Volume 54, Issue 1/2, 2023
Discussion of Hegel¡¯s Anthropology: Life, Psyche, and Second Nature, by Allegra De Laurentiis
Kevin Thompson
Pages 1-13
https://doi.org/10.5840/owl202482745
Hegel on the Anthropological Determination of the Soul
Hylomorphism, the Universal Immateriality of Nature, and Self-Feeling
This essay explores two key elements in Allegra de Laurentiis¡¯s book Hegel¡¯s Anthropology: Life, Psyche, and Second Nature. The first is Hegel¡¯s pivotal claim that the most basic determination of the natural soul is not as a thing, which is the way it has traditionally been understood, but as the ¡°universal immateriality of nature.¡± The second element is the thesis that what identifies the higher determination of the feeling soul is the strange concept of ¡°self-feeling¡± (Selbstgef¨¹hl). Prof. de Laurentiis offers a philosophically rigorous and philologically rich reading of both these important moments in Hegel¡¯s anthropological account of the soul. Nonetheless, I argue that employing a distinctly hylomorphic reading of Hegel¡¯s Anthropology, as Prof. de Laurentiis proposes, despite its many merits, ultimately distracts from and prevents an account that exposes and articulates the most radical and significant aspects of Hegel¡¯s theory.