Hegel's Philosophy of Mind — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Georg Hegel · en
Under such metaphysical or extra-empirical presuppositions all
investigation, whether it be crudely empirical or (in the physical sense)
scientific, is carried on. And when so carried on, it is said to be
prosecuted apart from any interference from metaphysic. Such a naïve or
natural metaphysic, not raised to explicit consciousness, not followed as
an imposed rule, but governing with the strength of an immanent faith,
does not count for those who live under it as a metaphysic at all. M.
Jourdain was amazed suddenly to learn he had been speaking prose for forty
years without knowing it. But in the present case there is something worse
than amazement sure to be excited by the news. For the critic who thus
reveals the secrets of the scientist’s heart is pretty sure to go on to
say that a good deal of this naïve unconscious metaphysic is incoherent,
contradictory, even bad: that it requires correction, revision, and
readjustment, and has by criticism to be made one and harmonious. That
readjustment or criticism which shall eliminate contradiction and produce
unity, is the aim of the _science_ of metaphysic—the science of the
meta-physical element in physical knowledge: what Hegel has chosen to call
the Science of Logic (in the wide sense of the term). This higher Logic,
this _science_ of metaphysic, is the process to revise and harmonise in
systematic completeness the imperfect or misleading and partial estimates
of reality which are to be found in popular and scientific thought.