Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
The name of Clarke is likewise famous in connection with his proof
of the existence of God. There were quite a number of other English
philosophers, whom we do not, however, require to notice; for Clarke,
Wollaston, and others carry on their speculations within forms such
as belong to a very commonplace metaphysic of the understanding.
The manifold systems of moral philosophy which we find taking their
rise in England are drawn up from this same mental standpoint; in
them the implicitude of mind appears in a form of natural existence,
namely, of desires and feelings. Their principles are found in moral
sentiments, benevolent desires, sympathy, &c. That form alone is
worthy of notice which, on the one hand, represents duty as something
which is not foreign, given, commanded, but as clearly belonging to
self-consciousness, even while, on the other hand, it represents
this property as a natural, unconscious, unspiritual, and irrational
existence. Impulse is blind, a solid existence which cannot get beyond
itself like thinking self-consciousness. It is indeed true of impulse
that its pure activity or its process, and the content, are, as in
thought, immediately posited as the same; it has its content in itself,
and this is not dead and passive, but self-acting and impelling. But that
unity has the form of immediacy only as existent; in the first place
it is not a knowledge, it is not necessary, for it is only taken from
inward perception; in the second place, it is a determinate which does
not abrogate itself, beyond which we cannot get, and which thus is not a
universal. Impulse is no more an infinite than is the fixed category of
force. Such reasoning takes the impulses in their determinate character
from experience, and expresses the appearance of necessity in the same
as an inward existence, as a force. For instance, the social instinct is
a moment which is found in experience, because man derives all manner
of utility from society. Wherein does the necessity of the State, of
society, find its basis? In a social desire. This is cause, just as in
the physical world a formal interpretation such as this is always to
be found. The necessity of any existent fact, such as what pertains to
electrical phenomena, finds its basis in a force which brings it forth;
it is merely the form of returning from the external to an inward, of
passing from the existent to what is thought, which is again in turn
represented as an existent. Force is necessitated by reason of the
manifestation, we must argue from the latter to the former. On the other
hand, the manifestation takes place through the force, for it is the
cause of the manifestation; we hence have force in one place as reason,
and in another as cause. But in all this there is no realization of
the fact that in respect of form there is a transition from the Notion
into Being and the other way, while in respect of content there is a
perfect contingency of manifestation; we look at electricity in the same