Hegel's Philosophy of Mind — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Georg Hegel · en
§ 505. As regards its empirically concrete _content_ (1) the action has a
variety of particular aspects and connexions. In point of _form_, the
agent must have known and willed the action in its essential feature,
embracing these individual points. This is the right of _intention_. While
_purpose_ affects only the immediate fact of existence, _intention_
regards the underlying essence and aim thereof. (2) The agent has no less
the right to see that the particularity of content in the action, in point
of its matter, is not something external to him, but is a particularity of
his own,—that it contains his needs, interests, and aims. These aims, when
similarly comprehended in a single aim, as in happiness (§ 479),
constitute his _well-being_. This is the right to well-being. Happiness
(good fortune) is distinguished from well-being only in this, that
happiness implies no more than some sort of immediate existence, whereas
well-being regards it as also justified as regards morality.
§ 506. But the essentiality of the intention is in the first instance the
abstract form of generality. Reflection can put in this form this and that
particular aspect in the empirically-concrete action, thus making it
essential to the intention or restricting the intention to it. In this way
the supposed essentiality of the intention and the real essentiality of
the action may be brought into the greatest contradiction—e.g. a good
intention in case of a crime. Similarly well-being is abstract and may be
set on this or that: as appertaining to this single agent, it is always
something particular.
c. Goodness and Wickedness(160).
§ 507. The truth of these particularities and the concrete unity of their
formalism is the content of the universal, essential and actual, will,—the
law and underlying essence of every phase of volition, the essential and
actual good. It is thus the absolute final aim of the world, and _duty_
for the agent who _ought_ to have _insight_ into the _good_, make it his
_intention_ and bring it about by his activity.