Running compilation of questions and answers (by Dr. Peters) from the reading group.
I have to wonder why Hegel and Hegelian thought in general seems to occupy such a comparatively small part of the contemporary philosophy landscape given the grand scope of his claims. I guess I am interested in what happens metaphilosophically when we consider Hegel’s work as part of Hegelian development in the history of philosophy. Is it accurate to say that Hegel’s work is fundamentally self-negating? Is Hegel’s work sort of tautologically on a higher-level of self-knowledge because it has posited itself as such?
As a purely technical matter, Hegel’s position in contemporary continental philosophy is enormous. He might even be the single most important figure. Virtually all of 20th Century French phil was a self-conscious response to Hegel. The attendees of Kojeve’s Hegel lectures in Paris were a veritable who’s who of 20th Century French thought. Jean Wahl’s lectures on Hegel were also hugely influential. But that’s just a technical point.
By Hegel’s notion of development, has, say, contemporary analytic philosophy (or rather the interplay of disagreements between the contemporary philosophical landscape) reached higher self-knowledge? rephrased in a naive way, has history post-Hegel played out in the way Hegel’s philosophy says it does?
For Hegel, analytic philosophy would constitute an expression of a fairly low viewpoint, a kind of regression. In a sense, though, this would be a problem for Hegel since, as with Marx, he doesn’t have a clear principle of decline.
Is it that judgement observes only the “substance” of the matter but comprehension captures an ideal dimension?
Yes, it means judging Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, whoever, as just taking their respective “hacks” at answering basic philosophical questions and then, from one’s current viewpoint, judging whether or not they’re answers are satisfactory or correct, rather than understanding these positions as moments in an ongoing genesis of self-knowledge and, eo ipso, recognizing that the burden may be on oneself to raise one’s mind to their level in order, for example, to comprehend the acts or objects they are describing. As Lonergan famously said regarding his early works on Aquinas, he did not simply try vet or judge Aquinas’ “arguments” but rather spent 10 years lifting his mind up to Aquinas.
What does Hegel mean by the “general concept” (Gedanke) of the real issue? (para 4)
“General concept” is the uinversal, the form. Philosophy demands lifting one’s vision from immediate concerns and even immediate sensuous images to an understanding of the universal patterns governing things. This is the initial task of “culture” for Hegel. Philosophy builds on culture, is its highest expression.
Just piling on more questions: Hegel writes in para 8 that […]. The first thing that came to my mind was Husserl, but Hegel is writing before Husserl, so what is Hegel referring to as this philosophy which examines experience (and to which Hegel seems to propose an idealist counterturn)?
Platonism and other mysticisms (e.g. Christian philosophy) raised the vision of Spirit beyond the immediate and sensuous but became fixated on the heavenly realm of transcendent forms or the “beyond” of Augustine’s City of God. In modernity, Spirit has actually learned to recognize that it is “incarnate”, that this world is itself intelligible, that it can find itself and be at home in this world – hence, modern science, etc. However, we have perhaps swung too far in this direction and are now once again unable to raise our vision beyond the immediate, i.e. we’ve become petty, brittle, small-minded, spiritless, too occupied with the merely worldly.
If anyone has a good grip on what he means by mediation and immediacy in paragraphs 20/21, I’d love some help with that.
Mediation is one of the top 5 or 6 most important Hegelian notions, along with Spirit, Concept, Idea, and dialectic. Ever so briefly, mediation is to be contrasted with immediacy. Many philosophies look for the object, for being, for truth in the immediate, e.g. the immediate object of sensuous intuition. In the analogy of the plant, this is like looking for the fruit in the soil. The fruit (or the object, truth, being) is mediated by the plant/spirit and is always a result.
Mediation is the spirit moving toward or becoming the absolute?
Basically, yes. Mediation (Vermittlung) and development (Entwicklung) almost interchangeable. Mediation is the principle of development.
Can you clarify the difference between substance and subject? Are they opposed (even if the true manifests itself across both)? It seems from how I understand it that substance is sort of the sensuous essence whereas subject considers itself to be its own object and therefore is “pure, simple negativity” (para 18) in that it negates its own subjectivity when it looks at itself. Is substance analogous to ‘object’ in the object/subject dualism? Is substance the precursor to subject in development?
Hegel’s point is that substance is subject. But, what is substance? Well, Hegel is alluding here mainly to Spinoza’s notion of substance according to which there is only one, infinite substance (aka God) with various attributes and modes – attributes being things like the two Cartesian attributes of thought and bodiliness or materiality. For Descartes, of course, thinking substances are fundamentally distinct from bodily substances. For Spinoza, however, thinking and bodiliness are simply two attributes of the one, true substance. Now, what Hegel is alluding to here is how, in Spinoza, substance is not yet subject in the sense that it is not self-directed or purposive. For Spinoza, substance “unfolds” according to merely efficient causes but there is no final causality, no purposiveness. As Spinoza says, just as premises produce/cause conclusions, so wings produce/cause flying; but premises don’t exist for the sake of conclusion and wings don’t exist for the sake of flying. Regarding “negativity,” Hegel is referring to his overall theory of development in which there is an initial, unstable or merely “abstract” unity (the seed) and then positing of a difference (the differentiation of the plants various organs, functions, etc.) and the overcoming of this difference in a higher unity (the mature plant). Of course, the culminating instance merely biological development results in the positing of a difference (a negation of unity) that it cannot overcome (sublate) – thus, the fruit/seed falls from the plant and confronts the plant as something merely external, different. The plant, as it were, falls back into the naive attitude, does not recognize the seed/fruit as its own work. Only spirit can preserve itself in absolute difference. This unity-in-difference is the concrete, is substance, but substance as subject, as self-directed and self-objectified, knowing/recognizing itself in its object, its product.
Is sublation/aufhebung a mode of mediation?
Sublation is maybe the single most important notion in Hegel. Should have had this on the board already. Sublation is yet another name for the whole process of development with a special focus on the culminating moment in which the negation is negated and unity is restored, or more precisely, the unity that was always present is recognized instead of “forgotten” (Vergessen). Famously, infamously, “Aufhebung” is untranslatable into English but sublation is really fine. Aufhebung means both the negate/annul and to preserve. Etymologically it means “to lift or heave” (Heben) “up” (Auf). It’s raising something to another level, or rather spirit’s own self-raising. Everything on the lower level is preserved on the higher level but in a new form – more precisely, its immediacy has been negated. Thus, our immediate natural inclinations are preserved after they’ve been negated by the discipline of Kantian ethics in the higher level of virtue ethics, but these natural inclinations have been transformed, mediated, educated, directed towards their proper object.
I really need someone to walk me through this idea 😂: “It is the process of its own becoming, the circle that resupposes its end as its goal, having its end also as its beginning ; and only by being worked out to its end, is it actual.”
The entire plant – which is the end, goal of the plant – is already contained in it albeit implicitly at the beginning. Thus, beginning and end are one. As Jesus said, “I am the alpha and the omega.” Spirit/nous/mind is already making and becoming all things, at least potentially, at the beginning. Also, just basic Aristotelian metaphysics: in order to act, one determines the end first and then devises the means. Thus, one begins with the end implicitly present.
To make connections with Phenomenology, when Hegel writes in para 18: “Only this self-restoring Sameness, or this reflection in otherness within itself~not an original or immediate unity as such-is the True.” Should we read this in opposition to Husserl? It seems to me that Husserl builds his entire phenomenological method around the acceptance of immediate unity as the only thing which we can apodictically know to be true – that we do not look at ourselves as objects and find ourselves othered but rather, via meditation, epistemically unlock our true eidos, etc. etc. And if so, then in what sense is the “phenomenology” in “phenomenology of the spirit” that Hegel is talking about different than the “phenomenology” which Husserl introduces?
Yes, there is a Hegelian critique of Husserl, i.e. Husserl is attached to immediacy. But, there is a Husserlian critique of Hegel. We can discuss that today, perhaps. Don’t worry, it’s all resolved, sublated in Lonergan 😁😁
It would be interesting to talk about whether Hegel’s interpretation of the master-slave dynamic is distorted by his position as a master. The way he describes the slave developing self-consciousness through the production of art for his master feels a maybe little optimistic? You all know the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett? Four people waiting around for some guy named Godot to show up. The first pair is two tramps who mirror each other, and the other is a master and his slave. Somewhere in the middle Pozzo, the master, tells his slave, Lucky, to perform for everyone. Lucky is bad at dancing so Pozzo tells him to ‘think’, and Lucky gives this speech about God. Beckett says it pulls together the themes of the entire play, but the mind producing it seems to be warped…
Yes, there are a series of issues here. One is Hegel’s overall theodicy according to which sin is not radically unintelligible but only relatively unintelligible and so can, at least retrospectively, be understood as constitutive of some larger good. Thus, for Hegel, viewed retrospectively, the historical atrocity of slavery was a necessary moment in the development of Spirit since, without this compulsion, Spirit would not have learned restrain its immediate desire and thereby sublate it into labor. We’ll discuss all of that. But, for the moment, we might note that one approach would be simply to critique Hegel’s view of the nature of sin/evil. Christians would do this by arguing that sin as sin is a mere principle of decline and so cannot be incorporated or sublated into a larger good. Beckett has an exceptional sense of this, although, for him, the totality of existence is unintelligible not just sin. A good recent study of the radical unintelligibility of sin/evil is the A24 film “The Witch.” There is no sublation of sin/evil in “The Witch,” just an irrational, unintelligible descent into disorder, confusion, and desolation.
As for Hegel’s position as a master, that will be complicated by, among other things, the fact that, as it turns out, for Hegel, the primary or at least initial locus of the master-slave dialectic turns out to be not that which would have obtained between two (or more) distinct historical human individuals but the internal dialectic between two aspects of a single self-consciousness. Thus, we can, at least temporarily, bracket the question of Hegel’s view of the historical significance of the institution of slavery and examine how the dialectic of domination and servitude is experienced within a single self-consciousness. Hegel’s own Christian background is important to recall here since, for Hegel, Christ, as the “hypostatic union” of two natures (God and man) in one person, is prototypical of the sublation of lordly/masterful and servile consciousness in one person. Moreover, Hegel will have been aware of the Christian/Pauline reversal according to which, in allowing their immediate appetites to overcome their reason, the masters are themselves slaves to sin.
I’m curious if Zizek’s writing on Hegel is really a kind of pseudo-Hegelianism through Lacan, maybe a kind of forced reading-together of the two where Lacan prevails. Because the stuff about immanent antagonism, non-All, reinscribing particularity as the basis for universality, etc. on a re-read might suggest so.
Yes, prob a bit of that. In other words, he’s just making things up. But, why not? What else is there to do at this point?