L’opera d’arte dell’anima

Corpo, tecnica e medialità nell’Antropologia di Hegel

Abstract

In the section of the Encyclopedia dedicated to Anthropology Hegel endorses a technological and mediological conception of body. In order to grant to the Soul access to the external world, body has to be turned into an instrument. Through repeated exercise it becomes a middle term between the Soul and the World, and only thanks to its medial nature is it possible for consciousness to awaken. This peculiar relationship between inner Self and body plays a pivotal role for the whole development of Spirit: the technological approach to body becomes the model for any further contact with the external world. Thus, the Anthropology lays the foundation of Hegel’s whole conception of finite Spirit as a medial dimension: man is a self–productive being whose nature is always a second nature, a form of immediacy that is nevertheless produced (mediated) by his own activity. According to this view body is a proto–medium, and Hegel’s account of technology can be interpreted as a theory of the extended body (in the Anthropology) as well as a theory of extended mind (in the Philosophy of Objective Spirit).