Subjetividade animal e o sistema nervoso na Filosofia da Natureza de Hegel

Abstract

Hegel’s idealism is often thought to entail, or at least include, a rejection of the idea that our natural existence could be determinative or our spiritual or minded existence. But while for Hegel our mindedness must be distinguished from our stricty natural being, we can nonetheless know nature, including our natural selves, as the very basis and source of that mindedness. In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s discussion of nervous system physiology in higher-order animals describes such animals as manifesting a proto-self-consciousness through their nervous system activity and its role in their overall bodily funcioning. While this proto-selfconsciousness does not on its own underwrite the possibility of genuine mindedness in humans, it constitutes an important part of Hegel’s larger argument for the emergence of non-natural mindedness out of nature, and of his ultimate argument for the reconciliation of nature and Geist.