Unconscious spirit

Last updated

The unconscious spirit is the supposed part of the human spirit or soul that operates outside of conscious awareness.

Contents

In general, the idea of the unconscious spirit suggests that there are deeper aspects of our selves that are not readily accessible to conscious awareness, but which may hold important insights, wisdom, and creative potential. It invites us to explore the depths of our inner world and connect with the spiritual dimensions of our being.

This idea has been explored in various spiritual and philosophical traditions throughout history. In some religious traditions, the unconscious spirit may be seen as the source of divine inspiration or guidance.

Religious traditions

Western religions

In Western religions, the concept of the Holy Spirit in Christianity [1] and the Ruach in Judaism [2] are sometimes seen as corresponding to the idea of the unconscious spirit. Both of these concepts refer to a divine presence or energy that animates the universe and is accessible to human beings through prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices.

As a promoter of reflective consciousness, Saint Augustine, a theologian of the 5th century and Church Father, is the initiator of an introspective approach which consists in discerning the zones of unconscious from which consciousness itself is born. [3] This discernment is achieved through a deepening of the immediate consciousness, in which the soul directly grasps its concrete reality. [3] For Augustine, our conscious mind and our voluntary action had their common source in an inner and unconscious spiritual reality where God himself resided and which he alone knew in all its extent, and animated. [3]

Philosophy

Slavoj Zizek is an example of a contemporary philosopher and psychoanalyst influenced by Schelling's and Hegel's conceptions of the unconscious. Slavoj Zizek Fot M Kubik May15 2009 10.jpg
Slavoj Zizek is an example of a contemporary philosopher and psychoanalyst influenced by Schelling's and Hegel's conceptions of the unconscious.

In philosophy, the notion of an unconscious spirit emerged in the course of history in the context of philosophical romanticism and its mystical and neoplatonic sources. The term itself, first used as an adjective in the 18th century, did not really appear in its present noun form until the 19th century. It was coined by the German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (in his System of Transcendental Idealism ), and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in his Biographia Literaria ). [4] [5]

Schelling and the Romantics

Friedrich Schelling was a German philosopher who was a major figure in the development of German Idealism and Romanticism. His understanding of the unconscious was influenced by his belief in the interconnectedness of all things in nature. [6] In his philosophy of nature, he posited that nature itself was an unconscious, spiritual force. [6] Schelling believed that the universe was not simply a collection of inert matter, but rather a dynamic, living entity that was infused with a kind of divine intelligence. [7]

According to Schelling, the unconscious spirit is the underlying force behind all of the phenomena of the natural world, from the movements of the planets to the growth of plants and animals. This spirit is also present within human beings, although in a more conscious form, and is responsible for the development of human consciousness and culture. [7] He sees it as a kind of pre-rational or pre-conscious realm that underlies conscious experience. [7] In that view, the unconscious spirit is the source of creative inspiration and intuition. [7]

Schelling's ideas about the unconscious spirit were highly influential in the development of Romanticism. [6] For the German Romantics in general, the Unconscious (Unbewusste in German) constituted the root or the foundation of the human being, the point of insertion of his spirit in the vast process of the world. [6] The Romantic approach to the "Unconscious" found a posterity even beyond philosophy, in Romantic psychology. [6] It was a decisive moment in the genesis of the psychodynamic notion of the unconscious [8] and helped to shape later psycho-philosophical movements such as depth psychology.

Hegel

Georg Hegel is one of the most important figures in German idealism and pantheistic postkantian philosophy. While he did not explicitly develop a theory of the unconscious, nor include the unconscious as a central element of his psychology, he acknowledged the unconscious dimension of world spirit. [9] He talked of the unconscious processes of spirit as a "nightlike abyss". [10] For Hegel, the Spirit (Geist) was a developmental process of self-actualization realized individually and collectively through reflective, contemplative thought and action. His notion of Geist encompasses a principle of complexe holism whereby higher stages of development are attained through dynamic, laborious dialectical mediation. [9] The unconscious is seen in that perspective as the competing and antithetical organizations of "impulses" (Triebe) or "instincts", whose "basic is the soul itself", which informs Spirit's burgeoning process over time. [11]

Hartmann

Portrait of Eduard von Hartmann (1882) Eduard von Hartmann.png
Portrait of Eduard von Hartmann (1882)

Eduard von Hartmann was a German philosopher who lived in the 19th century, and he is best known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. In his philosophy, von Hartmann developed the concept of the unconscious spirit, which he believed played a central role in human existence and the world at large. [12] That Unconscious (Unbewusste in German) appears as a combination of the "Idea" of Hegel with the "Will to live" of Schopenhauer. [12] It is a fundamental force that underlies all of reality, including the physical world and human consciousness. It is also a source of creativity and innovation, and it drives the evolution of consciousness and culture through whole history. [12]

Von Hartmann saw the unconscious spirit as a kind of cosmic Will, which he believed was ultimately striving towards the realization of an ideal state of being. [13] This ideal state, which he called the "Absolute", was characterized by perfect unity, or by pure potentiality, and it represented the ultimate goal of human existence. The whole point of that philosophy of the unconscious was to vindicate the central thesis of his spiritual pantheism: that there is a single intelligent subject throughout all of nature, which acts purposively and intelligently yet subconsciously. [14] That spiritual pantheism was to be the religion of the modern world, the sole alternative to a bankrupt theism and a soulless materialism. [14]

However, von Hartmann also believed that the unconscious spirit could be destructive and irrational at times, leading to suffering and chaos in the world. [15] He argued that the key to overcoming this destructive aspect of the unconscious spirit was through the development of conscious awareness and rational thought, which could help individuals and societies better understand and harness the power of the unconscious. [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel</span> German philosopher (1770–1831)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.

In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German philosophy</span> Specialty in philosophy, focused on German language origin

German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling</span> German philosopher (1775–1854)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Johann Gottlieb Fichte, his mentor in his early years, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his one-time university roommate, early friend, and later rival. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is regarded as difficult because of its evolving nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German idealism</span> Philosophical movement

German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Objective idealism</span> Idealistic metaphysics

Objective idealism is a philosophical theory that affirms the ideal and spiritual nature of the world and conceives of the idea of which the world is made as the objective and rational form in reality rather than as subjective content of the mind or mental representation. Objective idealism thus differs both from materialism, which holds that the external world is independent of cognizing minds and that mental processes and ideas are by-products of physical events, and from subjective idealism, which conceives of reality as totally dependent on the consciousness of the subject and therefore relative to the subject itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eduard von Hartmann</span> German philosopher (1842–1906)

Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann was a German philosopher, independent scholar and author of Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). His notable ideas include the theory of the Unconscious and a pessimistic interpretation of the "best of all possible worlds" concept in metaphysics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philipp Mainländer</span> German philosopher and poet (1841–1876)

Philipp Mainländer was a German philosopher and poet. Born Philipp Batz, he later changed his name to "Mainländer" in homage to his hometown, Offenbach am Main.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Absolute idealism</span> Type of idealism in metaphysics

Absolute idealism is chiefly associated with Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher who was greatly influenced by Hegel's work, and the British idealists.

Frederick Charles Beiser is an American philosopher who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University. He is best-known for his work on German idealism and has also written on the German Romantics and 19th-century British philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Right Hegelians</span>

The Right Hegelians, Old Hegelians (Althegelianer), or the Hegelian Right were those followers of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. They are typically contrasted with the Young Hegelians, who interpreted Hegel's political philosophy as supportive of left-wing and progressive politics or views on religion.

<i>Naturphilosophie</i> Current in 19th-century German idealism

Naturphilosophie is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of nature in the earlier 19th century. German speakers use the clearer term Romantische Naturphilosophie, the philosophy of nature developed at the time of the founding of German Romanticism. It is particularly associated with the philosophical work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—though it has some clear precursors also. More particularly it is identified with some of the initial works of Schelling during the period 1797–9, in reaction to the views of Fichte, and subsequent developments from Schelling's position. Always controversial, some of Schelling's ideas in this direction are still considered of philosophical interest, even if the subsequent development of experimental natural science had a destructive impact on the credibility of the theories of his followers in Naturphilosophie.

Christian Martin Julius Frauenstädt was a German philosopher and editor. He was educated at the house of his uncle at Neisse, and converted from Judaism to protestant Christianity in 1833. He studied theology and, later, philosophy at Berlin, where he came under the sway of the philosophies of Hegel and Schelling. He worked as a private tutor for the Sayn-Wittgenstein family during this period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julius Bahnsen</span> German philosopher (1830–1881)

Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen was a German philosopher. Bahnsen is usually considered the originator of characterology and a real-dialectical method of philosophical reflection which he laid down in his two-volume Contributions to Characterology (1867) and developed forth with his following works, amongst others his magnum opus The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World (1880/82).

Sebastian Angus Gardner is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy in the University College London. He is known for his expertise on Kant, German Idealism, Sartre and Freud, and for his philosophical interpretations and investigations in the subject of psychoanalytic theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnes Taubert</span> German philosopher and writer (1844–1877)

Agnes Marie Constanze von Hartmann, who wrote under the name A. Taubert, was a German philosopher and writer. She was known for her 1873 book Pessimism and Its Opponents and its contribution to the pessimism controversy in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pessimism controversy</span> Philosophical controversy in Germany

The pessimism controversy or pessimism dispute is an intellectual controversy that occurred in Germany, starting in the 1860s and ending around the beginning of the First World War. Philosophers who took part included Friedrich Nietzsche, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, neo-Kantians, Agnes Taubert, Olga Plümacher and critics of Hartmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olga Plümacher</span> Swiss-American philosopher and scholar

Olga Marie Pauline Plümacher was a Russian-born Swiss-American philosopher and scholar. She engaged with the philosophies of the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, and published three books which contributed to the pessimism controversy in Germany. Her book on the history of philosophical pessimism, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart was influential on Friedrich Nietzsche and Samuel Beckett.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romantic psychology</span>

Romantic psychology was an intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe, particularly in Germany. It was a response to the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and rationality, which Romantic psychologists believed neglected the importance of emotions, imagination, and intuition in human experience.

Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical school critical of existence.

References

  1. ↑ Konsmo, Erik (2010). The Pauline Metaphors of the Holy Spirit: The Intangible Spirit's Tangible Presence in the Life of the Christian. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN   9781433106910.
  2. ↑ Alan Unterman and Rivka Horowitz, "Ruah ha-Kodesh", Encyclopaedia Judaica , Keter.
  3. 1 2 3 Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève (1950), Le problème de l'inconscient et le cartésianisme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1985, introduction, § 5 : « La conscience et l'inconscient chez saint Augustin », pp. 24-33.
  4. ↑ Bynum; Browne; Porter (1981). The Macmillan Dictionary of the History of Science. London. p. 292.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ↑ Murray, C. J. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. New York, London: Taylor & Francis. pp. 1001–1002.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Ellenberger, H.F. (1970). Histoire de la découverte de l'inconscient, Paris, Fayard, 1994, chap. IV, « Les fondements de la psychiatrie dynamique : La philosophie de la nature et la philosophie romantique », pp. 232-241.
  7. 1 2 3 4 McGrath, S.J. (2012). The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious . London/New York: Routledge.
  8. ↑ McGrath, S.J. (2012). The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious . London/New York: Routledge, p. 46.
  9. 1 2 Mills, J. (2002). The Unconscious Abyss – Hegel's Anticipation of Psychoanalysis. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, p 3.
  10. ↑ Mills, J. (2002). The Unconscious Abyss – Hegel's Anticipation of Psychoanalysis. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, p 1.
  11. ↑ Mills, J. (2002). The Unconscious Abyss – Hegel's Anticipation of Psychoanalysis. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, p 4.
  12. 1 2 3 Beiser, F.C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 122-129 (chap. 7.2 : "The Optimistic Pessimism of Eduard von Hartmann: The Unconscious").
  13. ↑ Beiser, F.C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 136-142 (chap. 7.4 : "The Optimistic Pessimism of Eduard von Hartmann: First Principles").
  14. 1 2 Beiser, F.C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 129-136 (chap. 7.3 : "The Optimistic Pessimism of Eduard von Hartmann: A New Religion").
  15. 1 2 Beiser, F.C. (2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 156-161 (chap. 7.8 : "The Optimistic Pessimism of Eduard von Hartmann: Evolutionary Optimism").

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.