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.but I'm wondering if we aren't reading a little too much into it. — WerMaat
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
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
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
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.Hegel is not entirely unsympathetic to the impulse of those he is criticizing. — Fooloso4
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
Correction/refinement welcome! — tim wood
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
But I'm not sure yet what this "qualitative leap" is supposed to be exactly? — WerMaat
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.
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 ...
... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.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
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
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
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
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
The effects, more evolutionary than revolutionary ? Leading to an exciting new world. — Amity
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Yes, I read that. However, I am wondering how long this took in real life.
How long was 'the winding path' ? — Amity
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
I think MU makes a similar point: — Amity
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.
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.
From the Greeks to Hegel. — Fooloso4
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
Still, I wouldn't describe it as revolutionary. — Amity
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
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
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.wondering if we aren't reading a little too much into it. — WerMaat
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
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
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.