur) division or partition (teilen) of a unitary concept. The two parts, the subject and the predicate, are then joined together, even identified, by the copula, is. The German for syllogism or inference, Schluss, principally means close, end, conclusion, therefore it is to be regarded as joining together again what the judgement has divided, it joins them more adequately than the copula does, for whereas a judgement involves only two terms, a syllogism involves three, two extremes and a middle term that joins them together. In traditional logic, these terms are contained in judgements or propositions, of which there are usually three: two premises and a conclusion, yet in Hegelian logic what matters is just the three terms so any three terms, one of which joins the other two, can be described as constituting a syllogism (cf. the individual, civil society, and the state). In the absolute syllogism, the three terms are the logical Idea, nature, and mind but one must consider a particular objection to Leibniz than that he failed to reach the heights of an Hegelian philosophy in that for him the soul and the body are not radically different, the body consists of monads that have only subliminal perceptions while the soul or mind is the dominant monad which has apperception, self-conscious awareness. The dominant monad has no causal relation to the body-monads mind and body are related simply by a pre-established harmony, established by God, the perceptions of the mind and those of each body-monad harmonize with each other in a kind of psycho-physical parallelism and the objection is that Leibniz has rendered the mind too similar to the body and too closely related to it, a consequence of Leibniz’s exclusive reliance on judgement. Upon the mind and body being divided by a judgement they have to remain similar and closely related, joined so to speak by a copula, and if the mind were to transcend the body in the manner that Hegel requires then the unity of mind and body would be lost. If however the syllogism is brought in then the mind can transcend the body and become very dissimilar to it and yet still be united or reunited to the body by a syllogism. Later Hegel will deliver a discerning account of different types of unity in particular the kind that allows considerable free play to the united terms, a kind of unity relevant not only to the mind but in addition to the modern state.
The soul is substance but not a unity of thinking and being, the soul does not in actual fact think, which is to say, the soul combines a natural, bodily element (being) with a low-grade mind that absorbs stuff from its environment and it thereby constitutes an underlying supply (substance) from which the mind draws resources for its particularization and individualization. On Persian religion see previous. In his ‘Ethics’ Spinoza contended that there is only a single substance with an infinity of attributes only two of which are known to us, extension (Hegelian being) and thought, hence mind is implicitly (an sich) in that unity of thinking and being albeit it may withdraw into itself, disengaging itself in a Cartesian way from extended things. Spinoza does not demonstrate how the mind attains this or how in general substance differentiates itself into a manifold of various things and people, a manifold that is merely tacked upon to substance in an external manner. What in actual fact occurs is that substance develops the difference between thinking and being into an actual difference and then unifies it again. Demonstrating how this transpires takes up the ‘Philosophy of Mind’ in its entirety, and if it did not transpire mind would remain an unconscious soul and not get to absolute being-for-self. How do human beings get beyond the dim awareness of their surroundings that the lower animals have to a fully human understanding of the world and of themselves? Spinoza fails to explain this, principally since he did not realise that to understand something, nature, the world, even ourselves, we must first take our distance from it and then return to it.
Anaxagoras (c.500–428 BC) held that the cosmos was originated and is governed by a supreme intellect or nous. Anaxagoras’s nous does not develop and by contrast Spinoza not once suggested that the attribute of thought originates or governs the world and is averse to explanations of things in terms of purposes. Nous does not create matter or seeds but simply organizes them into an ordered cosmos and we might compare Socrates who in Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ laments the fact that Anaxagoras did not fulfil his promise to supply purposive explanations of things but depended instead upon mechanical explanations and invoked nous only to initiate motion. Pantheism may not be attributed to Anaxagoras since he does not identify nous with matter and since he nowhere in the surviving fragments calls nous God. That pantheism does not systematize its content stems from its logical defects in particular that it operates only with individuality and universality with no mediating particularity to explain their connection, a defect in which Spinoza partakes but he is hardly bacchanalian since this aspect of pantheism emerges only when pantheism takes the more pictorial form of representation. Cf. Hinduism.
Reflection concerns itself in hard and fast opposites such as the I and the body and Hegel is inclined to equate the soul and the I which belongs to a later stage of the mind’s development yet the word soul (Seele) fluctuates between the Hegelian sense in which it is quite distinct from the I and the sense in which it was used by the rational psychology described previously. If we take the soul to be immaterial and the body to be material and both equally substantial we are unable to explain how they are united. The former metaphysics of pre-Kantian thinkers such as Christian Wolff eschewed the difficulty through rendering the soul a thing with many of the features of a physical thing, a spatial location, a beginning and end in time, and a persistent nature capable of bearing properties. How does this resolve the problem in the light of doubts concerning the possibility of combining two pieces of matter yet two bits of matter can at the very least fit into each other’s pores whereas a soul that had no location in space or time could hardly fit into a body at all.
A monad is a mind and Leibniz really held that only minds exist, albeit minds of varying degrees of sophistication. Hegel presents two criticisms, first since a soul-monad is as stable and persistent as a material thing it is just as hard to see how it can be united to body-monads as it is to see how a soul can be united to a body or one body to another body. And second, the difference between a soul and a material thing is made a difference of degree rather than kind, a soul-monad having perceptions that are clearer and more distinct than those of other monads.
‘A related question is that of the communion of the soul and the physical body. This communion was accepted as a fact, and the only problem was how to comprehend it. What can be regarded as the usual answer, was that it is an incomprehensible mystery. For, in fact, if we presuppose them to be absolutely independent of each other, they are as impenetrable to each other as any piece of matter is to another, each being assumed to be found only in their reciprocal non-being, in the pores of the other. Hence Epicurus, when assigning the gods a residence in the pores, was consistent in not imposing on them any communion with the world. An answer that cannot be regarded as equivalent to this one has been given by all philosophers ever since this relationship came up for discussion. Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz have all specified God as this relation. They did so in the sense that matter and the finitude of the soul are only ideal determinations in respect of each other and have no truth; and so for these philosophers God is not, as is often the case, merely another word for this incomprehensibility, but rather is conceived as the sole true identity of soul and matter. However, this identity is either too abstract, as Spinoza’s identity is, or it is, like Leibniz’s monad of monads, creative as well, but is so only by a judgement. In the latter case, we get as far as a distinction between the soul and the bodily (or material), but the identity is only like the copula of a judgement and does not proceed to the development and system of the absolute syllogism’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
On speculative logic. This contrasts with reflective thinking and with the understanding or lntellect (Verstand). Reflection is frequently similar to Verstand but the latter is regularly contrasted with Vernunft, reason, and, unlike Reflection, has no particular connection with light. Cf. the mind’s ideality and its bearing on opposites.The old metaphysics that Hegel refers to is perhaps the the pre-Kantian metaphysics of Christian Wolff etc. albeit this is more usually referred to as the former (vormalige) metaphysics. More probably ancient metaphysics is meant for instance passages such as Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ wherein Socrates contends that the soul is non-composite and hence, but in addition may be meant Plato’s theory of ideas or forms according to which each form is one in contrast to the many things that participate in it.
The progressive dematerialization of matter is then reiterated yet weight or gravity (Schwere) was previously a feature characteristic of matter while now it is the first step in overcoming it, the attraction of one body to another is a kind of refutation of their separate individuality and mind undertakes two roles here, mind that is ‘n itself and at work within nature gradually overcomes materiality, and mind as soul completes the process, a dual use of mind that should alert us to possible ambiguity. If the mind at work in nature overcomes materiality then matter has no independence in face of this mind and yet it does not follow that matter has no independence in face of the human soul or even the developed human mind for ravity, heat, light, and so on are not forever ready to react to our commands and further it is not evident why we could not have such control over matter as we do have even if there is no mind implicitly at work in nature.
The indeterminate universal soul is not the mind at work in nature but the human soul discussed here and the opposition betwixt mind and its other is an essential feature of mind in particular as consciousness of something other than itself, and two seemingly different relations are now running together: the relation between the soul or mind and the body and the relation between the mind and the object of which it is conscious. But Hegel uses for body the word Körper which excludes any implication of human feelings, sentiments and life in its non-physical aspects for it is Leib that carries this suggestion and is conceived as the vessel of the soul. And unlike Leib, Körper can apply to a piece of matter as well as to a human body and what this means is that the distinction between the relation of the soul to a body of which it is conscious and its relation to its body is not as evident as it could be but the two relations are also connected. My body (Leib) is also a body (Körper). If I am to enquire regarding the communion of my soul and my body then I have to distinguish my soul or myself from my body, that is to say, my body has to become an object of which I am conscious so I must in general be conscious of objects other than myself and the philosophical question concerning the soul’s relation to the body is grounded in a basic and necessary facility of the human mind to discriminate itself from other objects.
The material is particular and the immaterial universal hence the immaterial overarches the material in something like the way in which the universal colour overarches and embraces particular colours such as red and green and this suggests the Aristotelian view that the soul is the form of the body fitting together with the body without any special need for divine help. However, Hegel ignores Aristotle here in favour of Descartes and his ilk and their resort to God. Mind and matter are originally united in God and wholly dependent upon him so that they are not independent substances yet because God is himself mind or spirit, mind is predominant, God as mind is the universal that overarches particular mind and particular matter. Mind idealizes its other and so on, due to our conceptual and other means of processing the material world. God may not be required for this but Hegel contrary to Descartes and his ilk does not neatly distinguish between God and man and also unlike them he is endeavouring to answer a couple of questions. Are mind and matter in an original unity and if so then how? This is the question of Descartes and his ilk but is of less interest to Hegel yet his answer is that they are united in nature and in the natural soul as well as in the logical Idea. Once mind and matter have emerged from their original unity in consciousness and other stages of the developed mind how are they to be reunited again? Hegel does not respond by referring again to their original unity but rather to the mind’s idealizing activity hence the mind–matter relationship follows the pattern: original unity, opposition, restored unity. Descartes perhaps furnished a similar response whereby the mind is wrested from its original unity with body by scepticism but recovers belief in external bodies by an appeal to the veracity of God’s veracity. According to Nicolas Malebranche’s occasionalism no event causes any other event for it is God who causes all events hence there is no causal interaction between mind and body, rather whenever God causes a mental event He causes a corresponding physical event. We see everything in God since our seeing is caused by God not by the objects seen. Cf. Plato’s ‘Timaeus’.
Hegel presents three criticisms of materialism First, if thought is a result of matter then the relation of matter to thought is or resembles a relation of cause to effect or of means to end but a cause is sublated in its effect, for instance. the rain that causes the wetness of the street also constitutes the wetness. The means to an end is sublated in the end once it is realized, for instance. the paint and canvas are contained in the finished painting. Hence if thought is a result of matter then matter is sublated in thought and there is no just cause for designating such a doctrine materialism rather than for instance mentalism. Mind has its own special way of sublating other things including the conditions of its own emergence, it coverts them into something posited by itself. And further, mind as such develops of its own accord out of its being-in-itself, that is out of its earlier forms, soul and consciousness. The first two points concern the development from its earliest beginnings while the third concerns the subsequent development of mind. There are two essential respects in which we must disagree with traditional materialism, first, albeit mind emerges from matter the matter from which it emerges is already pervaded by mind, and second mind does not develop in accordance with the laws even of this mind-pervaded matter, it breaks free of it and develops autonomously.
‘Confronting this speculative conception of the opposition between mind and matter stands materialism, which portrays thinking as a result of the material, derives the simplicity of thinking from the manifold. There is nothing more unsatisfactory than the discussions conducted in materialistic writings of the various relationships and combinations by which a result such as thinking is supposed to be produced. Such discussions entirely overlook the fact that, just as the cause is sublated in the effect, and the means in the accomplished end, so too that from which thinking is supposed to result is conversely sublated in thinking, and rhat mind as such is not produced by an Other, but raises itself from its being-in-itself to being-for-itself, from its concept to actuality, and makes that by which mind is supposed to be posited into something posited by mind. All the same, we must recognize in materialism the enthusiastic endeavour to transcend the dualism which assumes two different worlds as equally substantial and true, to sublate this dismemberment of what is originally one’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
A birthday present for my muse. Thank you for all the inspiration and flow of productivity and creativity you have granted me. Happy the day when you arrived upon this dreary planet and made it better and brighter. 🎂💕
Every time I faced the world I just had to cry
I stood alone with no love of my own
But then you happened by
Oh, darling, bless you
Bless every breath that you take, yeah
Bless every move that you make so perfectly
And bless your little heart for loving me
Ooh, bless you, bless you, child
’Til you smiled and took my hand I felt kinda small
But you stood by me for the whole world to see
And then I was ten feet tall
Oh, darling, bless you
Bless every breath that you take, ooh
Bless every move that you make so perfectly
And bless your little heart for loving me
Oh, darling, bless you
Bless every breath that you take, baby
Bless every move that you make so perfectly
And bless your little heart for loving me
Baby, bless you Bless every breath that you take, yeah
Bless every move that you make so perfectly
And bless your little heart for loving me
‘Bless You’, Tony Orlando :
Coming up next:
The natural soul.
It may stop but it never ends…
