Hegel's Philosophy of Mind Part 11

Sub-Section C. Psychology. Mind(134).

-- 440. Mind has defined itself as the truth of soul and consciousness,-the former a simple immediate totality, the latter now an infinite form which is not, like consciousness, restricted by that content, and does not stand in mere correlation to it as to its object, but is an awareness of this substantial totality, neither subjective nor objective. Mind, therefore, starts only from its own being and is in correlation only with its own features.

Psychology accordingly studies the faculties or general modes of mental activity _qua_ mental-mental vision, ideation, remembering, &c., desires, &c.-apart both from the content, which on the phenomenal side is found in empirical ideation, in thinking also and in desire and will, and from the two forms in which these modes exist, viz. in the soul as a physical mode, and in consciousness itself as a separately existent object of that consciousness. This, however, is not an arbitrary abstraction by the psychologist. Mind is just this elevation above nature and physical modes, and above the complication with an external object-in one word, above the material, as its concept has just shown. All it has now to do is to realise this notion of its freedom, and get rid of the _form_ of immediacy with which it once more begins. The content which is elevated to intuitions is _its_ sensations: it is _its_ intuitions also which are trans.m.u.ted into representations, and its representations which are trans.m.u.ted again into thoughts, &c.

-- 441. The soul is finite, so far as its features are immediate or con-natural. Consciousness is finite, in so far as it has an object. Mind is finite, in so far as, though it no longer has an object, it has a mode in its knowledge; i.e., it is finite by means of its immediacy, or, what is the same thing, by being subjective or only a notion. And it is a matter of no consequence, which is defined as its notion, and which as the reality of that notion. Say that its notion is the utterly infinite objective reason, then its reality is knowledge or _intelligence_: say that knowledge is its notion, then its reality is that reason, and the realisation of knowledge consists in appropriating reason. Hence the finitude of mind is to be placed in the (temporary) failure of knowledge to get hold of the full reality of its reason, or, equally, in the (temporary) failure of reason to attain full manifestation in knowledge.

Reason at the same time is only infinite so far as it is "absolute"

freedom; so far, that is, as presupposing itself for its knowledge to work upon, it thereby reduces itself to finitude, and appears as everlasting movement of superseding this immediacy, of comprehending itself, and being a rational knowledge.

-- 442. The progress of mind is _development_, in so far as its existent phase, viz. knowledge, involves as its intrinsic purpose and burden that utter and complete autonomy which is rationality; in which case the action of translating this purpose into reality is strictly only a nominal pa.s.sage over into manifestation, and is even there a return into itself.

So far as knowledge which has not shaken off its original quality of _mere_ knowledge is only abstract or formal, the goal of mind is to give it objective fulfilment, and thus at the same time produce its freedom.

The development here meant is not that of the individual (which has a certain _anthropological_ character), where faculties and forces are regarded as successively emerging and presenting themselves in external existence-a series of steps, on the ascertainment on which there was for a long time great stress laid (by the system of Condillac), as if a conjectural natural emergence could exhibit the origin of these faculties and _explain_ them. In Condillac's method there is an unmistakable intention to show how the _several_ modes of mental activity could be made intelligible without losing sight of mental unity, and to exhibit their necessary interconnexion. But the categories employed in doing so are of a wretched sort. Their ruling principle is that the sensible is taken (and with justice) as the _prius_ or the initial basis, but that the later phases that follow this starting-point present themselves as emerging in a solely _affirmative_ manner, and the negative aspect of mental activity, by which this material is trans.m.u.ted into mind and destroyed _as_ a sensible, is misconceived and overlooked. As the theory of Condillac states it, the sensible is not merely the empirical first, but is left as if it were the true and essential foundation.

Similarly, if the activities of mind are treated as mere manifestations, forces, perhaps in terms stating their utility or suitability for some other interest of head or heart, there is no indication of the true final aim of the whole business. That can only be the intelligible unity of mind, and its activity can only have itself as aim; i.e. its aim can only be to get rid of the form of immediacy or subjectivity, to reach and get hold of itself, and to liberate itself to itself. In this way the so-called faculties of mind as thus distinguished are only to be treated as steps of this liberation. And this is the only _rational_ mode of studying the mind and its various activities.

-- 443. As consciousness has for its object the stage which preceded it, viz. the natural soul (-- 413), so mind has or rather makes consciousness its object: i.e. whereas consciousness is only the virtual ident.i.ty of the ego with its other (-- 415), the mind realises that ident.i.ty as the concrete unity which it and it only knows. Its productions are governed by the principle of all reason that the contents are at once potentially existent, and are the mind's own, in freedom. Thus, if we consider the initial aspect of mind, that aspect is twofold-as _being_ and as _its own_: by the one, the mind finds in itself something which _is_, by the other it affirms it to be only _its own_. The way of mind is therefore

(_a_) to be theoretical: it has to do with the rational as its immediate affection which it must render its own: or it has to free knowledge from its pre-supposedness and therefore from its abstractness, and make the affection subjective. When the affection has been rendered its own, and the knowledge consequently characterised as free intelligence, i.e. as having its full and free characterisation in itself, it is

(_b_) Will: _practical_ mind, which in the first place is likewise formal-i.e. its content is at first _only_ its own, and is immediately willed; and it proceeds next to liberate its volition from its subjectivity, which is the one-sided form of its contents, so that it

(_c_) confronts itself as free mind and thus gets rid of both its defects of one-sidedness.

-- 444. The theoretical as well as the practical mind still fall under the general range of Mind Subjective. They are not to be distinguished as active and pa.s.sive. Subjective mind is productive: but it is a merely nominal productivity. Inwards, the theoretical mind produces only its "ideal" world, and gains abstract autonomy within; while the practical, while it has to do with autonomous products, with a material which is its own, has a material which is only nominally such, and therefore a restricted content, for which it gains the form of universality. Outwards, the subjective mind (which as a unity of soul and consciousness, is thus also a reality,-a reality at once anthropological and conformable to consciousness) has for its products, in the theoretical range, the _word_, and in the practical (not yet deed and action, but) _enjoyment_.

Psychology, like logic, is one of those sciences which in modern times have yet derived least profit from the more general mental culture and the deeper conception of reason. It is still extremely ill off. The turn which the Kantian philosophy has taken has given it greater importance: it has, and that in its empirical condition, been claimed as the basis of metaphysics, which is to consist of nothing but the empirical apprehension and the a.n.a.lysis of the facts of human consciousness, merely as facts, just as they are given. This position of psychology, mixing it up with forms belonging to the range of consciousness and with anthropology, has led to no improvement in its own condition: but it has had the further effect that, both for the mind as such, and for metaphysics and philosophy generally, all attempts have been abandoned to ascertain the necessity of essential and actual reality, to get at the notion and the truth.

(a) Theoretical mind.

-- 445. Intelligence(135) _finds_ itself determined: this is its apparent aspect from which in its immediacy it starts. But as knowledge, intelligence consists in treating what is found as its own. Its activity has to do with the empty form-the pretence of _finding_ reason: and its aim is to realise its concept or to be reason actual, along with which the content is realised as rational. This activity is _cognition_. The nominal knowledge, which is only cert.i.tude, elevates itself, as reason is concrete, to definite and conceptual knowledge. The course of this elevation is itself rational, and consists in a necessary pa.s.sage (governed by the concept) of one grade or term of intelligent activity (a so-called faculty of mind) into another. The refutation which such cognition gives of the semblance that the rational is _found_, starts from the cert.i.tude or the faith of intelligence in its capability of rational knowledge, and in the possibility of being able to appropriate the reason, which it and the content virtually is.

The distinction of Intelligence from Will is often incorrectly taken to mean that each has a fixed and separate existence of its own, as if volition could be without intelligence, or the activity of intelligence could be without will. The possibility of a culture of the intellect which leaves the heart untouched, as it is said, and of the heart without the intellect-of hearts which in one-sided way want intellect, and heartless intellects-only proves at most that bad and radically untrue existences occur. But it is not philosophy which should take such untruths of existence and of mere imagining for truth-take the worthless for the essential nature. A host of other phrases used of intelligence, e.g. that it receives and accepts impressions from outside, that ideas arise through the causal operations of external things upon it, &c., belong to a point of view utterly alien to the mental level or to the position of philosophic study.

A favourite reflectional form is that of powers and faculties of soul, intelligence, or mind. Faculty, like power or force, is the fixed quality of any object of thought, conceived as reflected into self. Force (-- 136) is no doubt the infinity of form-of the inward and the outward: but its essential finitude involves the indifference of content to form (ib.

note). In this lies the want of organic unity which by this reflectional form, treating mind as a "lot" of forces, is brought into mind, as it is by the same method brought into nature. Any aspect which can be distinguished in mental action is stereotyped as an independent ent.i.ty, and the mind thus made a skeleton-like mechanical collection. It makes absolutely no difference if we subst.i.tute the expression "activities" for powers and faculties. Isolate the activities and you similarly make the mind a mere aggregate, and treat their essential correlation as an external incident.

The action of intelligence as theoretical mind has been called _cognition_ (knowledge). Yet this does not mean intelligence _inter alia_ knows,-besides which it also intuites, conceives, remembers, imagines, &c.

To take up such a position is in the first instance part and parcel of that isolating of mental activity just censured; but it is also in addition connected with the great question of modern times, as to whether true knowledge or the knowledge of truth is possible,-which, if answered in the negative, must lead to abandoning the effort. The numerous aspects and reasons and modes of phrase with which external reflection swells the bulk of this question are cleared up in their place: the more external the att.i.tude of understanding in the question, the more diffuse it makes a simple object. At the present place the simple concept of cognition is what confronts the quite general a.s.sumption taken up by the question, viz.

the a.s.sumption that the possibility of true knowledge in general is in dispute, and the a.s.sumption that it is possible for us at our will either to prosecute or to abandon cognition. The concept or possibility of cognition has come out as intelligence itself, as the cert.i.tude of reason: the act of cognition itself is therefore the actuality of intelligence. It follows from this that it is absurd to speak of intelligence and yet at the same time of the possibility or choice of knowing or not. But cognition is genuine, just so far as it realises itself, or makes the concept its own. This nominal description has its concrete meaning exactly where cognition has it. The stages of its realising activity are intuition, conception, memory, &c.: these activities have no other immanent meaning: their aim is solely the concept of cognition (-- 445 note). If they are isolated, however, then an impression is implied that they are useful for something else than cognition, or that they severally procure a cognitive satisfaction of their own; and that leads to a glorification of the delights of intuition, remembrance, imagination. It is true that even as isolated (i.e. as non-intelligent), intuition, imagination, &c. can afford a certain satisfaction: what physical nature succeeds in doing by its fundamental quality-its out-of-selfness,-exhibiting the elements or factors of immanent reason external to each other,-that the intelligence can do by voluntary act, but the same result may happen where the intelligence is itself only natural and untrained. But the _true satisfaction_, it is admitted, is only afforded by an intuition permeated by intellect and mind, by rational conception, by products of imagination which are permeated by reason and exhibit ideas-in a word, by _cognitive_ intuition, cognitive conception, &c. The truth ascribed to such satisfaction lies in this, that intuition, conception, &c. are not isolated, and exist only as "moments" in the totality of cognition itself.

(a) Intuition (Intelligent Perception)(136).

-- 446. The mind which as soul is physically conditioned,-which as consciousness stands to this condition on the same terms as to an outward object,-but which as intelligence _finds itself_ so characterised-is (1) an inarticulate embryonic life, in which it is to itself as it were palpable and has the whole _material_ of its knowledge. In consequence of the immediacy in which it is thus originally, it is in this stage only as an individual and possesses a vulgar subjectivity. It thus appears as mind in the guise of _feeling_.

If feeling formerly turned up (-- 399) as a mode of the _soul's_ existence, the finding of it or its immediacy was in that case essentially to be conceived as a congenital or corporeal condition; whereas at present it is only to be taken abstractly in the general sense of immediacy.

-- 447. The characteristic form of feeling is that though it is a mode of some "affection," this mode is simple. Hence feeling, even should its import be most sterling and true, has the form of casual particularity,-not to mention that its import may also be the most scanty and most untrue.

It is commonly enough a.s.sumed that mind has in its feeling the material of its ideas, but the statement is more usually understood in a sense the opposite of that which it has here. In contrast with the simplicity of feeling it is usual rather to a.s.sume that the primary mental phase is judgment generally, or the distinction of consciousness into subject and object; and the special quality of sensation is derived from an independent _object_, external or internal. With us, in the truth of mind, the mere consciousness point of view, as opposed to true mental "idealism," is swallowed up, and the matter of feeling has rather been supposed already as _immanent_ in the mind.-It is commonly taken for granted that as regards content there is more in feeling than in thought: this being specially affirmed of moral and religious feelings. Now the material, which the mind as it feels is to itself, is _here_ the result and the mature result of a fully organised reason: hence under the head of feeling is comprised all rational and indeed all spiritual content whatever. But the form of selfish singleness to which feeling reduces the mind is the lowest and worst vehicle it can have-one in which it is not found as a free and infinitely universal principle, but rather as subjective and private, in content and value entirely contingent. Trained and sterling feeling is the feeling of an educated mind which has acquired the consciousness of the true differences of things, of their essential relations.h.i.+ps and real characters; and it is with such a mind that this rectified material enters into its feeling and receives this form. Feeling is the immediate, as it were the closest, contact in which the thinking subject can stand to a given content. Against that content the subject re-acts first of all with its particular self-feeling, which though it _may_ be of more sterling value and of wider range than a onesided intellectual standpoint, may just as likely be narrow and poor; and in any case is the form of the particular and subjective. If a man on any topic appeals not to the nature and notion of the thing, or at least to reasons-to the generalities of common sense-but to his feeling, the only thing to do is to let him alone, because by his behaviour he refuses to have any lot or part in common rationality, and shuts himself up in his own isolated subjectivity-his private and particular self.

-- 448. (2) As this immediate finding is broken up into elements, we have the one factor in _Attention_-the abstract _identical_ direction of mind (in feeling, as also in all other more advanced developments of it)-an active self-collection-the factor of fixing it as our own, but with an as yet only nominal autonomy of intelligence. Apart from such attention there is nothing for the mind. The other factor is to invest the special quality of feeling, as contrasted with this inwardness of mind, with the character of something existent, but as a _negative_ or as the abstract otherness of itself. Intelligence thus defines the content of sensation as something that is out of itself, projects it into time and s.p.a.ce, which are the forms in which it is intuitive. To the view of consciousness the material is only an object of consciousness, a relative other: from mind it receives the rational characteristic of being _its very other_ (---- 147, 254).

-- 449. (3) When intelligence reaches a concrete unity of the two factors, that is to say, when it is at once self-collected in this externally existing material, and yet in this self-collectedness sunk in the out-of-selfness, it is _Intuition_ or Mental Vision.

-- 450. At and towards this its own out-of-selfness, intelligence no less essentially directs its attention. In this its immediacy it is an awaking to itself, a recollection of itself. Thus intuition becomes a concretion of the material with the intelligence, which makes it its own, so that it no longer needs this immediacy, no longer needs to find the content.

() Representation (or Mental Idea)(137).

-- 451. Representation is this recollected or inwardised intuition, and as such is the middle between that stage of intelligence where it finds itself immediately subject to modification and that where intelligence is in its freedom, or, as thought. The representation is the property of intelligence; with a preponderating subjectivity, however, as its right of property is still conditioned by contrast with the immediacy, and the representation cannot as it stands be said to _be_. The path of intelligence in representations is to render the immediacy inward, to invest itself with intuitive action in itself, and at the same time to get rid of the subjectivity of the inwardness, and inwardly divest itself of it; so as to be in itself in an externality of its own. But as representation begins from intuition and the ready-found material of intuition, the intuitional contrast still continues to affect its activity, and makes its concrete products still "syntheses," which do not grow to the concrete immanence of the notion till they reach the stage of thought.

(aa) Recollection(138).

-- 452. Intelligence, as it at first recollects the intuition, places the content of feeling in its own inwardness-in a s.p.a.ce and a time of its own.

In this way that content is (1) an _image_ or picture, liberated from its original immediacy and abstract singleness amongst other things, and received into the universality of the ego. The image loses the full complement of features proper to intuition, and is arbitrary or contingent, isolated, we may say, from the external place, time, and immediate context in which the intuition stood.

-- 453. (2) The image is of itself transient, and intelligence itself is as attention its time and also its place, its when and where. But intelligence is not only consciousness and actual existence, but _qua_ intelligence is the subject and the potentiality of its own specialisations. The image when thus kept in mind is no longer existent, but stored up out of consciousness.

To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat e.g. the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inability to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete, still continues _simple_, is what has led people to talk about special fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its existing specialisations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence takes place only in another germ,-the germ of the fruit; intelligence _qua_ intelligence shows the potential coming to free existence in its development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness.

Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this sub-conscious mine, i.e. as the _existent_ universal in which the different has not yet been realised in its separations. And it is indeed this potentiality which is the first form of universality offered in mental representation.

-- 454. (3) An image thus abstractly treasured up needs, if it is to exist, an actual intuition: and what is strictly called Remembrance is the reference of the image to an intuition,-and that as a subsumption of the immediate single intuition (impression) under what is in point of form universal, under the representation (idea) with the same content. Thus intelligence recognises the specific sensation and the intuition of it as what is already its own,-in them it is still within itself: at the same time it is aware that what is only its (primarily) internal image is also an immediate object of intuition, by which it is authenticated. The image, which in the mine of intelligence was only its _property_, now that it has been endued with externality, comes actually into its _possession_. And so the image is at once rendered distinguishable from the intuition and separable from the blank night in which it was originally submerged.

Intelligence is thus the force which can give forth its property, and dispense with external intuition for its existence in it. This "synthesis"

of the internal image with the recollected existence is _representation_ proper: by this synthesis the internal now has the qualification of being able to be presented before intelligence and to have its existence in it.

() Imagination(139).

-- 455. (1) The intelligence which is active in this possession is the _reproductive imagination_, where the images issue from the inward world belonging to the ego, which is now the power over them. The images are in the first instance referred to this external, immediate time and s.p.a.ce which is treasured up along with them. But it is solely in the conscious subject, where it is treasured up, that the image has the individuality in which the features composing it are conjoined: whereas their original concretion, i.e. at first only in s.p.a.ce and time, as a _unit_ of intuition, has been broken up. The content reproduced, belonging as it does to the self-identical unity of intelligence, and an out-put from its universal mine, has a general idea (representation) to supply the link of a.s.sociation for the images which according to circ.u.mstances are more abstract or more concrete ideas.

The so-called _laws of the a.s.sociation of ideas_ were objects of great interest, especially during that outburst of empirical psychology which was contemporaneous with the decline of philosophy. In the first place, it is not _Ideas_ (properly so called) which are a.s.sociated. Secondly, these modes of relation are not _laws_, just for the reason that there are so many laws about the same thing, as to suggest a caprice and a contingency opposed to the very nature of law. It is a matter of chance whether the link of a.s.sociation is something pictorial, or an intellectual category, such as likeness and contrast, reason and consequence. The train of images and representations suggested by a.s.sociation is the sport of vacant-minded ideation, where, though intelligence shows itself by a certain formal universality, the matter is entirely pictorial.-Image and idea, if we leave out of account the more precise definition of those forms given above, present also a distinction in content. The former is the more consciously-concrete idea, whereas the idea (representation), whatever be its content (from image, notion, or idea), has always the peculiarity, though belonging to intelligence, of being in respect of its content given and immediate. It is still true of this idea or representation, as of all intelligence, that it finds its material, as a matter of fact, to _be_ so and so; and the universality which the aforesaid material receives by ideation is still abstract. Mental representation is the mean in the syllogism of the elevation of intelligence, the link between the two significations of self-relatedness-viz. _being_ and _universality_, which in consciousness receive the t.i.tle of object and subject. Intelligence complements what is merely found by the attribution of universality, and the internal and its own by the attribution of being, but a being of its own inst.i.tution. (On the distinction of representations and thoughts, see Introd. to the Logic, -- 20 note.)

Abstraction, which occurs in the ideational activity by which general ideas are produced (and ideas _qua_ ideas virtually have the form of generality), is frequently explained as the incidence of many similar images one upon another and is supposed to be thus made intelligible. If this super-imposing is to be no mere accident and without principle, a force of attraction in like images must be a.s.sumed, or something of the sort, which at the same time would have the negative power of rubbing off the dissimilar elements against each other. This force is really intelligence itself,-the self-identical ego which by its internalising recollection gives the images _ipso facto_ generality, and subsumes the single intuition under the already internalised image (-- 453).

-- 456. Thus even the a.s.sociation of ideas is to be treated as a subsumption of the individual under the universal, which forms their connecting link. But here intelligence is more than merely a general form: its inwardness is an internally definite, concrete subjectivity with a substance and value of its own, derived from some interest, some latent concept or Ideal principle, so far as we may by antic.i.p.ation speak of such. Intelligence is the power which wields the stores of images and ideas belonging to it, and which thus (2) freely combines and subsumes these stores in obedience to its peculiar tenor. Such is creative imagination(140)-symbolic, allegoric, or poetical imagination-where the intelligence gets a definite embodiment in this store of ideas and informs them with its general tone. These more or less concrete, individualised creations are still "syntheses": for the material, in which the subjective principles and ideas get a mentally pictorial existence, is derived from the data of intuition.

-- 457. In creative imagination intelligence has been so far perfected as to need no helps for intuition. Its self-sprung ideas have pictorial existence. This pictorial creation of its intuitive spontaneity is subjective-still lacks the side of existence. But as the creation unites the internal idea with the vehicle of materialisation, intelligence has therein _implicitly_ returned both to identical self-relation and to immediacy. As reason, its first start was to appropriate the immediate datum in itself (---- 445, 455), i.e. to universalise it; and now its action as reason (-- 458) is from the present point directed towards giving the character of an existent to what in it has been perfected to concrete auto-intuition. In other words, it aims at making itself _be_ and be a fact. Acting on this view, it is self-uttering, intuition-producing: the imagination which creates signs.