Abstract

The trajectory of the “Anthropology” section of Hegel’s Encyclopedia brings us from the uncultivated, natural soul which humans share with non-human animals, to the point where it becomes an individual subject, ready to become the “I” of the “Phenomenology” section. Much of this entails the transformation of the body from something purely determined by nature to being a home for spirit as it freely relates itself to the world. The “Anthropology” thus dwells on the theme of liberation from nature. Especially in the Zusätze and in the 1827/8 Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel notes that that cultivation is associated with minimizing the effects of natural determinations on one’s body. Insofar as nature is associated with particularity and reason with universality, it may seem as though idiosyncratic embodiments are incompatible with the kind of mastery of the body Hegel envisions. At the same time, given that the focus of the “Anthropology” is on the development of the soul rather than the matter of the body itself, there may be a range of compatible bodily possibilities. This raises the question of how much the body and its comportment ought to correspond to an ideal, and what the implications may be for those humans whose embodiment marks them out (in Hegel’s system) as closer to nature. Are there limitations to embodiments that may be appropriated and claimed as my own? Since coming to own our natural determinations is an ongoing process throughout a lifetime, despite the location of the “Anthropology” in the Encyclopedia, it is important to consider the role of our free decision-making in the transformation of our body. Attending to the story of the body within the “Anthropology” helps us to appreciate it more fully as a crucial link between the Philosophy of Nature and the rest of the Philosophy of Spirit.