Hegel's Philosophy of MindHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
The vulgar apprehension of these things seems to assume that we have by
nature, or are born with, a general faculty or set of general faculties,
which we subsequently fill up and embody by the aid of experience. We
possess—they seem to imply—so many “forms” and “categories” latent in our
minds ready to hold and contain the raw materials supplied from without.
According to this view we have all a will and an intelligence: the
difference only is that some put more into them, and some put less. But
such a separation of the general form from its contents is a piece of pure
mythology. It is perhaps true and safe to say that the human being is of
such a character that will and intelligence are in the ordinary course
inevitably produced. But the forms which grow up are the more and more
definite and systematic organisation of a graded experience, of series of
ideas, working themselves up again and again in representative and
re-representative degree, till they constitute a mental or inner world of
their own. The will is thus the title appropriate to the final stage of a
process, by which sensation and impulse have polished and perfected
themselves by union and opposition, by differentiation and accompanying
redintegration, till they assume characters quite unsurmised in their
earliest aspects, and yet only the consolidation or self-realisation of
implications. Thus the mental faculties are essentially acquired
powers,—acquired not from without, but by action which generates the
faculties it seems to imply. The process of mind is a process which
creates individual centres, raises them to completer independence;—which
produces an inner life more and more self-centered and also more and more
equal to the universe which it has embodied. And will and intelligence are
an important stage in that process.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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