The Logic of the Unconscious

One of the more interesting aspects of Hegels developmental treatment of the soul is the way in which a mediated dynamic forms a new immediate. This process not only informs the basic structure of his Logic, which may further be attributed to the general principle of Aufhebung, but this process also provides the logical basis to account for the role of the unconscious. The process by which mediation collapses into a new immediate provides us with the logical model we can clearly glean from the souls transitions from nature, to feeling, then to actualized ego. And it is precisely this logical model that provides the internal consistency to its specific instantiation within unconscious spirit. As an architectonic process, spirit invigorates itself and breaths its own life unconsciously as a self-determining generative will that forms the edifice for all else to unfold. It is this internal consistency that provides us with a coherent account of the circular motion of the progressive drive toward higher manifestations of psychical development. Unconscious spirit builds upon its successive shapes and layers and constructs its own monolith. Hegel allows for many distinctions to be made between the different forms and levels of unconscious activity in the Anthropology, Phenomenology, and
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Psychology of Spirit, ranging from the standpoint of unawareness in general, to psychic space, to the telic functions of an unconscious ego with determinate being. It is the last that is the most significant in our understanding of the abyss, for not only does unconscious spirit reside within the nocturnal Ungrund, it remains the nucleus or dynamic agent that guides the dialectical functions of desire, thought, and reason, thus canceling opposition while simultaneously transcending yet preserving its immediate forms through sustained mediated syntheses. It is important to reemphasize that unconscious spirit is always present in any activity of spirit, whether we consider the phenomenology of consciousness or the psychological processes of intelligence, imagination, and reason, for the abyss is their presupposition. While we can examine or dissect spirit in its moments, we may not exclude the presence of the abyss in any treatment of spirit, for the Anthropology, Phenomenology, and Psychology are interconnected activities the unconscious soul forms the ground of all higher modalities. These interconnected structures and processes make the abyss a fluid and dynamic ground that is constantly transforming itself as it encounters new contingencies, therefore generating new desires and complexities of thought and valuation encountered in each moment. The logic of the dialectic forms the internal configurations of all shapes of spirit, which we may say is its proper essence, without which Spirit could not exist. The dialectic of spirit first appears unconsciously and is thus generated unconsciously from within the soul itself. It is this movement and the mechanics of the dialectic as process that provide the logical basis for an unconscious ground, one that is precipitated and superimposed onto all forms of mental activity. A logical analysis of the operations of unconscious activity may be found in Hegels general treatment of mediation within the soul where he traces the systematic application of his logic within its unfolding. Each opposition the soul encounters it mediates, which in turn generates a new immediate that it must further surpass and digest into its internality. By following this dialectical pattern, the soul steadily divides and separates itself out from its otherness when it encounters each new immediate shape, and then in turn reconstitutes itself through mediation until it achieves determinate being-for-self as a concrete ego set over against its mere natural embodiment which has become incorporated into its inner structure. Hegel explains:
It is therefore through the separation of the soul from its corporeity and the sublation of this separation, that this inwardness of soul and externality of corporeity emerge as a mediated unity. It is this unity, which relinquishes its being

brought forth as it becomes immediate, that we call the actuality of the soul. (EG 411, Zusatz)

No longer confined to the limits of bodily sensation, the soul as ego now attains cognizing capacities as its ideal nature, which it further expounds upon as it continues to confront new immediacy.
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Hegels use of mediation within the movements of the soul has been properly prepared in the Science of Logic as well as the Encyclopaedia Logic which prefaces the Anthropology. In the Logic, Being moves into Nothing, which then develops into Becoming, first as the passing over into nothing, second as the vanishing into being, and third as the ceasing-to-be or passing away of being and nothing into the coming-to-be of becoming. Becoming constitutes the mediated unity of the unseparatedness of being and nothing (SL, 105). Hegel shows how each mediation leads to a series of new immediates which passes over and ceases to be as that which has passed over in its coming to be until these mediations collapse into the determinate being of Daseinits new immediate. Being is a simple concept while becoming is a highly dynamic and complex process. Similarly, Dasein is a simple immediacy to begin with which gets increasingly more complicated as it transitions into essence and conceptual understanding. It is in this early shift from becoming to determinate being that you have a genuine sublation, albeit as a new immediate, spirit has a new beginning. We may see how Hegel uses this method as the basic framework for the unfolding of unconscious spirit. In the souls transition from undifferentiated unmediated being to differentiated mediated being, the soul must divide itself from what it is notits nothingnessas the coming-to-be of its determinate being, with the act of its initial separation already constituting its determinative power. As the soul awakens to find itself in its immediacy, it has already mediated its immediacy in that it finds itself through the act of division. In its division it passes over into nothing, its otherness, ceasing to be what it was as it comes to be what it already isa determinate being. The soul continues on this circular albeit progressive path conquering each opposition it encounters, elevating itself in the process. Each mediation leads to a new beginning, and the soul constantly finds itself confronting opposition and overcoming conflict as it is perennially engaged in the process of its own becoming. In the Logic, the whole process is what is important as reason is eventually able to understand its operations as pure self-consciousness, however, in its moments, each mediation begets a new starting point that continually reinstitutes new obstacles and dialectical problems that need to be mediated, hence eliminated. But thought always devolves or collapses back into the immediate. This dynamic is a fundamental structural constituent that offers systematic coherency to Hegels overall philosophy of spirit as well as its specific relevance to unconscious spirit and the soul. The methodological congruity of the logic allows for its systematic application to the unconscious and gives logical order to the mediative activity of the soul, otherwise Hegel runs the risk of potentially having a plethora of immediate concepts or relations that can be generated independently from the soul. It is not merely that concepts mediate each new immediate, but rather that mediation attempts to resolve earlier problems unto which new immediacy emerges. Mediation is therefore an activity performed from within the soul and not engineered by extrinsic forces that in turn make new experience possible.
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Hegels logical analysis of spirit perpetually engaged in the process of mediation begetting new immediacy is the same structure in the Phenomenology where consciousness first encounters sense-certainty before perception is achieved as a mediated unity, where reason is effected as the sublation of self-consciousness. In the natural progression of the soul, as with the phenomenology of consciousness,

unconscious spirit educates itself as it passes through its various stages, preserving its experiences within the nocturnal abyss of the mind. The soul brings its collective retained history to bear on each successive shape, and while practically barren at this early embryonic level, it nevertheless starts to amass its experiences, thus reorganizing its interior cupboards, and the abyss begins to fill. Hegel sees this general structural dynamic throughout all contexts of spirit, giving the movement of spirit its logical substance. What is happening in each mediatory shift of spirit is that in each new immediate encounter it faces, it brings forth within it unconsciously all of its past mediation that has already taken place, thus forming the backdrop onto which spirit interprets and resolves its new reality. Each immediacy has a new kind of claim that tests spirit s past shapes, which in turn must be put into practice in the novel experience it confronts. Spirit is faced with the tussle of having to take each new immediate and integrate it within its preexisting internal structure, thus incorporating each novelty within its subsisting mediatory faculties. This structural dynamic takes into account the ubiquitous nature of contingency, for spirit is not simply extending a part of itself as mediation that is already there, it has to incessantly vanquish each new experience it encounters in all of its freshly discovered and unacquainted future environments. The ongoing process of confrontation is the leviathan of spirits journey, with each encounter signaling a spewing forth from the well of what it has already incorporated from its past, thus defining the context for each new stage, which also defines what confronts spirit as unexpected reality. This model holds true for unconscious spirit that has to take each experience of novelty and assimilate it into its psycheits personality. And here we may see Hegel once again in the company of Freud: there is always an element of our history that informs our relation to novelty and influences the way in which reality impacts us, that is, how we respond to it; the dynamics of wish and defense, transference, and character formation are the collection of our unconscious histories. Hegels treatment of the soul accounts for an unconscious teleology that is free, what psychoanalysis would call psychic determinism, not as a materialist interpretation of mind naturally determined by mechanical causal laws, but rather one that freely takes into account the unexpected in its appropriation of its past experiences. The psychic determinism of spirit is therefore the freely determining power of the ego. There is a degree of choice unconscious spirit assumes as it becomes more mature, a teleology defined, not as a preordained goal, but one that finds novel ways of incorporating novel encounters into its self. In this sense there is no absolute fixed end point that has been predesigned or preprogrammed into spirit, for spirit defines its intentions and purposes in each moment. It is through the interaction of each mediated
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immediacy that choice is defined, whether existing in spirit or in nature, for as Hegel says, the true teleological methodand this is the highestconsists, therefore, in the method of regarding Nature as free in her own peculiar vital activity (PN 245, Zusatz). The soul, being part of nature, is free vital activity that becomes more convoluted and circuitous as it becomes increasingly more permeated by the spiritual. And as John Findlay points out, Hegels teleology of spirit as the self-conscious ideal is the ultimate meaning of everything, a meaning however that does not lie at the beginning of thought and being nor at a presupposed end, for the end is a transformed achievementthe logical and ontological Alpha of the cosmos, but only after it has first emerged as its logical and ontological Omega.37William DeVries also affirms that Spirit is what is self-determined, . . . a self-productive activity.38 Hegels teleology is all inclusive, equally stressing the beginning, the process, and the end product as spirits unactualized potential moves through a process of actualizing the potential to the emergent actuality itselfall one, equally necessary and reflective totality.

Through the interaction of mediated immediacy, teleology becomes defined in each moment, with each immediate being only a moment in the process of unconscious spirits development. As unconscious spirit passes into new stages, it takes on new forms as the self expands and incorporates larger aspects of its experience into its inner being, preparing itself for its next confrontation, guaranteeing there will always be a new stage. In Hegels discussion on determinate being in the Logic, the escalating shift from mediation to immediacy ultimately carries spirit into dialectical engagement with the finite and the infinite, a combat with the Fichtean ought in which there is always a beyond.39 Hegel cannot accept this mere Sollen of the ego as an endless endeavor, for spirit must get beyond the ought, a beyond that is itself finite; For in the ought, the limitation as limitation is equally implied (SL, 133). Yet this finite position is equally beyond or in opposition to that which is free from limitation, which marks the shift to the infinite which is the affirmative determination as negation of the finite. However, as Hegel points out, this shifting back and forth from finite to infinite determinations is merely alterations or moments of the one-sided infinite and is not self-sublated until it is viewed as a single processthis is the true or genuine infinite (SL, 137). Hegel shows that the progression to infinity is like the ought, the expression of a contradiction which is itself put forward as the final solution (SL, 150). But rather than get ensnared in infinite progresses of infinite regresses, thought moves back and examines the process. What we see is an infinite pattern: first, the finite moves over into the infinite, second, the infinite becomes finite, and third, the finite slides once again over into infinitude. However, it is this pattern itself that contains both finitude and infinity as contrary moments of each merging into the other. This pattern is genuinely infinite for it is a self-maintaining process; each alteration collapses into a new moment, which is its being-for-self in its mediacy. By standing back
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and seeing the recurrent pattern as a new dimension, spirit is enabled to effect the transition to a new immediate that is truly sublated. Despite the fact that spirit attains an appreciation of genuine infinity, this does not mean that the contingency of finitude vanishes; spirit is always faced with the relative novelty of each new shape. But it approaches each new opposition not as a static antinomy doomed to a stalemate, rather as a self-contained pattern; the infinite generates new finites as a fundamental repetition of itself a self-maintaining process that generates its own process. While unconscious spirit is not aware at this stage of its infinite fundamental pattern within its finitude, the procreative movement of the dialectic informs the relation between a mediated immediacy as an internally self-generating dynamically articulated process. Because consciousness is the self-sublation of unconscious activity, the logic of the dialectic of consciousness provides us with the prototype for understanding the underlying functions of the abyss.