Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
it, which belongs to the order of the eternal and self-active: something
which is “form” and “energy” quite unaffected by and separate from
“matter.” How this is related to the realm of the perishable and
changeable is a problem on which Aristotle has been often (and with some
reason) believed to be obscure, if not even inconsistent(21).
In these divergent elements which come to the fore in Aristotle’s
treatment we have the appearance of a radical difference of conception and
purpose as to psychology. He himself does a good deal to keep them both in
view. But it is evident that here already we have the contrast between a
purely physical or (in the narrower sense) “scientific” psychology,
empirical and realistic in treatment, and a more philosophical—what in
certain quarters would be called a speculative or metaphysical—conception
of the problem. There is also in Aristotle the antithesis of a popular or
superficial, and an accurate or analytic, psychology. The former is of a
certain use in dealing, say, with questions of practical ethics and
education: the latter is of more strictly scientific interest. Both of
these distinctions—that between a speculative and an empirical, and that
between a scientific and a popular treatment—affect the subsequent history
of the study. Psychology is sometimes understood to mean the results of
casual observation of our own minds by what is termed introspection, and
by the interpretation of what we may observe in others. Such observations
are in the first place carried on under the guidance of distinctions or
points of view supplied by the names in common use. We interrogate our own
consciousness as to what facts or relations of facts correspond to the
terms of our national language. Or we attempt—what is really an
inexhaustible quest—to get definite divisions between them, and clear-cut
definitions. Inquiries like these which start from popular distinctions
fall a long way short of science: and the inquirer will find that
accidental and essential properties are given in the same handful of
conclusions. Yet there is always much value in these attempts to get our
minds cleared: and it is indispensable for all inquiries that all alleged
or reported facts of mind should be realised and reproduced in our own
mental experience. And this is especially the case in psychology, just
because here we cannot get the object outside us, we cannot get or make a
diagram, and unless we give it reality by re-constructing it,—by
re-interrogating our own experience, our knowledge of it will be but
wooden and mechanical. And the term introspection need not be too
seriously taken: it means much more than watching passively an internal
drama; and is quite as well describable as mental projection, setting out
what was within, and so as it were hidden and involved, before ourselves
in the field of mental vision. Here, as always, the essential point is to
get ourselves well out of the way of the object observed, and to stand,
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