Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 03:44:01 -0700 (PDT)


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PART 2 

"Thus then, we have on the one side we have a number of passive [Miller: “inert”] regions of the skull, on the other a number of mental properties, the variety and character of which will depend on the condition of psychological investigation. The poorer the idea we have of mind, the easier the matter becomes in this respect; for, in part, the fewer become the mental properties, and in part, the more detached, fixed, and ossified, and consequently more akin to features of the bone and more comparable with them. But, while much is doubtless made easier by this miserable representation of the mind, there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides: there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation. When every faculty of the soul, every passion and (for this, too, must be considered here) the various shades of characters, which the more refined psychology and "knowledge of mankind" are accustomed to talk about, are each and all assigned their place on the skull, and their contour on the skull-bone, the arbitrariness and artificiality of this procedure are just as glaring as if the children of Israel, who had been likened to "the sand by the sea-shore for multitude", had each assigned and taken to himself his own symbolic grain of sand! (¶ 335)

[I am not quiet sure why he brings in “the children of Israel” specifically here, but I am naïve. The point seems straight forward (?). The sand of the beach represents the multitude symbolically and is not to be interpreted as literally each member of the multitude has its ‘symbolical’ but literal grain of sand as mirror to itself since that would wreck the whole symbolical representation to take it so literally. However, we are starting to see Hegel’s sense of humor and irony come into play. No one seems to take such literary ‘devices’ seriously in philosophers, other than maybe Plato. But humor, sarcasm, and irony are redolent in these passages from Hegel.

ALSO – Hegel says here, in reversal of his belittlement of “this miserable representation of the mind”, he also immediately brings in “there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides: there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation.” So he is reserving his ‘final’ judgment on the  mere ‘thing’, if ever he actually reaches finality,  of the skull for another time and place.] 
"The skull of a murderer has - not this organ or sign - but this 'bump'. But this murderer has in addition a lot of other properties, and other bumps too, and along with the bumps hollows as well. Bumps and hollows, there is room for selection! And again his murderous propensity can be referred to any bump or hollow, and this in turn to any mental quality; for the murderer is neither this abstraction of a murderer, nor does he merely have one protuberance and one depression. The observations offered on this point must sound just  
about as sensible as those of the dealer about the rain at the annual fair, and of the housewife at her washing time (see above pg. 349). Dealer and housewife might as well make the observation that it always rains when neighbor so-and-so passes by, or when they have roast pork. From the point of view of observation a given characteristic of mind {Miller: “particular determinateness of Spirit”] is just as indifferent to a given [Miller: “particular”] formation of the skull as rain is as rain is to circumstances as these. For of the two objects thus under observation, the one is a barren isolated entity (Fursichsein) [Miller: “dry, sapless being-for-itself”], an ossified property of mind, the other is an equally barren potentiality (Ansichsein) [Miller; “sapless being-in-itself]. Such an ossified entity, as they both are, is completely indifferent to everything else. It is just as much a matter of indifference to a high bump whether a murderer is in close proximity, as to the murderer whether flatness is near to him. (¶ 335)
" . . . [Phrenology] seems to be restricted to merely to the connection of a bump to a property in one and the same individual, in the sense that this individual possesses both. But phrenology . . . goes a long way beyond this restriction. It does not merely affirm that a cunning [Miller: “cheating”] fellow has a bump like a fist lying behind his ear, but also  
puts forward the view that, not the unfaithful wife herself, but the other party to this conjugal transaction, has a bump on the brow.

"In the same way, too, one may imagine the man living under the same roof with the murderer, or even his neighbor, or, going still further afield, imagine his fellow citizens, etc., with high bumps on some part of the skull, just as well as one may picture [Miller: “imagine”] to oneself the flying cow, that was first caressed by the crab, [that was] riding on a donkey, and afterwards, etc., etc. But if possibility of conceiving, then the object is a reality of the kind which is a mere thing and is, and should be, deprived of a significance of this sort, and can thus only have it for imaginative or figurative thinking. [Miller: “But if possibility is taken, not in the sense of possibility of imagining, but in the sense of inner possibility, or the possibility of the Notion, then the object is a reality of the kind which is a pure ‘thing’, and is, and should be, without a significance of this sort, and can therefore have it only in imagination or picture-making.”] (¶ 336)

[Hegel wrote an essay, for a newspaper I think, called, “Who Thinks Abstractly?” essentially stating that it is such everyday ‘They’-self type people as the dealer and housewife here, and an apple seller in the essay, that think abstractly all the time in empty generalities whereas the true philosopher is constantly anchoring their words  to concrete instance and experience. This is also the point Sartre makes in his book ANTI-SEMITE AND JEW, that an anti-Semite almost always in every case thinks about “the Jews”, never any specific Jew. Once someone asked ‘Louis Ferdinand Celine’ [Doctor Destouches, physician to the poor – for real], minister in Petain’s Vichy collaborationist government and world famous novelist, why he hated the Jews? He responded, “There was this person . . . but never mind.” That’s all! That’s absolutely fucking ALL! I understand that there is much, much more to Celine that being an anti-Semite, so this mindless declaration of a great passion of his that is so terribly empty is extremely strange and somewhat frightening. Hegel, whom Walter Kaufmann said was also an anti-Semite – I myself do not know the truth of the matter – and – ALWAYS – such truths are absolutely particular, individual, unique – once in discussion with Heinrich Heine at a window open to the clear night sky, in response to Heine’s commonplace observation of the beauty of the heavens, stated, “The stars are a leprosy of the sky.”]
end part 2



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PART 2 

"Thus then, we have on the one side we have a number of passive [Miller: “inert”] regions of the skull, on the other a number of mental properties, the variety and character of which will depend on the condition of psychological investigation. The poorer the idea we have of mind, the easier the matter becomes in this respect; for, in part, the fewer become the mental properties, and in part, the more detached, fixed, and ossified, and consequently more akin to features of the bone and more comparable with them. But, while much is doubtless made easier by this miserable representation of the mind, there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides: there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation. When every faculty of the soul, every passion and (for this, too, must be considered here) the various shades of characters, which the more refined psychology and "knowledge of mankind" are accustomed to talk about, are each and all assigned their place on the skull, and their contour on the skull-bone, the arbitrariness and artificiality of this procedure are just as glaring as if the children of Israel, who had been likened to "the sand by the sea-shore for multitude", had each assigned and taken to himself his own symbolic grain of sand! (¶ 335)

[I am not quiet sure why he brings in “the children of Israel” specifically here, but I am naïve. The point seems straight forward (?). The sand of the beach represents the multitude symbolically and is not to be interpreted as literally each member of the multitude has its ‘symbolical’ but literal grain of sand as mirror to itself since that would wreck the whole symbolical representation to take it so literally. However, we are starting to see Hegel’s sense of humor and irony come into play. No one seems to take such literary ‘devices’ seriously in philosophers, other than maybe Plato. But humor, sarcasm, and irony are redolent in these passages from Hegel.

ALSO – Hegel says here, in reversal of his belittlement of “this miserable representation of the mind”, he also immediately brings in “there still remains a very great deal to be found on both sides: there remains for observation to deal with the entire contingency of their relation.” So he is reserving his ‘final’ judgment on the  mere ‘thing’, if ever he actually reaches finality,  of the skull for another time and place.]