Hegel and Inner Space

Two weeks ago I posted an entry entitled “Hegel the Alien,” and I think my initial assessment of the philosopher was more than a little imaginative. I read the brief descriptions of his idealism by Durant and Lavine, and I’m now just about finished with Singer’s Very Short Introduction to Hegel. And now I have a somewhat different interpretation of Spirit.

That’s the problem, right there, that word ‘Spirit.’ In pretty much any book about Hegel you’ll read, you’ll come across three items. One, how difficult it is to read him. Check, I agree. Two, the whole thesis-antithesis-synthesis, which may or may not be an actual part of his philosophy. I haven’t heard definitively one way or the other. Most likely he had something similar, but not as simplified as that formula. Anyway, three: his use of the word Geist, the lynch-pin of his philosophy and written about in all his works.

If you aren’t aware of it, Geist is a German word that has no English equivalent. It can mean anything from ‘ghost’ to ‘spirit’ to ‘mind’ and all shades in between. Sometimes Hegel means what we would label ‘spirit,’ as in the ‘spirit of the times,’ and other times he means ‘mind’ as in that essence which centers itself ethereally behind your eyeballs. And other times he kind of combines the two in some bizarre concept that appeals to me, but I have a hard time grasping. It’s rather like a Zen koan.

Anyway, I think the mistake I made in that “Hegel the Alien” post was taking the word ‘spirit’ a tad too literally. I don’t think the philosopher envisioned some sort of upper-dimensional entity that springs from our minds or somehow creates or sustains our minds. But I think you have to admit it’s a decently cool theory, albeit a little disturbing.

Singer has decided to translate Geist as ‘mind’ or Mind in his short little book on Hegel. Now that I’ve read a summation of the philosophy using the term Mind, it strikes me that perhaps Hegel was a pioneer of the exploration of Inner Space. Consciousness, from pure sensory-consciousness, to perception, to judging, and to increasing degrees of self-consciousness. Maybe that’s a better angle to approach his works, since it seems to fit better with my late-twentieth early-twenty-first century post-Enlightenment scientifically-rational mindset. Or Mindset. Singer’s definitely exposed me to a different view of Hegel, allowed me to see the man’s philosophy from a different angle, and that’s very exciting to me.

I still believe, though, that Hegel had some sort of hybrid idea in mind (pun intended). And like all Zen koans, I won’t be able to crack it until after I’ve thought about it a good deal, and then only after some sort of subconscious revelation, like remembering something you forgot to do at work just before drifting off to sleep. Hmmm: how mystical!