Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827-8

297 Pages·2007·20.44 MB·English

by  G.W.F. Hegel

LECTURES
on the
PHILOSOPHY
of
SPIRIT 1827-8

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
LECTURES ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT
1827-8
Translated and with an Introduction by
ROBERT R. WILLIAMS
OXFORD
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This volume is a translation of G. W. F. Hegel: Vorlesungen uber die
Philosophie des Geistes (1827-8), transcribed by Johann Erdmann and Ferdinand Waiter,
edited by Franz Hespe and Burkhard Tuschling (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1994),
vol. 13 in the series G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen: Ausgewiihlte Nachschriften und
Manuskripte, edited by Pierre Garniron and Waiter Jaeschke, copyright
© 1989, 1996 by Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH, Hamburg
© Translation and introduction Robert R. Williams 2007
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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First published 2007
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CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 1
1. Why These Lectures? 1
2. Hegel Between the Ancients and the Modems 7
3. Divisions and Topics in Philosophy of Subjective Spirit 12
4. Anthropology: Slumbering Spirit 14
A. Animal Magnetism and Clairvoyance 15
B. Dementia 16
5. Phenomenology of Spirit 18
A. Reciprocal Recognition, Spirit, and the Concept of Right 22
B. Recognition and Self-Actualization 26
6. Psychology: Theoretical Spirit 27
A. Spirit for Itself: From the Found to the Posited 29
B. Imagination, Sign, Memory 33
C. Mechanical Memory and Transcendental Deduction 37
7. Psychology: Practical Spirit: The Synthesis of Kant
and Aristotle 39
A. The Formalism of the Psychology 46
B. Unresolved Issues: The Unity of the Philosophy of Spirit 48
8. Notes on the Text and Translation 52
HEGEL'S LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT
INTRODUCTION 57
ANTHROPOLOGY 81
1. Natural Soul 83
2. The Dreaming Soul 124
A. Sentience 125
B. Self-Feeling 139
C. Habit 153
3. Actual Soul 158
V
CONTENTS
165
PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
1. Consciousness as Such 173
2. Self-Consciousness 182
3. Reason 195
PSYCHOLOGY 199
1. Theoretical Spirit 204
A. Intuition 206
B. Representation 213
C. Thought 235
2. Practical Spirit 247
GLOSSARY 267
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 279
GENERAL INDEX 283
vi
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
1. WHY THESE LECTURES?
The Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827-8 is in many respects a
'new' Hegel text, first published in Germany in 1994.1 It is a transcription
made by Johann Eduard Erdmann, a German philosopher who attended
Hegel's lectures as a student in 1827. Not only is it a 'new' Hegel text, this
lecture transcript illumines a less well-known, less well-understood area in
Hegel's thought, one to which Hegel himself attached special importance.
One puzzle in Hegel scholarship is that in spite of the renaissance of interest
in his thought, and in spite of the importance Hegel himself attached to it,
his Philosophy of Subjective Spirit has received very little attention. There is
an enormous secondary bibliography on Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic,
as well as the Philosophy of Right, but very few studies of the Philoso
phy of Subjective Spirit, 2 Moreover, there is no scholarly consensus that
this work is somehow 'insignificant' in comparison to the others. On the
1. Hegels Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie des Geistes 182718, ed. Franz Hespe and
Burkhard Tuschling (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1994). Hereafter cited as VPG 1827.
2. In English, see Murray Greene, Hegel on the Soul (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1970); Willem deVries, Hegel's Theory of Mental Activity (lthaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1987); Daniel Berthold-Bond, Hegel's Theory of Madness (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1995); Alfredo Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), Heikki lkiiheimo, Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity: A Study
of Hegel's Encyclopedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (1830) (Jyviiskylii, Finland: University
of Jyviiskylii, Publications in Philosophy, 2000); in German see Iring Fetscher, Hegels Lehre
vom Menschen (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1970); Adrian Peperzak, Selbsterkenntnis des Absoluten
(Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog; 1987); Lothar Eley (ed.), Hegels Theorie der subjektiven
Geistes (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990); Franz Hespe and Burkhant Tuschling (eds.),
Psychologie und Anthropologie oder Philosophie des Geistes, Spekulation und Erfahrung
(Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991); M. Wolf£, Das Korper-Seele Problem: Kommentar
zu Hegel (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992); and H. Schnadelbach, Hegels Enzyklopiidie der
philosophischen Wissenschaften: Ein Kommentar (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000); Christolph
Halbig, Objektives Denken: Erkenntnistheorie und 'Philosophy of Mind' in Hegels System
(Frommann-Holzboog, 2002).
1
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 1827-8
contrary, even a cursory examination of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit
reveals that it contains material of interest to contemporary philosophy of
mind and social science. So we are led to ask, why has the Philosophy
of Subjective Spirit fared poorly in scholarly interest by comparison with
other dimensions of Hegel's thought? The explanation is to be found in its
relative unintelligibility. The reasons for this unintelligibility are not simply
inherent in the work itself, but rather in factors surrounding its origins and
reception, especially in the English-speaking world. In this section we focus
on these factors and on the potential significance of these recently discovered
lectures for the study and understanding of the Philosophy of Subjective
Spirit. Those wishing for an account of the main themes of this work and
the lectures may skip directly to section 11.
The Philosophy of Spirit is the third part of Hegel's Encyclopedia of
the Philosophical Sciences (1817). Hegel planned to publish an expanded
version of the first part, the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, in 1822 as
a self-standing parallel volume to the Philosophy of Right (1821), which
elaborates his philosophy of objective spirit. He began composing an intro
duction to the Philosophy of Spirit, 3 but for unknown reasons abandoned
the project; instead, he brought out a revised and greatly expanded second
edition of his Encyclopedia in 1827. Hegel delivered these lectures shortly
after the publication of the 1827 edition.
Hegel's Encyclopedia was published in three editions: 1817, 1827, and
1830.4 Each of these editions is an outline of paragraphs from which Hegel
lectured. Hegel's procedure was to elaborate and explain this outline in
his lectures. This procedure is underscored by the full title of the 182 7
edition which reads: 'Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in outline,
for use in his lectures.' In a letter to Victor Cousin in July 1827, Hegel
wrote ' ... this book is but a succession of theses, their development and
clarification being reserved for the courses ... '. 5 In the preface to the 1827
3. Published as Ein Fragment zur Philosophie des Geistes (1822-5) in Hegel's Philosophy
of Subjective Spirit, ed. and trans. M. J. Petry, vol. I (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), 90-139.
4. Hegel, Enzyklopi:idie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl M. Michel, Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), vols. 8-10. Eng
lish translations of the 1830 edition: Hegel's Logic, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, trans. W.
Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873, 1975); Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V.
Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). Hereafter cited as Enc. 1830 with paragraph
number. There is a translation of the Encyclopedia 1817 edition by S. Taubeneck (New York:
Continuum, 1990), hereafter Enc. 1817. Unless otherwise indicated, all references are to the
1830 edition. All translations are my own, although I have consulted (and often corrected) the
Wallace translation.
5. Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christine Seiler (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1984), 640, my italics.
2