Hegel's Philosophy of Mind Part 13

-- 473. The practical ought is a "real" judgment. Will, which is essentially self-determination, finds in the conformity-as immediate and merely _found_ to hand-of the existing mode to its requirement a negation, and something inappropriate to it. If the will is to satisfy itself, if the implicit unity of the universality and the special mode is to be realised, the conformity of its inner requirement and of the existent thing ought to be its act and inst.i.tution. The will, as regards the form of its content, is at first still a natural will, directly identical with its specific mode:-natural _impulse_ and _inclination_. Should, however, the totality of the practical spirit throw itself into a single one of the many restricted forms of impulse, each being always in conflict to another, it is _pa.s.sion_.

-- 474. Inclinations and pa.s.sions embody the same const.i.tuent features as the practical feeling. Thus, while on one hand they are based on the rational nature of the mind; they on the other, as part and parcel of the still subjective and single will, are infected with contingency, and appear as particular to stand to the individual and to each other in an external relation and with a necessity which creates bondage.

The special note in _pa.s.sion_ is its restriction to one special mode of volition, in which the whole subjectivity of the individual is merged, be the value of that mode what it may. In consequence of this formalism, pa.s.sion is neither good nor bad; the t.i.tle only states that a subject has thrown his whole soul,-his interests of intellect, talent, character, enjoyment,-on one aim and object. Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without pa.s.sion. It is only a dead, too often, indeed, a hypocritical moralising which inveighs against the form of pa.s.sion as such.

But with regard to the inclinations, the question is directly raised, Which are good and bad?-Up to what degree the good continue good;-and (as there are many, each with its private range) In what way have they, being all in one subject and hardly all, as experience shows, admitting of gratification, to suffer at least reciprocal restriction? And, first of all, as regards the numbers of these impulses and propensities, the case is much the same as with the psychical powers, whose aggregate is to form the mind theoretical,-an aggregate which is now increased by the host of impulses. The nominal rationality of impulse and propensity lies merely in their general impulse not to be subjective merely, but to get realised, overcoming the subjectivity by the subject's own agency. Their genuine rationality cannot reveal its secret to a method of outer reflection which pre-supposes a number of _independent_ innate tendencies and immediate instincts, and therefore is wanting in a single principle and final purpose for them. But the immanent "reflection" of mind itself carries it beyond their particularity and their natural immediacy, and gives their contents a rationality and objectivity, in which they exist as necessary ties of social relation, as rights and duties. It is this objectification which evinces their real value, their mutual connexions, and their truth.

And thus it was a true perception when Plato (especially including as he did the mind's whole nature under its right) showed that the full reality of justice could be exhibited only in the _objective_ phase of justice, viz. in the construction of the State as the ethical life.

The answer to the question, therefore, What are the good and rational propensities, and how they are to be co-ordinated with each other?

resolves itself into an exposition of the laws and forms of common life produced by the mind when developing itself as _objective_ mind-a development in which the _content_ of autonomous action loses its contingency and optionality. The discussion of the true intrinsic worth of the impulses, inclinations, and pa.s.sions is thus essentially the theory of legal, moral, and social _duties_.

-- 475. The subject is the act of satisfying impulses, an act of (at least) formal rationality, as it translates them from the subjectivity of content (which so far is _purpose_) into objectivity, where the subject is made to close with itself. If the content of the impulse is distinguished as the thing or business from this act of carrying it out, and we regard the thing which has been brought to pa.s.s as containing the element of subjective individuality and its action, this is what is called the _interest_. Nothing therefore is brought about without interest.

An action is an aim of the subject, and it is his agency too which executes this aim: unless the subject were in this way in the most disinterested action, i.e. unless he had an interest in it, there would be no action at all.-The impulses and inclinations are sometimes depreciated by being contrasted with the baseless chimera of a happiness, the free gift of nature, where wants are supposed to find their satisfaction without the agent doing anything to produce a conformity between immediate existence and his own inner requirements. They are sometimes contrasted, on the whole to their disadvantage, with the morality of duty for duty's sake. But impulse and pa.s.sion are the very life-blood of all action: they are needed if the agent is really to be in his aim and the execution thereof. The morality concerns the content of the aim, which as such is the universal, an inactive thing, that finds its actualising in the agent; and finds it only when the aim is immanent in the agent, is his interest and-should it claim to engross his whole efficient subjectivity-his pa.s.sion.

-- 476. The will, as thinking and implicitly free, distinguishes itself from the particularity of the impulses, and places itself as simple subjectivity of thought above their diversified content. It is thus "reflecting" will.

-- 477. Such a particularity of impulse has thus ceased to be a mere datum: the reflective will now sees it as its own, because it closes with it and thus gives itself specific individuality and actuality. It is now on the standpoint of _choosing_ between inclinations, and is option or _choice_.

-- 478. Will as choice claims to be free, reflected into itself as the negativity of its merely immediate autonomy. However, as the content, in which its former universality concludes itself to actuality, is nothing but the content of the impulses and appet.i.tes, it is actual only as a subjective and contingent will. It realises itself in a particularity, which it regards at the same time as a nullity, and finds a satisfaction in what it has at the same time emerged from. As thus contradictory, it is the process of distracting and suspending one desire or enjoyment by another,-and one satisfaction, which is just as much no satisfaction, by another, without end. But the truth of the particular satisfactions is the universal, which under the name of _happiness_ the thinking will makes its aim.

(?) Happiness(148).

-- 479. In this idea, which reflection and comparison have educed, of a universal satisfaction, the impulses, so far as their particularity goes, are reduced to a mere negative; and it is held that in part they are to be sacrificed to each other for the behoof that aim, partly sacrificed to that aim directly, either altogether or in part. Their mutual limitation, on one hand, proceeds from a mixture of qualitative and quant.i.tative considerations: on the other hand, as happiness has its sole _affirmative_ contents in the springs of action, it is on them that the decision turns, and it is the subjective feeling and good pleasure which must have the casting vote as to where happiness is to be placed.

-- 480. Happiness is the mere abstract and merely imagined universality of things desired,-a universality which only ought to be. But the particularity of the satisfaction which just as much _is_ as it is abolished, and the abstract singleness, the option which gives or does not give itself (as it pleases) an aim in happiness, find their truth in the intrinsic _universality_ of the will, i.e. its very autonomy or freedom.

In this way choice is will only as pure subjectivity, which is pure and concrete at once, by having for its contents and aim only that infinite mode of being-freedom itself. In this truth of its autonomy, where concept and object are one, the will is an _actually free will_.

Free Mind(149).

-- 481. Actual free will is the unity of theoretical and practical mind: a free will, which realises its own freedom of will now that the formalism, fortuitousness, and contractedness of the practical content up to this point have been superseded. By superseding the adjustments of means therein contained, the will is the _immediate individuality_ self-inst.i.tuted,-an individuality, however, also purified of all that interferes with its universalism, i.e. with freedom itself. This universalism the will has as its object and aim, only so far as it thinks itself, knows this its concept, and is _will_ as free _intelligence_.

-- 482. The mind which knows itself as free and wills itself as this its object, i.e. which has its true being for characteristic and aim, is in the first instance the rational will in general, or _implicit_ Idea, and because implicit only the _notion_ of absolute mind. As _abstract_ Idea again, it is existent only in the _immediate_ will-it is the _existential_ side of reason,-the _single_ will as aware of this its universality const.i.tuting its contents and aim, and of which it is only the formal activity. If the will, therefore, in which the Idea thus appears is only finite, that will is also the act of developing the Idea, and of investing its self-unfolding content with an existence which, as realising the idea, is _actuality_. It is thus "Objective" Mind.

No Idea is so generally recognised as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to the greatest misconceptions (to which therefore it actually falls a victim) as the idea of Liberty: none in common currency with so little appreciation of its meaning. Remembering that free mind is _actual_ mind, we can see how misconceptions about it are of tremendous consequence in practice. When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and that as its very actuality. Whole continents, Africa and the East, have never had this idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary, they saw that it is only by birth (as e.g. an Athenian or Spartan citizen), or by strength of character, education, or philosophy (-the sage is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is actually free. It was through Christianity that this idea came into the world.

According to Christianity, the individual _as such_ has an infinite value as the object and aim of divine love, destined as mind to live in absolute relationship with G.o.d himself, and have G.o.d's mind dwelling in him: i.e.

man is implicitly destined to supreme freedom. If, in religion as such, man is aware of this relationship to the absolute mind as his true being, he has also, even when he steps into the sphere of secular existence, the divine mind present with him, as the substance of the state of the family, &c. These inst.i.tutions are due to the guidance of that spirit, and are const.i.tuted after its measure; whilst by their existence the moral temper comes to be indwelling in the individual, so that in this sphere of particular existence, of present sensation and volition, he is _actually_ free.

If to be aware of the idea-to be aware, i.e. that men are aware of freedom as their essence, aim, and object-is matter of _speculation_, still this very idea itself is the actuality of men-not something which they _have_, as men, but which they _are_. Christianity in its adherents has realised an ever-present sense that they are not and cannot be slaves; if they are made slaves, if the decision as regards their property rests with an arbitrary will, not with laws or courts of justice, they would find the very substance of their life outraged. This will to liberty is no longer an _impulse_ which demands its satisfaction, but the permanent character-the spiritual consciousness grown into a non-impulsive nature.

But this freedom, which the content and aim of freedom has, is itself only a notion-a principle of the mind and heart, intended to develope into an objective phase, into legal, moral, religious, and not less into scientific actuality.

SECTION II. MIND OBJECTIVE.

-- 483. The objective Mind is the absolute Idea, but only existing _in posse_: and as it is thus on the territory of finitude, its actual rationality retains the aspect of external apparency. The free will finds itself immediately confronted by differences which arise from the circ.u.mstance that freedom is its _inward_ function and aim, and is in relation to an external and already subsisting objectivity, which splits up into different heads: viz. anthropological data (i.e. private and personal needs), external things of nature which exist for consciousness, and the ties of relation between individual wills which are conscious of their own diversity and particularity. These aspects const.i.tute the external material for the embodiment of the will.

-- 484. But the purposive action of this will is to realise its concept, Liberty, in these externally-objective aspects, making the latter a world moulded by the former, which in it is thus at home with itself, locked together with it: the concept accordingly perfected to the Idea. Liberty, shaped into the actuality of a world, receives the _form of Necessity_ the deeper substantial nexus of which is the system or organisation of the principles of liberty, whilst its phenomenal nexus is power or authority, and the sentiment of obedience awakened in consciousness.

-- 485. This unity of the rational will with the single will (this being the peculiar and immediate medium in which the former is actualised) const.i.tutes the simple actuality of liberty. As it (and its content) belongs to thought, and is the virtual _universal_, the content has its right and true character only in the form of universality. When invested with this character for the intelligent consciousness, or inst.i.tuted as an authoritative power, it is a _Law_(150). When, on the other hand, the content is freed from the mixedness and fortuitousness, attaching to it in the practical feeling and in impulse, and is set and grafted in the individual will, not in the form of impulse, but in its universality, so as to become its habit, temper and character, it exists as manner and custom, or _Usage_(151).

-- 486. This "reality," in general, where free will has _existence_, is the _Law_ (Right),-the term being taken in a comprehensive sense not merely as the limited juristic law, but as the actual body of all the conditions of freedom. These conditions, in relation to the _subjective_ will, where they, being universal, ought to have and can only have their existence, are its _Duties_; whereas as its temper and habit they are _Manners_. What is a right is also a duty, and what is a duty, is also a right. For a mode of existence is a right, only as a consequence of the free substantial will: and the same content of fact, when referred to the will distinguished as subjective and individual, is a duty. It is the same content which the subjective consciousness recognises as a duty, and brings into existence in these several wills. The finitude of the objective will thus creates the semblance of a distinction between rights and duties.

In the phenomenal range right and duty are _correlata_, at least in the sense that to a right on my part corresponds a duty in some one else. But, in the light of the concept, my right to a thing is not merely possession, but as possession by a _person_ it is _property_, or legal possession, and it is a _duty_ to possess things as _property_, i.e. to be as a person.

Translated into the phenomenal relationship, viz. relation to another person-this grows into the duty of some one _else_ to respect _my_ right.

In the morality of the conscience, duty in general is in me-a free subject-at the same time a right of my subjective will or disposition. But in this individualist moral sphere, there arises the division between what is only inward purpose (disposition or intention), which only has its being in me and is merely subjective duty, and the actualisation of that purpose: and with this division a contingency and imperfection which makes the inadequacy of mere individualistic morality. In social ethics these two parts have reached their truth, their absolute unity; although even right and duty return to one another and combine by means of certain adjustments and under the guise of necessity. The rights of the father of the family over its members are equally duties towards them; just as the children's duty of obedience is their right to be educated to the liberty of manhood. The penal judicature of a government, its rights of administration, &c., are no less its duties to punish, to administer, &c.; as the services of the members of the State in dues, military services, &c., are duties and yet their right to the protection of their private property and of the general substantial life in which they have their root. All the aims of society and the State are the private aim of the individuals. But the set of adjustments, by which their duties come back to them as the exercise and enjoyment of right, produces an appearance of diversity: and this diversity is increased by the variety of shapes which value a.s.sumes in the course of exchange, though it remains intrinsically the same. Still it holds fundamentally good that he who has no rights has no duties and _vice versa_.

Distribution.

-- 487. The free will is

A. itself at first immediate, and hence as a single being-the _person_: the existence which the person gives to its liberty is _property_. The _Right as_ right (law) is _formal, abstract right_.

B. When the will is reflected into self, so as to have its existence inside it, and to be thus at the same time characterised as a _particular_, it is the right of the _subjective_ will, _morality_ of the individual conscience.

C. When the free will is the substantial will, made actual in the subject and conformable to its concept and rendered a totality of necessity,-it is the ethics of actual life in family, civil society, and state.

Sub-Section A. Law.(152)

(a) Property.

-- 488. Mind, in the immediacy of its self-secured liberty, is an individual, but one that knows its individuality as an absolutely free will: it is a _person_, in whom the inward sense of this freedom, as in itself still abstract and empty, has its particularity and fulfilment not yet on its own part, but on an external _thing_. This thing, as something devoid of will, has no rights against the subjectivity of intelligence and volition, and is by that subjectivity made adjectival to it, the external sphere of its liberty;-_possession_.

-- 489. By the judgment of possession, at first in the outward appropriation, the thing acquires the predicate of "mine." But this predicate, on its own account merely "practical," has here the signification that I import my personal will into the thing. As so characterised, possession is _property_, which as possession is a _means_, but as existence of the personality is an _end_.

-- 490. In his property the person is brought into union with itself. But the thing is an abstractly external thing, and the I in it is abstractly external. The concrete return of me into me in the externality is that I, the infinite self-relation, am as a person the repulsion of me from myself, and have the existence of my personality in the _being of other persons_, in my relation to them and in my recognition by them, which is thus mutual.

-- 491. The thing is the _mean_ by which the extremes meet in one. These extremes are the persons who, in the knowledge of their ident.i.ty as free, are simultaneously mutually independent. For them my will has its _definite recognisable existence_ in the thing by the immediate bodily act of taking possession, or by the formation of the thing or, it may be, by mere designation of it.

-- 492. The casual aspect of property is that I place my will in _this_ thing: so far my will is _arbitrary_, I can just as well put it in it as not,-just as well withdraw it as not. But so far as my will lies in a thing, it is only I who can withdraw it: it is only with my will that the thing can pa.s.s to another, whose property it similarly becomes only with his will:-_Contract_.