Hegel’s representation is a form-giving act, not figurative imaging
Evidence
Yet what reasons can we give for the claim that it is impossible to identify representation as Hegel understands that with the simple idea of ‘figurative thought’? First of all because the realm of the imaginary, whether symbolic or mythical, only constitutes for Hegel one moment of representation, representation at its most indeterminate, immediate and natural. Hence it is illegitimate – at the risk of remaining stuck in the operations of the ‘religion of art’ – to think that God’s originary distancing, by virtue of which the religious consciousness constitutes itself as representational, is a function of consciousness’s rendering the divine in images. Furthermore, representation, for Hegel, is not a form of consciousness. The exposition of representational processes in the Encyclopedia doesn’t belong to the Phenomenology of Spirit but to Psychology. That is to say that representation is not a faculty, but a psychological act defined as the combined work of interiorization and exteriorization. In Hegel, representation is not a figurative process but an act whereby the speculative content is given form. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 820
Yet what reasons can we give for the claim that it is impossible to identify representation as Hegel understands that with the simple idea of ‘figurative thought’? First of all because the realm of the imaginary, whether symbolic or mythical, only constitutes for Hegel one moment of representation, representation at its most indeterminate, immediate and natural. Hence it is illegitimate – at the risk of remaining stuck in the operations of the ‘religion of art’ – to think that God’s originary distancing, by virtue of which the religious consciousness constitutes itself as representational, is a function of consciousness’s rendering the divine in images. Furthermore, representation, for Hegel, is not a form of consciousness. The exposition of representational processes in the Encyclopedia doesn’t belong to the Phenomenology of Spirit but to Psychology. That is to say that representation is not a faculty, but a psychological act defined as the combined work of interiorization and exteriorization. In Hegel, representation is not a figurative process but an act whereby the speculative content is given form. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 820
Categorization
- DEFINE: Corrects a common misreading by carefully separating Vorstellung-as-form-giving from figuration.
- XREF: Sharpens the plasticity frame this reader is applying to enemy-construction; representation as active schema-building rather than passive mirroring. — connects to: Scholars have evaded the origin of representation’s form-giving role in Hegel’s religion — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 817
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 820