Hegel

[gorski]

K: stop trying so hard to be troll - you're a very poor one. Read on and weep, when it all comes to coincide with what I wrote earlier...

A8: the earlier versions of latter-day Hegel's system came to the fore relatively recently ['70s?] in an American attic [notes from lectures, if memory serves: I haven't thought of that for quite a while, I'll check] - revealing a much more loose structure and considerably less "authoritarian" Hegel, before the Prussian state got to him and he wanted to lead the rest of his days in peace... with his young wife...

If we see Romatics as escapees from Modernity, then it's no wonder it was Schelling who was called up by the Prussian state "to destroy the revolutionary seed of Hegel's Philosophy", so inspired by the French and American revolutions and the UK developments... So, Hegel invented Modernity for Schelling, as it were!

Btw, Schelling was "unwisely developing in the open, in everyone's gaze", as it were, stated Hegel, who prefered to do it by himself, studiously and systematically sorting it all out for himself...

What we do know of his early work was his emphasis on inter-subjectivity... [Enter Habermas...]

 

[Knotted]

K: stop trying so hard to be troll - you're a very poor one. Read on and weep, when it all comes to coincide with what I wrote earlier...

I knew you couldn't handle Hegel's actual writing, as opposed to what you wished he'd said. Luckily I've got some more Hegel for you to read:

'The Germans were at this time quietly drifting along in their Leibnitzo-Wolffian philosophy, in its definitions, axioms and proofs. Then they were gradually breathed upon by the spirit of foreign lands, they made acquaintance with all the developments which there came to pass, and took very kindly to the empiricism of Locke; on the other hand they at the same time laid aside metaphysical investigations, turned their attention to the question of how truths can be grasped by the healthy human understanding, and plunged into the Aufklärung and into the consideration of the utility of all things - a point of view which they adopted from the French. Utility as the essence of existent things signifies that they are determined as not being in themselves, but for another: this is a necessary moment, but not the only one. The German Aufklärung warred against ideas, with the principle of utility as its weapon. Philosophic investigations on this subject had degenerated into a feeble popular treatment of it which was incapable of going deeper; they displayed a rigid pedantry and an earnestness of the understanding, but were unspiritual.'
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpgerman.htm

If you continue to talk crap, I will continue to prove you embarrassingly wrong.

 

[Knotted]

I can't be arsed waiting for gorski's next twist and turn. Here's some more selectively quoted Hegel comparing Bacon to Socrates and praising the vitality of his empiricism in contrast with the unsastifactory empiricism of the ancients:

'What Cicero says of Socrates may be said of Bacon, that he brought Philosophy down to the world, to the homes and every-day lives of men (Vol. I. p. 389). To a certain extent knowledge from the absolute Notion may assume an air of superiority over this knowledge; but it is essential, as far as the Idea is concerned, that the particularity of the content should be developed. The Notion is an essential matter, but as such its finite side is just as essential. Mind gives presence, external existence, to itself; to come to understand this extension, the world as it is, the sensuous universe, to understand itself as this, i.e., with its manifest, sensuous extension, is one side of things. The other side is the relation to the Idea. Abstraction in and for itself must determine and particularize itself. The Idea is concrete, self-determining, it has the principle of development; and perfect knowledge is always developed. A conditional knowledge in respect of the Idea merely signifies that the working out of the development has not yet advanced very far. But we have to deal with this development; and for this development and determination of the particular from the Idea, so that the knowledge of the universe, of nature, may be cultivated — for this, the knowledge of the particular is necessary. This particularity must be worked out on its own account; we must become acquainted with empirical nature, both with the physical and with the human. The merit of modern times is to have accomplished or furthered these ends; it was in the highest degree unsatisfactory when the ancients attempted the work. Empiricism is not merely an observing, hearing, feeling, etc., a perception of the individual; for it really sets to work to find the species, the universal, to discover laws.'
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpbacon.htm

Isn't it fun treating Hegel as a great authority and quoting bits you agree with!

 

[gorski]

The ABC!!!

Since Bacon has ever been esteemed as the man who directed knowledge to its true source, to experience, he is, in fact, the special leader and representative of what is in England called Philosophy, and beyond which the English have not yet advanced. For they appear to constitute that people in Europe which, limited to the understanding of actuality, is destined, like the class of shopkeepers and workmen in the State, to live always immersed in matter, and to have actuality but not reason as object.

He set forth the general principles of procedure in an empirical philosophy. The spirit of the philosophy of Bacon is to take experience as the true and only source of knowledge, and then to regulate the thought concerning it. Knowledge from experience stands in opposition to knowledge arising from the speculative Notion, and the opposition is apprehended in so acute a manner that the knowledge proceeding from the Notion is ashamed of the knowledge from experience, just as this again takes up a position of antagonism to the knowledge through the Notion.

It's place in the system? I mentioned it before but there you go, as if all that studied it don't have a clue...

To a certain extent knowledge from the absolute Notion may assume an air of superiority over this knowledge; but it is essential, as far as the Idea is concerned, that the particularity of the content should be developed. The Notion is an essential matter, but as such its finite side is just as essential.

This particularity must be worked out on its own account; we must become acquainted with empirical nature, both with the physical and with the human. The merit of modern times is to have accomplished or furthered these ends; it was in the highest degree unsatisfactory when the ancients attempted the work. Empiricism is not merely an observing, hearing, feeling, etc., a perception of the individual; for it really sets to work to find the species, the universal, to discover laws. Now because it does this, it comes within the territory of the Notion — it begets what pertains to the region of the Idea; it thus prepares the empirical material for the Notion, so that the latter can then receive it ready for its use. If the science is perfected the Idea must certainly issue forth of itself; science as such no longer commences from the empiric. But in order that this science may come into existence, we must have the progression from the individual and particular to the universal — an activity which is a reaction on the given material of empiricism in order to bring about its reconstruction.

It's limit?

In fact it was only to an alteration in the content that, without being aware of it, Bacon was impelled. For though he rejected the syllogism and only permitted conclusions to be reached through induction, he unconsciously himself drew deductions; likewise all these champions of empiricism, who followed after him, and who put into practice what he demanded, and thought they could by observations, experiments and experiences, keep the matter in question pure, could neither so do without drawing deductions, nor without introducing conceptions; and they drew their deductions and formed their notions and conceptions all the more freely because they thought that they had nothing to do with conceptions at all; nor did they go forth from deduction to immanent, true knowledge. Thus when Bacon set up induction in opposition to the syllogism, this opposition is formal; each induction is also a deduction, which fact was known even to Aristotle. For if a universal is deduced from a number of things, the first proposition reads, “These bodies have these qualities;” the second, “All these bodies belong to one class;” and thus, in the third place, this class has these qualities. That is a perfect syllogism. Induction always signifies that observations are instituted, experiments made, experience regarded, and from this the universal determination is derived.

For Hegel - this is flooring!!!!

Now, go away!

 

[Knotted]

For Hegel - this is flooring!!!!

I like the way you have to explain that this rather mild criticism is flooring.

Marx points this out somewhere. When you strip what he says of all the idealistic gunk, Hegel was really just a crass empiricist.

 

[gorski]

Crass goes rather well with your "observations"...

 

[Knotted]

Crass goes rather well with your "observations"...

They're crass but they're accurate. Read what's written, not what you wish was written.

 

[gorski]

Why don't you take your own advice?

 

[Knotted]

Why don't you take your own advice?

I did. Over the summer, in a fit of boredom, unemployment and housemoving I reread a stack of Hegel. He's much closer to an ordinary analytic philosopher than he appears to be on a close reading, albeit one with rather extreme idealist overtones (mind you idealism is not that unusual these days - see David Lewis's many world semantics for example). I was genuinely surprised by this discovery.

 

[Jonti]

In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation. This principle contradicts that ‘ought to be’ on the strength of which ‘reflection’ is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to a scene beyond a scene which is assumed to have place and being only in the understanding of those who talk of it. No less than Empiricism, philosophy (§ 7) recognises only what is, and has nothing to do with what merely ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist. On the subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of knowledge which he has to accept.

This sounds like my idea of empirical science!

 

[Knotted]

I like the way you have to explain that this rather mild criticism is flooring.

Actually it isn't even a criticism. Hegel is pleased that Bacon implicitly deals with the 'speculative Notion'. Of course he would prefer it if it were explicit, but he's clearly inspired by Baconian empiricism. Elsewhere he reminds how English/French/Scottish empiricism/materialism shook up German philosophy for the better - Hume's influence on Kant, the French influence on Jacobi. Elsewhere he points out how Locke was an advance on Spinoza (Hegel loved Spinoza). Hegel himself borrows from Hobbes and Rousseau in Philosophy of Right. Most of Hegel's bile is directed towards fellow Germans, the thing about Newton being the only exception I'm aware of.

 

[Jonti]

I'm a fan of Locke. His First Treatise on Government is an underrated classic.

 

[gorski]

Oh, the philosophers of stature have taken to the stage... time for us ignorant, totally uninformed minnows to fuck off...

 

[8ball]

Oh, the philosophers of stature have taken to the stage... time for us ignorant, totally uninformed minnows to fuck off...

You'll be sorely missed.

 

[gorski]

Ughhh.....

 

[Knotted]

Oh, the philosophers of stature have taken to the stage... time for us ignorant, totally uninformed minnows to fuck off...

The only reason to think you're informed is that you've got a piece of paper that says you are. It doesn't impress me. I've got pieces of paper saying I'm informed about stuff I really don't know that much about. I know about what I care about not what I had exams about, and I think most people are the same. Let's be honest you just don't care about Hegelian philosophy, otherwise you would care about getting it right. You have to try this bluster on someone else.

 

[gorski]

...'Really sorry for you sometimes...

 

[Knotted]

...'Really sorry for you sometimes...

That's a kind thing to say.

Having your religion taken out is a painful operation, however there's no need to feel sorry for those who've had the operation or who never needed the operation in the first place.

 

[8ball]

I think it may have been Hegel who coined the term: 'Religion sucks ass' . . .

 

[articul8]

Hegel was not anti-religion - just wanted a more expansive notion of divinity

 

[articul8]

That's an interesting take. I haven't read any of his pre Phenomenology work. I've never thought of Hegel as a romantic, although people around him obviously were. How does this relate to Schelling's work?

I didn't say anything so definitive as "Hegel was a romantic" which would be an utterly silly claim (I didn't express that at all well)- but certainly, the early Hegel seems to have shared with Holderlin and Schelling a fascination with overcoming the phenomenal/noumenal and spontaneity/receptivity divisions in Kant, on a basis which - unlike Fichte - doesn't simply put nature as merely known through the individual subject's act of positing. ie at the outset he shaes many of the romantic points of reference and attitudes.Ironically, in some ways Hegel takes the start made by Schelling further than the latter can himself, and the later Schelling goes back a repudiates his own early efforts and Hegel all the more for building on them.

But this doesn't really answer the question of how the courses of German Idealism and the early romantic critique diverge but from beginning with similar problems. I suppose it's all a question of whether you respond to Fichte by going beyond him and situation his work in a more complete, complex system OR whether you chip away at his notion of foundation and accept the impossibility of systematisation. ie. can non-identity and particularity be incorporated into a greater system OR do they place limits on the viability of such systems?


Obviously, Hegel's approach is totally different from the fragmentary nature of Novalis and Schlegel (and Hegel was cutting about Novalis as a "beautiful soul")- I suspect Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank - or maybe Andrew Bowie or Fred Rush are the people to read on the latter. I'm fascinated by it.

 

[Knotted]

But this doesn't really answer the question of how the courses of German Idealism and the early romantic critique diverge but from beginning with similar problems. I suppose it's all a question of whether you respond to Fichte by going beyond him and situation his work in a more complete, complex system OR whether you chip away at his notion of foundation and accept the impossibility of systematisation. ie. can non-identity and particularity be incorporated into a greater system OR do they place limits on the viability of such systems?

I'm not sure why you see this as either/or. I don't think Hegel was going beyond Fichte, although Schelling probably saw himself as doing this. Hegel was Fichtean in the sense he was building a systematic 'science' of ideas, but he rejects the idea that you impose ideas (cognitions) onto reality (he also rejects the opposite that your conceptions are imposed by reality).

Marx once astutely commented that Hegel has no problems, he has his method. Hegel deals in philosophical problems but he does not deal with philosophical problems. Problems are the bricks and the dialectical method is the mortar for his system. The problems are related to Hegel's Notions which are in turn related to the Absolute Idea which in itself is nothing but method. Hegel didn't wrestle with philosophy in the same way that the other German idealists did. In a sense he has nothing interesting to say - unless you accept his system. But he puts it all together especially well, and he does this in part by drawing on a very broad base of philosophical thought. I suspect this last might be why he was less influenced by romanticism - he had other philosophical resources to draw on.

 

[articul8]

It's either/or because you can't both build a viable system AND show how building a viable system is impossible That's a non-dialectical contradiction.

 

[Knotted]

It's either/or because you can't both build a viable system AND show how building a viable system is impossible That's a non-dialectical contradiction.

I was a bit confused by the implication that Schelling & Hegel's systems had to be a result of chipping away at Fichte (that's true of Schelling, but not of Hegel). I was also confused by the implication that this makes a more complex or a more complete or a greater system.

To answer your question directly, I doubt that many positionsor doctrines or critiques are impossible to incorporate into a system. I suspect you will need a very artificial, self-referential doctrine to be a system destroyer such as 'this doctrine cannot be incorporated into a system'. The problem with system building is more fundamental than whether they can incorporate certain positions. This is demonstrated by Hegel, who could overcome the limitations of any philosophical doctrine (remember he had no problems, only method), but was still confined to his system.

 

[articul8]

It's the early romantics who chip away, the system-builders who integrate and move beyond Fichte.

I suppose the non-totalisable element for Novalis and Schlegel is intellectual intuition that must be presupposed before Fichte's I can posit anything - how can the subject recognise that what is being reflected is its own image without a prior possibility of contentless apperception (eg. not having to think whose is this pain, but knowing pre-reflectively that it is ours)

 

[gorski]

Btw...

No one builds a system, in a Hegelian sense, after Hegel.

Whatever happened to Bloch, trying to do precisely that, is - a mystery....

 

[Knotted]

It's the early romantics who chip away, the system-builders who integrate and move beyond Fichte.

I suppose the non-totalisable element for Novalis and Schlegel is intellectual intuition that must be presupposed before Fichte's I can posit anything - how can the subject recognise that what is being reflected is its own image without a prior possibility of contentless apperception (eg. not having to think whose is this pain, but knowing pre-reflectively that it is ours)

I'm not so sure. I don't doubt that was part of it, but the romantics were obsessed by nature. Kant was driven by physical/metaphysical questions of time, space and causality. The post Kantians were all formulating various philosophies of nature. Nature, including the nature of the self, appeared strange, mysterious and alien in the wake of Kantian philosophy. The post Kantians, including and especially the romantics, were trying to come to terms with this and it was connected directly to moral and political concerns. Hegel was the first to see this alienation as merely a moment to be overcome, but then Hegel was also one of the most scientifically backward of these philosophers.

In the wake of Marx's historical materialism or Darwin's evolutionary theory, all these concerns look rather quaint. That is until we look at modern physics which is still strange and abstract.

 

[Santino]

No one builds a system, in a Hegelian sense, after Hegel.

Whatever happened to Bloch, trying to do precisely that, is - a mystery....

Husserl is pretty systematic.

 

[phildwyer]

Hegel's historicizing of the dialectical principle of the interpenetration of opposites enabled Marx to develop the only accurate labor theory of value ever. That's not bad for a day's work.

 

[Santino]

Hegel's historicizing of the dialectical principle of the interpenetration of opposites enabled Marx to develop the only accurate labor theory of value ever.

Except for the transformation problem, which completely invalidates Marx's theory.