Hegel on the Relation between Mind

and Nature

David Pejić

Robinson College, University of Cambridge

This dissertation is submitted for the degree of
Master of Philosophy
June 15th, 2015
! ii!

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the
outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

The dissertation does not exceed the word limit set by the Philosophy Degree
Committee.
 Hegel on the Relation between Mind and Nature

In a paper that provides an evaluation of Hegel’s philosophical legacy in relation to

contemporary intellectual culture, Rolf-Peter Horstmann writes:

“The only ones who should expect to find something philosophically valuable (in
contrast to something of historical or maybe psychological value) in what Hegel left to
posterity are those who share with him the sentiment that there is something either
fundamentally wrong or at least unsublatably one-sided with our traditional ways of
attaining a correct conception of reality or of finding out what things really are.”1

The primary motivation for this paper is the contention that there is, indeed, something
fundamentally one-sided about the traditional ways of thinking about the world. More
specifically, it is the suspicion that the picture of the world as a whole based on the naturalist
or reductive materialist premise that the latter is amenable solely to the types of explanation
that the natural sciences can give us, leaves out ourselves as thinking subjects and conscious
minds. Here, I understand naturalism as both a metaphysical and a methodological framework,
holding that the world or reality is exhausted by the ontology given by physics and that
everything that happens in the world can be explained by reference to the kind of explanations
provided by natural sciences. Hence, within this framework, it is both certain features of reality,
such as consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, purpose and thought, as well as certain forms
of explanation, such as a priori analysis of self-consciousness or teleological intelligibility, that
struggle to find their place.

In recent years, the theoretical framework of naturalism has been called into question
in relation to its inability to accommodate different aspects of human mindedness. One
example of this criticism is apparent in the ongoing debate within philosophy of mind regarding
the so-called mind-body problem. Here, the issue for naturalism lies in the seeming inability of
physical descriptions of bodily or brain events and processes to capture the intrinsic,
experiential and subjective quality of mental phenomena. As Thomas Nagel, pointed out,
though perhaps the cause of mental events, physical processes such as neural transmissions do
not exhaust the distinct “what’s it like” being of mental life.2 Subsequently, the search for an
intelligible link in virtue of which the relation between the mental and the physical could be

1 Horstmann, “Hegel’s Legacy”, 286.
2 Nagel, “What’s it Like to Be a Bat?”, 222.
 2

thought of in reductionist terms, suitable for a naturalist framework, has proven to be a

considerable challenge.3 On the other hand, thinkers like John McDowell have pointed out the
incompatibility between the naturalistic world of physical laws and necessity with the notion of
freedom understood as the distinctly human capacity of responsiveness to reasons.4 This, in
turn, raises question about how a normative “space of reasons” fits into the world the
intelligibility of which is determined solely by that of natural laws; what is more, this question
cannot just be ignored insofar as reason-giving and justification are components of naturalist
account-giving as well.5 Here, it seems like no coincidence that, in searching for an alternative
metaphysical framework from within which their concerns could be addressed, both thinkers
have been led to Hegel.6 This is understandable, insofar as the tradition of German Idealism
in general puts the mind and the subject at the very center of its inquiry.

In connection with the above, the topic of this paper also seeks to address the issue of
mind’s placement in the world and its relation to nature. However, in contrast to Nagel or
McDowell, my interest is concerned not so much with the relation between the mental and the
physical or the possibility of reasons and justifications; rather, the focus of my inquiry is
subjectivity as such, its place in the world and its relation to nature. To clarify this notion
immediately, what I mean by ‘subjectivity’ here refers to the inner organization of the conscious
mind of a subject, insofar as this organization and the way it operates are taken to be the
conditions of possibility for the subject’s self-understanding, as well as its understanding of the
world around it.7 Here, the term ‘subject’, i.e., the ‘self’ or the ‘I’, does not refer to the personal
or social identity of an individual but is to be understood in a Kantian, epistemological sense of
the knowing subject that acts as a structural element and a necessary condition for conscious
experience. Hence, this conception of subjectivity is, essentially, a ‘logic of presuppositions’8
necessary to understand ourselves, as subjects, and our relation to the world in which we act.
Understood in this way, subjectivity is not ‘subjective’ in some derogatory sense of the term that

3 If not an outright “gigantic waste of time.” Nagel, View from Nowhere, 16.

4 “Responsiveness to reasons is a good gloss on one notion of freedom. So the puzzlement in its general form is
about how freedom, in that sense, fits into the natural world.” McDowell, Mind and World, 23.
5 Hence, insofar as naturalism constructs the world as a causal network of physical facts and ignores the fact that

it is a world that can be and is comprehended from a subjective point of view, it runs dangerously close to being
self-defeating. It is this what Henrich has in mind when he talks of a ‘limiting theorem’; “the idea that the naturalist
worldview cannot be applied to, and thereby, explicate itself.” Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich, 81.
6 Obviously McDowell more explicitly so in, Mind and World, 44. However, Nagel clearly identifies with Schelling

and Hegel in Mind and Cosmos, 17.

7 Hence, the methodology of this type of an inquiry operates within the framework of Kantian transcendental

arguments, insofar as inferences about the mind are made by studying a priori conditions of experience.
8 Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich, 33.
 3

would imply its psychological contingency; rather, it can be understood as ‘objective’ in the
sense of designating real, structural features of consciousness tied to the first-person perspective.
Simply put, then, this conception of subjectivity, while mental, is taken to be the same for every
conscious subject.

In the form outlined above, there is little to no room for subjectivity within the naturalist
metaphysical and methodological framework. With regards to the latter, the a priori mode of
inquiry into subjectivity is generally incompatible with the emphasis on the exclusive authority
of natural sciences in determining what counts as real. As for the metaphysical compatibility,
the predicament is no better. Here, the first obstacle to integrating subjectivity is an atomistic
conception of the world that designates reality as a composite of isolated, self-sufficient and self-
identical particulars or natural kinds that are mutually independent and the differences between
which are taken to be external to their own identity.9 In contrast to this, as the analysis in the
first section of this paper will show, the knowing subject cannot be captured as a fixed, self-
identical particular but only as an element of conscious activity that is inherently characterized
and constituted by relations of dependence and opposition. As such, unless the atomistic
metaphysical framework is supplanted, subjectivity runs the risk of alienation, i.e., of not fitting
the world, insofar as there is no precedent in reality to accommodate the logic of its structure.

The second problem concerns the relation of mind, as subjectivity, to nature and the
intelligibility of the former’s emergence from the latter. Admittedly, evolutionary theory can
and does provide a physical explanation for the appearance of behaviorally complex organisms
with nervous systems; however, if subjectivity and consciousness are not reducible to those
physical descriptions, then they remain logically distinct and unaccounted for by physical
sciences alone. As will be shown in the second half of this paper, Hegel’s conception of the self-
relation explicit in the structure of subjectivity and implicit in the structure of non-conscious
living organisms, exhibits a level of self-organization that cannot be reduced to mechanistic10
relations of physical laws. In this sense, even if it was blind necessity of evolution that caused
the emergence of the structure of consciousness, that cause does not count as a full explanation

9 Westphal takes this position to be an unevaluated presupposition that “echoes throughout the narrowly
reductionist conception of “naturalism” that is prevalent in contemporary philosophy.” “Philosophizing about
Nature”, 301-302.
10 By mechanism, I understand the position that the nature of any whole has no bearing on its activity and

interaction with other objects. In this sense, a whole is understood as a mere conglomeration of its parts, dependent
on a cause external to it for its determination as a whole, as well as its activity.
 4

if it does not account for the organization and the structure of subjectivity itself.11 Hence, to
successfully place mind in nature, it is important that we understand the emergence of the
structure of subjectivity from the latter in concrete terms that explain both the possibility and
the actuality of that structure.

With this, the purpose of this paper is to expound Hegel’s theoretical alternative to the
atomistic metaphysical paradigm and the mechanistic account of the mind’s emergence from
nature, with the goal of arriving at a framework capable of accommodating the structure of
subjectivity in a way that does not ignore or exclude it from reality. In doing so, my
interpretation of Hegel consists of two main steps designed to overcome the problems indicated
above. The first is the analysis of the structure and logic of consciousness and subjectivity,
followed by an explication of how Hegel sees this logic as, to some extent, mirroring the
developmental logic and the organizing principle of reality. This, then, is taken to be the
meaning of Hegel’s well-known claim that “the truth ought to be comprehended not only as
substance but also as subject.”12 The second step involves following Hegel’s developmental
account of nature to the point of emergence of consciousness and subjectivity, after which we
will be able to interpret his position on the relation between mind and nature. Roughly speaking,
this relation comes down to conceiving of reality as a process in which the implicit
organizational principle of nature results in the emergence of mind, at the stage of which, in
the form of self-consciousness and subjectivity, that same organizing principle becomes explicit.
In this way, conscious subjects can become aware of the logic of their own process of becoming
and, hence, overcome the appearance of their alienation. This, then, is taken to be the meaning
of Hegel’s other well-known claim that “For us mind has nature as its presupposition, though mind
is the truth of nature, and is thus absolutely first with respect to it.”13

Before concluding this introduction, I want to give some basic coordinates of the logical
space of different interpretations of Hegel and the position of mine in relation to them. In
general, insofar as I take Hegel to be making claims about the structure or organization of
reality, my interpretation can be characterized as metaphysical.14 This is in clear opposition to
those interpreters who conceive of Hegel’s project as non-metaphysical and, in some cases,

11 In other words, it “does not account for the reflexive actuality of mental processes whose self-activity remains
irreducible to mechanism.” Winfield, Hegel and Mind, 29.
12 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, ¶17-18. Hereafter, PS.
13 Hegel, Encyclopedia, §381. Hereafter, Enc.
14 I take Beiser, Hegel; Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics and Stern, Hegelian Metaphysics to be notable examples of

such readings.
 5

concerned with a Kantian extension of the epistemological investigation of different ‘forms of

thought,15 as well as their normative authority.16 Though I will not be engaging in a debate
with the non-metaphysical options, there is a third conception of Hegel’s philosophy to which
both camps are opposed to and from which I will distance my interpretation at several points
throughout the paper. This position is a sort of a caricature of Hegel’s philosophy, a myth that
is propagated by his detractors17 in the shape of an extreme form of panlogicism which sees
nature as a manifestation and literal embodiment of a cosmic mind that returns to itself with
human subjectivity. 18 Finally, with respect to the focus of this paper on the position of
subjectivity in the world and its relation to nature, we can also identify an existential aspect of
Hegel’s thought; i.e., the notion that philosophy ought to be capable of offering us an
understanding of ourselves as conscious subjects and of our place in the world of other subjects
and objects.19

1. Hegel’s Analysis of Consciousness and Subjectivity

In the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel identifies the Delphic aphorism
“know thyself” as the absolute command of philosophical inquiry. 20 As such, this principle
establishes the primacy of self-knowledge, but not, as Hegel immediately points out, in a trivial
sense that would focus on the individual peculiarities of psychology or character, rather in
regards to that which is shared and universal to human mind. Indeed, for Hegel, the subject of
our consciousness, the “I” or the self understood in the epistemological sense of the knowing
subject, is something universal, a necessary element of the structure of consciousness shared by
all human minds. As I have indicated in the introduction, this conception of subjectivity refers
to the inner organization and structure of consciousness which determines the conditions of
possibility of self-knowledge as well as knowledge of the world. Hence, the analysis of

15 Kreines, “Metaphysics,” 2.
16 Some examples of such readings would be Hartmann, “Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View; Pippin, Hegel’s
Idealism; Pinkard, Hegel’s Naturalism. With regards to Kantian epistemological readings, I tend to agree with
Johnston who points out that Hegel remains “utterly scathing about the anti-realism of subjective idealism”
throughout his philosophical development. “Where to Start?”, 386.
17 This myth still takes the same form of mockery as Russell’s contention that “Hegel believed in a mystical entity

called spirit which causes human history to develop according to the stages of the dialectic as set forth in Hegel’s
logic. Why spirit has to go through these stages is not clear. One is tempted to suppose that spirit is trying to
understand Hegel, and at each stage rashly objectifies what it has been reading.” A History, 784.
18 The only recent example of this reading is Taylor who says that “The general structure of the universe is

determined by its being the embodiment and expression of Geist [Mind].” Hegel, 91.
19 Understanding philosophy as a theoretical activity that can have practical and normative insights is what

Henrich calls “Lebensphilosophie.” Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich, 8. For the historical context of attributing this
tendency to Hegel and the influence of Hölderlin on the latter, see Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel, 293-295.
20 Enc, §377.
 6

subjectivity we are interested in here has nothing to do with social or psychological knowledge
of personal identity, but rather the real structural features of human minds. With this, the goal
of this section is to look at Hegel’s conception of consciousness and locate within it three
separate insights that we can use as an entry point into Hegel’s logic and metaphysical
framework of the world, taken up in the next section. These three points are: i) Being conscious
of objects involves having a subject, ii) Self-consciousness is not achieved by an additional act
of reflection on the subject but is a self-relation essential to it, and iii) The temporality of self-
consciousness is possible only insofar as the objects being determined exist independently from
consciousness.

The first insight Hegel owes to Kant and the latter’s critique of rational psychology.21
This discipline focused its efforts on the investigation of the “soul”, i.e. the thinking subject, and
its attributes, trying to establish it as a simple substance, existing immaterially and
independently of the external world. Against this, in the “Paralogisms” section of the first
Critique, Kant argued that attributing determinations of simplicity, immateriality and
substantiality to the mind’s “I”, i.e., the subject, constitutes a category mistake. 22 That is,
instead of being a thing to which determinations could be applied to, Kant argued that the
subject is, rather, the condition of possibility of making determinations as such. The reason for
this was Kant’s conception of the subject as a fundamental component of all our conscious
states; i.e., the notion that the subject must be able to accompany all our conscious states as it
is only through the self-relation of the subject in multiple conscious states that we can have
unified experience.23 From this point of view, it is a mistake to try and determine the subject by
predicating immateriality or substantiality to it insofar as, in doing so, one tries to determine
that which enables that very same act of determination. 24 In other words, the rational
psychologist makes the mistake of treating as an object, as a determinable thing, that which is
itself a presupposition for the possibility of determination of objects.25 Simply put, then, the
error of rational psychology consists in mistaking the necessary presence of the subject in one’s
conscious thought for the cognition of oneself as a thinking thing, a res cogitans.26

21 Hegel, Science of Logic, 12:193. Hereafter, SL.
22 A341/B399. References to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are indicated in the standard way by reference to the
original pagination of the A- and B-edition.
23 B131. This conclusion is also known as the transcendental unity of apperception; i.e., the notion that the 'I

think" that is the knowing subject must be able to accompany all of our conscious states.
24 In Kant’s terms, “any judgment upon it [the subject] has always already made use of its representation.”

A346/B404.
25 A402.
26 SL, 12.193.
 7

For Hegel, treating mind as a thing by applying categories to it necessarily leads to

dualism insofar as it turns mind into something static and fixed that consequently, by its
apparent immateriality, becomes impossible to unite with the body. In this way, the position of
rational psychology very quickly loses track of the relation of the mind to the natural side of
humans.27 In contrast to this, Hegel understands mind in general as an activity and the human
mind in particular, i.e., consciousness, as the activity of determining an object.28 What this
means is that consciousness must be understood as fundamentally constituted by a denial of the
immediacy of its object, i.e., by the distinguishing and positioning of the knowing subject in
relation to whatever it is conscious of. For this to be possible, however, the subject needs to be
present in all consciousness states, as a point of reference, against which determinations can be
made.29 With this, Hegel’s point is that it is a constitutive characteristic of consciousness that
we are never fully immersed in the object of our experience but are always already taking up a
position against it. That is, I do not just perceive an object, I am aware of myself perceiving it;
I do not just act, I feel that it is I who acts30 or, in general, I do not just interact with an object,
I relate to this interaction as such. I am never just in a state of pain in a sense that I am identical
with it, but always related to it in a way that can be made explicit. To put it simply, then, being
conscious of objects, requires having a subject.

The second insight has its origin in Fichte and is best understood as a critique of the so-
called reflection model of self-consciousness.31 This position is characterized by the notion that
we are ordinarily conscious of objects and that we are or can become self-conscious when we
reflect on ourselves as being conscious of objects. Hence, in general terms, the reflection model
of self-consciousness understands self-consciousness as the ability of becoming aware of
ourselves upon reflecting on ourselves. The problem with this position begins with the fact that
every attempt to inquire into the subject of our conscious states by reflecting on it turns it
immediately into an object. From here, the reflection model suggests that when a subject
reflects on itself in this way, i.e. by treating itself as an object, it can develop articulated
awareness of, or identify the object as, a subject. In other words, by reflecting, the subject arrives

27 This natural side of humans is their embodiment, the topic of which is taken up in section four.
28 Enc. §378A. See also, Hegel, Berlin Phenomenology, §413. Hereafter, BPh.
29 Hence, for example, I am never just in a state of pain in a sense that I am identical with it, but always related to

it in a way that can be made explicit.

30 As Pippin notes, for me to act is to be in a position in which I can give a reason for my action. If I move and

cannot give a reason for why I moved, my body may have moved but I did not perform an action. "Back to
Hegel?", 12.
31 Henrich attributes this point to Fichte in "Fichte's Original Insight", 15-53. Ameriks argues that Kant might

have already been aware of the problem with the reflection model theory, though he did not formulate it explicitly.
Kant and the Fate of Autonomy, 244-249.
 8

at an object that it identifies as itself. However, this argument is circular. To be able to do this,
to know that the object on which I reflect is I, I must already know what I am. In other words,
for the subject to identify itself in the object, it must already know what it is, i.e., be self-
acquainted and self-related. Hence, trying to interpret self-consciousness by appealing to
intentional reflection, i.e., by claiming that the subject recognizes itself by "bending back" on
itself as an object, is circular. For this reason, self-acquaintance cannot be construed as
something achieved solely upon reflection; rather, self-acquaintance as a self-relation is to be
found in the nature of self-consciousness and subjectivity as such. That is, self-consciousness is
not achieved by an additional act of reflection on the zero-level of consciousness of objects.
Rather, it is in the nature of the subject to be self-related, i.e., pre-reflexively self-conscious and
self-acquainted.32

The third point in our analysis of consciousness is the anti-solipsistic notion of the
dependence of the subject on the consciousness of objects. The fundamental insight here is that
the subject does not possess a distinct, substantial status over and above the activity of
consciousness of objects. That is, the subject, as such, is not the source of the activity of
determination, i.e., consciousness, but rather the result of the activity itself. In other words, it
comes into being, is posited, by the very same activity that denies the immediacy of an object
of experience. The point here is simply that there is no intervening step between the activity
and the subject.33 In other words, as the activity of our consciousness denies the immediacy of
an object of experience, as it relates to an object, the subject comes into being, is posited, as
something that relates to this object and positions itself to it. That is, our consciousness, as the
activity of determining an object, differentiates itself from the object of its experience and, in
doing so, posits the subject as that which is different from the object of experience. To put the
point in simpler terms, the subject is added in the determination of the object as a non-
substantial point of reference, as that which acts, feels, desires, thinks, judges and so on.34

32 Hence, we see how there is a relation of mutual implication between consciousness, subjectivity and self-

consciousness: the first requires the second, and it is in the nature of the second to be the third.
33 This point about the contemporaneity of the subject and its activity in consciousness might sound obscure, but

is in fact ubiquitous and made by philosophers and neuroscientists alike. For example, Strawson puts it by saying
that "the subject of awareness (that which wholly constitutes the existence of the subject of awareness) isn’t ontically
distinct from the awareness of which it is the subject" in "Radical Self-Awareness", 17. The same point is made by
neuroscientists see, e.g., Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 191 and Metzinger, Being No One, 557 who both
employ different analogies to convey the contemporaneity of the subject and its activity.
34 As mentioned previously, the subject is necessary for there to be unified experience but, as ought to be clear

now, that does not make it a metaphysically burdened substance. Once again, Strawson's formulation is on point:
"it’s important to bring out the full import of the notion of subjectivity or experience by stressing the fundamental
sense in which it can’t exist without a subject. But there’s a no less important point in the other direction. If all
 9

The crux of this insight is that we are conscious of ourselves as subjects only through
the activity of determining objects that are independent of us, i.e., in determining them as
something other than ourselves. Here, Hegel even pushes this reasoning to its logical conclusion
in saying that for this activity even to be, for consciousness to exist at all, "there must be this
other."35 Hence, there is no privileged Cartesian realm of subjectivity in which we can know
ourselves independently of the world. Far from solipsism or idealism, here Hegel openly
recognizes that our subjectivity is fully dependent on there being independent spatial objects.36
The root of this insight also goes back to Kant who, in the Refutation of Idealism, argued that
self-consciousness, i.e., the subject, could not exist without consciousness of external spatial
objects, i.e. the sensible manifold.37 That is, the very temporality of self-awareness becomes
impossible to understand if successive mental content has no enduring ground to reveal its unity.
In other words, if all mental states are temporally successive, only the existence of something
non-mental can provide an enduring basis sufficient to connect past, present and future states
into unified experience.38 Accordingly, self-consciousness requires enduring objects other than
the subject, i.e. external world or, in Kantian terms, the sensible manifold.

For Hegel, it is in this sense that the conceptual analysis of the subject of our thoughts
already points to its anti-dualistic dependence on the external and natural world; to the fact
that it is only the embodied mind that can relate to itself as an individual subject. This
importance of embodiment will be taken up again in section four. What I want to do now is
combine the three insights from the analysis of consciousness and subjectivity in this section,
and show how Hegel derives from them a fundamental relation of his dialectical logic. Once
again, the three insights are: i) Being conscious of objects involves having a subject, ii) Self-
consciousness is not achieved by an additional act of reflection on the subject but is a self-
relation essential to it, and iii) The temporality of self-consciousness is possible only insofar as
the objects being determined exist independently from consciousness.

Now, the logical structure to be gathered from these three conclusions is that
subjectivity is a self-relation that itself depends on a relation to something else, i.e., the external

you need to know, to know that there is a subject, is that there is subjectivity or experience, then you can’t build
more into the notion of a subject than you can know to exist if subjectivity or experience exists." Strawson, "Radical
Self-Awareness", 275.
35 PS, ¶175.
36 On this note, Hegel thinks that “Materialism is much preferable to this spiritualistic idealism, since its view is

that matter is independent and mind dependent.” Also, “one needs only to touch matter in order to experience
resistance, and it is folly to deny the reality of matter.” Modified translation from Nuzzo, “Anthropology”, 13.
37 B276.
38 Winfield, Hegel and Mind, 26.
 10

world or nature, to be the self-relation it is. In other words, self-consciousness is a relation-to-

self that is distinct but inseparable from the relation-to-other, i.e., consciousness of an object.
This dependence of a relation-to-self on a relation-to-other is the absolute key in understanding
Hegel’s description of subjectivity and living organisms, as well as constituting one half of the
basic relation of his dialectical logic. The other half is the reversal of the first, postulating that
the object of consciousness – the other of self-consciousness that is the external object – must
also be interpreted as constituting a relation: namely, a relation to itself (as an other) that is also
essentially mediated by the relation-to-self (i.e., self-consciousness) that it stands in relation to
as its other. The two relations combined, then, state that if self-consciousness (relation-to-self)
is essentially mediated by a term that is external to it (relation-to-other), then that “other” is
itself mediated by its relation to self-consciousness and hence it is relational in itself.39

The above relation between the conscious subject and its object, and vice versa, is the
basis for understanding Hegel’s dialectical logic, which is itself crucial for understanding
Hegel’s conception of the world and the relation between mind and nature. At this point, we
can already see why this logic is called ‘dialectical’ insofar as what it tries to demonstrate is an
integration and an interrelation of opposites, as the above analysis showed to be the case with
the structure of subjectivity. In the next section, I will explore this logic in greater detail and
show how it overcomes the atomistic conception of reality.

2. Dialectical Logic and Development

In general, the role of Hegel’s dialectical logic is to revise and supplant the atomistic
metaphysical and ontological framework. This framework understands the world or reality as
a composite of isolated, self-sufficient and self-identical particulars or natural kinds in the case
of which differentiation is merely an external relation between their properties. Simply put the
identity of those particulars is taken to be independent of what they are not. By conceiving of
the world under this framework, then, we conceive of it as consisting of those particulars
standing in ordered and fixed relations with one another, determined by natural laws. In this
sense, such a framework operates with notions of identity and difference that are excluded from
one another. For Hegel, such a conception of the world has a very limited explanatory power
and collapses in on itself; i.e., it struggles to find even basic natural kinds that do not depend
for their identity on their relation to other natural kinds. 40 Furthermore, Hegel finds the

39Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics, 38.
40As is the case with, for example, acids and bases where the identity of one term depends on its reaction with the
other. Kreines, Metaphysics, 6.
 11

atomistic framework entirely inadequate for understanding higher natural kinds such as
organisms or conscious minds, which, subsequently, fall out of the explanatory picture. In
contrast to this, Hegel’s dialectical logic seeks to achieve a unity between the notions of identity
and difference, as well as demonstrate their interrelation and interdependence. In this section,
we will see how Hegel achieves this and how he understands differentiation as an element of
the dynamic developmental process by which both particulars and the world as a whole achieve
their identity, i.e., become what they are, as such.

In the Science of Logic, Hegel praises Anaxagoras for conceiving of “Nous”, i.e., thought,
as the principle of the world. 41 He then immediately qualifies his sympathy for the claim,
interpreting it not as a statement implying that the world itself is a mind, but that there is a
fundamental logic to reality.42 In the previous section, I have already indicated that the core
and the general principle of this logic is revealed through Hegel’s conception of consciousness
and subjectivity. There we have seen that self-consciousness is a relation-to-self that is
dependent on, i.e., essentially mediated, by a relation-to-other, i.e., by there being an external
object of consciousness. Equally, however, we have noted that the object of consciousness, i.e.,
the other of self-consciousness that is the external object, must also be interpreted as constituting
a relation: namely, a relation to itself that is also essentially mediated by the relation-to-self (i.e.
self-consciousness) that it stands in relation to as its other. Hence, we have two relata, mind as
subjectivity and external world as nature, that each mirror each other and the overarching
relation to which they belong.43 This overarching relation, that constitutes nature and mind, is
reality or, in Hegel’s terms, Concept. For Hegel, then, reality is a structure whose elements are
defined in relational terms in such a way that the whole structure is itself a relation, i.e., a
relation between those elements.

Additionally, we have seen how, for Hegel, our consciousness is fundamentally

constituted by a denial of the immediacy of its object, i.e. by the distinguishing and positioning
of the knowing subject in relation to whatever it is conscious of. It is for this reason that, in
logical terms, Hegel defines consciousness as a negative self-relation44, since it is constituted by a

41 SL, 21.34.
42 As Wandschneider points out, Hegel’s logic is fundamental insofar as its basis in opposition and negation makes
it indispensable for meaningful argumentation. “Philosophy of Nature”, 106. It is not formal but always tied to
content. “By thus introducing content into logical consideration, it is not things that become its object, but the reality,
the Concept of things.” SL, 21:17. Hegel also refers to the logic as the “reason of that which is.” SL, 21:17.
43 I rely here on Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics, 38.
44 "The I is now this subjectivity, this infinite relation to itself, but therein, namely this subjectivity, lies its negative

relation to itself, diremption, differentiation, judgment. The I judges, and this constitutes it as consciousness;
(...)"BPh, §413.
 12

self-related subject who relates to itself always and only insofar as it determines its object as non-
I, i.e., as something other than itself. This is why, for Hegel, all determination is negation insofar
as to be determinate in general, one needs to stand in a relation-to-other. Here, then, we begin
to see how relation-to-other, i.e., difference, becomes an essential element of relation-to-self,
i.e., identity, as I need to relate to something other, to know what an object is not, in order to
know what that object is. In other words, to determine something as ‘A’, I need to know its
limits, that which it is not. To do this, I necessarily need negation and for this a difference
between ‘A’ and ‘non-A’ needs to hold. But if this is so, if difference is necessary for
determination, then difference is not merely an external relation that separates particulars from
each other, but is relevant as determining the essence45 or identity of each particular itself. That
is, for Hegel, the way we distinguish objects is analogous to the way they distinguish
themselves:46

“The difference must be a difference in themselves, not for our comparison, for the subject must
have the difference as its own peculiar characteristic or determination, i.e., the determination
must be immanent in the individual, not only do we distinguish the animal by its claws, but it
distinguishes itself essentially thereby, it defends itself, it preserves itself.”47

In this way, then, difference as relation-to-other becomes a moment, a necessary

element, of a thing’s identity understood as a relation-to-self. Hence, difference is not something
external to an object, but is that by which the object becomes that which it is. In other words,
for Hegel, difference is a constitutive moment of the identity of a thing. For instance, a thing
reveals what it is, its identity, by the process and the series in which it takes on different guises48,
as is, for example, the case with a tree that changes its semblances or states through the change
of seasons. The identity of the tree is, then, just the unity, i.e. the self-relation, of the series of
its differences. In this way, then, Hegel conceives of identity as a negative self-relation that
implies difference as well as the process of differentiation that actualizes difference.49 To put it
simply, we could say that the identity of something is derived through difference, has difference

45 Hegel’s notion of essence designates something that remains self-identical in qualitative change. It refers to the
unity that remains same through change, but it is not a substrate behind appearances. In other words, “to be an
essence is to be the kind of a thing that appears in various guises such that no particular guise exhaustively expresses
the nature of that thing.” Yeomans, “Identity as a Process of Self-Determination”, 64.
46 As Yeomans puts it, “The best explanation for why we are able to individuate objects the way we do is that

objects individuate themselves. “Identity as a Process of Self-Determination”, 74.

47 Hegel, Lectures in History of Philosophy, 3:333-334. Hereafter, LHP.
48 In Hegel’s terms, a thing ‘repels itself from itself’. Enc, §116.
49 De Nys, “Identity and Difference”, 85. Even a tautology such as ‘A bachelor is an unmarried man’ has the

requisite difference between subject and predicate that allows it to say something.
 13

as its moment. 50 This conception of negative self-relation, i.e., a self-relation that includes
difference, is opposed to the atomistic self-relation that excludes difference and sees it as
something external to identity. 51

It is important to note here that Hegel also insists that difference is equally a self-relation
that has identity as its moment.52 That is, although self-relation as identity has relation-to-other,
i.e., difference as its moment, that other relates to itself and identity as its other. This is so because
the other, as difference, in relating to itself must differ from itself or otherwise it would be
identical to itself. However, the only way difference can differ from itself is by being other than
itself. But that which is different from difference is identity. Hence, difference contains identity
as its moment, insofar as it is the difference between identity and difference.

The reason for Hegel’s insistence on this reversal is that the latter is required in order
to avoid a one-sided, totalizing procedure in which all difference is rendered subordinate to an
original identity. If this were so, we would end up with a one-sided holism where we would
think of reality or the world as a whole in terms of an original unity that merely splits itself while
remaining essentially what it always was.53 It is this misconception that leads to the spirit monist
reading of Hegel in which some sort of an original mind stands at the basis of reality,
externalizes itself in nature and then merely returns to itself with the development of
consciousness. 54 Hence, it is only by treating identity and difference as equipotent and
cotemporaneous,55 that we can achieve a conception of the world as a whole that does not
result in one-sided, totalizing holism.56 In other words, in conceiving of the whole it is crucial
to keep in mind that difference is not merely a subordinate moment of a self-identical whole
but a necessary component that determines the whole itself. That is, a whole is a whole not by

50 “[Those who say that identity is not difference] do not see that they are themselves saying that identity is different;
for they are saying that identity is different from difference; since this must at the same time be admitted to be the
nature of identity, their assertion implies that identity, not externally, but in its own self, in its very nature, is this,
to be different.” SL, 11.262R2.
51 This is why for Hegel, anything that relates solely to itself, such as a thing-in-itself, lacks all determination and,

insofar as it is a being that possesses no determinate content, it is, in fact, nothing at all. Hence, Westphal notes
that “If there is a first rule of Hegel’s metaphysics, it is: ‘Posit no transcendent entities.’” “Philosophizing about
Nature”, 307.
52 SL, 11.266.
53 Williams attributes this reading to Desmond in “Double Transition”, 35.
54 Taylor, Hegel, 91.
55 “Unity, difference and relation are categories each of which is nothing in and for itself, but only in relation to

its opposite, and they cannot therefore be separated from one another.” PS, ¶363.
56 With this in mind, Westphal rightly characterizes Hegel’s philosophy as emergentist and only moderately holist,

rejecting “strongly holist interpretations of Hegel’s views, according to which ‘the whole’ has ontological priority
over its parts and determines their characteristics, or at least, more so than vice versa.” “Philosophizing about
Nature”, 305.
 14

its simple identity in relation to something completely other than itself but by its identity
understood as the self-relation of the whole, the components of which, however, are themselves
determined by difference. Hence, a whole becomes, i.e., gets to be the whole it is only through
irreducible, non-derivative difference. 57 Or, as Willliams puts it, “the whole is not the
elimination but rather the consummation of the differences it organizes.”58

The import of all this is that, for Hegel, this dynamic between identity and difference
constitutes the foundation of the dialectical logic of the world as a whole and the principle
ground of all its activity and self-development.59 What this means is that it is in the very nature
of the self-identical to differentiate itself and of the self-differentiated to demonstrate its identity
as a part of its internal activity.60 With this dialectical double movement61, the whole of reality
is not merely a composite of its parts, not merely external to its members, but present in them
as their organizing principle.62 In other words, the dialectical logic is the reciprocal, two-sided
principle of movement by which the whole of reality develops and organizes itself. Hence,
where the atomistic metaphysical framework outlined in the beginning of this section conceives
of difference and plurality as something apart from identity and unity, dialectical logic allows
us to see how seemingly opposed terms are, in fact, related; how separation implies and
presupposes relation and how relation presupposes separation.63

As outlined, the explication of dialectical logic has its origin in the analysis of subjectivity
and self-consciousness, which is taken by Hegel to be the logic, structure and principle of
development of all reality in virtue of which all distinctions and determinations within it arise,
including the emergence of subjectivity itself. With this, we are in a position to understand how
the dialectical framework of Hegel’s metaphysics accommodates subjectivity and overcomes its
alienation in logical terms. The crux of Hegel’s solution, then, is this: the alienation between
the subject and its object is overcome by realizing that the difference between the thinking

57 Maker, “Identity, Difference”, 19.
58 Williams, ‘Double Transition”, 42.
59 “This is to be regarded as the essential nature of reflection and as the determined primordial origin of all activity and

self-movement.” SL, II.266.

60 According to Henrich, then, the fundamental theses of the dialectical logic are: “the positive relation is, at the

same time, negative; everything is identical with itself insofar as it is also not identical with itself; all that is
unmediated is essentially mediated; every individual thing is also the other of itself.” Quoted in Freundlieb, Dieter
Henrich, 86.
61 “It is only through this doubled movement that the difference gets its due, since each of the two differences,

considered in itself, consummates itself in the totality and in this totality works out its unity with the other. Only
this self-suspension of the one-sidedness of both [sides] in themselves prevents the unity (totality) from being one-
sided.” Enc, §241.
62 Williams, “Double Transition,” 41.
63 Ibid., 38.
 15

subject and its external object, that very act of separation, is the result of the dialectical self-
development and opposition of reality as a whole. The solution is achieved, then, by a change
of perspective insofar as it is the very separation of the subject from reality, from its object, that
unites the subject with reality insofar as that separation is a part of its, i.e., the reality’s, process
of dialectical development. This elementary formula is worth quoting in full:

“The disparity which exists in consciousness between the I and the substance [reality] which is
its object is the distinction between them, the negative in general. This can be regarded as the
defect of both, though it is their soul, or that which moves them. That is why some of the ancients
conceived the void as the principle of motion, for they rightly saw the moving principle as the
negative, though they did not as yet grasp that the negative is the self. Now, although this negative
appears at first as a disparity between the I and its object, it is just as much a disparity of the
substance [reality] with itself. Thus what seems to happen outside of it, to be an activity directed
against it, is really its own doing, and substance [reality] shows itself to be essentially subject.”64

Once again, noting the reversal in the last sentence is crucial. That is, Hegel’s
fundamental insight is that the difference between the ‘I’ of the knowing subject and its object,
is simultaneously a difference, or disparity in reality itself. It is only in this way that alienation
between subjectivity and the external world can be overcome; not by forcibly reducing one
term to the other, but by showing how the emergence of the difference between the two is a
part of the developmental process of the world as a whole that follows the same dialectical logic
of self-relation in relation-to-other. This is the meaning of Hegel’s famous proclamation that
his entire system depends on “grasping and expressing the truth not only as substance but also
as subject.”65 His point is merely that the structure of subjectivity as a negative self-relation
remains impossible to reconcile with external reality as long as we conceive of the latter in
atomistic terms as a composite of self-identical particulars. However, when we realize that
reality itself follows the oppositional, dialectical logic of self-relation that has relation-to-other
as its moment, the structure of subjectivity can be logically accommodated within the world
precisely in and through its activity of separation. It is this that Hegel refers to when he says
that “the negative” or “the void” is the fundamental principle of motion, insofar as what this
means is that the development of the world as a whole is dialectical, i.e., progresses through
opposition.

64PS, ¶37.
65PS, ¶17-18. The “truth” then is the self-knowledge that self-consciousness achieves in recognizing its logic in
reality.
 16

An instance of such opposition is the one between mind and nature, the latter of which
is, of course, the ground for the emergence of the former. Though in this section we have
overcome the logical alienation of subjectivity from the world by showing how differentiation
and negative relation, understood as separation, does not preclude unity and identity, we are
yet to see how Hegel conceives of the mind’s actual emergence from nature and its relation to
that ground. It is only by comprehending this relation that the task of placing subjectivity in the
world can be completed.

3. Nature and Organism

For Hegel, the dialectical logic manifests itself in both nature and mind, i.e., constitutes
a single self-developing process of reality that has nature and mind as its phases. The relation
of the logic to nature is complex and a matter of significant dispute. Very generally, we can say
that Hegel takes the dialectical logic to be a self-supporting and an internally autonomous
structure; in this way, it is self-related, self-determined and unconditioned by anything other
than itself. As such, however, it itself manifests itself dialectically, i.e., in relation to other. For
Hegel, this other of dialectical logic is nature. If dialectical logic is characterized by its logical
and conceptual connectedness, nature is the opposite of that in its spatial externality. In this
way, the dialectical logic as a principle of organization and structure of reality, manifests itself,
as unconditioned, by conditioning nature. In dialectical terms, it is a self-relation that has nature
as its moment of difference, i.e., its other. As the conditioned other of dialectical logic, nature
relates to itself as difference, i.e., is external to itself, but has self-relation in the form of
dialectical logic, as its moment, as its other. For Hegel, because it is external to itself, nature is
characterized by spatial separateness. However, insofar as it has the dialectical logic as its
moment, as its other, it is conditioned by the dialectical logic as its organizing principle.66

Hegel contends that because of this relation between its appearance as separate and
external, yet conditioned by dialectical logic, nature has a developmental tendency to
demonstrate its organizing principle, i.e., the dialectical logic.67 In this development, we ought
to regard it as a series of stages, or a scale of forms, in which each phase presents itself as a
summing up of the whole to that point and is, in turn, taken up in the successive phase.68 It is

66 A simpler way to put this is to note that nature is conditioned by natural laws that are not themselves natural
objects. “The law of falling, for example, is not itself something that can fall.” Wandschneider, “Philosophy of
Nature”, 107.
67 It has a goal of showing ‘what it is in in itself’, namely ‘something ideal.” Enc, §251A.
68 Nature “is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceeding of necessity out of the other, being the

proximate truth of that from which it results.” Enc, §249.

 17

this developmental tendency towards manifesting the logic lying at the ground of it that Hegel
refers to when he talks of nature being “driven onwards beyond itself to mind as such” and how
we have to “in a certain way only look on at how nature itself overcomes its externality (…), at
how it liberates the concept concealed in nature from the cover of externality.”69 Nevertheless,
and this cannot be emphasized enough, nature is not itself completely determined by the
dialectical logic. It is the other of logic and is, hence, related to it but the self-grounding
autonomy of the logic does not determine or necessitate nature’s every particular component.
The point is that we must not forget that, for Hegel, nature is truly the other of the logic; hence,
where each step in the latter is necessary, nature itself is a realm of contingency in which the
necessity of the logic appears. It is this what Hegel refers to when he talks of ‘weakness’ or
‘impotence’70 [Ohnmacht] of nature, insofar as the point he is making is clearly anti-rationalistic;
there is no underlying reason for every component of nature, some things that it contains, such
as the natural laws and constants being X instead of Y, are truly contingent.71

For Hegel, the most substantial stage at which nature overcomes its externality, i.e.,
goes beyond mere externality of atomism and mechanistic relations of physics where one thing
is always externally impelled to affect something else, is the emergence of life and organism.
Hegel understands organisms in general as dynamic, living wholes essentially characterized by
their propensity towards self-preservation, both as individuals and representatives of their
genus72; i.e., they are fundamentally distinguished by their ability to preserve their own kind
and their corresponding functions throughout the process of life. As such, although they do not
exhibit consciousness or subjectivity, living organisms exhibit self-relation insofar as their genus
determines their parts as members of a whole73; i.e., their parts are organized with respect to
the kind of the organism that is self-preserved under changing external conditions.74 What we
can observe, then, is that nature at the stage of the organism already exhibits the dialectical
logic of relation-to-self being dependent on the relation-to-other: 75 The animal or plant
organism relates to itself, determines the function of its parts as a biochemical metabolism, in

69 Enc, §381A, §389A.
70 Enc, §250.
71 Kreines takes this point to demonstrate that Hegel is not a pre-Kantian rationalist. “Metaphysics,” 16.
72 “The end of the animal in itself as an individual is its own self-preservation; but its true end in itself is the species.”

LHP 3:185.
73 “In this way the living thing is articulated purposefully; all it members serve only as means to the one end of

self-preservation.” Aesthetics, 1:145.

74 Since an individual organism preserves its kind, species or genus throughout life, the individual organism is

conceptual in character as it is a particular of a genus understood as a universal. Hence, with organism, “nature
has reached the determinate being of the concept.” Enc, 336A.
75 PS ¶256.
 18

relation to the other of the external world, i.e., the changing natural conditions. In this way,
the logic that is explicit in self-consciousness, is already implicit in nature at the stage of the
organism.76

What we see in the case of the organism, is that Hegel’s conception of it is teleological
in an internal sense,77 where means, in the form of e.g. biochemical functions, and ends, such
as self-preservation, exist solely through one another and neither could exist without the other.
Once again, we can observe here the dialectical logic and relation between identity and
difference, insofar as a living whole is differentiated into parts, i.e., complementary organs, that,
themselves, reproduce the whole. Hence, the whole is a self-relation dependent on the relation-
to-other that are its parts. Equally, however, the parts relate to each other and the whole that
determines their function; in other words, the parts as organs exist only within the
complementary functioning of the self-sustaining and self-relating whole.78 In this way, living
things exhibit a level of self-determination, mirroring the principle of dialectical logic that
cannot be reduced to the mere externality of nature as mechanism.79 Hence, in this way, the
development of nature can be understood as slowly uncovering its underlying dialectical
principle.80

This process is taken further with the emergence of sentience in which animal organisms
begin to relate to themselves and their environment in the form of internalized sensations.
Likewise, Hegel consider sentience, what he calls the natural soul, to be the zero-level basis of
consciousness as well. In the next section, we will look at Hegel’s account of this development.

76 Notably, such descriptions are not without their examples in biology as is the case with the notion of autopoiesis:

“Autopoiesis attempts to define the uniqueness of the emergence that produces life in its fundamental cellular
form. It’s specific to the cellular level. There’s a circular or network process that engenders a paradox: a self-
organizing network of biochemical reactions produces molecules, which do something specific and unique; they
create a boundary, a membrane, which constrains the network that has produced the constituents of the
membrane. This is a logical bootstrap, a loop: a network produces entities that create a boundary, which constrains the network
that produces the boundary. Varela, “The Emergent Self”, 212. Emphasis mine.
77 In contrast to external teleology where the fulfillment of an end depends upon a separate process that imposes

the end in an independently given object. In this way the outcome is merely an artifact and the process of its
becoming is abolished. Winfield, Hegel and Mind, 30-31.
78 In this reversal, the parts relate to themselves, and the whole as their other.
79 “Teleology is above all contrasted with mechanism, in which the determinateness posited in the object, being

external, is one that gives no sign of self-determination.” SL, 12.154.

80 Hegel credits Kant for the rediscovery of the notion of internal teleology at SL, 12.157, though, for Kant, we

could never know whether organisms actually had purposes or merely acted as if they did. Hence, the principle of
natural purposiveness remained merely regulative and not constitutive. Critique of Judgment, 5:397.
 19

4. Natural Soul and Embodiment

As we have seen in our analysis of consciousness in section one, Hegel, like Kant, is
opposed to the methods of rational psychology and its attempts to determine subjectivity as an
immaterial substance. For Hegel, treating consciousness as a thing by applying categories to it
necessarily leads to dualism insofar as it turns mind into something static and fixed that
consequently, by its apparent immateriality, becomes impossible to unite with the body. In this
way, the position of rational psychology very quickly loses track of the relation of the mind to
the natural side of humans.81 It is for this reason, then, that Hegel praises Kant for pointing out
the category mistake in attributing determinations to the subject of thought and, thus, putting
an end to questions about the “soul’s” simplicity, composition or immateriality.82

In contrast to Kant, however, Hegel does not abandon the notion of the soul altogether,
but rather points it towards, what he takes to be, the concept’s actual and proper referent,
namely, the body. Here, the soul is not some immaterial substance or some disembodied thing.
Rather, according to Hegel, the concept ought to be used and interpreted as referring to the
conscious mind’s immediate and natural relation to corporeality. With this reappropriation,
Hegel seeks to undo the dualist picture and connect consciousness and subjectivity with the
natural world. In relation to the anti-solipsistic argument, that demonstrates the dependence of
subjectivity on consciousness of external objects, the body can then provide the mind with the
minimal spatial enduring ground that allows for the unity of conscious experience.83 That is, it
is only the embodied mind that can relate to itself as an individual subject; if this were not the
case, if the mind had no spatial ground in which it could perceive itself as active, it could not
be conscious.

Hence, in opposition to the Cartesian thinking thing designating the soul as an

immaterial substance, Hegel takes the soul or the psyche84 to be the mind’s first, natural and
embodied, developmental step in its emergence from nature.85 As such, the notion of the soul

81 Hegel rejects the entire discipline of rational psychology by saying that “Aristotle’s books on the soul, as well as
his dissertations on its special aspects and conditions, are still by far the best or even the sole work of speculative
interest on this general topic.” Enc, §378.
82 Enc, §47R.
83 Winfield, Hegel and Mind, 26.
84 It is worth keeping this alternative term in mind, as to avoid any dualist or spiritualist connotations that might

be associated with ‘soul’.

85 There are three main steps in this development: the soul which relates solely to its sensations and feelings without

distinguishing them from itself as objects of an external world, consciousness which is aware of objects by taking what
it senses and feels not to be itself but determinations of a unified world from which it has separated itself as a
subject, and intelligence which has intuitions, representations and thoughts by seeing its mental contents as both
products of its own activity and determinations of object. Winfield, Hegel and Mind, 30.
 20

represents an important step in the anti-dualist argument, acting as a middle term between the
body of a living organism and the more developed conception of mind which, at the stage of
consciousness, is characterized by the subject-object divide. In contrast to this, the mind at the
stage of the soul is fully immersed in its corporeality, not thinking of itself as a subject or, for
that matter, thinking at all. Unlike with consciousness, the mind at the stage of the soul does
not conceive of its body as an object or something other than itself but is fully immersed in the
particularity of sensation and feeling. In this sense, Hegel sees the soul as the organizational
form86 of the body, as its animating principle that unifies the body and brings it conceptually
closer to mind proper, i.e., consciousness.87 With this conception, the soul is not exclusive to
humans, but possessed by animal organisms as well.

Unlike the animal, however, a plant organism does not possess sentience understood as
the capability to feel or experience itself. The plant is self-related as a whole through its
biochemical and metabolic functions that preserve it in relation to the external environment
but it is not related to itself as itself. In contrast to this, an animal is present to itself, it experiences
and feels itself as an organism. This, however, does not mean that it has a robust sense of
subjectivity that allows it to think of itself or make determinations; rather, the point is that the
animal organism, through its capacity for sensibility and irritability, as it moves and orients in
a given environment, encounters itself in the natural world. Another way to clarify this
difference between plant and animal organism is by looking at their different modes of self-
preservation. 88 An organism, in general, to preserve itself, must regulate its biochemical
functions. We can call this regulative function of an organism the function-self. Accordingly,
since the plant, to preserve itself, has to regulate only its internal biochemical functions, its form
of self-relation is limited to that of the function-self. However, an animal organism must also be
in control of its actions within the external environment. For this reason, in addition to the
function-self, the animal can also be said to have an action-self. In this case, the action-self and
the function-self are intrinsically connected; i.e., an animal’s actions must be such that they are
in keeping with the organism’s goal of self-preservation of its form. Hence, all actions of an

86 There is a clear parallel with Aristotle here and the hylomorphic doctrine of the soul as the form of the body.

De Anima II 1, 412a20–1. However, as Ferrarin points out, whereas Aristotle applies the notion of the soul to all
life forms, including plants, the Hegelian soul has the narrower scope of psychic functions intertwined with animal
and human organisms. Hegel and Aristotle, 263. Additionally, as Winfield notes, by likening an organism to a doctor
who cures himself, Aristotle falls back to external teleology. Hegel and Mind, 32.
87 “In philosophy at present we hear little of the soul: the favorite term now is mind. The two are distinct, soul

being as it were the middle term between body and mind, or the bond between the two.” Enc, §34A.
88 I rely here on Wandschneider, “Philosophy of Nature,” 121.
 21

animal organism must be subject to the function-self, insofar as they need to conform with its
activity of biochemical regulation.

Making this distinction between the function-self and the action-self is important insofar
as it helps us make sense of the fact that animal organisms possess sentience, i.e., that they
experience sensations, in light of Hegel’s rather opaque definition of sensation as “the faculty
of finding oneself within oneself.”89 The key to understanding this claim is to consider what
happens if, for example, I touch a very hot object. With reference to the distinction between
the function-self and the action-self, the externally derived tactile impression is first relayed to
the function-self and subjected to existential assessment, i.e., the being of the hot object is
assessed in relation to the regulation of my biochemical functions that are essential to my self-
preservation. It is the result of this evaluation that is, then, relayed to my action-self,
experienced as pain and can form the basis for an action based on that sensation. The point
here is that, in the case of animal organisms, the emergence of sensation represents the stage at
which the organism is no longer merely externally related to its environment but presents
content to itself by making internal evaluative conditions something that can be experienced.
Such an outcome is made possible by the double-self nature of the animal organisms by which
the qualities such as hot, cold or sweet act as significant factors towards the organisms goal of
self-preservation. Once again, then, the animal organism exhibits a greater degree of self-
relation, sensation, that is itself dependent on relation-to-other, i.e., relation to its external
environment.

In this context, the emergence of the mental in the form of sensation of an animal
organism is the point at which the externality of nature is, to a significant extent,90 overcome.
This is so because, through sensations, the animal organism begins to relate to itself in a way
that is no longer solely spatial and material. As a natural, sentient soul, it feels itself a whole,
achieving a greater unity in relation to its parts than at the previous stage of plant organism
and mere biochemical metabolism. The emergence of the natural soul at this stage is, then, a
dialectical transformation of the body and its biochemical functions; those functions are still
present and essential to it, yet the physiological character is replaced by a new form of activity,
i.e. mental as opposed to physical. Hence, it is the systematic structure of the whole of the

89Enc, 337A.
90Not entirely though as mere sensation and feeling is not enough for self-determination and comprehension of
the dialectical structure of reality. For this consciousness and cognition are required. This is why the true parting
with nature occurs with consciousness and subjectivity understood as mind proper.
 22

organism’s living body that triggers the emergence of a new quality.91 The natural soul and
body are, thus, not separate, yet remain distinguished with the mental quality of sentience
representing a new form taken by bodily functioning. That is, the emergence of the mental
ought to be understood as the means by which a living organism achieves a greater level of self-
relation in relation-to-other. In other words, to better preserve itself, the living organism needs
to adjust and adapt to its environment, which requires a way of discriminating and evaluating
the innumerable effects upon it from the environment. For this to be possible, the emergence
of the mental is crucial, in virtue of which the organism feels itself as a whole, a new form of
self-relation, by relating to the multitude of the effects upon it from the external environment –
its other.

Hence, the very first development of the mental in the form of sensations is inextricably
tied to an organism’s goal towards preservation of its form. That is, Hegel demonstrates the
embodiment of mind by showing how the qualities experienced in sensations are an extension
of the organism’s process of self-determination and self-preservation as a type of self-relation.92
The soul is the name for the mind’s development at this stage in which it operates as an
immediate unity of nature and the natural organism; it is not a thing separable from the body
but rather the organism’s intrinsic organizational structure, the organizational form of the
living body that dynamically endures beyond its physical changes.93 The soul is not conscious
of itself under any description nor does it make any determinations but merely responds to its
natural environment by means of internalized sensations. In other words, mind at the stage of
the soul does not determine these sensations as objects, as members of the external world but
merely registers them as qualities of its own psychic field. For this reason, Hegel says that
sensations are merely found94 in the soul as its immediate and transient alterations devoid of
any reflexivity.

Nevertheless, sensation is of utmost importance for the development of the mind insofar
as it marks the point of ‘being-for-self’ of an organism; i.e., the fact that the quality of sensation,

91 Within this framework, the physical does not directly cause the mental (or vice versa), rather the mental ought
to be understood as a phase shift of the physiology of a living organisms, occurring at a critical stage of structural
organization and self-relation. Harris, Reflections, 161. A good analogy for understanding this phase shift is, perhaps,
that of quantitative change resulting in qualitative change such as can be observed in the case of water and steam.
The quantitative increase in temperature makes evident intrinsic relations of measure by which continual change
in quantity – as governed by these relations – is transformed into qualitative change in the sense that there is the
emergence of new qualitative determinations. Ice, water and steam figure here as forms of appearance of an
underlying substrate (designated by the chemical formula H2O) that represents the essence of what appears.
92 “Sensation in general is the healthy participation of the individual mind in its bodiliness.” Enc, 401R.
93 Testa, “Hegel’s Naturalism”, 26.
94 Enc, §402.
 23

at the level of content, is subjectively experienced. Importantly, it also marks the point at which
the spatiotemporal externality of nature is dialectically overcome in the form of experiential,
mental quality. With this, the natural soul is the zero-level basis of mind’s development95 that
we share with animal organisms and that acts as the ground on which all further stages and
functions of the mind depend on. In the next section, we will look at the developmental
progression from the natural soul to consciousness, in which the organism, as a whole and a
universal, becomes aware of itself as such.

5. From the Natural Soul to Consciousness

Despite the partial overcoming of nature’s externality, animal organisms cannot

distinguish themselves internally from their natural environment. In other words, they have no
capacity for self-determination independently of nature, i.e., independently of excitement,
sensation or other environmental circumstances. Hence, at the stage of the natural soul, the
mind remains immersed in its natural conditions which is why Hegel discusses a number of
natural occurrences in relation to it, such as the changing of the seasons and the variations of
night and day. Though it relates to itself as a whole, the animal organism is fully determined
by its natural conditions and, for this reason, remains a part of nature. Yet, in the form of
sensation, it assimilates and internalizes the external environment, manifesting a dialectical
overcoming of nature’s spatiality. This process increases gradually; at first, organisms might
sense only that with which they come directly into contact with, however, as they develop,
organisms gain access to a greater domain of the environment and sense modalities such as
sight and hearing with which they can assimilate wider portions of the natural world. In such a
way, nature is progressively internalized in the form of sensations as mental phenomena and its
externality gradually overcome.

This process of internalization is furthered with the transition from sensation to feeling.
Though still unconcious, the move from sensation (Empfindung) to feeling (Gefühl) exhibits a
further degree of self-organization and self-relation insofar as the source of sensations is outer
and tied to individual ‘this and that’ sources whereas feeling come from the organism itself and
is felt in it as a whole.96 The point here is that, unlike sensation, which is passive and found,

95 “Everything is in sensation, and, if you like, everything that emerges in the conscious mind and in reason has its
source and origin in sensation; for source and origin just mean the first, most immediate manner in which something
appears.” Enc. 400R.
96 “While sensation puts more emphasis upon the passive aspect of feeling, i.e. upon the immediacy of feeling’s

determinacy, feeling refers more to the selfhood involved here.” Enc, 402R. 96 For this reason, the strength or
 24

feeling is better described as an immediate, embodied response to something. Another way to

put this is that, while sensation moves from the body, i.e., the senses, and is internalized in the
soul’s being-for-self, feeling appears as originating in the soul’s being-for-self and is subsequently
embodied, such as when someone, perhaps poetically, reports a feeling of courage coming from
the chest. It is important to note here that, for Hegel, the embodiment of the soul’s feelings is
necessary. This is so because, to be sensed, the feeling must be minimally separated from the
organism as a soul, yet also be, in some sense, identical to it. It is precisely this that happens
with embodiment, insofar as an inner feeling is minimally externalized, i.e., felt in the body.97

Here, it is worth noting how on point Hegel’s insistence on the embodiment of feeling
is with some of the developments in contemporary neuroscience. For example, Antonio
Damasio, throughout his work, repeatedly emphasizes the dependence of an experience of
feeling on corporeality by saying that “If an emotion is a collection of changes in the body state
connected to particular mental images the essence of feeling an emotion is the experience of such
changes in juxtaposition to the mental images.”98 The point here is simply that it is primarily
the body that is the object of the mind, i.e., the bodily state is subconsciously present at all times
and when we feel, we feel the changing landscape of the body. This ties in directly to Hegel’s
contention that sensation and feeling are extensions of the metabolic and biochemical functions
of an organism as a whole; hence, in the instance of a sensation of danger “…it is the entire
organism rather than the body alone or the brain alone that interacts with the environment.”99
In other words, in agreement with Hegel’s account of the soul, Damasio contents that the mind
comes on stage when an organism acquires the capability of “telling a story that there is a life
ticking away in an organism, and that the states of the living organism, within body bounds,
are continuously being altered by encounters with objects or events in the environment.”100

As the soul progressively internalizes its interactions with the environment, as well as its
own states, it reaches a stage in which it encompasses the entirety of the body’s corporeality or,
in Hegel’s terms, becomes the idealization of the body in its interaction with the
environment.101 This results in the emergence of self-feeling,102 in which the organism begins

weakness of a feeling is taken to depend on the self rather than on the stimuli as is the case with sensation. Inwood,
Philosophy of Mind, 365.
97 Enc, 401A.
98 Damasio, Descartes Error, 145.
99 Ibid, 224. Damasio continues, “when we see, or hear, or touch or taste or smell, body proper and brain

participate in the interaction…”

100 Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 30.
101 Harris, Reflections, 147.
102 What Damasio would call a proto-self. The Feeling of What Happens,154.
 25

to sense itself as a whole modified by contact with objects in its environment. This constitutes
the transition from the natural to the feeling soul, insofar as in the case of the latter, the soul
does not only sense its fleeting individual sensations but also feels itself as a whole, although still
only as a particular feeling. However, this feeling of self is not yet opposed to anything other;
at this stage, the soul does not distinguish itself from the rest of the world.103 That is, the subject
and object are not yet distinguished insofar as the soul has no way of detaching itself from its
immediate content, no means by which it could determine further the content of its feeling
beyond the mere activity of feeling in which it consists.104

To develop from this point, it seems as if some level of positioning and determination
towards feeling is required, however, the soul has no resources to modify its feelings and
sensation since all it does is feel and sense. At this stage, there is no subject that relates to the
content of feeling. Hence, the only way a change can occur is if feeling itself somehow affects
the content of other feelings which is precisely what Hegel’s account of habituation seeks to
explicate. By developing habits, a self-feeling organism can become indifferent to a particular
feeling and achieve a level of detachment or withdrawal without actually altering or
determining the content of the feeling itself. That is, through repetition, it is conceivable that a
feeling could get psychologically isolated from those that have no relation to it. Hence,
habituation allows the soul, as self-feeling, to detach itself or grow accustomed to repeated
feelings. In doing so, in not being entirely immersed in its feelings, the soul has them in
“possession”105 and, in this sense, achieves a further level of abstraction from its immediate
content.

The important thing to note here is that the possibility of detachment from feeling also
implies the possibility of suspended corporeal behavior. In this way, habit marks a clear step
forward towards freedom from natural conditions and self-determination; the individual
organism is still a natural being, but the extent to which it is naturally determined by sensations
can be reduced. 106 This separates the soul from its bodily sensations and allows it to have
determinations of its own. This development may also initially take the form of a failure in
which a habitualized action goes wrong; for example, an individual might want to grab

103 “The soul is in itself the totality of nature, as an individual soul it is a monad; it is itself the posited totality of its
particular world, so that this world is included in it, its fulfilment; in relating to this world it relates only to itself.” Enc, §403.
Last emphasis mine.
104 As Hegel puts it, “self-feeling, immersed in the particularity of the feelings (of simple sensation, and also desires,

urges, passions, and their gratification), is not distinguished from them.” Enc, §409.
105 Enc, §410.
106 For example, one can become indifferent to satisfaction if the desires and urges are dulled by habit.
 26

something that is out of reach by moving towards it, only to finds its arms and legs not willing
to cooperate. With this minimal separation achieved, the soul can begin to impose its will on
the body and its movement, as is the case, for Hegel, with human upright posture. In this way,
by imposing habits, the soul moves away from its immediacy with the body. This gives rise to
the distinction between the outer as the body and the inner as the soul, which, for Hegel, marks
the transition from the feeling soul to the actual soul.107 Here, the body becomes the expression,
the “sign”, of the soul, allowing gestures such as the mentioned upright posture or laughter.
Hence, the organism is no longer subjected merely to its natural, self-preserving process but
becomes subjected to itself, achieving a greater level of self-determination.

With the minimal separation of the soul from the body, the soul is in a position to feel
its body as a limitation and in so doing it can designate it as something alien or other in relation
to it. This is the crucial moment in which the soul takes the shape of the “I”, i.e., the subject,
and the development of mind reaches the stage of consciousness. It is at this stage that the
development of mind leaves behind animal organisms and a separation from nature occurs.108
Hegel describes the emergence of the subject as the moment in which “the universal becomes
for the universal.”109 By explaining this claim, we will be able to see how subjectivity contrasts
with the mere self-feeling of an organism. Note first that, for Hegel, an organism in general is
a universal in virtue of its form as a whole being the mark of its species or genus. Now, with
self-feeling, the organism as a universal feels itself only as that particular, transient and immediate
feeling. However, the crucial way in which subjectivity differs from this case is that, although
my subjectivity, manifested in the form of “I think” thought, particularizes me as something
different than everyone else, this act, as such, is something that all subjects have in common.
In other words, the ‘I think” thought, the very act by which every single self-conscious subject
differentiates itself from all other subjects and objects is, at the same time, an act by which we
differ in no way from one another.110 Hence, the subject is at the same time a particular and a
universal in virtue of which a conscious organism, as a universal, becomes aware of itself as
such.111

107 Enc, §411.
108 “It is only man who is thinking mind and by this, and by this alone, is essentially distinguished from nature.
Enc, §381A.
109 Enc, §412.
110 “When we say I, we indeed mean an individual; but since everyone is I, we thereby say only something entirely

universal.” Enc, 381A.

111 This is why Hegel refers to self-consciousness as a genus. PS, ¶175.
 27

As an abstract universality, the subject excludes itself from all of its natural
determinations 112 , feelings and sensations and turns them into objects, giving rise to the
perception of an external world.113 Simply put, it becomes aware of the world as objectivity, as
projected outside of it and in this way opposes itself, as mind, to nature. Though it remains
embodied and a part of a natural world, crucially, the mind no longer depends on nature for
its development. In other words, Hegel’s point is that, through e.g. culture or history, conscious
minds can and do develop, without those developments being completely or solely determined
by their natural conditions. In this sense, subjects acquire freedom, understood as the capacity
for self-determination, i.e. the capacity “to be at home with oneself in one’s other [nature], to
be dependent upon oneself, to be the determining factor for oneself.”114

6. Relation between Mind and Nature

With this, we are finally in a position to interpret Hegel’s short but obscure description
of the relation between mind and nature:

“For us mind has nature as its presupposition, though mind is the truth of nature, and is thus
absolutely first with respect to it.”115

The first part of this sentence expresses the fact that mind emerges from nature in a
series of dialectical stages of development. In this sense, mind has nature as its clear ontological
presupposition.116 However, insofar as nature is conditioned by the dialectical logic that drives
its development and that mirrors the logic of thought, self-conscious mind as that logic is the
truth of nature, the revelation of its rational substrate, and, hence, prior to it.117

Here, however, we ought to, once again, resist the urge towards a one-sided totality that
privileges identity over difference; i.e., the type of interpretation that would designate the
dialectical logic as some sort of a primal mind that externalizes itself in nature and then returns
to itself in human mind. While it is true that, for Hegel, the self-conscious mind marks, in some
sense, an overcoming of nature and a return to the original ground of dialectical logic, this does

112 “The universality of the I enables it to abstract from everything, even from its life.” Enc, 381A.
113 “It is true that the mind has within itself the entire content of nature, but the determinations of nature are in
the mind in a radically different way from that in which they are in external nature.” Enc, §381A.
114 Enc, §24A2. Or, “put in terms of a process, to come to itself in its other.” Enc, §94A.
115 Enc, §381.
116 As Bowman notes, it is precisely this aspect of Hegel’s conception of reality and the relation between mind and

nature that accommodates an “essentially Schellingian philosophy of nature seeking to derive the relation-to-self
that is self-consciousness from an initially unconscious realm of physics.” Hegel and the Metaphysics, 39.
117 That is, “Hegel warns against taking nature as the original ground that would make mind into something

derived from it.” Ferrini, “Transition to Spirit”, 128.

 28

not make the opposition between mind and nature or logic and nature magically disappear.
That is, we must always remember that any self-relation in a dialectical process does not merely
destroy its antagonisms and differences, but rather depends on them for its own identity. Hence,
if one can talk of a “return” in the act of subjectivity comprehending the dialectical logic as
both its own principle and a developmental principle of reality, it must be noted that this return
is a return with a difference, i.e., a return through nature.

This important distinction can be related through an analogy. The interpretation we

ought to reject conceives of Hegel’s system as a circle in which the dialectical logic externalizes
itself in nature and then returns to itself with self-conscious mind. In this way, the moment of
difference is completely destroyed and we end up with a one-sided, totalizing and closed system
that privileges identity. In contrast to this, the interpretation of Hegel’s system outlined in this
paper, can, for comparative purposes, be visualized of as an open-ended spiral in which every
seeming return to the original ground never closes in a full circle since the difference through
which it went, though reconciled and overcome, is simultaneously minimally preserved.118 To
put the point directly then, though mind as self-consciousness comprehends its own logic to be
the same as the logic of the dialectical development of reality, it does so as a natural and
embodied organism. 119 In this way, then, there is no final teleological completion and the
process of development remains open-ended.120

7. Conclusion

In the introduction to this paper, I have outlined two obstacles to integrating mind as
subjectivity into the world and explicating its relation to nature: i) the atomistic metaphysical
conception of reality that, by conceiving of the world as a composite whole constituted by parts
understood as independent and self-identical particulars, cannot accommodate the
oppositional structure of negative self-relation that characterizes subjectivity and ii) the
mechanistic account of the emergence of subjectivity which, by trying to account for the latter
in terms of external laws and forces causing its determinations, leaves out the self-determining

118 This is in line with Hegel’s conception of negation of negation where, after a first term is negated, the negation
of the resulting second term does not bring us back to the first, but preserves the content of both in a third term.
In contrast, the “circle” interpretation outlined above operates with a conception of negation where the negation
of the second term marks a return to the first and, hence, a destruction of the second.
119 In Hegel’s terms, mind “posits its own presupposition,” comprehends itself as a result of its own presuppositions,

i.e. the relation between the dialectical logic and nature. Enc, §381A.
120 Note Hegel’s insistence that reality ought to be grasped not as a static and fixed being but “always as a becoming,

as a process, a repulsion and attraction.” Hegel continues, saying that the process does not end with the coming
of unity, but rather “that distinction will also come in again.” SL, 21.161.
 29

and self-organizing character of mind as an extension of the organizational structure already

implicit in the whole of living organisms.

In searching for an alternative framework in Hegel, capable of overcoming these

obstacles, we have seen how a close analysis of subjectivity and consciousness reveals a
dialectical logic of determination in which the notions of identity and difference are not separate
from each other but interrelated and interdependent in a way that overcomes the atomistic
conception of the world. Secondly, we have seen how this dialectical logic manifests itself in the
externality of nature and conditions its development towards the emergence of life and
consciousness, in the latter of which that same logic becomes explicit in the form of self-
determined subjectivity, overcoming the otherness of nature and allowing us to understand the
emergence of mind in concrete terms that explain the actuality of its structure. Admittedly, the
resulting metaphysical position is complex and difficult in addition to being opposed to the
more dominant framework of naturalism. However, it is not opposed to natural sciences
themselves nor does it contain, in and of itself, anything that would be scientifically
unacceptable. In fact, as might be observed from the notions such as autopoiesis 121 or
punctuated equilibrium,122 dialectical thinking in general can be of use in scientific inquiry.123

As for its philosophical plausibility, Hegel’s dialectical framework is as complex as the

problem it is trying to address; here, the solution to the question of mind’s placement in the
world and its relation to nature is achieved not by forcibly reducing one term to the other, a
strategy that privileges identity, nor by dualistically keeping them apart - an approach that
prioritizes difference; rather the solution is achieved by offering a reconception of the very
notions of identity and difference that allows us to see how the terms that at first seemed
incompatible, such as mind and nature, belong together after all.124 The Hegelian alternative
metaphysical framework we have arrived at, then, allows us to comprehend mind and nature
as opposites that belong together precisely in and through their difference, in virtue of the

121 See footnote 76.
122 A theory in evolutionary biology proposed by Eldredge and Gould, that opposes uniform gradualism and
suggests periods of stasis followed by rapid and rare events of speciation. "History, as Hegel said, moves upward
in a spiral of negations," where "punctuated equilibria is a model for discontinuous tempos of change in the process
of speciation and the deployment of species in geological time." Also, "the law of transformation of quantity into
quality holds that a new quality emerges in a leap as the slow accumulation of quantitative changes, long resisted
by a stable system, finally forces it rapidly from one state into another." “Punctuated Equilibria”, 145-146.
123 In fact, under the name of dialectical materialism, such a framework has shaped the entire scientific endeavor

of a good part of the world throughout the 20th century, most notably the Soviet Union but other
socialist/communist countries as well. See Graham, Science, Philosophy and the Human Behavior in the Soviet Union.
124 It is in this sense that Hegel’s approach is often described as therapeutic insofar as a solution to a problem is

achieved by transcribing it into the right context. See Testa, “Hegel’s Naturalism”, 20.
 30

dialectical developmental logic that organizes and pervades all reality, the presence of which is
implicit in nature, especially in life and organism, as well as explicit in mind as self-
consciousness, by virtue of its cognition and comprehension. That is, what becomes object for
self-consciousness in this comprehension, is the process of its own genesis. Given, however, that
this process follows the same dialectical logic that is the logic of self-consciousness, mind as
subjectivity is no longer alienated from the external world but finds itself in it. Hence, Hegel’s
account of self-relation in relation-to-other, i.e., dialectical logic, overcomes the alienation of
mind from nature and reality insofar as it allows us to understand how a process of self-repelling
can at the same time be a process of self-arriving.

For Hegel, this way in which the mind comprehends the process of its own becoming
and finds its place in the world constitutes the pinnacle of philosophical knowledge, i.e., “the
absolute”.125 With it, conscious subjects, that oppose themselves to all objects, find themselves
at home in a world that is a process of self-opposition itself.

125 Enc, §381A.
 31

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