Hegel ties a people’s character to local spirits expressed in occupation and body.

Evidence

The mutual fashioning of soul and body has led to the formation of man as the sensuous medium of spirit, and this same process illuminates the movement of substance’s determination of itself. It is this latter movement which Hegel conceives of as spiritual incorporation or embodiment. In the Aesthetics, he says that spirit’s various moments, the moments in its own development, are equal to ‘bodily forms (Leiblichkeit) of spiritual individuality’. Hence, the process of substance in its self-determination finds itself translated into the sensuous through this ‘psychosomatic hermeneutic’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 595 (#expands, via linked claim)

What Moses sought was to present the servile spirit with its own representation, that of terror: “He brought before the slavish spirit the image of itself, namely, the terror of physical force.” The English translator explains that with the use of the word “orientally,” the image evoked by Hegel “was not a kindly one, like those of Greece, but a nonnatural one, a threat of terror, like those to which people under oriental despotisms were accustomed.” The French editor concurs and writes that “one finds here the prefiguration of the ‘Lordship and Bondage’ dialectic.” Writing in the same years, Hegel further provides an explanation of the “Oriental threat” alluded to in “The Spirit of Christianity.” What requires an explanation is that “two determinations” are “apparently contradictory,” but nonetheless “intimately linked” in the “Oriental character,” “the thirst for absolute domination” and “the willing subjection to any enslavement.” In the Orient, then, “domination, power and violence, is the essence of social relations.” Hegel continues: “Such a fixed, determined character does not tolerate anything outside itself but what it dominates and what dominates it.” Hence, it is always the case that “one dominates, and the other is dominated.” What accounts or more precisely enables this state of affairs is, of course, “the law which dominates all.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 635 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hegel treats embodiment as the process whereby spirit’s moments become bodily forms. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 595; Hegel saw each people’s spirit as shaping its religion, constitution, and philosophy.; Hegel located the essence of Oriental social relations in absolute domination — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 635

Broader Connections

• Hegel treats embodiment as the process whereby spirit’s moments become bodily forms. #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 595
• Hegel saw each people’s spirit as shaping its religion, constitution, and philosophy. #expands (0.80)
• Hegel located the essence of Oriental social relations in absolute domination #expands (0.75) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 635