So, negation is important because there is no motion forward without it. The Notion is not an explanation but an activity. It is not "automatic" as a process. If it was, then it would already be appropriated like a Category of Reason. — Valentinus

I think that is correct and is a consistent feature throughout.The latest in para 32 and 33:

32:

However, the life of spirit is not a life that is fearing death and austerely saving itself from ruin; rather, it bears death calmly, and in death, it sustains itself. Spirit only wins its truth by finding its feet in its absolute disruption. Spirit is not this power which, as the positive, avoids looking at the negative, as is the case when we say of something that it is nothing, or that it is false, and then, being done with it, go off on our own way on to something else. No, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and lingering with it. This lingering is the magical power that converts it into being. — Hegel

33:

Nowadays the task before us consists not so much in purifying the individual of the sensuously immediate and in making him into a thinking substance which has itself been subjected to thought; it consists instead in doing the very opposite. It consists in actualizing and spiritually animating the universal through the sublation of fixed and determinate thoughts. — Hegel

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

Analysis (Analysieren) of an idea into its constituent elements, through the understanding (Verstand ), as distinguished from reason, will not yield knowledge. Kant's critical philosophy features categories, or pure concepts of the understanding, that "produce," or "construct," the objects of experience by unifying the contents of sensory experience. For Hegel, on the contrary, the understanding does not unify but rather separates. He refers to "the activity of separation of theUnderstanding, the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power" (§32, 18). The understanding's capacity to introduce distinctions, to separate what was whole, or the power of the negative that causes death, is a phase of the cognitive process. In a further phase, mere individuality is transformed into universality. In this way, thoughts, or pure essences, are brought together in an "organic whole" (§34, 20). — Tom Rockmore

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Very well said.
I consider your question of dinosaur versus current player the one that is most interesting to me and shapes the tenor of many reactions to Hegel's text.
But I will respond more thoughtfully after a little bit.
I am being chased by a Velociraptor.

At this point a decision to be made. Hegel is either a dinosaur, interesting but in-himself a quaint piece of history of no direct interest, or, even today the bearer of truths timeless in-themselves, that ought to be known — tim wood

Why 'at this point'?
Why an either/or decision ?
Why the extreme positions ?

You might need to make that decision. I don't.

However, you raise an interesting question which I have taken the liberty of including in a parallel thread:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6430/hegel-is-not-a-philosopher-thoughts-

I consider your question of dinosaur versus current player the one that is most interesting to me and shapes the tenor of many reactions to Hegel's text.
But I will respond more thoughtfully after a little bit. — Valentinus

'Dinosaur v current player'.
I look forward to further clarification.
Clearly, there are many different views and interpretations.
All of them potentially relevant to one's own developing understanding.That is one of the reasons I started a new thread; to give room for that exploration and to prevent straying too far off the Preface.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6430/hegel-is-not-a-philosopher-thoughts-

I understood Tim's aim was to focus on the text alone and explicate each paragraph *
I find this continual comparative analysis of Hegel v Kant useful up to a point. However, it seems to be taking over the objective analysis of the Preface.
I miss @Fooloso4 comments on each paragraph. Perhaps he has lost interest...

*

To understand any book or text requires first that it be read - and understood. That's the task of this thread, and that is the only task of this thread! Opinions and arguments are not welcome! Exception: given a reading, if someone can add light or improve on - or correct - the explication given, then they're very welcome. Or if anyone wants to add their own parallel "reading," also welcome.

With luck, 50-odd pages, maybe the thing can be done in under 50 - 100 posts! — tim wood

I'll proceed paragraph-by-paragraph. — tim wood

This is a difficult read. I intend to proceed through it paragraph-by-paragraph, — tim wood

Copying and pasting.
Soon the whole Preface will be covered.
The mountain top reached.
Out of breath and without oxygen.
Dead bodies are left on the mountain.
Where is the joy ?
Of reading...

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In any case the origin of the mystical tradition in Western philosophy is (neo)Platonism and its successors, whose doctrines were fused into early Christianity by the Greek-speaking theologians, including Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and later Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scotus Eriugena. The intuition of 'the One' which is the ground/source of all being through the domain of the forms/ideas is central to that tradition. Although it should be said the marriage of Hebrew prophetic religion with Greek rationalism was often a rather fraught one, and that (in my view) the mystical elements became almost completely subordinated to the literalistic tendencies in Protestantism. But there's a huge amount of study involved in all of those issues, and I've only skimmed the surface. But I think it is possible to identify aspects the Hegelian 'absolute' with both the 'first mover' of Aristotle, and also with the One of neo-platonism (feasibly a kind of 'world soul'). — Wayfarer

Your description is helpful. I would only throw a few curve balls into the mix.

The emphasis in Lutheran thought that what is happening for each individual is the Incarnation is mystical in itself.

As a matter of struggling with the idea of the "unconditioned" as a means of orientation to establish a starting place, Leibniz and Spinoza did that sort of thing while Kant declined to provide that in his Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics because he said we could never prove it.

I find the paragraphs taken severally difficult to get through. Often in trying to follow the path I find no path. I.e., where I look for meaning I have to provide it - and remember that as mine it's provisional — tim wood

Of course, the paragraphs are difficult to get through to find the meaning. As a group, we all struggle with this to varying degrees. Some spend more time than others, some fall away; it's all a learning process.
Fascinating to be a part of.The dynamics and dialogue intriguing in themselves.

As a leader of a discussion, it is wise and important to acknowledge a lack of understanding and not to plough on regardless, without even commenting on a particular paragraph *.
Silence can mean so many things. It can give the impression of not caring and that is far from the truth.
It is good to know where we stand, even if the ground is shaky, especially when the ground is shaky.

All our understanding is provisional. Our thoughts are not written in stone. They are active and adapting.
Communication is all. Thanks for listening and sharing.

*

If something in a view you're examining is unclear to you, don't gloss it over. Call attention to the unclarity. Suggest several different ways of understanding the view. Explain why it's not clear which of these interpretations is correct. — Jim Pryor

I am guilty of glossing over that which I don't understand or dismissing fancy gobbledegook.
However, sometimes I try to gain clarification by asking questions of other posters. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to get an understandable reply. Other times, the reply is that ambiguous silence.

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A modern phrase (first used before Hegel!) suffices here: "hermeneutic circle." More accurately, spiral. in simplest terms, as you go 'round and 'round with a thing, or idea, it makes the more sense. "Circle" referring variously to a "circle" of texts that inform (by successive recourse to) on the text in question. Or because the Greek root means translate/interpret, which in itself evokes a "taking counsel with," implying an other even it the other needed be found only in one's own critical awareness. — tim wood

Given that I have started a parallel thread to further explore issues, I will be discussing the question of the 'Hermeneutic Circle' there.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6430/hegel-is-not-a-philosopher-thoughts-

I hope thereby not to intrude on the focus and engagement required for the Preface text discussion.

@tim wood
@Fooloso4
@Wayfarer
@Valentinus
And any other interested parties...

I hope that using parts of quotes from this thread will not be objected to.
I will give due reference, acknowledgement and show context.
Have sent a PM to tim wood.

Correction/refinement welcome. — tim wood

A lot of waffle.

For anyone interested in a more objective and substantive account, this is recommended:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/

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I am at a loss to see how "waffle" is any kind of correction or refinement - or contribution. What is waffling, where, how? — tim wood

You are right. You didn't get what you asked for. Tough. Perhaps someone else can be bothered.

'Waffling':

noun
1.BRITISH
lengthy but vague or trivial talk or writing.
"we've edited out some of the waffle"

synonyms:prattle, jabbering, verbiage, drivel, meaningless talk, nonsense, twaddle, gibberish, stuff and nonsense, bunkum, mumbo jumbo, padding, flannel, verbosity, prolixity; — Oxford online dictionary

 

The first part of your post. Verbose padding.

But I do observe that there is in your posts almost zero reference to any reading you're doing of Hegel's text. Anyone, everyone, else, but not Hegel. Why would that be? I assume you do read the paragraphs. — tim wood

You are right. I have never referenced any paragraphs, discussed any analysis with any other participants or raised any questions about the text. And I never, ever read the paragraphs.

[ Edit: to remove comments I regret making ]

As to the question of whether Hegel was a mystic, we must first ask what a mystic is. Is it someone who has experiences or someone who has been initiated formally or informally into secret teachings or someone who yearns for immediacy or someone who attempts to attain altered states of consciousness via particular practices or ...? — Fooloso4

A mystic is someone who knows or thinks to know something but refrains from uttering it, for various reasons. Mysticism's main tenet can be summed up in the proposition: "'Whereof one dare not speak thereof one must be silent". But Hegel was pretty much verbose, unless he kept silent about a lot of stuff.

A modern phrase (first used before Hegel!) suffices here: "hermeneutic circle." More accurately, spiral. in simplest terms, as you go 'round and 'round with a thing, or idea, it makes the more sense. "Circle" referring variously to a "circle" of texts that inform (by successive recourse to) on the text in question. Or because the Greek root means translate/interpret, which in itself evokes a "taking counsel with," implying an other even it the other needed be found only in one's own critical awareness. — tim wood

The hermeneutic circle is a good idea to bring into this topic. It is an element in the experiences Hegel describes and also reflects how he is in the circle himself as the origin of many discussions and disputes about ontology and epistemology. In spite of those conditions, I read the Phenomenology as an attempt at escaping the circle of "avoiding learning how to swim before getting in the water." When I read that section of the Logic, I wonder whether Hegel avoided the situation he said Kant was stuck in. Does he escape the problem of being "outside" of his method?

Some of that wondering goes in the direction being explored by Fooloso4:

Another thing might be that each thing must be other than all other things. Is the whole other than itself? In one sense since there is nothing other than the whole of what is then there would be nothing other than the whole. But self-knowing requires the self to treat itself as is object of knowledge. — Fooloso4

A greater part of my wondering goes toward how "Self-Awareness" comes into being through its experiences and the role harsh necessity and "un-freedom" play in that. The negativity of the conscious individual meets the negation of the other individuals. The logic of how these events unfold leads to freedom and self-awareness. I accept that something like the structure of a Preface is needed to talk about experience this way. To see conflict as part of a process requires the use of synthesis for it to become past. From that point of view, Hegel is keenly aware of his "absorption" in his time and history. He is a major part of why we talk that way now.

On the other hand, the idea that the process has reached a kind of completion is at odds with the instruction to stay in the water. The ever expanding generations of Hegel's critics dig into the negativity he did not explore. By the turn of his own method, that points to elements and processes he was not aware of.

In my mind, it is that relationship between the dialectic and understanding that is still alive and kicking.

By your description Hegel would not be a mystic, but those who, like Wallace, claim that Hegel was a mystic hold to some other idea of what mysticism means.

Given the importance of the development of spirit in time, it seems clear that Hegel's thinking goes further than that of the mystics. But, one might argue that the mystic is able to transcend time. For Hegel, however, science is discursive. It is necessary to articulate or give a rational account of what one claims to know. I think he would say that the mystic fails to do this, but not because the mystic chooses to remain silent.

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I am talking about this sort of thing, as it was laid out by Plato (or his followers) in "The Seventh Letter":

Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that man the things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men "have themselves bereft him of his wits."

Anyone who has followed this discourse and digression will know well that, if Dionysios or anyone else, great or small, has written a treatise on the highest matters and the first principles of things, he has, so I say, neither heard nor learnt any sound teaching about the subject of his treatise; otherwise, he would have had the same reverence for it, which I have, and would have shrunk from putting it forth into a world of discord and uncomeliness. For he wrote it, not as an aid to memory-since there is no risk of forgetting it, if a man's soul has once laid hold of it; for it is expressed in the shortest of statements-but if he wrote it at all, it was from a mean craving for honour, either putting it forth as his own invention, or to figure as a man possessed of culture, of which he was not worthy, if his heart was set on the credit of possessing it. — plato 7th

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html

Perhaps men have themselves bereft Hegel of his wits, or maybe he too is a man of worth. In that case he would be like Plato in that both have a lot to say but both leave the things of the most worth unsaid. I am certain that this is the case for Plato but do not know if it is for Hegel.

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Perhaps men have themselves bereft Hegel of his wits, or maybe he too is a man of worth. In that case he would be like Plato in that both have a lot to say but both leave the things of the most worth unsaid. I am certain that this is the case for Plato but do not know if it is for Hegel. — Fooloso4

Exactly! Which is why I said "but Hegel was pretty much verbose, unless he kept silent about a lot of stuff". No matter whether Plato or Hegel were really mystics, it's another question what they took themselves to be. In that respect, Plato certainly took himself as one, but I doubt that the same can be said of Hegel. In fact, I believe that Hegel wanted to do away with mysticism, most probably seeing the "young spirit" as mystical and secretive, but in its progression breaking free from this secrecy, like you say "it seems clear that Hegel's thinking goes further than that of the mystics".

Yes of course, you are right, the first task is to read and understand what is written. I was just commenting on the mystical.

When I first read Plato I thought he was a mystic. I no longer read him this way.

I think he was a Socratic or zetetic skeptic, knowing that he does not know. What he says about the Forms seems to be a direct contradiction of this point, but a careful reading of the Republic makes clear that Socrates is telling stories. He admits he cannot confirm that things are as he says. In other words, he has not had the transcendent experience of direct apprehension of the Forms. The Forms, of which the visible world is said to be an image, are actually themselves images of the truth, a truth he does not know.

I think what Plato presents is a public teachings that takes on the guise of mystical revelation. It is a salutary teaching about the Good. It is Plato's response to the poets who shaped the minds and souls of man. It is poetry (poeisis, to make), intended to inspire and lead to the desire to aspire, to seek the truth itself.

So, to make things clear, you say that a mystic is like the one being portrayed in the following music video, one that "saw the whole of the moon"?



And that Plato was not one, but Hegel was?

I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned, I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

How would Hegel call this, the distinction between loving to know and actual knowledge, or I dunno?

So, to make things clear, you say that a mystic is like the one being portrayed in the following music video, one that "saw the whole of the moon"? — Pussycat

I am not saying what the mystic is. What I am saying is that there is no single definition of the mystic. I am not sure if the label is important or helpful. So, when someone asks whether Hegel was a mystic I must ask what he or she means by that.

And that Plato was not one, but Hegel was? — Pussycat

I don't think either of them were. I do see some similarities between Hegel and Lurianic Kabbalah, but I am not prepared to make more of it. I simply do not know his work well enough to speak with more confidence on the matter.

One way I look at the limit of reason stuff in Hegel is that he was a horse who got out of his corral when a gate was left open.
He galloped for a while and then stopped because he expected there to be another fence after the one he got past.

For sure, there is no single definition of the mystic, or for anything. But we can focus our attention on different meanings for the same word. Which means that there is no point in us, or anyone for that matter, arguing what a mystic really is, really pointless, but to give an account, a description, for what we, individually, mean by that, like you ask. So I am saying that Hegel believed, mystic or not, purported himself to be the one to see the whole, "see the whole of the moon", would you agree?

I mean, like timmy :) above referred from the marxists:

"Hegel is not a philosopher. He is no lover or seeker of wisdom — he believes he has found it. Hegel writes in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, “To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title of ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowledge — that is what I have set before me”. By the end of the Phenomenology, Hegel claims to have arrived at Absolute Knowledge, which he identifies with wisdom."

In order to know with what we are dealing with here. Are we dealing with this? With a method to attain absolute knowledge, everything that there is to know?? But I think that Hegel did not identify himself with absolute knowledge, like he did not say that he knew everything that there is to know, but that his method, the hegelian method, will lead someone to absolute knowledge.

Has Hegel lost his mind, or does he know what is he talking about?

He may be right, of course, I don't know. But it is crucial to know beforehand what we are delving into here.