Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
same time determined through and with all the rest. Thus the facts
embodied in his sensation are authenticated, not by his mere subjective
representation and distinction of the facts as something external from the
person, but by virtue of the concrete interconnexion in which each part
stands with all parts of this complex. The waking state is the concrete
consciousness of this mutual corroboration of each single factor of its
content by all the others in the picture as perceived. The consciousness
of this interdependence need not be explicit and distinct. Still this
general setting to all sensations is implicitly present in the concrete
feeling of self.—In order to see the difference of dreaming and waking we
need only keep in view the Kantian distinction between subjectivity and
objectivity of mental representation (the latter depending upon
determination through categories): remembering, as already noted, that
what is actually present in mind need not be therefore explicitly realised
in consciousness, just as little as the exaltation of the intellectual
sense to God need stand before consciousness in the shape of proofs of
God’s existence, although, as before explained, these proofs only serve to
express the net worth and content of that feeling.
(γ) Sensibility(121).
§ 399. Sleep and waking are, primarily, it is true, not mere alterations,
but _alternating_ conditions (a progression _in infinitum_). This is their
formal and negative relationship: but in it the _affirmative_ relationship
is also involved. In the self-certified existence of waking soul its mere
existence is implicit as an “ideal” factor: the features which make up its
sleeping nature, where they are implicitly as in their substance, are
_found_ by the waking soul, in its own self, and, be it noted, for itself.
The fact that these particulars, though as a mode of mind they are
distinguished from the self-identity of our self-centred being, are yet
simply contained in its simplicity, is what we call sensibility.
§ 400. Sensibility (feeling) is the form of the dull stirring, the
inarticulate breathing, of the spirit through its unconscious and
unintelligent individuality, where every definite feature is still
“immediate,”—neither specially developed in its content nor set in
distinction as objective to subject, but treated as belonging to its most
special, its natural peculiarity. The content of sensation is thus limited
and transient, belonging as it does to natural, immediate being,—to what
is therefore qualitative and finite.
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