The Philosophical Theory of the StateBosanquet, Bernard
Philosophy
The Philosophical Theory of the State
Bosanquet, Bernard
Political science -- Philosophy; State, The -- Philosophy
[1] For this account, to which he has devoted perhaps the greatest
of his works, Hegel has coined the term “Phenomenology of the Mind.”
It is the history of the emergence of the free or modern spirit from
the undeveloped consciousness of the ancient world, to which, for
instance, slavery seemed a natural thing.
The story of mind, then, begins long before the free mind, the object
of Psychology to-day, has appeared on the scene. And as to this there
would be no great difference of opinion. The peculiarity of Hegel’s
treatment is that his romance of the intelligence not only begins
long before the phase of free mind is reached, but continues long
after. Investigation can no more stop at the individual of to-day
than it can begin with him. His “mind” is not a separable entity,
and throughout the story no such entity has appeared. It has been
convenient for Hegel to treat the earlier division of the _Philosophy
of Mind_, comprising the Anthropology, Phenomenology, [1] and
Psychology, as dealing _par excellence_ with Mind Subjective. This is
because its main purpose was to trace the growth of “subjectivity,”
the emergence of the man of full mental {255} stature, aware
of himself, of his ideas and purposes, and confident in his
“subjectivity” his self-hood against all comers.
[1] See previous note.
But the following division of the work, under the title of Mind
Objective, deals with a necessary implication which might have been
noted at any point of the entire history of consciousness, though at
any earlier point it could have been treated as referring to mind
only by anticipation.
Here, however, the problem can no longer be deferred. The “free
mind” does not explain itself and cannot stand alone. Its impulses
cannot be ordered, or, in other words, its purposes cannot be
made determinate, except in an actual system of selves. Except by
expressing itself in relation to an ordered life, which implies
others, it cannot exist. And, therefore, not something additional and
parallel to it, which might or might not exist, but a necessary form
of its own action as real and determinate, is the actual fabric in
which it utters itself as Society and the State. This is what Hegel
treats in the second division of the _Philosophy of Mind_ under the
name of Mind Objective. It is not for him ultimate. A particular
society stands in time, and is open to criticism and to destruction.
Beyond it lies the reality, continuous with mind as known in the
State, but eternal as the former is perishable, which as Absolute
Mind is open to human experience in Art, Religion, and Philosophy.
We will pursue in the following chapter Hegel’s analysis of the
modern State as Mind Objective, a magnified edition, so to speak,
of Plato’s _Republic_, bringing before the eye in full detail
distinctions and articulations which were there invisible.
{256}
CHAPTER X.
THE ANALYSIS OF A MODERN STATE. HEGEL’S “PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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