In Hegel’s concept of Geist a new aspect of the Mind-Body problem appears. The new difficulty lies in the distinction between collective Geist and individual Geist. This distinction is unproblematic for Hegel but needs clarification because many people confuse collective Geist and individual Geist and so misunderstand Hegel. There are good reasons for this confusion. The most established translation of Phanomenologie des Geistes, that by J.B. Baillie does not consistently translate Geist as either “Mind” or “Spirit.” It translates most instances of Geist as “Mind.” The title itself, The Phenomenology of Mind, seems to indicate that Geist = “Mind” but Baillie also translates Geist as “Spirit,” “human spirit,” or “spirit of man.”[1] He also translates other words besides Geist as “Mind.” For example, die Meinung des Gegensatz (or “the opposite opinion”) is translated as “ordinary mind.”[2] Baillie may have been able to achieve greater consistency if he had translated Geist only as “Spirit.”[3] If he had translated it only as “Mind,” making the phrase der Heilige Geist into “the Holy Mind,” there would be faults despite the consistency.
However, Geist
is both “Mind” and “Spirit” in a way that no English word can duplicate and
is best left as Geist. Der
Geist des Christentums may have to be translated as “the Spirit of
Christianity,” but, the question “Bist du denn von allen guten Geistern
verlassen?” has to be translated “Are you out of your mind?” What confusion
there is in translating Geist into English is best cured by leaving Geist
as Geist.
Albert Hofstadter says Hegel’s concept of Geist takes “ego and other” and blends them together into “Ego.”[4] This Hofstadter feels is unacceptable language. We cannot simply talk the way Hegel and his contemporaries did. What may be unacceptable in English is one thing, but Hofstadter forgets that the German Geist expresses both a collective “social mind” and the individual mind as well.
The dual nature of Geist, the key concept of the Phanomenologie, results in conflicting interpretations of the central theme of the book. This conflict centers on whether Geist is collective or individual.
Hofstadter, for instance, argues, that the Phanomenologie depicts “the historical development of the speculative concept of self-consciousness.”[5]
(It) is the divine comedy of the effort of the heroic spirit, beginning as soul immersed in the externalized, material, organic world of the body, to mount the ascending levels of self-consciousness to the stage of the divine Absolute.[6]
Opting for the “big Ego” interpretation, Hofstadter takes Geist in the collective sense.
Hans-Georg Gadamer takes Geist in this sense also. Gadamer’s article “The Inverted World” proposes that the section of that title in the Phanomenologie is meant as an example of what ironic possibilities the coherence theory of truth allows unless tempered with the correspondence theory of truth.[7] Hegel uses his gift of Swabian satire, says Gadamer, to demonstrate that both the correspondence theory and the coherence theory must be accepted to explain truth. Hegel describes the inverted world as coherent but opposite to the first supersensible world, which is appearance qua appearance.[8]
(What) is sweat, is in this inner, inverted reality, sour; what is there black is here white. What, by the law of the first, was north pole in the case of the magnet, is, in its other supersensible world (viz. in the earth) south pole…. (etc.)[9]
Gadamer views this as a hypothetical experience of Cultural Mind.[10]
Clark Butler, on the other hand, interprets the inverted world section of the Phanomenologie as an empathetic study of a stage in the psychological development of an individual.[11] For him, the Phanomenologie describes the psychological growth of an individual from birth to maturity. Butler supports his interpretation by comparing Hegel’s work with that of Freud. According to Butler, the level of consciousness of an individual entitled “Perception” is similar to Freud’s description of the experience of an infant.[12] The level of “sense certainty” describes an infant capable of distinguishing a “sensuous universal,” i.e. a breast and a smiling face.[13] The stage of self-consciousness is reached when the baby “forms the concept of mother as a unity of opposite laws and as self-reflective.”[14] The section on the inverted world is the point of growth reached where a child begins having daydreams. In a day dream a child imagines an inverted world where he is omnipotent. Only in this way can the child learn the reality principle while retaining the comforting illusion of omnipotence.[15] Taking Geist in the individual sense Butler thus comes to an interpretation of the Phanomenologie that conflicts with those of Hofstadter and Gadamer.
Butler is not alone in taking Geist in the individual sense. Darrel Christensen also compares Hegel’s method with Freud’s in this respect. The collective sense of Geist, however, is by far the most popular. This is due primarily to the work of Walter Kaufmann.[16]
Kaufmann argues that Geist should be translated “Spirit” in every case. He primarily supports this by an analysis of the use of the word by Hegel’s contemporaries. In his opinion Geist is a creative force.[17] It is very similar to Schiller’s Spieltribe, i.e. the “play drive” which is the synthesis of the “sensuous drive and the form drive.”[18] Kaufmann also argues that Geist, as a concrete force that is visible cannot be “Mind,” since no one sees “minds.” People have claimed to see spirits.[19]
There are, however, instances where “spirit” would be an awkward translation. In these cases Baillie is more correct in translating Geist as “mind” rather than “spirit.” Baillie translates “der Geist selbst nicht ein Abstract = einfaches ist, sondern ein System von Bewegungen…” as “mind itself is not an abstractly simple entity, but a system of processes…”[20] No scientist yet has argued that an individual’s spirit is a system of processes. So to translate Geist in this instance as spirit loses a great deal of its relevance for contemporary psychology. Another such translation is “…brain and spinal cord are that bodily self-existence of mind…”[21]
The section on Phrenology (Schadellehre) contains many uses of Geist that cannot be translated as “Spirit.”[22] The means of clarifying the distinction between collective Geist and individual Geist is available to us in just this manner. In the English language “Mind” is attached to the concept “individual.” Each member of a football team has a mind. The football team does not have “a mind of its own. “ What it has is team spirit. “Spirit” is primarily a group characteristic. There are instances where “Mind” may be attributed to more than one individual, and there are many instances where “Spirit” may be used with respect to an individual. However, it remains that “Spirit” as an animating principle of life and energy, pertains to a group. “Mind” is much less frequently shared. We can be of “the same mind” as someone else but we are more often “in the same spirit.”
In translating the Phanomenologie, where Geist must be understood as “Mind” put instead “individual Geist”. Where Geist must be understood as “Spirit” put “collective Geist.” Where Geist can be either, leave it as Geist. This rule would greatly help clarify the distinction but keeps intact the technical nature of Geist that Baillie ignores.[23]
With this
in mind the nature of Geist and its relationship to the Mind-Body
problem may be more clearly understood.
[1] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind trans. By J.B. Baillie (New York, 1967 originally 1910) pp. 73-75. See also Phanomenologie des Geistes in Hegel Samtliche Werke Vol. 2 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1964) pp. 17-18
[2] Ibid. Phen. p. 68, Phan. p. 12
[3] Kaufmann, op. cit. pp. 145 f.
[4] Albert Hofstadter, “Ownness and Identity: Re-Thinking Hegel” Review of Metaphysics 28 June 1975 pp. 690-691
[5] Ibid. p. 692
[6] Ibid. p. 692
[7] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Inverted World” translated by John F. Donovan, Review of Metaphysics 28 March 1975 pp. 401-422
[8] Hegel, op. cit. Phen. P. 193. This “world” is the first supersensible world, i.e. “a quiescent ‘kingdom of laws,’ no doubt beyond the world of perception – for this exhibits the law only through incessant change – but likewise present in it, and its direct immovable copy of them.” Ibid. p. 195
[9] Ibid. p. 204
[10] Gadamer, op. cit. p. 404
[11] Clark Butler, “Hegel and Freud: A Comparison” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 36 June 1976 pp. 506-522
[12] Ibid. p. 507
[13] Ibid. p. 508
[14] Ibid. p. 509
[15] Ibid. pp. 510 - 511
[16] Darrel Christensen, “Hegel’s Phenomenological Analysis and Freud’s Psychoanalysis” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. VIII 1968 pp. 356-378
[17] Kaufmann, op. cit. p. 27
[18] Ibid. p. 31
[19] Ibid. p. 146
[20] Hegel, op. cit. Phen. p. 353, Phan. p. 254
[21] Ibid. Phen. p. 354, Phan. p. 254
[22] Ibid. Phan. p. 251 f.
[23] There are several instances where Baillie keeps Geist in the translation, or puts “Mind or Spirit” but these are far too few.