On Hegel's 'Philosophy of Mind': the self-knowing, actual Idea - part twenty four.

David Proud

Philosopher

Published Jul 29, 2025

+ Follow

'Blue Evening'

by Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,

Knowing that always, exquisitely,

This April twilight on the river

Stirs anguish in the heart of me.

For the fast world in that rare glimmer

Puts on the witchery of a dream,

The straight grey buildings, richly dimmer,

The fiery windows, and the stream

With willows leaning quietly over,

The still ecstatic fading skies . . .

And all these, like a waiting lover,

Murmur and gleam, lift lustrous eyes,

Drift close to me, and sideways bending

Whisper delicious words.

But I Stretch terrible hands, uncomprehending,

Shaken with love; and laugh; and cry.

My agony made the willows quiver;

I heard the knocking of my heart

Die loudly down the windless river,

I heard the pale skies fall apart,

And the shrill stars' unmeaning laughter,

And my voice with the vocal trees

Weeping. And Hatred followed after,

Shrilling madly down the breeze.

In peace from the wild heart of clamour,

A flower in moonlight, she was there,

Was rippling down white ways of glamour

Quietly laid on wave and air.

Her passing left no leaf a-quiver.

Pale flowers wreathed her white, white brows.

Her feet were silence on the river;

And "Hush!" she said, between the boughs.

'Two young English women in the United States speaking around 1900'. Alice Barber Stephens, (1858 – 1932)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831). Philosophy of Mind. Subjective Mind.

C. Psychology, The Mind

§440

'The mind has determined itself into the truth of soul and of consciousness, of that simple immediate totality and of this knowledge, which is now an infinite form and thus not restricted by the content derived from the soul, does not stand in relationship to it as object, but is knowledge of the substantial totality that is neither subjective nor objective. Mind, therefore, sets out only from its own being and is in relationship only with its own determinations'.

'[Remark] Psychology accordingly studies the faculties or universal modes o f activity of the mind as such, intuition, representing, recollecting, etc., desires, etc., disregarding both the content, which in appearance is found in empirical representation, in thinking also and in desire and will, and the forms in which the content occurs, in the soul as a natural determination, and in consciousness itself as an object of consciousness that is present for itself.2 This, however, is not an arbitrary abstraction. Mind itself is this elevation above nature and natural determinacy, and above the involvement with an external object, i.e. above the material element in general; this is what its concept has turned out to be. All it has to do now is to realize this concept of its freedom, i.e. sub late the form of immediacy with which it once more begins. The content that is elevated to intuitions is its sensations; similarly it is its intuitions that are transformed into representations, and its representations that are transformed again into thoughts, etc.'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'Into the truth of soul and of consciousness... ', consult §419 albeit the truth there was the proximate truth of only one item while here mind in a somewhat narrower sense is the truth of two opposing grand scale stages of mind in a somewhat wider sense. Soul and consciousness were opposite to each other for soul is a simple immediate totality, a self-enclosed whole, while consciousness is knowledge (Wissen) of an object distinct from itself, an object the content of which was derived from the soul: consult §413. Mind also is knowledge but it is aware of itself, not of an external object. And so it is infinite form, the infinity that goes round in a circle, not on for ever. it is not restricted by anything else, only concerned with the mind itself, and so it reverts in a way to a soul-like totality, only now it is a substantial and not a simple immediate totality. Because it is, unlike the soul, aware of itself, it is neither subjective nor objective, or maybe both subjective and objective. Mind is a kind of round trip to the soul on a higher level, the negation of its negation, consciousness: consult §§381, 425. What is here said of consciousness is applicable only to consciousness as such (§§418–23), and not to consciousness in the wider sense in which it includes self-consciousness. This highlights a troublesome relationship between phenomenology and psychology: consult §§440, 446.

Psychologie is, through its etymology, the study of the soul (the Greek psuchë), but here it is the study of the mind. Consult §378. In appearance, that is to say, in real life, people do not merely intuit, represent, desire, and so on, they intuit, represent, desire particular things, such as a house, a drink, and so on. Psychology disregards such content and concentrates merely upon the faculties (Vermögen) or universal modes of activity, but psychology’s putting to one side the forms is not so simple a matter, for consciousness perceives a tree and psychology ignores the actual tree, the object, it is interested merely in the faculty of perception or the activity of perceiving. Furthermore it disregards the occurrence of a content as a natural determination in the soul, as a sheer sensation not yet projected as an independent object, and yet the soul does not have the faculties that Hegel refers to. It does not intuit, represent, think, or will and in this instance Hegel is not simply ignoring the form of ‘natural determination but is assuming that the content does not take this form. A question arises as to whether he is treating the soul and consciousness differently and whether he is in effect assuming that the mind is a conscious mind, not merely a soul, and only ignoring the specific independent objects that a conscious mind has. But he is not discriminating in this manner for he believes that the mind has stopped, or is on the way to stopping, to be merely consciousness, just as it has stopped to be merely a soul. It halts being consciousness since it thinks, as reason, that its objects are not independent of itself, but are at bottom identical to itself, that they are imbued with its own thoughts, and because as the mind ascends to higher faculties, such as thought, it becomes increasingly independent of external objects: consult §439. Although Hegel does discriminate between the content and the forms, the content is simply ignored (consult §440), and the forms are sublated. .

The concept of mind involves its freedom, its elevation above nature and external objects, but to begin with the mind does not fully accord with its concept, any more than an acorn is an oak-tree or an infant an adult, hence the faculties of the mind form a hierarchy that ascends away from dependence on nature and external objects, the form of immediacy, towards freedom from them. Near the bottom are its sensations and sensations are natural determinations of the soul, they are emphatically its sensations, the sensations of the individual mind and they are simply subjective, with no objective or interpersonal status. These are elevated to intuitions (consult §§446). These are still its intuitions, yet less emphatically so, because its (seine) is not italicized (albeit I have italicised it) and my intuition depends upon the presence of an external object, yet others would have an intuition of it also if they were present. Intuitions are converted into representations (consult §451), general ideas which, though they depend upon the prior intuition of objects, do not depend upon the current presence of an object, and which are shared with others, and so no longer its. Finally, representations are turned into thoughts (consult §465), which not only do not depend upon the immediate presence of an object, but are relatively independent of our past encounters with objects and if our intuitions of objects, even our representations, had been quite different, our thoughts would still be the same. And so mind itself gradually extricates itself from what Hegel pays no mind, sensory content, nature, and objects, and here as in other places Hegel is inclined to speak as if mind develops over time when in this context it does not.

____________________________________________

Doux, doux, l'amour est doux

Douce est ma vie, ma vie dans tes bras

Doux, doux, l'amour est doux

Douce est ma vie, ma vie près de toi

Bleu, bleu l'amour est bleu

Berce mon cœur, mon cœur amoureux

Bleu, bleu, l'amour est bleu

Bleu comme le ciel qui joue dans tes yeux

Comme l'eau

Comme l'eau qui court

Moi, mon cœur

Court après ton amour

Gris, gris, l'amour est gris

Pleure mon cœur lorsque tu t'en vas ,

Gris, gris, le ciel est gris

Tombe la pluie quand tu n'es plus là

Le vent, le vent gémit

Pleure le vent lorsque tu t'en vas

'L'amour est bleu' - Vicky Leandros:

____________________________________________

There are two possible interpretations we can make. The mind has knowledge (Wissen) of itself, the knowledge is boundless in that it does not come up against any barrier in its exploration of itself, it embraces all objectivity in the sense that all the objectivity that concerns it, namely the objectivity of the mind itself, is immanent in it. Or, the mind has, at least potentially, knowledge of everything, because everything is somehow immanent in the mind.

Hegel supports a watered down version of interpretation the second interpretation in §440, that the mind is confident that that it will find itself in the world, and so on. But nothing thus far has been said to warrant such confidence or his claim that the mind has it. That the mind has to seek reason in the world, that it will find it, or that it is confident that it will find it, such evident claims do not follow in any evident way from the fact that the mind knows itself or from the fact (consult §440) that the higher phases of the mind are relatively independent of sensory material. Reason, the ‘unity of the subjective and the objective, may be realized within the self-knowing mind without being realized between the mind and the world. But Hegel’s idea is that as the mind ascends to thought, that is to the concept, it becomes free of objects not only in the sense that it withdraws from them but also in the sense that it finds its own thoughts to be determinations of the essence of things. Consult §439. The mind must free, extricate itself from objects before it can take them over. The biblical reference is to Genesis 2: 23: ‘And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’.

Consult §440 on mind as a unification of soul and consciousness. Hegel refers here to the mind’s knowledge not just of itself but of any object of which we can be conscious. The mind aims to turn the beings (das Seiende, what is, with the suggestion that it is just there) of consciousness into something soulful (ein Seelenhaftes),that is, into something mental or spiritual, soulful is used here rather than mental in view of the mind’s relation to the soul. For symmetry's Hegel adds that it turns the soulful into an object, albeit consciousness has already done that. The mind does this by discerning in objects the determinations of free mind which are both subjective (its own thoughts, consult§439, the thoughts that it gradually extricates from the material (das Materielle, consult §440) ), and objective (determinations of the essence of things, consult §439). When the object is seen in this way it is true in the sense of corresponding to its concept (consult §437) and the mind’s knowledge is true, because its own thoughts correspond exactly to the transformed object. Indeed the mind and the object are really the same, because both involve the same determinations. And so the mind is the self-knowing (sich wissende) truth.

The doctrine Hegel criticizes is not global scepticism, but rather theological or metaphysical scepticism. Such is not merely a modern phenomenon. Aquinas believed that we can only know what God is not, not what he is, a view which, albeit not a thoroughgoing scepticism, Hegel wants to jettison. It is not evident that Hegel has refuted theological, or even more extensive, scepticism for were we to allow that the mind does discern its own thoughts in such objects as it encounters, it would not follow that there is no range of objects that evade its conceptual grasp. Suppose, for instance, I were dreaming, but retained my power of discerning thoughts in the dream-objects, then the true objects would be unknown to me. Two possible responses: The unknown objects would not be true or the truth because if they remain unconceptualized by me, they do not correspond to their concept and are thus untrue. And to this the sceptic may well respond that by true he or she does not mean ‘corresponding to your concepts’ in this sense’. Secondly, As soon as I become aware of the possibility of objects beyond my conceptual reach they ipso facto become objects of my thinking and then I can go on to conceptualize them and if I cannot get very far in conceptualizing them, this means that there is not very much to these objects, objects, my objects, cannot exceed my conceptual reach so the objects are thin, and therefore not true. To which the sceptic can respond that he or she does not see why objects, even objects about which they can think sufficiently for them to be their objects should not exceed their conceptual reach.

____________________________________________

Blue blue my world is blue

Blue is my world now I'm without you

Gray gray my life is gray

Cold is my heart since you went away

Red red my eyes are red

Crying for you alone in my bed

Green green my jealous heart

I doubted you and now we're apart

When we met how the bright sun shone

Then love died now the rainbow is gone

Black black the nights I've known

Longing for you so lost and alone

Gone gone the love we knew

Blue is my world now I'm without you

Paul Mauriat - Love Is Blue (1968)

____________________________________________

'Zusatz. Free mind, or mind as such, is reason as it divides into, on the one hand, pure infinite form, boundless knowledge, and, on the other hand, the object identical with this knowledge. Here, this knowledge still has no other content than its own self, with the determination that the knowledge embraces within itself all objectivity, that consequently the object is not something coming to the mind from outside and incomprehensible to it.4 Mind is thus the absolutely universal certainty of itself, free of any opposition whatever. Therefore, it possesses the confidence that in the world it will find its own self, that the world must be friendly to it, that, just as Adam said of Eve that she was flesh of his flesh, so mind has to seek in the world reason of its own reason. We have found reason to be the unity of the subjective and objective, the unity of the concept existing for its own self and of reality. Since therefore mind is the absolute certainty of itself, is knowledge of reason, it is knowledge of the unity of the subjective and objective, knowledge that its object is the concept and the concept is objective. Free mind thereby shows itself to be the unity of the two universal stages of development considered in the first and second main parts of the theory of subjective mind, namely, of the soul, this simple spiritual substance or immediate mind, and of consciousness or appearing mind, the self-separation of this substance. For the determinations of free mind have subjectivity in common with those of the soul, and objectivity in common with those of consciousness. The principle of free mind is to posit the being of consciousness as something soulful, and conversely to make the soulful into something objective. Free mind stands, like consciousness, as one side confronting the object, and is at the same time both sides and therefore, like the soul, a totality. Accordingly, whereas the soul was the truth only as an immediate unconscious totality, and whereas in consciousness, by contrast, this totality was divided into the I and the object external to it, so that there knowledge still had no truth, the free mind is to be cognized as the self-knowing truth'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

_____________________________________

Hegel's footnote:

Therefore, when people assert that we cannot know the truth, this is the extreme of blasphemy. People are not aware of what they are saying here. If they were aware of it they would deserve to have the truth withdrawn from them. The modern despair of the knowability of truth is alien to all speculative philosophy as well as to all genuine religiosity. A poet no less religious than thoughtful, Dante, expressed in such a pregnant fashion his belief in the knowability of truth, that we permit ourselves to convey his words here. He says in the Fourth Canto of the Paradiso, verses 124-30:

Io veggio ben, che giarnmai non si sazia

Nostro intelletto, se'! V er no lo illustra

Di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia.

Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra,

Tosto che giunro !'ha; e giunger puollo;Se

non, ciascun desio sarebbe frustra.

[I see that nought can fill the mind's vast space,

Unless Truth's light dwell there as denizen,

Beyond which nothing true can find a place.

In that it rests, like wild beast in its den,

When it attains it; and it can attain,

Else frustrate would be all desires of men.

- Dean Plumptre's translation]

_____________________________________

The scepticism Hegel is not of the brain-in-a-vat sort (whereby a computer is simulating reality) or Cartesian scepticism (the evil demon is a similar thought experiment.) The brain-in-a-vat sceptic can without trouble describe the true state of affairs unknown to the hypothetical subject, the subject is a brain in a vat manipulated by scientists to have our everyday beliefs about its surroundings, beliefs of the same type, albeit different in detail, from the beliefs that the scientists have about their surroundings. But for the theological sceptic the truth is of a somewhat different order from our everyday beliefs, different enough that the sceptic can barely describe it, at least in non-metaphorical terms. If the sceptic can describe, that is, conceptualize, it, then Hegel is on his way to establishing what he wants. But only on his way and not there yet, since he still needs to negotiate the hiatus between conceptualization and knowledge, knowledge that things are that way.

Consult §439. Verification (Bewahrheitung) here does not mean ascertaining or proving the truth of in the ordinary sense for the deficiency of mind’s certainty of the identity of the subjective and objective is not that it may be wrong but rather that it has not yet carried out the identification in detail. As one might be quite certain that, for instance, a chess problem has a solution of a certain type, without yet having worked out the solution in detail. The verification involves the following steps. First, the identity between the subjective and objective is developed into an actual difference (Unterschied). That is to say, in its ascent from sensation and intuition to thought, the mind progressively disengages itself from the object, opening up an apparent hiatus between the subjective and objective. Secondly, when this gap attains its greatest extent then it closes up again, not to give the original formal identity, but the sort of identity that unites both formal identity and difference, an identity-in-difference. And thirdly, the mind hence becomes a differentiated totality, not the simple certainty with which we started and these steps exemplify the general principle that to grasp something properly we have first to distance ourselves from it. Consult §389.

'However, knowledge of truth does not itself initially have the form of truth, for at the stage of development now reached, the knowledge is still something abstract, the formal identity of the subjective and objective. Only when this identity has developed into an actual difference and has made itself into the identity of itself and its difference, when mind thus emerges as a totality differentiated within itself determinately, only then has that certainty achieved its verification'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'Two Women Talking', Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919

§441

'The soul is finite, in so far as it is determined immediately or by nature. 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 determinacy in its knowledge, it is finite, that is, in virtue of its immediacy, and, what is the same thing, in virtue of being subjective or as the concept. And it makes no difference, what is determined as its concept, and what as its reality. If utterly infinite objective reason is posited as its concept, then the reality is knowledge or intelligence; or if knowledge is taken as the concept, then its reality is this reason and the realization of the knowledge, making reason its own. Hence the finitude of mind consists in the fact that knowledge does not grasp the being-in-and-for-itself of its reason, or, equally, in the fact that reason has not attained to full manifestation in knowledge. Reason at the same time is only infinite reason in so far as it is absolute freedom, hence presupposes itself in advance of its knowledge and thereby makes itself finite and is the eternal movement of sublating this immediacy, of comprehending its own self and being knowledge of reason'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Hegel generously provides us with two alternate accounts of finitude.

Something is finite if and only if it is bounded or limited by something else: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' 92.

Something is finite if and only if its reality fails to correspond to its concept.

These two accounts are connected because if something fails to correspond to its concept, then it is not fully determined by its concept, but by something else, and conversely if it is determined by something else, it does not fully correspond to its concept, because it is not determined wholly by its concept. Even an oak-tree is not fully determined by the concept of an oak but also by other things that interact with it. The first account explains the finitude of soul and consciousness, they are determined or limited, respectively, by nature and by an object. The second account is more prominent in the finitude of mind. Mind has a determinacy (Bestimmtheit) in its knowledge (Wissen), that is to say, the content of its intuitions, and so on is determined from without. This is finitude of the first type, but it is the same thing as finitude of the second type, an odd coupling between the concept of mind and its reality (Realität). The odd coupling is between objective reason, that is, the mind’s own thoughts constituting the essence of things (consult §439), and the mind’s own knowledge or intelligence (Intelligenz). The mind does not at its current level of awareness or knowledge discern its own thoughts in the nature of things and so one may view this as a couple not meant to be together, concept and reality, but it makes no difference which is taken as which. We may invoke an analogy Hegel uses elsewhere, the failure of correspondence between an acorn and the oak-tree that is to emerge from it, this is a failure of correspondence between concept and reality, and we can raise the question which is the concept and which is the reality. There are reasons for giving either answer as the acorn is the current reality or state of the plant while the oak is the concept or plan that the reality is striving to realize, and the acorn is the concept of the plant, since it embodies the concept or plan of the full-grown oak, the oak is the reality that will, but does not yet, fulfil the concept and the reason why either factor can assume the role of the concept is that the concept is both the fully developed entity and the plan of the fully developed entity that is implicit in its initial stage and, in a way, in every later stage of it.

The initial stage or immediacy of the mind involves both its current knowledge corresponding to the acorn and the abstract or indeterminate certainty that its reason is in the world corresponding to the concept in the acorn: consult §440. Whichever of these, knowledge or certainty of reason, is taken as the concept, the mind is subjective or as the concept (als der Begriff ). One may also say that it makes no difference whether the mind is taken as subjective or objective, concept or reality given that knowledge and reason albeit not the mere certainty of reason can equally be taken as reality. We may then ask why it is that the mind cannot be taken as reality. Perhaps since the concept does not refer only to the initial stage of the mind in contrast to its developed state but in addition to the subjectivity of the mind in contrast to the objectivity of the world and things in it. To begin with the mind is distinct from the world as well as undeveloped and upon being fully developed it ceases to be merely subjective and becomes both subjective and objective, narrowing the hiatus between itself and the world. The oak-analogy limps somewhat here as the full-grown oak cannot be said to sublate the distinction between itself and its surroundings.

Reason is infinite, not bounded or conditioned by anything else for if it simply emerged at a certain stage of mind from preceding stages, it would not be infinite, because it would be dependent upon these preceding stages hence it has to generate itself, or rather be entirely ungenerated, and so absolute freedom, not conditioned or dependent freedom. And so it presupposes itself in advance of its knowledge (sich ihrem Wissen voraussetzt). Voraussetzen is to presuppose, assume, but literally to place ahead, in advance and so reason both takes itself as a presupposition and places itself in advance of its knowledge, that is to say the mind’s current state of knowledge, now regarded as belonging to, since generated by, reason, albeit it is conceivable yet not likely, that its knowledge means ‘knowledge of it, viz. of reason. In either case, reason makes itself finite (sich verendlicht), that is to say, becomes a particular state of knowledge and then strives to overcome this finite state, comprehending (begreifen) and becoming aware of itself.

'Zusatz. As we have seen, free mind is by its concept perfect unity of the subjective and objective, of form and content, consequently absolute totality and therefore infinite, eternal. We have cognized it as knowledge of reason. Because free mind is this, because it has the rational for its object, it must be described as the infinite being-for-self of subjectivity. Therefore it belongs to the concept of mind that within it the absolute unity of the subjective and objective be not merely in itself, but also for itself, and therefore object of knowledge. On account of this conscious harmony prevailing between knowledge and its object, between form and content, a harmony that excludes all separation and so all alteration, one can call the mind, in accordance with its truth, the eternal, as well as the perfectly blessed and holy. For only that may be called holy which is rational and knows of the rational. Therefore, neither external nature nor mere sensation has a right to that name. Immediate sensation which has not been purified by rational knowing is burdened with the determinacy of the natural, the contingent, of being-external-to-its-own-self, of falling asunder. Therefore, in the content of sensation and of natural things infinity consists only in something formal, abstract. By contrast, mind is, by its concept or its truth, infinite or eternal in this concrete and real sense: that it remains absolutely self-identical in its difference. That is why we must declare mind to be the image of God, to be the divinity of man'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The account has theological overtones, recalling God’s making himself finite as Christ: consult §§441, 568. But to come down to earth the full-grown oak presupposes itself in advance of every particular stage in its growth, because it, or its plan, is embedded in the acorn, a completed book presupposes itself in advance of every stage in its completion, because the conception of the book is, at least in rough outline, implicit in the author’s mind, impelling the author on from one finite paragraph to the next until the conception is realized. Why is the movement eternal? Because that while the mind, the plant, or the author’s manuscript undergo a change or development that is driven by the plan in the mind, the acorn, or the author, the plan itself does or need not change along with its progressive realization and this would not entail that reason or the plan is everlasting, it might well have arisen at some time, only not in the course of its own realization. An extra meaning may be that reason is everlasting or, more likely, timelessly eternal, a logical structure that by some means generates its own physical and/or psychological embodiment.

Hegel describes the final form of mind as it appears in §577 where the mind thinks about pure thoughts, and is Aristotle’s God or the Hegelian logician and the thoughts involved in the mind’s thinking are the same as the thoughts it thinks about, so the subjective (form) coincides with the objective (content): consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §133 on form and content. Another reason for the unity of form and content is that the thoughts are now devoid of empirical content so that they have no content except the content determined by their form; this is why the mind is free. The mind is now an absolute totality, infinite in the sense that it circles back on itself in seclusion from the external world. And further, consult §440, the same thoughts constitute the essence of things but that type of objectivity is not immediately in play here for the mind is here the infinite being-for-self of subjectivity, that is to say it descends into the depths of its subjectivity disregarding the external world rather than discerning reason in it. (But see below). The mind is eternal in the sense of timeless rather than everlasting and the thoughts mind thinks are timeless, hence the inference is that so is the mind that thinks them. So it is that all along even at its lower stages mind involves this subjective objective unity implicitly or in itself but it only becomes for itself when the mind fulfils its concept.

There are two apparently distinct theological doctrines to be confronted, that nature is the highest manifestation of divinity (See 'Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics') and that the appropriate vehicle for religious content is feeling or sensation (consult §380), with the same objections, that they involve contingency, formal, abstract infinity of the sort that goes on for ever, and so on. It is mind rather than nature that is the image of God, and what makes it so is not its nature-burdened sensations, but its capacity for thinking about its own thoughts. This is the mind’s concept, its truth or fulfilment, the oak-tree for which sensation and other stages of mind are mere preliminaries. That mind is the image of God does not imply that it is second-rate in comparison to a deity transcending it. Aristotle’s God, in the account quoted after §577, certainly resembles the Hegelian logician.

Unlike an oak, the mind develops by coming to know (weiss) what it already is and this is why the expression for itself means, when applied to the mind, both actually, in contrast to potentially, and consciously, in contrast to unwittingly. Consult cf. §383. Hence mind is in absolute agreement with its concept if and only if it has grasped its concept thus mind has a vague certainty of reason, and hence of its own concept, yet no definite cognition (Erkenntnis: consult §445) of the rationality of the object (Gegenstandes). Here the object is in the external world and the mind proceeds thus: To begin with it peels off the contingency, and so on of external objects, and reveals their rational structure and this frees the mind from the Other, so that it can now contemplate the rational structure of its own thoughts independently of external objects: consult §441. Consult §441 where it is reason that makes itself finite and then sublates its finitude. The finite mind is a contradiction, an untruth, yet this does not imply its non-existence. The mind is like a princess who disguises herself as a pauper, assuming an appearance that does not accord with its essence and it may be supposed that the disguise will make her a better queen, with insight into her subjects’ condition and empathy for them, but she needs to shed the disguise prior to mounting the throne. The limits (Schranken) of reason involve a different kind of contradiction, a flat contradiction, wooden iron or a square circle and such a contradictory entity cannot exist, reason has no limits. Hegel does not refer to wooden iron-contradictions as contradictions. A princess, unlike reason, is limited in power, but her power is not limited in the way that a pauper’s is.

The I of consciousness develops and as it does so its objects alter too for the object alters because of the alteration of the I, but the I does not see its own alteration or its effect on the object, it thinks that the object alters independently of itself, rather like the man who prefers the older woman even when he reaches the point when the older woman is the same age as he or even younger. Only we, speculative philosophers, can discern the logical structure of such alteration: consult §§413, 414. The objects of the free mind alter also but now the mind knows that it is responsible for their alteration, that it makes objectivity subjective by discerning thoughts in things, and makes subjectivity objective by realizing its will in the world. For the mind there is nothing immediate, no sheer facts that just have to be accepted as they are; everything can be explained as the work of mind itself. It is not so evident even in the extended account of the 'Phenomenology of Spirit' why the I or consciousness under consideration is unaware of its own role in the change of its object from, for instance, the object of sensory certainty to the object of perception. We tend to attribute the change from one form of consciousness or outlook to another to the emergence of new empirical information and this requires nothing more of us than a tendency to look for empirical information. No empirical information can qualify as evidence for a new outlook unless we are ready to see it as evidence of something for which we are already somehow prepared, for instance, forces, other people, or the historical past. The outlook is always very much underdetermined by the empirical data and another factor may be that the I of consciousness is insufficiently reflective to ask why it moves from one outlook to another or to suppose that it contributes anything to the change.

'The finitude of mind must not, however, be taken for something absolutely fixed, but must be recognized as a mode of the appearance of mind, which is nevertheless infinite by its essence. This implies that the finite mind is immediately a contradiction, an untruth, and at the same time is the process of sublating this untruth. This struggling with the finite, the overcoming of the limit, constitutes the stamp of the divine in the human mind and forms a necessary stage of the eternal mind. Therefore, if one speaks of the limits of reason, this is worse than it would be to speak of wooden iron. It is infinite mind itself that presupposes its own self as soul, as well as consciousness, thereby making itself finite, but equally posits as sublated this home-made presupposition, this finitude, the implicitly sublated opposition of consciousness to the soul on the one hand, and on the other hand to an external object. This sublation has a different form in free mind than in consciousness. For consciousness the progressive determination of the I assumes the semblance of an alteration of the object independent of the activity of the I, with the consequence that in the case of consciousness the logical consideration of this alteration fell only in us, whereas it is for the free mind that the mind itself produces from itself the developing and altering determinations of the object, that the mind itself makes objectivity subjective and subjectivity objective. The determinations of which it is aware are of course inherent in the object, but at the same time posited by mind. In free mind there is nothing only immediate. Therefore, when people speak of 'facts of consciousness' which for the mind are what is primary and must remain an unmediated given for it, it is to be noted on this that of course at the standpoint of consciousness a great deal of such given material is found, but the free mind has to demonstrate and so explain these facts as deeds of the mind, as a content posited by it, not leave them as independent things given to it'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Facts (Tatsachen) of consciousness are also referred to disparagingly in §444 and 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§16 and 64. The expression was employed not by Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) but by his followers, such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold, (1757 – 1823), who spoke, in his 'Über das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens', 1791, both of the fact of consciousness and of facts of consciousness:

‘We know, not by any rational inference, but by mere reflection on the fact of consciousness, i.e. by comparison of what occurs in consciousness, that: the representation in consciousness is distinguished by the subject from the object and subject and related to both’.

- 'On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge'

But were we to endorse this assertion it is not, as Reinhold suppose, a solid given, but something brought about and explicable by the mind. Wilhelm Traugott Krug, (1770 – 1842), also appealed to facts of consciousness. In his 'Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften', 1832), he says that the origin of consciousness is entirely inexplicable, but that we can analyse consciousness:

‘... the philosopher discerns and exhibits the facts of his consciousness, compares them with one another, analyses them into their constituents, which are nothing but the I’s activities or modes of expression, and finally seeks and exhibits the laws on which these activities depend, as well as the faculties from which they stem’.

- 'General Dictionary of the Philosophical Sciences'

Hence for Krug the facts of consciousness do not remain an unmediated given albeit Hegel can contend that he does what Krug considers as impossible, that is to say to disclose the origin of consciousness itself. Hegel uses consciousness in a more restricted sense than Krug. For Krug the facts of consciousness are explained not by natural consciousness but rather by philosophical consciousness but for Hegel, consciousness itself cannot explain the given material, only the free mind can do so. Hegel limits consciousness to consciousness of an object conceived as independent of oneself and a philosopher as such is not conscious in this sense.

The final sentence includes a pun that cannot be translated, the word for fact, Tatsache, is formed from Tat, deed, action, and Sache, thing. These facts, Tatsachen, have to be considered as deed, Taten, of the mind, not left as Sachen, things.

'Two ladies chatting', Frederic Soulacroix, (1858–1933)

§442

'The progression of mind is development, in so far as its existence, knowledge, has within itself, as its kernel and purpose, determinedness in and for itself, i.e. the rational, and so the activity of translation is purely only a formal transition into manifestation and therein a return into itself. In so far as knowledge is encumbered with its initial determinacy, is at first only abstract or formal, the goal of mind is to produce objective fulfilment, thus at the same time producing the freedom of its knowledge'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Progression is Fortschreiten, advance; development is Entwicklung, literally unfolding, unrolling. So a progression that is a development is an unfolding of what is already latent in the developing entity, as an acorn unfolds into an oak. Knowledge (Wissen) is the mind’s Existenz, that is its stepping forth or emergence: consult §§403, 416. The progression of knowledge is development, because knowledge involves determinedness [or being-determined] in and for itself (das an und für sich Bestimmtsein), that is it is determined autonomously, not by entirely external things. This is for the reason it involves rationality or the rational, which itself develops autonomously. To bring in a partial analogy, pure mathematics develops without much in the way of external input, and so therefore does the mind of the pure mathematician when he or she is doing pure mathematics. Translation is Übersetzen, usually translation from one language into another, but also carrying or ferrying across, usually across water. These are two different words, pronounced with a different stress, but orthographically identical. The advance from one stage of mind to the next is a manifestation of what is already implicit in the mind or in knowledge, something like a translation or deciphering of the code inscribed in the mind, and so it is a return into itself, a return to what is implicit in the mind. The initial determinacy of knowledge is quite different from its determinedness in and for itself, it is the alien object with which the mind is encumbered at its lowest level, the object of sensation or intuition: consult §440. Knowledge is at that stage only abstract or formal, because it operates on content given to it from outside without producing content of its own. To produce (hervorzubringen, literally bring forth) objective fulfilment (Erfüllung, also filling, approximating to content) also gives freedom of knowledge because knowledge is no longer dependent upon what is externally given to it.

In anthropology (consult §§388–412) human faculties develop successively in the individual. In psychology, the study of the faculties of the adult, they are not considered as developing successively over time. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–80), in particular in his Traité des sensations, 1754, regarded the faculties in the order in which they supposedly emerged in the individual and attempted, in the manner of John Locke, (1632 – 1704), to reduce every mental activity to sensations, the earliest mental phenomenon. Hegel supports his objective of demonstrating the intelligible unity of the mind and the necessary interdependence of its activities, and also his belief in the primacy of sensation, but makes a couple of objections. First, the order in which faculties or activities emerge in us is not the key to explaining them. Second, sensations are the initial foundation (anfangende Grundlage) of our other powers, the empirically primary (das empirische Erste), but not (as Condillac maintains) their substantial foundation. Sensations are subjected to negative, not just affirmative treatment; they are spiritualized and sublated: consult §440. To deal with this needs richer categories than those deployed by Condillac.

1, The statue limited to the sense of smell can only know odours. Our statue’s knowledge, limited to the sense of smell, can extend only to smells. It can no more have ideas of extension, shape, or of anything outside of itself, or outside of its sensations, than it can have of colour, sound, or taste.

2. It is, in relation to itself, only the odours that it smells. If we present it with a rose, to us it will be a statue that smells a rose; but to itself, it will be the smell itself of this flower.

Thus it will be the smell of a rose, a carnation, a jasmine, or a violet according to the objects that act on its sense organ. In short, smells are for it only its own modifications or states. And it cannot think of itself as anything else since these are the only sensations of which it is capable.

3. It has no idea whatever of matter. Let philosophers to whom it seems obvious that everything is material put themselves in its place for a moment and let them imagine how they could suspect that there exists something that resembles what we call 'matter'.

4. One cannot be more limited in knowledge. Thus we can already convince ourselves that it would be sufficient to increase or diminish the number of our senses to cause us to make judgments quite different from those that are now so natural to us. And our statue limited to the sense of smell can give us an idea of the class of beings whose knowledge is the least extensive. -

- Condillac, 'Treatise on the Sensations'

Hegel does not believe that mental activities are expressions (Aüsserungen) of forces or powers, that is, faculty psychology (consult Encyclopaedia Logic' §136). This view takes insufficient account of the mind’s unity and even if each power or activity is useful for some other power or activity, the powers remain operating on behalf of others and no explanation is given of the ultimate purpose (Endzweck). The heart is Gemüt, the seat of emotions, and therefore contrasting with the Intelligenz. There are at least two objections to raise here. First, an ad hominem objection whereby faculty psychology purports to give functional or teleological explanations of each faculty in terms of its service to other faculties, for instance that perception, memory, and intelligence require each other, and yet that does not explain the faculties as a whole nor, ultimately, each individual faculty. Questions arise as to why we have perception, memory, and intelligence and why we have memory, rather than lacking perception, memory and intelligence altogether. Faculty psychology does not answer these questions and maybe it can disclaim any intention of answering them. But a second objection is that Hegel believes that we can answer these questions in teleological terms. The concept, the logical structure underlying the mind as well as the world as a whole, is striving towards knowledge of itself, gradually shedding the immediacy or subjectivity (sensations, and so on) with which it is initially encumbered. That is to say, the mind is impelled by the concept to think about the concept, to study logic, a bit like Aristotle’s God: consult. The faculties are stages on the way to this ultimate purpose and are ordered for this purpose, not just distinct from each other: consult §440.

An advantage with Hegel’s theory is that it takes account of the capacities of the psychologist or the philosopher, not merely our everyday capacities, and philosophy of mind concludes with an account of the capacities of the philosopher of mind, especially the logical expertise that informs the philosophy of mind. And yet even if this account is the ultimate purpose of the philosopher of mind, a question arises as to why we should consider it as the ultimate purpose of the mind or of the concept. And as to why the mind should have one ultimate purpose rather than several or none at all. Nonetheless such teleology is deeply ingrained in Hegel’s thought and we need to acknowledge it in order to understand him.

When the mind thinks pure, that is to say non-empirical, thoughts, as it does in §§465–8, it provides itself with its own content, namely the thoughts about which it thinks. But its productions remain thoughts, more or less ideal, because it is not yet objective mind (consult §§483) and it has not yet realized its thoughts in the world. In advancing to the level of pure thinking the mind gradually distances itself from external objects and content, is the infinite negativity of them: consult §440. The mind produces not only its own pure thoughts but also all content, all reality, that is to say, the objects of lower faculties such as perceptible things, whose externality and independence of the mind is a semblance (Schein) to be sublated. This claim is not so evidently entailed by the first claim for that the mind can ignore external objects does not immediately entail that their externality is an illusion, that they are really created by the mind. As §443 makes clear, the mind progressively imposes its thoughts on, or discerns them in, external objects and in that manner eliminates their externality. A problem arises in that even upon ascending to the heights of science, lower levels of the mind persist. Upon being greeted on the internet by a certain person I know it is K.F. and thankfully not my ex who wouldn't greet me anyway other than via a low flying object which option is not available to her online. The point being that however thought-laden my perception of K.F. might be my ability to discriminate between K.F. and other people arguably involves an ineliminable externally given content.

'Zusatz. The existence of mind, namely knowledge, is the absolute form, i.e. the form having the content within itself, or the concept that exists as concept and gives itself its own reality. That the content or object is for knowledge a given content or object, coming to it from outside, is therefore only a semblance, by sublation of which the mind proves to be what it is in itself, namely, absolute self determination, the infinite negativity of what is external to mind and to itself, the ideality that produces all reality from itself The advance of mind has, therefore, only this meaning: that this semblance be sublated, that knowledge prove itself to be the form that develops all content from itself. Thus the activity of mind, far from being restricted to a mere acceptance of the given, must, on the contrary, be called a creative activity, though the productions of the mind, in so far as it is only the subjective mind, do not '. yet acquire the form of immediate actuality but remain more or less ideal'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'The New Necklace', William McGregor Paxton, (1869 – 1941)

Dedicated to my muse. 🌹

Speaking of thought laden perceptions of K.F: 💙

Since she loves

We've been out of style

For a while

If there's anything I can do

To make you smile

Doesn't matter what you say

Because no one could love you the way I do

The way I do

Love is blue