Hegel rejects Greek dualism and almost stumbles upon a biblical Hebraism. He sees the Cartesian project as inherently mechanistic and incoherent (what connects mind and matter? Cartesians have never really answered this).
Unfortunately, Hegel still sees the idea of a mind/soul in a body as a “dualist temptation.” He does admit, though, that it is foreign to Greek thought (Taylor 81).
Hegel is drawing upon Herder’s expressivism. Thought, language, etc does not exist without a medium. Thus for Hegel, the subject, no matter how spiritual, is necessarily embodied. This is true up to a point, but runs into problems in two areas: God/Geist is not embodied (at least not God the Father and the Holy Spirit, though Hegel gets around that) and the soul exists in a disembodied state after death.
"Thought, language, etc does not exist without a medium. Thus for Hegel, the subject, no matter how spiritual, is necessarily embodied."
ReplyDeleteSay more on this please.
Hegel is saying that nothing exists in a vacuum. How can a "thought" exists outside of a mind that thinks it?
DeleteWhat about "the subject...is necessarily embodied"?
Deletethat's where it gets tricky. Hegel says every subject (including Geist) is embodied. He has his reasons which I'll get into later. The problem is that Hegel isn't really clear on what he means by "embodied."
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