Commentary on Subjective Spirit, Chapter 44
A Desideratum: The East Asian Reception
Not treated here, but noted for the record — because it raises a question that already surfaced in the first part.
Hegel’s determination of impulse through lack, and his finding that happiness as a sum of satisfactions fails, converge with basic Buddhist ideas — and diverge on the question of whether lack is to be sublated or shaped (see Part One, on practical spirit).
The Kyoto School took up exactly this point. Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji thought Hegel’s dialectic together with the concepts of Zen and the Mahāyāna tradition — not as comparison, but as continuation. Korean Hegel scholarship built on this.
Whether Hegel gained or lost in the process would have to be examined by the same criteria as the other receptions: What is to be saved, and what may experience be allowed to change? This volume lacks the sources for that.
Bibliography
Hegel’s Texts
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), §§ 377–482, cited according to TWA 10. The Additions derive from the Friends’ Edition and go back to lecture transcripts.
Lectures on the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, ed. by Christoph Johannes Bauer, 3 vols., Hamburg 2016 (GW 25.1–3). Contains the transcripts by Hotho (1822), Griesheim (1825), and Stolzenberg (1827/28), as well as an appendix with variant readings.
Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit. Berlin 1827/1828, transcribed by Johann Eduard Erdmann and Ferdinand Walter, ed. by Franz Hespe and Burkhard Tuschling, Hamburg 1994 (Lectures, vol. 13).
Philosophical Encyclopedia. Nuremberg 1812/13, transcribed by Christian Samuel Meinel and Julius Friedrich Heinrich Abegg, ed. by Udo Rameil, Hamburg 2002 (Lectures, vol. 15). The underlying dictations had already appeared in the Friends’ Edition as Philosophical Propaedeutics.
Nuremberg Gymnasium Courses and Gymnasium Speeches (1808–1816), GW 10, Hamburg 2006.
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), §§ 4–32, TWA 7.
Editions and Concordances
G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, edited and translated by Michael John Petry, 3 vols., Dordrecht 1978. Bilingual, with references to sources in the contemporary literature.
Concordance of the Encyclopedia editions 1817 / 1827 / 1830 (working tool of the project). The lecture courses of 1822 and 1825 cite the numbering of the first edition.
The Students
Carl Ludwig Michelet, Anthropologie und Psychologie oder die Philosophie des subjectiven Geistes, Berlin 1840. — Id., Das System der Philosophie als exacter Wissenschaft, Vol. 3: Philosophie des Geistes, Berlin 1878.
Karl Rosenkranz, Psychologie oder die Wissenschaft vom subjectiven Geist, Königsberg 1837; 2nd ed. 1843 (“Nebst Widerlegung der vom Herrn Dr. Exner gegebenen vermeintlichen Widerlegung”). — Id., System der Wissenschaft, Königsberg 1850, Third Part.
Johann Eduard Erdmann, Leib und Seele. Nach ihrem Begriff und ihrem Verhältniß zu einander, Halle 1837; 2nd ed. 1849. — Grundriss der Psychologie. Für Vorlesungen, Leipzig 1840; 2nd ed. 1842; 3rd ed. 1847. — Psychologische Briefe, Leipzig 1852; 2nd ed. 1856 (five editions). — Vorlesungen über Akademisches Leben und Studium, Leipzig 1858, Seventeenth Lecture. — Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. 3, Berlin 1866.
Erdmann’s lectures: Ueber Lachen und Weinen (1850), Ueber die Langeweile (1852), Über Gewohnheiten und Angewohnheiten (1858), Das Träumen (1861), Ueber Schwärmerei und Begeisterung (1863), Ueber Dummheit (1866), Vom Vergessen (1869).
Julius Schaller, Die Philosophie unserer Zeit, Leipzig 1837. — Leib und Seele. Zur Aufklärung über “Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft”, Weimar 1855. — Das Seelenleben des Menschen, Weimar 1860.
The Opponents
Franz Serafin Exner, The Psychology of the Hegelian School, Assessed from the Standpoint of Experience, First Issue, Leipzig 1842. — Second Issue: The Replies of Messrs. K. Rosenkranz and J. E. Erdmann, Leipzig 1844.
The Interpreters
Hermann Drüe, Die Philosophie des Geistes, in: Hegels „Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften“ (1830). Ein Kommentar zum Systemgrundriß, ed. by Herbert Schnädelbach, Frankfurt 2000.
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels Realphilosophie, Hamburg 2023.
Dirk Stederoth, Hegels Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes. Ein komparatorischer Kommentar, Berlin 2001.
Richard Dien Winfield, Hegel and Mind. Rethinking Philosophical Psychology, Basingstoke 2009. — The Living Mind. From Psyche to Consciousness, Lanham 2011.
Vittorio Hösle, Hegels System, chap. 6 (quoted from the Italian edition).
Adriaan Peperzak, Hegels praktische Philosophie, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1991, pp. 90–106.
Own Preliminary Work
[[subjektiver-faktor]] deals with psychology in today’s sense, [[handeln]] with the practical will, [[systematisches-denken]] with the theoretical. The philosophy of nature, from which this part emerges, is developed in [[hegel-natur]]; the philosophy of right, into which it flows, in [[hegel-recht]]. On logic, which is presupposed throughout, see [[kleine-logik]].