Hegel's Philosophy of Mind · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
INTRODUCTION.
The books of Aristotle on the Soul, along with his discussions on its special aspects and states, are for this reason still by far the most admirable, perhaps even the sole, work of philosophical value on this topic. The main aim of a philosophy of mind can only be to re-introduce unity of idea and principle into the theory of mind, and so re-interpret the lesson of those Aristotelian books. § 379. Even our own sense of the mind’s _living_ unity naturally protests against any attempt to break it up into different faculties, forces, or, what comes to the same thing, activities, conceived as independent of each other. But the craving for a _comprehension_ of the unity is still further stimulated, as we soon come across distinctions between mental freedom and mental determinism, antitheses between free _psychic_ agency and the corporeity that lies external to it, whilst we equally note the intimate interdependence of the one upon the other. In modern times especially the phenomena of _animal magnetism_ have given, even in experience, a lively and visible confirmation of the underlying unity of soul, and of the power of its “ideality.” Before these facts, the rigid distinctions of practical common sense were struck with confusion; and the necessity of a “speculative” examination with a view to the removal of difficulties was more directly forced upon the student.
What Mind (or Spirit) is. § 381. From our point of view Mind has for its _presupposition_ Nature, of which it is the truth, and for that reason its _absolute prius_. In this its truth Nature is vanished, and mind has resulted as the “Idea” entered on possession of itself. Here the subject and object of the Idea are one—either is the intelligent unity, the notion. This identity is _absolute negativity_—for whereas in Nature the intelligent unity has its objectivity perfect but externalised, this self-externalisation has been nullified and the unity in that way been made one and the same with itself. Thus at the same time it is this identity only so far as it is a return out of nature. § 382. For this reason the essential, but formally essential, feature of mind is Liberty: i.e. it is the notion’s absolute negativity or self-identity. Considered as this formal aspect, it _may_ withdraw itself from everything external and from its own externality, its very existence; it can thus submit to infinite _pain_, the negation of its individual immediacy: in other words, it can keep itself affirmative in this negativity and possess its own identity. All this is possible so long as it is considered in its abstract self-contained universality. § 383. This universality is also its determinate sphere of being. Having a being of its own, the universal is self-particularising, whilst it still remains self-identical. Hence the special mode of mental being is “_manifestation_.” The spirit is not some one mode or meaning which finds utterance or externality only in a form distinct from itself: it does not manifest or reveal _something_, but its very mode and meaning is this revelation. And thus in its mere possibility Mind is at the same moment an infinite, “absolute,” _actuality_.
Subdivision. § 385. The development of Mind (Spirit) is in three stages:— (1) In the form of self-relation: within it it has the _ideal_ totality of the Idea—i.e. it has before it all that its notion contains: its being is to be self-contained and free. This is _Mind Subjective_. (2) In the form of _reality_: realised, i.e. in a _world_ produced and to be produced by it: in this world freedom presents itself under the shape of necessity. This is _Mind Objective_. (3) In that unity of mind as objectivity and, of mind as ideality and concept, which essentially and actually is and for ever produces itself, mind in its absolute truth. This is _Mind Absolute_. § 386. The two first parts of the doctrine of Mind embrace the finite mind. Mind is the infinite Idea; thus finitude here means the disproportion between the concept and the reality—but with the qualification that it is a shadow cast by the mind’s own light—a show or illusion which the mind implicitly imposes as a barrier to itself, in order, by its removal, actually to realise and become conscious of freedom as _its_ very being, i.e. to be fully _manifested_. The several steps of this activity, on each of which, with their semblance of being, it is the function of the finite mind to linger, and through which it has to pass, are steps in its liberation. In the full truth of that liberation is given the identification of the three stages—finding a world presupposed before us, generating a world as our own creation, and gaining freedom from it and in it. To the infinite form of this truth the show purifies itself till it becomes a consciousness of it.
A rigid application of the category of finitude by the abstract logician is chiefly seen in dealing with Mind and reason: it is held not a mere matter of strict logic, but treated also as a moral and religious concern, to adhere to the point of view of finitude, and the wish to go further is reckoned a mark of audacity, if not of insanity, of thought. Whereas in fact such a _modesty_ of thought, as treats the finite as something altogether fixed and _absolute_, is the worst of virtues; and to stick to a post which has no sound ground in itself is the most unsound sort of theory. The category of finitude was at a much earlier period elucidated and explained at its place in the Logic: an elucidation which, as in logic for the more specific though still simple thought-forms of finitude, so in the rest of philosophy for the concrete forms, has merely to show that the finite _is not_, i.e. is not the truth, but merely a transition and an emergence to something higher. This finitude of the spheres so far examined is the dialectic that makes a thing have its cessation by another and in another: but Spirit, the intelligent unity and the _implicit_ Eternal, is itself just the consummation of that internal act by which nullity is nullified and vanity is made vain. And so, the modesty alluded to is a retention of this vanity—the finite—in opposition to the true: it is itself therefore vanity. In the course of the mind’s development we shall see this vanity appear as _wickedness_ at that turning-point at which mind has reached its extreme immersion in its subjectivity and its most central contradiction.
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