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Richard Dien Winfield. Hegel and Mind: Rethinking Philosophical Psychology

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WinfieldRichard Dien. Hegel and Mind: Rethinking Philosophical Psychology (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010). Pp. 170.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2013

Karen Ng
Karen Ng*
Affiliation:
Siena College, [email protected]
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Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring/Summer 2012 , pp. 88 - 101
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Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2012

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References

1 Abbreviations: PS: Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 (cited by paragraph number)/Phänomenlogie des Geistes, vol. 3 of Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970 (cited by volume and page number).

SL: Science of Logic (1812–16), trans. A.V. Miller. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1969 (cited by page number)/Wissenschaft der Logik, vols. 5 and 6 of Werke (cited by volume and page number).

EPN: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part II: Philosophy of Nature (1817/1830), trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970 (cited by section number)/Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830): Zweiter Teil. Die Naturphilosophie mit den mündlichen Zusätzen, vol. 9 of Werke (cited by section number).

EPM: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III: The Philosophy of Mind (1817–30), trans. W. Wallace and A.V. Miller, rev. Michael Inwood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 (cited by section number)/Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830): Dritter Teil Die Philosophie des Geistes mit den mündlichen Zusätzen, vol. 10 of Werke (cited by section number).

1 The first and only mention of ‘Geist’ in Winfield's book occurs near the end of the first chapter on page 20 where he speaks of the transition from phenomenology to psychology: ‘Hegel characterises intelligence (Geist) as the resultant truth that is aware of what it is.’

2 Winfield uses psyche, consciousness, and intelligence to translatedie Seele, das Bewußtsein, and der Geist respectively, the three stages of development in Hegel's subjective spirit. I will follow Wallace, Miller, and Inwood and use ‘soul’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘mind’. Since Winfield often deviates from the standard translations (or uses the older translations) I will note when he does so. However, the use of ‘intelligence’ for Geist in the context of psychology is misleading because Intelligenz has the specific sense of theoretical mind, which Hegel contrasts here to practical mind as Wille.

3 Although Winfield is correct that Hegel's Philosophy of Mind is generally neglected in the literature, I do not agree with his assessment of the Phenomenology as a ‘wholly negative’ investigation that ‘does not give a positive account of mind’ (pp.xii, xi).

4 This trope appears everywhere in Hegel, but see for example EPM §378Z.

5 See for example EPM §379.

6 Winfield refers to Begierde as both desire and appetite.

7 This development parallels the development in the Phenomenology.

8 Winfield refers to Triebe as impulses and Willkür as choice.

9 Winfield cites in particular Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

10 See Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, trans. Pluhar, Werner S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), pp. 244–55/Kritik der Urteilskraft, vol. 10 of Werkausgabe in 12 Bänden, ed. Weischedel, Wilhelm (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 313–24Google Scholar.

11 Critique of Judgment, p. 251/Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 320.

12 Ibid.

13 Critique of Judgment, p. 249/Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 318.

14 See SL 737, 766/6:440–41, 476.

15 See for example SL 764–5/6:473–75 and PS ¶170/3:140–41.

16 See SL 764/6:474 ff.

17 See EPN §337. Hegel also writes of the organism: ‘Thesubjectivity in virtue of which organic being exists as a singular [Einzelnes], unfolds itself into an objective organism in the shape of a body articulated into parts which are separate and distinct’ (EPN §343).

18 Rather than following Hegel here, and against Aristotle, Winfield instead turns to Plato, arguing that whereas organic unity and organisation can be likened to the ‘City of Pigs’ in the Republic, the unity of mind and body requires understanding mind as the ‘ruling function’ or ‘ruling element’ (p.33).

19 The question of whether or not Sellars is guilty of reducing all awareness and thought to language and therefore, is a proponent of a kind of linguistic idealism, is a topic of much debate. See for example his exchange with Chisholm in Roderick, M. Chisholm, and Sellars, Wilfrid, ‘Intentionality and the Mental,’ in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Volume II: Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-Body Problem, ed. Feigl, Herbert, Scriven, Michael, and Maxwell, Grover (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), pp. 507–39Google Scholar; and McDowell, John, ‘Why Is Sellars's Essay Called ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind?’ in Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. On the question of linguistic idealism and relativism in Brandom, see for example, Richard Rorty, ‘What do you do when they call you a ‘Relativist?’ and Brandom, Robert, ‘Replies,’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57:1 (March 1997), pp. 173–177 and pp. 189–204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See for example SL 764/6:473.

21 As in the title of his book, Winfield is using the term psychology here broadly to refer to mental reality as it is developed in the subjective spirit and not only to the psychology section within subjective spirit.

22 Winfield writes of logic that it is ‘the valid thinking of valid thinking,’ and ‘[t]he truth of what presuppositionlessly develops [from logical determination] will lie precisely in the autonomy of its emergence’ (pp.140, 141).

23 Hegel and Winfield do agree however, in that both attack the modern epistemological tendency towards representationalism and foundationalism (what Hegel calls dogmatism). See the introduction to the Phenomenology, and Hegel, G.W.F., ‘On the Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy, Exposition of its Different Modifications and Comparison of the Latest Form with the Ancient One,’ trans. Harris, H.S., in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Philosophy, ed. Giovanni, George Di and Harris, H.S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), pp. 311–62Google Scholar. See also Forster, Michael N., Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pippin, Robert, Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 5; and Franks, Paul, ‘Ancient Skepticism, Modern Naturalism, andNihilism in Hegel's Early Jena Writings,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and 19th Century Philosophy, ed. Beiser, Frederick C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 52–73 Google Scholar.

24 Descartes is exemplary of this form of doubt.

25 EPM §377.