Unconsciousness and the Unconscious

There are three primary ways of understanding and interpreting any thinker and the philosophical implications of his or her thought. Understanding Hegel, or any other philosopher for that matter, may be facilitated by examining (a) the historical precursors that influenced his thinking, (b) what he actually says in his texts, and (c ) the philosophical ideas that grew out of his thought. These three elements inform the purpose and overall structure of this project, showing how Hegels notion of the unconscious draws on a number of historical figures, is revealed with depth and consistency in his own writings, and may be interpreted 1 from the standpoint of contemporary theories of mind continuous with his postulations on unconscious mental life.Within this context, it becomes important to understand how Hegels conceptual treatment of the unconscious was informed by his historical predecessors, including the influence of neo-Platonism, theosophic Christianity, early German Idealism, and Natural Philosophy, and how he theoretically appropriated this knowledge and made it part of his own philosophical system. Examining his likely precursors, and the similarities and differences that exist between their respective philosophies, prepares us to engage Hegels texts with careful precision. Our understanding of Hegels position and its implications becomes even broader if we interpret him through the psychoanalytic theories of Freud. While giving meticulous attention to Hegels texts, I wish to show that the set of ideas among Hegels successors increase our appreciation of the depth of his contributions to understanding the dynamic processes of the psyche. In providing a systematic and coherent account of Hegels theory of the unconscious, I will argue throughout this book that he anticipated much of what psychoanalysis was later to make more intelligible. Because psychoanalysis comes out of the intellectual milieu that was prepared by Hegel, using Freud to read Hegel aids in our appreciation of how revolutionary both of these thinkers were in impacting the way in which we have come to understand the mind. It is in this manner that we can see how Hegels ideas transcend his time, and how easily we can read Hegel informed by psychoanalytic perspectives. What becomes particularly germane to the question of applied Hegelian theory is whether or not it is able to withstand the scrutiny of contemporary interrogation and prove its relevance to our current understanding of human nature. For Hegel, as for psychoanalysis, the unconscious is a pivotal concept in our comprehension of Geist. The word Geist is customarily translated as spirit or mind,3 but the English equivalents do not capture the full meaning of the term in German. A person s Geist signifies the complex integration of his or her intellectual capacity, insight, depth, and personal maturity, and it is a term that always implies a measure of respect for its superiority. Hegel, for instance, and Freud, are grosse Geister, literally, big spirits.To say of someone that he has einen grossen Geist is a great compliment and praise for his personality as a whole. A child or average person has einen kleinen Geist (a small spirit), meaning he is unable to have a deep insight into the complexities of life, is probably not very intelligent, and will likely fall prey to his petty desires and flaws. While all human beings are primarily equal in terms of their soul (Seele), individuals are very unequal in terms of the development and quality of their Geist. The term is used for God as wellder heilige Geist (the holy ghost)and thus carries with it a further sense of exaltation. The English word mind is much more reductionistic in scope and pertains more to intellectual capacities and biological functioning. There is no corresponding term in German. Geist, however, truly combines mind and spirit and always implies a high level of awareness or self-consciousness. This is why for Hegel, Spirit is the process and culmination of pure subjectivity, the coming into being of

pure self-consciousness.
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Hegel employs the term unconscious (bewutlos) in a few limited contexts, in which it carries a variety of meanings. In modern, ordinary German, bewutlos is used principally as a medical term, such as when a person is in a coma, while unconscious in Hegels sense would be translated by todays standards as unbewut, a usage adopted by the time of Freud. While not formally distinguished by Hegel, we may say there are six distinct usages of unconsciousness: (1) that which lacks consciousness, such as the Idea outside of itself instantiated in nature, thus, an unconsciousness that in principle cannot be made conscious; (2) a state or condition of spirit as non or unself-consciousness; (3) a realm that is other-than or dialectically opposed to consciousness; (4) that which is outside of or beyond spirit in its current moment, which we may either attribute to (a) the realm of pure potentiality not yet actualized by spirit (which would correspond to the second definition), or ( b) that which is negativity itself and thus a central feature in spirits development; (5) that which was once conscious but became concealed from self-awareness (as in repression); and (6) a pre-rational unconscious ground or abyss (Schacht, Abgrund, or Ungrund ) that serves as the foundation for all forms of spirit to manifest themselves. This last definition will concern us the most, because Spirit emanates from and is the logical completion of an unconscious ontology. While Hegel acknowledges the unconscious dimension of world spirit,4 he largely limits the scope of the unconscious to individual psychology. Hegel tells us that the concrete existence of spirit as the I or pure self-consciousness resides in the domain of individual personality (SL, 583). Always in a state of turbulent activity, the ego (Ich) as pure self-consciousness is individual personality in the form of Self (Selbst). For Hegel, the self as a process of becoming is a complex whole whose own restless nature impels it to actualize itself, to unfold into actuality . . . that whole, of which to begin with it contained only the possibility (EG 398, Zusatz). In its conceptual totality, the self is the Absolute as the Concept or complex whole.5 In common language, spirit is a developmental process of self-actualization realized individually and collectively through reflective, contemplative thought and action. The notion of spirit encompasses a principle of complex holism whereby higher stages of development are attained through dynamic, laborious dialectical mediation. At its apex, subject and object, mind and matter, the particular and the universal, the finite and the infiniteare mutually implicative yet subsumed within the Absolute or Whole process under consideration. This is what Hegel refers to as the Concept (Begriff ), or what we may more appropriately translate as comprehension. Begriff is the noun to the verb begreifen, literally, to grasp with ones hands. Begreifen implies a depth of understanding, an ability to fully comprehend all aspects of a subject matter or thing under question. Therefore, Begriff is a concise one-word description that captures the essence of something, namely spirit, what we aim to comprehend. Hegels account of the concrete actuality of the Concept as individual personality may be said to present a theory of human psychology with unconscious elements always prefiguring intrapsychic and logical operations of thought. In fact,
introduction 3

the unconscious makes thought possible.Yet for Hegel, individuality is ultimately explained within the larger context of a collective historical anthropology that informs human relations and the coming to presence of pure self-consciousness. In this sense, we may say that the unconscious is not only non self-consciousness, which is much of world history until spirit returns to itself and comes to understand its process, but is furthermore the competing and antithetical organizations of impulses (Triebe) that are instinctively active, whose basis is the soul [Seele] itself (SL, 37), which informs spirits burgeoning process.

Hegel is concerned not only about explaining individual psychology, but also about providing a universal, anthropological account of humankind. For Hegel, individuality is ultimately subordinated to higher social orders constituted in society by participating in the ethical life (Sittlichkeit) of a collective community. This participation rests on the development of a continuous psychosocial matrix of relations that has its origin in the family. The communal spirit and the ethical law embodied within the family of communal consciousness arises from the power of the nether world (PS 462)what one might not inappropriately call the collective unconscious. For Hegel, collective spirit binds all into one, solely in the mute unconscious substance of all (PS 474). This unconscious universality contains the ethical order as divine law as well as the pathos of humanity, the darkness of the underworld (PS 474). Hegel states:
[H]uman law proceeds in its living process from the divine, the law valid on earth from that of the nether world, the conscious from the unconscious, mediation from immediacyand equally returns whence it came. The power of the nether world, on the other hand, has its actual existence on earth; through consciousness, it becomes existence and activity. (PS 460)

Almost a full century before the emergence of depth psychology, Hegels psychological insights are profound. In this passage, he clearly recognizes that the personal and collective unconscious developmentally and logically precedes consciousness and further sees that each domain maintains its dialectical relation with the other.6 Universal self-conscious Spirit becomes, through the individuality of man, united with its other extreme, its force and element, unconscious Spirit (PS 463). Yet as Hegel points out, there is always a fundamental tension between the drive toward individuality and subordination to the collective:
The Family, as the unconscious, still inner Concept [of the ethical order], stands opposed to its actual, self-conscious existence; as the element of the nations actual existence, it stands opposed to the nation itself; as the immediate being of the ethical order, it stands over against that order which shapes and maintains itself by working for the universal. (PS 450)

The family is the locus of identification and the determinant stimulus for the internalization of valuethe Ideal. As a result, it becomes the matrix affecting the
4 THE UNCONSCIOUS ABYSS

deep structures of the unconscious and the organization of social life. Yet for Hegel, the dialectical tensions organized within the unconscious of the individual and the collective unconscious of the community will always ensure a conflict of self-conscious Spirit with what is unconscious (PS 474). The universalization or actualization of the unconscious becomes important for Hegel in the depiction of spirit as a dynamically informed, self-articulated totality or complex whole. Thus, he not only focuses on human psychology and collective unconscious forces that determine individual and social relations, but also points to the generic structural operations of the mind that have their origins in the unconscious, which make human consciousness and thought possible. It is this latter point that we will be concerned with here. In the Second Preface to the Science of Logic, Hegel states:
The activity of thought which is at work in all our ideas, purposes, interests and actions is, as we have said, unconsciously busy. . . . [E]ach individual animal is such individual primarily because it is an animal: if this is true, then it would be impossible to say what such an individual could still be if this foundation were removed. (SL, 3637, italics added)

Hegel is clear that unconscious activity underlies all dimensions of human subjectivity, from the determinate negativity of death and desire to the emergence of thought and higher forms of reason. He further underscores the point that the unconscious is tied to our natural constitution or animal evolutionary past. The notion of the unconscious as determinate negativity is the dynamic foundation or ground of spirit and is therefore at least partly responsible for its dialectical ascendence toward the Absolute, or what we may call absolute conceiving. In the night

of the mind, desire and reason coexist in dialectical tumult as spirit attempts to develop a unity from its unconscious beginnings. For the purpose of giving systematic structure to Hegels theory of unconscious spirit, it becomes important to explore this fundamental relation between desire and reason first instantiated as a primal ground or abyss. By way of a preliminary introduction to Hegels views on the abyss, let us turn our attention to a succinct overview of his specific treatment of the unconscious within the domain of subjective spirit and the feeling soul.