SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY A Study on Hegel’s Encyclopedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (1830) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Hegel's Psychology (The Oxford Handbook of Hegel), draft
Despite its central importance in Hegel’s mature system, the section Subjective Spirit in his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences has attracted relatively little attention in the reception history of Hegel’s work. The most influential early readers of Hegel were mostly interested in other parts of Hegel’s system; and relatively soon after Hegel’s death more empirically oriented approaches to the topics of Subjective Spirit won the day, displacing the overly ‘speculative’, armchair philosophical approach that Hegel was seen as representing. Hegel’s direct disciples and moderate ‘centre Hegelians’ Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz and Karl Ludwig Michelet did write extensive commentaries on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, but their influence paled in comparison to the more politically astute and independently creative Hegelian ‘left’ who mostly focused on the Philosophy of Right or the Phenomenology of Spirit, as well as to the Hegelian ‘right’ who were mostly interested in Hegel’s views on religion and history. The long neglect of Subjective Spirit shows even today in the curious way in which the recent revival of Hegel as an epistemologist and a philosopher of mind, or of “mindedness”, has mostly ignored this text —even if systematically speaking Subjective Spirit is the part of Hegel’s system where issues of knowledge and of the mind are explicitly at stake. There is also a widely spread view according to which Hegel was engaged in his Jena-writings in a project of ‘detranscendentalizing’ the Kantian subject of knowledge and action problematically divided between the empirical and transcendental, or in other words of consistently conceptualizing it as a living individual human person embedded in the natural and social world, in language and in intersubjective interaction. According to this view, after Jena Hegel for whatever reason gave up this project and in his later work regressed into a dubious metaphysics of a ‘spirit’ which obfuscates the concrete lived reality of the human individual. Whatever the truth about Hegel’s metaphysics, this article aims to show that in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit Hegel develops a thoroughly ‘detranscendentalized’ account of the human person as the “concrete” flesh and blood subject of knowledge and action, an account which deserves much more attention than it has so far received. In short, whereas the section ‘Anthropology—Soul’ of Subjective Spirit (see previous chapter) deals with the bodily aspects of the concrete subject, the section ‘Phenomenology of Spirit—Consciousness’ deals with the various dimensions of intentionality, or in other word of the subject’s theoretical and practical relation to objectivity, and finally the section ‘Psychology—Spirit’ deals with the intrasubjective or mental processes and activities at work in the various object-relations. Eventually all of the three chapters contribute to a holistic picture of the human person as the “concrete subject” of knowing and acting, yet reconstructing this picture requires a proper understanding of the structure of the text which at first sight, on a simple linear reading, appears rather fragmentary and thus confusing. This article focuses on the Psychology-section, and the thematically closely connected Phenomenology-section. I will first (1.) reconstructs the ‘parallel architectonics’ of the Phenomenology and Psychology, the understanding of which is essential for comprehending the substantial views Hegel puts forth in them. I will then (2.) draw on this reconstruction and introduce central elements of Hegel’s account of the human person as the concrete subject of knowledge and action as it unfolds in the text.
The Spirit of the Age: Hegel and the Fate of Thinking
2008
Hegel's works are cited by either page, section (§) or paragraph (¶) number; Hegel's remarks (Anmerkungen) to his sections are cited by an accompanying 'r' (e.g. EL §140 r); Hegel's additions (Zusätze) with an 'A' (e.g. EN § 140 A). When a citation is made of additions, remarks and sections at the same time they will be separated with a comma. For example (EL § 140, r, A) would refer to a citation of the section, its remark and the addition. Where there are multiple additions to a single section a number will be placed after the 'A' (e.g. EL § 136 A2). Citation of texts with pages appear thus: (LA 257) or (LHP III 87). When a German edition is cited it follows the English citation if one is given, e.g. for example (SL 47/WL I 31). The German volume numbers follow the abbreviation in roman numerals. 1. I am grateful to David Kolb for his comments on an earlier version of this essay.
"The 15 chapters each focus on a section of Hegel's book, making this an excellent resource in a course on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers." —Choice In Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology, John Russon uses the theme of reading to clarify the methods, premises, evidence, reasoning, and conclusions developed in Hegel’s seminal text. Russon’s approach facilitates comparing major sections and movements of the text, and demonstrates that each section of Phenomenology of Spirit stands independently in its focus on the themes of human experience. Along the way, Russon considers the rich relevance of Hegel’s philosophy to understanding other key Western philosophers, such as Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. Major themes include language, embodiment, desire, conscience, forgiveness, skepticism, law, ritual, multiculturalism, existentialism, deconstruction, and absolute knowing. An important companion to contemporary Hegel studies, this book will be of interest to all students of Hegel’s philosophy.