G.W.F. Hegel

Gregory

"We usually suppose that the Absolute must lie far beyond; but it is precisely what is wholly present, what we, as thinkers, always carry with us and employ, even though we have no express consciousness of it. It is in language that these thought-determinations are primarily deposited. Hence, the instruction in grammar that is imparted to children has the useful role of making them unconsciously attentive to distinctions that occur in thought."

Recently I've been rereading Hegel's The Encyclopedia of Logic, which the above is from. The Prefaces were interesting and early in the Introduction he writes, "In the Preface of my Philosophy of Right p.xix the following propositions will be found: What is rational, is actual. What is actual, is rational." Hegel mirrors Spinoza to a great extent. He speaks of believing in God, even the Christian God, with his mind, yet he writes "But what we have here is the free act of thinking putting itself at the standpoint where it is for its own self, producing its own object for itself thereby, and giving it to itself." Spinoza, as for as I know, never said we were God. So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. Hegel seems to develop an argument about the infinity of the mind from the simple fact that we can think of infinity itself as an object of the mind. The cause has to be proportionate to the effect. Hegel draws a distinction between the form and the content of thought. Form is abstract and logical. Content has will, emotion, and imagery involved in it. But for him, God himself can be the content of thought: "It is only in thinking, and as thinking, that this content, God himself, is in its truth." Spirituality, as for as Hegelians are concerned, is closer to us than we are to ourselves. For him when we rationalize about infinity, whether in mathematics or logic, we indicate that there is a part of ourselves which is infinite through it containing the abstract content of infinity. This seems to be an elaboration of Descartes's ontological argument (from his Meditations).

So maybe the question is, if there is and can be something infinite, what would that be?

180 Proof

So maybe the question is, if there is and can be something infinite, what would that be? — Gregory

The Real (e.g. Spinoza's substance, Democritus-Epicurus' void, Laozi's dao ...)

Gregory

↪180 Proof

Yes

Fooloso4

↪Gregory

The whole.

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept of itself. (#12)

And:

In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject. (#17)

He continues:

At the same time, it is to be noted that 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.

The universal is unity of the immediacy, direct and unmediated, of knowing and being, of knowing and for knowing.

With regard to Spinoza he says:

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.

Hegel thinks Spinoza shocked the age not because, as is commonly assumed, it threatened the status of God as distinct and separate, but because it threatens the status of man as distinct in his self-consciousness.

Gregory

↪Fooloso4

Self-consciousnsss is not preserved. In paragraph 46 of the lesser Logic he writes "But the need arises to be cognizant of this identity or of the empty thing in itself." Nonetheless he immediately says next that, "To be cognizant, however, means nothing else but the knowing of an object according to its determinate content." Emptiness is fullness and fullness is emptiness. Humans have a sense that something "needs to happen" to make everything alright. Its all already happened and never happened. And we all know the sun will rise. Cantor reasoned that there cannot be an final all-encompasing infinity but that exactly is what the idea of God is. To form an infinite idea requires an infinite mind (?)

Gregory

Cantor did actually speak of "Absolute infinity." He was also a Christian who was decounced as a pantheist. Hegel's notion that thought, like organic nature, was composed of matter and form has been revelatory for me. I wonder how a materialist understands how the brain processes infinity

Wayfarer

Hegel's notion that thought, like organic nature, was composed of matter and form has been revelatory for me. — Gregory

That's similar to hylomorphism - 'matter-form' ism. In hylomorphism the 'form' (which is NOT the shape of something, but more like its principle or essence, that which makes it what it is) is grasped ('seen') by the intellect ('nous') while the material substance is received by the senses.

“EVERYTHING in the cosmic universe is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

“Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality. — From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.

Gregory

↪Quixodian

Yes but Hegel writes "Spirit is activity in the sense in which the Scoolmen already said of God that he is absolute actuosity. The spirit's being active implies, however, that it manifest itself outwardly. Accordingly, it is not to be considered as 'ens' lacking all process, the way it was regarded in the older metaphysics, which separated s spirit's inwardness that lacked process from its outwardness. It is essential that the spirit be considered in its concrete actuality, in its energy, and more precisely in such a way that its utterances are recognized as being determined through its inwardness."

Hegel taught acomism, as did Spinoza. Thought, as with Aquinas, was the greatest good. Dear Hegel thought Aquinas wrong, however, in that God seemed static and overlording in the pre-Descartes world. Modern philosophy is subjected to more influence by the collective unconscious. Unconscious or subconscious anyway is the limit of life

Wayfarer

Yes but Hegel writes "Spirit is activity in the sense in which the Scoolmen already said of God that he is absolute actuosity. — Gregory

that really has no bearing on anything in that quote, which is essentially Aristotelian in orientation. And Aristotle never spoke of 'spirit'. What caused me to quote that passage was your 'thought being composed of matter and form', which is what that passage is about. But I don't know if it's relevant beyond that.

180 Proof

Hegel taught ac[osm]ism, as did Spinoza. — Gregory

Hegel was one of the first thinkers (following(?) Maimon) to differenntiate Spinoza's acosmism from pantheism but I think its more accurate to identify Hegel's metaphysics with (Christian) pantheism.

Fooloso4

Self-consciousnsss is not preserved. — Gregory

If you mean individual self-consciousness, it is aufheben. A moment in the self-movement of the whole. In this way self-consciousness is preserved.

Gregory

↪Fooloso4

As in Spinozian immortality? I think with death there is something gained and something lost. Which is you is hard to tell. But the movement of self-consciousness is all we ever experience now

↪Quixodian

It is relevant because we think with a brain AND with Infinite Intelligence. If the brain and spinal cord are made of form and matter we can distinguish the lots and images of both with regard to thought

↪180 Proof

Ive never thought of it that way before. However Spinoza identified God with nature, which changes. So it both changes and changes not, which was Hegel's point in his dialectic. If it's pantheism, then it has more belief in the reality of the world

Fooloso4

↪Gregory

The whole and not just individuals comes to self-consciousness. The death of the individual is not the end or death of self-consciousness itself even though the realization of self-consciousness comes about through individuals within the whole.

Gregory

↪Fooloso4

Does self consciousness come from the individual, or did God exist before you were born. "If I were to say God exists, this would not be true. He is a being beyond being... You must love not God, not Spirit, not Son, not-image, but as He is" (Meister Eckhart). So the starting point would be the same as the beginning in that the whole precedes the parts but the parts have all of the whole in them

NotAristotle

↪Gregory

I think Hegel was influenced by Fichte. In Fichte's Foundations of Natural Rights, he posits humans as finite beings; finite in body, finite in our ability to exercise our own rights against others. That said, there is ,alongside righthood, the realization of free efficacy as such; however, this isn't any particular "thing." Rather "thinghood is thought, thought is thinghood."

For Hegel, I think the Absolute, the unbounded, the infinite, may be properly understood as Spirit. It is that that is never at the fore of conscious but always subterranean in its operations. Consciousness, self-consciousness, etc. actualizes insofar as it actualizes Spirit. Spirit is, maybe, a bit like a book before it has been written.

Gregory

↪NotAristotle

I have not read Fitche but I've wanted too for a long time. These paradigms shift between philosophers because it is difficult to cognate spirit-forms and square it with our finite experience in the material world (or at least what we process as finite)

Fooloso4

He is a being beyond being — Gregory

Does Hegel say this?

Gregory

↪Fooloso4

To my understanding Hegel held that God/Spirit is everything and everything is becoming, which in turn is the sublating (erasing and preserving anew) of being and nothing. Becoming is beyond being

Fooloso4

↪Gregory

The movement of Geist (Spirit/Mind) is the movement of the whole to its self-realization, its consciousness of itself. The movement has come full circle.

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

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.

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.

kudos

↪Gregory

So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. Hegel seems to develop an argument about the infinity of the mind from the simple fact that we can think of infinity itself as an object of the mind....
...So maybe the question is, if there is and can be something infinite, what would that be?

Are you looking for an infinite thing, or something determined to be infinite? It sounds like you are trying to classify the infinite using what Hegel calls the 'understanding,' which would be a type of bad-infinity. Bad infinity being the infinity of earlier philosophers such as Locke and Leibniz who would derived infinity from traditional metaphysics as a iterative process.

Gregory

↪Fooloso4

Your quote is from his perspective as living a life like ours. It's not denying that heaven is actual and your there *although* we experiennce life now as a journey, not a destination

Gregory

↪kudos

A "bad" or spurious infinity is one like life, where its the endless striving just for striving. An infinite object would have to be the universe, but "to be determined" is to be made (or remade) spiritual

180 Proof

Spinoza identified God with nature — Gregory

Spinoza does not say "God IS Nature" (Deus natura est ~ pantheism); he says instead "God, OR Nature" (Deus, sive natura ~ acosmism). An excerpt from a letter ...

... But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as ‘Nature’ understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake. — Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg

(Emphasis is mine.)

A post from an old thread "Philosophy and Metaphysics" wherein I clarify why Spinoza's metaphysic is not consistent with – identical to – pantheism ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116

A post from an old thread "Pantheism" ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/636415

Gregory

Here is some of the spiritual tradition that was a early precursor to German idealism (quotes taken from Timothy Freke's book on Christian mystics)

"In the reality, intuitively know by the mystics, we can no longer speak of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, nor of any creature, but only One being, that is the super-essence of all." John van Ruysbroeck

"God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to the All. God is creating this whole universe, full and entire, in this present moment." Meister Eckhart

"I have seen the One who is, and how He is the being of all creatures." Angela of Foligno

"The one work we should rightly undertake is eradication of the self. Could you completely forget yourself even for just an instant, you would be given everything." Meister Eckhart

"The world is pregnant with God." Angela of Foligno

"Simple people imagine that they should see God as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God, and I, we are one." Meister Eckhart

"I AM can be spoken by no creature, but by God alone. I must become God and God must become me, so completely that we share the I eternally." Meister Eckhart

"Someone who is joined to the Lord is One Spirit." St. Paul

"If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'thank you,' that would be enough." Meister Eckhart

We exist as nothing which is why Hegel speaks of positive and negative. Negative is passage, change, (whenever he uses the word negative, some change is occuring in the dialectic) while positive is philosophical determination of truth. Yin and Yang. Maybe negative is the matter and positive is the form. Hmm

Gregory

↪180 Proof

Thanks for information. If for Spinoza God is everything and yet God is not identified with the world, then the world is illusionary (as acosmism says) while what exists is Thought. So I am not sure any kind of materialism would work with Spinoza. I know Einstein liked him..

180 Proof

If for Spinoza God is everything ... — Gregory

Natura natura (i.e. Modes aka "everything") is not divine (i.e. not eternal, not self-caused) according to Spinoza, only natura naturans (i.e. Substance (which is eternal & self-caused)) is divine. "The world is illusionary" only in the sense that it merely exists, or is contingent, sub specie durationis but is not real, or necessary (re: Substance), sub specie aeternitatis.

So I am not sure any kind of materialism would work with Spinoza.

Classical atomism (Epicurus-Lucretius) – insofar as atoms are conceived of as Modes and void is conceived of as Substance – works fine enough for me (& Marx, Deleuze et al).

kudos

↪Gregory

OK, but what is need for the term 'universe'?

Gregory

↪180 Proof

Have you read Being and Nothingness by Sartre? He takes the concepts of "in itself" vs "for itself" from Hegel, noting that the nothing, the in itself, is coiled up in being ("for itself"). To be for yourself means you have feelings and consciousness. Even a rock has an in itself, or is that the noumena.. Anyway, Spinoza at the beginning of the Ethics argues iirc that for God to be infinite, he would have to be everything. So i agree that Spinoza denied the existence of the world, and I think Hegel wanted to give history/reality more of a substance.

Gregory

↪kudos

"This" (experience) is what is- FOR us. Universe is a word that implies a cohesion of the world of sense and its laws. Compared to the Absolute the world is "no thing" because that implies separation. The only way to do life is to have goals, which is paradoxical because spiritual is about letting go. Yes there is a deep paradox between a spiritual message (like that of Jim Newman and Tony Parsons) and the driven life as described by people like Napoleon Hill. The line between paradox and contradiction is not, however always exact. Often its back to "I think therefore I am"

Gregory

"ut the Idea that is all-embracing even with respect to content is set up by Kant as the postulated harmony between nature (or necessity) and the purpose of freedom: as the final purpose of the world thought of as realized." Hegel, lesser Logic, para. 55

Possibility

So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. Hegel seems to develop an argument about the infinity of the mind from the simple fact that we can think of infinity itself as an object of the mind. The cause has to be proportionate to the effect. Hegel draws a distinction between the form and the content of thought. Form is abstract and logical. Content has will, emotion, and imagery involved in it. But for him, God himself can be the content of thought: "It is only in thinking, and as thinking, that this content, God himself, is in its truth." Spirituality, as for as Hegelians are concerned, is closer to us than we are to ourselves. For him when we rationalize about infinity, whether in mathematics or logic, we indicate that there is a part of ourselves which is infinite through it containing the abstract content of infinity. This seems to be an elaboration of Descartes's ontological argument (from his Meditations). — Gregory

When we rationalise about infinity we invariably run into error. That is, when we think of ‘infinity’ (or ‘God’) as an object of the mind we are reducing it as such - rendering this idea-concept finite to some extent. The way I see it, ‘God’ as an object of thought is necessarily reduced, but God as embodied thinking-about-God is in its truth - inclusive of and inseparable from our embodiment (with all of its will, emotion and imagery).

How we draw the distinction, whether between abstract, logical form and wilful, emotional content or some other agential cut, is both arbitrary and meaningful. How we describe ‘God’ or ‘infinity’ says as much about ourselves and our assumptions in what we exclude, what we embody in order to relate to God from within God.

So maybe the question is, if there is and can be something infinite, what would that be? — Gregory

Relation

G.W.F. Hegel

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