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I agree with Stewart that Hegel and Kierkegaard collide in many places but that the differences are not a simple matter of thesis versus antithesis.

I brought up Kierkegaard since he emphasized the centrality of the Single Individual. In the passage I quoted by Hegel, I wonder if the statement can be be seen as a shared point of departure, a moment of agreement before struggling with each other.

Stewart depicts faith as something like the Romantic's criticism of reason as insufficient. Kierkegaard is better understood as a follower of Pascal who recognized that Christianity was absurd in a fundamental way but who also argued that it is a better model of the human condition than others.

So, in addition to the specific arguments made in regards to what must exist, there has been introduced a psychological register where some models fit better than others. The "long path" reference in Hegel's text is an acknowledgment that experience is not a simple thing given to anybody.

I brought up Kierkegaard since he emphasized the centrality of the Single Individual. In the passage I quoted by Hegel, I wonder if the statement can be be seen as a shared point of departure, a moment of agreement before struggling with each other. — Valentinus

Thanks for explanation and point to ponder on our path. It's good to linger a while.

So, in addition to the specific arguments made in regards to what must exist, there has been introduced a psychological register where some models fit better than others. The "long path" reference in Hegel's text is an acknowledgment that experience is not a simple thing given to anybody. — Valentinus

The idea of the 'path', I think was first introduced in para 12. I look back at the discussion about the prize at the end of a 'winding path' being won through struggle and effort. The prize of the 'beginning of a new spirit' being the final outcome. It seems clearer now. As is 'this path to science is itself already science'.

I think it perfectly understandable that it is life's journey itself, with all its experiences, that can help move us. In different ways at different times. There is no single appropriate fit or model.
I don't know where the image of the spiral staircase to the Absolute is referenced. Anyone ?
I don't think it helpful. Again, it smacks of religiosity. A glorious path ascending to Perfection.

This idea of reaching, or grasping at, a perfect ideal might be fine for a few philosophers.
It might be the case that philosophy is an essential part of the whole but it isn't everything.
Our knowledge/understanding of the human condition is gained via many sources.
Not so much a ghost but a host of many coloured disciplines.
It is this almost religious sense of the importance of Western, European or German philosophy in our historical development or culture that I take exception to. So very narrow...and it is not available to all, even if it were so desired.

But perhaps I have it all wrong...

It is this almost religious sense of the importance of Western, European or German philosophy in our historical development or culture that I take exception to. So very narrow...and it is not available to all, even if it were so desired. — Amity

Your statement has been articulated in many ways. Hegel, himself, said many things that compared his "culture" in a better light than others.

But, as a matter of intellectual inheritance, his work paved the way for you to express your objection.

Irony abounds.

Your statement has been articulated in many ways. Hegel, himself, said many things that compared his "culture" in a better light than others. — Valentinus

Yes. Such criticism ( and more ) is supported by others more articulate than whot I am.
For example, 'In the Spirt of Hegel' by Robert Solomon.
https://www.scribd.com/document/321486406/SOLOMON-Robert-In-the-Spirit-of-Hegel-pdf

Also, Bertrand Russell offers a critical analysis of Hegel in his 'History of Western Philosophy'.
https://archive.org/details/RUSSELLHEGEL1946

This is counterbalanced by John Cottingham's 'Western Philosophy - an Anthology'.
And so it goes.

But, as a matter of intellectual inheritance, his work paved the way for you to express your objection. — Valentinus

'Intellectual inheritance' - sounds good but what does it mean ?
If it is about the history of philosophy then I agree Hegel played his part.
However, it is a strong claim to make that his work paved the way for me to express my objection.
This is not about intellectual inheritance but intellectual or cognitive development.
I don't need to read a 'Who's Who' in Western Philosophy to reach an understanding of individual progress to self-realisation or wellbeingness, holistically.

Irony abounds. — Valentinus

Yes it does. Sarcasm too. Especially when there are difficulties in communicating ideas from one brain to another in writing. And through the lens of bias.

The "long path" reference in Hegel's text is an acknowledgment that experience is not a simple thing given to anybody. — Valentinus

What kind of experience are you referring to ?

Is it science in Hegel's sense of the term, that is, knowledge of the whole?
— Fooloso4

I don't know. I doubt it is exactly Hegel's approach. Goethe wasn't such a brilliant, mad philosopher.
It would be interesting to see how they compare. — Amity

Exchange of letters between Hegel and Goethe. Did Hegel appropriate Goethe's idea ?
https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/on-hegel.htm
No 43 Goethe, Hegel and Marx
( 19 page downloadable pdf )

Yes it does. Sarcasm too. Especially when there are difficulties in communicating ideas from one brain to another in writing. And through the lens of bias. — Amity

I meant no offense. The irony applies to my own efforts to criticize Hegel.

I had a teacher who once asked me how I could separate using tools made by others from one's I forged myself. I used to think the question was about authenticity versus imitation. An Hegelian point of view says to me that the new is both.

If I use something made before for my purposes, that is a new "determination." If I organize elements in a way that gets other people to start talking in a new way, that too, is a kind of new "determination."

The "Concept" beyond the boundaries of an individual are developed by both kinds of change. It introduces a Z axis where previously there was only X and Y.

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I had a teacher who once asked me how I could separate using tools made by others from one's I forged myself. I used to think the question was about authenticity versus imitation. An Hegelian point of view says to me that the new is both.

If I use something made before for my purposes, that is a new "determination." If I organize elements in a way that gets other people to start talking in a new way, that too, is a kind of new "determination."

The "Concept" beyond the boundaries of an individual are developed by both kinds of change. It introduces a Z axis where previously there was only X and Y. — Valentinus

Interesting story. If I understand correctly, then I agree.
The tools you forged yourself could be a direct copy, an imitation of the original product - X.

However, I think there would be differences even if same materials were used. Humans are not robots who churn out identikits.
If handmade then differences in skills, experience and ability would result in something unique to you; even if not original. That reproduction would be new but not significantly different - Y.

If you then use some imagination ( ? a movement of spirit - inspiration ) to create or invent a new product by tweaking the old and adding a new element, then - Z.
You are a design genius.

Same with concepts.
I am not sure what you mean by 'beyond the boundaries of the individual'.
As individuals, don't we in the main have an inherent drive - an inner necessity- to progress either to benefit self or with others.
Are you talking about the consciousness which moves us to a heightened awareness of the possible ?

26:

Pure self-knowing in absolute otherness, this ether as such, is the very ground and soil of science, or, knowing in its universality.

All knowing takes place in unconditioned otherness, that is, in what is other than self. As its ground and soil, the otherness to self cannot be separate from self-knowing. Pure self-knowing is purity from otherness.

The beginning of philosophy presupposes or demands that consciousness is situated in this element.

Both Plato and Aristotle say that philosophy begins in wonder (‘thaumazein’) (Theaetetus 155c-d; Metaphysics 982b). There can be no wonder without a sense of the otherness of what engenders wonder. It is what lies beyond or outside of what can be understood or taken within consciousness, what remains a mystery.

However, this element itself has its culmination and its transparency only through the movement of its coming-to-be. It is pure spirituality, or, the universal in the mode of simple immediacy. It is pure spirituality, or, the universal in the mode of simple immediacy.

The coming to be of otherness is not the coming to be of the object in and for itself but of its coming to be for us, that is, as an object of consciousness. It is pure spirituality in that it is for us in its immediacy, in its otherness, its mystery, understood universally rather than as a particular object of consciousness.

Because it is the immediacy of spirit, because it is the substance of spirit, it is transfigured essentiality, reflection that is itself simple, or, is immediacy; it is being that is a reflective turn into itself.

The substance of spirit is the union of consciousness and what is for consciousness. Otherness is transfigured from what is other than or independent of consciousness to what is for consciousness in its immediacy. Being becomes conscious of itself.

For its part, science requires that self-consciousness shall have elevated itself into this ether in order to be able to live with science and to live in science, and, for that matter, to be able to live at all.

Science requires that self-consciousness be situated in the ether of absolute otherness. It must become other in and for itself, its own object.

Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science provide him at least with the ladder to reach this standpoint. The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being.

The individual in his conscious awareness is not aware of his awareness but of what is given immediately in awareness. His absolute self-sufficiency, his being unconditioned, his immediate self-certainty of being, requires for its self-sufficiency self-knowledge. He must be both knower and known.

However much the standpoint of consciousness, which is to say, the standpoint of knowing objective things to be opposed to itself and knowing itself to be opposed to them, counts as the other to science – the other, in which consciousness is at one with itself, counts instead as the loss of spirit – still, in comparison, the element of science possesses for consciousness an other-worldly remoteness in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself.

The standpoint of consciousness is its awareness of things as other than itself. This standpoint, the opposition of subject and object, is the other of science. Science is self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness with itself, is the loss of spirit because it is the loss of consciousness of the world.

Each of these two parts seems to the other to be an inversion of the truth.

The one part is consciousness as knowing objective things, the other consciousness knowing itself. Each taken by itself is an inversion of the truth because each by itself leads away from the truth, that is, away from the concept of the whole in which both parts are united, identity in difference.

For the natural consciousness to entrust itself immediately to science would be to make an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk upside down all of a sudden. The compulsion to accept this unaccustomed attitude and to transport oneself in that way would be, so it would seem, a violence imposed on it with neither any advance preparation nor with any necessity.

The natural consciousness is consciousness of objects and is thus not sufficient to move immediately to science. It is one sided, undeveloped, not yet prepared to be knowledge of the whole, that is, of the identity in difference between subject and substance, knower and known.

Science may be in its own self what it will, but in its relationship to immediate self-consciousness, it presents itself as an inversion of the latter, or, because immediate self-consciousness is the principle of actuality, by immediate self-consciousness existing for itself outside of science, science takes the form of non-actuality.

Self-consciousness is immediacy. Science is mediated, the conception of or thinking about rather than the immediacy of self-consciousness.

Accordingly, science has to unite that element with itself or instead to show both that such an element belongs to itself and how it belongs to it. Lacking actuality, science is the in-itself, the purpose, which at the start is still something inner, at first not as spirit but only as spiritual substance. It has to express itself and become for itself, and this means nothing else than that it has to posit self-consciousness as being at one with itself.

Science is the in-itself but must become for itself, that is, it must move from self-consciousness as being something inner, by which substance is other or object to self-consciousness, to self-consciousness being for itself, the whole as the union of substance and subject. Here spirit is no longer substance, that is, object of consciousness but the actualization of spirit, as in itself and for itself; not something that is mine or particular, or even as universal, but as absolute, the identity of difference, one with itself.

Excerpt, para 26:

Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science provide him at least with the ladder to reach this standpoint. The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being — Hegel/Pinkard

Response:

The individual in his conscious awareness is not aware of his awareness but of what is given immediately in awareness. His absolute self-sufficiency, his being unconditioned, his immediate self-certainty of being, requires for its self-sufficiency self-knowledge. He must be both knower and known. — Fooloso4

Discussion:
That makes sense to me.
In that the claim is that it is philosophy alone which is supposed to lead to increased understanding of self via others.
If this is the case, then it should provide the means, the ladder - the structure of reason - to facilitate this process. The path to knowledge or science.
The starting point is the individual, the subject who is aware of his limitations and is curious to know more about the awesome world out there. As you point out:

Both Plato and Aristotle say that philosophy begins in wonder (‘thaumazein’) (Theaetetus 155c-d; Metaphysics 982b). There can be no wonder without a sense of the otherness of what engenders wonder. It is what lies beyond or outside of what can be understood or taken within consciousness, what remains a mystery. — Fooloso4

The image of the ladder reminds me of the Wittgenstein thread you participated in.
In that case, wasn't the ladder kicked away ? Do you think that it might be a different kind of ladder ?
I can't remember the details.

Anyway, as always, Fooloso4, thanks for the in--depth analysis, requiring time and effort.
Most helpful.

In that the claim is that it is philosophy alone which is supposed to lead to increased understanding of self via others. — Amity

Standard disclaimer: in trying to work out what Hegel says I am forced to frequently revise what I think he is saying. What follows is no exception.

I think that absolute otherness as discussed here does not refer to others but to pure self-knowing, that is, knowing that has itself as its object, which is to say, that treats itself as other. What is absolute is not relative to or conditioned by anything else. The otherness of objects in the world as well as other people are other relative to me, and so, cannot be absolute otherness. The otherness of myself is not relative to anything other than myself. But absolute otherness cannot be the otherness of myself to myself either, because that would make it dependent on me. Knowing in its universality means what is common to all knowing, the unification of subject and object, identity in difference. All knowledge is self-knowledge. Absolute otherness must be the otherness of the whole within itself as the condition for the whole's self-knowledge. The circle of self-knowledge plays out on the levels of the individual, the culture, and the whole. The first two are limited wholes, the last the whole of wholes.

If this is the case, then it should provide the means, the ladder - the structure of reason - to facilitate this process. The path to knowledge or science. — Amity

Others do come into play but here we are led to the same question as in the ascent from Plato's cave. If one is led up and out, then who led out those who can lead us out? Is there first one individual who did not require others? In line with the metaphor of the ladder, the rungs may have been put in place by the work of those who came before, but each new step requires going further than what culture and education provided. There must still be someone whose step goes beyond what was already provided. But now with Hegel all the rungs are in place.

Hegel goes on to claim that the individual has immediate self-certainty, an unconditioned being. I think that what he is getting at here is the certainly of our being. Descartes' self-certainty was his Archimedean point, from which he could move the Earth. Perhaps Hegel is suggesting that Descartes science was incomplete because he failed to otherness into account.

... curious to know more ... — Amity

I think it is more than curiosity. It is desire, eros, love. And here again we are reminded of Hegel's claim that the title of love of knowing can be set aside and replaced by actual knowing (5).

The image of the ladder reminds me of the Wittgenstein thread you participated in.
In that case, wasn't the ladder kicked away ? Do you think that it might be a different kind of ladder ?
I can't remember the details. — Amity

There are some similarities but the image of the ladder is an old one. There is, for example, Jacob's ladder (Genesis 28:10-17). Hegel's ladder is to reach the standpoint of absolute otherness, the ground and soil of science. Wittgenstein's ladder is leads to what is beyond the limits of science.

I think you are right about the importance of others for self-consciousness, but what I am still struggling with the concept of absolute otherness. It seems to be a contradiction in terms. What is other is so relative to something, but if relative then it is not absolute.

[Added: I might put this question aside for now.]

[Added: I might put this question aside for now.] — Fooloso4

Yes, you and me both.
Ciao :cool:

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With these paragraphs, Hegel draws in sharp relief the comparison of individual experience to what makes that possible. This "universal self" is central to what is being presented but is very hard for me to understand.

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Then the difference between Kant and Hegel is about how this stuff is happening in time or not.
Kant describes time as a component of individual experience.
If this "Spirit" is the shape of history, then Kant is wrong.

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Kant's "knowledge," then, is based in perception. Hegel places it in reason; he seems to take perception uncritically and for granted. That is, there is what we know and how we know it - which for Hegel seems to happen after perception, while for Kant it's all in one batter, baked together. — tim wood

Good observation.
I am not sure how to read that against the background of negation and exclusion being the default position and something other than that being an advance or at least something different.

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Well, the logic of both the stuff in time combined with the idea of a dialectic as producing results through a process suggests that "exclusion" is a very important activity in what Hegel has in mind.
The inclusion part only gets recognition after the conflict is over.

Or put another way, there is factor in play that Kant was not able to locate. And Hegel tried to.

I am not sure how to read that against the background of negation and exclusion being the default position — Valentinus

the logic of both the stuff in time combined with the idea of a dialectic as producing results through a process suggests that "exclusion" is a very important activity in what Hegel has in mind. — Valentinus

The inclusion part only gets recognition after the conflict is over. — Valentinus

I find this excerpt from para 28 helpful:

The individual whose substance is spirit standing at the higher level runs through these past forms in the way that a person who takes up a higher science goes through those preparatory studies which he has long ago internalized in order to make their content current before him; he calls them to mind without having his interest linger upon them. In that way, each individual spirit also runs through the culturally formative stages of the universal spirit, but it runs through them as shapes which spirit has already laid aside, as stages on a path that has been worked out and leveled out in the same way that we see fragments of knowing, which in earlier ages occupied men of mature minds, now sink to the level of exercises, and even to that of games for children. — Hegel/Pinkard

So, knowledge for the particular individual is internalised as he progresses through life and learning via study and experience. All of this happens within a universal culture.
We proceed by laying aside ( a kind of exclusion ) previous baby steps in learning, but they are necessarily incorporated into our whole (inclusion).
The spirit grows. Rung by rung.

Rockmore has this to say:

Hegel now relates human beings to the process of knowledge. The individual, who participates in the knowing process, does so from both individual and universal perspectives. What was earlier central, as the current view of knowledge, afterward subsists as a mere trace (Spur), like Jacques Derrida's own view of the trace (la trace ).18 We cannot separate prior from present views of knowledge. The process of education consists in making our own what was already known by our predecessors, "a past existence" now described as "the already acquired property of universal Spirit which constitutes the substance of the individual" (§28, 16). Human history records the immense efforts of human beings over a period of many centuries to know the world and themselves through the elaboration of a satisfactory view of knowledge. "The goal is Spirit's insight into what knowing is" (§29 , 17).

In the course of human history, mere existence is transformed into a series of shapes. To transform experience into knowledge, we must consider the movement of shapes preserved in memory, which must be represented and with which we must become acquainted. Through representation, we arrive at what is familiar to us, but which, to become scientific knowledge, requires the more refined cognitive "activity of the universal self, the concern of thinking" (§30, 18).  — Tom Rockmore

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft7d5nb4r8;brand=ucpress

With these paragraphs, Hegel draws in sharp relief the comparison of individual experience to what makes that possible. — Valentinus

How so ?

This "universal self" is central to what is being presented but is very hard for me to understand. — Valentinus

I don't fully understand it either. I think I remember discussing it earlier - but it never quite sinks even with all the repetition. It is linked to mediation and sublation.
We need others to become more. To connect. To be global. Universal.
We keep our sense of self as we progress and are lifted up into a higher Self.
Or something along these lines...

I don't know if this will help.
From an Outline of Hegel's Phenomenology:

Universality of Self-Consciousness.

38. The universal self-consciousness is the intuition of itself, not as a special existence distinct from others, but an intuition of the self-existent universal self. Thus it recognises itself and the other self-consciousness in itself, and is in turn recognised by them.

39. Self-consciousness is, according to this its essential universality, only real in so far as it knows its echo (and reflection) in another (I know that another knows me as itself), and as pure spiritual universality (belonging to the family, the native land, &c.) knows itself as essential self. (This self-consciousness is the basis of all virtues, of love, honour, friendship, bravery, all self-sacrifice, all fame, &c.)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ol/ol_phen.htm

Experience or knowledge? My preference and instinct is to not wrestle with this aspect at the moment, but to see what comes.

And that it has got to be possible to re-say Hegel in more accessible language - to be striven for. And gained, though perhaps through successive approximations. — tim wood

To even try 'to re-say Hegel' we need to know what he is saying in the first place. To focus on the text. This means careful reading - not a swift, superficial skipping over of paragraphs 'to see what comes'. And yes, even then, approximations are the most we can hope to achieve.
I think, as a group, we are doing quite well. Getting there...

All of this, requires understanding important philosophical terminology, related to Hegel.

From Sebastian Gardner's glossary:

EXPERIENCE ( Erfahrung). In the Phenomenology, experience refers to the experience of consciousness on its way to Science. It does not have the usual implication of restriction to the sensory but rather hinges on thought; so it does not mean for Hegel what it means for the emliricists or for Kant. Hegel originally planned to give Phenomenology the title 'Science of the Experience of Consciousness'. — Gardner

CONSCIOUSNESS ( Bewusstsein). Note that Hegel sometimes uses consciousness as a generic term for cognitive awareness, of which self-consciousness is one species; and sometimes as a species of consciousness in the generic sense, where it contrasts with self-consciousness. — Gardner

SCIENCE (Wissenschaft). In Hegel, Science refers not to natural science but to philosophical knowledge, which must be in a systematic, articulate form. Thus it refers to his own philosophy. — Gardner

Returning to our previous question about 'absolute otherness'...

Science is the in-itself but must become for itself, that is, it must move from self-consciousness as being something inner, by which substance is other or object to self-consciousness, to self-consciousness being for itself, the whole as the union of substance and subject. Here spirit is no longer substance, that is, object of consciousness but the actualization of spirit, as in itself and for itself; not something that is mine or particular, or even as universal, but as absolute, the identity of difference, one with itself. — Fooloso4

what I am still struggling with the concept of absolute otherness. It seems to be a contradiction in terms. What is other is so relative to something, but if relative then it is not absolute. — Fooloso4

I am going to refer to Gardner's glossary in an effort to understand the above.

ABSOLUTE adj.,n. (absolute, das Absolute). Complete, self-contained, all-encompassing. Per Inwood, the Absolute 'is not something underlying the phenomenal world, but the conceptual system embedded in it'.

FOR ITSELF (fur sich). Reflective, explicit, self-comprehending, fully developed. Contrasts with: in itself, in-and-for-itself.

IN ITSELF (an sich). Merely potential or implicit...Something is 'in itself' when it is considered separately from other things, and ( in the case of a form of consciousness) when it is unreflective. That is why, for Hegel, the in itself is mere potentiality: actuality requires determination, negation, relations with other things. Note that a thing may be 'in itself for us'...an expression Hegel uses often: this just means that we are considering it as it is separate from other things. Contrasts with: for itself, and in-and-for-itself.

IN-AND-FOR-ITSELF (an und fur sich). Completely developed; both at home with itself, and finding itself in the other. It contrasts with mere being in itself and being for itself. Being in-and-for-itself is the condition of the Absolute, God, Spirit actualised. — Gardner

So, what can be meant by 'absolute otherness', as per para 26.

"Pure self-knowing in absolute otherness, this ether as such, is the very ground and soil of science, or, knowing in its universality" - Hegel.

Taking absolute as an adjective: all-encompassing. There is a sense of a complete or whole otherness wherein we as individuals find ourselves.
We move from our separate, individual potential ( in itself) to actual, full self-realisation in a personal and global sense ( in-and-for-itself) via socio-cultural relationships and being actively reflective ( for itself).

That is, we are relative within an absolute whole.
That's my current understanding. Open to review.

Absolute otherness must be the otherness of the whole within itself as the condition for the whole's self-knowledge. The circle of self-knowledge plays out on the levels of the individual, the culture, and the whole. The first two are limited wholes, the last the whole of wholes. — Fooloso4

Just noticed this part I bolded. I think you answered your own question. Where is your struggle ? There is no contradiction in terms, is there ?

If we were to draw the circles of wholes where would absolute otherness be? If it is complete otherness it would be a circle that is not encompassed in some larger whole, otherwise it would not be absolute otherness.

Perhaps what Hegel is getting at is the movement from absolute otherness to its sublation, its negation.

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