12: ... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept of itself.
13: 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.
13: 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.
17: In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject.
17: ... substantiality comprises within itself the universal, or, it comprises not only the immediacy of knowing but also the immediacy of being, or, immediacy for knowing.
17: However much taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed, still that was in part because of an instinctive awareness that in such a view self-consciousness only perishes and is not preserved.
18: Furthermore, the living substance is the being that is in truth subject, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of self-positing, or, that it is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself.
18: The true is not an original unity as such, or, not an immediate unity as such. It is the coming-to-be of itself, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal and has its end for its beginning, and which is actual only through this accomplishment and its end.
I think you are entirely right. It would be helpful to circle back. After all, the circle is the best and most powerful image of the self-movement of spirit. Since it is so easy to get lost in the details and opacity of Hegel's writing, before moving forward I want to collect a few things together that he has said. — Fooloso4
19. The life of God and divine cognition might thus be expressed as a game love plays with itself.
Precisely because the form is as essential to the essence as the essence is to itself, the essence must not be grasped and expressed as mere essence, which is to say, as immediate substance or as the pure self-intuition of the divine. Rather, it must likewise be grasped as form in the entire richness of the developed form, and only thereby is it grasped and expressed as the actual.
20: The true is the whole. However, the whole is only the essence completing itself through its own development. This much must be said of the absolute: It is essentially a result, and only at the end is it what it is in truth.
The beginning, the principle, or, the absolute as it is at first, or, as it is immediately expressed, is only the universal. But just as my saying “all animals” can hardly count as an expression of zoology, it is likewise obvious that the words, “absolute,” “divine,” “eternal,” and so on, do not express what is contained in them; – and it is only such words which in fact express intuition as the immediate.
Whatever is more than such a word, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a becoming-other which must be redeemed, or, it is a mediation.
21: ... mediation is nothing but self-moving self-equality, or, it is a reflective turn into itself, the moment of the I existing-for-itself, pure negativity, or, simple coming-to-be.
The I, or, coming-to-be, this mediating, is, on account of its simplicity, immediacy in the very process of coming-to-be and is the immediate itself. – Hence, reason is misunderstood if reflection is excluded from the truth and is not taken to be a positive moment of the absolute.
Reflection is what makes truth into the result, but it is likewise what sublates the opposition between the result and its coming-to-be. This is so because this coming-to-be is just as simple and hence not different from the form of the true, which itself proves itself to be simple in its result. Coming-to-be is instead this very return into simplicity.
However much the embryo is indeed in itself a person, it is still not a person for itself; the embryo is a person for itself only as a culturally formed and educated rationality which has made itself into what it is in itself.
I think Hegel at no point goes theologica — tim wood
... taking God to be the one substance
The life of God and divine cognition ...
I also think even in his time it was unwise to be to clearly or explicitly anti-religious. — tim wood
... taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed ... — tim wood
Thus, not only is the former anticipation that the absolute is subject not the actuality of this concept, but it even makes that actuality impossible, for it posits the concept as a point wholly at rest, whereas the concept is self-movement." — tim wood
I asked about the reversibility of terms because the logic that seems to be operating here does not seem to be focused on corresponding necessity to event in the way other ideas of causality are often discussed. — Valentinus
The first question should not be whether he believed in God but what he means by God. — Fooloso4
Like talking about man when he is but an embryo, we should wait to see how things develop. — Fooloso4
Chapter 7
"Religion"
One of the great, enduring mysteries of Hegel scholarship is the role of religion in his mature theory, including the Phenomenology. More than a century and a half ago, the breakup of the Hegelian school after his death into different factions already turned on different approaches to this mystery. In simplest terms, the orthodox, or Hegelian middle, desired to maintain what was perceived as his synthesis of religion and philosophy, the Hegelian right wished to subordinate philosophy to religion, and the Hegelian left wanted to eliminate the religious component entirely.
The idea that Hegel is a basically religious thinker is very strong, for instance, in British Hegelianism, which routinely relates all phenomena to the self-development of religious spirit that is equated to the Christian God, thereby further expanding the traditional right-wing reading of Hegel. — Tom Rockmore
That sort of thing reminds me of:
Thus, not only is the former anticipation that the absolute is subject not the actuality of this concept, but it even makes that actuality impossible, for it posits the concept as a point wholly at rest, whereas the concept is self-movement."
— tim wood — Valentinus
Hegel expresses the same idea in yet another way, this time making explicit that it is not just something that occurs in the consciousness of the individual:
— Fooloso4
However much the embryo is indeed in itself a person, it is still not a person for itself; the embryo is a person for itself only as a culturally formed and educated rationality which has made itself into what it is in itself. — Hegel
While the importance of culture was recognized by the Greeks, it was to a large degree atemporal. The importance of history as self-moving and self-development was not a factor. The truth was regarded as unchanging. Today both views are represented and defended. — Fooloso4
However, the commencement of cultural education will first of all also have to carve out some space for the seriousness of a fulfilled life, which in turn leads one to the experience of the crux of the matter, so that even when the seriousness of the concept does go into the depths of the crux of the matter, this kind of acquaintance and judgment will still retain its proper place in conversation.
So, becoming all that you can be depends not only on capacity for reason but being part of a society of others with whom you can relate and depend on for nourishment and enrichment. Combined with reflection it leads the way to an improved understanding of particulars and the universal. Is that about right ? — Amity
I am surprised that the importance of history in or as self-development wasn't recognised by the Greeks. — Amity
What did they see as the truth ? — Amity
How does this compare with the Romans ? — Amity
Yes, the development of the individual is through the development of the culture. But also, it is "the few" the philosophers who are responsible for the development of the culture. — Fooloso4
with Hegel Heraclitus lives to fight another day. — Fooloso4
So, we should thank our lucky stars ? For the 'few' - who knew what to do? — Amity
And the opposing view ? — Amity
However much the embryo is indeed in itself a person, it is still not a person for itself; the embryo is a person for itself only as a culturally formed and educated rationality which has made itself into what it is in itself. — Hegel
It is not the capacity for rationality but the culturally formed and educated rationality that allows the person to become for herself what she is in herself. While the importance of culture was recognized by the Greeks, it was to a large degree atemporal. — Fooloso4
The English goes:für sich ist er es nur als gebildete Vernunft — Hegel
is a person for itself only as a culturally formed and educated rationality — Hegel
... which has made itself into what it is in itself. — Hegel
Hegel's context leaves it open whether the rationality has simply "formed" and developed itself, or whether it was "educated" from an outside source. And the word "cultural" does not show up at all. — WerMaat
I feel that Hegel is leaning more towards the self-formed. — WerMaat
Bildung (German: [ˈbɪldʊŋ], "education, formation, etc.") refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation (as related to the German for: creation, image, shape), wherein philosophy and education are linked in a manner that refers to a process of both personal and cultural maturation.
The concept of Bildung. What is a fundamental theme of Hegel's philosophy is Bildung. This term might be translated as 'education', but it could also be rendered, more appropriately in many contexts, as 'formation', 'development' or 'culture'. For Hegel, the term refers to the formative self-development of mind or spirit (Geist), regarded as a social and historical process. Bildung is part of the life process of a spiritual entity: a human being, a society, a historical tradition. (Allen W. Wood, "Hegel on Education". https://web.stanford.edu/~allenw/webpapers/HegelEd.doc
"24. Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, this in particular can be underscored: It is only as a science or as a system that knowing is actual and can be given an exposition;
and that any further so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, if it is true, is for this reason alone also false just because it is a fundamental proposition or a principle.
– It is consequently very easily refuted. Its refutation consists in demonstrating its defects; however, it is defective because it is only the universal, or, only a principle, or, it is only the beginning.
If the refutation is thorough, then it is derived from and developed out of that fundamental proposition or principle itself – the refutation is not pulled off by bringing in counter-assertions and impressions external to the principle. Such a refutation would thus genuinely be the development of the fundamental proposition itself; it would even be the proper augmentation of the principle’s own defectiveness if it were not to make the mistake of focusing solely on its negative aspect without taking note of its results and the advances it has made in their positive aspect.
– Conversely, the genuinely positive working out of the beginning is at the same time just as much a negative posture towards its beginning; namely, a negative posture towards its one-sided form, which is to be at first only immediately, or, to be purpose. It may thereby be taken to be the refutation of what constitutes the ground of the system, but it is better taken as showing that the ground, or the principle, of the system is in fact only its beginning. — Hegel, trans. Pinkard
I'm not disagreeing. But I still posit that this is not in the specific passage I quoted - Hegel is using the Embryo-to-aware-self as a metaphor, he's not expounding a theory of education.The development of the thinking I is a historical development not something that develops on its own in each individual. — Fooloso4
Hegel is using the Embryo-to-aware-self as a metaphor, he's not expounding a theory of education. — WerMaat
You don't go to a restaurant to get what you like, rather you go to a restaurant to (because you) like what you get. — tim wood
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