/lit/ - Literature

you have to take the divinity of man as a given. hegel has a fundamentally christian-apocalyptic conception of humanity

The Hegelian (and Fichtean and Schellingean) Absolute is a transposition of early emanationist doctrines about the why and how of the world becoming what it is. It's always been a fundamental problem with such doctrines that they seem to posit an eternal entity, because time/change/process are themselves subsets of the Absolute and not prior to it (or else THEY would obviously be the original thing from which everything else emanated). This leads to the strange situation where this eternal and absolute monad, metaphysically and logically prior to time (and everything else), went through what seems to be a determinate unfolding/emanation, and often self-return and completion. Some doctrines deal with it by simply having the eternal/absolute monadic base of reality be eternally doing what it's doing, but emanationist schemes specifically posit that there was some kind of logical sequence, a process with a beginning and an end.

It gets even more confusing when they start talking about the why of this process, and start mentioning things like how the Absolute "needed" to complete itself (so it wasn't initially complete?) or was "overfull" of perfection/goodness and "had to" spill over with the creation of the subordinate reality/cosmos we know (so it "had to" do something?). Plenty of even weirder formulations exist.

On a logical level these schemes always have such problems. If they are possibly correct it's because of some higher esoteric understanding that mere logic can't touch.

>>18609688
From the Ungrund, the Ousia.

>>18609688
>“All that is outside, also is inside,” we could say with Goethe. But this “inside,” which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from “outside,” has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience. It is quite impossible to conceive how “experience” in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world. The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism. Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever “originated” at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case. And this is the mother, the matrix—the form into which all experience is poured.

>>18609706
What do you mean by given here? The immanent Spirit is the transcendental Spirit, the transcendental process is reflected in the immanent process.

>>18609710
Thank you anon. This is, dare I say...a Phenomenal explanation.

>>18609720
I appreciate this answer as well though I'm not sure I necessarily agree with ol' Jungy boi here.

>>18609710
>This leads to the strange situation where this eternal and absolute monad, metaphysically and logically prior to time (and everything else), went through what seems to be a determinate unfolding/emanation, and often self-return and completion.
Hegel, unlike Fichte and Schelling, seems to circumvent this problem. The moment of return happens in time, since the Absolute Idea exteriorize itself in nature, and return to itself only after having overcome this exteriorization. He also seems to turn the emanationist model on its head. Usually this model would have the apical moment of perfection in the source of the first emanation (like the One in Plotinus, or the unnamed God in Pseudo-Dyonisius), and each successive emanation only constitutes a loss in reality and dignity. On the other hand, for Hegel the Absolute Spirit gets closer to its reconciliation with itself with each successive emanation: every new emanation adds concreteness to the Absolute.

>>18609799
Wouldn't that cause a "bad infinity"?

>>18609802
No, since Hegel thinks this process has an end, and has in fact ended. Don't ask me to justify this claim for him, I'm not knowledgeable to do so, but I know for a fact he thinks so (mainly because he repeats it in almost every introduction of his books and lectures)

>>18609799
What is the why Hegel gives to this emanationism? Emanationism usually falls into a kind of necessitarianism. The Absolute being determined and no Absolute at all. I feel that in the end Hegel, despite pretty good contributions, just ended up perverting Boehme.

>>18609860
>What is the why Hegel gives to this emanationism?
Through the dialectic of the Absolute Idea, which entails its exteriorization.

Hegel denied biological evolution even though he would have been familiar with Lamarck.

>>18609710
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are not emanationists anon. You actually unintentionally explain why they aren't when you say this:
>It gets even more confusing when they start talking about the why of this process, and start mentioning things like how the Absolute "needed" to complete itself (so it wasn't initially complete?) or was "overfull" of perfection/goodness and "had to" spill over with the creation of the subordinate reality/cosmos we know (so it "had to" do something?)
Emanationists believe the origin point to have been perfect. Everything that spilled over as you (or rather Plotinus) put it in an emanationist scheme is inferior to the previous moments. On the other hand in German Idealist systems, the origin point is almost nothingness at the start, and instead the dialectical developments are genuinely progressing towards a fullness. Emanationism is basically the total opposite of German Idealism: German Idealism is Emanationism turned upside down.

>>18609721
He means stop thinking or the magic of German idealism won't work.

>>18609904
Yep. The dialectical determination of the Absolute kind of deprives it of what it itself is. That is why I'll stick with Boehme, where the dialectical genesis is through Will as expression of the Ungrund, being pure Freedom.

>>18610106
I haven't read Boehme, could you tell me in which texts he talks about these issues?

>>18610205
I think in all his works he will write about this, but in the Clavis you can find it too.

>>18609799
>>18609816
Unless we do grant this closing of the circle it's hard to see how Hegel's absolute is at all intelligible, given it in some sense is "becoming subject".

>>18609975
The commonality is the necessary and processual scheme of the "absolute". In the one the problem is the sheer necessity, in the other the becoming of subject through substance. Hegel is more explicit about the becoming of subject which at least doesn't leave us with a reified absolute that is a jumble of dubious necessities. But we are left with a process the nature of which demands its completion having been achieved, through time, as the becoming of subject itself in and for itself.

We could ask, is it possible for subject in and for itself to *become*? Then we would have a kind of absolute monad at the end of the process rather than the beginning, and this incompletely subject 'beginning' is still dubious.

I don't see how we get around a rejection of both the 'emanationist' and 'Hegelian' options. Kabbalah and those like Boehme don't have the problem of exclusively derived subjectivity, will and freedom.

>>18611852
>Then we would have a kind of absolute monad at the end of the process rather than the beginning, and this incompletely subject 'beginning' is still dubious.
The end point of the dialectical progress is a concrete unity, rather than an absolute monad.
>I don't see how we get around a rejection of both the 'emanationist' and 'Hegelian' options. Kabbalah and those like Boehme don't have the problem of exclusively derived subjectivity, will and freedom
How does Boehme do it, then?

>>18609688
Geist is an evil parasite from outer space

>>18612454
Fair enough, though I think the dialectic is as yet incomplete and so to characterize it as Hegel does is to characterize a kind of failed (self-transparent) monad. I'm not the first poster who brought up Boehme, who surely knows him better than I do. But I suppose the difference is just what I said, Kabbalists and Boehme are not philosophers in the Hegelian way and have no need to derive or deduce subjectivity, will and freedom from a 'philosophically' respectable Absolute. Obviously I don't think this is a weakness given the apparent failure of Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel et al. to give any satisfactory such deduction. I'm more interested in Stanley Rosen's rapprochement of Hegel and Plato, and revising the traditional story of philosophy as autonomous and already self-transparent reason debunking 'irrational' forms like magic, faith, etc.

>>18609688
Geist is the product of imaginative mentation, Hegel's attempt to get around Spinoza with some mythical, 'positive,' 'objective' something; Hegel only succeeds in fact if his notion of Spirit is accepted, i.e. as 'real'. I personally don't think he does but he nonetheless has many great insights

>>18609710
>>18609975

Previously:

>>>/lit/thread/S18532270#p18532390
>peanut brain: Jesus invented compassion and charity as we know it.

>GALAXY BRAIN: JESUS INVENTED CONTEMPT AS WE KNOW IT. YALDABAOTH'S CHILDREN ARE AS THE ART OF HAPPY LIVESTOCK, DEPRIVED EVEN OF A "TRUE" CONSCIOUSNESS OF THEIR DEATHLY REALITY, IT IS THE BODY, THE CADAVER, THAT WAS ABSENT PRIOR TO THE CHRISTOLOGICAL ADVENT, NOT THE SPIRIT. THE PREHISTORIC BARBARISM WAS NOT A PROBLEM, IT WAS PRECISELY THE "PLENITUDE OF THE FATHER'S LOVE" WHEREBY ONE IS INDEFINITELY DESTROYED, AND HAPPILY SO, AS MANY CARTOON CHARACTERS ARE INDEFINITELY TORTURED AND KILLED BY THEIR CREATOR, THE "LOVE" BEING THE VERY OMISSION OF THIS REALITY: THE PHENOMENAL WORLD IS INDEED "GOD'S" GLORY IN THAT IT IS A SUPERFLUOUS ABSENCE OF "GOD'S" REALITY OF EATING HIS CREATION AND OF ITS OWN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. A HORIZONTAL PAGANISM, SO TO SPEAK, OF OBLIVIOUS CYCLES. IN THIS SENSE, HOW JESUS MANAGES TO DIE SHOULD BE THE FIRST MYSTERY, INCIDENTALLY, UNEARTHING THE TRUE MEANING OF THE (CATHOLIC) ANECDOTE THAT "GNOSTICS REJECT THE RESURRECTION". THE ATHEIST OBSESSION WITH RIDICULING THE "CORPSE ON THE CROSS" IS MOSTLY CORRECT. WITH NO CADAVER, "GOD" CAN INDEFINITELY GRACE HIS FAVORITE PEOPLE AS IF LICKING THE FINGERS OF THE HAND THAT GRIPPED THE VANQUISHED THAT HE ATE, UNBEKNOWN TO EITHER PARTY. WITH THE CADAVER, THE ART OF HAPPY LIVESTOCK COLLAPSES INTO SLAUGHTERHOUSES, THE VICTOR ONLY GIVES YALDABAOTH HIS DUE DEAD WEIGHT. CONSIDER THAT THE PEACE IN "MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH, GIVE I UNTO YOU" COULD BE THE PEACE OF DEATH: YALDABAOTH CAN NO LONGER SUBSIST ON ONE NOW THAT ONE IS TRULY ABSENT, DEAD, THAT DYING IS NOT A MEANS OF MIGRATION OR RETURN BUT IS ITSELF THE VERY "WHITE HOLE", IN STRICTLY METAPHORIC TERMS, NOW OPENING IN THE ABSENCE OF YALDABAOTH'S TERMINAL PARASITISM, THE "BLACK HOLE"

The "first" Monad is Evil, or rather, the Evil Monad can only conceive of itself as Temporally first, and in its onanism of emanating things ever more unwitting for itself to consume, so that it may relish them all the more, accidentally emanated, or rather, made room for the "last" Good Monad to bootstrap itself out of Time and into the Atemporal whence it annuls the Evil Monad.

>>18613493
Meds. Now.

Is German Idealism that looks anything like Hegel's reconcilable with something that's not solipsism?

>>18609688
Spirit exists as long as nature and logos exist.

>>18614915
Maybe. But it doesn't necessarily fit into a nifty, Hegelian bottle. If mind can get around Spirit so as to describe it adequately, then mind necessarily subsumes Spirit: thereby rendering it a creature of itself. Hegel doesn't necessarily fail or fall 'as a philosopher,' but neither does he get around Spinoza.

Is Geist actually clearly defined? There are non-metaphysical readers of Hegel who argue it's not like an egregore but I feel as though they're retarded

>>18615782
Through its functioning, which is clearly delineated.

>>18615825
Is it a super-consciousness or not?

>>18615698
I don't really know what you're talking about to be honest. Hegel kind of leaves the development of spirit at a certain point, so I see what you mean by saying that the mind will be a product of that level of spirit, but that is kind of the point of Hegel in the first place. If you just mean to say that natura naturata and natura naturans are the same kind of abstract machine as the logical idea, then you might be right I guess. I mean I am guessing you mean that conatus is self preserving force, and the logical idea and spirit itself result in a self preserving force, and Hegel cannot move past that. I doubt that is what you meant though. If it is, I think Hegel actually does explain something relating to Spinoza in the Logic, but I'd have to have a look at it again.

>>18615853
It's a grandiose algorithmic playground for the imagination; a rush to read (I did I admit become super excited when reading both the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia Logic) I feel it must be reduced ultimately to thought or human thinking -- a dialectic between intellect and imagination (in historical guise).
What Hegel did was encroach upon the purlieus of Theology, and palm off as 'objective' what formally rested (and still does, to some degree) on faith-- e.g. Geist (Heilege Geist). If there's such a thing as Spirit then the human mind bathes in it; Hegel not only reverses this and has the Spirit bathing in Mind, but weirdly denies it (with his notion of Objective Spirit, or Geist). I fear this is going to make little sense to anyone not familiar with Hegel's critique of Spinoza in his History of Philosophy Lectures, but oh well.

>>18615928
Yeah, these are the environs of the exceptionally difficult to explain *simply* which nevertheless one feels compelled to attempt here in this magic space

>>18613493
The Law of Causality binds us in this world. This world of the stinking corpse of Yaldaboath, you are correct, but there is no escape.

Hogel saw Naplotian Bone Apart from his bedroom window and thought to himself, "Dude, Geist."

>>18614026
Hegel's idealism understood as 'everything is an appearance of the idea' (which can be material objects or self-conscious beings and even the entire nature before humans) is completely compatible with realism which states that objects exist apart from and prior to consciousness. The development of humanity presupposes and only arises from the prior development of the organic powers of nature.
It is also compatible with naturalism (understood as everything happening according to laws (since, for Hegel, everything happens out of necessity)), but it is incompatible with naturalism which that claims everything is explicable only according to mechanical laws.

>>18617695
Thanks.
I don't really get it, though.

Where is the idea? Is it an idea of something - if not, why call it idea? Is it primary?

And how, if a tree in my garden is just an appearance of the 'idea', can the tree be substantial in a realist way?

Logos

>>18617884
It's not an idea in the sense that you and I think of the word idea. It's more akin to Plato's ideas or forms, a 'thing' underlying the entire reality. It existed before anything, at the start of time itself. Hegel's idea has to make itself known in and through history which can only be done within individual conscious minds.

>>18618069
>has to make itself known
why "has"?

Also if the idea is there but the appearance is supposedly compatible with realism, what is the existence/non-existence of the idea of any consequence?
Or is this framework just to say
>the 'explanation for things happening is because they have to
?

>>18618154
>why "has"?
It's goal inherent in itself if to reach self-conscious, rational and self-determining freedom.
>Also if the idea is there but the appearance is supposedly compatible with realism, what is the existence/non-existence of the idea of any consequence?
It's not christianity, it won't condemn you to hell because you don't believe in it. Existence of the idea is what 'allows' appearance.

Even if I was an expert on Hegel I wouldn't be able to explain everything here. It's stupid to isolate any part of his philosophy and examine it by itself. That's explained in the very beginning of PoS. He never explains Absolute in a single sentence or paragraph. The entire Science of Logic is an explanation of Absolute.
I'm just giving you a general idea (wink wing), I encourage you to read him yourself.

this thread is blessed by the geist

Can any Hegel anons here explain the Master-Slave chapter of PoS? I figure I got the gist of it but I still don't fully understand why recognition is necessary, how it leads to conflict and how the Slave's labor has a positive effect.

>>18618928
(I'll skip consciousness and start with self-consciousness)
Consciousness consumes object to consolidate its self-certainty through recognition, but that won't last forever as consuming objects destroys them. That's where you encounter other self-consciousnesses and you try to treat it as an object to consume. You enter into a struggle to death, a battle of recognition, where each self-consciousness tries to consume another. A dead consciousness can't give you recognition, obviously. One self-consciousness is afraid of death (discussed more before the master-slave dialectic but I can't be bothered) and becomes the slave to the victor, the master, who isn't afraid of the battle. Both of them now receive recognition, but not equal. The slave now works to satisfy the master's need for the consumption of objects, but the slave gains the knowledge while working, something the master will lack. This knowledge gets passed down and accumulated. The master becomes dependent on the slave and can never be a free self-consciousness.

>>18619426
>>18617695
I'll never give any fucking answer to anybody. I'm never coming back to this fucking site.

>>18620428
>I'm never coming back to this fucking site.
Why?

>>18619426
This was helpful, thank you anon. It's kinda a confidence booster to know that my reading was pretty close. If you don't mind me asking, what do you feel about interpretations of Master-Slave as being a sort of representative of Reason and the rest of the faculties? I think I came across this in one of Sadler's vids and its quite intriguing, especially in relation to the Kantian system. Also, does the Slave's labor grant him a sort of access to self-consciousness/recognition that somehow breaks loose of the Master's bondage?

Can someone tell me if starting with Hegel's Lectures on History and his early theological writings (having read only Kant's Prolegomena) would make Kojève's introduction to his PoS and his PoS itself more accessible? If not what do you recommend?

>>18620506
Anon for the love of God, read the Critique (and the Third one as well). After that read some intro to German Idealism, I like Beiser but his is 700 pages so if you don't have that time search for a shorter one. Hegel's Early Theological stuff is interesting and very valuable but kind of an add-on than a necessary pre-req. You should read the Differenzschrift, Intro Lectures and maybe even the Encyclopedia Logic before tackling PoS. Also stay away from Kojeve, he didn't understand Hegel.

>>18620529
Ah yes, I forgot about Beiser and Pinkard's, they would also accompany me.
>Differenzschrift
Is ti 'The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy'?
Also, why do you think Kojève didn't understand him?

>>18620576
>Is ti 'The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy'?
Yes. It is quite helpful in understanding Hegel's early alliance with Schelling and Schelling's own split with Fichte.

Kojeve gives an overly humanistic and he adds in too much Marx/Existentialism into it. It doesn't capture the spirit of Absolute Idealism imo. You would be far better off with more secondary material from contemporary Hegel scholars and injecting a bit of Schelling into the mix than with Kojeve.

>>18620602
Ah yes. This recommendation of Hegel's essays on Fichte and Schelling seems indeed very helpful. Thank you!

>>18609720
Nice.

>>18612572