On Hegel's 'Philosophy of Mind': the self-knowing, actual Idea - part fifteen.

'Psyche; or, the legend of Love'

by Mary Tighe (1772 – 1810)

CANTO II.

Oh happy you! who blest with present bliss 

See not with fatal prescience future tears, 

Nor the dear moment of enjoyment miss 

Through gloomy discontent, or sullen fears 

Foreboding many a storm for coming years; 

Change is the lot of all. Ourselves with scorn 

Perhaps shall view what now so fair appears; 

And wonder whence the fancied charm was born 

Which now with vain despair from our fond grasp is torn! 

Vain schemer, think not to prolong thy joy! 

But cherish while it lasts the heavenly boon; 

Expand thy sails! thy little bark shall fly 

With the full tide of pleasure! though it soon 

May feel the influence of the changeful moon, 

It yet is thine! then let not doubts obscure 

With cloudy vapours veil thy brilliant noon, 

Nor let suspicion's tainted breath impure 

Poison the favouring gale which speeds thy course secure! 

Oh, Psyche, happy in thine ignorance! 

Couldst thou but shun this heart tormenting bane; 

Be but content, nor daringly advance 

To meet the bitter hour of threatened pain; 

Pure spotless dove! seek thy safe nest again; 

Let true affection shun the public eye, 

And quit the busy circle of the vain, 

For there the treacherous snares concealed lie;

Oh timely warned escape! to safe retirement fly! 

Bright shone the morn! and now its golden ray 

Dispelled the slumbers from her radiant eyes, 

Yet still in dreams her fancy seems to play, 

For lo! she sees with rapture and surprise 

Full in her view the well-known mansion rise, 

And each loved scene of first endearment hails; 

The air that first received her infant sighs 

With wondring ecstasy she now inhales, 

While every trembling nerve soft tenderness assails. 

See from the dear pavilion, where she lay, 

Breathless she flies with scarce assured feet, 

Swift through the garden wings her eager way, 

Her mourning parents ravished eyes to greet 

With loveliest apparition strange and sweet: 

Their days of anguish all o'erpaid they deem 

By one blest hour of ecstasy so great: 

Yet doubtingly they gaze, and anxious seem 

To ask their raptured souls, "Oh, is this all a dream?" 

The wondrous tale attentively they hear, 

Repeated oft in broken words of joy, 

She in their arms embraced, while every ear 

Hangs on their Psyche's lips, and earnestly 

On her is fixed each wonder speaking eye; 

Till the sad hour arrives which bids them part, 

And twilight darkens o'er the ruddy sky; 

Divinely urged they let their child depart, 

Pressed with a fond embrace to each adoring heart. 

Trusting that wedded to a spouse divine 

Secure is now their daughter's happiness, 

They half contentedly their child resign, 

Check the complaint, the rising sigh suppress, 

And wipe the silent drops of bitterness. 

Nor must she her departure more delay, 

But bids them now their weeping Psyche bless; 

Then back to the pavilion bends her way 

Ere in the fading west quite sinks expiring day. 

But, while her parents listen with delight, 

Her sisters hearts the Furies agitate: 

They look with envy on a lot so bright, 

And all the honours of her splendid fate, 

Scorning the meanness of their humbler state; 

And how they best her ruin may devise 

With hidden rancour much they meditate, 

Yet still they bear themselves in artful guise, 

While 'mid the feigned caress, concealed the venom lies. 

By malice urged, by ruthless envy stung, 

With secret haste to seize their prey they flew, 

Around her neck as in despair they clung; 

Her soft complying nature well they knew, 

And trusted by delaying to undo; 

But when they found her resolute to go, 

Their well laid stratagem they then pursue, 

And, while they bid their treacherous sorrows flow, 

Thus fright her simple heart with images of woe. 

"Oh, hapless Psyche! thoughtless of thy doom! 

"Yet hear thy sisters who have wept for thee, 

"Since first a victim to thy living tomb, 

"Obedient to the oracle's decree, 

"Constrained we left thee to thy destiny. 

"Since then no comfort could our woes abate; 

"While thou wert lulled in false security 

"We learned the secret horrors of thy fate, 

"And heard prophetic lips thy future ills relate. 

"Yet fearing never to behold thee more, 

"Our filial care would fain the truth conceal; 

"But from the sages cell this ring we bore, 

"With power each latent magic to reveal: 

"Some hope from hence our anxious bosoms feel 

"That we from ruin may our Psyche save, 

"Since Heaven propitious to our pious zeal, 

"Thee to our frequent prayers in pity gave, 

"That warned thou yet mayest shun thy sad untimely grave.

'The Woman in Red', ('Frau in Rot'), Giovanni Boldini

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831). 'Philosophy of Mind'. 'Subjective Mind'.

§408

'(2) Owing to the immediacy in which self-feeling is still determined, i.e. owing to the moment of bodiliness which in self-feeling is still undetached from the mind, and since too the feeling itself is a particular feeling, thus a particular embodiment, the subject, though educated to intellectual consciousness, is still susceptible to the disease of remaining fast in a particularity of its self-feeling, unable to refine it to ideality and overcome it. The fully furnished self of intellectual consciousness is the subject as an internally consistent consciousness, which orders and conducts itself in accordance with its individual position and its connection with the likewise internally ordered external world. But when it remains ensnared in a particular determinacy, it fails to assign that content the intelligible place and the subordinate position belonging to it in the individual world-system which a subject is. In this way the subject finds itself in the contradiction between its totality systematized in its consciousness, and the particular determinacy in that consciousness, which is not pliable and integrated into an overarching order. This is derangement'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Self-feeling is immediate, or to put it another way, it has not like higher aspects of the mind, shaken itself free of the body, and a particular feeling, unlike, for example, a thought, involves a particular part of the body and even when a person has advanced to intellectual consciousness he or she still retains self-feeling and the particular feelings that go with it, hence an intellectual consciousness may well become obsessed by a feeling which it cannot refine to ideality, integrate into its overall view of things, put in its proper perspective, and thus overcome, and because of their physical embodiment feelings are able resist rational control and in this case there is a contradiction between the subject’s individual world-system and its recalcitrant feeling and this is Verrücktheit, insanity, and yet because it derives from verrücken, to move, disarrange, this is also derangement, and so there are no pieces lacking from the subject’s mind but instead the pieces are simply in disarray.

A subject that has only self-feeling yet no intellectual consciousness cannot be insane since derangement involves a contradiction between intellectual consciousness and self-feeling, hence intellectual consciousness, a later stage of mind, needs to be brought into this account of derangement. There are not two selves in operation here, one the self of self-feeling, the other the self of intellectual consciousness. Intellectual consciousness albeit not itself natural is also the natural self (natürliches Selbst) of self-feeling and in virtue of this a contradiction can arise between these two aspects of the self. Earlier metaphysicians, in particular such followers of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) as Christian Wolff, (1679–1754), Alexander Baumgarten, (1714–1762), etc., consult §378, equated the mind with the soul and conceived it as a thing (Ding). Concerning this they were mistaken for the mind is free and not a lump of stuff that might have a thought or a feeling stuck in it like a drawing pin on a draft board. For itself or on its own the mind is not capable of derangement, only if it is natural and in being (Seiendes) can the mind become insane, with a finitude fixed in it. Derangement involves the soul and its bodily accompaniment as well as the mind, it is a psychical and not a purely mental disease, it happens only because intellectual consciousness is also the natural self of self-feeling.

The difference between the healthy and the insane subject is like the difference between waking and dreaming, yet derangement is not simply dreaming, a normal dream does not normally come into conflict or contradiction with intellectual consciousness because intellectual consciousness is in abeyance. Derangement is dreaming and waking together, a dream is incorporated into what is otherwise a normal waking life, error is embedded in the objective world. But we all make mistakes. Where does madness (Wahnsinn) begin? An unjustified surge of for instance hatred that goes against one’s usually placid demeanour might appear like madness, but in actual fact it is not. Madness requires a ‘feeling that has come into being in a bodily form’ (leiblich, seiend gewordenen Gefühls) stubbornly resistant to incorporation in the ‘mediations’ of consciousness, such as hatred that persists despite one’s realization that its object has done nothing to deserve it. In this case the mind is in a state of ‘being’ (seiend), with an indigestible ‘being’ (Sein) that it cannot dissolve, though it retains the general principles and the rational resources for overcoming it. Phillipe Pinel (1745–1826), a French physician, viewed insanity as ‘mental alienation’, a mind alienated from its proper function, and advocated treating the insane as persons to be cured rather than objects of amusement or fear.

Hegel holds that derangement arises to begin with from a feeling, passion, or emotion, a view that was challenged by Anthony Quinton (1925 – 2010) in ‘Madness’ in 'From Wodehouse to Wittgenstein', 1998.

He contended instead that emotions or at least emotions characteristic of madness embody beliefs and that madness consists in the ‘systematic unreasonableness of a person’s practical beliefs’. Beliefs, not emotions, are primary because an emotion can only be said to be unreasonable or not appropriate if it embodies an unreasonable belief, and yet it is not evident why this even if it is true implies the causal primacy of beliefs. An emotion might be unreasonable if it generates an unreasonable belief and yet Hegel rejects this account given his belief that the mind is intrinsically immune to systematic unreasonableness and that its apparent unreasonableness depends upon intrusions from lower levels of the psyche. He can concur that emotions are accompanied by beliefs, that for instance. the ‘manic’s wild elation embodies a belief in his own supreme qualities of intelligence, etc.’ (Quinton, ‘Madness’, 221). But he would argue that the belief is powered by the elation rather than the other way round. By analogy, love is love of someone and love embodies certain beliefs. If a youth falls in love with a girl his love embodies the belief, say, that she is the most beautiful girl in the world, or that he cannot live without her, and yet it appears unlikely that the youth’s love is driven by, and to be explained by, such a belief. In all probability the youth would have fallen in love with another girl had he met her instead, he was in the mood for love, harbouring feelings ready to be aroused by any object falling within a certain range of acceptability and again, the beliefs that accompany the youth’s love are in all probability absurd.

Ot maybe not. I play devil's advocate here.

That an otherwise sane youth should adopt them would be incomprehensible in the absence of an appropriate feeling, and here the belief is engendered by the emotion, not the emotion by the belief. It is not so evident that it has to be otherwise in the case of those systematically unreasonable practical beliefs that constitute madness. Hegel also seems to hold (along with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and others, but in opposition to, for instance, Pascal or Rousseau) that passions or the heart are intrinsically malevolent and self-seeking but it is not obvious that this is so. Insanity can be altruistic, expressing itself in, for instance, excessive generosity (or is that authentic and not mere display?). Generosity might be inconvenient if unrestrained by reason, but it is not inherently malevolent or self-seeking. Socrates, in Plato’s 'Phaedrus', observes an affinity between madness and love. In the eyes of a dispassionate observer, love involves a passion for an object wholly disproportionate to its merits, manifestly false beliefs about the loved object, and strangely impractical behaviour, but love is surely a benign emotion, inconvenient if wholly unrestrained by reason, and yet not intrinsically malignant and possibly beneficial, therefore we are more tolerant of blind love than of blind hatred (or maybe that is a bad example in this current climate)..

'Study Of A Woman In Red', c. 1890, Jean-Jacques Henner

On the stages of the soul’s development, consult §402. Crime is considered in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1821), §§90–103, and in Enc. III, §§496–502. The cases of crime and derangement are different since derangement is a contradiction between the intellectual consciousness and self-feeling, these are constituents of every human mind and so every human individual has the seeds of derangement in him or her albeit the seeds do not normally burgeon. Derangement is an individual, not a social, matter and by contrast the necessity of crime is a social matter but the argument is not that every individual contains the seeds of criminality, only that given that there are laws some people are bound to break them. A question still arises however, it is still not evident in what sense derangement is a stage in the development of the soul, for a person cannot be insane if he or she is not already an intellectual consciousness, that is to say, if he or she has not yet completed his or her development, because there is then nothing for self-feeling to contradict. And so self-feeling might be a stage in the soul’s development but to infer from this that derangement is a stage in our development is comparable to saying that since the feeling soul in its immediacy is a stage in our development, so is animal magnetism.

A given stage, Sn, is distinct from a reversion to it at a later stage, S(n+m).

Sn is still in normal minds latently present in S(n+m).

In abnormal minds it acquires an undue prominence giving the diseased state S(n!+m).

Sn is a stage in our development, and so is S(n+m).

But S(n!+m) is not. it is a perversion of S(n+m).

Here also crime differs from derangement.

Crime is not a reversion to an earlier stage of development.

The difference between somnambulism and derangement is discussed in the first paragraph of the Zusatz to §405. The concept of derangement applies to derangement in general and contrasts with the particular species of derangement considered below.

The necessity of his procedure as follows:

The soul is a contradiction.

It is both a single individual and immediately identical with the universal natural soul, with its substance.

But at the stage of the feeling soul in its immediacy this contradiction is only in itself or latent.

Furthermore, a contradiction is an opposition (Entgegensetzung) and opposition stands in contrast to identity.

But here the contradiction or opposition exists in a form that contradicts it in the contradictory form of identity, the identity of the individual with the universal.

To be a proper contradiction it has to become explicit, appear in a form that does not contradict it as an opposition or as a contradiction.

Why must a contradiction become explicit?

Well, the point that the form of identity contradicts its content, which is to say, the contradiction, will not suffice. If contradictions can subsist at all why not a contradiction between a contradiction and the form in which it appears? Maybe to sharpen a contradiction into an opposition is to go some way towards resolving it, if the selfsame person supports both the UK Labour Government and a Meritocracy where people with genuine merit are given the freedom to shine we have a contradictory (or inconsistent, like supporting two football teams?) but not necessarily impossible state of affairs. If we sunder him or her in two leaving one wholehearted UK Labour government supporter and one wholehearted Meritocracy-supporter we have an opposition and maybe a contradiction but not at least in its consequence an unusual state of affairs. Or in other words transforming a latent contradiction into an explicit contradiction albeit not itself a resolution of the contradiction is a step towards a resolution. One may not be able to begin to resolve a contradiction inone's thought or pne's writing until pne makes it explicit and gest it out in the open. By way of analogy the more explicit contradictoriness of self-feeling and/or insanity is a step on the road to harmonious consciousness, that an explicit contradiction is closer to resolution, for instance to ceasing to be a contradiction, exemplifies a general principle of Hegelianism, that one opposite veers over into the other at its extreme point. for instancem if you travel as far southwards as possibl, you begin travelling northwards albeit traveling to the West never veers over into traveling eastwards!. In the 'Encyclopaedia Logic identity is not immediately followed by opposition, an intervening stage is difference (Unterschied), so that the order is generally speaking identity–difference–polarity/opposition (consult the Encyclopaedia §§115–20). One may well then anticipate an intervening stage in which the individual soul is different from the universal soul, but not in opposition to it, giving the order feeling soul in its immediacy/somnambulism - intermediate stage - self-feeling/derangement. What are not provided with such an intervening stage however but rather a description of somnambulism in various ways, at times it involves a difference but not an opposition between the individual soul and the universal: ‘the relationship to it of something different’ (§405Z), ‘relationship . . . of mere difference’ (§408Z). At times somnambulist soul is ‘immediately identical’ with its ‘substance’, (§408Z.) So there is ambiguity but it may be clarified thus: the ‘feeling soul in its immediacy’ as an early stage in our development (for instance the soul of the foetus) is immediately identical with its world. In the adult reversion to this state, the soul is divided, on one side it is, like the foetal soul, immediately identical with its individual world, its substance, and on the other side it has a mediated relationship to the objectively ordered world. These two sides are merely different and not opposed, the individual is sometimes in a magnetic state, sometimes in a normal state; when he or she is in a magnetic state he or she is controlled by someone in a normal state. The two states never come into collision, they can therefore be mixed (consult §405Z, vermischt, §408Z,) Is there a conflation of the feeling soul in its immediacy as a stage in our development with later reversions to it in intellectual consciousness, Sn with S(n!+m), in the terminology introduced in §408?

In derangement the subjectivity of the soul separates itself from and comes into opposition to that with which it is, in somnambulism, immediately identical, and what it opposes is described in two ways, first as its substance' and second as the objective. The first description suggests what is called above ‘the universal natural soul, . . . its substance’, the second suggests the objective world accessible to ‘objective consciousness’, the first suggests that what is at issue here is self-feeling dealt with as a stage in our development, the second suggests the adult reversion to self-feeling in derangement. An opposition occurs in both states whereby in simple self-feeling the soul endeavours to extricate itself as an individual from its individual world and from its feelings and sensations. In derangement there is a parallel movement of extrication and opposition, the individual extricates itself from the objective world but the movements are more than simply parallel. The movement of derangement is driven by a re-emergence of the self-feeling characteristic of the earlier stage, self-feeling is a healthy development, an essential stage in our advance to full self-consciousness, derangement is an interuptive degeneration of it.

'The Empress Josephine', circa 1805, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Put your hand on my shoulder.

Turn me around.

I'm helpless, I'm spinning.

Turn me around.

Turn me around.

I'll open myself, and I'll never close.

The red rose in my hand is my gift to you.

Turn me around, turn me around.

Put your hand on my shoulder and turn me around.

Over and over, turn me around.

Never stop.

'[Remark] In considering derangement we must likewise anticipate the cultivated, intellectual consciousness, the subject which is at the same time the natural self of self-feeling. In this determination it is capable of falling into the contradiction between its subjectivity, free for itself, and a particularity which does not become ideal in subjectivity and remains fixed in self-feeling. Mind is free, and therefore not susceptible for itself to this disease. But in earlier metaphysics it was regarded as soul, as a thing, and only as a thing, i.e. as something natural and in being, is it liable to derangement, to the finitude lodged in it. Derangement is therefore a psychical disease, i.e. a disease of body and mind alike; the commencement may seem to proceed from one more than the other, and so may the cure'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The account proceeds in terms of derangement involving an impaired objective consciousness, and not of simple self-feeling. The soul enters into opposition to the objective world, a world in which it is, for instance, a peasant. In this opposition its subjectivity is purely formal, empty, abstract, it is not a peasant, but nor is it anything else, it has no role, no place in the world, hence it adopts a role, a place, it supposes it is in reality a princess, then it is a unity of the subjective and objective, it is a simple, subjective self, with subjective opinions, but also, objectively, a princess, with a palace and retainers, from which it has perhaps been temporarily ousted by a usurper. ‘Actually objective consciousness’ is not so defective. An actual princess is aware (subjectively) that she is (objectively) a princess. She is thus for herself an object [gegenständlich] to herself, just as the peasant is. This is ‘a subjective identity of the subjective and objective’ but unlike the deranged peasant the real princess has disconnected (abgeschieden) this subjective identity from herself, ‘placed it over against’ herself as an ‘actually objective’ identity. Sanity involves not just the unity of the two sides that it shares with insanity, but also a separation. The insane cannot effect this separation, since they are still encumbered by ‘immediacy’, ‘naturalness’ and ‘bodiliness’ but the sane consciousness overcomes them, makes them ‘ideal’, ‘makes them its own’ (sich zu eigen machen), and transforms them into ‘an objective unity of the subjective and objective’. In this way it liberates itself from ‘its Other’, namely corporeality, etc., and releases its ‘Other’, namely objective reality, from identity with itself. The feeling soul and the insane distinguish themselves from and relate themselves to a quasi-objective world but this world in which they live is a world of their own, a subjective objective world. It must be so, since the feeling soul is still anchored to its bodily feelings, only by overcoming them can the subject reach out to what is genuinely objective, extruding its private world and its subjective view of it out of itself into genuine objectivity hence it is extricated from its ‘other’, that is to say, from both its corporeality and the objective world. Self-feeling, by contrast, is still immersed in its corporeal feelings and thus has no access to an objectivity that is more than a projection of its feelings, while the insane combine a consciousness of the objective world with its ‘negative’, their private, feeling-dependent world.

'When I have risen to rational thinking I am not only for myself, an object to myself, and therefore a subjective identity of the subjective and objective, but I have, secondly, disconnected this identity from myself, placed it over against myself as an actually objective identity. In order to achieve this complete separation, the feeling soul must overcome its immediacy, its naturalness, bodiliness, must posit them ideally, make them its own, thereby transforming them into an objective unity of the subjective and objective and thus discharging its Other from its immediate identity with the feeling soul as well as at the same time freeing itself from this Other. But the soul has not yet reached this goal at the standpoint at which we are now considering it. In so far as it is deranged, it clings to a merely subjective identity of the subjective and objective, rather than to an objective unity of these two sides; and only in so far as, with all its folly and all its madness, it is still at the same time rational and stands therefore on another level than the one now to be considered, does the soul attain to an objective unity of the subjective and objective. For in the state of derangement proper both modes of finite mind -on the one hand rational consciousness developed within itself, with its objective world, on the other hand inner sensation clinging to itself and having its objectivity within itself-are cultivated, each for itself, into the totality, into a personality'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The Taming of the Shrew begins with an “induction” in which a nobleman plays a trick on a beggar, Christopher Sly, treating Sly as if he is a nobleman who has lost his memory.

LORD:

O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies! 

Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image! 

Sirs, I will practice on this drunken man. 

What think you, if he were conveyed to bed, 

Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, 

A most delicious banquet by his bed, 

And brave attendants near him when he wakes, 

Would not the beggar then forget himself?

THIRD HUNTSMAN:

Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.

SECOND HUNTSMAN:

It would seem strange unto him when he waked.

LORD:

 Even as a flatt’ring dream or worthless fancy. Then take him up, and manage well the jest.

________________________________________________________

Substance of the feeling soul, its naturalness and corporeality, with the objective world disclosed to consciousness, each are referred to as the soul’s other. It appears to be corporeality, etc. that are transformed into ‘an objective unity of the subjective and objective’ but here the object of the verb ‘transform’, umbilden, is not clear and it might be as Miller the translator surmises the soul ‘itself ’. This depends upon whether sich in the clause sich zu eigen machen is a dative, with ‘them’ understood - ‘make them its own’ -, or an accusative - ‘appropriate itself ’ - which can then be taken as the direct object of umbilden in the following clause. The general idea is that one can only know about something if one is not immersed in it, but sets it at a distance, and a natural objection is that the soul’s corporeality is not the same as the objective world but at most a part of it but the conflation is mitigated by the following considerations:

a) The substance of the soul is not a clearly demarcated individual distinct from the rest of the world, but extends throughout the world: see below.

b) Since the objective world is an interconnected whole and the soul’s corporeality is at least a part of that whole objective knowledge of one’s own corporeality involves at least a rough objective knowledge of the world.

c) The illusions of the insane usually concern themselves, their surroundings, and people close to them, that is, that portion of the objective world that is closely connected to their soul’s corporeality, and so on.

'This waking dreaming of theirs has an affinity with somnambulism; but the two states are also distinct from each other. In somnambulism the two personalities present in one individual make no contact with each other, the somnambulistic consciousness, on the contrary, is so separated from the waking consciousness that neither of them is aware of the other, and the duality of personalities also appears as a duality of states. In derangement proper, by contrast, the two difef rent personalities are not two different states but are in one and the same state; so that these reciprocally negative personalities-soulful consciousness and intellectual consciousness-have mutual contact and are aware of each other. The deranged subject is therefore together with itselfin the negative of itself, i.e., in its consciousness the negative of that consciousness is immediately present. This negative is not overcome by the deranged individual, the duality into which he splits up is not brought to unity. Consequently, though the deranged individual is in himself one and the same subject, yet, as an object for himself, he is not an internally undivided subject, concordant with itself, but a subject diverging into two difef rent personalities. The determinate sense of this disruption, of this being-together-with-itself of the mind in the negative of itself, needs still further development. In derangement this negative acquires a more concrete meaning than the negative of the soul has had in our exposition so far, j ust as the mind's being-together-with-itself must be taken here in a more replete sense than the being-for-itself of the soul that has so far been achieved'.

- Philosophy of Mind

‘Being-together-with-itself ’ like ‘together with itself ’ in the preceding paragraph is Beisichsein, ‘being (at home) with [bei] oneself ’, the term implies that the consciousness of the insane is, though fractured, nevertheless somehow unified.

Psychical or ‘soulful consciousness’ and ‘intellectual consciousness’ are each the ‘negative’ of the other and so the deranged are ‘together with’ themselves in their ‘negative’, namely soulful consciousness or self-feeling, but there are other types of ‘negative’. For instance, pains and hardships are a ‘negative’. So is it insane to endure hardships voluntarily? If one endures them involuntarily one is perhaps not ‘together with oneself ’ in them. One would suppose not, if the hardships are endured for a worthwhile end which can be attained with them and not without them. On the other hand pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre and ‘Indians crawling on their stomachs’ either have no worthwhile end or their end can be achieved as easily without the hardships. Are these cases of derangement or at the very least folly?

'In the first place, therefore, we must distinguish this negative characteristic of derangement from other sorts of negative of the soul. To this end we can note that when we endure, e.g., hardships we are also together with ourselves in a negative, but we need not therefore be fools. We become fools only if we endure hardships when we have no rational aim to be attained only in this way. A journey, e.g. , to the Holy Sepulchre undertaken for the purpose of fortifying one's soul may be regarded as a madness, because such a journey is quite useless for the end in view and is therefore not a necessary means for procuring it. For the same reason, the journeys across whole countries made by Indians crawling on their stomachs can be pronounced a derangement. The negative endured in derangement is, therefore, one in which only the sentient consciousness, not the intellectual and rational consciousness, finds itself again'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

But this raises a couple of problems. First, the sense of ‘negative’ in which hardship is ‘negative’ is different from the sense in which the delusions of the insane are ‘negative’, delusions are the negative of intellectual consciousness but hardships as such are not, they may be an integral part of a rational plan. Conversely insane delusions need not be painful,the peasant enjoys the thought of being a princess. What might qualify Christian and Hindu devotees for insanity is not the pains they endure but the delusions motivating their endurance, delusions presumably at odds with their intellectual consciousness, that what they endure is painful is not strictly relevant to the question of their sanity except in so far as it is evidence for their delusions. And secondly, the Christian and Hindu beliefs that sustain their endurance are not isolated beliefs of solitary individuals but parts of a large-scale, and not wholly irrational, widespread ideology. The peasant’s belief that he is a princess can perhaps be explained by the untimely intrusion of self-feeling into his intellectual consciousness but a shared ideology depends also upon education, etc. This is not merely a matter of the number of individuals who have the beliefs for in principle very many individuals might succumb to the delusion that they are a princess, their numbers would not mitigate their insanity, their belief would not be a shared belief propagated by education but a belief adopted more or less independently by each individual and to be explained by his individual defects. Individual insanity might be widespread but genuinely shared insanity is more problematic which is not to deny that an ideology may provide an arena for the display of individual insanity. Not all Christians undertake an arduous pilgrimage, perhaps only those who are insane, the sane are less consistent in the pursuit of their one supposes less intense beliefs. A shared ideology can be insane as it arouses the latent self-feeling of its adherents.

In rationally endured pains, the intellectual consciousness ‘finds itself again’ (sich wiederfindet), that is achieves overall satisfaction by gaining an end that is worth the pain. This is not insanity, in irrationally endured pains only the ‘sentient’ (empfindende) consciousness discovers itself again, that is gets the satisfaction of doing what it wants, or thinks it ought, to do and this can qualify as insanity, though there are shifts in the meaning of ‘negative’.

'Woman in a Red Dress', or 'J. R. against a Window', between 1899 and 1900, Jean-Édouard Vuillard

red is the colour, there's no other, red velvet tap your veins red is the color, red is the lover, red as drippin' stains, red as the lips the wet tongue licks, red as the eyes that weep, mmm the bridegroom's red-devil cake, red as love, red as hate, red as anger, red as rage, red as playin' games, red as comin' home, red as poppies, fire and pain, red as you and she, red as ecstasy, red as racing cars, clinic cards, nirvana, red as a rose, a barfly's nose, back alabama roads, the Grand Wizard's robes, red as china, rubies, leather bridles, stirrups, red as sticky gooey syrup, red as cavier, mars, red as hell, red stripe, life, red as Jack the Ripper's surgical knife... ("you're better red.) red as cherry, power, armies, jelly, red as Kahlo's Birth, mud, sand and dirt, red magenta, Georgia clay, placenta, red & black-venom lack, red as snakes-i'm crawlin, down your back, red as a clown, Circus Mort, red as your way out, red abort, red as pleasure, traitor, red flavor, red as walls, smog, red silos, red stone, red sheets, read Keats, red sunset, nuclear accident, red sleep, red wings, red emergency,

red candles, insects, trance, cannibals, red sea, pussy, red shock, executioner's block, red as laughter, red slaughter eaten by carrion, Sharon Bateman, fate, and Al's hair, red sardonyx, red fingernails, lil' Red Ridin' Hood, MATADOR, crucifix, red is good, red as red, red as stop, red prick... ("you're better red.) red as party, sacred altars, Lola's dress, rubber halters, red as war, red Xmas, red as a temple, red as your next meal, red prostitutes, red preachers, suits, red mama's boots, red alert, red sex, red dessert, red hex, red as crimson, scarlet, vermillion, red cactus, a virgin's mattress, red as sin, red as ink in Ted and Norman's skin, red candy, toys, red box, munition, red as flesh whipped into submission, red as wounds of Christ, Bluebeard's wife, red as meat is, red as Foetus... ("you're better red...) red as an idea

The negativity of pain is distinguished from the negativity constituting derangement, the former is not reciprocal, pain is the negative of mind but mind is not the negative of pain, psychical and intellectual consciousness are each the negative of the other, their cohabitation in an individual is distinct from error and folly, excessive religious devotion may be error and folly rather than insanity. See above.

'The objective consciousness of the deranged shows itself in the most diverse ways: they are aware, e.g., that they are in a lunatic asylum; they know their attendants; are also aware with regard to others that they are fools; make fun of each other's folly; are employed on all kinds of tasks, sometimes even appointed overseers. But at the same time they are dreaming while awake and are captivated by a particular idea that cannot be unified with their objective consciousness. This waking dreaming of theirs has an affinity with somnambulism; but the two states are also distinct from each other. In somnambulism the two personalities present in one individual make no contact with each other, the somnambulistic consciousness, on the contrary, is so separated from the waking consciousness that neither of them is aware of the other, and the duality of personalities also appears as a duality of states. In derangement proper, by contrast, the two different personalities are not two different states but are in one and the same state; so that these reciprocally negative personalities-soulful consciousness and intellectual consciousness-have mutual contact and are aware of each other. The deranged subject is therefore together with itselfin the negative of itself, i.e., in its consciousness the negative of that consciousness is immediately present. This negative is not overcome by the deranged individual, the duality into which he splits up is not brought to unity. Consequently, though the deranged individual is in himself one and the same subject, yet, as an object for himself, he is not an internally undivided subject, concordant with itself, but a subject diverging into two different personalities'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Hegel has previously mentioned ‘somnambulistic consciousness’ and ‘soulful [seelenhafte] consciousness’ above but ‘consciousness’ unqualified is a higher state, involving opposition of thinking and ‘externality’, an outer world. In the ‘natural soul’ these are in immediate unity, no distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is drawn. In ‘reflective’ (reflektierenden) consciousness the ‘two worlds’ appear and at some level are distinct and independent. This is ‘finite thinking’, to it the ‘two worlds’ seem distinct and hence ‘finite’, each bounded by the other. At first it is to do with finite individuals, individuals not intelligibly related to their environment. ‘In truth’, however, the two worlds are ‘identical’, consciousness goes on to display their identity by converting the mass of isolated contingencies, ‘what is found and sensed [das Gefundene und Empfundene]’, into general ‘representations’ and hence into a coherent interrelated whole, in which things that initially appeared contingent become ‘necessary’ and ‘objective’. Taken by itself it appears a mere contingency that I am not a princess but in the context of my ancestry, the law of succession, not to mention genetics etc. it is necessary. This order is produced by the activity of my reason and intellect therefore the two worlds are once more identical, their identity is not ‘immediate’ identity as it was for the natural soul, but ‘mediated’ by our intellectual activity and this exemplifies the pattern: immediate unity–division–restored unity. Consult §387.

'But in the deranged state the negative constitutes, as we have just said, a determination which befalls both the soulfol consciousness and the intellectual consciousness in their mutual relation. This relation of these two opposed modes of the mind's being-together-with-itself likewise needs a more precise characterization to prevent its being confused with the relationship in which mere error and folly stand to the okjective, rational consciousness. To clarifY this point, let us recall that when the soul becomes consciousness, there arises for it, by the separation of what in the natural soul is unified in an immediate way, the opposition of a subjective thinking and externality,-two worlds which are in truth identical with one another ('ordo rerum atque idearum idem est', says Spinoza) , but which to the merely reflective consciousness, to finite thinking, appear as essentially diffirent and independent of one another. Consequently, the soul, as consciousness, enters the sphere of finitude and contingency, of the self-external, hence individualized. What I am aware of at this level, I am aware of initially as something individualized, unmediated, consequently as something contingent, as something given, found. What is found and sensed, I transform into representations, at the same time making it into an external object'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

What Spinoza actually said was: ‘The order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and connexion of things’ (Ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum, Ethics II, proposition vii) by which he meant that the order and connexion of ideas and things is the same constantly, whereas for Hegel the identity is the result of human cognitive activity.

Anyway apparently religious devotion is to be acquitted of insanity, it is not trying to become a princess that is insane but tenaciously believing against all the evidence that one is a princess hence endeavouring to fortify one’s soul by a pilgrimage would not be insane but believing against all the evidence whatever this might be that one’s soul has been fortified by it. This distinction seems a bit dubious to be honest, endeavouring to ensnare the moon’s reflection with a fishing rod appears hardly more sane than believing one has ensnared it. After all the mere endeavour implies a belief that the reflection is the sort of thing that can be ensnared in this manner, a belief that itself defies the evidence, but it is harder to present evidence against the belief that souls are fortified by pilgrimages, in particular to someone whose whole view of the world is coloured by this system of beliefs.

If I am not a king, then in the context of the ‘totality of my actuality’ it is both certain and necessary that I am not a king, evidenced and determined by my actuality but taken by itself, it is possible that I am a king, since some men are kings. This bare logical possibility is the only ground of my belief, albeit such factors as my regal feeling of superiority over others help to cause it.

'It follows from what has just been said that the deranged representation can be called an empty abstraction and mere possibility regarded by the deranged as something concrete and actual; for as we have seen, this representation precisely involves abstraction from the concrete actuality of the deranged. If, e.g., I, who am very far from being a king, nonetheless take myself to be a king, this representation, which contradicts the totality of my actuality and is therefore deranged, has no other ground and content whatever than the indeterminate universal possibility that since a man, in general, can be a king, I myself, this determinate man, am a king. But the reason why such a fixation on a particular representation, irreconcilable with my concrete actuality, can arise in me lies in the fact that I am initially a wholly abstract, completely indeterminate I, an I thus standing open to any content whatever. In so far as I am such an I, I can frame for myself the emptiest representations, take myself, e.g. , to be a dog (in fairy-tales men have indeed been turned into dogs), or imagine that I am able to fly, because there is enough room to do this and other living creatures are able to fly. As soon as I become a concrete I, by contrast, and acquire determinate thoughts of actuality...'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

On the ‘abstract’ I consult §§412–17. The abstract I or ego bears a resemblance to the consciousness that is confronted by a mass of contingencies that it has not yet subjected to rational ordering and as a consequence it has not yet assigned itself a stable place in concrete actuality, a lot of a rational adults are an abstract I to the extent that they can imagine being a king and imagine being or at least entertain the proposition that they are a dog, and yet a merely abstract I can not only imagine these possibilities but also believe them. This is because as an abstract I it has no determinate belief about itself for instance that it is a commoner, or that it is a rational biped, to exclude these possibilities. We cannot believe or even imagine what is logically impossible. In the early stages of consciousness the I, an essential ingredient of consciousness, is merely abstract, it advances by degrees to concrete egohood or ‘concrete, sober selfconsciousness’, consult §§424–5. This stands comparison to the consciousness that has ordered the world by its intellectual activity. And yet after it has reached this stage it can revert to merely abstract egohood and lose it bearings in the objective world, it can become stubbornly attached to such a subjective idea as that it is a king. As to the connexion between this account of insanity, as a reversion to the abstract I, and the earlier account of it as a reversion to self-feeling, the abstract I is required in order to explain how a person can believe for instance that he is a king or she is a queen, rather than simply having feelings of superiority that do not affect his or her conscious beliefs. It explains the effects of self-feeling at the level of consciousness, self-feeling is needed in order to explain the descent from the concrete to the abstract ego, and why the abstract I opts for one belief rather than another, it is possible that I am a king and equally possible that I am a commoner, as a merely abstract I, I can believe either, my obstinate belief that I am a king stems from my particular self-feeling.

There are a couple of unresolved contradictions that need attending to. First, the ‘individualized representation’ or isolated idea contradicts the ‘abstract universality of the immediate I’. Why? The abstract I can indeed accommodate any idea. But I can find no intelligible connexion between my abstract self and the concrete king I believe myself to be. Why should I be a king rather than a commoner or a dog? Secondly, the isolated idea, together with the abstract I, contradicts the ‘internally harmonious total actuality’.

Three propositions and one sensation are now introduced:

a) ‘What I think is true’. In one sense this is true and defended by ‘conceptual reason’. The world achieves its objectivity and coherence by our thinking, at the highest level, what conceptual reason thinks, is true in ‘form’ and ‘content’, a perfect unity of ‘what is thought’ and ‘what is’. Consult §§465–8, 574–7. Does ‘true’ mean ‘fitting the facts’, that is, ‘correct’, or does it have Hegel’s special sense of roughly ‘coherent and self-contained’ (consult §379)? Is what is ‘thought’ by reason the object of its thinking (for instance God) or the content of its thinking (for instance that God is good)? At this elevated level ‘truth’ has the Hegelian special sense, and the distinction between the object (content?) and the content (form’) of the thinking is transcended. On ‘conceptual’, from begreifen, ‘comprehend’, consult §406.

b) ‘What I think is true’ in the ‘deranged’ sense given it in insanity, this implies that if I think I am a king, then I am a king. The ‘concrete content of actuality’ is ‘excluded’ from this merely ‘formal’ unity-in-difference. If ‘actuality’ were taken into account it would be obvious that I am not a king.

c) ‘The subjective and objective are absolutely divorced’. This is asserted by the ‘unintelligence [Unverstand] of the intellect [Verstand].’ This is the separation of the ‘two worlds’, the second stage discussed above.

d) A healthy mind’s feeling or ‘sensation’ (Empfindung) contains, but does not assert, the ‘actual unity of the subjective and objective’, that is to say, it draws no distinction between them and, usually at least, they coincide: I feel hot and I am hot, this is the first, pre-conscious, stage discussed above

The subjective–objective unity characteristic of derangement is ‘immediate’, that is, the unity asserted in proposition b). It is not the unity resulting from ‘infinite mediation’, that is, the unity asserted in proposition a). The force of ‘infinite’, unendliche, may be that owing to mediation the objective and subjective are not ‘finite’, bounded by each other, or that everything is included in the mediation, or that the mediation is very complex. The deranged I is the peak or tip of self-feeling, and is in a way thin and acute but owing to its relation to self-feeling it is ‘natural, immediate, a being’. ‘A being’ translates Seiendes, a nominalization of the present participle of sein, ‘to be’. The I just is, involving no negation or mediation with what it is not, with what is other than itself: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic', §§84–6. Therefore the I is abstract, cut off from its other and hence thin and empty and hence exposed to the intrusion of an unruly feeling, such as a feeling of superiority. This feeling too is a ‘being’, impervious to mediation and hence difficult to dislodge, instead of being ‘posited ideally’, put in its proper place, it is held fast as an objective fact, the belief that I am a king. Therefore there is a duality of ‘being’, of the feeling, on the one hand, and objective consciousness, on the other, they contradict each other, and yet the disparity between them, since it just is, has no tendency to dispel the feeling, any more than, say, my objective consciousness can remove a headache or a physical entity such as a boil. The mind alone cannot accommodate unmediated lumps of indigestible being because it is fluid and free, an unsurmountable ‘barrier’ between two parts of the mind must therefore stem from a bodily intrusion. On ‘being’, consult §410. And §§409–12.

Hegel poses two questions:

a) Why must the soul, in particular self-feeling, be discussed before objective consciousness?

b) Why must derangement, which presupposes objective consciousness, because it consists in the intrusion of the soul into consciousness, be discussed before objective consciousness?

As for a) the soul or natural self is relatively abstract while consciousness is relatively concrete involving, among other things, the latent natural self ‘in potentiality. The natural self also precedes consciousness in time, at least as a stage in the life of an individual. Neither of these considerations answers question b), derangement is no less concrete than objective consciousness, nor does it precede consciousness in time. The 'Encyclopaedia Logic' , §§469–552 follows the order: concept of will, abstract or ‘formal’ right (property, personhood, etc.. ‘morality’ (Moralität, that is, the morality of individual conscience); ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit, that is, social morality), which develops into: family; civil society; state. This parallel assists in answering question a). Each stage is more abstract and less concrete than its successors. Morality, for instance, is less concrete than ethical life, just as the natural self is less concrete than objective consciousness but there are differences, morality does not precede ethical life in time but the natural self does precede objective consciousness and while there can be no consciousness without a latent natural self, there can be an ethical life without morality. Ancient Greece was an ethical society without morality, without an individual conscience. Does the parallel help to answer question b)? So an earlier has to be not only more abstract than later stages but also a diseased version of a later stage. for instance morality is perhaps not simply an abstraction as compared to ethical life but an abstraction that can reassert itself, unduly and deleteriously, within ethical life. This is what happens. Morality is the most obvious case of a stage that recurs as a disease in a later stage but other stages may also recur in this way. Although for instance abstract right is an essential element in a healthy political state, it might, in some states (for instance imperial Rome), gain undue prominence, and so also may the family or civil society.

____________

However granted the parallel is sound and early stages of right and of mind are both healthy abstractions and diseases parasitic on later stages this is no conclusive reason for considering the disease at the same time as its healthy counterpart and before the later stage, the host on which it is parasitic. Derangement could be discussed under the heading of consciousness, and morality as a malignant excrescence under the heading of ethical life, the deranged idea and malignant morality may be an ‘abstraction held on to in opposition’ to objective consciousness and ethical life respectively but derangement and morality-infected ethical life themselves are no less concrete than healthy consciousness and ethical life. Treating derangement gives him an insight into self-feeling and the soul in general that he could not otherwise have had. He cannot, after all, remember what it was like to be just self-feeling. So he looks for clues in adult regressions to it. The differentiation of derangement into types is to be necessary and rational, based on its inner nature, not on its external expressions nor on the particular content of the formal subjective-objective unity distinguishing indefinitely many varieties of derangement according to whether the patient thinks he is, for instance, a king, a dog, or a building. Classification into types starts with a fundamental feature common to all types of derangement, the deranged mind is invariably enclosed within itself, sunk into itself, which appears akin to somnambulism and the mind’s being-within-self but in fact is different the somnambulist is deaf to all voices except the hypnotist’s but this is because he or she is in immediate contact with actuality from which the deranged mind,by contrast is decisively separated.

‘Submergence within itself ’ is both the ‘universal’ feature common to all types of derangement and a ‘particular’ type of derangement. The idea that the genus is one of its own species which occurs frequently in Hegel maybeperhaps owes something to Aristotle, who argued that plants are both a type of living creature in contrast to animals and humans and possess only those generic life functions (nutrition and growth) that are common to all living creatures (de Anima, II. 3, 414b27 ff.) The indeterminate submergence- or being-within-itself that constitutes the first form of derangement becomes the second form, when it attaches itself to a ‘particular’ idea and regards it as objective. The third main form of derangement is just the second form together with awareness of it and the endeavour to escape it. If cretinism is diagnosed in infancy, it can be avoided by treatment with thyroid extract, once it has developed it is not curable. It is not related to insanity or to catatonic schizophrenia, which afflicted the anonymous ‘Englishman’. Distraction or ‘absent-mindedness’ is Zerstreutheit, from zerstreuen, ‘to scatter, disperse’. Its relationship to insanity seems distant, as long as, say, Newton does not persist in claiming that the finger is a tobacco-stopper. Hegel connects it with insanity by ascribing some versions of it to absorption in ‘abstract selffeeling’ and to obsession with one’s ‘subjectivity’ at the expense of the objective surroundings. Rambling is Faselei, primarily (talking) drivel, but here applied to what is now termed ‘attention-deficit disorder’ and to some types of schizophrenia. The term ‘schizophrenia’, meaning ‘split mind’, was coined in1911 by a Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler, reflecting his somewhat Hegelian view that the symptoms stem from a split, a dissociation or lack of coordination, between feeling or emotion, on the one hand, and thought and cognition, on the other.

'But absent-mindedness proper is a submergence into entirely abstract self-feeling, into a suspension of sober, objective consciousness, into an unaware nonpresence of the mind at things at which it should be present. The subject in this state confuses his true situation in the individual case with a false one, and conceives outer circumstances in a one-sided manner, not in the totality of their relations. Among many other examples, a delightful example of this state of soul is a French count who, when his wig got caught on a chandelier, laughed heartily over it with the others present and looked around to discover whose wig had been pulled off, who was left with a bald pate. Another instance of this kind is supplied by Newton. This scholar is supposed once to have taken hold of a lady's finger in order to use it as a tobacco-stopper for his pipe. Such absent-mindedness can be the result of excessive study; it is found quite often in scholars, especially in those of an earlier time. However, absent-mindedness often arises also, when people want to be held in high esteem everywhere, and consequently keep their subjectivity in view constantly, which makes them forget objectivity been pulled off, who was left with a bald pate. Another instance of this kind is supplied by Newton. This scholar is supposed once to have taken hold of a lady's finger in order to use it as a tobacco-stopper for his pipe. Such absent-mindedness can be the result of excessive study; it is found quite often in scholars, especially in those of an earlier time. However, absent-mindedness often arises also, when people want to be held in high esteem everywhere, and consequently keep their subjectivity in view constantly, which makes them forget objectivity'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'Absent-mindedness stands in contrast to the rambling that takes an interest in everything. Rambling springs from inability to fix attention on anything determinate, and consists in the illness of stumbling from one object to another. This ailment is mostly incurable. Fools of this kind are the most troublesome. Pinel tells of such a subject who was a perfect image of chaos. He says: This subject approaches me and overwhelms me with his chatter. Straight afterwards he does the same to someone else. When this individual comes into a room he turns everything in it upside down, shakes chairs and tables and moves them about without any apparent particular purpose. You only have to take your eyes off him for a second and this subject is already out on the adjoining promenade, busying himself there just as aimlessly as in the room, chattering, throwing stones, pulling off foliage, going on further, turning round again, without knowing why. '-Rambling always stems from a weakness of the power of intellectual consciousness to hold together the entirety of its representations. But ramblers often already suffer from delirium-therefore, not merely from non-awareness of what is immediately present but from an unconscious reversal of it. So much for the first main form of the deranged state'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Hegel speaks of Narrheit and Narren, literally ‘folly’, ‘fools’, but he means ‘madness’ and ‘madmen’ and uses them synonymously with Verrücktheit and Verrückten, the search is on for words to designate different types of insanity, words which in the language of his day were not clearly differentiated, and this form of insanity may be superior to at least some varieties of the first form. Unlike the idiot and the rambler, this madman can ‘hold on to’ something definite and has a largely ‘coherent consciousness’ so the varieties of derangement are considered as a progression towards sane consciousness. Hegel will refer again to speaks of Narrheit and Narren, meaning ‘madness’ and ‘madmen’ and ‘weariness with life’ is ‘indeterminate’ in that it involves no particular idea. Even the ‘fixed idea [Vorstellung] of the loathsomeness of life’, which Hegel introduces in order to assimilate it to other types of madness lacks a definite object.

'Weariness with life can be reckoned as the most indeterminate madness when it is not occasioned by the loss of loved and worthy persons and of ethical relationships. An indeterminate, groundless disgust with life is not indifef rence to it, for in indifference life is endured; rather it is the inability to endure it, a fluctuation to and fro between inclination and aversion towards everything pertaining to actuality, a captivation by the fixed idea of the loathsomeness of life and at the same time a striving to overcome this idea. It is mostly the English who succumb to this disgust with actuality, arising without any rational ground, as well as to other modes of madness; perhaps because with this nation induration into subjective particularity is so prevalent. In the English, this weariness with life appears mainly as melancholy, the mind's constant brooding over its unhappy representation, never rising to the vitality of thought and action. Not infrequently this state of soul gives rise to an irrepressible impulse to suicide; on occasions this impulse could only be eradicated by violently wrenching the despairing individual out of himself. For instance, the stoty is told of an Englishman who was on the point of drowning himself in the Thames when he was attacked by robbers; he offered the fiercest resistance and by the suddenly awakening feeling of the value of life, he lost all suicidal thoughts. Another Englishman who had hanged himself, on being cut down by his servant not only regained the desire to live but also the disease of avarice; for when discharging the servant, he deducted twopence from his wages because the man had acted without instructions in cutting the rope in question'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'Lady in Red', 1928, A.C.G.S Amarasekara.

Mania is Wahnsinn and lunacy is Tollheit but the words are not employed precisely, this type of insanity is marked by an awareness of the contradiction that afflicts the subject and before the contradiction was said to be between a subjective idea and objective consciousness: consult §408z. Now it is said to be between the subjective idea and objectivity, when the madman or woman becomes aware of this contradiction, his or her response is not to seek help in removing his or her subjective idea but, at least when he or she does not wallow in ‘tranquil pain’, to make his or her idea an ‘actuality’ or to destroy ‘what is actual’. Hegel is not merely describing the type of madness fostered by the French Revolution, which also afflicted those attached to the old order and now living ‘in the past, but in addition the madness of French revolutionaries themselves who feel an acute contradiction between the present state of things and their subjective ideas about how things ought to be. The ‘rage of reason against unreason’ is the rage not of reason in a typical Hegelian sense, but of the reason of the Enlightenment, against the irrationality of the old order, the rage of unreason against reason might be the rage of restorationists against revolutionaries, but more likely Hegel is suggesting that the reason of the revolutionaries is really unreason. The revolutionary suffers from another contradiction, he or she flouts ‘ethical laws’ but retains ‘moral [moralische] and ethical [sittliche] feelings’. This ‘unmediated opposition’ corresponds to the contradiction between a subjective idea and objective consciousness or reality. Ethical laws stem from the ‘rational will that wills the universal’ or the ‘genuinely universal will’, not the private will of any given individual, rather as objective consciousness discloses a world that is necessary and ‘universal’, not the idiosyncratic ideas of any individual, consult §§396, 400, 401, 402. Therefore the two contradictions afflicting the revolutionary and maybe other maniacs tend to converge. Their mind is torn between attachment to objective reality and values, on the one hand, and devotion to its private ideas and desires, on the other.

'The cure of derangement. The last point we have to discuss in connection with insanity and derangement relates to the course of treatment to be applied to both diseased states. The treatment is partly physical and partly psychological. At times the former by itself alone is sufficient; mostly however it is necessary to supplement this by psychological treatment which, likewise, can sometimes be sufficient by itself alone. No universally applicable prescription for the physical side of cure can be indicated. The medical remedies employed are, on the contrary, very much an empirical matter and therefore unreliable. But this much is certain, that the worst procedure of all is the one formerly practised at Bedlam which was limited to a thorough purging of the insane every three months. Sometimes, incidentally, the mentally ill have been cured in a physical way by the very thing that is liable to cause derangement in those not afflicted, namely, by falling heavily on their heads. The celebrated Montfoucon, e.g., is supposed to have been freed of his listlessness in this way in his youth'.

'But psychological treatment always remains the main thing. While this can have no effect on imbecility, it can often be successful in the treatment of madness proper and insanity because in these soul-states a vitality of consciousness is still present, and alongside derangement related to a particular representation, in its other representations a rational consciousness still subsists, which a skillful psychiatrist can develop into a power over that particularity. (It is the merit of Pinel in particular to have conceived this residue of rationality present in the mad and the insane as the foundation of cure and to have conducted his treatment of the mentally ill in accordance with this conception. His publication on this subject must be declared the best that exists in this field.)

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Hegel distinguishes between Verrücktheit or Narrheit, insanity proper, and Wahnsinn, mania, the second and third main forms of derangement and yet he does not distinguish between the types of cure for them. Both can respond to a talking cure. Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741), whose problem was stupidity rather than insanity, was a pioneer in Greek paleography and archaeology, as well as a patristic scholar. Pinel’s publication on the subject is: Traité médico-philosophique sur l’ali´enation mentale ou la manie (Paris, 1801).It was soon translated into German: Philosophisch-medizinische Abhandlung über Geistesverirrungen oder Manie (Vienna, 1801).

'Another way of effecting a cure of derangement consists in getting madmen to perform actions which immediately refute the peculiar madness that torments them. Thus, e.g., someone who imagined he had glass feet was cured by a feigned attack by robbers, when he found his feet extremely useful for running away. Another who took himself to be dead, remained motionless and would not eat anything, came to his senses again when someone pretended to enter into his madness. The lunatic was put in a coffin and laid in a vault in which there was another coffin occupied by a man who at first pretended to be dead but who, soon after he was left alone with the lunatic, sat up, expressed his pleasure at now having company in death, and finally got up, ate some of the food there and told the astonished lunatic that he had already been dead a long time and therefore knew how the dead go about things. The lunatic was pacified by the assurance, likewise ate and drank and was cured. Sometimes lunacy can also be cured by a word, by a joke acting immediately on the representation. For instance, a lunatic who believed he was the Holy Ghost recovered when another lunatic said to him: How can you be the Holy Ghost, when it's me? An equally interesting instance is a watch-maker who imagined he had been guillotined although innocent. The remorseful j udge ordered that his head be given back to him, bur through an unfortunate confusion a different, much worse, thoroughly useless head had been put back on him. As this lunatic was once defending the legend according to which St Dionysius had kissed his own severed head, another lunatic retorted: 'You arrant fool, what is St Dionysius supposed to have kissed his head with, with his heel perhaps?' This question so shook the deranged watch-maker that he completely recovered from his quirk. A joke of this kind will, however, completely dispel the madness only if this disease has already abated in intensity'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

'Laughing Girl', 1894, Santiago Rusiñol

Dedicated to my muse

Love you madly ❤️ ...

If I can't get away from you What am I gonna do 'Cause you hit me just like a dream Where there's no in-between

'Cause I just fall forever Fall forever in your eyes

'Cause it's a mad mad love Mad mad love Mad mad love Can't help falling now Falling into mad love

Well, you're shorting out all my pride Like fireworks exploding inside You're just something I can't deny Why tell me, baby, why

'Cause I just fall forever Fall forever in your eyes

'Cause it's a mad mad love Mad mad love Mad mad love Can't help falling now Falling into mad love

If I can't get away from you What am I gonna do Now you call me up and you're so cool What do you, what do you want me to do

'Cause it's a mad mad love Mad mad love Mad mad love I can't help it

Mad mad love Mad mad love Mad mad love Can't help falling now Falling into mad love

Linda Ronstadt - Mad Love

Coming up next:

Habit.

It may stop but it never ends.