{"id":903132,"date":"2026-09-17T15:49:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/?page_id=903132"},"modified":"2026-09-17T15:49:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:49:03","slug":"is-not-everything-in-reality-unconscious-irrational-drive","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/en\/is-not-everything-in-reality-unconscious-irrational-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Is not everything in reality unconscious, irrational drive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In brief:<\/strong> The drive is real, and Hegel does not deny it \u2013 in the Encyclopaedia<\/em> he gives it a section of its own and expressly calls the human being unfree in so far as he is sunk in his drives. He denies only that the drive is the whole. His reason for doing so is not edification but a contradiction within the drive itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The drive is the beginning, not the end<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the Encyclopaedia<\/em> the relevant section is headed \u201eThe Drives and Arbitrary Will\u201c (\u00a7\u00a7 473 ff.). The will there is at first \u201estill natural will, immediately identical with its determinacy, drive and inclination\u201c \u2013 and where it lays itself wholly into a single determination, that is called passion<\/em>. This is not a concession to the objection but its presupposition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Therefore the human being, in so far as he is sunk in his drives, appears as unfree.<\/p>\nEncyclopaedia (1830), \u00a7 473 Addition<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

2. The contradiction: the collision of the drives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The objection makes this stage absolute without seeing that it is not tenable in itself. Every drive is particular and wills only itself: hunger wills to eat, ambition wills standing, the drive of self-preservation wills rest. But a human being has many drives, and they contradict one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were a human being nothing but drive, he would be the battlefield of these forces \u2013 incapable of a unified deed, and precisely not the sovereign natural being the objection paints him as. The question which<\/em> drive is to be followed cannot be answered by any drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. What follows from the contradiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Two steps, both unspectacular and both observable. First the I appears as the power of choosing between the drives \u2013 that is arbitrary will<\/a>. Then it organises them: one works now in order to be able to eat and rest later. Hegel calls this the striving for happiness<\/em> (\u00a7 479). Already here the drive is no longer what determines, but a material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But happiness too remains arbitrary, because it gives no information about what is supposed to make one happy. Only where the will has a content that it can think is it free on Hegel\u2019s determination \u2013 see \u00a7 15<\/a> note and \u00a7 21<\/a> ff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Where this arrives in the philosophy of right<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ethical life<\/a> is not the suppression of the drives but their shape. The urge to have something as one\u2019s own has its legal form in property<\/a> (\u00a7 41<\/a> ff.). The need for standing and regard has its place in the estate and in the corporation<\/a>, where the individual has his \u201eright, merit, and honour\u201c (\u00a7 206<\/a>, \u00a7 253<\/a>). And \u00a7 124<\/a> expressly holds that subjective satisfaction is contained in the carrying out of a universal purpose \u2013 the notion that objective and subjective purposes exclude one another he calls \u201ean empty assertion of abstract understanding\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, then, Hegel is further from the ascetic than from the philosopher of drives. What he denies is not the force of the drive but its explanatory power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the objection keeps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That Hegel ranks the drives systematically below<\/em> thinking is a decision and not a proof. Whoever holds that thinking is itself only a particularly refined drive will find in him no refutation but a different arrangement of the same phenomena. The dispute has had a long history since, and Hegel does not have the last word in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources.<\/strong> Encyclopaedia (1830) \u00a7\u00a7 469\u2013482 (practical spirit), in particular \u00a7\u00a7 473\u2013478 (the drives and arbitrary will) and \u00a7\u00a7 479\u2013480 (happiness). \u2013 Groundlines \u00a7 11<\/a>\u2013\u00a7 21<\/a> (drive, arbitrary will, happiness, purification of the drives), \u00a7 124<\/a> and note, \u00a7 206<\/a>, \u00a7 253<\/a>. \u2013 As the classical counter-position Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung<\/em> (1819), and later Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud; none of them is Hegel\u2019s addressee, all three are heirs of the same question. \u2013 In the glossary: The Will<\/a>, Arbitrariness<\/a>, Ethical Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n