Hegel’s Conception of Psychology

Abstract

The present paper seeks to understand Hegel’s notion of a philosophical or ‘scientific’ psychology, these terms being synonymous for him. First the paper notes Hegelian criticisms of various approaches to psychology, whose diverse failings, Hegel often says, derive from a proceeding through “external reflection,” or the “reflective understanding.”¹ External reflection, according to Hegel, is a philosophizing from the standpoint ‘outside’ the Sache selbst, and we may say that in Hegel’s view, external reflection constitutes the main obstacle toward a philosophical psychology. With regard to such a psychology, external reflection takes on an especially problematic form in post-Cartesian philosophy as a philosophizing from the subjective consciousness. For when such a philosophizing turns to consciousness itself, should not its procedure be eo ipso immanent to the Sache selbst? In fact, says Hegel, it is not; rather its procedure in dealing with the soul or mind or consciousness is but a special form of external reflection. It is this post-Cartesian form of external reflection, particularly in its most challenging embodiment in the Kantian Critical philosophy, that Hegel’s approach is designed to overcome. The attempt to elucidate the nature of the problem here forms the second part of our paper.