For whatever it might be suitable to state about philosophy in a preface – say, an historical sketch of the main drift and point of view, the general content and results, a string of desultory assertions and assurances about the truth – this cannot be accepted as the form and manner in which to expound philosophical truth. — Hegel
I'm looking at Kaufmann's translation, and it's almost unrecognizably different. I did not expect there to be such difference even at the outset. — tim wood
Perhaps we can agree to undertake a hermeneutics of this text, in the original sense of "taking counsel with," to approach its meaning. — tim wood
I think your remark is to the point, if a little anticipatory. I'm not sure we have to re-live the history of philosophy; we merely have to accommodate it - know it - to move beyond it. In particular, Hegel seems to be presenting a dynamic model of the workings of thinking, which dynamism itself will stand in for the particulars of that thinking. Indeed the particulars become quaint details as the dynamism grinds them up in its dialectic teeth. — tim wood
I propose a rule of sorts. That our discussion at least at the first be directed toward what we read. Already we see that will be problematic. But if we don't use our best sense of the text as it unfolds to us as an aiming device, the who knows where our efforts will land?
Unfortunately, Hegel doesn't seem so easily parsable. I propose we deal with that by regarding much of his verbiage as flourish and rhetoric, a fat that warrants trimming. — tim wood
As a practical matter, then, I think Hegel is inaccessible. — tim wood
There is an age-old assumption that thinking distinguishes man from the beast. This we shall accept. What makes man nobler than the beast is what he possesses through thought. Whatever is human is so only to the extent that therein thought is active; no matter what its outward appearance may be, if it is human, thought makes it so. In this alone is man distinguished from the beast.
Still, insofar as thought is in this way the essential, the substantial, the active in man, it has to do with an infinite manifold and variety of objects. Thought will be at its best, however, when it is occupied only with what is best in man, with thought itself, where it wants only itself, has to do with itself alone. For, to be occupied with itself is to discover itself by creating itself;’ and this it can do only by manifesting itself. Thought is active only in producing itself; and it produces itself by its very own activity. It is not simply there; it exists only by being its own producer. What it thus produces is philosophy, and what we have to investigate is the series of such productions, the millennial work of thought in bringing itself forth, the voyage of discovery upon which thought embarks in order to discover itself. — Hegel
The first point was that thought, free thought, is in itself essentially concrete. This implies that it is alive, that it moves of itself. The infinite nature of spirit is its own process in itself, which means that it does not rest, that it is essentially productive and exists by producing. More precisely we can understand this movement as development; the concrete as active is essentially self-developing.
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Customarily we have in regard to what is in itself the high opinion that it is what truly is. To get to know God and the world is to get to know them in themselves. What is in itself, however, is not yet the true but only the abstract; it is the seed of what truly is, the tendency, the being-in-itself of the true. It is something simple, something which, of course, contains in itself multiple qualities, but in the form of simplicity – a content which is still hidden.
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The big difference consists in this: Man knows what he is, and only when he does so is he actually what he is. Without this, knowing reason is nothing, nor is freedom. Man is essentially reason; man and child, educated and uneducated, each is reason; or rather, the possibility of being reason is present in each, is given. Still, reason is of no use to the child, to the uneducated. It is only a possibility; and yet, not an empty but a real possibility, with its own orientation to fulfillment. Only the adult, the educated, knows through experience that he is what he is. The difference is simply that in the one case reason is present only as a tendency, only in itself, whereas in the other case it is so explicitly, beyond the form of possibility and posited in existence.
The whole difference in world-history is reducible to this difference. All men are rational, and the formal element in this rationality is human freedom; this is man’s nature, it belongs to his essence. Still, among many peoples slavery has existed, to some extent it still does, and people are satisfied with it. Orientals, for example, are men and as such free, and yet they are not free, because they have no consciousness of their freedom but are willing to accept every sort of religious and political despotism. The whole difference between Oriental peoples and those who are not subject to slavery is that the latter know that they are free, that to be free is proper to them.
The former are also in themselves free, but they do not exist as free. This, then, introduces an enormous difference into man’s world-historical situation, whether he is free merely in himself or whether he knows that it is his concept, his vocation, his nature, to be as a free individual.
— Hegel
There is an age-old assumption that reason distinguishes man from the beast. This we shall accept. What makes man nobler than the beast is what he possesses through reason. Whatever is human is so only to the extent that therein reason is active; no matter what its outward appearance may be, if it is human, reason makes it so. In this alone is man distinguished from the beast.
Can thought see its own limitations, and seeing its own limitation, it brings a different intelligence into being?
Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and therefore it cannot be depended upon.
It is really extraordinarily interesting to watch the operation of one's own thinking, just to observe how one thinks, where that reaction we call thinking, springs from. Obviously from memory. Is there a beginning to thought at all? If there is, can we find out its beginning- that is, the beginning of memory, because if we had no memory we would have no thought.
Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal.
To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.
Plotinus argues: "But if we must introduce these names for what we are seeking, though it is not accurate to do so, let us say again that, speaking accurately, we must not admit even a logical duality in the One, but we are using this present language in order to persuade our opponents, though it involves some deviation from accurate thought...We must be forgiven for the terms we use, if in speaking about Him in order to explain what we mean, we have to use language which we, in strict accuracy, do not admit to be applicable. As if must be understood with every term. 1"
So in this philosophy, 'thought' is by its very nature conditioned, it is 'of the order of time'; whereas 'intelligence' is 'that which reads between the lines', i.e. it is insight, apprehension of the real meaning, so is of a different order to discursive thought. — Wayfarer
To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.
So, I take Hegel to actually be speaking about something much nearer to nous (and perhaps the 'active intellect' of Aristotle) than what we casually and habitually convey by the use of the general term 'thought'. So I have used the word 'reason' in that top example, because it conveys the idea that we're not simply talking of 'discursive thought' in the sense of an internal dialogue, but in terms of 'the intelligence which sees the meaning of things'. — Wayfarer
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not. — Hegel
In respect of his statement about 'orientals', he is plainly reflecting the prejudices of his age, but it's worth noting in passing, that from the 'oriental' viewpoint, the very clever and apparently autonomous Western individual, although democratically and economically free, may yet still be a 'slave to passion', as very few seek to live in the light of the kind of 'reason' that Hegel is speaking of; it is indeed 'the road less travelled'. — Wayfarer
In such a time, a people, therefore, necessarily finds a satisfaction in the idea of virtue. Talk about virtue partly accompanies, partly replaces real virtue. On the other hand, pure universal Thought, being universal, is apt to bring the particular and unreflected – faith, confidence, custom – to reflection about itself and its immediate (simple and unreflected) existence. It thus shows up the limitation of unreflected life, partly by giving it reasons on hand by which to secede from its duties, partly by asking about reasons and the connection with universal thought. Then, in not finding the latter, it tries to shatter duty itself as without foundation.
Therewith appears the isolation of the individuals from each other and the whole, their aggressive selfishness and vanity, their seeking of advantage and satisfaction at the expense of the whole. For the inward principle of such isolation (not only produces the content but) the form of subjectivity – selfishness and corruption in the unbound passions and egotistic interests of men. — Hegel
Hegel= obscurantist, mystic. Russell did not understand him and it is my view that Hegel did not understand himself most of the time. — charleton
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not. — Hegel
I understand him, the meanings of all these terms are dynamically and systematically related — ff0
I'm not sure I'd characterise this as phenomenology, but standard metaphysics, this is not about experiencing life but conceptualising it. — charleton
In philosophy as such, in the present, most recent philosophy, is contained all that the work of millennia has produced; it is the result of all that has preceded it. And the same development of Spirit, looked at historically, is the history of philosophy. It is the history of all the developments which Spirit has undergone, a presentation of its moments or stages as they follow one another in time. Philosophy presents the development of thought as it is in and for itself, without addition; the history of philosophy is this development in time. Consequently the history of philosophy is identical with the system of philosophy. — Hegel
The 'familiar' is the 'how' of our grasping that we take for granted. — ff0
He's talking about shit you absorb, mostly uncritically, the points of reference we take for granted, and that this could be problematic "deceptive". — charleton
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. — Hegel
The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinity – he may look where he likes to find this: he will easily find for himself the means to procure something he can rave over and puff himself up withal. But philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying.
Still less must this kind of contentment, which holds science in contempt, take upon itself to claim that raving obscurantism of this sort is something higher than science. These apocalyptic utterances pretend to occupy the very centre and the deepest depths; they look askance at all definiteness and preciseness of meaning; and they deliberately hold back from conceptual thinking and the constraining necessities of thought, as being the sort of reflection which, they say, can only feel at home in the sphere of finitude.
— Hegel
They also assume that God or Truth is a frozen already-finished entity. All they have to do is snap the right word-numbers together. But for Hegel the meanings of the words evolve as we do philosophy. Even more radical, we create God (or self-conscious Reality) as we do philosophy. Or God creates himself through us as we try to figure out the truth about God/Reality. God has to misunderstand himself as a fixed object. God has to misunderstand language as a sort of math. Such creative errors are the stairway to reality becoming fully conscious of itself. — ff0
This is all very well and nice, but practicing what you preach is my minimum standard. If he wants to take the skeptical stance, he can't remain a Theist.
And if he thinks he has transcended the problems he lays out then he is deeply arrogant and wrong headed.
What use is Hegel when you have Hume whose skepticism he had till the end? — charleton
Calling self-knowing reality God and insisting that the cruelty in history is necessary for God to become God is far from ordinary theism. — ff0
It's still arrogant and lacking in skepticism. — charleton
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