When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.” — Stephen Crane
He who despises himself still nevertheless respects himself as one who despises. — Nietzsche
Of course Hegel takes sides with the "grown-ups" here. He himself clearly wanted (and achieved) worldly recognition. The "solid and substantial" is (to me) the objective and the social. I remember shifting from a vision of myself as an artist (more of the God-like creator role) to the scientist. There was something beautiful about the cold and the objective. It had a "weight" that music, for instance, did not have. Of course I'd still rather live Mick Jagger's life from the beginning than Isaac Newton's. But it's easier (though not easy) to make it in an objective discipline, especially if you're ambivalent about becoming a fixed avatar in the mind's of your consumers. (Fame is commonly craved and yet I'm sure there's a hellish aspect to it.)The next form of this negativity of irony is, on the one hand, the vanity of everything factual, moral, and of intrinsic worth, the nullity of everything objective and absolutely valid. If the ego remains at this standpoint, everything appears to it as null and vain, except its own subjectivity which therefore becomes hollow and empty and itself mere vanity.[53] But, on the other hand, the ego may, contrariwise, fail to find satisfaction in this self-enjoyment and instead become inadequate to itself, so that it now feels a craving for the solid and the substantial, for specific and essential interests. — Hegel
Of course we call dreamers childish, and perhaps they are. But they are childish in relation to our adult, business-like selves — Ignignot
Some of us dream of being great writers or world-historical philosophers, which is to say we dream of being Christ figures, really. — Ignignot
I guess it is a shallow age, but I wonder whether "deep" art has ever been mainstream or whether we view the past through the lens of its best works. — Ignignot
A few painters occasionally did something grand and spiritual, — Ignignot
secular cathedrals (museums). — Ignignot
Like the Underground Man of Dostoevsky who wanted to look very intelligent at least if he could not be handsome.) — Ignignot
Some of the past's best works were mainstream at the time, so I don't think that's the dichotomy. Bach or Beethoven were successful in their time. — Noble Dust
Of course Notes from Underground is about (among other things) consciousness in excess as a curse. But self-consciousness is a big part of his disease. He obsesses over slights, obsesses over how he looks to others, experiences himself as a object of contempt when he wants to be admired. The Crane poem about the suicide arriving at the sky gets the dark humor right.I never interpreted that book that way, but I guess I can see that. I'm not sure what you mean by philosophical glamour. As far as the shallowness of mainstream music, I think that has as much to do with money as anything else. Music now is a capitalistic money-making industry; that wasn't the case until about 100 years ago. In the past, the gatekeepers were wealthy patrons; rub someone wrong and you don't get any funding, but now it's just economics. Of course there's a philosophical underpinning as to why wealth and beauty and youth are worshipped in this age as well. That's tied to nihilism and the "means with no ends" era of the internet, and technology that evolves on a bell-curve... — Noble Dust
Currently TV is in something like a golden age. I don't read many novels these days, since I'm finding such sophisticated and well-executed narratives in various shows. — Ignignot
Of course Notes from Underground is about (among other things) consciousness in excess as a curse. But self-consciousness is a big part of his disease. He obsesses over slights, obsesses over how he looks to others, experiences himself as a object of contempt when he wants to be admired. — Ignignot
This echoes what I mean by "haunted by God." — Ignignot
There are A-list philosophers who one might feel ashamed of not having read, for instance. Other philosophers are taboo. You lose points for suggesting their ideas are worth talking about. — Ignignot
Do you think the Golden Age of TV is a mediocrity, or a form of greatness, or something in between, or what? — Noble Dust
Can you explain this concept further? I'm very intrigued by it, but also confused by your obtuse language in describing it. — Noble Dust
a mid-late 30s recovering artist who had shifted to academia (pure mathematics) but was still in touch with his Blake & also Stirner. — csalisbury
Then: you build up a persona and self-image, half-knowing its false, in order to re-position yourself in a way that will restore things to how they're supposed to be. — csalisbury
I take your point. Still, when we speak as "philosophers" (or present a crystallization of our living personality in a blog post), we are indeed (like it or not) carving a persona, which is to say an image of ourselves in the mind of another. We do not have direct access to one another. We do tend to attempt at least to control this image. And this makes sense, since we largely define ourselves in terms of the inferior other (liberals versus conservatives is an easy example). We know all too well (from our own dark hearts) how quick to stereotype and categorize that pesky, self-preserving Other can be.And if you think about yourself that way, then you start to think about the whole world that way. Not people, but personas. A persona can only see personas. That kinda thing. — csalisbury
To speak is an act of the will; thus, creation is a product of the Will: as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the Will: not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the imagination – the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of nothing. As the eternity of the world or of matter imports nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness of the world. — F
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and reality: nothing else than the ability to posit everything real as unreal – everything conceivable as possible: nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-will.
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Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. — F
I didn't much like Feuerback, or Marx, for that matter, or any of other European atheists intellectuals. My view always was, they're reacting against the extreme pressure to conform that characterised the Western and European religious tradition. — Wayfarer
Not to invent, but to discover, “to unveil existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis, – since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology; – but in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism – at least in the sense of this work – is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature. — F
'Exuberance is beauty' applies to both of them, but Stirner has lost points with me since I have discovered him to be an elaborate footnote to Hegel.still in touch with his Blake. & also Stirner. — csalisbury
And Feuerbach was another elaboration, though with an important materialistic emphasis.Spirit thus rises to itself or attains to self-consciousness, and by this means finds within itself its own objectivity, which it was previously compelled to seek in the outer and sensuous forms of material existence. Henceforth it perceives and knows itself in this its unity with itself; and it is precisely this clear self-consciousness of spirit that constitutes the fundamental principle of Romantic Art. But the necessary consequence is that in this last stage of the development of art the beauty of the Classic ideal, which is beauty under its most perfect form and in its purest essence, can no longer be deemed a finality; for spirit now knows that its true nature is not to brought into a corporeal form. It comprehends that it belongs to its essence to abandon this external reality in order to return upon itself, and expressly posits or assumes outer reality to be an existence incapable of fully representing spirit.
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The true content of Romantic thought, then, is absolute internality, the adequate and appropriate form of which is spiritual subjectivity, or conscious personality, as comprehension of its own independence and freedom. Now that which is in itself infinite and wholly universal is absolute negativity of all that is finite and particular. It is the simple unity with self which has destroyed all mutually exclusive objects, all processes of nature, with their circle of genesis, decay, and renewal which, in short, has put an end to all limitation of spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular divinities into itself. In this pantheon all the gods are dethroned. The flame of subjectivity has consumed them. In place of plastic polytheism, art now knows but one God, one Spirit, one absolute independence, which, as absolute knowing and determining, abides in free unity with itself, and no longer falls asunder into those special characters and functions whose sole bond of unity was the constraint of a mysterious necessity. — Hegel
Note that there's not much difference between Hegel and The Irony. Hegel is just the "mature" man who sees that he also wants something solid, objective, social. He's a "god hauntedBut in order that spirit may thus realise its infinite nature it is so much the more necessary that it should rise above mere natural and finite personality in order to reach the height of the Absolute. In other terms, the human soul must bring itself into actual existence as a person (Subjekt) possessing self consciousness and rational will; and this it accomplishes through becoming itself pervaded with the absolutely substantial. On the other hand, the substantial, the true, must not be understood as located outside of humanity, nor must the anthropomorphism of Greek thought be swept away. Rather the human as actual subjectivity or personality must become the principle, and thus, as we have already seen, anthropomorphism for the first time attains to its ultimate fullness and perfection. — Hegel
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. — F
Hegel begins with a radical critique of conventional ways of thinking about God. God is commonly described as a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth. Hegel says this is already a mistake. If God is to be truly infinite, truly unlimited, then God cannot be ‘a being’, because ‘a being’, that is, one being (however powerful) among others, is already limited by its relations to the others. It’s limited by not being X, not being Y, and so forth. But then it’s clearly not unlimited, not infinite! To think of God as ‘a being’ is to render God finite. [WF- this is also a point that is made by Paul Tillich.]
But if God isn’t ‘a being’, what is God? Here Hegel makes two main points. The first is that there’s a sense in which finite things like you and me fail to be as real as we could be, because what we are depends to a large extent on our relations to other finite things. If there were something that depended only on itself to make it what it is, then that something would evidently be more fully itself than we are, and more fully real, as itself. This is why it’s important for God to be infinite: because this makes God more himself (herself, itself) and more fully real, as himself (herself, itself), than anything else is. [WF - I don't quite get why 'infinite' here, but otherwise, this is simply a re-statement of the dependent nature of contingent beings vs the 'self-originated' first cause.)
Hegel’s second main point is that this something that’s more fully real than we are isn’t just a hypothetical possibility, because we ourselves have the experience of being more fully real, as ourselves, at some times than we are at other times. We have this experience when we step back from our current desires and projects and ask ourselves, what would make the most sense, what would be best overall, in these circumstances? When we ask a question like this, we make ourselves less dependent on whatever it was that caused us to feel the desire or to have the project. We experience instead the possibility of being self-determining, through our thinking about what would be best. But something that can conceive of being self-determining in this way, seems already to be more ‘itself’, more real as itself, than something that’s simply a product of its circumstances. [WF - similar to Maslow's 'self-actualised beings']
Putting these two points together, Hegel arrives at a substitute for the conventional conception of God that he criticized. If there is a higher degree of reality that goes with being self-determining (and thus real qua oneself), and if we ourselves do in fact achieve greater self-determination at some times than we achieve at other times, then it seems that we’re familiar in our own experience with some of the higher degree of reality that we associate with God. Perhaps we aren’t often aware of the highest degree of this reality, or the sum of all of this reality, which would be God himself (herself, etc.). But we are aware of some of it – as the way in which we ourselves seem to be more fully present, more fully real, when instead of just letting ourselves be driven by whatever desires we currently feel, we ask ourselves what would be best overall. We’re more fully real, in such a case, because we ourselves are playing a more active role, through thought, than we play when we simply let ourselves be driven by our current desires.
What is God, then? God is the fullest reality, achieved through the self-determination of everything that’s capable of any kind or degree of self-determination. Thus God emerges out of beings of limited reality, including ourselves.
Note that I haven’t said that God is ourselves, or that God is the world, or (as Spinoza said) that God is Nature. Instead, I’ve said that God is the fullest reality, arising out of ourselves, the world, and nature. This doesn’t reduce God to us, the world, or nature, because the God that we’re talking about is more fully real than they are. There is a process of increasing reality at work here, rather than some underlying ‘stuff’ that’s simply the paradigm of what’s ‘real’.
The explicit discussions of the 'distinction of man from Nature' I recall are those from Indian philosophy, although usually described in terms of 'self and other'. — Wayfarer
Hegel was not in any case an atheist, and he also had some affinities with mysticism. — Wayfarer
He doesn't strike me as the typical theist, though.Equally unsatisfactory is the merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts. On the contrary our earnest endeavour must be directed to the recognition of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day; viz. that of the possibility of knowing God: or rather — since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question — the doctrine that it is impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in holy Scripture as the highest duty, — that we should not merely love, but know God, — the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there said; viz. that it is the Spirit (der Geist) that leads into Truth, knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead. While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge, and outside the limit of all human things, we have the convenient licence of wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True. On the other hand, the vanity and egotism which characterise it find, in this false position, ample justification and the pious modesty which puts far from it the knowledge of God, can well estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis - that Reason governs and has governed the World — and the question of the possibility of a Knowledge of God, chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the imputation against Philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths, or of having occasion to be so in which is insinuated the suspicion that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is, that in recent times Philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian religion God has revealed Himself, — that is, he has given us to understand what He is; so that He is no longer a concealed or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes no narrow-hearted souls or empty heads for his children; but those whose spirit is of itself indeed, poor, but rich in the knowledge of Him; and who regard this knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of the thinking spirit, which has resulted from the revelation of the Divine Being as its original basis, must ultimately advance to the intellectual comprehension of what was presented in the first instance, to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for understanding that rich product of active Reason, which the History of the World offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess admiration for the wisdom of God, as displayed in animals, plants, and isolated occurrences. But, if it be allowed that Providence manifests itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in Universal History? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But Divine Wisdom, i.e. Reason., is one and the same in the great as in the little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realising the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom, is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicaea, — a justification of the ways of God, — which Leibnitz attempted metaphysically in his method, i.e. in indefinite abstract categories, — so that the ill that is found in the World may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil. — Hegel
When we state the true form of truth to be its scientific character – or, what is the same thing, when it is maintained that truth finds the medium of its existence in notions or conceptions alone – I know that this seems to contradict an idea with all its consequences which makes great pretensions and has gained widespread acceptance and conviction at the present time. A word of explanation concerning this contradiction seems, therefore, not out of place, even though at this stage it can amount to no more than a dogmatic assurance exactly like the view we are opposing. If, that is to say, truth exists merely in what, or rather exists merely as what, is called at one time intuition, at another immediate knowledge of the Absolute, Religion, Being – not being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itself – from that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for systematic philosophical exposition. The Absolute on this view is not to be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited; it is not its conception, but the feeling of it and intuition of it that are to have the say and find expression.
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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.
Φ 10. 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. But just as there is a breadth which is emptiness, there is a depth which is empty too: as we may have an extension of substance which overflows into finite multiplicity without the power of keeping the manifold together, in the same way we may have an insubstantial intensity which, keeping itself in as mere force without actual expression, is no better than superficiality. The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself when spending and giving out its substance. Moreover, when this unreflective emotional knowledge makes a pretence of having immersed its own very self in the depths of the absolute Being, and of philosophizing in all holiness and truth, it hides from itself the fact that instead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for all measurable precision and definiteness, simply attests in its own case the fortuitous character of its content, and in the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams. — Hegel
When the student Feuerbach presented his own theory to Professor Hegel, Hegel refused to reply positively to it.
I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day; viz. that of the possibility of knowing God: or rather - since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question — the doctrine that it is impossible to know God. — Hegel
I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis - that Reason governs and has governed the World - and the question of the possibility of a Knowledge of God — Hegel
In Professor Tucker's words, Hegelianism was a "philosophic religion of self in the form of a theory of history. The religion is founded on an identification of the self with God" 1 It should not be necessary to add at this point that "the self here is not the individual, but the collective organic species 'self.'" In a youthful essay on "The Positivity of the Christian Religion," written at the age of 25, Hegel revealingly objects to Christianity for "separating" man and God except "in one isolated individual" (Jesus), and placing God in another and higher world, to which man's activity could contribute nothing. Four years later, in 1799, Hegel resolved this problem by offering his own religion, in his "The Spirit of Christianity." In contrast to orthodox Christianity, in which God became man in Jesus, for Hegel Jesus's achievement was, as a man, to become God! Tucker sums this up neatly. To Hegel, Jesus
<<is not God become man, but man become God. This is the key idea on which the entire edifice of Hegelianism was to be constructed: there is no absolute difference between the human nature and the divine. They are not two separate things with an impassable gulf between them. The absolute self in man, the homo noumenon, is not mere godlike … it is God. Consequently, in so far as man strives to become "like God," he is simply striving to be his own real self. And in deifying himself, he is simply recognizing his own true nature.>>2
If man is really God, what then is history? Why does man, or rather, do men, change and develop? Because the man-God is not perfect, or at least he does not begin in a perfect state. Man-God begins his life in history totally unconscious of his divine status. History, then, for Hegel, is a process by which the man-God increases his knowledge, until he finally reaches the state of absolute knowledge, that is, the full knowledge and realization that he is God. In that case, man-God finally realizes his potential of an infinite being without bounds, possessed of absolute knowledge. — https://mises.org/library/hegel-and-man-god
Here's an interesting quote that shows that gap between Hegel and Feuerbach (as I understand it).Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. But, basing themselves rather on imagination, ordinary theology and Theism regard him as an independent being existing separately from reason. Under these circumstances, it is an inner, a sacred necessity that the essence of reason as distinguished from reason itself be at last identified with it and the divine being thus be apprehended, realised, as the essence of reason. It is on this necessity that the great historical significance of speculative philosophy rests. The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason. — Feuerbach
I owe my existence by no means to the verbal or the logical bread – to the bread in itself – but always only to this bread, the "non-verbal." Being, grounded as it is altogether on such non-verbalities, is therefore itself something non-verbal. Indeed, it is that which cannot be verbalised. Where words cease, life begins and being reveals its secret. If, therefore, non-verbality is the same as irrationality, then all existence is irrational because it is always and forever only this existence. But irrational it is not. Existence has meaning and reason in itself, without being verbalised. — F
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