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Hegel on Others and the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Frances Berenson
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Extract

Hegel, in offering his account of Other Minds, claims that his way of conducting the enquiry is the only philosophically significant way. I shall attempt to bring out certain profound insights in this area on Hegel's part, but I shall also argue that his view of Man leaves out of consideration some of the most important aspects of what is essentially human.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 57 , Issue 219 , January 1982 , pp. 77 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1982

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References

1 G. W. F., Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).Google Scholar

2 Op. cit., note I, 1.

3 Op. cit., note I, 11.

4 Op. cit., note I, 221.

5 Op. cit., note I, 221.

6 This is only one stage because the assimilation itself produces antinomies on the level of Understanding which are ultimately dealt with by Reason.

7 Op. cit., note I, 224.

8 G. W. F., Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind trans. J. B. Baillie, revised 2nd edn (The Muirhead Library of Philosophy), 141Google Scholar

9 Op. cit., note 8, 142.

10 This whole discussion is rather dubious to say the least. The Dialectic which Hegel employs with reference to Force and Law not only fails to perform the explanatory work that the Understanding requires of it but also fails to allow any empirical content to the most general laws of nature. The realm of laws, for Hegel, is that of ‘the stable image of unstable appearances’ or ‘the tranquil Kingdom of Laws’ or ‘the quiet perceived world’. Laws serve to explain changes of various types of phenomena and to connect them. Laws, in Hegel's sense, are not to be regarded as concepts through which phenomena are to be understood but are to be taken as a necessary framework in which phenomena exist. Hegel says explicitly in the Phenomenology (p. 123) that there is only one general law: everything makes a constant difference to everything else, laws do not explain phenomena. The point is that for Hegel laws are not mere generalizations serving to explain phenomena but are somehow paths along which phenomena necessarily travel. We work from phenomena to laws regarding them; not vice versa. Ultimately, in our attempts to discover laws we discover yet again only self-consciousness in terms of the rationality of the real in thought. This discussion raises serious difficulties which I cannot possibly enter into here. I am offering an outline of Hegel's position to show the transition he makes from knowledge of the physical world to self-knowledge.

11 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 361.

12 Op. cit., note I, Introduction I, Zusatz.

13 Op. cit., note I, p. 109 (Anthropology).

14 Op. cit., note 8, 227.

15 Op. cit., note I, 19.