Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
But with regard to the inclinations, the question is directly raised,
Which are good and bad?—Up to what degree the good continue good;—and (as
there are many, each with its private range) In what way have they, being
all in one subject and hardly all, as experience shows, admitting of
gratification, to suffer at least reciprocal restriction? And, first of
all, as regards the numbers of these impulses and propensities, the case
is much the same as with the psychical powers, whose aggregate is to form
the mind theoretical,—an aggregate which is now increased by the host of
impulses. The nominal rationality of impulse and propensity lies merely in
their general impulse not to be subjective merely, but to get realised,
overcoming the subjectivity by the subject’s own agency. Their genuine
rationality cannot reveal its secret to a method of outer reflection which
pre-supposes a number of _independent_ innate tendencies and immediate
instincts, and therefore is wanting in a single principle and final
purpose for them. But the immanent “reflection” of mind itself carries it
beyond their particularity and their natural immediacy, and gives their
contents a rationality and objectivity, in which they exist as necessary
ties of social relation, as rights and duties. It is this objectification
which evinces their real value, their mutual connexions, and their truth.
And thus it was a true perception when Plato (especially including as he
did the mind’s whole nature under its right) showed that the full reality
of justice could be exhibited only in the _objective_ phase of justice,
viz. in the construction of the State as the ethical life.
The answer to the question, therefore, What are the good and rational
propensities, and how they are to be co-ordinated with each other?
resolves itself into an exposition of the laws and forms of common life
produced by the mind when developing itself as _objective_ mind—a
development in which the _content_ of autonomous action loses its
contingency and optionality. The discussion of the true intrinsic worth of
the impulses, inclinations, and passions is thus essentially the theory of
legal, moral, and social _duties_.
§ 475. The subject is the act of satisfying impulses, an act of (at least)
formal rationality, as it translates them from the subjectivity of content
(which so far is _purpose_) into objectivity, where the subject is made to
close with itself. If the content of the impulse is distinguished as the
thing or business from this act of carrying it out, and we regard the
thing which has been brought to pass as containing the element of
subjective individuality and its action, this is what is called the
_interest_. Nothing therefore is brought about without interest.
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