Introduction
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit offers many interpretive challenges. One such challenge is the dialectical structure of his rhetoric, resulting in a syntactical maze that often obscures the already demanding prose (both stylistically and conceptually). A consequence of this for the interpreter is the highly probable possibility of misinterpretation and intellectual defamation against the figure you are elucidating. That being said, my objective in this paper is to approach Hegel’s critique of the 19th-century pseudo-sciences physiognomy and phrenology in sub-section C of the “Observing Reason” section. To achieve this, I intend to examine aspects of the paragraphs most relevant to the critique of physiognomy (§314, §323) and phrenology (§340, §343), as well as probe the importance of these criticisms to the broader aims of the Reason chapter. To this end, I wish to inquire into why the critique of physiognomy and phrenology are necessary for the development of the shapes of Spirit. In addition to these concerns, I will attempt to parse out a positive philosophy of embodiment and corporeality, which arises as a result of the expulsion of physiognomy and phrenology. I intend to “rediscover,” as it were, an implicit theory of embodiment in the critical paragraphs identified above, implicating that there is a notion of embodiment that is only illuminated in the explicitly negative assessment of physiognomy and phrenology.
A Brief Understanding of Physiognomy and Phrenology
What I hope to make apparent with the utmost clarity, is that in Hegel’s appraisal of these pseudo-sciences is an explicit attack on the naively deterministic and overly biologized accounts of corporeality that were popularized in the infancy of contemporary naturalism and evolutionary theory.[1] However, before addressing Hegel’s criticisms, it seems beneficial to provide a brief note on physiognomy and phrenology, since each gained significant footing during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment period. Physiognomy—perhaps surprisingly—has a basis in antiquity, in a treatise contentiously attributed to Aristotle.[2] The basic insight of physiognomy is twofold: there is a correspondence between body and mind and this correspondence is observable on the surface of the body. In other words, the externalities present on the body are representations of inner character or personality. Physiognomical analyses typically focus on the face, its bone structure, the shape of the nose, the placement of the eyes, etc. It could be said that many of our common expressions like “thick-headed,” as well as the crass distinction of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” (which are comments on intelligence based upon inspection of outer appearance and facial features) are cultural colloquialisms rooted in physiognomical analysis.
While physiognomy was often associated with esoteric practices, phrenology, by contrast, had pretensions toward scientific legitimacy. Arising at the end of the 18th century out of certain circles of physicians, phrenologists sought to apprehend not only personality traits but to locate cognitive functioning and the organization of the brain via the contours and shape of the skull. As an example, where contemporary neurologists and neuroscientists may examine the role of the hippocampus in the production of memories, phrenologists lacked such sophistication; instead, they focused on bumps and depressions on the skull as deterministic of character traits, often done by merely feeling a patient’s head with one’s hands. With such historical quandaries clarified, we may now orient our analysis toward an understanding of Hegel’s critiques.
On the Critique of Physiognomy
In a dialectical fashion typical of the Phenomenology, Hegel begins sub-section C by summarizing the physiognomical view, not so much critiquing, but describing precisely what is at stake in this portion of the book: what is the relation between inner existence and outer expression? The dialectical shift toward critical assessment appears to occur in §314, as physiognomy is supposedly understood in more advanced terms than other archaic disciplines like astrology and palm reading. The predominant issue with the latter two, says Hegel, is that—despite their claims—they offer no real correlative analysis between inner and outer existence. In the case of astrology, for example, we see one externality (the formation of constellations or planetary alignment) correlated with another externality (birth), which is allegedly constitutive of internal character. Physiognomy, by contrast, purports to show the correlation between the essence of consciousness and its existent shape in the materiality of the body via the expressivity of the face. The intelligibility of the self becomes a law governed by what is displayed on the surface of the body.
In §323, however, we see the insufficiency of the physiognomical framework. Moreover, it might appear that, at first, Hegel is sympathetic to or even endorses the claims made by physiognomists, but this disregards the moments when Hegel is dismissive of physiognomy’s incohesive assertions. Here Hegel introduces a dichotomy between physiognomy and psychology (although the meaning of the “psychological” here is more akin to the transdisciplinary methodology in various philosophy of mind, cognitive and neuroscientific approaches than merely our current conception of the psychological domain). While physiognomists insist that the details of outer appearance are deterministic of the “utterances of Spirit,” the psychological regards outer expressivity as complementary to the animating action of Spirit. As an example, one could posit the expressivity of the face as pure contingency, either via plastic surgery or permanent disfiguration (burning, scarring, maiming, etc.). For the physiognomist, the character of the individual would necessarily be altered by any facial reconstruction. The psychologist, however, does not have to reduce their analysis to such inanity, since their claims function inside-out rather than outside-in. Setting aside the issue of empiricism for a moment, physiognomy fails at the level of consistency and its explanatory power is already less than that of the psychological.
On the Critique of Phrenology
Perhaps even more so than his comments on physiognomy, Hegel’s investigation into phrenology is rife with hyper-fixation, poor interpretation, and strong accusations. The attentive reader will not find an outright dismissal but a complicated rejection that develops by taking the implications of phrenology seriously (or rather the implications of its relative popularity), as well as the movement of Spirit in its modality of observation. Take, for instance, in §340 wherein Hegel contrasts an unintelligent rejection with the complexity of an impoverished science: “the worse the conception, the less sometimes does it occur to one wherein its badness specifically lies, and the harder it is to analyse it.”[3] In other words, the swift denial of phrenology without further reflection conceals the extent of its insidiousness. As will be seen later, the unfolding of Hegel’s system follows a specific and rigorous pattern, the point of which would be entirely lost on those who retained a solely dismissive attitude. Just as one could announce the phrenological perspective as “stunted,” we could say the same of unreflexive denial.
It seems that the most infamous “quip” from this section of the Phenomenology is the attribution to Hegel that “Spirit is a bone.”[4] One can only consider the extreme misinterpretation of this passage puzzling. Perhaps more contemporary scholarship needed to be produced (esp. Hyppolite in this regard) before our comprehension of the Phenomenology could be elevated beyond the foolish notion Hegel endorses such a statement. If anything, §343 serves as no greater refutation of phrenological thinking. For Hegel, it is the reduction of embodiment to the a-signifying cadaver, neither organ nor language, since they require animation. The cadaver, a mere thing, however, is analogous to the skeleton. It is, as he says, a “fixed being.” It lacks processual movement, multiplicitous consideration, and signification. To adopt a semiotic vocabulary, equating being to a bone is a floating signifier, whose referent can only emerge artificially. Theories of the skeletal system, such as that of physiognomy and phrenology, are only made coherent relationally, in the discourse of their own assertions.
In this sense, the observation of reason becomes a shape of Spirit but cannot be confused for the shape of Spirit. Insofar as the Phenomenology is taken in its totality (and equally as a work of totality), any insistence to “halt the process” is necessarily limited. Observing Reason, like Sense-Certainty, is a boundary that must be transgressed. As when Hegel states, “the intention here is not to state that Spirit, which is represented by a skull, is a Thing; there is not meant to be any materialism, as it is called, in this idea; rather Spirit must be something more and other than these bones,” he is implicating the failure of Reason to apprehend itself in objective reality.[5] Because the entirety of the system has not yet been revealed, there remains an unsophisticated tendency to condense Spirit into a being. Spirit’s relation to the material world, however, cannot be fitted into the narrative of Cartesian dualism, whereby Spirit is a form separate from the body or reductionism in which Spirit is simply another layer to materiality. Phrenology is, then, a dead end. The elusive sublimity of Spirit cannot be located in reducing its being to a bone.
Spirit’s Corporeality and Incorporeality
However, given all that has been established, what can be extracted concerning the embodiment and expression of Spirit in materiality? Of course, the gesture of hand-waving this concern as answered later in the book is simple, but it is not all that could be said. One could say that Hegel’s concerns with the physiognomists and phrenologists lie mostly within their ignorance of experiential revelation. The methodological theories of physiognomy and phrenology explicitly rely on an a-experiential account of corporeality, wherein the relation from inner self to outer expression is determinant in advance of animation and devoid of act. Unlike contemporary neuroscientific practices, which implicate the constitutive influence of biochemical and neurochemical processes on human action, both physiognomy and phrenology function within a static paradigm.[6] This is not to imply that Hegel would have an unproblematic relationship to cognitive and neuroscientific concepts; rather, to merely illustrate the adolescent hubris of those such as Franz Gall and his ilk.[7] To speculate about his relation to a modern science is most likely a fool’s task, but the compatibility of Hegelian concepts with issues of neuroplasticity and the brain’s intersubjectivity still remains outstanding. Perhaps we could confidently assert his incompatibility with reductionist or “eliminativist” perspectives, at least insofar as they fall prey to the same faults as the phrenologists in implicating Spirit’s localizable being.[8]
In §309, Hegel states, “Individuality has now become the object for observation, or the object to which observation now turns.”[9] As it is in the first paragraph of the section, I take it to be emblematic of Hegel’s aims. “Individuality,” in other words, is the expression of consciousness in the world. By the Reason chapter, in Spirit’s process of coming to know itself as Spirit, it is assured of its immediacy (its sensory data), and now looks inward and outward for its organic appearance vis-à-vis inorganic articulation. However, as we have seen in §343, the development of Spirit is not yet in a position to reflect on its own becoming, since it is prone to make an elementary mistake as seen in phrenology. The task, then, is to conceptualize corporeality and incorporeality in the aftermath of §343. The issue, however, is that both corporeality and incorporeality are in a dialectical paradox, whereby neither can sufficiently declare itself as the being of Spirit. If Spirit is incorporeal and its corporeality is its animation contingent on its incorporeality, then the Hegelian model transcends naïve materialism and pre-critical idealisms such as those of Berkeley and Leibniz. There exists no privileging of one over the other but a relationality of complementarity that allows one expression in an objective world. Without devolving into a Kantian thing-in-itself, Hegel presents a theory of mind in which Spirit is found in nature and expresses itself through nature but stays purely rational. While not found in the Phenomenology, the Hegelian principle of “the rational is real and the real is rational” exhibits the intertwined relationality of Spirit and its expression in the world.[10] The dialectic is not necessarily a multiplicity, since it subsumes opposition and contradiction into a singularity.
Our conclusion, then, must not be to conceptualize Spirit and its corporeality separately but to recognize how they form, in harmony, a totality. Physiognomy and phrenology reduce this relationality to a localizability; however, the embodiment of Spirit is not a reduction. One’s embodiment is an extension, and its corporeality is constituted in action. Unlike physiognomy, our personality is not determined by bone structure but by our acts in the world. Unlike phrenology, our being is not found in depressions on the skull but through our animation in the world. In this sense, for such a notion of embodiment and corporeality to arise, Hegel first had to account for the claims of static and fixed theories. Now that these have been identified as insufficient, offering inadequate explanations, Spirit is free to sublate Reason toward its process of Absolute Knowing.
[1] While beyond the confines of this exercise, the debate in Hegelian scholarship on teleological and non-teleological readings of his philosophy of history could greatly complicate this picture. The following cannot assess such complications and proceeds on the presumption of neither.
[2] See Leunissen’s “Signs of Physiognomy in Aristotle” for an extended discussion on the possible connection to Aristotelianism.
[3] G.F.W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press, 1977), 206.
[4] As an aside, I do wonder what, if any, parallels could be drawn to Luke 24: 36-40. After the crucifixion of Christ, they find the tomb empty, and when the risen Savior approaches them, they are frightened. He assures them, however, that spirit hath not flesh nor bones, implicating His existence beyond materiality. Since this analysis is decidedly not theological, these concerns will have to be addressed elsewhere. Nonetheless, it may complicate conceptualizing Hegel’s relation to faith, heresy, and phrenology.
[5] G.F.W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press, 1977), 208.
[6] See Patricia Churchland’s “Modulating Social Behavior with Oxytocin” (DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.12.003) for a modern approach to the connection between the brains, chemicals, and bodily action.
[7] Modern Hegelians have, however, developed interpretations and integrations between neuroscience and Hegel’s system. For instance, see Catherine Malabou’s The Future of Hegel for one attempt at a synthesis.
[8] While it is not clear to me how many working neuroscientists take on either moniker, the post-Sellarian project of eliminative materialism nonetheless takes up neuroscience for its validity. To this end, we may want to remember Hegel’s insistence in §343 that this need not be a materialism. Of course, the projection of this onto current trends in materialism (physicalism) is never a perfect analog, but it does illustrate the possible apprehensive approach he may take toward it.
[9] G.F.W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press, 1977), 185.
[10] As noted, the quip is not found in the Phenomenology of Spirit; rather, it is mentioned in the Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopedia. This is simply speculation, but it seems the phrase may be a reference to Schelling’s formulation of “the real” and “the ideal.”