/lit/ - Literature

The same kind of mind that had to contend with the intelligibility of the in itself in the world

All the german idealists were hippies, and it’s especially apparent with Hegel and Schopenhauer. I mean come on: Hegel was obsessed with Hinduism, while schopy was with Buddhism. I think Kant really kickstarted it when he applied the idea of the noumenal not only to things, but also to the self, so a bunch of these guys started to meditate and remove senses in order to encounter their “True” or pre-sense self. I’m pretty sure Hölderlin even experimented with sensory deprivation tanks. Probably the greatest prank academia ever pulled was convincing people that the Germans were a bunch of boring, overly-academic nerds rather than the nature fetishizing, love philosophizing, eastern-influenced poets and mystics.

>>15020286
Do you really think you have adequately summed up his thought?

>>15020286
Also, if you think he is a hippy you might want to consider his perspective on punishment

>>15020397
I hope not. Care to correct it?

>>15020286
The entire idealist project has been a joke since Fichte.

Its the only way we can experience anything so its pointless to make assumptions about things that exist outside of it

>>15020437
Nooooo!
What he actually thought was the immediate thinking of the mediate itself of thought itself, which thought, precisely by the act of negating itself, becomes the non-self of the other of itself not thinking not its own thoughts about it not-self, thus sublating itself.
Hegel was a gross charlatan. Schopenhauer is so many leagues above him because of his honesty and integrity even if you disagree with his philosophy.

He was an obscurantist

>>15020625
This.

"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense"

>>15020650
Schopenhauer said the same thing in his own time. Hegel invented the art of appearing profound with gibberish. This is his true legacy and "contribution" to philosophy, which you see many imitate.

>>15020625
>nooo you can't say Hegel was overly obscure and incoherent. If something is complicated and opaque then it proves I'm smart for liking it!!!

>>15020437
Sure.
>"the only thing that exists"
First, there is a distinction between existence and substantiality, or what is usually translated as actuality, in Hegel's thought. Hegel does not deny that things like our sense-certainty, objects of perception, and other empirical phenomenon exist - that would be an absurd misreading of Hegel - just that they, as forms of knowing, contain contradictions which cannot be adequately addressed on their own terms. In other words, a contradictory element of 'the World' writ large as an empirical concept is precisely what makes us refer to concepts; the claim of empiricists that all knowledge must be rooted in sense data, phenomenon or empirically-generated forms of understanding, or that all knowledge comes 'a posteriori,' being an a priori claim, fails at its own project. Thus knowing qua knowing must be founded somewhere else.

>"universal"
The collective totality of our understanding, as self-understanding, which reaches out into the world to understand it and, in so doing, understand ourselves finds nothing but the same kind of contradiction; the world is a mediated entity and its forms of radical particularity only arrive at us through universality. In other words, what we gather and collect as distinct forms of information about the outside world assume distinction, but are nonetheless conceptually drawn together and united into concepts; any particulars are universals, and all concepts represent universality as established in thinking.

>"mind or spirit"
This unification, Hegel establishes, does not come from the world outside of us - any 'This', 'Here', or 'Now' come from our mental confrontation with the world. The world as it is for us, i.e. in the form of radical particularity, various moments, distinct phenomenal realities, itself presupposes our being mediators/receptive to it and therefore we are either imposing rationality upon it or engaged in a process whereby we are observing rationality in the world. Either way is contradictory; we do not simply create rationality, and neither does the world. The only through-line is rationality itself, not in its own particularity, but as a universal. To recognize this, for Hegel, is to recognize a unification of thinking and being, that is, our being receptive to the world as it is for us while reaching out into it in order to understand it as it is in itself. This is precisely what mind does in knowing, it knows the object, i.e. thinks its being.

>"aware of itself"
Therefore, mind as unifying thinking and being finds all of the above contradictions at play in every 'object' of thought except for thinking itself; thinking, in thinking about thinking, generates no contradiction but rather reflects on a process of knowing that is self-contained and unmediated. Thinking, for Hegel, is not a finite epiphenomenon which rides a wave of material beings and is delimited by material or empirical limitations. Thinking is infinite.

>>15020525
>>15020625
>>15020650
>>15020657
>>15020671
>>15020773
Hilarious if it wasn't such a widespread misconception

>>15020376
Very very good points.
>>15020787
This breaks down to the same summary but with the more of a process (arguably what's important in philosophy but still).

>>15020802
Why do you bother defending a charlatan. Its funny that the people who have actually read him are the ones calling him out.

>>15020857
Well its not the same. Here's why:

Existence simply means the things that exist, actuality is that which is self-actualizing. Spirit does not simply exist, but it is existence becoming aware of itself, and actualizing itself. Therefore it is not all that exists, not at all. The purposive activity of reason as the substantial actual reality of existence is a self-actualizing purpose which refers only to itself and frees itself from all that simply exists.

>the unfolding of history
This process is embedded not just in Hegel's notion of history, but all history. We approach the subject assuming precisely what Hegel assumes, except he has undergone the process of thinking through the rationality as work in history.

>important in philosophy
Hegel was a philosopher.

>>15020883
Not all of them, I have read quite a bit of Hegel. What makes you think he is a charlatan besides the bad interpretations of him you either have or have heard?

>>15020894
The only thing different is "all there is" you're saying that Hegel had a concept of our interiority and of the Absolute.

>>15021029
If that's the only difference you can see in what you have said and I have said I'm not sure I can help you. maybe try reading Hegel

>>15020787
Thanks. Could you say more about the distinction between existence and 'substantiality'? What is 'substantiality'?

Are there any German anons in? I'd like to know how much easier Hegel is to read in German than in English. I've read some Heidegger in translation and it was utterly baffling, full of sentences sounding rather like >>15020894's
>actuality is that which is self-actualizing
- the kind of sentences that don't seem to say anything, and leave you thinking 'What the fuck was that meant to mean?' I knew a German who told me he was amazed when he read the Witty in English - amazed by how opaque and dense the translation of TLP was, whereas in German it was (so he claimed) very clear.

>>15020376
Joe Rogan is the modern Hegel

>>15021069
>Substantiality meaning the of some substantial reality.

c.f. Aristotle's notion of substance, which I am admittedly not that well read up on. But what I mean is that the substantial is that which is in a process of becoming, self-actualizing.

>I understand this seeming obscure, but it is really pretty simple. What is good is good not because it partakes in some Platonic form of Good, or because it has a proper alignment with its telos or purpose, i.e. Aristotle. What is good for Hegel is the self-moving principle of goodness coming into being, into reality, manifesting itself, and recognized only afterwards as such a principle.

>>15021069
>meaning of some******

>>15020286
Ahh, 19th century German Idealism. Poor Kant never asked of this, although he kinda did.

>>15021123
My understanding of 'substance' in Aristotle (ousia, I think?) is that it's a posh philosophical word for '(individual) thing', and it's one of a number of kinds of thing that can be said to exist (quality, quantity, relation, yada yada).

>I understand this seeming obscure, but it is really pretty simple...
I guess I'll just have to take the second clause on faith!

>>15020650
just admit you dont understand the philosophy and go on, no need to seethe, its okay, dumb anglo

>>15020376
I haven’t read Kant so please correct me if I’m misunderstanding, but isn’t the noumenal inherently unknowable to us? How would it be discoverable through meditation if meditation itself is just a function (or rather non-function) of our senses?

>>15021412
Yes, noumenal things are inherently unknowable because they are separate from us so we have to use our senses to get their approximations, but this is the noumenal YOU. People generally talk about self-consciousness as arising out of a confrontation with the other, or out of a confrontation with the self. Imagine a human born without any senses at all. Whatever consciousness or mind existed in them would be a noumenal self.

>>15021200
That is not necessary, just go read Hegel.

>>15021369
This

>>15021937
This makes sense, thanks anon

>>15021412
What’s this a picture of? What’s going on?

>>15021075
I know you're memeing but cmon man, don't meme like that. Its not right

>>15021937
This is a not a very accurate reading of Kant. They are not separated from us, sensation is not their mediator in Kant, and sensations for Kant do not give us approximations of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself is a rational construct at the boundaries of Kant's epistemological, and hence is knowable by reason alone.

>>15022214
I suspect Warsaw during polish independence day

>>15021369
Based. Fuck analytics, Russell in particular.

>>15020286
He was a Guenonian unironically.

>the only thing that exists is a universal mind or spirit becoming more and more aware of itself through the unfolding of history?
Nobody can refute this, it's like trying to wrestle a boulder and getting angry when your cock snaps in half

>>15023481
Are you saying the claim is irrefutable, or the interpretation of Hegel, or both?

>>15021937
This is complete bullshit, or I'm not understanding correctly (nah, it's just bullshit). There is a noumenon that gives rise to phenomena (whatever noumena underlies the "mind" or "brain"), but this cannot be investigated directly. Meditation changes your state of consciousness, maybe even takes away your consciousness (ego dissolution), but you never escape the phenomenal world. I guess now that I write this I'm somewhat realising what you mean: that ego dissolution strips away most phenomenal experience to achieve a state of minimum phenomena, but to call this ego-less state or any consciousness a "noumenal self" is incorrect. It is still phenomenal. It cannot be noumenal *by definition*. You can still recall the experience, describe it, and ultimately it *is* an experience---thus it is phenomenal. You cannot experience, describe, know anything about noumena besides that it exists and that it gives rise to phenomena (although the link between phenomena and noumena cannot be described).