My Spiritual Coach
Quick search
  • About Me
  • About My Sessions
  • Your Past Lives Revisited
  • Discover Your Soul Mates
  • My Soul Mate Books
  • Psychic Phenomena and Powers
  • Auras, Out-of-Body, and Life after Life Experiences
  • Astrology, Saturn, and Past Lives
  • Balance and Enhance Your Energy Centers (Chakras)
  • Blog - Q&A
  • Contact
  • Resources

How does Hegel view consciousness?

7/8/2018

0 Comments

 
Hegel doesn’t think we can have consciousness unless we are self-aware first. But to be self-aware we must be conscious of “the other,” which is not ourselves. We are the subject which has consciousness of objects (including other people). These objects are apart from ourselves. But we can never really know ourselves if we are not aware that other people are aware of us.

By now your brain might be spinning from all this. Hegel gets into some difficult mental acrobatics in which he declares that subjects are also objects to other subjects. So you only become aware of yourself by seeing yourself through the eyes of another. This is what he terms “self-consciousness.” It is the awareness of another person’s awareness of you.

Now a struggle arises. The self and the other come together—which causes self-consciousness come into being. But also we become aware of the otherness of the people who are aware of us. This becomes a struggle between two unequal individuals. One becomes the master and the other the servant. But they really depend on each other to complete the picture.

The servant knows the master sees him as an object. He is a thing, not a person to the master. This is frustrating to the one who is in the servile position because he cannot express his full self-consciousness (since he is not a subject). The master is dominant because the slave is an object to him. But it is not a satisfying position either, because self-consciousness depends on subject-subject interaction of equality.

At the same time, the master does not find his position completely satisfying. In negating his own otherness in the consciousness of the servant, in turning the servant into an object unessential to his own self-consciousness, he does not recognize the servant as a consciousness equal to himself. And therefore he cannot fully realize his own self-consciousness.

But, according to Hegel, the servant is actually better off because he is able to get satisfaction from labor. This allows him to work on and transform objects through which he rediscovers himself and can claim a “mind of his own.” So through labor, a person’s consciousness can come into being as well.

This is all terribly confusing. Many people are ready to throw Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit containing the chapter on “Self-consciosness” across the room. Yet a lot of of twentieth-century philosophers and psychoanalysts have used Hegel’s ideas as their basis. Before him, Kant discussed the difference between subject and object. But Hegel believed that the subject, or the self, is aware of its self only as a distinct entity through the eyes of another self.

This is different because it implies that all our consciousnesses are interdependent with each other. We can’t have any concept of ourselves without having actually experienced a moment of identification with “the other.” We know ourselves through the view we think others hold of us. This can be extremely stressful when others see us as objects, things, and not other living consciousnesses.
​
I don’t agree with Hegel, especially about this glorification of the slave’s labor. However, once we get past all the talk about masters and slaves, I can see what Hegel is getting at. We all exist in relationship to our society and other people. If we did not differentiate ourselves from “the other” there wouldn’t be any self-consciousness.

I would rather go a step further. If we go beyond how other people hold us in their opinions, we could all recognize ourselves as part of the Universal consciousness. And what others thought about us wouldn’t matter at all. We would still know we exist—which is true consciousness.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    As a spiritual guide, healer, and lecturer, I have had the privilege to touch the lives of people who long to understand their higher selves. Please leave questions and comments for me. Hope to see you often here!

    Categories

    All
    Chakras
    Consciousness
    Death And Dying
    Dreams
    Energy Fields
    Enlightenment
    Good And Evil
    Health And Healing
    Karma
    Life After Life
    Meditation
    Movie Reviews
    Past Lives
    Philosophy
    Present Moment Awareness
    Purpose In Life
    Religions
    Soulmates
    Spirit Guides Angels
    Spiritual Growth
    State Of The World
    The Soul
    The Universe

    Archives

    May 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017

    RSS Feed


© Copyright June Marshall, 2014 - Present. 
    All rights reserved.       


Site designed and maintained by Newmedia Publishing