Sensation: Mind's Material

If the question of sensation or perception arises in a discussion of Hegel, the focus of the discussion is likely to be the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. Such a focus is, however, a mistake. The examination of sense certainty and perception in the Phenomenology bears on the question of the proper categories to be applied within experience, but there is no discussion there of the actual nature of sensation or perception as states of organic and spiritual beings within a natural world. To understand what Hegel thinks sensation and perception themselves are we must turn to his Anthropology and Psychology. Hegel's theory of sensibility tries to do justice to the insights of such predecessors as Aristotle, Hume, and Kant while also providing a framework within which the empirical research of the day can be comprehended systematically. His theory does not answer all the desiderata imposed on philosophical theories of perception by analytic philosophers today, such as detailing a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to distinguish veridical from nonveridical per-