Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
thought, but pleasant or unpleasant sense-perception has the relation
of affirmation or negation,” therefore of the positive and negative
determination of thought. “And to perceive the pleasant or unpleasant
is to employ the activity” (spontaneity) “of the middle state of
sense-perception upon good or evil, in so far as they are such. But
desire and aversion are the same in energy; it is only in manifestation
that they are different. To the reasoning soul pictorial conceptions
take the place of sense-perceptions, and when the mind affirms or
denies something to be good or bad, it desires or avoids its object.
It has the relation both of unity and limit. The understanding,” as
that which determines opposites, “recognizes the forms underlying
pictorial conceptions; and in the same manner as what is desirable in
them and what is to be avoided have been determined for it, so it also
is determined independently of actual sense-perceptions when it is in
mental conceptions. And when, in dealing with conception or thought,
as if seeing them, it compares the future with the present and passes
judgment accordingly, and determines what is pleasant or unpleasant in
this respect; it desires or seeks to avoid it, and in general it finds
itself in practical operation. But independently of action true and
false are of the same character as good or evil.”
b. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.
From this the conception of will, or the practical element is shown to
us, and it has to be reckoned as still belonging to the Philosophy of
Mind. Aristotle has treated it in several works which we now possess.
α. ETHICS.
We have three great ethical works: the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ
Νικομάχεια) in ten books, the Magna Moralia (Ἠθικὰ μεγάλα) in two
books, and the Eudemean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Εὐδήμια) in seven books; the
last deals for the most part with particular virtues, while in the
first two general investigations on the principles are contained. Just
as the best that we even now possess in reference to psychology is what
we have obtained from Aristotle, so is it with his reflections on the
actual agent in volition, on freedom, and the further determinations of
imputation, intention, &c. We must simply give ourselves the trouble to
understand these, and to translate them into our own form of speech,
conception and thought; and this is certainly difficult. Aristotle
follows the same course here as in his Physics, determining one
after the other, in the most thorough and accurate fashion, the many
moments which appear in desire: the purpose, the decision, voluntary
or forced action, the act of ignorance, guilt, moral responsibility,
&c. I cannot enter upon this somewhat psychological presentation of
the subject.[102] I shall only make the following remarks on the
Aristotelian definitions.
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