Hegel's Philosophy of Mind

Hegel's Philosophy of Mind

377. The knowledge of Mind is the highest and hardest, just because it is the most concrete of sciences. The significance of that absolute commandment, Know thyselfwhether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utteranceis not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine realityof what is essentially and ultimately true and realof mind as the true and essential being. Equally little is it the purport of mental philosophy to teach what is called knowledge of menthe knowledge whose aim is to detect the peculiarities, passions, and foibles of other men, and lay bare what are called the recesses of the human heart. Information of this kind is, for one thing, meaningless, unless on the assumption that we know the universalman as man, and, that always must be, as mind. And for another, being only engaged with casual, insignificant and untrue aspects of mental life, it fails to reach the underlying essence of them allthe mind itself. 378. Pneumatology, or, as it was also called, Rational Psychology, has been already alluded to in the Introduction to the Logic as an abstract and generalising metaphysic of the subject. Empirical (or inductive) psychology, on the other hand, deals with the concrete mind: and, after the revival of the sciences, when observation and experience had been made the distinctive methods for the study of concrete reality, such psychology was worked on the same lines as other sciences. In this way it came about that the metaphysical theory was kept outside the inductive science, and so prevented from getting any concrete embodiment or detail: whilst at the same time the inductive science clung to the conventional common-sense metaphysic, with its analysis into forces, various activities, &c., and rejected any attempt at a speculative treatment. The books of Aristotle on the Soul, along with his discussions on its special aspects and states, are for this reason still by far the most admirable, perhaps even the sole, work of philosophical value on this topic. The main aim of a philosophy of mind can only be to re-introduce unity of idea and principle into the theory of mind, and so re-interpret the lesson of those Aristotelian books. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 39064
Author: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Release Date: Mar 5, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Wallace, William, 1844-1897