notes on Hegel (1; revised)
I think I'm going to start recording some notes on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.
Also, thanks to a friend I'm listening to Fredric Jameson's lectures on Marx. They are awesome.
Finally, Juan Cole has some important comments on the alleged national reconciliation law at juancole.com
I first tried to read Phenomenology of Spirit during Spring Break of my junior year, I think. I was pretty much completely unsuccessful and went on to read Woman Warrior instead, which I think was a good choice.
Part of my problem, I think, was that I started with the Preface. It's often mentioned that Hegel changed the very concept of the preface with this opening to Phenomenology of Spirit, and it is true that he wrote the only preface that is completely unreadable until you finish the book.
Nonetheless, it's what I'll start with.
The preface is concerned primarily to distinguish the methodology of Hegel's work from various other modes of thinking -- common understanding, mathematical reasoning, current philosophical trends.
Hegel describes speculative thought (a term he gives to his own philosophy) as expressing truth not only as substance, but equally as subject.
Now that's interesting. Substance is what underlies (sub-stance, or stands below) our world; Spinoza defines substance as that which can be conceived completely through itself. For instance, in order to understand water -- boiling, freezing, etc. -- we need to have a concept of molecules, so "water" cannot be conceived through itself, we can understand it only through something else; similarly molecules need atoms, etc. In this example, the fundamental laws of physics would be the 'substance', except that even these have certain factors which seem to be set somewhat arbitrarily and so cannot be understood in themselves. Spinoza's Ethics was an attempt to understand the world as having a single Substance, namely God, which existed in two modes -- thought and extension (or matter).
Hegel, on the other hand, claims that truth must be grasped not only as substance (something conceived completely through itself) but as Subject. Subject, in turn, is bound up with a whole other set of concepts such as negativity, whole, mediation, and becoming, which we will have to understand eventually. For now, let's use the above example to describe grasping truth as Subject: so that we cannot simply uncover the truth as the laws of physics; rather, it is as though the laws of physics themselves (and not simply our knowledge of them) were only able to emerge through a tortured development that could not have been avoided due to the very nature of the laws of physics, so to speak.
In Hegel's words: "the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself."
Mediation of the whosie with the whatsit?
To Be continued...
Also, thanks to a friend I'm listening to Fredric Jameson's lectures on Marx. They are awesome.
Finally, Juan Cole has some important comments on the alleged national reconciliation law at juancole.com
I first tried to read Phenomenology of Spirit during Spring Break of my junior year, I think. I was pretty much completely unsuccessful and went on to read Woman Warrior instead, which I think was a good choice.
Part of my problem, I think, was that I started with the Preface. It's often mentioned that Hegel changed the very concept of the preface with this opening to Phenomenology of Spirit, and it is true that he wrote the only preface that is completely unreadable until you finish the book.
Nonetheless, it's what I'll start with.
The preface is concerned primarily to distinguish the methodology of Hegel's work from various other modes of thinking -- common understanding, mathematical reasoning, current philosophical trends.
Hegel describes speculative thought (a term he gives to his own philosophy) as expressing truth not only as substance, but equally as subject.
Now that's interesting. Substance is what underlies (sub-stance, or stands below) our world; Spinoza defines substance as that which can be conceived completely through itself. For instance, in order to understand water -- boiling, freezing, etc. -- we need to have a concept of molecules, so "water" cannot be conceived through itself, we can understand it only through something else; similarly molecules need atoms, etc. In this example, the fundamental laws of physics would be the 'substance', except that even these have certain factors which seem to be set somewhat arbitrarily and so cannot be understood in themselves. Spinoza's Ethics was an attempt to understand the world as having a single Substance, namely God, which existed in two modes -- thought and extension (or matter).
Hegel, on the other hand, claims that truth must be grasped not only as substance (something conceived completely through itself) but as Subject. Subject, in turn, is bound up with a whole other set of concepts such as negativity, whole, mediation, and becoming, which we will have to understand eventually. For now, let's use the above example to describe grasping truth as Subject: so that we cannot simply uncover the truth as the laws of physics; rather, it is as though the laws of physics themselves (and not simply our knowledge of them) were only able to emerge through a tortured development that could not have been avoided due to the very nature of the laws of physics, so to speak.
In Hegel's words: "the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself."
Mediation of the whosie with the whatsit?
To Be continued...