Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
We have already dealt generally from the theoretical side with the
speculative nature of mind as yet unrealized, as well as with the
highly important differences with respect to the kinds of knowledge
(pp. 28-48). It must also be considered that we find in Plato as yet
no developed consciousness of the organization of the theoretic mind,
though certainly sensation, memory, &c., are distinguished by him from
reason; these moments of the mind are, however, neither accurately
discriminated, nor exhibited in their connection, so as to show the
necessary relations between them. The only point of interest for us
then in Plato’s philosophy of mind is his view of man’s moral nature;
and this real, practical side of consciousness is Plato’s greatest
glory, and hence must now be specially dealt with by us. Its form
certainly does not suggest that Plato gave himself much trouble to
discover a supreme moral principle, as it is now called, which, for
the very reason that it is supposed to be all-embracing, has in it a
certain lack of content. Neither did he trouble himself about a natural
right, which is but a trivial abstraction foisted on to the real
practical existence, the right; but it is of man’s moral nature that he
treats in the Republic. Man’s moral nature seems to us to have little
to do with the State; to Plato, however, the reality of mind—that is,
of mind as opposed to nature—appeared in its highest truth as the
organization of a state which, as such, is essentially moral; and he
recognized that the moral nature (free will in its rationality) comes
to its right, to its reality, only in an actual nation.