Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
and especially so in the specific bodily part, and thus to enable the
soul, under its volitional and conceptual characters, to exist as
substance in its corporeity. In this way an aptitude shows the corporeity
rendered completely pervious, made into an instrument, so that when the
conception (e.g. a series of musical notes) is in me, then without
resistance and with ease the body gives them correct utterance.
The form of habit applies to all kinds and grades of mental action. The
most external of them, i.e. the spatial direction of an individual, viz.
his upright posture, has been by will made a habit—a position taken
without adjustment and without consciousness—which continues to be an
affair of his persistent will; for the man stands only because and in so
far as he wills to stand, and only so long as he wills it without
consciousness. Similarly our eyesight is the concrete habit which, without
an express adjustment, combines in a single act the several modifications
of sensation, consciousness, intuition, intelligence, &c., which make it
up. Thinking, too, however free and active in its own pure element it
becomes, no less requires habit and familiarity (this impromptuity or form
of immediacy), by which it is the property of my single self where I can
freely and in all directions range. It is through this habit that I come
to realise my _existence_ as a thinking being. Even here, in this
spontaneity of self-centred thought, there is a partnership of soul and
body (hence, want of habit and too-long-continued thinking cause
headache); habit diminishes this feeling, by making the natural function
an immediacy of the soul. Habit on an ampler scale, and carried out in the
strictly intellectual range, is recollection and memory, whereof we shall
speak later.
Habit is often spoken of disparagingly and called lifeless, casual and
particular. And it is true that the form of habit, like any other, is open
to anything we chance to put into it; and it is habit of living which
brings on death, or, if quite abstract, is death itself: and yet habit is
indispensable for the _existence_ of all intellectual life in the
individual, enabling the subject to be a concrete immediacy, an “ideality”
of soul—enabling the matter of consciousness, religious, moral, &c., to be
his as _this_ self, _this_ soul, and no other, and be neither a mere
latent possibility, nor a transient emotion or idea, nor an abstract
inwardness, cut off from action and reality, but part and parcel of his
being. In scientific studies of the soul and the mind, habit is usually
passed over—either as something contemptible—or rather for the further
reason that it is one of the most difficult questions of psychology.
(c) The Actual Soul.(126)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account