… reason is purposive doing.
... purposive doing, purpose is the immediate, the motionless, which is self-moving, or, is subject.
Its abstract power to move is being-for-itself, or, pure negativity. For that reason, the result is the same as the beginning because the beginning is purpose – that is, the actual is the same as its concept only because the immediate, as purpose, has the self, or, pure actuality, within itself.
What has returned into itself is just the self, and the self is self-relating sameness and simplicity.
The need to represent the absolute as subject has helped itself to such propositions as “God is the eternal,” or “God is the moral order of the world,” or “God is love,” etc.
In such propositions, the true is directly posited as subject, but it is not presented as the movement of reflection taking-an-inward-turn.
One proposition of that sort begins with the word “God.” On its own, this is a meaningless sound, a mere name. It is only the predicate that says what the name is and is its fulfillment and its meaning. The empty beginning becomes actual knowledge only at the end of the proposition. To that extent, one cannot simply pass over in silence the reason why one cannot speak solely of the eternal, the moral order of the world, etc., or, as the ancients did, of pure concepts, of being, of the one, etc., or, of what the meaning is, without appending the meaningless sound as well.
However, the use of this word only indicates that it is neither a being nor an essence nor a universal per se which is posited; what is posited is what is reflected into itself, a subject.
... at the same time, this is something only anticipated. The subject is accepted as a fixed point on which the predicates are attached for their support through a movement belonging to what it is that can be said to know this subject and which itself is also not to be viewed as belonging to the point itself, but it is solely through this movement that the content would be portrayed as the subject.
... 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.
gebildet" means nothing but "formed". It has the second meaning of "educated", true, but 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
Yes, I think that this is right, but self-formation is a cultural formation. We are shaped by and within our culture. As individuals we are not wholly separate or other. To use the agricultural root from which we get culture, it is the soil in which we grow and are nourished. — Fooloso4
I don't see a reference to culture, to society or education in its literal sense. — WerMaat
prior existence of a material culture, subject to interpretation.. — Andy Blunden
What I am stressing is the importance of culture in the development of the thinking I. — Fooloso4
The notions of culture and education that are going back and forth, I'm agnostic on, but I am pretty sure that in as much as Hegelian motion is in things like the plant and the tree, I think he is going to argue that history/culture is similarly shaped and conditioned by impersonal movement - — tim wood
So, are you saying you don't know about - or recognise - the importance of culture ?
What particular notion of 'culture' do you have difficulty with ?
But you are 'pretty sure that...Hegel is is going to argue that history/culture is shaped by impersonal movement'.
Why would you think that ?
How could it be 'impersonal' ? — Amity
"25. That the true is only actual as a system, or, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the representation that expresses the absolute as spirit – the most sublime concept and the one which belongs to modernity and its religion.
The spiritual alone is the actual; it is the essence, or, what exists-in-itself. – It is what is self-comporting, or, the determinate itself, or, otherness and being-for- itself – and, in this determinateness, to be the self-enduring in its being-external-to-itself – or, it is in and for itself.
– However, it is first of all this being-in-and-for-itself for us, or, in itself, which is to say, it is spiritual substance. It has to become this for itself – it must be knowing of the spiritual, and it must be knowing of itself as spirit. This means that it must be, to itself, an object, but it must likewise immediately be a mediated object, which is to say, it must be a sublated object reflected into itself. It is for itself solely for us insofar as its spiritual content is engendered by itself. Insofar as the object for itself is also for itself, this self-engendering, the pure concept, is, to itself, the objective element in which it has its existence, and in this manner, it is, for itself in its existence, an object reflected into itself. Spirit knowing itself in that way as spirit is science. Science is its actuality, and science is the realm it builds for itself in its own proper element." — Hegel
The notions of culture and education that are going back and forth, I'm agnostic on, but I am pretty sure that in as much as Hegelian motion is in things like the plant and the tree, I think he is going to argue that history/culture is similarly shaped and conditioned by impersonal movement - — tim wood
...you are 'pretty sure that...Hegel is is going to argue that history/culture is shaped by impersonal movement'.
Why would you think that ?
How could it be 'impersonal' ? — Amity
...Or another way, it's all personal, but more accurately considered at the appropriate scale as "impersonal." — tim wood
WW1 was a war of individual people? Jim and Steve and Gunter and Heinrich? Or the immigration/refuge crisis in the world today - a matter of individuals not liking where they are? Or is there some more elemental force at work? — tim wood
23:
"The need to represent the absolute as subject has helped itself to such propositions as “God is the eternal,” or “God is the moral order of the world,” or “God is love,” etc." - Hegel.
Does Hegel intend for us to draw a connection between “God is love”, “The life of God and divine cognition ... as a game love plays with itself” (19),and the goal of philosophy as moving “nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of love of knowing and be actual knowing (5)? — Fooloso4
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.
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.
And what is meant by your question: 'is there some more elemental force at work' ?
What do you mean by 'elemental' ? Your 'clarification' needs clarifying. — Amity
That is, there is a scale appropriate to the actions and motivations of individuals, and that scale not-so-much appropriate for understanding movements on a larger scale. — tim wood
In as much as there is nothing personal, still, though, you are pressed for some reason or reasons. I think Hegel is going to investigate those reasons via his analysis of history, in a dialectic of history.
That is, there is a scale appropriate to the actions and motivations of individuals, and that scale not-so-much appropriate for understanding movements on a larger scale. — tim wood
I think the matter of scale you describe is important to what Hegel is presenting — Valentinus
There is no first principle of philosophy upon which everything else rests and is supported. Both the truth of a proposition and its negation are moments within the movement of the system of knowledge. — Fooloso4
https://www.marxist.com/science-old/dialecticalmaterialism.htmlThe dialectic of discussion. In a properly conducted debate, an idea is put forward (the Thesis) and is then countered by the opposing view (the Antithesis) which negates it. Finally, through a thorough process of discussion, which explores the issue concerned from all points of view and discloses all the hidden contradictions, we arrive at a conclusion (the Synthesis). We may or may not arrive at agreement but by the very process of discussion, we have deepened our knowledge and understanding and raised the whole discussion onto a different plane.
Contrary to the assumption that the ground or principles of reason must be firm and unchanging, the movement of reason has no fixed ground. A principle is a starting point. The positive movement is via the negative, the negation of what is taken as true. It is not the truth but in the movement, the development, the working out of truth. — Fooloso4
That the true is only actual as a system, or, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the representation that expresses the absolute as spirit – the most sublime concept and the one which belongs to modernity and its religion.
The spiritual alone is the actual; it is the essence, or, what exists-in-itself. – It is what is self-comporting, or, the determinate itself, or, otherness and being-for-itself – and, in this determinateness, to be the self-enduring in its being-external-to-itself – or, it is in and for
Itself.
However, it is first of all this being-in-and-for-itself for us, or, in itself, which is to say, it is spiritual substance. It has to become this for itself – it must be knowing of the spiritual, and it must be knowing of itself as spirit. This means that it must be, to itself, an object, but it must likewise immediately be a mediated object, which is to say, it must be a sublated object reflected into itself.
It is for itself solely for us insofar as its spiritual content is engendered by itself.
Insofar as the object for itself is also for itself, this self-engendering, the pure concept, is, to itself, the objective element in which it has its existence, and in this manner, it is, for itself in its existence, an object reflected into itself.
Spirit knowing itself in that way as spirit is science. Science is its actuality, and science is the realm it builds for itself in its own proper element.
I take this to mean that the object, that is, spirit becoming an object to itself, is self-engendering, it conceives itself. It is pure concept, reason, logos.
Spirit knowing itself in that way as spirit is science. Science is its actuality, and science is the realm it builds for itself in its own proper element.
Man does not engender the concept but thinks it, develops it dialectically, actualizes it. — Fooloso4
(He opens a tome [of the New Testament] and begins.)
It says: ‘In the beginning was the Word [Wort].’
Already I am stopped. It seems absurd.
The Word does not deserve the highest prize,I must translate it otherwise
If I am well inspired and not blind.
It says: In the beginning was the Mind [Sinn].
Ponder that first line, wait and see,
Lest you should write too hastily.
Is mind the all-creating source?It ought to say: In the beginning there was Force [Kraft].
Yet something warns me as I grasp the pen,
That my translation must be changed again.
The spirit helps me. Now it is exact.
I write: In the beginning was the Act [Tat]
— Goethe's Faust
Ten years of office work, of literary projects left incomplete, finally took their toll. In 1786, in a spirit of adventure characteristic more of a young poet than of a middle-aged civil servant, Goethe abruptly threw aside his work and left Weimar without telling friends and colleagues where he was going. Travelling under an assumed identity, he made his way to Italy, where he spent the next two years studying art and enjoying the country that he described, in one of his most famous poems, as “the land where lemon blossoms blow, / And through dark leaves the golden oranges glow.”
— Adam Kirsch
The concept of Bildung—a word that means learning and education but also implies a cultivation of the self and of maturity—was central to Goethe’s thought, and he, in turn, made it central to German culture. For Thomas Mann, whose admiration of Goethe took the form of spiritual imitation, Goethe was above all an educator, but one who had first to learn, through experience, the wisdom he taught. Mann wrote that a “vocation towards educating others does not spring from inner harmony, but rather from inner uncertainties, disharmony, difficulty—from the difficulty of knowing one’s own self.” — Adam Kirsch
When I think of spirit, beginnings and qualitative leaps, Goethe comes to mind. With his:
In the beginning was the act. Im Anfung war die Tat - Faust.
As opposed to the Word of the Bible. — Amity
Perhaps what Goethe was getting at is the impotence of mere words. Actions not words are primary. Hegel's use of terms such as 'logos', 'reason', and 'concept' are self-generative, that is, not passive descriptions of something separate and other. — Fooloso4
3 brief statements of facts (no metaphors or similes) are followed by an assertion for the future.
Uber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh.
In allen Wipfeln
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch.
Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde,
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
By the very order of the poem, Goethe is embraced in it, the last link in the chain of being.
From the inanimate to the animate, from the mineral, through the vegetable, to the animal kingdom, from the hilltop, to the treetops, to the birds, and so at last to man.
The subjective and objective experience are completely fused.
The appearances of Nature are rendered, but also the organic relations between them; man's mind is shown as the final link in the chain of creation, Nature become conscious of itself, but it also takes its place within nature. It does not stand outside or over against it.
It was Goethe's way of being - the poet; not here offering conscious opinions, intellectual convictions and philosophical beliefs. The latter don't always express the self, they may even disguise.
At the level of his deepest thought, the subjective and objective modes are quite evidently harmonised.' — Wilkinson and Willoughby
No, I don't think that's it. Goethe was a poet and thinker. Faust was the character trying to translate the New Testament into German. From what I remember, he was seeking inspiration having dried up in more ways than one. Then came the Spirit... — Amity
It was Goethe's way of being - the poet; not here offering conscious opinions, intellectual convictions and philosophical beliefs. The latter don't always express the self, they may even disguise.
At the level of his deepest thought, the subjective and objective modes are quite evidently harmonised.' — Wilkinson and Willoughby
... [posit] that the true shape of truth lies in its scientific rigor – or, what is the same thing, in asserting that truth has the element of its existence solely in concepts –
If Man does not engender the concept, then who ? — Amity
Isn't it the translation of logos that Goethe's Faust is grappling with, the term translated as wort in German and word in English, as in: "In the beginning was the ..."? — Fooloso4
Faust is moved the the spirit. If that is the case then doesn't this point to the insufficiency of words, that words alone are not what provides the movement both for him and in the beginning? I take it as being for this reason that he translates logos as deed or act, something done rather than something said. — Fooloso4
Goethe does that elsewhere. Possibly even at the same time. One can write poetry even as one studies rocks. He was multi-talented that guy. I mentioned his theories earlier.I think Hegel's response might be that Goethe represents it but does not raise it to the level of science — Fooloso4
Self-engendering spirit. — Fooloso4
26. Pure self-knowing in absolute otherness, this ether (sic) as such, is the very ground and soil of science, or, knowing in its universality. The beginning of philosophy presupposes or demands that consciousness is situated in this element. However, this element itself has its culmination and its transparency only through the movement of its coming-to-be. It is pure spirituality, or, the universal in the mode of simple immediacy.
Because it is the immediacy of spirit, because it is the substance of spirit, it is transfigured essentiality, reflection that is itself simple, or, is immediacy; it is being that is a reflective turn into itself. For its part, science requires that self-consciousness shall have elevated itself into this ether in order to be able to live with science and to live in science, and, for that matter, to be able to live at all.
Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science provide him at least with the ladder to reach this standpoint. The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being. However much the standpoint of consciousness, which is to say, the standpoint of knowing objective things to be opposed to itself and knowing itself to be opposed to them, counts as the other to science – the other, in which consciousness is at one with itself, counts instead as the loss of spirit – still, in comparison, the element of science possesses for consciousness an other-worldly remoteness in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself.
Each of these two parts seems to the other to be an inversion of the truth. For the natural consciousness to entrust itself immediately to science would be to make an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk upside down all of a sudden. The compulsion to accept this unaccustomed attitude and to transport oneself in that way would be, so it would seem, a violence imposed on it with neither any advance preparation nor with any necessity. – Science may be in its own elf what it will, but in its relationship to immediate self-consciousness, it presents itself as an inversion of the latter, or, because immediate self-consciousness is the principle of actuality, by immediate self-consciousness existing for itself outside of science, science takes the form of non-actuality.
Accordingly, science has to unite that element with itself or instead to show both that such an element belongs to itself and how it belongs to it. Lacking actuality, science is the in-itself, the purpose, which at the start is still something inner, at first not as spirit but only as spiritual substance. It has to express itself and become for itself, and this means nothing else than that it has to posit self-consciousness as being at one with itself.
27. This coming-to-be of science itself, or, of knowing, is what is presented in this phenomenology of spirit as the first part of the system of science. Knowing, as it is at first, or, as immediate spirit, is devoid of spirit, is sensuous consciousness. In order to become genuine knowing, or, in order to beget the element of science which is its pure concept, immediate spirit must laboriously travel down a long path.
– As it is established in its content and in the shapes that appear in it, this coming-to-be appears a bit differently from the way a set of instructions on how to take unscientific consciousness up to and into science would appear; it also appears somewhat differently from the way laying the foundations for science would appear. – In any case, it is something very different from the inspiration which begins immediately, like a shot from a pistol, with absolute knowledge, and which has already finished with all the other standpoints simply by declaring that it will take no notice of them." — Hegel/Pinkard
Science may be in its own self what it will, but in its relationship to immediate self-consciousness, it presents itself as an inversion of the latter, or, because immediate self-consciousness is the principle of actuality, by immediate self-consciousness existing for itself outside of science, science takes the form of non-actuality. — Hegel/Pinkard
The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being. — Hegel/Pinkard
The individual’s right is based on his absolute self-sufficiency, which he knows he possesses in every shape of his knowing, for in every shape, whether recognized by science or not, and no matter what the content might be, the individual is at the same time the absolute form, or, he has immediate self-certainty; and, if one were to prefer this expression, he thereby has an unconditioned being.
— Hegel/Pinkard
If I had the opportunity to cross the river and pour some of my blood into Kierkegaard's bowl in Hades, I would ask him about this passage. — Valentinus
According to standard interpretations of 19th-century European philosophy, a stark ’either / or’ divided Hegel and Kierkegaard, and this divide profoundly shaped the subsequent development of Continental philosophy well into the 20th century. While left Hegelians carried on the legacy of Hegel’s rationalism and universalism, existentialists and postmodernists found inspiration, at least in part, in Kierkegaard’s critique of systematic philosophy, rationality, and socially integrated subjectivity. In Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel Reconsidered, Jon Stewart provides a detailed historical argument which challenges the standard assumption that Kierkegaard’s position was developed in opposition to Hegel’s philosophy, and as such is antithetical to it. — Matthew Edgar review
I guess there was more to it.
Anti-religion ? What comes first...not words. Nor a Bible. — Amity
I think Hegel's response might be that Goethe represents it but does not raise it to the level of science
— Fooloso4
Goethe does that elsewhere. — Amity
Yeah, I got that. I just don't get it. What is there at the beginning... — Amity
Is it science in Hegel's sense of the term, that is, knowledge of the whole? — Fooloso4
https://philosophyisnotaluxury.com/2013/06/14/goethes-method-of-doing-science/The method of science that Goethe practiced was in certain respects diametrically opposed to the objective science described above. Goethe believed that the outer physical world and the inner world of our senses were mirror images of each other, the inside view and the outside view of the same reality. Therefore, paying attention to the outer world leads to necessary inner responses in us that tell us directly about qualities of what we are observing. The science that Goethe advocated was also one of deep observation. The difference that Goethe brought was that the scientist, while observing the outside world, would pay attention to their own inner responses which would reveal essential elements of what was being observed. It was in a sense a science of subjectivity, or what you might see as a mystical approach to science. — Jeff Carreira
[my bolds]His literary works certainly addressed contemporary philosophical concerns: Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia in Tauris) (1779–86) seems a prophetic dramatization of the ethical and religious autonomy Kant was to proclaim from 1785; in his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (The Elective Affinities) (1809) a mysterious natural or supernatural world of chemistry, magnetism or Fate, such as ‘Naturphilosophie’ envisaged, seems to underlie and perhaps determine a human story of spiritual adultery; in Faust, particularly Part Two, the tale of a pact or wager with the Devil seems to develop into a survey of world cultural history, which has been held to have overtones of Schelling, Hegel or even Marx. But whatever their conceptual materials, Goethe’s literary works require literary rather than philosophical analysis. There are, however, certain discrete concepts prominent in his scientific work, or in the expressions of his ‘wisdom’ – maxims, essays, autobiographies, letters and conversations – with which Goethe’s name is particularly associated and which are capable of being separately discussed. Notable among these are: Nature and metamorphosis (Bildung), polarity and ‘intensification’ (Steigerung), the ‘primal phenomena’ (Urphänomene), ‘the daemonic’ (das Dämonische) and renunciation (Entsag — Nicholas Boyle
http://journal.telospress.com/content/1968/1/34.abstractIn two different media, poetic drama and philosophic prose, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) explored the same subject: man's perilous journey to discover his consciousness along a course of doubt and despair. — Ingrid Poole - abstract
The basis of this new epistemology was the “fundamental conviction that the relation of the human mind to the world was ultimately not dualistic but participatory…. In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, self-contained and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it ‘objectively’ and register it from without. Rather, nature’s unfolding truth emerges only with the active participation of the human mind. Nature’s reality is not merely phenomenal, nor is it independent and objective; rather, it is something that comes into being through the very act of human cognition. Nature becomes intelligible to itself through the human mind” (Tarnas, 1991).
If I remember correctly and understood it correctly (it has been a very long time since I last read Hegel) it begins with the eternal negating itself and giving rise to time. In its embryonic stage it contains all that it will come to be, but must work itself out over time, eventually there is the development of consciousness and finally self-consciousness and knowledge of itself as the whole. — Fooloso4
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