OK, interesting point. After reading these paragraphs about 3 times, I mostly agree with the above points, but I'm wondering if we aren't reading a little too much into it.

I can't put it into such poetic words as my predecessor in this thread, but I'm guessing that Hegel is not aiming for any eternal spirals or cycles of life and death.
Instead, he might simply be defending himself against the criticism of being too simplistic or too elitist:
"The wealth of its bygone existence" - He says that the old concept(s) of science where broad and diverse in scope and well founded in a wealth of particulars.
And this broad scope is still what people expect from science: "consciousness misses both the dispersal and the particularization of content,"
Right now, however, he's at a bottle neck or turning point. His concept of the new science is currently "enshrouded in its simplicity" and "the esoteric possession of only a few individuals"
But he hastens to assure us that this simplicity is not the goal or core of his project, but merely an initial stage. From here on, the "new" science will unfold and realize its potential.

Right now his theory may be a small acorn, and only few can work with it and understand it. But it's supposed to grow into a large tree and be accessible to a broad audience: "Only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody."

What do you think?

but I'm wondering if we aren't reading a little too much into it. — WerMaat

In the main I agree that's a risk. The text is the preface to a book, one book of many books. Hegel's audience - his reader - is not us. We linger in the detail and his language as a matter of choice and at the expense of other things - whatever those might be.

Still though, arguably some of the detail matters to understanding the whole. I reckon we will get pretty good pretty quickly about discerning what really matters.

It’s always a danger to read a text for the first time through the opinions of others (‘qualified’ or not).

I NEVER read commentaries until I’ve drawn my own vague ‘conclusions’ purely from what the text says.

Anyway, have at it if you want. I’m outta here!

It's also important to note that 'Notion' (or concept) is used here (beginning in section 6 iirc) in contrast to 'intuition'. Hegel is critiquing those thinkers, and philosophies, which propose truth can be apprehended in an unmediated way; Via some kind of direct experience. Instead truth is aprehended through a systematic process - which is what hegel regards as 'scientific'. The word begriff itself signifies a grabbing onto. Notion therefore, conveys an image of ascertaining truth through effort, whereas intuition does not. — emancipate

Consider it noted with appreciation for clarity, drawing out the distinction.

From Gardner's Glossary:

CONCEPT ( Begriff ) ...The verb begreifen incorporates greifen, to seize...

INTUITION ( Anschauung)
A term of Kant's, referring to the immediate, non-conceptual presentation of a thing.
Hegel's attitude to the concept of intuition is mostly negative. — Sebastian Gardner

----------

Another element in rejecting Romanticism is that one of the main goals of the book is to show how individual experience is interwoven with developments of ideas that unfold over time.
At the same time, the developments are changes in what is possible for the individual to experience. — Valentinus

Helpful. The unfolding of developing ideas and the effect on individuals.
Good to know one of the main goals of the book.

For "edify" and "edification" the original text uses "Erbauung".
This word ist usually used to describe a spiritual or moral type of experience. One might find Erbauung in church, in nature, or in art.
Erbauung has positive connotations ( unless you use it in an ironic fashion), as in: it strengstens your personality. But it's usually more intuitive and spiritual, not rational and intellectual.
I believe that Hegel thus connects the word to the romantic "Schwärmereien" he mocks. And when her states that philosophy may not be "erbaulich", he is trying to say that it is a strictly rational enterprise, not a vague spiritual feel-good Type of experience. — WerMaat

I'll be following along with the German original. I'm a German native, so the original text is actually easier for me to read... — WerMaat

How excellent is this. Das ist fantastisch :cool:

I haven't reached this point yet. However, your clear thoughts and writing make me want to try and catch up.

Hegel is not entirely unsympathetic to the impulse of those he is criticizing. — Fooloso4

I'm glad about that. It seems to me that his writing style reflects that positive spirit of Erbauung of which WerMaat spoke. The spirit lying in the artful use of metaphors.

The discussion between you and WerMaat is instructive and enjoyable to read.
Reciprocal exchanges and informative interaction.
It is exactly what I appreciate in a book discussion. Especially when I am behind and need a bit of motivation. Thanks :smile:

Right now his theory may be a small acorn, and only few can work with it and understand it. But it's supposed to grow into a large tree and be accessible to a broad audience: "Only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody." — WerMaat

I am not there yet. I guess you are one of the few :wink:

Correction/refinement welcome! — tim wood

I appreciate your enthusiasm but I see more distracting poetry than useful clarity in this explication:

The tree again, seed, seedling, sapling, mature tree, finally fallen tree. But the source for a whole new beginning, that future grounded in the rotting tree, but itself not determined by its ground

And the past is archive of the new, being its ground and providing reference points, and without which the "child" both feels and is insecure, lacking the structure and bounds of the old, and not yet establishing its own.

In this inchoate condition, "science" is owned and understood only by the few. But in its logic and the working out of that logic it becomes an offering of participation to all, because as Being itself, it is necessarily accessible to all beings. — tim wood

Some selective pruning required ?

But I'm not sure yet what this "qualitative leap" is supposed to be exactly? — WerMaat

When being and not being are subsumed within becoming, in the manner of Hegelian dialectics, the "qualitative leap" is difficult to make sense of. Such a leap, under its own definitive terms is an end, a not-being of the past existence, and a beginning of the being of the future existence. Such a leap must be understood in terms of process, a coming-to-be, to be made sense of in Hegelian terms, but then the term "leap" is misleading. Hegel's challenge is to describe these occurrences which appear as qualitative leaps, in terms of processes or comings-to-be, "slowly and quietly" ... "reshaping itself", because the leap for him is an illusion. You might call this "qualitative leap" a faulty description.

12:

Yet this newness is no more completely actual than is the newborn child, and it is essential to bear this in mind. Its immediacy, or its concept, is the first to come on the scene.

As the oak is in the acorn, the man is in the child, but it its immediacy, that is, at this moment it has not actualized itself.

In the same way, science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not completed in its initial stages. The beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution in the diversity of forms of cultural formation ...

Just as each stage of gestation is necessary, each moment leading to the new birth of spirit is necessary. And just as each stage in the development of the fetus is itself a revolution (Miller has upheaval) that brings about something that was not present before this stage and adds to the whole of what is developing, each stage of cultural development adds to the diversity of forms that comprise:

... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept of itself.

Returning into itself is to become what from the beginning it is to be. Each stage of this new whole no matter how different it is from earlier stages is not a move away from but within itself, adding to to the completion of itself.

The actuality of this simple whole consists in those embodiments which, having become moments of the whole, again develop themselves anew and give themselves a figuration, but this time in their new element, in the new meaning which itself has come to be.

The moments in the development of spirit do not understand themselves and are not understood by subsequent moment until this moment when it has come to the simple concept of itself. It is in this new element that each of those moments is understood anew as part in the development of the whole.

13:

On the one hand, while the initial appearance of the new world is just the whole enshrouded in its simplicity, or its universal ground, still, on the other hand, the wealth of its bygone existence is in recollection still current for consciousness.

Hegel is not talking just about the development of some intellectual pursuit, philosophy, or even a science of the whole, but of a new world in its incipience. It is not the study of or reflection on the whole but the whole itself. In its simplicity it is not yet revealed itself as what it is to be. At the same time its existence as it was is still present or active in its recollection of itself, that is, its history in the sense of bringing it back to itself in its consciousness of itself.

In that newly appearing shape, consciousness misses both the dispersal and the particularization of content, but it misses even more the development of the form as a result of which the differences are securely determined and are put into the order of their fixed relationships.

Its new shape, the whole enshrouded in simplicity, as the universal ground is no longer what it was in its earlier stages of differentiation and particularization, of fixed relationships. Here we see that Hegel is not completely at odds with those he criticizes.

Without this development, science has no general intelligibility, and it seems to be the esoteric possession of only a few individuals – an esoteric possession, because at first science is only available in its concept, or in what is internal to it, and it is the possession of a few individuals, since its appearance in this not-yet fully unfurled form makes its existence into something wholly singular.

Science appears to be esoteric, that is, shrouded, hidden from view of all but a few who are, so to speak, initiated into its secrets, its specialized language and practices. But it appears this way because it has not yet fully unfurled. It is not something wholly singular but a part of the development of the whole. It is from within this development that science has its general intelligibility.

Only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. The intelligible form of science is the path offered to everyone and equally available for all.

Up until this point science has not been completely determinate, that is to say, it has not yet completed itself and so cannot be understood. With the completion of its movement it has become comprehensible. Perhaps @WerMaat can comment on whether there is in German this double sense of comprehensive as complete and understandable.

To achieve rational knowledge through our own intellect is the rightful demand of a consciousness which is approaching the status of science. This is so because the understanding is thinking, the pure I as such, and because what is intelligible is what is already familiar and common both to science and to the unscientific consciousness alike, and it is that through which unscientific consciousness is
immediately enabled to enter into science.

What does Hegel mean by "our own intellect"? Is it something uniquely mine or ours? The "pure I" is the thinking I. As such it is the I of thinking. What is intelligible is so to any consciousness whether scientific or unscientific, because the intelligible is what is already familiar to consciousness.

Pinkard #14

"14. At its debut, where science has been brought neither to completeness of detail nor to perfection of form, it is open to reproach. However, even if it is unjust to suppose that this reproach even touches on the essence of science, it would be just as unjust and inadmissible not to honor the demand for the further development of science. This opposition seems to be the principal knot which scientific culture is currently struggling to loosen and which it does not yet properly understand. One side sings the praises of the wealth of its material and its intelligibility; the other side at any rate spurns the former and insists on immediate rationality and divinity. Even if the first is reduced to silence, whether by the force of truth alone or just by the bluster of the other side, and even if it feels overwhelmed by the basics of the subject matter which is at stake, it is still, for all that, by no means satisfied about those demands, for although they are just, those demands have not been fulfilled. Only half of its silence is due to the other side’s victory; the other half is due to the boredom and indifference which result from the continual awakening of expectations by promises never fulfilled."

----------------

Btw, these cut-and-pastes come from this site:

https://libcom.org/files/Georg%20Wilhelm%20Friedrich%20Hegel%20-%20The%20Phenomenology%20of%20Spirit%20(Terry%20Pinkard%20Translation).pdf

Only what is completely determinate is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody.

German:
Erst was vollkommen bestimmt ist, ist zugleich exoterisch, begreiflich, und fähig, gelernt und das Eigentum aller zu sein.

Forget about the double sense, we're talking "understandable" only, "completeness" is not implied in the German Text.( At least not in this sentence.)
Hegel uses "begreiflich", from the root greifen: the action of grasping an object with your hand.
With the prefix be- you get begreifen, literally: the action of touching an object repeatedly in order to explore its shape - but usually used in the more abstract sense of understanding or grasping something in your mind

Each stage of this new whole no matter how different it is from earlier stages is not a move away from but within itself, adding to to the completion of itself. — Fooloso4

This makes sense to me. There are distinct stages of development of an individual, the core spirit of whom remains intact. It is a becoming.

Hegel is not talking just about the development of some intellectual pursuit, philosophy, or even a science of the whole, but of a new world in its incipience. It is not the study of or reflection on the whole but the whole itself — Fooloso4

Each individual experience, and reflection thereof, adds new ideas to the old.
The effects, more evolutionary than revolutionary ? Leading to an exciting new world.

Is that about right ?

Forget about the double sense, we're talking "understandable" only, "completeness" is not implied in the German Text.( At least not in this sentence.) — WerMaat

Okay, thanks. I think it may be more accurate to say that completeness is not implied in the German term begreiflich, but completeness is certainly central to the text and paragraph: "Only what is completely determinate ...", and this is why prior to this moment it has not been understood or, as both Miller and Pinkard have it "comprehended". Whether they made a connection between comprehend and comprehensive I cannot say. With regard to the root meaning of the term in German you provided I am reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each can touch a part but since none can grasp the whole, and so none of them understand or comprehend the object.

Hegel uses "begreiflich", from the root greifen: the action of grasping an object with your hand.
With the prefix be- you get begreifen, literally: the action of touching an object repeatedly in order to explore its shape - but usually used in the more abstract sense of understanding or grasping something in your mind — WerMaat

This clarity helps my understanding. Much better than the glossary explanation . Thanks.

With regard to the root meaning of the term in German you provided I am reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each can touch a part but since none can grasp the whole, and so none of them understand or comprehend the object. — Fooloso4

Readers each explore the form, shape, substance and nature of the text from their unique perspective.
So, a group affair is more likely to fare well.
Feedback loop leads to improved comprehension. Hopefully.

The effects, more evolutionary than revolutionary ? Leading to an exciting new world. — Amity

In #11 he says that the process is interrupted. And in #12 that the beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution.

Hegel died before the publication of The Origin of Species and so we should not attribute Darwin's vocabulary of evolutionary change to Hegel.

With regard to the root meaning of the term in German you provided I am reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each can touch a part but since none can grasp the whole, and so none of them understand or comprehend the object. — Fooloso4

Yes definitely, a good point!
Still, in this context I think that Hegel is mainly trying to contrast the "esoteric" and the "exoteric", stating that only the latter is easily and immediately "graspable": begreiflich.
He may still be arguing against Romanticism, which believes in the opposite: that the true core of a thing can best be comprehended and grasped by immediate intuition, circumventing reason and intellect.

By the way, scrolling back to the earlier paragraphs, please note that you have already encountered the noun form of "begreiflich".
The word "Begriff", translated as "concept" in #6, stems from the exactly same root...

Still, in this context I think that Hegel is mainly trying to contrast the "esoteric" and the "exoteric", stating that only the latter is easily and immediately "graspable": begreiflich. — WerMaat

Right, but what is it that makes it graspable? How is it that what was once esoteric has become exoteric?

By the way, scrolling back to the earlier paragraphs, please note that you have already encountered the noun form of "begreiflich".
The word "Begriff", translated as "concept" in #6, stems from the exactly same root... — WerMaat

See also the following exchanges:

Kaufman notes here that the German word for concept is "Begriff,.. closely related to begreifen (to comprehend),,,
— tim wood

Yes, but this needs to be understood within the whole, that is, it is comprehensive in the double sense of comprehend and inclusive of the subject matter as both subject and object together. See my comments about on #3.
— Fooloso4

The Hegel Glossary from Sebastian Gardner is useful here. Gives different translations and thoughts from Miller, Inwood, Solomon, Geraets et al, Kainz.

Excerpt from CONCEPT ( Begriff)
...
,..When Hegel speaks of the Concept, he sometimes just means concepts in general, but he also uses it to mean, per Solomon, the most adequate conception of the world as a whole...
Solomon...the Concept...has the force of 'our conception of concepts'...may also refer to the process of conceptual change...since for Hegel the identity of concepts is bound up with dialectical movement...
— Sebastian Gardner — Amity

 

And in #12 that the beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution. — Fooloso4

Yes, I read that. However, I am wondering how long this took in real life.
How long was 'the winding path' ?

12. The beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution in the diversity of forms of cultural formation; it is both the prize at the end of a winding path just as it is the prize won through much struggle and effort.

Hegel died before the publication of The Origin of Species and so we should not attribute Darwin's vocabulary of evolutionary change to Hegel. — Fooloso4

The word 'evolution' was in use before Darwin. From the 1660s it meant a growth to maturity and development of an individual living thing. A process. Unfolding over time.
This would tie in with Hegel's biological analogies.
I think talk of a revolution and leaps is confusing. I think MU makes a similar point:

Such a leap must be understood in terms of process, a coming-to-be, to be made sense of in Hegelian terms, but then the term "leap" is misleading. Hegel's challenge is to describe these occurrences which appear as qualitative leaps, in terms of processes or comings-to-be, "slowly and quietly" ... "reshaping itself", because the leap for him is an illusion. You might call this "qualitative leap" a faulty description.
6 hours ago — Metaphysician Undercover

Also:

Again, it's about development. Things are changing, that's his message. But the new is not refuting or replacing the old, the old is merely developing into the new. As in, the old state of things is a necessary precursor to the new. — WerMaat

Btw, these cut-and-pastes come from this site:

https://libcom.org/files/Georg%20Wilhelm%20Friedrich%20Hegel%20-%20The%20Phenomenology%20of%20Spirit%20(Terry%20Pinkard%20Translation).pdf — tim wood

Thank you, Tim.
Although initially critical of need to cut and copy whole paragraphs, thinking a reference sufficient, I now appreciate this very much.
It means I can easily find and copy relevant pieces of text in response to others.
My own pdf is Read Only.

Yes, I read that. However, I am wondering how long this took in real life.
How long was 'the winding path' ? — Amity

From the Greeks to Hegel.

The word 'evolution' was in use before Darwin. From the 1660s it meant a growth to maturity and development of an individual living thing. A process. — Amity

It is not always clear what one means when they use the term. For Darwin the process is not predetermined, but for Hegel it is. It is teleological.

I think MU makes a similar point: — Amity

I do not think the leap is an illusion:

11. Spirit has broken with the previous world of its existence and its ways of thinking ... just as with a child, who after a long silent period of nourishment draws his first breath and shatters the gradualness of only quantitative growth ... This gradual process of dissolution, which has not altered the physiognomy of the whole, is interrupted by the break of day, which in a flash and at a single stroke brings to view the structure of the new world.

It is the difference between process and product. The product is not simply the continuation of the linear process that led up to it. It is birth of something new, something revolutionary.

12. ... it is both the prize at the end of a winding path and, equally as much, is the prize won through much struggle and effort.

That is, the prize is the product that one comes at the end of the process and, equally as much, what comes through the through the process of struggle and effort. We do not simply follow along the path we bring about the prize. It is not simply there to be found but brought out through our struggle and effort.

From the Greeks to Hegel. — Fooloso4

Ah yes. The movement of history. I had been thinking about the duration of Hegel's own journey.
His time of revolution within the overall evolutionary process, meaning changes over successive generations.Ideas changing individuals.

It is the difference between process and product. The product is not simply the continuation of the linear process that led up to it. It is birth of something new, something revolutionary. — Fooloso4

Understood. The product can be both an end and a beginning. Just like the conclusion of an argument can become a premise of another in an inference chain.
Still, I wouldn't describe it as revolutionary. The term 'revolution' is debatable.
Struggle and effort are involved in both evolution and revolution.

But don't wish to bog the discussion down.

Still, I wouldn't describe it as revolutionary. — Amity

Hegel has not given us any examples. The rise of modern science was revolutionary and among other things established the authority of the individual based on reason. The American Revolution, French Revolution.

I think this is important and speaks to my earlier point:

Hegel is not talking just about the development of some intellectual pursuit, philosophy, or even a science of the whole, but of a new world in its incipience. — Fooloso4

Hegel has not given us any examples — Fooloso4

I'm tired so will ask only one question - perhaps a follow up tomorrow, or if someone else wants to contribute their thoughts...

Examples of what and where ?
Of revolution ?

It is not always clear what one means when they use the term. For Darwin the process is not predetermined, but for Hegel it is. It is teleological. — Fooloso4

Here a disagreement - maybe. For anything to be teleological, in a classical sense at least, there has to be a telos - a "finally." That is, something specific that is the final stage. The kitten's telos is to become a cat, and so forth. Hegel had no need to invent a new "science" for this; the Greeks had it long since covered. And if that were what he was trying to accomplish, his contemporaries would have had his number immediately.

So far I hear a foreshadowing of the process of his idea of being that is usually in schoolbooks called "thesis-antithesis-synthesis," which dynamic, as most of us already know, Hegel explicitly disavowed. The two key terms here being aufheben and sublation, the meanings of both being worth a look-up.

But at this point it's just hint built into the form of the argument so far, of oppositions, e.g., the Enlightenment v. Romanticism, brought into juxtaposition and a pointing at what might come out of both of them together.

I think this is the road we're on, and WerMaat's gentle but wise concern,

wondering if we aren't reading a little too much into it. — WerMaat

and Sherlock Holmes's warning against speculation without having all the facts, argue to me that we can certainly spectate the scenery while on the way, but won't gain much if we use up too much time and energy on it.

And it strikes me there are two distinctly different meanings of over-thinking, over-working, and worth noting, even if just in passing. First is the idea of existing material over-worked, over-wrought; second the idea of additional and too-much material added. If we try to eat all the thistles in the field, there won't be any left, nor appetite nor capacity for them.

Examples of what and where ?
Of revolution ? — Amity

Yes. [Added. Examples of revolutions. I suggested the scientific revolution and the French and American Revolutions.]

Here a disagreement - maybe. For anything to be teleological, in a classical sense at least, there has to be a telos - a "finally." That is, something specific that is the final stage. The kitten's telos is to become a cat, and so forth. Hegel had no need to invent a new "science" for this; the Greeks had it long since covered. And if that were what he was trying to accomplish, his contemporaries would have had his number immediately. — tim wood

It is not a question of a new science of teleology, but of the movement of spirit from consciousness to self-consciousness, which is the movement of the whole to self-realization. I am not going to defend that argument now, but I think it will become clearer as we move forward.

In this inchoate condition, "science" is owned and understood only by the few. But in its logic and the working out of that logic it becomes an offering of participation to all, because as Being itself, it is necessarily accessible to all beings. — tim wood

The book, beyond the Preface, builds on how other people take things away from us when they appear before us. The new thing being proposed is to live without doing that. And it is an empty idea unless a different sort of life happens. To that extent, the esoteric relies upon what is determined by the "exoteric." It has to work for everybody or at least enough of us to not be stuck in a previous level of development.