Nous and Geist
self-identity and methodological solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel
pp. 191-210
in: Panayiota Vassilopoulou, Stephen L. Clark (eds), Late antique epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
This study offers a parallel discussion of Plotinus' and Hegel's conceptions of Nous and Geist. Its overall aim is to show how these conceptions enable Plotinus and Hegel to construct a notion of self-identity in which the individual self or mind can be ultimately identified with a supra-personal identity or mind. To attain this goal, Plotinus and Hegel employ the presupposition of methodological solipsism not as a strategy that restricts the validity of certain metaphysical claims within a first-person standpoint, but as a strategy that makes possible the expansion of the first-person perspective into a collective one that includes other minds. Their aim is to overcome the dualistic and solipsistic tendencies that they saw in Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant.
