Hegel’s Souls: Aristotle, Kant, and the Climax of Life

Abstract

The article aspires to delineate Hegel’s appropriation of Aristotle’s concept of soul in post-Kantian European Philosophy. It showcases the way that Hegel fuses central aspects of Aristotle’s theory and Kant’s account of inner purposiveness in order to deliver a hierarchical account of vegetative-, animal-, and human organisms. The article is divided in six parts. The first part offers an introduction to the subject matter. The second part delivers an overall account of the way that Hegel reconstructs Aristotle’s general theory of the soul and fuses it with Kant’s theory of inner purposiveness. The third part highlights Hegel’s distinctive argumentative strategy for delivering a unified, atemporal account of the connection between the various natural realms, both inorganic and organic. Parts four, five and six proceed to his theory of vegetative-, animal- and human life respectively, while showcasing the underlying logic and the upshot of Hegel’s developmental account of these three kinds of life qua soul.

1. Introduction

Early 19th-century Berlin was no friendly place for philosophers with a serious interest in Aristotle. The prevailing enthusiasm for Plato’s philosophy, a standing monument of which remains Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher’s translation of the Platonic dialogues [1], along with the widespread stereotype of Aristotle as an empirical, unsystematic philosopher left little space for a systematic interest in Aristotle’s speculative works, especially within the strand of Kantianism and of German Idealism. Nevertheless, it was the main proponent of German Idealism, Hegel, who was the first to take a serious interest in Aristotle and, eventually, to initiate an Aristotle renaissance within 19th century German-speaking philosophy [2]. As we read in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy:

One reason for treating of Aristotle in detail rests in the fact that no philosopher has had so much wrong done him by the thoughtless traditions which have been received respecting his philosophy, and which are still the order of the day, although for centuries he was the instructor of all philosophers. For to him views are ascribed diametrically opposite to his philosophy. And while Plato is much read, the treasures contained in Aristotle have for centuries, and until quite modern times, been as good as unknown, and the falsest prejudices reign respecting him [3] (p. 118)1.

Hegel’s interest in Aristotle and his appreciation for the Stagirite was so great [5] (pp. 110–132) that he decided to conclude his philosophical system, the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, with an untranslated passage from Aristotle’s metaphysics [6] (pp. 276–277, § 577)2. This gesture succinctly summarizes the importance that Hegel, from his Jena period onwards3, attributed to Aristotle: as the great discoverer of the true goal and place of philosophy in the world, whose discovery would find its definite, radically enhanced amplification in Hegel’s philosophy of Absolute Spirit. Hegel’s interest in Aristotle was, however, by no means exclusively concentrated in Aristotle’s account of God as noeseos noesis, extending to various other aspects such as his physics, his theory of cognition [9], and, most notably, his theory of the soul. It is very telling that Hegel had such a great interest in Aristotle’s theory of the soul that he aspired to deliver a translation, or at least a part, of De anima [10]. In the introduction to his philosophy of subjective Spirit, Hegel writes the following:

Aristotle’s books on the soul, along with his essays on particular aspects and states of the soul, are for this reason [for their speculative approach on the issue—AK] still the most admirable, even the sole, work of speculative interest on this topic. The essential aim of a philosophy of Spirit can only be to introduce again into the knowledge of spirit, and so also to disclose once more the sense of those Aristotelian books [6] (pp. 4–5, § 378; translation adjusted).

While in the context of the Kantian-shaped philosophical landscape of Hegel’s time the soul was the essential element for living entities endowed with cognitive and moral agency4, Hegel’s effort to modernize Aristotle’s theory of the soul does not solely aim at contributing to the field of philosophical anthropology, qua theory of solely human mental and practical faculties. Hegel’s strategy consists in reintroducing Aristotle’s broader theory of the soul, which accounts not only for entities with consciousness but also for all things living, however in the sense that Hegel, not Aristotle, understands life—that is for plant and for animal life as well5. As we read repeatedly in his Lectures on Aristotle:

The soul [according to Aristotle—AK] should, further, be determined in a threefold way: (1) as vegetative; (2) animal; (3) thinking soul. One cannot not search for another kind of soul that is one of these three; this would be an abstraction [4] (vol. 30.1, pp. 108–109; my translation)6.

The present article aims sets a two-fold goal: (a) to deliver an account of Hegel’s appropriation of Aristotle’s theory as a re-broadening of concept of the soul in European modern philosophy and (b) to showcase the argumentative background of this reappropriation, which, in Hegel’s philosophy, does not unfold as the exhibition of given empirical entities that qualify as organisms, as in Aristotle, but is executed as a conceptually developmental, that is, necessitated account of vegetative, animal, and human organisms7. Τhis article will show that Hegel’s account of living beings, as we understand them today, rests on a hierarchical conceptual scheme, within which every stage logically hints at the following one [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 518 and pp. 970–971)8.

By the same token, it will be shown that Hegel’s developmental accounts of the soul are not conceived autonomously but in the light of Hegel’s account of human soul [12] (pp. 444–445, § 376, oral addition) and [4] (vol. 24.2, p. 770 and p. 950). Vegetative and animal organisms should be understood as souls, nevertheless, as less adequate realizations of what I will call ‘the soul-principle’. This principle refers to the unconscious, self-organizing, purposive activity, embodied in all things living, which finds its most adequate realization in the human soul, which, in turn, should be further understood in light of Hegel’s theory of human consciousness and spirit.

While in the last three decades there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between Aristotle’s and Hegel’s concept of the soul [16,20,21,22,23] vis-à-vis his systematic subsequent accounts of human consciousness and of theoretical and practical spirit, the present paper takes the reverse path in order to shed light on the hitherto relatively unacknowledged continuity between vegetative, animal, and human organisms, a continuity that coincides with the execution of Hegel’s Aristotle-inspired task of re-broadening the concept of the soul [24] (pp. 140–142)9 within the context of post-Kantian European philosophy. It is the centrality of this concept, understood as the actualized inner purposiveness of the living body [4] (vol. 24.3, p. 1190) in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature (and of mind), which, according to Hegel, places Aristotle’s approach to nature higher than any of Hegel’s contemporary approaches:

Aristotle’s conception of nature is, however, nobler than that of today, for with him the principal point is the determination of end as the inward determinateness of natural things. Thus, he comprehended nature as life, i.e., as that which has its end within itself, is unity with itself, which does not pass into another, but, through this principle of activity, determines changes in conformity with its own content, and in this way, maintains itself therein. In this doctrine, Aristotle has before his eyes the inward immanent end, to which he considers necessity an external condition [3] (p. 157)10.

The paper will proceed in five consecutive steps. First, it will deliver an overall account of the way that Hegel reconstructs Aristotle’s general theory of the soul and fuses it with Kant’s theory of inner purposiveness. Second, it will highlight Hegel’s distinctive argumentative strategy for delivering a unified, atemporal account of the interconnectedness of the various natural realms, both inorganic and organic. Finally, it will proceed to his theory of the vegetative, animal, and human soul, respectively, while showcasing the underlying logic and the upshot of Hegel’s developmental account of the three kinds of souls.

2. Aristotle’s Soul, Kant’s Organism

Hegel’s fundamental point of interest in Aristotle’s account of the soul is that Aristotle does not understand the soul in the way that the mainstream rational psychology of Modern European philosophy does, namely as an isolated entity, which in some—for Hegel11 incomprehensive12—way inhabits the body, but rather as the inextricable, self-referring, purposive activity that defines all natural organisms [4] (vol. 23.1, p. 37)13. In Hegel’s jargon, Aristotle is right in understanding the soul as an activity and not as a “thing”14, that is, not as an isolated element with features wholly independent from the respective living body that it inhabits:

In Aristotle’s teaching on this subject, we must not expect to find so-called metaphysics of the soul. For metaphysical handling such as this really presupposes the soul as a thing, and asks, for example, what sort of a thing it is, whether it is simple, and so on. Aristotle did not busy his concrete, speculative mind with abstract questions such as these, but, as already remarked, he deals rather with the manner of the soul’s activity [.] [3] (pp. 180–181)15.

Hegel’s approval of Aristotle’s account of the soul marks the fundamental shift that Hegel aspires to reestablish vis-à-vis the mainstream philosophical understanding of the soul in his time: from a dualistic account of human existence, consisting in the principally independent elements of the material body16 and the immaterial soul17, to a three-fold account of human existence, consisting in the mutually interdependent, but not reducible, elements of corporeity, soul, and consciousness18. While the mainstream, i.e., dualistic, philosophical accounts of Modern European philosophy understand human existence as the (according to Hegel) inexplicable coincidence of the elements of extension (body) and thought (soul), Hegel, following Aristotle, understands the soul as the missing, intermediate link between extension qua corporeity and thought and/or consciousness19. It is this concept of the soul, Hegel will argue, which allows the proper grasping of the necessary inextricability between (human) corporeity and consciousness:

Today philosophy rarely speaks of soul but, rather, of Spirit. This because Spirit is different than the soul, which [the soul—AK] is, so to say, the middle element between corporeity and Spirit, the bond between the two. The Spirit as soul is immersed in the corporeity [4] (vol. 23.1, p. 187; my translation).

As mentioned earlier, Hegel’s interest on Aristotle’s account of the soul is at least two-fold: it concerns the omnipresent mind–body problem of post-Cartesian and post-Kantian philosophy and the systematic coherence of any philosophy of nature that aims at a unifying account of all things living. Hegel is very aware of the fundamental differentiation between what he thinks as the “three souls” [3] (p. 185), i.e., the vegetative, animal and human organisms, in Aristotle. In his Lectures, he nevertheless always begins his account of Aristotle’s philosophy with “a general account of the nature of the soul” [4] (vol. 30.1, p. 108), while using the terms ‘entelechy’ and ‘soul’ at times interchangeably [4] (vol. 30.3, p. 1107 and p. 1111)20 since, in Hegel’s understanding, the concept of entelechy and of soul coincide as the inner purposiveness of all natural organisms: the soul is actualized entelechy in the concretizations of vegetative, animal-, and human life.

Hegel, following Aristotle, understands soul21 as the forming principle that organizes purposively and sustains the structure of a distinctive sum of matter22. As self-organizing principle, the soul can be regarded as distinct from matter. As a self-organizing principle, it is the way that matter itself is structured and organized. As Hegel repeatedly remarks in the related parts of his Lectures, drawing this time from De Anima II 200a 24–30 [15] (p. 34), a house, for example, can be considered according to its principle, that is to its (extrinsic) final cause, or according to its material: “One defines a house as a place for safekeeping, according to the (final—AK) cause, while another according to the matter” [4] (30.1, p. 108; my translation). The difference, though, between the organizing principle of artefacts such as a house and natural organisms is that the parts of the former remain the same when the actualization of the final cause ceases to be, while the status of the parts of the latter alters substantially: the stone used for building a storage house remains a stone, even if the building ceases to be a storage house. The parts of an eye and the eye itself, on the contrary, that allows an organism to see, cease to be an eye if the organism as a whole ceases to be. In the same, juxtaposing vein, Hegel refers to the example of the axe: “The concept of such a body [of an axe—AK] is not soul—the form is not the being of the body itself” [4] (vol. 30.4, 1480; my translation).

Wood, in other words, can be used as the random matter for a random final cause, for the storage of goods, or for the making of an axe and so forth. The purposively intertwined parts of the eye, on the contrary, do not exist antecedently as such but only in order to be used by forming principle internal to them and not subsequently imposed on them. The purposively intertwined parts of the eye exist as such, as long as the eye actualizes the purpose of seeing: when seeing is no longer possible an eye ceases to be an eye, while the wood remains wood, even if using the axe stops being a possibility [13] (47 ff.). As Hegel goes on in the same passage: “The eye as eye is the matter of seeing, if seeing is lost, then there is no eye anymore; only something dead” [4] (vol. 30.1, p. 108; my translation)23.

The juxtaposition of the two examples stems from Hegel’s productive reappropriation of the Aristotelian concepts of actuality or activity (energeia)24 in the specific modality of the active actualized purposiveness (first entelechy) [4] (vol. 30.3, pp. 1097–1099 and p. 1102)25 of natural organisms, that is, of soul (psyche) [32] (pp. 104–105)26, which serves as the basis for Hegel’s general theory of the soul qua life: soul is the spatiotemporal embodiment of the concept of an active actualized, self-referring purpose27. Natural organisms do not have souls, they are souls [12] (353, § 353) and [4] (vol. 25.1, p. 309, § 25)28. These souls, in turn, cannot be abstracted from their bodily parts, since their parts are placed and formed in such-and-such a way by virtue of the actualized, self-referring purpose [4] (vol. 30.4, p. 1476). The parts of a living body, which Hegel calls technically “members” [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 132) and [4] (vol. 24.2, pp. 947–948)29 instead of ‘parts’, do not serve some extrinsic cause, they are the actualized final cause, which, as actualized in and through them, is an intrinsic final cause. If the cause was not actualized, then the parts qua members would seize to be what they are. Hegel summarizes his understanding of Aristotle’s idea as follows:

Actuality (entelechy) is an activity (energeia), but [an activity that—AK] is determined in and for itself. This actuality is [according to Aristotle—AK] the essential being [the being that an entity is meant to be—AK] and the being of the soul. It is the substance according to the Concept, or the Concept itself, the form is the substance. If a physical body, an axe, had as its substance to be an axe, which [the axe—AK] is its external form [the form that the substance is—AK], then this [the physical body—AK] would be a soul. If such a body ceased to be an axe, then only the name would remain. But the soul has the principle of order and of movement in itself […] In this way the form is the essence of the soul itself. The eye is, then, the seeing and the eyeball; and in this way it is [the eye—AK] soul and body. The soul is the actuality, the entelechy; the [materiality of the—AK] body [is—AK] only the potentiality [4] (vol. 30.1, p. 108; my translation)30.

I designated above the actualized final cause qua soul as “self-referring”, since it consists in the self-preservation and growth of the respective organism and not in something external to the organism. This feature of self-reference, together with the idea that the specific constitution of the members of a living body qua soul neither precedes nor succeeds the actualized life of the body but is simultaneous to it [16] (pp. 129–131), leads to another idea that Hegel draws from Aristotle: the living organism qua soul is not produced but is self-producing in a twofold way, synchronically and diachronically. The soul is, synchronically, self-producing since it solely aims at its own self-preservation and growth. It is, also, diachronically, self-producing because the intertwined constitution of its members, and thus, the members themselves neither emerge from an antecedent aggregate of elements nor serve for the subsequent constitution of another artificial and/or natural product external to them31. The soul qua living being is, for Hegel, secure against all outer purposiveness32. Neither can it be produced by a conglomerate of already existing parts, nor can it be used as an intrinsic part in the process of the actualization of an extrinsic cause. Hegel summarizes Aristotle’s idea in the following way:

[According to Aristotle—AK] [t]he natural [that is, organic—AK] element is a product, it emerges and is equally the subsequent as the antecedent. The product is at the beginning. This is the production of things living. In the case of the mechanical [and of the—AK] chemical element, the product is something other. The self-production is the activity (ενεργεια) [Greek in the original text—AK] [,] the self-preserving [element—AK]. The fundamental determination of [organic—AK] Nature is, therefore: to be an activity according to a purpose, that is no outer purposiveness [4] (vol. 30.2, p. 607; my translation)33.

Hegel’s reference to the technical term of outer purposiveness and, indirectly, of inner purposiveness34 brings us to another fundamental element of Hegel’s Aristotle-inspired account of the soul: its fusion with Kant’s theory of inner teleology, used for the proper conceptualization of entities that can be considered as end-in-themselves [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 719 and p. 725)35. Kant, in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, famously defines organisms in the following way: “An organized product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well” [38] (pp. 247–248, § 66) [5:376]36. Kant’s definition of organic life is of great importance both for Hegel’s own theory37 of the soul and for the way he is interpreting Aristotle on the issue. This is because Kant’s definition of inner purposiveness qua organic life not only stresses, as does Aristotle’s definition, the coincidence of matter qua bodily members and form qua final cause—it also allows for a systematic account of organism in which each member can be regarded simultaneously both as means (concerning the self-preservation of the other members and of the organism as a whole) and as an end (vis-à-vis the preservation of each member by means of the purposive activity of all the other members of the body)38. A well-functioning heart enables a well-functioning body; a well-functioning body enables a well-functioning heart [38] (pp. 243–244, § 64) [5: 371–372]39. As Richard Dien Winfield succinctly puts it, life amounts to the “complementary functionality of the organs” [13] (p. 1)40.

Nevertheless, Hegel’s appropriation comes with a fundamental adjustment. For Hegel, as for Aristotle, the inner purposiveness of an organic entity is not, as Kant suggests, an ultimately subjective projection of the cognizing agent. Kant thought that purposes and purposiveness can only be objectively ascribed to conscious rational agents and to the products of their activity alone [41] (pp. 6 and 59) and [13] (pp. 26 ff.). Organisms, thus, could be objectively considered as purposively structured beings only if one accepted the existence of a divine, rational agent as the creator of those purposively structured natural entities [38] (p. 233, § 61) [5: 359]. Yet the limits of knowledge set by Kant’s critical philosophy did not allow for the warranted knowledge of the existence of such a supra-spatiotemporal entity that could be conceived of as the author of purposively structured natural entities [38] (p. 266 § 73 [5: 395]41. For Kant, as for Aristotle, natural living things are a “marvel” [32] (p. 139)42, but the actual marvel for Kant does not refer to the objective structure of their existence, which is mechanical, but rather to their compatibility with our concept of purpose and/or final causation while being at the same time merely utterly contingent conglomerations of effective causes:

Further, objective purposiveness, as a principle of the possibility of the things of nature, is so far from being necessarily connected with the concept of the latter that it is rather precisely that to which one refers above all in order to prove the contingency of it (of nature) and of its form. For if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones, the placement of its wings for movement and of its tail for steering, etc., one says that given the mere nexus effectivus in nature, without the help of a special kind of causality, namely that of ends (nexus finalis), this is all in the highest degree contingent: i.e., that nature, considered as a mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule, and that it is therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it, that one could have even the least ground a priori for hoping to find such a principle [38], (pp. 233–234, § 61) [5: 360].

Thus, Kant re-introduces the concept of inner purposiveness qua unconscious, self-referring, purposive activity in Modern European philosophy, even if only as a subjective approach to cases that could be perceived by the observer as purposively structured43. Kant thinks purposively structured natural beings in analogy to human-made purposively structured artefacts, since, as we saw, objective purposiveness presupposes (self-) conscious intelligence [38] (p. 234, § 61) [5: 361] and (p. 239, § 62) [5: 366–367]44.

Kant’s definition of a natural organism as something to be treated “as its own end” or, more literally, as “self-cause”, is integrated into Hegel’s Aristotle-inspired of concept of soul45 as something objectively existing [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 171)46. This integration enriches Aristotle’s concept of the soul not only by allowing us to conceive the soul qua organism as that which serves the purpose of the actualization of a soul as a whole, but also by enabling an examination of the purposive activity of the whole toward its particular parts. This feature provides, in other words, the background for understanding and investigating the concrete intertwinement of the particular parts of the organism and thus for understanding the soul as a self-enclosed system of parts qua members, where the activity of each part not only hints directly at the overarching purpose that the natural organism is, but also, indirectly, at the function of each part vis-à-vis the growth and the well-being of another part [38] (p. 244–247, § 65) [5: 372–376]47. Hegel appropriates this distinctively Kantian insight in the following way:

End is an ideal determination which is already existent beforehand; so that, in the process of realization which must fit in with what exists determinately beforehand; nothing new is developed. The realization is equally a return-into-self. The accomplished End has the same content as that which is already present in the agent; the living creature, therefore, with all its activities does not add anything to it. As the organization [of life] is its own End, so too it is its own Means, it is nothing merely there. The viscera, the organs generally, are perpetually posited as ideal, for they are active against each other: and just as each, as centre, produces itself at the expense of all the others, so it exists only through the process; in other words, that which, as sublated, is reduced to Means is itself End, is itself product. As that which develops the Concept, the animal organism is the Idea manifesting only the differences of the Concept; and thus each moment of the Concept contains the others, is itself system and totality. These totalities, as determinate, produce in their transition the whole which each system is in itself, as a One, as subject [12] (pp. 356–357, § 352, oral addition; translation adjusted)⁴⁸.

For Hegel, it is crucial to appropriate this aspect of Kant’s account of natural organisms, because it seems that in his reading, Aristotle’s account of living beings can explain the existence of the body parts in relation to the final cause of the self-preservation and the growth of the respective whole that the living body is, but this does not provide a unifying principle for understanding the specific intertwinement of the body parts. The body parts are not only purposively subsumed under the final cause that the soul is, but, much more than that, none of these body parts, as Kant repeatedly remarks, is in any aspect “in vain” [38] (p. 248, § 66) [5: 376] and (p. 250, § 67) [5: 379].

Thus, when Hegel summarizes the re-emergence of an Aristotle-inspired, teleological understanding of natural organisms, he succinctly focuses on the novelty of Kant’s approach and the restriction that it entails. Understanding the soul qua living organism as end-in-itself, that is, as a whole that aims at its self-preservation through the preservation of its parts, comes with a restriction that Aristotle would never have thought: that a purposively structured spatiotemporal entity ought to be the product of some conscious author. Hegel, as the following passage exhibits, aims at the integration of Kant’s innovation within a broadly understood Aristotelian account of organic life that does not share the epistemological restrictions of Kant’s critical philosophy:

The basic determination of the living being seized on by Aristotle, that it must be conceived as acting purposively, has in modem times been almost forgotten till Kant, in his own way, revived this concept in his doctrine of inner teleology, in which the living being is to be treated as its own end (Selbstzweck). The difficulty here comes mainly from representing the teleological relationship as external, and from the prevalent opinion that an end exists only in consciousness [12] (pp. 388–389, § 361, Remark)49.

This fusion amounts to Hegel’s own understanding of soul qua life, which is neither, as in Kant, a subjective projection, nor, as in rational psychology, some principally immaterial entity that animates and/or ensouls pregiven material entities, nor, finally, as in Aristotle, an objective account of soul qua organism exclusively in the light of the overarching, intrinsic, final cause that the soul is. Hence, Hegel’s own definition of the soul reads as follows:

The concept is realized as the soul in a body; the soul is the immediate, self-referring universality of the body’s externality just as much as it is the body’s particularization, so that the body expresses no other differences than the determination of the concept, and finally it is the individuality as infinite negativity—the dialectic of the body’s objectivity, [the factors of which are] outside one another, an objectivity that is led back into subjectivity from the semblance of self-sufficient subsistence, so that all members are reciprocally momentary means as much as momentary purposes, while life, inasmuch as it is the inceptive particularization, results in itself as the negative unity that is for itself and, in the dialectic of corporeity (Leiblichkeit), joins itself together only with itself [45] (p. 287, § 216; translation adjusted)⁵⁰.

As noticed above, Hegel is following Aristotle also in claiming that the generic ‘soul-principle’51 is not actualized in an identical way in plants, animals, and humans but rather in variously adequate ways52:

As to what concerns more nearly the relation of the three souls, as they may be termed (though they are incorrectly thus distinguished), Aristotle says of them, with perfect truth, that we need to look for no one soul in which all these are found, and which in a definite and simple form is conformable with any one of them. This is a profound observation, by means of which truly speculative thought marks itself out from the thought which is merely logical and formal [3] (p. 185).

However, in other words, the concept of the inner purposiveness or intrinsic entelechy qua life is one-fold53, its spatiotemporal embodiment, the soul, is three-fold. Referring approvingly to Aristotle, Hegel says the following:

In the same way the soul must not be sought for as an abstraction, for in the animate being the nutritive and the sensitive soul are included in the intelligent, but only as its object or its potentiality; similarly, the nutritive soul, which constitutes the nature of plants, is also present in the sensitive soul, but likewise only as being implicit in it, or as the universal. Or the lower soul inheres only in the higher, as a predicate in a subject: and this mere ideal is not to be ranked very high, as is indeed the case in formal thought; that which is for itself is, on the contrary, the never-ceasing return into itself, to which actuality belongs [3] (p. 185).

This—according to Hegel—necessarily three-fold spatiotemporal embodiment of the soul as plant, animal, and human organism brings us to their respective treatments.

3. Between Soulless and Ensouled Beings: The Non-Emergence of Life

Hegel depicts vegetative, animal, and human souls and ultimately human consciousness in a developmental order, which he draws from Aristotle: the vegetative soul prepares the way for the animal soul [47] (p. 182) [Historia animalium, IX 1, 588b 4–12]54. The latter, similarly, paves the way for human soul [4] (vol. 30.3, pp. 1106), which finally prepares the way for human consciousness [4] (vol. 30.1, p. 109). This order is not understood as evolutionary and/or temporal. Neither do vegetative organisms turn into animal organisms, nor do animal organisms turn into human organisms. Vegetative, animal, and human organisms exist equiprimordially in Hegel’s ahistorical understanding of nature [12] (pp. 20–22, § 249). While Hegel, in the Science of Logic, develops the unified concept of life qua inner purposiveness, he develops in the Philosophy of Nature a more nuanced developmental account of less to more adequate existing modes of his concept of life as exhibited in the Logic [21] (p. xv). The exhibited developmental account of the stages of living organisms is just as atemporal as the development of concepts in the Science of Logic. The exhibition of the modes of organic life follows a necessitated logical exposition, the sum of which Hegel calls the Concept [12], (pp. 358–359, § 353, oral addition, p. 386, § 359, Remark), [4] (vol. 23.1, pp. 400 and 796–800) and [4] (vol. 24.2, p. 769)55:

It has been an inept conception of ancient and also recent Philosophy of Nature to regard the progression and transition of one natural form and sphere into a higher as an outwardly-actual production which, however, to be made clearer, is relegated to the obscurity of the past. It is precisely externality, which is characteristic of Nature, that, is, differences are allowed to fall apart and to appear as indifferent to each other: the dialectical Concept which leads forward the stages, is the inner side of them. A thinking consideration must reject such nebulous, at bottom, sensuous, ideas, as in particular the so-called origination, for example of plants and animals from water, and then the origination of the more highly developed animal organisms from the lower, and so on [12] (p. 20, § 249; translation adjusted)56.

This logically necessitated natural sequence [21] (p. 68) brings forth another feature that fundamentally distinguishes Hegel’s account of things living from those of Aristotle and of Kant. Aristotle and Kant would agree that, within the realm of organic life, we encounter a series of less or more complicated living entities. Aristotle hierarchizes them relative to the standard of the mover that does not move, Kant relative to the maxims of the power of judgment, according to one of which nature “makes no leaps, either in the sequence of its changes or in the juxtaposition of specifically different forms” [38] (p. 69, § V) [5:182] in the inorganic and in the organic natural realm. Both Aristotle and Kant have, thus, a hierarchical understanding of nature, whether ontological or epistemological. Based on the respective standards that they set, they presume that all empirically, that is, contingently given types of living organism will have to be, post hoc integrable into the hierarchy of all things living.

In contrast to this approach, Hegel, following Schelling, amplifies the claims of philosophical reason, since his approach consists in the exhibition of a logically necessitated order of beings [12] (pp. 23–24, § 250, Remark) and [18] (p. 160): the realm of vegetative life, Hegel claims, upon closer investigation, necessarily refers to another existing realm of life, the realm of animals. The latter refers, in turn, to another necessary realm of life, the realm of human life. What is more impressive is that, for Hegel, this necessitated reference to other natural realms is not restricted to the realm of living beings but is extended to all things natural: the realm of mechanical phenomena hints at the realm of chemical phenomena, which, in turn, hints at the realm of organic life [12] (p. 275, § 337, oral addition) and [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 517)57. As Stephen Houlgate puts it, “[f]or Hegel, life is not a mere accident of nature but is logically necessary. It is made necessary, specifically, by chemistry” [49] (p. 163)58.

This brings me to the logical transition from the chemical to the organic realm, which is crucial for understanding the way that Hegel understands the first actualization of the concept of intrinsic entelechy qua ‘plant-soul’. As he conceived the non-emergence of more complex organic beings out of less complex ones, Hegel does not understand organic life as emerging out of non-organic entities. Both realms exist equiprimordially as well [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 529). The most complex stage of the inorganic reality, the realm of chemical phenomena, hints logically at the existence of another realm, the realm of living, that is, of purposively self-preserving entities59. As Cinzia Ferrini puts it:

[T] his transition, as Hegel conceives it, is a logical one that hinges on conceptual inner necessity, not a natural one in which chemical processes actually give rise to living organisms at specific points in time […] Hegel holds neither the vitalistic view that organic life ‘emerges’ from an essentially lifeless matter by means of the sudden appearance of a natural productive power of generation (Lebenskraft), nor the hylozoic view that nature in its temporal existence is everywhere really alive in all its parts [53] (p. 203).

Like the chemical object, the organic entity is not isolated from its surroundings, i.e., external influence; in fact, however, it assimilates this influence to maintain itself, which is exactly what the immediate predecessor in Hegel’s hierarchy of natural realms, the chemical object, lacks. The chemical object is active, as the living object is—it also assimilates the influences of its surroundings. However, the outcome of its activity is not itself and/or its self-preservation but a different chemical object, in the place of the one destroyed, with different properties and structure:

The chemical process is, in fact, in general terms, Life; for the individual body in its immediacy is not only produced by the process but also destroyed by it, so that the Concept no longer remains at the stage of inner necessity but is made manifest. But on account of the immediacy of the corporealities entering into chemical process, the Concept is everywhere infected with division. As a result, its moments appear as external conditions, and what is dissociated falls apart into mutually indifferent products, the fire and activation (Begeistung) are extinguished in the neutral body and not spontaneously rekindled in it. The beginning and end of the process are separate and distinct; this constitutes its finitude which keeps it far from Life and distinguishes it there from [12] (p. 269, § 335; translation adjusted)60.

The subsequent chemical object is equally something that will be likewise destroyed and replaced by another, different object. This internal inadequacy of chemical objects that presents itself as the inability to preserve itself, though, hints, according to Hegel, at another type of entities which are not destroyed in the process of assimilating external influences but remain the same by preserving themselves:

The living body is always on the point of passing over into the chemical process: oxygen, hydrogen, salt, are always about to appear, but are always again sublated; and only at death or in disease is the chemical process able to prevail. The living creature is always exposed to danger, always bears within itself an other, but can endure this contradiction which the inorganic cannot [12] (p. 274, § 337, oral addition).

The place of the inorganic qua not self-preserving body hints, thus, at the organic qua self-preserving body. Soulless entities logically pave the way for ensouled ones:

It [the organism—AK] acts, and reacts against, the most diverse powers (Potenzen); in each reaction it is differently determined, but equally also remains a single unity with itself. This implicit determinateness of a kind now also exists; it enters into relationship with an other, but also breaks off this involvement, and is not neutralized in it: it preserves itself, on the contrary, in the process which, none the less, is determined by it and its other. The infinite form as the soul (Seele) of individuality is still materialized in shape, and so reduced to a unity which is not an infinitely free form within itself, but is in its existence a quiescently enduring being [12] (p. 271, § 336, oral addition)61.

The vegetable life is, thus, the first natural organism in Hegel’s philosophy of nature and, as such, the first realization of Hegel’s appropriative understanding of the Aristotle’s concept of soul as actively self-referring entelechy62:

Distinguished from this stage is the beginning of subjective vitality, the living organism in the vegetable kingdom: the individual, but, as external to itself, still falling apart into its members which are themselves individuals [12] (p. 273, § 337; translation adjusted)63.

4. The Plant and Its Soul

We saw that Hegel understands soul as the fundamental structural feature of all things living. This feature is understood as an activity and, thus, as a process. Hegel divides the overall process of plant life into three distinctive processes: its organic unity, its metabolism, and its reproduction mechanisms64. The first process accounts for the formation of the distinctive parts of the plant. The order of exposition is, again, not temporal but logical: a vegetative organism must, first, be structured in distinctive, mutually complementing parts. This structure, second, can enable the self-preservation of the plant by means of metabolism. Once the self-preservation of the plant is established, then, third, the plant can reproduce. The plant, unlike inorganic formations, is an active unity of its members. This unity is defined by Hegel as the relation of the plant “to itself”, since it refers to the internal formation process of the structure of the plant [12] (p. 322, § 346). The second process refers to the plant’s inorganic environment, or more concretely to the natural elements such as carbon dioxide, light, and soil. It is the relation of the plant not to itself but to its other. The last kind of active relatedness of the plant is the one between the individual plant and the reproduction of the genus [12] (pp. 321–322, § 346, oral addition): here, the plant relates again to its surroundings as “to itself”, since its external other is another embodiment of the same species [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 148). The reproduction of the genus is described by Hegel as “superfluous” [12] (p. 343, § 348), because plants can also multiply through the detachment of a part of them.

This, the distinctive feature of vegetative life—namely the fact that a part of the plant can, when cut off from the rest of the plant, grow as an independent vegetative organism—explains the initially unclear remark that Hegel makes immediately after the introduction of the realm of life in general and of vegetative life in particular, as quoted in the passage just above. Hegel indeed namely speaks of “the beginning of subjective vitality” qua vegetative life, but only to immediately add his reservations in light of what he understands as an adequate actualization of the ‘soul-principle’. Vegetative organisms are the first entities in the natural scale of self-preserving beings. They, thus, ought to be indivisible as well, as Kant’s definition of organism, as a systematic whole of indispensable parts, dictates the following: for what is the soul if not the self-referring purposive activity of a living body, by means of which the members of the body are exclusively maintained? Yet, the plant, as a whole is divisible, and its parts are detachable, since from each part can grow a new plant [35] (pp. 243–244). That is why Hegel adds “the individual, but, as external to itself, still falling apart into its members which are themselves individuals” [12] (p. 273, § 337)65. The self-externality that Hegel ascribes to the plant can, thus, only be understood in light of Hegel’s understanding of the soul qua embodied, self-referring purposiveness. We saw earlier that the embodied self-referring purposiveness that the soul is purposive relative to the intertwinement of the members of the organism, which also serves their self-preservation. Both elements, in Hegel’s understanding, are equally important: the inseparability of the parts and their firm distinctiveness. Hegel thinks that these two elements are necessary for something to be a fully adequate actualization of the ‘soul-principle’. But, in the case of the plant, the distinctive parts are not firmly distinct, both because they transform into other parts [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 143) of the same plant and because they can be, as parts, isolated from the original intertwinement, they belong to and develop into a new intertwinement of parts, that is, into a whole new plant [4] 24.1, pp. 705–706).

Only against this background does Hegel’s reference to animal life in the immediately subsequent passage, where Hegel juxtaposes the vegetable organism to the animal one, reveal its full sense. Vegetative life is the first, but not the most adequate spatiotemporal embodiment of the soul [4] (vol. 24.3, 1458)66 qua natural organism, since its soul is not utterly indispensable for its parts. These can evolve into another soul, that is, into a new self-referring purposive unity. But this is impossible for the part of an animal organism. Its soul is indispensible for it and for all parts of the organism: “[I]t is first in the animal organism that the differences of shape are so developed as to exist essentially only as its members, thereby constituting it subject” [12] (p. 274, § 337)67. The programmatic definition of the animal organism as a “subject”, that is, as a firmly undividable unity of mutually referring parts, is thus quite significant, as Hegel’s theory of the chemical object was. This time that the definition of animal organism serves retrospectively the better understanding of Hegel’s account of vegetable organism, it unearths the standard upon which the vegetable organism’s adequacy as actualization of the soul-principle is measured, that is, the utter interdependence and firm distinctiveness of its parts.

We already saw that Hegel’s understanding of the soul consists in a purposively active unity of material parts, which are coordinated in such-and-such a way so that the respective material structure, the organism, can preserve itself. That the adequate actualization of the ‘soul-principle’ is the actualization of an utter inextricability between unity and parts is not a position that stems from empirical observation but, as mentioned above, from Hegel’s account of the logical concept of unity, as developed in his Logic. Unity, or in the Hegelian jargon, ‘universality’, is according to Hegel not a common denominator that levels the differences between the respective unity and/or the parts that it unites. If, for example, we take the color ‘red’ and we subsume all red objects under it, then the common denominator ‘red’, Hegel argues, is an ‘abstract’ unity that levels or ignores the differences between, say, a red carpet, a red coat, a red fish, and a red apple. Therefore, the common denominator ‘red’, under which a conglomerate of things is subsumed, bestows no intrinsic complementarity on these entities.

Hegel argues that this is an example of extrinsic unity and, thus, no true unity since it unifies objects and/or entities that are not in truth not related to each other, if only in a not necessary and thus, arbitrary way: a red carpet and a red flower are not inextricable, the lungs and the heart are68. A non-arbitrary, that is, true unity, on the contrary, in not imposed externally on random objects and/or entities by means of levelling their differences, but is conceived by Hegel as a non-reductionist conceptual scheme within which these differentiated entities and/or objects are complementing each other as parts of a unity, understood, in the case of living and thinking beings, as a self-referring and self-preserving process [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 154)69. Tellingly, Hegel projects back on Aristotle his understanding of universality: “The main idea of the Aristotelian philosophy is the universal as what remains itself” [4] (vol. 30.3, pp. 1095–1096; my translation).

This speculative understanding of what a true unity of entities qua members ought to be leads to the hierarchical principle according to which the lower the independence of the parts of the organism is, the higher the organism’s position in the hierarchy of organisms [4] (vol. 24.2, pp. 916–917) and [4] (vol. 24.3, p. 1520)70. As we have seen, an organism is structurally characterized by two elements: the firm differentiation and the utter complementarity of its parts, that is, when taken together, their soul. The less differentiated the members are, the less developed their distinctive complementarity, that is their concrete unity: if, in other words, we detach a stem from a plant, which transforms into a new plant, the stem is not an utterly complementary part of the previous plant. If we cut a hand, though, it stops being a hand [4] (vol. 24.2, pp. 978–979) and [4] (vol. 25.1, 10), without developing into a whole new human organism. Thus, the actualization of the ‘soul-principle’ in vegetative organisms falls short of the conceptual standards set by Hegel, due to the low differentiation and complementarity of the parts of the plant: the body-parts of the vegetative organism do not remain intrinsically complementary and firmly distinct; they are interchangeable and, hence, eventually, self-subsistent individuals. The animal and the human organism are, hence, both a “veritable subjectivity”, while the plant is not:

The plant is still not veritable subjectivity because the subject, in distinguishing itself from itself and making itself into its own object, cannot trust itself to the truly articulated differences; but it is the return out of these differences which first constitutes true self-preservation. The plant therefore does not advance beyond a formal distinguishing of itself from itself, and it can remain only in formal communion with itself. It unfolds its parts; but since these its members are essentially the whole subject, there is no further differentiation of the plant: leaves, root, stem, are themselves only individuals. Since the real differences (das Reale) which the plant produces in order to preserve itself are completely similar to itself, it does not develop true members. Each plant is therefore only an infinite number of subjects; and the togetherness whereby it appears as one subject is only superficial. The plant is thus impotent to hold its members in its power, for these, as self-subsistent, escape from it; and the innocence of the plant is the same impotence of self-relation to inorganic being in which the plant’s members become, at the same time, other individuals [12] (p. 276, § 337; translation adjusted)⁷¹.

The animal organism namely presents a more adequate embodiment of actively self-referring entelechy, exactly because of the higher interdependence and, thus, complementarity of its members. The members of the animal organism neither transform into different members, nor do they develop into self-subsistent organisms. They preserve themselves only as members of the same organism and, thus, are, truly indivisible entities, that is, individuals. They not only feel, as plants do, but because they are subjects in the aforementioned sense, that is selves, they feel themselves as selves, which plants do not:

Animal life is therefore the Concept which displays itself in space and time. Each member has within itself the entire soul (Seele), is not self-subsistent but exists only as bound up with the whole. Feeling, the finding of self in self, is the highest achievement and occurs here for the first time; it is to remain one with self in determinateness, in determinateness to be freely at home with oneself. The plant does not find itself within itself because its members are self-subsistent individuals over against it [12] (p. 277, § 337, oral addition; translation adjusted)72.

We now understand that it is on the basis of the same conceptual standard that Hegel scrutinizes another feature of the unity that the plant as soul is—the transformation of its parts:

In the plant, which is only the first, immediate stage of subjective vitality, the objective organism and its subjectivity are still immediately identical. Consequently the process whereby the plant differentiates itself into distinct parts and sustains itself, is one in which it comes forth from itself and falls apart into a number of individuals, the whole plant being rather the basis (Boden) for these individuals than a subjective unity of members; the part—bud, branch, and so on, is also the whole plant. A further consequence is that the difference of the organic parts is only a superficial metamorphosis and one part can easily assume the function of the other [12] (p. 303, § 343; translation adjusted)⁷³.

This is the reason why the soul of the plant, that is the unity qua purposive complementarity of its members, is described by Hegel as “identical” with its particular parts. Since every part of the plant can eventually turn into a whole plant, the distinctive difference between parts and purposive unity that ought be preserved is equally cancelled, as in the case of the removal of one of its parts [13] (p. 101). From a logical, that is atemporal, point of view, the part of the plant not only turns into another part74, but it also turns, as the removed parts, into a unity and the unity that a plant is, turns, conversely, into a part. The soul of the plant and the parts of the plant are, thus, indistinguishable:

Like every living organism, the nature of a plant is particularized; but whereas in the animal the particularity is at the same time a particularity in contrast with which the subjectivity as soul (Seele) is also a universal, in the plant the particularity is quite immediately identical with the plant’s vitality in general. It does not exist as a state distinct from the plant’s inner life; on the contrary, the quality of the plant completely pervades its general vegetative nature, instead of being distinct from it as in the animal [12] (p. 304, § 343, oral addition and pp. 305–306, § 344).

This interchangeability between the whole plant and the parts of the plant, that is between soul and body(-part), is not only a token of the plant’s mere conceptual inadequacy. It also conditions another, final, substantial feature of the plant: its inability to move through space. Hegel’s speculative explanation of the plant’s inability to move goes as follows: a soul is a necessitated, spatiotemporal embodiment of the concept of intrinsic entelechy qua life. The soul, as the self-referring purposive unity of a body, is necessarily embodied in the parts of the respective material body. Nevertheless, the soul itself, as the unity of the parts of the body, is immaterial. The ability of the part of the plant, though, to turn itself into another part and/or to turn into a whole new plant makes the immaterial and, therefore, non-spatial unity, that the plant is, with a spatially determined part of the plant, coincide. The soul of the plant is, thus, bound to a spatial restriction that is unable to overcome. The plant, as soul, is alive but it is not self-moving and, hence, remains on the verge between inorganic materiality and immaterial organic structure:

Now because, as we have said, the subjective One of the plant is fused with its very quality and particularization, and consequently the negative selfhood (Selbstischkeit) of the plant is not yet self-related, therefore this self, too, does not yet exist as a purely non-sensuous being, the name of which is simply soul (Seele), but is still sensuous; no longer, it is true, as a material plurality, yet still as a sensuous unity of material parts. Now the sensuous element which remains for the unity is space. Since the plant thus cannot entirely destroy the element of sense, it is not yet pure time within itself; for this reason, the plant is in a specific place which it cannot get rid of, although it unfolds itself within it [12] (pp. 306–307, § 344, oral addition).

We have seen it time and again: purposive self-preservation is the fundamental feature of all things living in general and of plants in particular. But what qualifies a material entity as a living being is not identical with what qualifies a material entity as a fully adequate living being. In addition to the purposive self-preservation, a wholly adequately actualized soul must be embodied in a sum of body parts, that do not transform into other parts and that remain utterly dependent from the respective purposive unity wherein they belong. When the unity does not coincide with one of its parts, in the cases of alteration and/or removal of a part, then the soul can never be spatially localized. Thus, this kind of soul is freed from its ever-recurring spatial reification and is, thus, able to move itself75. At this point emerges the fundamental difference between Aristotle’s, Kant’s, and Hegel’s accounts of natural organisms mentioned earlier: the transition from plant to animal soul is not a result of a post hoc hierarchization of empirically given natural organisms that are retrospectively placed within am external developmental scheme. It is the philosophical demonstration of the internal inadequacy of the plant-soul, showcased in the (immaterial) soul’s confinement in a spatial [12] (p. 306, § 344 oral addition), that is, in a material determination that hints at a more adequate embodiment of the soul relative to the concept of the soul76. This more adequate embodiment is the animal-soul. It is more adequate because it never coincides with something material and, hence, can self-move.

5. Between Ensouled and Conscious Beings: The Animal and Its Soul

As in the case of the plant, Hegel divides the overall process of animal life into the three distinctive processes of formation, assimilation, and reproduction [4] (vol. 24.3, p. 1538), corresponding to what he the calls “systems” of sensibility, irritability and reproduction, respectively. Following here as well his own account of the concept of inner purposiveness qua life as depicted in the Logic77, Hegel divides his treatment of animal organism into, first, the process of the internal formation of the animal organism, ‘the relation to the self’; second, the process of the animal organism assimilating its surroundings, ‘the relation to the other’; and, finally, third, the process of reproduction, which Hegel calls ‘the relation to the other as the self”, since this process entails, again, two individuals of the same natural kind [12] (p. 356, § 352) and [4] (vol. 24.1, pp. 157–160). The animal organism is, furthermore, conceptualized by Hegel as a system of three distinctive systems, i.e., three distinctive processes, which entail, in turn, three further distinctive processes, respectively. It is, as Hegel, remarks a “three-foldness” [4] (vol. 24,1, p. 157; my translation), which hints at another important element in Hegel’s understanding of the soul. The soul is not only the actualized self-referring, unifying activity of the parts of an organism, it is also the actualized self-referring, unifying activity of the processes, that constitute an organism. It is a process of processes [13] (p. 150) and [42] (pp. 5–7).

Concretely, the first process of these processes—the formation or the “structural process”—refers to the functions of the organisms that aim at the development of the parts of the organism, which are necessary for its self-preservation and growth. Here, can be found Kant’s profound impact on Hegel in understanding the internal structure of the organism as a sum of parts that are simultaneously means and ends relative to the other parts and the whole organism [12] (pp. 377–380, § 356). The structural process is divided in the ‘systems’ of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction of the individual organism. The activity of sensibility is embodied in the nervous system; the activity of irritability, that is, the sum of the functions that convert the receptivity to the reactivity of the organism, is embodied in the “circulatory system”—while the last process of the reproduction of the organism is embodied by the digestive system [12] (pp. 359–372, § 354). These processes, which are the processes of formation of the distinctiveness of the parts and of their utter inseparability, amount to the actualization of the animal soul, which is materialized in the feeling of the self of the animal [12] (p. 377, § 356).

The second process, that of assimilation, is divided into the processes of assessing the data of the senses, instincts, and urges, the ‘theoretical process’[12] (pp. 380–384, §§ 357–358)78, and the practical reaction to this data, the “real or practical process”. Hegel divides this process into two distinctive processes. The first he calls “formal assimilation”. This refers to the transformation of the elements pertaining to the environment and of the surroundings of the animals that serve the satisfaction of the various needs and urges of the organism. The second process is defined by Hegel as the “real process”. This refers to the specific corporeal functions of the organism, such as digestion, that transform nutrition and other relevant elements into necessary substances for the self-preservation of the organism [12] (pp. 388–393, §§ 360–362).

The third and final process, reproduction, entails the processes of species specification, sexual interaction, and process of termination of the self-preserving activity that the animal organism is. While Hegel’s overall account of organism is remarkably well informed and foreseeing, I will only focus in what follows on this very last process, since it is crucial for understanding the further inadequacy of the animal organism in Hegel’s scale of souls qua living beings. By the same token, this will shed more light upon Hegel’s claim that the animal soul’s internal inadequacies hint at another, wholly adequate, soul, namely the human soul79.

The animal-soul lies between the plant and the human soul in Hegel’s account of purposively structured natural beings. As such, it also serves as an advantageous vantage point for understanding what precedes it, the plant-soul, as well as what succeeds it, the human-soul, from a two-fold perspective: respectively, their spatial confinement and their sense of being-a-self, that is, an indivisible, purposive unity of parts. As we have seen, for Hegel, the ability of self-movement depends on the inseparability of the body parts. The greater the dependency of the parts, the higher is the soul’s independence from spatial confinement and/or materiality. Thus, the plant cannot move, since its parts can become independent [4] (vol. 24.2, p. 917) and [4] (vol. 24.3, p. 1455). The animal can move, because its parts cannot become independent since they cannot transform into and/or turn into a new animal. Nevertheless, the animal is independent from its respective spatial confinement but is not independent from space as such: the animal moves from one place only to bring itself to another place [4] (vol. 24.3, pp. 1459, 1517 and 1611). What is, thus, totally freed from space is the soul of that natural organism whose full actualization leads beyond space. A natural organism that is fully actualized beyond space is, however, not an organism that is solely unconsciously purposive, but also consciously: a natural organism that is freed from space is an organism that is able to think and the only organism being able to potentially think is the human organism, that is the human soul. The human soul is a necessitated embodiment of the ‘soul-principle’, but its embodiment is a specific embodiment among the embodiments of the ‘soul-principle’ because it refers to a body that potentially, that is, as consciousness and as intelligence, can think80.

The first fundamental token of the soul’s fully adequate spatiotemporal embodiment is the soul’s freedom from spatial confinement as such. Total freedom from spatial confinement starts where thinking starts. The ability of thinking, though, is not only conditioned by a soul, that is, only by an unconsciously purposive corporeal structure. It is also conditioned by the mental awareness of being-a-self. Thinking, hence, starts where consciousness is. Hence the soul that is totally freed from spatial confinement is a soul that does not enable thinking directly, but a soul that, first, enables consciousness, which, in turn, enables thinking. Being conscious of being something distinct of one’s surroundings means being conscious of being an indivisible unity. Being an indivisible unity means, hence, being a self [12] (p. 277, § 337, oral addition). Being conscious of being a self means being aware of being a self. Being aware of being a self, though, is a broader state of affairs than being conscious of being a self since an animal organism, a soul, can also feel that is a self and is, thus, also aware of being a self.

Hegel’s account of the animal soul is thus not only the path toward the independence of the soul from spatial confinement but also the path from the feeling of being-a-self, found both in animal and in human souls, to the consciousness of being-a-self, a characteristic unique to humans alone. It is the ability of mentally perceiving oneself as an ‘I’. In contradistinction to the plant-soul, the animal and the human soul feel that they are themselves or, more paradoxically, they do not only feel but feel themselves feeling [24] (pp. 141–142 and 147). What distinguishes the animal soul from the human soul is that the full actualization of the former remains within the bounds of space, while the latter paves the way for the mental awareness of being a self, an awareness that is fully immaterial and, thus, beyond space. As Hegel says in the Lectures, when commenting on Aristotle’s theory of passive nous and identifying it with the soul, “[o]nly thinking is exactly this, the annihilation of the material element and the production of the universal element” [4] (vol. 30.1, 110; my translation)81.

Spatial (non-)confinement and mental self-awareness are, thus, two distinct but mutually inextricable features that serve as the ultimate standards for Hegel’s developmental account of the soul. The greater the dependency of the body-parts, the more immaterial their purposive unity, their soul, is. The more immaterial the soul of the natural organism is, the greater its independence from spatial confinements. Relative independence from spatial confinements, that is self-movement, means awareness of being-a-self in the material element of the feeling and vice versa. Complete independence from spatial confinements means awareness of being-a-self in the immaterial element of consciousness and vice versa. The plant, thus, is not capable of the feeling of the self, because its parts can become independent. The animal is capable of the feeling of the self because its parts can never become independent, since they are interrelated as mutually inextricable means and ends for each other [12] (vol. 377, § 356). Hence, the unity that the animal soul is, is a veritable soul and a true self. The human soul is equally capable of the feeling of the self for the same reason as the animal is. But the human soul is also capable of being conscious of being a self, which means that the human soul is not only the self-referring, purposive activity of an organic body, but a purposive activity that the paves the way and, thus, hints at another, fully immaterial, unity: the conscious and thinking self [4] (vol. 24.1, pp. 740–741 and 752), [4] (vol. 24.2, pp. 932, 983) and [4] (vol. 24.3, p. 1611).

As the transition from chemical objects to living objects showcased the fundamental differences between soulless and ensouled beings, the logical transition from animal to human organisms showcases the boundary between a soul that is the purposive unity of a body that is not able to think and of a body that is. The idea of the soul as the purposive intertwinement of the body parts is not only the basis for Hegel’s understanding of what an organism is to be. It is also the basis for understanding how an organism ceases to be. If being a soul qua organism amounts to being a purposive unity of parts, then, Hegel infers, an organism stops being an adequate organism when one of its parts ceases to be a purposively functioning part of that unity, that is, when it makes itself independent from it [4] (vol. 24.1, p. 746). In Hegel’s words, “the disease is that the organism separates itself into its separate moments”. This means, Hegel continues:

That the disease becomes for the self: i.e., there is established in the self and in opposition to it as universal [that is, as purposive unity—AK], a determinateness which makes its own self into a fixed self; in other words, the self of the organism becomes a fixed existence, a specific part of the whole[12] (p. 433, § 372, oral addition, p. 440, § 374) and [4] (vol. 25.1, p. 315)82.

The disease is an internal inadequacy of the soul qua organism, which can be overcome. What the animal soul cannot overcome according to Hegel is its fundamental inadequacy, which consists of it being, as the purposive intertwinement of material body parts, an immaterial feature83. This is the (highly speculative) reason the animal soul perishes: because it is an immaterial unity embodied in material parts. The embodiment of the soul into something material at all, that is the (animal) organism, proves to be the fundamental inadequacy of all things living, which becomes manifest in their death:

The animal, in overcoming and riddling itself of particular inadequacies, does not put an end to the general inadequacy which is inherent in it, namely that its Idea is only the immediate Idea that, as animal, it stands within Nature, and its subjectivity is only implicitly the Concept but is not for its own self the Concept. The inner universality [that is, the soul—AK] therefore remains opposed to the natural singularity of the living being as the negative power from which the animal suffers violence and perishes, because natural existence (Dasein) as such does not itself contain this universality and is not therefore the reality which corresponds to it [12] (vol. 440, § 374; translation adjusted)⁸⁴.

The (animal) soul’s constitutive self-inadequacy lies in the fact that it ensouls something, matter, that is soulless. Nevertheless, the unearthing of this inadequacy not only prescribes the limits of the realm of animal souls qua organisms, but it also hints, in a negative, way to a realm within which this inadequacy is overcome. And it can only be overcome in a realm within which the soul does not ensoul something material but paves the way for an immaterial unity, that is thinking, of immaterial parts, that is, thoughts85. Thus, the boundary of the realm of animal soul simultaneously delineates another realm, beyond that boundary: the realm of human soul, that is the realm of the emergence of consciousness and of Spirit [12] (pp. 442–445, § 376).

6. From Ensouled to Conscious Beings: The Human and Her Soul

Hegel’s account of the development of the human soul also follows a hierarchy from lower to higher functions of the soul, albeit the successive exposition of the various modes and activities of the human soul does not, as Hegel emphasizes, always correspond to some temporally distinct phases of the soul’s development, since they exist simultaneously [28] (vol.1, pp. 22–24, § 380). Another important aspect of Hegel’s account of the human soul is that he does not thoroughly investigate the physiology, that is, the organic mechanisms connecting the soul with the body parts, but rather the impact that the body, by means of its interaction with its surroundings and of its natural drives, has on the soul and vice versa. Hegel approves and, actually, finds highly interesting a complementary physicalist approach of the soul86, albeit not in an evolutionary way but within a highly teleological context of a natural purposiveness that necessarily leads to consciousness and human intelligence.

The underlying conceptual scheme for understanding the human soul remains the same as the one for understanding the vegetative and animal soul: the soul is an unconscious, actualized, purposive and unifying process. Its parts can be seen simultaneously as its means and as its end: one the one hand, the urges, needs, inclinations, sensations, perceptions, etc. that emerge out of the necessary embodiment of the soul in a body that interacts with its environment have to be taken into account and be satisfied. On the other hand, the process of integrating sense data and satisfying and controlling impulses serves the final, overarching end: the self-awareness of this unity in the mode of the feeling of being a self and, ultimately, the self-awareness of this unity in the mode of the consciousness of being a self. Being conscious of being a self is the point where the soul’s activity, that is, all unconscious organic life, reaches its climax—a climax that hints at and leads to beings not only endowed with purposively structured corporeity but with intelligence. The end of the human soul is, thus, an end in the double sense of a purpose and of a limit for all things organic.

Hegel divides his account of the human soul in three successive parts that successively lead to the stage of consciousness87. The first part, the ‘natural soul’, deals with the naturally given characteristics of the soul, which are conditioned from the element of its necessary corporeal embodiment [25] (p. 10). The second part, the ‘feeling soul’, deals with the unconscious unity of the soul, qua feeling of the self, in regards to external and internal sensations and inclinations. The third and final part, the ‘actual soul’, exhibits the stage where the soul has reached total control over external and internal sensations and inclinations and, thus, is able to use the body as the medium of its own externalization and expression [28] (vol. 2, pp. 20–21, § 390).

The fundamental two-fold feature that distinguishes this first part of Hegel’s philosophical account of his philosophy of Spirit from the later ones is that Hegel understands anthropology as the account of all unconscious activities and processes that occur in order that humans gain control over their corporeity and over the manifold of sensations and inclinations. This control is, for Hegel, a precondition for human consciousness. According to Hegel, the seeming divide between mind and world is not what appears to us to be, namely, a primordial ontological given. On the contrary, this divide, which Hegel calls the intermediate stage of consciousness, emerges out of the successful activity of the soul over its own natural embodiment, that is, over its body. The path that leads to this divide is the path of Hegel’s systematic account of the human soul. The human soul is not only the active entelechy of the human body, but the active entelechy that leads to something other than the body, namely the human consciousness.

As mentioned earlier, this path consists in the gradual process of the soul taking control over its physical embodiment and the related stimuli, needs, and urges88. Thus, Hegel begins his account from the initial formatting restrictions of the soul that soul is exposed to due to the spatiotemporal locality of its body. Hegel starts with the ways that geographical space impacts in a mediated way the soul by means of its physical embodiment and continues with the impact of physical time on the body and, thus, on the soul.

In the second part of his account of the human soul, the “feeling soul”, Hegel’s likewise distinguishes three developmental stages. The first stage refers to the passive ability of the soul to feel. Yet, the soul at this stage is immersed in each particular feeling and, hence, does not feel itself as a whole or as a unity having particular feelings. The lack of the feeling of self goes along with the soul’s inability to discern between its own embodiment and other, external bodies: since the soul does not feel itself as a self, it cannot feel another self [28] (vol. 2, p. 253, § 406). The second stage refers to the very feeling of the self in regard to the soul’s own body. In this stage, the soul distinguishes the multitude of feelings imposed on the soul through its corporeity and the explicit feeling of the self in contradistinction to the multitude of its various, individualized sensations. By the same token, the soul feels the outer as the outer. It is the self-awareness of the purposive unity of the body, that the soul is, not in a conscious manner, but in the element of a specific feeling: the self-feeling [28] (vol. 2, pp. 323–325, § 407)89.

The third stage builds on the previous one. The feeling of the self as distinguished from the feelings imposed on the soul by means of its corporeity paves the way for another set of feelings that do not originate from the human body’s interaction with other, external bodies and elements but from the soul’s body itself. The soul remains still unconscious; nevertheless, it is unconsciously active in the sense that it strives to satisfy the urges and needs emerging out of its own corporeity [28] (vol. 2 (p. 387, § 409). From a passive purposive unity of its embodiment, it develops into an active one, which, nevertheless, is initially immersed in the multitude of the individual urges that demand their satisfaction. At this stage, one of the most brilliant parts of Hegel’s philosophical anthropology [61], namely the soul’s unconscious activity, amounts to the hierarchization of these urges and the control over them [22] (pp. 85–86). It is the activity of turning the process of the satisfaction of its needs into habits [28] (vol. 2, p. 389, § 410), that is, into purposive, yet unconscious, actions that serve to achieve goals set by the very corporeity of the soul [62] (p. 264). The members of the body turn into instruments of the soul and are thus used for the development of specific skills that aim at the satisfaction of the manifold desires and impulses but not, as in the animal, in the moment of their reappearance, but in the moment set by habit [27] (vol. 2, pp. 393–397, § 410).

The third and final stage of Hegel’s account of the human soul, the “actual soul”, marks the transition from the function of the corporeity of the soul as an instrument to the function of the body as the “sign” of its soul. In the previous stage of habit, the soul is in total control of its natural embodiment, which has become a unified instrument of the soul. The soul, however, still aims at the satisfaction and hierarchization of the manifold desires and impulses of something that is not the soul itself: it uses the body to satisfy the body [59] (pp. 12 ff.), [25] (pp. 11–12) and [21] (p. 183). On the present stage, the soul, still unconsciously, dominates in such a degree over the body and over its impulses that the body turns into a means of the expression of the soul. The human soul has developed into the active intrinsic entelechy of the body, whose final cause consists in the exteriorization of the specific purposive unity, which is necessarily embodied in it yet distinct from it: the body of the human soul is not any kind of organic body, but a body meant to serve an organism endowed with intelligence. Thus, the body at this level serves, through habituation [16] (pp. 171–187), as the material expression of immaterial processes. These processes, still in an unconscious manner, make themselves visible through multiple ways such as gestures, facial reactions and upright posture—a posture characteristic of humans alone [28] (vol. 2, pp. 409–415, § 411 and the oral addition). The body turns into the “mode of the existence of the soul” [5] (vol. 25.1, p. 23, § 307; my translation).

The path of the human soul as the process of the actualization of a latently immaterial purposive unity and the particular, material parts of its embodiment ends with the complete domination of that unity over its parts [26] (pp. 133 ff). This actualization process is initiated by the external and internal stimuli that evoke the unifying activity that the soul is. While, initially, the soul reacts to or serves the satisfaction of these stimuli, it appears that these were the means through which the soul gains full control over its corporeal embodiment.

This domination, though, is not the peak of the unconscious activity of the human soul, as it was for the animal soul90. The soul, through its dominance over the body by means of habituation, becomes distinct from the body. The soul stops striving for control over the body and, through this closure, becomes, by fully controlling it, detached from it91. It becomes, as Hegel writes, “exclusive” towards its own spatiotemporal externality that the body is, while the soul itself emerges as the sheer abstract unity, the “simple negativity”, that the “I” is [63] (pp. 162–163)92. From here on, human existence ceases to be unconscious and, thus, ceases to be only soul by becoming conscious93. The peak of human unconscious activity, that is of the soul, namely consists in it ceasing to be and an end-in-itself and in becoming a means for a reality more adequate vis-à-vis Hegel’s hierarchical understanding of reality: a living existence that is conscious of being itself. Here, namely, lies the explanation of the human soul’s intermediating function and of its hybrid status vis-à-vis the conceptual development of the Logic. The human soul is neither mere life, as plant- and animal souls are, nor is it consciousness or intelligence, but the necessary disposition for them. Hegel, in full accordance with Aristotle, understands the achievement of the human soul in it becoming the stage through which emerges something wholly immaterial: human consciousness and, further, intelligence94. Life stops being only the form of a material principle and, through the thorough habituation of the body, appears as the matter of a further, wholly matter-independent form [34] (pp. 270–271)95. Consciousness is in this sense the overarching entelechy of the process, that all materially bound life is, since, as Stephen Menn puts it, it, in Aristotle entelechy “indicates that the process has reached its term, and that the effect exists outside its efficient and material causes.” [30], (p. 101). As Hegel unmistakably summarizes his thought in the preface to the Encyclopedia:

[T]he spirit is essentially consciousness, with a content that has become an object. As a feeling, it is the non-objectified content itself […] and only the lowest level of consciousness, indeed, in that form of the soul that we have in common with animals. Only thinking makes the soul (with which animals are also endowed) a spirit, and philosophy is only a consciousness of that content, the spirit and its truth, in the shape and manner of its essential character that distinguishes it [the spirit] from the animal […] [45] (p. 16; translation adjusted).

The climax of life lies outside life96.