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Anthropology, Geist, and the Soul-Body Relation The Systematic Beginning of Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit Angelica Nuzzo Introduced and defined as the “truth” of nature and thereby set unquestionably much “higher” than nature,1 Hegel’s concept of Geist does not cease to be determined throughout its development in relation to nature. While nature is indeed “sublated” in and by Geist, it is never entirely left behind in the articulation of spirit’s reality. Freedom is spirit’s most proper character , the guiding thread of its development; yet spirit’s liberation from nature is more precisely its liberation within (and with) nature.2 This predicament of Hegel’s Geist—its necessary and ongoing entanglement with nature—is surprising and even irritating only for those interpreters who hold on to a (extrinsic) teleological reading of the progression of Hegel’s system, cherish a forward-looking notion of Aufhebung, and ultimately read the Philosophy of Spirit as a renewal of older metaphysics in spite of Kant. On the contrary, a closer look at (and appreciation of) how constitutive the relation to nature is for Hegel’s concept of Geist may help us gain an insight into the much more complex character of the dialectic-speculative development of spirit from its subjective to its objective sphere. In addition, it may allow us to revisit the question of Hegel’s debt to the philosophical tradition in this part of his system, addressing it from a broader angle than the perspective of the Aristotle-Kant alternative.3 In this essay, I discuss spirit’s relation to 1 2 / Angelica Nuzzo nature, taking as paradigmatic case in point the “Anthropology,” the first division of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. More specifically, I examine the question of the relationship between “soul” and “body” that Hegel raises at the outset of the “Anthropology.” My claim is that such relation remains the underlying basis of Hegel’s entire philosophy of spirit. This constellation is crucial on several counts. First, in the beginning of the philosophy of spirit at stake is Hegel’s presentation of the general notion of Geist, the concept that lays the foundation of the philosophy of spirit as such. Second, Hegel’s indication of such beginning as “anthropology” is neither a self-evident nor an uncontroversial choice—both in terms of content (topic of the “Anthropology” is the animal soul or spirit, and not distinctively the human soul or spirit) and in relation to the philosophical tradition (the most recent referent being Kant’s 1798 Anthropology with which Hegel’s own “Anthropology” has very little in common).4 Third, it is on this set of issues that the newly translated Erdmann Nachschrift of Hegel’s 1827–28 lectures on the “philosophy of spirit” sheds a particularly interesting light.5 The fact that J. E. Erdmann is the author of the 1837 Abhandlung über Leib und Seele, which develops a Hegelian theory of the soul/body relation as prolegomena to a general theory of spirit, gives us reason to think that in 1827–28 he may have been a particularly sensitive and attentive hearer of Hegel’s lectures precisely on this topic.6 In fact, by examining the text of Erdmann’s introduction to the Philosophy of Spirit along with the first paragraphs of the “Anthropology,” and by comparing it with the corresponding sections of the introduction to the philosophy of spirit and “Anthropology” of the 1827–21830 Encyclopedia, we shall see in what sense the relation Seele/Leib that opens the “Anthropology” specifies the more general relation between spirit and nature offering the genetic definition of Geist and establishing the point of departure of spirit’s development . Such development offers Hegel’s final transformation of Kant’s critique of metaphysics, in particular of rational psychology, and specifies the perspective from which speculative philosophy takes up the central concepts of Aristotle’s and Plato’s metaphysics and psychology. Finally, the interpretation that I offer herein recommends itself also in relation to the current discussion on this part of Hegel’s system. For brevity, I shall mention only Robert R. Williams’ and Michael Wolff’s positions. In his introduction to the English translation of Erdmann’s Nachschrift , taking stock of the status of the literature on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, Williams rightly stresses how this is by and large the least studied part of his thought. On his account, the fundamental significance of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit lies in its constructing the systematic connection...

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