SUBJECTIVE SPIRIT: SOUL, CONSCIOUSNESS, INTELLIGENCE and WILL Willem Devries
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8 SUBJECTIVE SPIRIT: SOUL, CONSCIOUSNESS, INTELLIGENCE AND WILL Willem deVries THE TEXTS scholars. To some degree, this situation derives from the fact that one part of the PSS, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (PSS) the Phenomenology of Spirit – the middle occupies an important place in his system. The third that sits between the Anthropology and system has three major parts: the Logic, the the Psychology – corresponds to the first five Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of chapters of the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit Spirit. The Philosophy of Spirit itself has three ( PhG ) with the same title. The literature on parts: the PSS, the Philosophy of Objective PhG is massive, and the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Absolute Spirit. the 1830 Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical The PSS, then, stands at the transition from Sciences ( Enc ) gets lost in its shadow. nature to spirit and thus contains important Effectively, many Hegel scholars substitute material concerning the relation of nature the 1807 volume for the PSS when think- and spirit. Furthermore, objective spirit con- ing about Hegel’s system. PhG is far more cerns the various forms of relation among detailed than the Phenomenology in Enc agents within a rational society; subjective (though Hegel clearly changed his mind on spirit analyses the elements necessary for or some issues after writing the former), and is presupposed by such relations, namely, the a text of sweeping vision. The historical as structures characteristic of and necessary to well as systematic contexts of PhG and Enc the individual rational agent. The PSS analy- differ. It is a major interpretative challenge in ses the fundamental nature of the biological/ Hegel scholarship to understand the relation spiritual human individual along with the between the large, complex, and sometimes cognitive and the practical prerequisites of ungainly PhG , which was billed as an intro- human social interaction. duction to Hegel’s systematic philosophy, and Given the importance of Hegel’s PSS, the the compressed, telegraphic Phenomenology level of scholarly attention it has received is of Spirit that occupies a place within the disappointing. Only his philosophy of nature encyclopaedic system. The focus here is currently receives less attention from Hegel solely on the latter. 133 99781441195128_Ch08_Fpp_txt_prf.indd781441195128_Ch08_Fpp_txt_prf.indd 113333 110/3/20120/3/2012 111:08:521:08:52 PPMM SUBJECTIVE SPIRIT THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN (Descartes, for instance, defends such a claim INDIVIDUAL: SOME HISTORICAL at the end of the Second Meditation: see CONTEXT Descartes Oeuvres [AT] VII:33.) Thought is identified with the processes of composition The concern to understand the nature of the and analysis operating on ideas. Our knowl- human individual that dominated early mod- edge of the existence and characteristics of ern philosophy from Descartes and Spinoza material bodies is taken to be mediated by through Locke, Hume and Kant is also the knowledge of our own mental states, thus central concern in Hegel’s PSS. But Hegel remaining always more problematic than approaches the issue in a radically different self-knowledge. way from his pre-Kantian predecessors. I will These assumptions were shared broadly start by summarizing the common assump- among Kant’s predecessors, but there were tions shared among Kant’s predecessors. numerous specific differences. The rational- Pre-Kantian thinking about the individ- ists believed that the simple ideas are highly ual’s relation to the material natural world, abstract and innate in the very structure of the internal resources native to humans and the mind, and that a great deal of knowledge the basic prerequisites of human relation- about the fundamental structure of the world ships adopted a common generic theoreti- is encoded in them, affording insight into cal framework that we can call (following necessary truths concerning the supersensible Locke) ‘the new way of ideas’. This frame- realm and our spiritual nature. The empiri- work assumes a deep ontological distinction cists, in contrast, thought that the simple ideas between extended material objects (bod- are particular sensory images, from which all ies) and immaterial, thinking or experienc- our other ideas are derived or compounded ing objects (minds). 1 Bodies are thought to by de facto faculties (such as innate abilities interact according to rigorously mathema- to compare or to abstract ideas) in accord- tizable and exceptionless laws of nature of ance with certain laws of association. The the kind being discovered by the then emerg- dialectic of empiricist thought led empiricism ing new sciences of astronomy, mechanics to a rather unhappy scepticism according to and optics. Causation is generally conceived which conclusions that reach even a little of along mechanistic lines, and teleological beyond the senses cannot be justified, and the causation and explanation are also generally only necessities we can cognize are trivial. rejected. Minds, in contrast, contain (consist Kant began to revolutionize this frame- of?) ideas , usually characterized in terms of work. He enriched the framework of ‘ideas’, their representational content, that interact distinguishing in a meaningful way between according to normative rules of reason. 2 Ideas sensory and conceptual representations, and are taken to have a fundamentally composi- employing the logical forms of judgement to tional structure: there is a supply of simple provide a more sophisticated notion of the ideas that can be compounded into complex relationships among representations. He rec- ideas – though the forms of composition rec- ognized that representations in a judgement ognized in this framework were quite limited. are combined with a modal force that signals It is also a standard pre-Kantian assumption that the combination is not merely subjec- that minds have some form of immediate and tive association. Kant argued that the innate transparent access to the ideas they contain. architecture of the mind determines certain 134 99781441195128_Ch08_Fpp_txt_prf.indd781441195128_Ch08_Fpp_txt_prf.indd 113434 110/3/20120/3/2012 111:08:521:08:52 PPMM SUBJECTIVE SPIRIT complex representations to be necessarily characteristics, abilities, etc.? Hegel rejects true. Yet he also argued that these judge- this reading: the philosophy of subjec- ments can hold true only of the phenomenal tive spirit ‘is concerned with cognition of world revealed by sensory experience. The human truth, with that which is true in and supersensible realm remains beyond our ken. for itself, – with essence itself as spirit’ ( Enc Kant thus tried to validate more knowledge §377). Merely including knowledge of the than the empiricists thought to be obtain- characteristics and foibles of those around us able (namely, knowledge of the necessary is also ruled out by this test. The philosophy structure of the phenomenal realm), without of mind looks for the truly universal across acceding to rationalist metaphysical preten- all humans. Hegel then identifies two ways sions concerning the supersensible realm. this universal project has been approached But Kant remains mired in a highly dualis- recently: first, so-called rational psychology; tic framework: the distinction between the second, empirical psychology ( Enc §§377–8). phenomenal and the noumenal cannot be Both these approaches are faulty, however, overcome, so that human beings can neither because mired in the ‘categories of the under- know the nature of reality as it is in itself, nor standing’. This means that certain aspects can they know themselves as free, rational, of the phenomenon under consideration are moral agents. In the end, Kant denies knowl- regarded as ‘separate and fixed’ ( Enc §378A) edge to make room for faith. and form an independent basis from which all other aspects are to be derived. Empirical psychology reaches towards the universal by generalizing from empirical SHIFTING THE PARADIGM: observation of particular spiritual faculties: HEGELIAN REVISIONS In empirical psychology, it is the particu- Hegel is deeply dissatisfied with both larizations into which spirit is divided the metaphysics and the methodologies which are regarded as being rigid in their limitation, so that spirit is treated as a employed by his predecessors, so dissatisfied mere aggregate of independent forces, that he proclaims that ‘Aristotle’s books on each of which stands only in reciprocal the soul, as well as his dissertations on its and therefore external relation to the special aspects and conditions, are still by far other. ( Enc §378A; Petry translation the best or even the sole work of speculative adapted) interest on this general topic’ ( Enc §378). Understanding why Hegel is so dissatisfied Empirical psychology however cannot dem- with his predecessors’ paradigm is important onstrate the ‘harmonious integration’ of the to grasping his approach. powers or faculties it discovers, that is, the Let us start with Hegel’s complaints about necessary unity they must exhibit in order to methodologies commonly used in the philos- exist as powers of a unified spirit. ophy of mind. The philosophy of spirit aims Rational psychology or pneumatology at cognition of spirit itself; it is the execu- concerns itself, not with empirical research tion of the ‘absolute command, Know thy- and data, but ‘with abstract and general self ’. Is this an injunction to know oneself determinations, with the supposedly unmani- in a narrow sense: