This is an ongoing conversation I have been having with a Hegelian. I think it is interesting and informative. Antonio seems like a really sharp young person. He has taught a old dog like me a few things about Hegel so who says and old dog can\u2019t learn new tricks. \u2026still have major misgivings with Hegel\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His blog is here: The Empyrean Trail<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n He has also published on some other sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To skip ahead to the latest comments look for “***New Comments***” towards the bottom of this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***Previous Comments***<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hello. I am also an amateur student of philosophy. I did\nthree graduate programs officially in philosophy and audited other programs\nwhile working professionally as an engineer. My background is ancient Greek\nphilosophy and contemporary continental philosophy (Heidegger, Derrida,\nLevinas, Husserl, Hegel, \u2026). Here are some of my questions concerning this\narticle:In general, it seems like a pattern that Hegel\u2019s dialectic\nstarts with pure indeterminateness and emptiness, abstraction, pure knowing, \u2013\nthen, negates such to give way a more positive, determinate which then, gives\nway to aufhebung which holds both together in their mutual self-negation as\nlifted up and transformed into a more concrete Idea. I am thinking of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being->Non Being->Becoming, the One->the\nMany->Repulsion->Attraction->Quantity<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being-in-itself->Being-for-other->Limit->Finite->Infinite<\/p>\n\n\n\n Essential->Unessential->pure mediation-Being\u2019s pure\nimmediacy->Reflection->External <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reflection->Determining\nReflection->Identity->Difference->Contradiction->Ground<\/p>\n\n\n\n All have these dynamics play with terms such as abstraction,\nemptiness, negation otherness -> to\/from -> opposition, positive\notherness -> aufhebung<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hegel seems to think these dynamics prevent his Idea from\nbeing susceptible to the tautologies or ordinary science. Tautologies in this\nsense seems to simply be naming something then repeating the definition in the\n\u2018findings\u2019 of science. This seems to be a na\u00efve view of science (especially for\nthe \u201cEncyclopedia of Science\u201d) in that science is pervaded with\nsupposition->empiricism->contradiction-> paradigm transformation.\nCertainly, \u2018empiricism\u2019 can be deemed a metaphysic, an abstraction, a\ntautology, etc. but it could also simply be a pragmatic assumption which allows\nfurther inquiry. Any Concept or Idea has, at least, this pragmatic, functional\ncapacity including Hegel\u2019s terms like Being, Otherness, Negation,\nContradiction, etc. In a minimal sense what I have referred to as the dynamic,\npragmatic terms, for Hegel indeterminate, abstraction, emptiness, negation,\notherness, aufhebung, etc., are not unlike mathematical operators such as\naddition, division, square root, etc. in that they reflect relationships. Hegel\nseems to think he ends up in absolute Concept, Idea and completes philosophy as\nthe System. It seems to me his Ideas are more reflective of a Newtonian styled\nabsoluteness (i.e., time and space) than the newer sciences of relativity,\nquantum uncertainty, observer effect, dark matter and energy, etc.. \u2013\nIndeterminacy in the newer sciences is not swallowed up as an artifact of\ndialectic but would remain in the same apotheosis as absolute Idea or Concept\nfor Hegel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other or otherness is always peppered in as idea. To\n\u2018think\u2019 of the other as a he or a she would be what for Hegel? A he or she is\nyet another concept or idea that faces us? Would a \u2018real\u2019 he or she be a\nmetaphysic? Would it simply be yet another form of the depraved naturalism of\nscience? A he or she \u2018in time\u2019 even as the idea of a he or she assumes time and\nthe \u2018thought\u2019 of a he or she.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is to \u2018think\u2019? Doesn\u2019t it assume time (e.g., a specific\nthought or thought process). Let\u2019s look at Hegel\u2019s notion of time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shall we say the \u2018In the beginning was the Concept\u2019, could\nwe say time-space-less-ness? Concept is NOT the thought yet or the word (logos)\n\u2013 assumes time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The absolute other of time is pure, empty, indeterminate\nspace without dimensions of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The absolute other of space is a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The absolute other of the abstract point turns out to be\ntime\u2026which turns out to be yet another empty abstraction moving towards past,\npresent, future, etc..<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ok, let\u2019s \u2018think\u2019 about this\u2026The Concept is concrete\nself-determinateness as Idea. We have not asserted any \u2018thing\u2019 yet (perhaps\nliterally). Anyway, Concept must have an absolute other which is space. But\nspace is also an idea \u2013 not empirical or any such metaphysic, so how can\n\u2018space\u2019 be an absolute other in the \u2018absolute\u2019 sense. Sure, it can be a\ncontradictory idea or shall we say the \u2018anti\u2019 of tautology, tautology being\nConcept as Idea. Why do I write \u2018tautology? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The jump from Idea to space (which turns out to be yet\nanother idea) is not so complete as Hegel would have us believe. Anyway, from\nthere we go to the point and then temporality. So thinking happens in time but\nIdea has not yet developed the notion of time so thinking (e.g. about Concept)\ncannot happen in time since Concept is time-space-less-ness. Yet, do we assume\nconcept is something absolutely other from thinking? How can we think that\nwithout \u2018thinking that\u2019? Are we now postulating some kind of transcendent other\n(i.e., the Idea without thinking) \u2013 have we not lapsed into metaphysics but\ndeny ourselves the possibility of thinking Idea as such? Wouldn\u2019t this\nmetaphysical leap be the hobgoblin of all self-respecting post-post-post (ad\ninfinitum)-modernists. Hegelians tell us they are not metaphysicians \u2013 yet if\nIdea talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck\u2026isn\u2019t it a\nduck? If Concept can be thought without thinking it haven\u2019t we simply asserted\nyet another tautology?\u2026otherwise called a metaphysic. Could it be in the highly\ncircuitous route we have taken to Concept we have conveniently lost the notion\nof \u2018metaphysic\u2019 even though the dynamic Idea without a thought harkens back to\nGod without Being and convinced ourselves that it is surely and essentially\ndifferent?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 Concerning Hegel\u2019s critique of empirical science I can see\nwhy you would think this, but Hegel\u2019s critique of science is actually simpler\nand rather a critique of what goes on in the Phenomenology in a pointed sense.\nThe main argument is about his concept of theory and practice, and he does have\na rather short version of it in the Introduction to the Phil of Nat. The\ncritique of theory attacks both rationalist and empiricist doctrines of\nscience, and something like pragmatism is for Hegel just not worthy of attack\nsince it has given up the attempt of science as absolute knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning empiricism as a metaphysical doctrine, well, in\nHegel\u2019s concept of metaphysics it is. All concepts of ontological nature are at\nonce both about what is and how to know it. The way we think of the world is a\nmetaphysics. I agree, and Hegel would too, that his concepts are indeed exactly\nwhat you describe as mathematical functions, which is why concepts are logics.\nI would say, however, that it is a mistake to term Hegel\u2019s views as grounded on\na Newtonian view of absolutes (Hegel despises Newton, just as an aside) since\nhow Hegel conceives things is not what anyone even today conceives as an absolute\n*even* at the radical process fringes of QM and related theories. As someone\nmost simpathetic to the critics of modern science, *especially physics*, I\nwould say that one must be careful with the dogmatic adoption of these new\nterms about reality, particularly due to their nebulous indeterminacy and a\nhistorical lineage of conception by contingent caprice and erroneous\nhand-waving of things \u2018out of fashion\u2019 such as a demand for coherency and\nintelligibility. History tells us much of the origin of these terms, and they\nare indeed not entirely pragmatic but rather a necessity of axiomatic dogmatism\ntaken for fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning otherness and the \u201che\/she\u201d and what concerns the\nthinking of such. At an ontological level, this \u2018thinking\u2019 manifests as the\naction of a \u2018he\/she\u2019 and their relating to us. In this it is what they are and\nthus, yes, a metaphysic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning the he\/she in time, it seems you really wanted to\nget at the existential presupposition of time in regarding the pure logic of\nself-thinking thought. Concerning beginnings, well, Hegel denies there ever was\na beginning since everything in the finite sphere has a prior and posterior\nwithout end. Concerning the relation of time and space: you must keep in mind\nthat Hegel\u2019s foundational structure and dynamic of all Nature is\nself-externality. Depending on how we will look at this externality, either as\nsubstance or subject, being or activity, we shall determine this\nself-externality as space or time. The otherness of time and space is based on\nthe unifying role of this self-externality such that space qua space finds\nitself existent through the diremption that is time, and time qua time finds\nitself existent through the diremption that is space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expanding on how \u201cspace\u201d can be the absolute other of the\nConcept, I\u2019m not going to pretend I fully know Hegel\u2019s explanation for this,\nhowever, there are a few simple structural reasons that can be given. For one,\nthe determination of the Logic in its closure of the Absolute Idea is the\ndetermination of logic as a domain of self-thinking thought. Experience,\nhowever, tells us there is more than pure thought, there is a realm of\nout-there-ness we call Nature. If logic qua logic is determinate, it exists,\ntherefore it is determinately negated, therefore it has an other, this other is\nthe Idea opposing itself, hence outside itself, and this relation is its\nfundamental concept: self-externality. There is the simpler and more straight\nforward logical explanation, which is that logic being determinate and existent\nnow moves towards an opposite domain which is by negation determinate as\nnot-logic, not self-immanent thought, but the inverse, and this is fittingly\ncalled Nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Hegel being a metaphysician: He does not deny it, I\ndon\u2019t deny it, but by his conception of metaphysician literally everyone who\nhas a thought about any fundamental aspect of reality, cognitive or\nsubstantive, is engaging in the act of metaphysical determination of their\nworld by positing some view as the true absolute (even relativism cannot escape\nthis). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to the problem of existential presupposition of\nthe Concept: yes, *we* must and do think temporally in a natural sense. The\nconception of pure logic, however, is not about a temporal thinking, but just\nthe process of the self-determination of thought, a determination that has\nalways already been complete with all its defined parts. An atom\u2019s\nself-determination certainly does not await time for its complete\ndetermination, even in frozen space it is logically articulated in many ways in\none single moment. The determination of time is irrelevant for logic as such,\nand if you are pragmatic, you know this is the case for the world itself.\nRemoving time cannot and does not remove at least half of the determinations of\nthings, mostly the substance portion of logic, but plenty of dynamic logic\nstill remains even without time (conditionality, relations, etc).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This blog is unfortunately in need of a deep revising which\nI have worked on over time. Currently the draft stands at double the length and\ncertain sections like the one on time have been significantly changed in an\nattempt to clarify, as well as my comments on science in general have expanded\nto try to show the concreteness and relevance to issues today. I don\u2019t find\nmuch to disagree with Hegel here in this first chapter, but trust me, I know I\nhave differences with him which are indeed to do with the advances in knowledge\nwe have had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you for your comment, I appreciate that others read\nthese monstrosities I write haha. \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 Me…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio, I find your posts to be\nquite clear. In fact, more so in some\ncases than actually reading Hegel which can get quite convoluted and obfuscated\nin my opinion. I think perhaps a\ndefinition of terms might be good here as the word \u2018metaphysical\u2019 can have a\nwide variety of meanings\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Metaphysics was a\nterm applied to a collection of Aristotle\u2019s works in the first century AD. It has been entangled in Latin and Catholic\ninterpretations which as Heidegger thought obscured more than clarified\nAristotle\u2019s works. Aristotle described\nhis subject matter as \u2018first philosophy\u2019 or the study of being as being. I have written on my blog rather extensively\nabout the earliest form, phusis (\u03c6\u1fe0\u0301\u03c9 thought to be from proto-indo-european\n(ph\u00fa\u014d, \u201cgrow\u201d) +\u200e -\u03c3\u1fd0\u03c2 (-sis)), which pervaded ancient Greek thought from Heraclitus\nand Parmenides. From the earliest,\nphusis is a kind vitalism which increasingly through ancient Greek thought\ntakes on the budding rationalism of logos. \nFor Aristotle, Metaphysics was a survey concerned with \u2018first cause\u2019 and\nthe origin of things. It was the highest\nlevel of generalization. However, Metaphysics\nfrom Latin Neoplatonism and Christian thought transformed and lost some of the\nearliest origins of phusis. Metaphysics\nbecame a leap, a dogmatism, which equated being with God, God beyond being, and\neventually base metal with gold vis-\u00e0-vis the philosopher\u2019s stone, etc.. My impression is that for Hegel after Kant\nthe metaphysical would always be fashioned in purely negative terms since it is\nimpossible to determine if synthetic, a priori claims are \u2018absolutely\u2019 true. Metaphysical dogmatism was discredited by\nKant in his Critique of Pure Reason. \nHowever, the \u2018thing-in-itself\u2019 was precisely what Hegel wanted clear up\nand do away with from Kant. Beiser\nthinks Hegel resists using the term Metaphysics except in a negative sense of\nthe pre-Kantian, rationalist tradition. \nIn any case, Beiser certainly argued that Hegel retained a pre-Kantian\nfoundationalist approach that the absolute could be obtained through reason – “What\nis rational is real; And what is real is rational.”. In this way, Hegel seems to retain an\ninfluence form Spinoza albeit in the idealistic tradition. It seems that many\ncontemporary philosophers do not find a transcendental leap of faith in Hegel\nbut a highly rational and analytic approach to the absolute which was not typical\nof many of the traditional domains of metaphysicians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The dogmatism you\nreferred to in your reply and the \u2018not\u2019 of Hegel\u2019s \u2018metaphysics\u2019, in your opinion,\nwas certainly something Hegel thought he overcame. Certainly, indeterminacy and uncertainty are\nnot hallmarks of traditional dogmatism which insists on the opposite,\ndeterminacy and certainty. I am not a\npragmatist but I do take pragmatism as a starting point at times for the least\npossible and most commonly accessible starting place for agreement on\nterms. If indeterminacy and uncertainty\nhave become a modern form of \u2018scientific\u2019 dogmatism that is news to me. My engineering background and further\neducation in relativity and quantum mechanics do not play loosely with those\nterms. However, when I look in my own philosophical\nbackground for scientific equivalents I am not faced with Hegelian certainties\nand rationalism. Certainly, we know that\nHegel\u2019s earlier attempts with the ether did not end so well. I would also argue that his totalitarian and\nauthoritarian views on how more enlightened cultures were allowed, entitled by\nright, to handle the more primitive cultures strikes a negative and violent\ntone to his absolute certainties (which I consider dogmas i.e., not \u2018proven\u2019 by\nhis dialectics as he thinks). Because\nthe state is divine freedom is defined as right, violence is given necessary\nand free reign as \u201cMachiavellian genius\u201d (Hegel\u2019s opinion of Machiavellian – \u201cthe\ngreat and true conception of a real political genius with the highest and\nnoblest purpose\u201d). Violence can only\ncome to its end after it has had its \u2018last word\u2019 and the last word has been\naccepted as divine. As Nietzsche tells\nus, history is the story told by the victors. \nHegel certainly used the Christian motif in his terminology and the\nkenosis of Jesus. For Hegel, God may be\nthe whole or Spirit and certainly has a historical relationship to\nChristianity. In any case, it has a\ndouble play which intentionally plays on historical Christianity and\nrationalism. In this double play I see a\nintentional indeterminacy which can also lead to \u201ca necessity of axiomatic\ndogmatism taken for fact\u201d. Uncertainty\nand indeterminism always plays an inferior role in Hegel\u2019s dialectics. That is, they are certainly never in\nthemselves. They are always an avenue, a\nvehicle, which never \u2018stand-in-themselves\u2019. \nThey always \u2018stand-for-another\u2019. \nIndeterminacy and uncertainty lead us to determinacy and certainty \u2013 to\nthe rational, the logos. I do think in\nspite of Hegel\u2019s dislike for Newton he did favor a \u201cNewtonian styled\u201d\norientation at the very least, in a reductionary pragmatic sense, in the fact\nthat both of them highly favored the \u2018absolute\u2019. Also, both of them favored notions of\nChristianity and God although I will give you for very different\nrationales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s take a\nspecific case in the start of Hegel\u2019s Logic \u2013 of Being he tells us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeing, pure being,\nwithout any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal\nonly to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no\ndiversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held\nfast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be\ndistinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is\npure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if\none can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself.\nJust as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this\nempty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and\nneither more nor less than nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n of nothing he tells\nus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNothing, pure\nnothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all\ndetermination and content \u2014 undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as\nintuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether\nsomething or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has,\ntherefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in\nour intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself,\nand the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore,\nthe same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether\nthe same as, pure being.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s symbolize\nthis as Being = A, Nothing = B, indeterminate, immediacy = C<\/p>\n\n\n\n A = C<\/p>\n\n\n\n B = C<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore: A = B or\nBeing is Nothing<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we have\nBecoming\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPure Being and\npure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor\nnothing, but that being \u2014 does not pass over but has passed over \u2014 into\nnothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not\nundistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same,\nthat they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and\ninseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is\ntherefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other:\nbecoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which\nhas equally immediately resolved itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here Hegel tells us\nthat actually Being and nothing does have a determination in spite of the fact\nthe he just told us both are absolutely and immediately indeterminate (and\ntherefore the same). He told us that\nBeing and nothing are the same and now he tells that they are not the\nsame. Now we find out that they have a\ndistinction \u2013 a determinacy. In either\ncase, Being or Nothing, they are still that same as immediacy. So while they do and do not have determinacy\n(i.e., they are absolutely distinct), they both have immediacy. Each one immediately vanishes into the other. So now we have a difference even though they\nare the same. The difference and their\nimmediate nullity is becoming. Moreover,\nbecoming is mediation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So now we have\ndeterminacy (i.e., they are absolutely distinct) and mediation = D<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly, we can\nsay that C != D (where != is not equal). \nThey are actually syllogistically, diametrical opposites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now Hegel wants to\nsay A = C = D and B = C = D <\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore: A = B or\nBeing is Nothing but here we have absolutely contradicted ourselves because C\n!= D <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we have\ncontradicted ourselves. Is Hegel telling\nus that the contradiction is becoming and therefore we now have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being = Nothing =\nabsolute indetermination and absolute immediacy = determination (absolutely\ndistinct) and mediation (since they are both held in their absolute\ncontradiction (both the same and different)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as I can see\nthe only way to maintain this as TRUE is not based on logical deduction from a\nnecessarily TRUE categorical syllogism but to maintain it dogmatically (and\nfalsely) as a tautology. It is not\nreally a tautology but it is assumed by Hegel to be necessarily and absolutely TRUE\nand as a categorical syllogism BUT it cannot be proven true with a common\nmedium term only a common medium contradiction (which must be \u2018intuited\u2019 and\nlifted up). Additionally, in Kant\u2019s term\nthe beginning of \u201cThe Logic\u201d cannot be analytic, a priori and thus necessarily\ntrue but can only be a synthetic judgement in that terms are applied to the\nsubjects (Being and nothing) which are not contained in the mutual and\ncontradictory predicates (indeterminate, immediacy, determinate, mediate). Synthetic judgements are always contingent on\nperception. Contingency does not belong\nto the absolute in Hegel. Are we to\narrive at the absolute when we start with the contingent? Certainly this is a question of are synthetic\na priori judgements possible? I think\nthey are. The may or may not be true but\nthere can never be an \u2018absolute\u2019 truth as analytic, a priori judgements. They can never obtain that level of absolute\nif you will. If you add in intuition,\nconditioned by categories of sensibility by Kant, you can arrive at a\ncontingent certainty (such as cause and effect appears in empirical\nobservation) but those judgements are ALWAYS conditioned by a degree of\nindeterminacy and uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we are now to\napply intuition to Hegel\u2019s Logic (i.e., we intuitively know that Being is\ndistinct from nothing) we have introduced another medium term from \u2018Being =\nindeterminate, immediacy = nothing\u2019 to \u2018Being = indeterminate, immediacy =\ndeterminate, mediate = nothing\u2019. The\nstart in Hegel\u2019s logic begins in intuition and therefore contingency and ends\nin Concept \u2013 the \u2018absolute\u2019 (not contingent). \nHaven\u2019t we made base metal into gold? \nAre we to assume that the philosopher\u2019s stone will resolve our dilemma? Regarding the\ndefinition of metaphysics, well, I place no value on it whatsoever. Frankly, I\ndon’t care if someone is or is not metaphysical according to anyone. Hegel\ntalks about metaphysics both as that generality of Being and Essence, but also\nas ontology in general which ends up making all philosophy nothing but a\nmetaphysical exercise in asserting anything fundamental in any categorial\nsense. Whether you, Heidegger, or anyone else agrees I see as having no concern\n*within* Hegelianism. The issue with using someone else, even Kant, to define\nHegel and point out strange contradictions is precisely that Hegel himself\ndoesn’t *take* definitions from anyone, and his concepts are themselves not\ndefinitions in a common sense either. While one may talk about the relation, as\nHegel himself does, one has to keep in mind Hegel conceives the relation not of\nhimself to them, but them to him once he has his systematic groundwork in\nplace. In this same way, although here I admit total immanent ignorance,\ncharges of ‘onto-theology’ against Hegel strike me as, well, rather inane from\na Hegelian standpoint itself. I’ve seen descriptions of this concept and have\nbeen given some by some self-professed Heideggerians and I always found it a\nstrange charge (there have been times when a couple Hegelians reverse the\ncharge against Heidegger lol on related matters such as the ontic difference).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being, thought, and\nGod aren’t exactly the same thing for Hegel except for the implicated dynamic\nthat binds everything as the Absolute. The unity of Being and thought is, I\nthink, a rather clever conception made by Hegel on analogical ground\n(Phenomenology of Spirit Preface) of existence=abstraction=thought, as well as\nthe simple conceptual ground (Logic): With the concept of Being the only\nexistential possibility is nothing due precisely to its immediacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning the\nAbsolute, while Newton was an absolutist, I think it mistaken if not\ndisingenuous to equate what these two refer to by the same term name. Hegel’s\nabsolute is not something else different and independent of the relative like\nNewton’s absolute space and aether were in regard to motion. The relative is\nnot relative as something else, but as a moment which depends yet also is\ndepended on for the realization of the Absolute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning Hegel’s\npolitics, I certainly won’t defend his outlooks. First, because I’m not yet\nfamiliar with the works in their proper logic, and second because even if I was\nI am not someone who will defend Hegel for being Hegel, he does indeed have\nfailures in lapses of his own methodology. However, as someone with some eye\ntowards history, may I say that a Machiavellian prince is certainly something\nthat for all realities of our nice natures does seem to be a great necessity in\nmaintaining a shift from one social world to another. To my mind comes Simon\nBolivar, whose liberal kindness and resolute moral idealism unfortunately ended\nup betraying his own dream and that of the continent he helped liberate… all\nbecause he refused to be a dictator in a historical moment where such concentration\nof power and vision was required to see the project of a new Latin America\nthrough. Poor fool. As for Hegel’s totalitarian tendency, well, I think that’s\noverstating things considering the whole of the project is to see the freedom\nof individuality flourish, which of course requires the stability of its social\ntotality. Take my point with a grain of salt, however, I don’t speak for Hegel\nor Hegelians here, it’s so far an opinion based on a singular view of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the\nBeing, Nothing, Becoming issue. You’re right to note that there is something\nglaring in the claims and methodology, but Hegel himself tells us so right from\nthe first pages of that chapter. The beginning, as he presents it, is a ruse.\nHe begins legitimately, but explains the movement in illegitimate form in\ntaking on our own assumptions of the nature of these distinctions (hence the\nidentity through indeterminacy\/indifference and difference through intent).\nFirst is the intent, second is of course the appeal in Nothing to *existence*\nin order to make the return to Being. A lot of this issue sort of arises not\njust because these term names have some implication of some pretended meaning\nthat seems unutterable, but that immediacy itself really is weird to us who are\nso determinate and used to given determinateness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue of this\nbeginning is that it is so abstract that linguistically there is simply going\nto be an inescapable failure to describe the immanent move without relying on\nexternal categories. Discounting the intention of meaning, we can make the\ndifference of Being and Nothing in many ways: form and content, appearance and\nessence, thought and thinking. The beginning is presuppositionless and\nindeterminate in its *immanent intelligibility*. Indeed, these concepts don’t\npresuppose other concepts, they are what we conceive normally as closest to\npure immediacies. In being truly immediate, they cannot be relative in the\nsense of Being vs Nothing, because that would presuppose the relation. Though\nthought content in conceptual form is indeterminate, we cannot escape that\nthinking is inescapably determining in action and determinate as existent.\nRegardless of how we try to explicate these categories, however, their\nindeterminacy only transfers to everything else if we try to be immanent, and\nthough we may do things determinately we are left incapable of saying anything\nimmanently as to why these are determinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth of the\ndistinction, as I see it, is simply that we *can* make the distinction in act\ndespite not having any conceptual cognizance of how we can conceive that we did\nit. This is because thinking is a capacity\/power capable of self-abstraction\nwithout any seeming limit (its reflexivity). Thinking can think of thinking,\nand the fundamental split at the beginning is simply two faces of the thought\nprocess itself: thought and thinking. We are either immersed in penetrating\nthought already, or we are standing back from thought prior to this immersion.\nBeing is thought, Nothing is thinking. We either notice the immediacy in its\nform\/thought and simply determine that it is present indeterminately, or we\nnotice the immediacy in its content\/thinking which re-emerges into thought as\nthe recollection of this activity and the observation that presence was absent\nin the engagement. With this there is no appeal to some intent to Being or\nNothing, nor is their identity through a third, but rather through their\ninverting reflexion: Being is Nothing because that is what its thinking reveals\nitself to be. Nothing is Being because that is what its thought reveals it to\nbe. Here, of course, you may charge that intention has only shifted to the\nsubjectivity of attention\u2014we want to attend to something different about\neach\u2014and thinking of it right now, you may be right, but I have quite a bit of\nthinking I’ve been doing on this particular formulation of it and it still\nneeds development. Part of me hopes that maybe this formulation has something\nmore objective due to its tie to the nature of thought itself, of course, a\nnature which is not internally conceivable at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, of course,\nyou may level against Hegel the charge that indeed he is wrong or lying about\nhis supposedly logical methodology because he *indeed has relied on an\nintuition*. This charge, I think, Hegel would simply wipe off like a chip on\nhis shoulder. The intuition here is not at all a sensuous intuition. It is from\nthe beginning an intellectual intuition about what thinking experiences of\nitself in pure thought terms, for it is indeed as I call it a phenomeno-logic\nthat Hegel uses the entire way across all works from the beginning. Thinking\nitself has a phenomenal being, and why shouldn’t it? The appeal to the empty\nintuition of Nothing can indeed be taken in sensuous form, that of the\nsuspension of thinking simply temporally idling with no possible engagement. We\ncan, however, just as well recognize this as something we may want to call\nintellectual intuition of this suspension of thinking itself: immediate\nthinking is immediately negated, halted\u2014absent. To call this an intuition in\nany Kantian sense is of course erroneous, and Hegel himself doesn’t use such\nlanguage, but if we may speak of experience as learning, and if thought is an\nobject of thinking, thinking intuits thought in a loose sense. If you find this\nunappealing, it can just as well be cast off as a rather sloppy description in\nterms, but what Hegel does remains working just as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t in any way\nexpect this satisfies your curiosity and\nanswers its problematic, but rest assured I too am (when I get into the issue)\npuzzled by the enigmatic beginning of the Logic as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, to return\nto something earlier, on your mention of empirical science, pragmatism, and its\nconcepts (such as indeterminacy), I’m not quite sure what you mean without any\ndeterminate (ha) case for you to give. I don’t think it would at all be fair to\nsay that, say, the concept of indeterminacy in QM is what Hegel would be\nreferring to by his concept of indeterminacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, thanks\na lot for the email. I would offer some books to read… but I don’t actually\nread many about Hegelianism so I can’t. I certainly enjoy a challenge, and if I\nseem stubbornly Hegelian it is perhaps because I am. My mind is thoroughly\ndetermined in the Hegelian conceptual fashion which is certainly quite\ndifferent to what you’re used to, and I can say the same to the Heideggerian\nlogic which is unusual to me. I’m only familiar with small bits of Heidegger,\nbut those small bits are actually ones I like quite a lot due to how well\nthought they are, and how they meld well with Hegelian thinking. I’m afraid I\nramble now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, I am flattered a Hegelian would even take the time to\ntalk to me. The academics I have known\nincluding my best friend for decades will not engage in this kind of\nconversation at all. To be fair, they\nspend all their time \u2018publishing or perishing\u2019. \nI can tell you have not had a wide variety of exposure to philosophical\nthinkers but that is ok \u2013 I think philosophy should be fair game for all no\nmatter what their background. I can also\ntell you are a very bright young (I think) person and quite impressive for your\nHerculean efforts in what is probably the most difficult philosopher to\nunderstand. I also like you honesty in\ndealing with the material. From a very\nyoung age to the age of 62 (and having retired at the age of 43) I have had a\nlot of time for academic and my own studies in philosophy. I have a broad background in the history of\ncontinental philosophy (not so much analytic tradition) with an emphasis in the\nancient Greeks and contemporary philosophy (starting at the beginning of the 20th<\/sup>\ncentury). I have had a number of decades in philosophy\nbut still a content beginner IMO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are right in detecting that much of my academic\nbackground was in Heidegger. However,\nfor a number of years now I have not considered myself to be a\nHeideggerian. I understand Heidegger now\nas having more to do with German Idealism than I previously thought. More generally, my background in contemporary\nphilosophy has been in phenomenology which is not the \u2018phenomenology\u2019 of Hegel\nbut starting with Husserl. This\nphenomenology was about not abstracting away from phenomena but observing it as\nit shows itself in such phenomena as lived time \u2013 the stretch of subjective\ntime, epochs for Heidegger et al, etc. (not abstract linear \u2018now\u2019 moment time \u2013\noh, lived time fits well with relativity \u2013 came about around the same time) or\nlived space \u2013 as regions of deseverance for a subject, horizons for history and\nlanguage, etc. (not abstract geometrical\nthree dimensional space \u2013 fits well with QM).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps my critical concern of \u2018metaphysics\u2019 comes from my\nreading of post-modernists, Derrida in particular. His critique of \u2018logocentrism\u2019 certainly\nplays into the history of violence (capitalism, Stalinism, etc.). He brings out the dogmatism in metaphysics\nnot with another dogma but with a deconstruction of the text\u2026using the margins\nof the text\u2026the text\u2019s own implicit determinations to undermine its\n\u2018canon\u2019. I have read and talked to\nHegelians which I think come from contemporary Hegelianism that believe Hegel\nis NOT metaphysical in essence. They\nthink that his logic follows rationally, immanently, without any transcendental\nleaps into metaphysics. I know there\nhave been many schools of Hegel which differ from that orientation and are more\nsympathetic to your irrelevance of the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, I would currently think of myself as a\nLevinasian (he has been called an anarchist communist). He was a student of Heidegger and Husserl but\nwent in very different, and I would say very conflictive, directions from\nHeidegger. For Levinas, simply put, the\nhistory of violence which he also finds in German Idealism is a history of\nretreat from the face of the other. The\nface of the other is an infinity, a radical alterity which ontology retreats\nfrom. Levinas\u2019 major later work is\nentitled \u201cOtherwise than Being or Beyond Essence\u201d. Levinas reserves the absolute as the he or\nthe she which faces me and breaks through the \u2018plastic cast\u2019 I form of them\ngiven by the history of totality. The\nother is not Concept or Idea but face that confounds me. History which is the effacement of the other is\nontology. From this relation you can see\nhow Levinas derives an \u2018Ethics\u2019 not as an altruism, a derived duty or idea, but\na primacy from the \u2018anarchic\u2019 start with the encounter of the other. The\nother has a \u2018time not my time\u2019 a \u2018past not my past\u2019 which cannot be coincident\nwith my phenomenal temporality. He calls\nthis a \u2018diachrony\u2019. All of our historic,\nlinguistic categories which synchronizes time\/space, universalizes idea, gives\nus certainty and determinacy (i.e., \u2018reality\u2019, being, Concept, even historic\nmetaphysics, etc.) have been derived from an absolute inability to face the infinity\nof the other \u2013 a \u2018passivity beyond all passivity\u2019. Before we think we are held captive by a\nsubstitution – I for the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, I like the openness towards the other I find in\nLevinas. I see a violence and reductive\nimmanence in universalizing idea, naturalism (materialism, positivism,\npragmatism, etc.)\u2026a totality which truncates and essentially alienates. Levinas as many of the other contemporary\nphenomenologists starts in embodiment, lived sensibility, etc. and even his\nEthics is from the \u2018touch\u2019 not the Idea of the encounter with the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know this is off the topic but I did want to give you a\nlittle background on where I am coming from so you do not have to guess. I, as I think for yourself, am left of\nliberal and an activist for many years. \nI also like Marx \u2013 his critiques of capitalism in particular). I guess I would be more of the Trotsky type\nin that I take Marx to be speaking of a natural \u2018evolution\u2019 towards socialism\nand, for him ultimately, communism. If\nnothing else, with the advent of technology and manufacturing automation, the\nfuture cannot be pure capitalism unless we are willing to exterminate the\nmasses so only the elite can thrive. We\nwill have to think productivity and value in very different terms in the future\nthan pure, Austrian capitalism can conceive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I still love philosophy as Levinas did \u2013 incredible\nscholar. I am intrigued by Hegel and the\nabsolute \u2018idea\u2019-lism which for me, personally would be an absolute horror and\nfalse security that would reduce all to the one, the Idea, and forgo any excess\n\u2013 to the point of annihilating something phenomenally essential to\n\u2018otherness\u2019. If \u2018otherness\u2019 is the\noccasion for dialectic culminating in self-determining Concept, certainly the\nprotests of existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.) go unheeded but\nbeyond that any \u2018other\u2019 has already been determined in advance as Idea (for\nHegel). I also have seen in Hegel and\nhis students an indifference (perhaps smugness) and arrogance about his\n\u2018presumption-less\u2019 philosophy. I and\nmany others do not accept that on face value. \nI think it is an exaggeration and apothotheois which cannot stand up to\ncritical examination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Notwithstanding my critical concerns of Hegel, I will say\nthat I do have admiration for him. He\nobviously had an incredible mind \u2013 even the very fact that he is sooo hard to\ncriticize says something about his genius that few philosophers have ever\nattained. I can see his philosophy as\nmore of a work of art than the way he and his students seem to want to take him. The \u2018circularity\u2019 of his philosophy and the\napparent wholeness, completeness, of his System are apparent to me. It almost seems \u2018fractal\u2019 like to me and so,\nembodies a kind of organic naturalism to it. \nSo, just because I have problems taking him in the way I think he wants\nus to take him, I can still appreciate his work and the challenge it presents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason I brought up Kant is because Hegel himself brings\nup Kant as important to his philosophy and therefore, find it relevant to the\ndiscussion. It is not based on what I\nthink or others but what Hegel thinks relative to Kant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to onto-theology I also share a bit of a\nreservation with the free use of that critique. \nNeither Hegel or Heidegger \u2018should\u2019 be simply reduced to\nonto-theology\u2026almost as if it were some kind of psychologism of the\nthinkers. Both thinkers borrow terms\nfrom the history of Christian theology but generally have very different\nreasons for doing so. I have never ever\nread a word that Heidegger was Christian (hard to see) but Hegel certainly was\n\u2013 does not necessarily mean too much. \nThat being said, there certainly is a theological school of Hegel\n(mainly Catholic I think) and his fascination with the kenosis and Jesus as,\nhow shall I say, presently the most complete manifestation of Geist does bring\nhim in proximity to a reification of Christianity. Sure, it can have a very different foundational\nreason but it is curious shall we say. I\nunderstand the God\/Man dialectic and the introspective\nsubjectivity\/individuality he thinks this brings to Geist and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hegel himself in his early writing did employ the aether\n(Jena I, II, III \u2013 unpublished see http:\/\/www.cosmosandhistory.org\/index.php\/journal\/article\/viewFile\/393\/781)\nso it was not just Newton (and others including Einstein) although he seems to\nhave recanted that in his later writings. \nWith regard to the \u2018absolute\u2019 in both, I agree that it means very\ndifferent things but it is not simply ingenious that we observe they both\nemploy the terms. Both were highly concerned\nwith the \u2018absolute\u2019. I have read your\nown comments, something to the effect that modernity has disregarded and lost\nthe concern for the absolute. Both\nNewton and Hegel were immediately and evidently active about the business of\nthinking what the absolute could be. An\nobsession with the absolute has dominate strains in history and while the\nparticulars are different, the direction of the inquiry is motivated by what\nsimply and at least pragmatically is given by the word \u2018absolute\u2019. Certainly, what we currently understand by\nrelativity (in physics at least) has deflated that concern and spilled over\ninto contemporary philosophy as you seem to have observed. Additionally, there was crossover from Newton\nto philosophy and Hegel to physics as temporal\/spatial (certainly from the\nancient Greek meaning of phusis to physis to Latin nature, etc.). Certainly, there is a passion an intense\nconcern culminating in a lifetime of substantial work after the absolute. From an existentialism and 20th<\/sup>\ncentury phenomenological perspective (existing subject, egoistic) they share\nthat desire. It is certainly possible to\nsay they share the same passion without implying that their field of work was\nthe same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to Being and nothing as immediacy (\u201cpure\nimmediacy\u201d), \u2018immediacy\u2019 for Hegel seems to me to be an artificially asserted\nstate (or experience) which, in lived experience, never happens. By the very presumption of \u2018immediacy\u2019 as\nsome kind of vegetative human state of consciousness where there is no\ndeterminacy (except when it becomes) may be some kind of extremified state of\nBuddhist consciousness but it can only really be extrapolated as \u2018real\u2019 in some\nsense since, to have it as an experience, would be to lose it in any definitive\nmodality. When we correlate Being\nimmediacy to the nothing immediacy, it seems to me that we have tread into deep\nwaters which has lost the light of day. \nSure, we can imagine that state but to think of it as phenomenological,\nas a lived experience, seems to me to be self-contradictory. It seems to me that immediacy in Being and\nnothing at the start of the Logic is as Epicurus wrote: “So death, the\nmost terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is\nnot with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then\nconcern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the\nlatter are no more.\u201d I guess it could be \u2018analogical\u2019 for something\nor another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to this, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHowever, as someone with some eye towards history, may I\nsay that a Machiavellian prince is certainly something that for all realities\nof our nice natures does seem to be a great necessity in maintaining a shift\nfrom one social world to another. To my mind comes Simon Bolivar, whose liberal\nkindness and resolute moral idealism unfortunately ended up betraying his own\ndream and that of the continent he helped liberate… all because he refused to\nbe a dictator in a historical moment where such concentration of power and\nvision was required to see the project of a new Latin America through. Poor\nfool. As for Hegel’s totalitarian tendency, well, I think that’s overstating\nthings considering the whole of the project is to see the freedom of\nindividuality flourish, which of course requires the stability of its social\ntotality. Take my point with a grain of salt, however, I don’t speak for Hegel\nor Hegelians here, it’s so far an opinion based on a singular view of history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the \u2018world historical perspective\u2019 Bolivar can be thought as a \u201cPoor fool\u201d but I\nam not sure that exhausts the subject of validity. I suppose we could say that of Gandhi,\nSiddhartha Gautama, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. but the measurement of\nthe success of failure is not necessarily and exclusively taken in some\nsocio-politico aftermath which may or may not have occurred. It seems to me that all of these folks taken\nin a purely human way had no idea that, at the time, they were going to have a\n\u2018world historical\u2019 socio-politico-consciousness effect. All, at the time, lived their life as if it\nwere simply \u2018a life\u2019. Apart from the\nmythical connotations they picked up in later history, they themselves were not\nmotivated by delusions of (historical) grandeur. It does bring up the question in view of\nthe diversity of possible lived lives, \u201cHow shall we live our life? What choices based on what concerns? \u2026an ethical question based on what? \u2026world\nhistorical, illusions of grandeur, humble, empathetic, ethical, narcissistic (like\nour infamous president), etc.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, individuality certainly is one level of Hegel but not\nnecessarily a privileged level. We know the\n\u2018state\u201d is \u201csacred\u201d for Hegel. Also,\nSpirit (or Geist) is epochal and collective \n-even to the point where the individual seems almost slave-like with\nregard to the state and the Spirit. \nIndividualism seems more like a stop at the beginning of the way where\nnot all individuals are given some endowment of freedom but hold the\npossibility for freedom as given by their epoch and their ability to perceive\nit. For the more primitive they must be\n\u2018mastered\u2019 due to their enslavement and further, the end result of violence\nseems to be a \u2018right\u2019 of the\u2026master race shall we say obliquely at the least\n(ok, too much but can we say that freedom is taken hold of, created by, the\nenlightened, the Spirit of the age, the victors?). <\/p>\n\n\n\n From this comment \u201cIndeed, these concepts don’t presuppose\nother concepts, they are what we conceive normally as closest to pure\nimmediacies\u201d I would remark\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I find these parallelisms you name, Being and Nothing, form\nand content, appearance and essence, thought and thinking, etc. are\ninteresting, especially thought and thinking. \nAre these suppose to be analogous in some sense? Perhaps as they share Hegel\u2019s predicates of\nindeterminate\/determinate, mediate\/immediate, assertion\/negation, diremption \u201cof\nitself into itself as subjective individuality and itself as indifferent\nuniversality\u201d. I assume these hinge on\nexistential-particular\/universal? Sure,\nthese words can have meanings which, when pushed, can take on these\nconnotations but there is nothing necessary in that \u2018push\u2019. I have already talked about the \u2018immediacy\u2019\nnotion but when these other notions are set up as exclusive oppositions,\ndialectically opposites and negating each other, they seem to artificially and\nconveniently lose some of their included middles. For example, form and content \u2013 form could be\na perception of content and thus existential (as what one sees) but perception\nas seeing does not have to be an externality, a face, of content\u2026 an appearance. From a minimal sense there are many \u2018ways\u2019 to\nsee the same \u2018content\u2019 depending on how – the mechanism, by which you\nlook. In a banal sense we can look at\nthe content of space as visible light, infrared light, electromagnetic, radio\nfrequency, QM, etc. Is the form\naccidental to content or essential? This\nis a philosophical question. The fact is\nthat form is never, phenomenally at least, absolutely separable from\ncontent. They could be \u2018thought\u2019 as\nantithetical I suppose, as negating each other, but not necessarily. As a side, Nietzsche said \u2018my body does my\nmind\u2019 as a way to turn conventional thought on its \u2018head\u2019 so to speak. It seems an abstraction to me to think these\npredicates as oppositional and exclusively. \nSure they can be thought that way but there are other ways such as the\nsame phenomenon, mutually exclusive and inclusive members, purely formal,\nphenomenal, noumenal, etc. but to lose all these other denotations in a\nreductionary pool of oppositions is not somehow self-evident. These\nterms are never \u201cpure immediacies\u201d that can somehow be stripped of their\npresumptions except in a purely abstract and oracular fashion. We never experience them as somehow separate\nand purified of their fields of connotations as some kind of sterilized\nexperience of \u2018immediacy\u2019. To insist on\nthis \u2018immediacy\u2019 is to presume on our lived experience which grasp heterogenous\nmultiplicities of meanings and inflections in everyday, a priori (in Kant\u2019s\nterms), understanding of the terms. \nContemporary phenomenology does not want to abstract and infer\/imply\nabstractions to the way we encounter language but examine how we live them on\nhorizons\/wholes of meaning. I know we\ncan think as Hegel would have us think and assume a pure immediacy that is\nindeterminate but I think there is nothing necessary about that abstraction\nand, in that only a human vegetable could experience them as such, it would be\nimpossible to isolate those predications as \u2018indeterminate\u2019 and still have any\nsuch thing as language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFinally, to return to something earlier, on your mention of\nempirical science, pragmatism, and its concepts (such as indeterminacy), I’m\nnot quite sure what you mean without any determinate (ha) case for you to give.\nI don’t think it would at all be fair to say that, say, the concept of\nindeterminacy in QM is what Hegel would be referring to by his concept of\nindeterminacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is fair enough. \nI only find indeterminacy in philosophy as an excess to, what I think,\nis an assumed absolute determinacy based on \u2018logical\u2019 abstractions. I think your reasoning is very clear and\nhonest. I appreciate that. In Hegel\u2019s \u2018logic\u2019 it all fits together very\nwell, artistically I would say. I think\nperhaps it really comes down to a choice. \nDo we want to think that Hegel and his Logic exhaust, sum up, complete\nthe absolute, the all, without excess or even the possibility of being\nwrong? If we make that choice then I\nsuppose there is a kind of psychological security for some in that determinacy\nand certainty (as a pragmatic least anyway). \nFor me, indeterminacy leaves open possibility for the novel, for awe and\nwonder, for an other which has not entered my determinacies and certainties and\nthat also has some psychological component to my choice as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just to let you know, I had full knee replacement September\n10th<\/sup> on one knee and the other replaced December 3rd<\/sup>. This has given me more time to read, think\nand converse than I would normally have. \nGenerally, my days are filled with working out every day,\nplaying\/composing\/recording music in my studio, writing software for musicians\nwhich I really love, reading\/thinking\/writing philosophy and family. I have really enjoyed this conversations and\nlook forward to future discussions \u2013 I just may be a little longer to respond\nin the future as I get better. I am sure\nyou also have many engagements as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately I find myself by necessity of external\nfactors, but also by choice, outside the road to the ivory tower. Indeed, I\nhaven’t actually read widely in philosophy, but because I know my bit of Hegel\nso well people assume quite often that I do. It is not due to lack of interest\nat all, even the philosophers I am antagonistic towards (Deleuze and Schelling\nfor example) deeply fascinate me, but alas I am a inspirational reader and\nthinker who finds the spark of thought in a community of those who share in the\neffort and discuss, and outside of academic life this is almost an\nimpossibility. That I have managed so much with Hegel in so short a time and\nwith relatively so little read is almost entirely due to the luck of having met\nfellow enthusiasts open to the challenge. Most of what you find on my blog is\nactually written within time frames when I read with these groups and was\ncaught up in the exercise, most of it really was conceived in the total of one\nyear not of heavy reading, but of simply consciously and (mostly) unconsciously\nmeditating on the short parts I’ve read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately I have been and currently am of ‘modest’\nmeans, that is, scraping by. Often people sigh disappointedly at my financial\nstate because they are impressed with my intellect, but think I use it for the\nwrong things (that which makes no money). Indeed, I may be more busy in the\ncoming weeks which is often not the case, which is why I so readily answer\nemails. I’m going to be an entrepreneur (financial services), and while I\ndespise the idea, the potential of it and the need of the money requires that I\ngive up my discomfort and shame for a moment in order to achieve anything of\nthis sort. I intend to succeed despite my usual misgivings about bothering\npeople, I must succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, Hegel places himself in stronger connection to Kant\nthan to his immediate priors, but as I’ve noticed we must not mistake the\nnature of the relation to flow from Kant to Hegel, such that Kant will somehow\nelucidate Hegel from outside because Hegel simply elucidates himself and\ncompares\/contrasts himself to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the aether, it seems I overlooked mentioning in the last\nresponse that I myself stand by a concept of aether. The concept of aether as\nsuch need not be absolute qua reference frame, and the implications of physics\nitself require it for other reasons of brutely paradoxical and conceptual\nnature. The nature of inertia, radiation, gravity, light, electromagnetism\n(fields in general) from within themselves call out to our reason to\ninvestigate the medium of their reality. Light, for all that we practically do with\nit, is in itself unintelligible to us, so is electromagnetism, gravity, and\nsimple things like inertia and relativistic mass, particle\/wave duality, etc. A\nrelativistic infinitesimal aether not as a type of matter but as a general\nconcept of what is for us indeterminately determinate matter would, given the\nmaterial reality of Nature, answer and serve the mediating purpose to make\nintelligible a lot of these strange relations. Not fully, of course, I’m aware\nthat certain issues are present concerning empirical attempts motivated to\nanswer the issue one way or another, and while some of these experiments are\nsupremely well designed, they rest on assumptions on what this aether would be\nand the nature of what relations may appear as. Multiple individuals far more\ncapable than ourselves in these matters seem to think the conceptual issue is\notherwise and far from unsettled, and it is from my experience these\nindividuals who show the greatest grasp of the conceptual issues compared to\nthe standard theorists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About the parallels, I call them analogies in the Kantian\nsense of structural equivalences, i.e. we can talk *about* the dynamic of\nBeing\/Nothing with any of those and the exact issues will actually present\nthemselves only with a different veneer. It does have to do with the movement\nof the Concept, but I don’t talk of it in those terms (mainly because they’re\nso advanced and I’m not so comfortable with it on that level of concretion).\nYou note that there seems something forced in the abstractions of Being\/Nothing,\nthat we don’t necessarily have to think this way or think these thoughts, but I\nshall put that aside for now and simply say that *existentially* you’re right\n(Fichte has some beautiful words on the choice of philosophy and the\nindividual, but like him I think that though this choice is telling of the\nindividual it is also telling of what this individual is really committed to,\nand that there are higher and lower philosophies). I’ve been thinking a lot\nabout this in the last couple of days because of you and someone else (the\nprofessor I was responding to in a prior email).<\/p>\n\n\n\n ======On The Problem of Immediacy=====<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps some elucidation on immediacy is required to make\nsense of this issue. Being and Nothing are immediate in that they do not presuppose\nany relation internal or external to them. Hegel says they are \u2018equal only to\nthemselves and not unequal to another,\u2019 that they are indifferent within and\nwithout. In a way, this is a ruse, and Hegel knows it. We appeal to equality\nwithout difference, to innerness without exteriority, to indeterminacy without\ndeterminateness, to form without content, to immediacy without mediation as if\nsuch even makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the problem of immediacy as immediate: it can never\nbe what it pretends, it itself never has or will be immediate alone. In common\ntalk we speak of the immediate only as it is in mediation: the immediate is\nprecisely something split and differentiated even if the same. Immediacy is\nalways immediacy in mediation, immediate in relation to. We see an apple\nimmediately, the apple is immediately to the right, it is immediately one, it\nis immediately in contact, it is immediately itself\u2014here A=A, as Fichte shows\nin his opening to the Science of Knowledge, is itself hopelessly mediated in\nthis posited identity which splits a thing from itself and rejoins it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Being is absolutely immediate thought. There is not only no\nthought before or behind it, there is none within it. It\u2019s not a thought at\nall, it is the absence of it. How did we ever manage to conceive indeterminacy\nat all? Because we implicitly operated with its opposite, determinacy, in order\nto determine it so. It is against determinacy\u2019s absence that Nothing is\ndetermined. It is by the presence of the very determination of indeterminacy that\nNothing is. The implicitness of this, and this is crucial and a very important\ndifference, is in action and not in conceptual explicitness. I’ll explain this\nfurther below with thought\/thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dialectic of Being and Nothing entails all dialectics of\nthe Logic. Nothing is. Indeterminacy is a determinateness. Absence is present.\nDifference is identity. Content is form. Appearance is Essence. Thinking is\nthought. Subject is substance. Change is permanent. This occurs endlessly\nbecause thought and thinking are two sides of one coin which when we attempt to\nexplicitly split will either end in Nothing or it will end in its immanent\nopposite side of the coin if we simply follow it through for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is Being? Nothing. It could not be otherwise. What is\nNothing? It is indeterminate Being. This is where the action is implicitly\nhappening. Nothing is determinacy (existent thought) falling into\nindeterminatess because of its drive to absolutize a determinacy we call\nimmediacy, to achieve abstract absolute negation, to remove from content its\nform, to remove substance from subjectivity\u200a\u2014\u200ain short, to rip thought from\nthinking and posit them as utterly distinct. Are we, then, wrong about Being?\nIs it not the most general, the most universal, the most immediate? Hegel seems\nto say quite early that, yes, we are indeed wrong about Being. If, indeed, all\nis, then Being entails far more than itself, but Being as a term has\nconnotations that are more fit for the beginning of this impossible absolute\none-sided abstraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Identity<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being and Nothing are one and the same, not by a comparison\nof their immediacy and indeterminacy, but by the intellectual experience of\ntheir reflexive engagement in which one thought supplants the other. Being and\nNothing are indistinguishable, they are one and the same concept in this\nindifference, nonetheless, they are different. They are indeed two different\nmoments of thought, two indeterminacies which have yet to be determinate as\nthoughts, but we cannot yet immanently specify what this difference is from\nwithin the content of these thoughts themselves. We can, however, give an\nexternal account for the sake of methodological guidance and explanation. The\nusual manner of explaining this difference is in the shift of attention between\nform and content, but I shall opt for a more intuitive (in the experiential\nsense) distinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thought and Thinking<\/p>\n\n\n\n We must come to awareness and keep in mind the peculiarity\nof our situation in the Logic: We are existentially beginning at a point far\nbeyond where the Logic begins. We are by the fact of what we are,\nself-conscious thinkers, capable in ways these lower elements of the\ninvestigation themselves explicitly are not. This is also a truth we find in\nthe Phenomenology of Spirit, where likewise we operate with capacities which\nlower forms of consciousness are simply not equipped to ever conceive or\nperhaps even come to awareness. Therefore, a key question implicit in this\nbeginning, how we go from indeterminacy to determinacy, will be answered by an\nexistentially determinate capacity\u200a\u2014\u200awe are not limited to indeterminacy in\naction even if explicitly we do not call upon it. The capacity of thought is\nalready a determinate capacity, and its power to conceive will be necessarily\nin use. This power at its most basic can be termed absolute negativity, the\ncapacity to abstract without limit which by implication of its absoluteness\ndetermines it as self-operating in that thinking can think of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can perfectly explain how we arrive at Being is Nothing\nwithout making any unwarranted explicit leaps in the thought process by simply\nusing the full capacities of thinking as such in its implicit functions. We\nmust remember: at the outset we do not even know what thought or thinking as\nsuch are, let alone how they should function. The only way to find out is to\ncarry out the task of thinking in its purity, and being that we presuppose\nnothing the only thing to do is to let thought think with the stricture of its\nself-abstraction. Thinking, being determinate, will operate determinately and\ndeterminingly without need of our awareness or comprehension of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can discard with Being and Nothing and just as well speak\nof Thought and Thinking and still retain the problem at hand: there is a\ndifference that immanently is no difference between thought and thinking,\nimmediately they are recollected in immediacy, but we know that both are true\nbecause we know one is the immediacy of observation and the other of action.\nThe indifference lies in that each concept simply falls into the other\nimmediately, and this we find fully intelligible in that we do it in simply\nthinking these thoughts. However, we are struck by not knowing the\nintelligibility of the immediate difference within or between each despite the\nfact that we do make a difference. The difference is an inescapable practical\nreversal in the movement of absolute cognition exhausting all of its practical\ncapacities: it can engage and it can stand back. Being appears to that which\nstands back (thought), Nothing to that which steps in (thinking). As noted,\nthinking already works determinately, so despite the intent of absolute\nimmediacy it is already mediated, and despite the intent of indeterminacy, it\nis already determinate as indeterminate. The issue, to repeat, about the confusion\nof the beginning is precisely that the whole operation of thought works\nimplicitly in determinate distinction such that Being is treated as existence\n(determinacy), Nothing as its absence (indeterminacy), but we cannot explicitly\nrecognize this at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the ruse, a ruse which after thinking through (never\ndid I think it so much) now appears as not a ruse on us by Hegel, but by\nourselves. The beginning works as the indeterminate coming to be determinate\nonly explicitly, determinateness was always already there implicitly, and as\nHegel repeats endlessly, we can only bring to explicit light that which is\nalready there implicitly in action. Therefore, you are right of being a skeptic\nof the indeterminate and immediate beginning, the presuppositionless beginning.\nI return to my original point: Hegel is indeed presuppositionless explicitly,\nbut the absolute has always aready been there in the process and it is we who\nare the fools to think we can get rid of its action even if we blind ourselves\nto preconception. Indeed, the think the indeterminate is not possible for the\nindeterminate as such, just as in the Phenomenology no form of consciousness\ncan transcend itself if it does not already posses in its power absolute\nknowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ==========Individual vs State=========<\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel that I understand your worries of totality and the\nimportance of the Other. Unfortunately, I think it’s a bit of a romanticizing\nwhich given your political leaning is not unexpected to find in your theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the individual vs totality, I think the fear here comes\nfrom two spooky considerations: the state and the Universal. The state is\nsacred to Hegel just as Spirit is sacred, and the Universal is sacred\u2014sacred\nbecause they are quite literally holy as whole. The state is, for Hegel, the\nreality of an explicit community open before itself in its own universality.\nPrior to the life of a state there is a community, there is a Spirit, and the\nstate is there implicitly already. All communities have norms, have rules, have\nan ethical life which, even if not codified in explicit statements open to the\nview of all, is nonetheless most definitely there in the very actions of that\ncommunity’s members toward each other. Since the state is this unity of an\nentire way of life, the state as community is the basis which generates\nindividuals and is regenerated by them, were we to negate the state and\nliterally dissolve society, the obvious meaning of this is that we will have\ndissolved our own individuality and destroyed our own Spirit as community. The\nvery ground of the human, its society, is taken from under them and they revert\nback to a simple animal (e.g. feral children). As a communist you should\nexplicitly value this. Perhaps Hegel may be criticized for speaking of this\nfrom the view of some particular state, but according to his own logic the real\ncrime here is for the fall of a type of state in which a higher culture and\nSpirit will be lost to the seas of history in a dark age, and thus the\nindividual too will regress in that lower society to something less than what\nhad been achieved prior. We cheer for the revolution which advances freedom’s\nreality, not for the one that regresses us to barbaric times and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n =====On Barbarism in History==========<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, your mention of imperialism and conquest,\ngenocide even, of other peoples is certainly a concern. It takes a most cold\nand purposefully disinterested view of history to claim much of what Hegel\nclaims… and yet even when I considered myself mostly a Marxist I think things\nbecome apparent about certain realities which do not necessarily justify the\nhorrors of reality in a moral sense, but explain it in an intelligible sense.\nWhen Marx says that all that is solid melts into air, and that capitalism’s\nhistorical mission was to reshape the entire globe in its image according to\nits own logic, the logic which ingrains itself to a peculiar culture and to a\npeculiar individual that enacts its self-expansion, was this not a mere poetic\nprophecy, but a prosaic statement of the being of this very power above us in\nhistory? Is not capital necessary for the material advancement of life? It\nseems it is, regardless of private or state capital. The enslavement of\nhumanity to this moment of need is unfortunate, the existent horror something\nmost cannot even look at, the unhinged logic of an abstract universality\nconcentrated in deranged individuals serving but this abstract principle, and\nyet is this not the reality of history on the grand scale regardless of how we\nlook at it? Is conquest not a progress? Certainly not for those individuals\nafflicted, but what of humanity? I am from Honduras, a state in ruins. First it\nwas the natives conquering each other, then it was the Spaniards, then it was\nthe US, now it is in addition a war of state vs gangs, etc. Should I grieve for\na past people I feel and know no connection to, whose culture even if preserved\nis not really a culture that lives now? Should I reject the Americans, the\nGermans, the West in general, for having brought to being some of the greatest\nluminaries of humanity in the midst of a rape of the world and my people? I can\ncertainly hate them for my life predicament in many ways, but that the West has\na way of life and ideals which I would die for is unquestionable. Freedom is\nnot something I will give up, those cultures be damned. Now, I think that if we\nwere fully recognitive in explicitude we couldn’t do what we do to others\nregardless of their backwardness, but Hegel’s points about not grieving the\ndisappearance of backwards people is simply a logical truth. Nobody rational\ngrieves for the reality of the old ethical life prior to modernity, only for\nmoments of it which we wish we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the bloody march of history, isn’t it an expected\nlogical conclusion that when this material power is mixed with grandiose or\nbase ambition that all society shakes and trembles under such a boot? And is\nnot such a base ambition born not just of character but of ideal? Does it not,\nthen, come to pass that of historical necessity this is the exact reality: that\nconquerors found states and institutions, that states unify and homogenize\ntheir people, that in the Spirit of the founding is the Spirit of the people,\nand that these states immanently live and die in the logic of their own\ncontradiction? Should it then surprise us that this mix is not just possible,\nbut actual? That individuals concretize an entire mass of will under their\ncommand and as one lead nations to war when interest and ideals collide? Is war\nnot the ultimate sensuous reality of the logic of the other, not as unknown,\nbut as opposed absolutely? To die for an ideal is to die in service of an\nabsolute for us of which no denial or relinquishing is possible. While the\nboots on the ground may buy a story about an absolute of freedom, the pens in\nthe office tell a story about the absolute of capital. Of course, the winner is\nnot just the one willing to die for ideal, but with the means to kill and\nsurvive the opponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah, but what of those who weren’t founded by conquest? What\nof those like the Iroquois who seem to finally have recognized each other and\ncome together? They certainly exist, but existence itself is historically of no\nvirtue. The world spirits are those that lead, and we are being led by a train heading\ntowards a cliff\u2014alas, the strong in ethic, will, and charisma are not yet in\nour camp as champions. \u2014By the way, Simon Bolivar certainly did not see himself\nas living any common life. He was from nobility and schooled by a radical who\nveered close to anarchism in many ways. It is this teacher which put him on the\npath of the vision not just to free Latin America, but with a resolute purpose\nto found a nation that would rival the United States and not be bullied by\nexternal powers. The man had the charisma of Napoleon and the heart of\nRobespierre, but the aim of a state with the spoken ideals of the US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As some see it, we humans are adolescents coming to grips\nwith the consequences of mistaking freedom. Who is there, what is there, that\ncould teach us but our own wretched experience? An experience where we have\ncommitted and commit collective monstrosities under the guise that something\nelse requires us to do it, under the false pretenses of individuals who care\nnothing for others and only for themselves. How is this other ever to be\nrecognized without the turn toward ourselves, a turn in which you and I know as\nindividuals partaking in elucidating ideas we have a part, but are hardly the\ndetermining part unless we happen to spark an unseen gas. The problems of\nsociety aren’t solved with individual reflections, but a whole social movement,\nand as Hegel and Marx note, history up to now has been a tail that has wagged\nthe dog. The shift to what succeeds capital without stepping back on freedom\nrequires something new and immensely difficult, the self-reflection of a\nsociety which understands its position, problem, and determines consciously to\nmeld the solution to the crumbling house in the walls and beams of society\nitself, in its institutions, in the message of purpose it presents for and to\nitself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n =====Otherness and recognition=======<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is someone whose works I like despite deep\ndisagreement with their interpretation of Hegel, that is Jay Bernstein. In one\nof his lectures on recognition he brings up part of this bit about the other.\nIn one it is a point about ‘misrecognition’ which is a popular notion these\ndays, and how American black slaves were and are, according to some,\n‘misrecognized’ as an other. Along with Bernstein, I say that’s bullshit. The\nway we treat these Others is not in fact how one really treats a genuine Other\npresence. We don’t misrecognize people, it’s not their otherness, it’s the\nreflection of the negativity we hide in ourselves and which we project onto\nthem. We tell ourselves lies in order that we don’t have to recognize any\npositivity in them, to hide from ourselves the reality of our own atrocities.\nMisrecognition on a grand systematic scale is done on purpose, and on the\npersonal case it is done also by purpose hidden in an upbringing which\ndehumanizes a target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were we to meet a genuine Other, and this is just my own\nmusing by the way (conceptually and in example), we’d be talking about meeting\na being(s) who exceed our own capacities. A being to whom reason is not limited\nto our forms, to whom sense is not limited to our forms, and with whom as such\nwe can pretend to have no possible way to truly communicate in a universal\ndiscourse of any kind with regard to that which is beyond us and which subsumes\nus. Of course, to us this being is truly an Other, unthinkable, inconceivable\nno matter how we play about conceiving it and interacting with it. It would be\na being that baffles us in action and in spirit. It would, to use the\ntantalizing term, really be alien. Certainly the proper life instinct towards\nthe genuine Other is cautious fear precisely in its unknown reality. The other\nis of course cautious curiosity in attempting to know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n =========Indeterminacy As Excess========<\/p>\n\n\n\n On indeterminacy as excess against determinacy, the analogy\nis perfectly right. But now here you fall into a trap: you mistake epistemic\nindeterminacy for ontological indeterminacy. Phenomenally I’m perfectly\ncomfortable, more than the average person, that reality is more than what\nappears to us so immediately. But that things do not immediately appear at all\nis not to say that they are not there, and therefore are already not\ndeterminate in their reality. The excess is inconsequential to the Absolute,\nsince it is fundamentally about the total self-determination of thought. On the\nreal philosophy side as opposed to the purely theoretical side of the Logic,\nHegel himself is entirely open, especially with the Philosophy of Nature, that\nthe relations and orders of Nature can and will be revealed as not being what\nwe think on the theoretical side. This is why his use of just about everything\nis in fact provisional. As he cheekily notes, to paraphrase: Even if we were\nwrong about the empirical determinations that correlate with the concepts we\ngenerate, the concepts themselves are true. Perhaps he is wrong that the\nconcept of time corresponds to the empirical reality we call time, but the\nmovement of thought which occurs as the concept of time is for itself true and\nwe should call it something else if need be. So, we can be wrong. We can be\nwrong about the empirical relation, we can be wrong about how many mediating\nsteps there are in what we wish to talk about, we can be wrong about a lot of\nthings. What we can’t be wrong about is how these thoughts immanently relate to\neach other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, could there be other modes of as of yet unknown sensibility? Absolutely. Do we have any reason to posit such and could we know what they are without any experience of it from ourselves or someone else who can communicate something about it? No. This indeterminate excess, this genuine other, is for us only a nothing, an indeterminacy brought to attention. And note that excess is in relation to us, the mere possibility which can only intelligibly be grounded on our actuality. It is entirely a subjective fancy to dream up that there is the undreamable, just as Lovecraft crafted his horrors in negations and the fear of the inscrutable unknown which is utterly indifferent to us as dirt is to our shoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n me…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to respond to the post on love which you published\nhere – https:\/\/epochemagazine.org\/better-to-have-loved-lost-recognition-love-and-self-211a3948f281<\/a>. I find the observations you make about love\nas the result of practical wisdom. \nPersonally, I would not lay the Hegelian grid over the very important\nand mature lessons one needs to learn to have a successful older age, an in my\nopinion a successful life. Many never\nlearn these lessons: recognition, desire, abstract and concrete love, self-love\n(and self-esteem), love for the other (I would also include Other \u2013 more on\nthat later) and the \u2018better to have loved than never to have loved at all\u2019\nwhich to me translates to \u2018to be<\/a> or not to be\u2013 that\nis not the question \u2013 the question is what shall we make of the Other\u2019. I understand perfectly how negation can apply\nin all the cases you cited. \u2018Negation\u2019\nin these cases meaning notions similar to what I might think as projection,\nneed, sensual pleasure, recognition by the other which always fails, etc.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, where I think these dialectics fail is a case you\ndid not mention \u2013 what the ancient Greeks had the unique word for \u2013 ag\u00e1pe. Ag\u00e1pe is unconditional love like the love a\nparent has for a child. All the\n\u2018negations\u2019 or pitfalls along the way that you mention can derail a person such\nthat are incapable of ag\u00e1pe when they have children. In turn, this dysfunctionality can result in\nchildren that have barriers set up to their mature and full development in the\nways of love. Of course, Freud and Lacan\nboth deal with these psychological pitfalls but I prefer Lacan to Freud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a child to develop in infancy it needs mirroring, first\nby the mother according to Lacan (although I am not convinced others cannot\nfill this role in infancy). First, a few\nthings about Lacan. For Lacan, the\nunconscious is language. Language is not\nprivate or personal but collective, cultural, social, historical, etc.. For Lacan there is a tripartite: Imaginary,\nSymbolic and Real. The imaginary is the\nroot of meaning, semantic or what we might generally think of as\nconsciousness. The symbolic is not\nconscious, it is the linguistic writing of the unconscious, the syntax,\nconstituted by mutual differences. For\nLacan the symbolic is the radical alterity of the Other \u2013 for me the he or the\nshe. For Lacan the real is an\nontological absolute or what Hegel would call the being-for-itself. All the parallelisms you name, Being and\nNothing, form and content, appearance and essence, thought and thinking, etc.\nare regions of the symbolic not the real. \nThe real is undifferentiated. It\nis outside language and absolutely resists symbolization. It is impossible to imagine and impossible to\nattain. It cannot be mediated and\ntherefore is the locus of absolute anxiety. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to Desire, Lacan distinguishes need from\ndemand. Need is the desire for\nrecognition from the other. Demand both\narticulates need and the demand for love. \nFor Lacan, the demand for love is the need to receive ag\u00e1pe \u2013\nunconditional love. For me, all of the\ndynamics you refer to in your post fall under the rubric of Lacan\u2019s notion of\nDesire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If a child fails to get mirroring in infancy and fails to\nintegrate transitional objects into its reality, the child will likely have a\nlifelong problem connecting words and thoughts to meaning. If the child cannot name objects in the world\nand have them correspond to meaning, intense anxiety is the result. Remember the real is undifferentiated and coupled\nwith the child\u2019s inability to differentiate, to connect, to verbalize, to\nrelate the imaginary to the non-present-able symbolic results in the basis of\nanxiety. When semantic cannot find\nsyntax it flounders in the horrific real which can never come to conscious or\nunconscious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, as I understand Levinas, the symbolic is the retreat\nfrom the face of the Other, the he or the she. \nThe he or the she is the real. \nHowever, by real I mean the radical alterity of their infinity which\nfaces us. Their otherness is taken as\nhorror, as alien, by ontology. The retreat\nfrom the he or the she as transcendent to me, to my past, my temporality, my\nimagination, forms the basis of what Levinas calls the \u2018said\u2019. The \u2018said\u2019 is the locus of language and\nhistory. It is the dread of the scene of\nwriting in Blanchot, the il y a. The said is the mechanical and monstrous\nrepetition of what Hegel referred to as the negation of the idea to the thing \u2013\nthe thing can never appear in itself as alienated and also ontologically\n\u2018present\u2019 (e.g., as if in some metaphysical sense). So the idea is a phantasm of the thing. The idea supplants the thing in a ghostly\nform just as imagination for Lacan holds the place of the symbolic, the\nconscious supplants the unconsciousness. \nJuxtaposed to the said is the saying, the other that faces us and speaks\nto us. Just as with the thing – we must\nsupplicate, supplant, the he or she with the idea, with language, with\nphantasma. In so doing, we replicate the\nviolence of murder for Levinas. We\nviolate the commandment against murder, vis a vis our passivity beyond all\npassivity to the infinity of the Other. \nThis why I think of the Concept, the Idea, the Notion in Hegel as a\nreification of the absoluteness of the said. \nThis is why Hegelian idea-ology has been utilized by both fascist and\ncommunists. The said is\nreplication. Replication can be\nmanipulated and thus, the imaginary, the semantic, can be determinate as\nviolence, ambition, power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me back up at this point and give you my personal idea\nconcerning ag\u00e1pe \u2013 giving unconditional love for a child. If a\nperson can make it through all the pitfalls of love that you explicated, they\nmay be lucky enough to encounter a Desire which is not based on need and the\ndemand for love as reception in the Lacanian sense. It is still a Desire but it is an absolute\nDesire for the good of the Other \u2013 even against my need or my demand \u2013 even if\nit destroys me to benefit the Other, the child. \nUnconditional love is Desire which we \nconsciously know with absolute certainty that it will never be fulfilled\nbut counts that as nothing in regard to the Other, the he or the she, the\nchild. Unconditional love lays down its\nlife for the Other, turns the check, accepts abuse without recourse to anger\nand retribution \u2013 to murder. This, I and\nLevinas, call Ethics. It cannot be\nsupplanted by violence as violence goes against its absolute constitution. It is always for the Other over against my\nfears, my imaginations, even my ontological concerns for Being, for my being,\nmy temporality, my past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One practical example of how this plays out is my experience when I occasionally would lose patience with my child. I could never be simply angry with my child even if I was the object of abuse. Any feeling of anger was always and immediately mediated by pain for my child. Even after the horrific and tragic suicide of my son I have felt anger as to how could he do this to me, how could he rob me of my pride and joy for his future – for our future \u2013 even with that anger it always comes with mediation, with pain, with essential concern for him. I cannot languish in anger only in pain, a \u2018full\u2019 pain for him, for what he must have feared that drove him to such an extreme act. Now, what I have left with regard to the presence of my son is his absence and the presence of pain, deep \u2013 beyond my ability \u2013 beyond my able to be able – to be ultimately vulnerable to Chris\u2026but honestly, if that is all I have left, as far as presence, with Chris \u2013 I will take that with the fullness of his once upon my time with his diachronous time. My eternal hurt and my pain pale to the radical infinity, the alterity, that was\/is my son, my Chris. I will take the debt I owe him for his Otherness to my grave and count it as the basis of the highest, the best, the most beautiful which imagination could and never can, by essence, discover. Because of unconditional love for the Other, my son, I have found contentment even in the most painful loss anyone could ever imagination. I think this is the essence of what Levinas calls Ethics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ————————————————————————————————–<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good to see a response even if it is a return to the\nearlier problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concering the aether, if one does not question the\nonto-logical presuppositions of the orthodoxy I don’t see how you would become\nopen to aether. For my part, it was really the conceptual issues that turned\nme, for that is what opens up the field of interpretations to become a valid\nstandpoint. Whether one accepts it or not, however, the point of my bringing it\nup is for critical reflection and I’m glad you’re looking into it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the issue of presuppositionlessness, unfortunately\nyou give Hegel too much credit. He himself admits the beginning is not\nsomething you will ever be rationally convinced of at the beginning. It is, and\nafter dealing with a couple others who asked me the same issue at the same\ntime, clear to me now that it is a hopeless endeavor to attempt any explanation\nprior to the immanent practice which will explain it. One either goes with it\nand enters, or one does not and the whole thing will never make sense. Hegel,\nfor his part, seems to have accepted this and so gives little argument for most\nof his beginnings other than pointing out the failures of others and offering\nhis own systematic movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You mention that Hegel seems to take an either\/or\nstandpoint, I assume this is with Being\/Nothing. I don’t see what that connects\nto Kant with, the whole issue about that indifferent difference is entirely to\ndo with the operative cognition of immediacy as such. If one simple does this,\nit’s clear what it is. Recently I have been tutoring someone on the Logic, and\nonce I managed to get them to stop fighting it by trying to think about it and\ninstead to think it it quickly dawned on them what was going on even if they\ntoo became baffled about how it is that we operate that difference despite not\nknowing what it is. Once one builds up at least to Existence the description\nbecomes increasingly easier concerning the beginning. I cannot argue it further,\nI’m afraid this is the limit of the discussion if you cannot step into the open\nmystery haha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To go onto the other critiques, I must say I’m rather\nconfused as to your confusion. Not only is Hegel not engaging either\/or\nthinking as absolute, only as a real part of the determination process of\nconcepts (and cognition if you like), but he is also not splitting ontology,\nlogic, and epistemology. The Logic is actually all three. For some reason\npeople are baffled by this, but the Phenomenology already proves from the very\nbeginning that what we call epistemology and ontology is actually the\nphenomenon of logic: how we know things is necessarily what we think they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, it seems that you are misunderstanding determinacy\nfor Hegel. It is not exclusive, nor is it imposed. The determinate is being\nwith non-being, the category of their simultaneous immediate operation. This\nends up requiring a doubling at every turn in that every being is immediately\nlinked to its non-being and only repeats the unity of determinacy. The ‘ruse’ I\nmention is simply that with the beginning we take an indeterminate standpoint\non an already existent determinacy, we should know this because we are dealing\nwith thought and indeterminacy, the issue is simply that if we can’t latch onto\na presupposed structural dynamic to these concepts we’re going to have to see\nfor ourselves how an indeterminate conception becomes determinate when the\ndifference asserts its reality and we cannot simply bring those higher\ncategories into play. Andy Blunden has some papers that talk about this as a\ncognitive thing, e.g. how you and I can face something completely new which we\ncannot determine with given categories. How do we go about determining what we\nhave no concepts to determine? By taking their immediacy and just seeing what\nthey end up doing. I don’t know what A is other than that it is immediately. I\nobserve it and look into it and notice B which is just what A already was. I\nstand back and see A again and notice B already was A. I look at the totality\nand A-B really are a whole that is C. The indeterminacy is only there when I am\nfocused only on A or only on B, but if they do relate well are’t we intelligent\nand notice C? Basically, things we do not individually know as determinate,\nhence indeterminate, can and do relate as indeterminate and thus are just\ndeterminate. The determinate relation has no privilege of anything, all things\nthat are are just as much nothing at all points, so they are both. The claim\nthat there is some logical jump just doesn’t hold up. If you work through the\nfirst to second chapter you can see why and how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stuff about the other and the in-itself is just an\nexternal reflection on the categories. To defend Hegel from that I can only\nreiterate the entire movement of the Logic to show you that you are\nmisunderstanding the categories as what they are, what they do, and how that\nrelates to the more familiar realm of our actual existence. Regardless of what\nLevinas thinks of the other this is irrelevant for what Hegel means because for\nhim the other is just a poor category very early in the system. Next, for Hegel\nthe categories do not translate, they are the intelligibility of what is, i.e.\nHegel is not a representationalist or philosopher of presence as some accuse.\nAs to Hegel’s thing-in-itself being Idea, it’s an astute recognition though\nyour following comments make me think it is a correct one for the wrong\nreasons. I haven’t read Kant directly, mostly secondary literature. According\nto Winfield, Kant does actually on rare occasions identity the thing-in-itself\nas the Idea of Plato, since it is the objective truth, but because of their\ntranscendental nature and the limits of human reason we are never able to grasp\nthem and they only serve as regulatory ideals of reason. What Hegel means by\nIdea is much the same, but since epistemology is ontology is logic, the\nquestion of stripping the Idea of ontological status is rather nonsensical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The neo-Kantian reading of Hegel as merely a philosopher\nof cognition is just blatantly ignorant that Hegel already has thrown such\nideas into the trashbin for being utterly useless and empty presuppositions,\nfor what we think the world is is how we think it is. To put it concretely with\nour other issue, aether: what you already think the world is has a priori\nrendered you either capable or incapable of seeing such a thing is. We cannot\npretend the world just is and that our cognition here is waiting, it isn’t. The\nworld is as much as we strive to reveal it is, and we strive to reveal it is\ninsofar as we think there is more to it in the presuppositions of what we\nbelieve it ultimately is. Shocks happen, but no shock itself has ever revealed\nthat it can topple what we think the world is until the shock breaks the wall\nof dogma. Beyond that we just ignore these shocks and reinterpret them\naccording to our standing beliefs. The ‘evidence’ for much is there, to whom\nand for what it is evidence of and why we even conceive the what is the\nquestion. There is no thing-in-itself except for the epistemologist who refuses\nto see that the thing-in-itself is only a product of their presupposition of a\nworld already split from reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of your comments on the Idea and nature I’m\nafraid are just too confused. The Idea is just the truth, that which is in and\nfor itself. Insofar as anything has any independent being, it is Idea. Anything\nwhich forms a system of self-development and subsistence is Idea to the extent\nthat it does so, with life and mind doing so to the highest degrees. Any other\nconsideration of Idea is presupposing too much. Idea has nothing to do with\nfinite minds, it is simply the Idea of Plato in Hegel’s sense: that which\ngrounds the intelligible and objectively existential as one in accord with\nitself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To aid matters of communication along, may I suggest you\nlook into either Winfield’s “Hegel and the future of systematic\nphilosophy” or if you prefer something a bit more involved with Kant,\nJames Kreines’ “Reason in the World.” Kreines deals more heavily with\nthe Idea and the problems it deals with. I don’t think Kreines is wrong, he has\na fascinating reading, but he does go towards topics I have little interest in.\nGood book nonetheless. Winfield is more dense but also in my opinion initially\na lot clearer on the issues though he spends less time with them in that book.\nA lot of misattribution and miscommunication can be saved with the\nclarification that these two provide to these very important but also very\ndifficult categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio,<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sorry for the\ndelay but my music recording has been taking up large portions of my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to\nthis,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs for the issue\nof presuppositionlessness, unfortunately you give Hegel too much credit. He\nhimself admits the beginning is not something you will ever be rationally\nconvinced of at the beginning. It is, and after dealing with a couple others\nwho asked me the same issue at the same time, clear to me now that it is a\nhopeless endeavor to attempt any explanation prior to the immanent practice\nwhich will explain it. One either goes with it and enters, or one does not and\nthe whole thing will never make sense. Hegel, for his part, seems to have\naccepted this and so gives little argument for most of his beginnings other\nthan pointing out the failures of others and offering his own systematic\nmovements.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not give\nHegel too much credit but I do give deductively logic more credit than Hegel apparently\ndoes. All the issues I have with Hegel\u2019s\nbeginning can be simply reduced by giving the definition of deductive logic\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf all premises are true, the terms are clear, and the rules of\ndeductive logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Hegel would have\nprefaced his entire \u201cLogic\u201d as inductive I would have no problems with it. For a quick and famous review of deductive\nlogic\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n All men are mortal.\n(First premise)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Socrates is a man.\n(Second premise)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, Socrates\nis mortal. (Conclusion)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first premise\nstates that all objects classified as “men” have the attribute\n“mortal.” The second premise states that “Socrates” is\nclassified as a “man” \u2013 a member of the set “men.” The\nconclusion then states that “Socrates” must be “mortal”\nbecause he inherits this attribute from his classification as a\n“man.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am sorry Antonio\nbut a \u2018ruse\u2019 is not a good start for deductive logic. Further, to go on with this \u2018ruse\u2019 with that\nboastful and unabashed claim that Hegel and his devotees have bellowed as \u201cpresuppositionlessness\u201d\ncould certainly be justified if in fact it were deductive logic but not if it\nis in fact inductive logic. Hegel\u2019s \u201cLogic\u201d\nis no doubt \u2018inductive\u2019 but he treats it as deductive. Further, it is doubtful that the universal\nclaims he wants to make could ever be made with deductive logic. What makes deductive logic work is the\nincluded middle in the premises. The\nincluded middle really amounts, in my estimation, to no more than a\ntautology. Unfortunately, tautologies do\nnot really give us new information but tend to simply repeat the premises in\nthe conclusion in a different form. So,\nHegel could never start his work, much less complete it, as a deductive\nargument. This comment you made seems to\nme to be the definition of inductive logic\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNext, it seems\nthat you are misunderstanding determinacy for Hegel. It is not exclusive, nor\nis it imposed. The determinate is being with non-being, the category of their\nsimultaneous immediate operation. This ends up requiring a doubling at every\nturn in that every being is immediately linked to its non-being and only\nrepeats the unity of determinacy. The ‘ruse’ I mention is simply that with the\nbeginning we take an indeterminate standpoint on an already existent\ndeterminacy, we should know this because we are dealing with thought and\nindeterminacy, the issue is simply that if we can’t latch onto a presupposed\nstructural dynamic to these concepts we’re going to have to see for ourselves\nhow an indeterminate conception becomes determinate when the difference asserts\nits reality and we cannot simply bring those higher categories into play. Andy\nBlunden has some papers that talk about this as a cognitive thing, e.g. how you\nand I can face something completely new which we cannot determine with given\ncategories. How do we go about determining what we have no concepts to\ndetermine? By taking their immediacy and just seeing what they end up doing. I\ndon’t know what A is other than that it is immediately. I observe it and look\ninto it and notice B which is just what A already was. I stand back and see A\nagain and notice B already was A. I look at the totality and A-B really are a\nwhole that is C. The indeterminacy is only there when I am focused only on A or\nonly on B, but if they do relate well are’t we intelligent and notice C?\nBasically, things we do not individually know as determinate, hence indeterminate,\ncan and do relate as indeterminate and thus are just determinate. The\ndeterminate relation has no privilege of anything, all things that are are just\nas much nothing at all points, so they are both. The claim that there is some\nlogical jump just doesn’t hold up. If you work through the first to second\nchapter you can see why and how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If \u201cwe can’t latch\nonto a presupposed structural dynamic to these concepts we’re going to have to\nsee for ourselves how an indeterminate conception becomes determinate when the\ndifference asserts its reality and we cannot simply bring those higher\ncategories into play\u201d then we have not restricted the field of play by essentially\ntying two premises (i.e, Being and nothing) through a included middle to reach\na conclusion as you have just suggested. \nSo, let\u2019s not call what we are doing deductive logic or immanent logic\nas other Hegelians have called it. The problem\nI see is that Hegelians seem to think that if Hegel employs inductive logic\nthey cannot make the absolute claims in the way they want to make them as apodictic\ntruth. I find this arrogance untenable\nand simply wrong. Can we say that Hegel\nwas wrong in thinking his logic as \u201cdeductive\u201d and proceed with it as inductive\nlogic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is another issue\nwe are running into which I think has been my fault to some extent. I have been responding to you from my\nbackground in what other Hegelian schools are writing about Hegel and not\nprecisely about your conclusions on Hegel. \nYou seemed to have reached your conclusions in variance to other\nscholars I have read. I think you have a\nmuch more tame and understandable take on Hegel which I find refreshing and\nmore palatable. Here is one example, <\/p>\n\n\n\n The either\/or comment\ndoes not come from me and my interpretation of Hegel but from a scholar who wants\nto force us to that direction. Remember this\ncomment I made,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is a logical jump\nto make this into an either\/or dilemma \u2013 e.g. merely epistemological or\nsystemically deriving every determinacy without presupposing any underived determinacy. If we say that Hegel\u2019s project \u201cto\nsystematically derive every determinacy without presupposing any underived\ndeterminacy\u201d MUST be assumed in advance because the only other alternative to\nan \u201cimmanent method of derivation\u201d of logical deduction IS purely (and merely)\nepistemological, we have assumed an absolute bifurcation of logic and\nepistemology which has not been purely and immanently derived but conveniently\nassumed. Why can\u2019t there be a confluence\nbetween logic and epistemology?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not my take\non Hegel but Dr. Kisner\u2019s argument. Remember,\nI ask, \u201cCan it be that logical determination and knowledge is both\/and?\u201d We do not have to accept Hegel based on a\nreaction to a perceived and probably justified history of philosophy. \nWe can simply call Hegel\u2019s logic inductive and be done with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another tendency of\ncontemporary thinking on Hegel is to, in true post-post-modern thinking, react\nto transcendental steps in logic which, for them, amounts to slipping in gaps\nin logic based on dogmatic claims not on the \u201cimmanence\u201d of the text. You seem to have no problem with\ntranscendence or metaphysics with regard to Hegel\u2019s \u201cLogic\u201d \u2013 this is a taboo\nin many Hegelians I have read unless it is somehow swallowed up along the way\nin some historical dialectic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, another problem\nin our communications is that I react to other Hegelian schools and not more\ndirectly to your views. I know you do\nnot care about other philosopher\u2019s take on Hegel when they diverge from your\nopinions but my understanding thus far on Hegel is not simply based on your\nviews but my previous readings and understandings of Hegel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, certainly there\nis a philosophical, historical notion that identifies the thing-in-itself with\nPlato\u2019s forms but Kant means something much more specific than Plato. His argument is that because ESSENTIALLY understanding\ncan only come from a priori categories of knowledge and thus if you will, our\nexistence\/ontology\/subjectivity etc., we can never know any \u2018thing\u2019 as it is\napart from our understanding of the \u2018thing\u2019. \nYou may object but I would suggest that for Hegel \u2013 there is no \u2018thing\u2019\nother than Idea (which is not really a \u2018thing\u2019. However, Hegel\u2019s mission, it seems to me and\nother Hegelians I have read, is to actually think the \u2018thing-in-itself\u2019 so we\ncan be rid of metaphysics once and for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You stated, \u201cThere is\nno thing-in-itself except for the epistemologist who refuses to see that the\nthing-in-itself is only a product of their presupposition of a world already\nsplit from reason.\u201d – this is the either\/or\nI referred to which I was not assigning to Hegel but to why Hegelians think we\nneed Hegel to overcome it. Certainly,\nHegel himself pushes this line but only in so far as it opens up the space for\nhim to make another more important claim \u2013 the claim you also want to make \u2013\nthat the only alternative to Hegel\u2019s Idea (Begriff) and epistemology\u2019s\nCartesian (mechanistic) split is his \u201cLogic\u201d. \nSorry, I do not buy it \u2013 it is an alternative but not THE\nalternative. I find the force of\nviolence (in thought, i.e., presuppostionless) is the only emotional reaction\nHegelians have to the both\/and approach. \nCertainly, Hegel is one possibility. \nI think we could go on to demonstrate Hegelian weaknesses if nothing\nelse \u2013 his violent historic interpretations which lead to human atrocities. Is it unlawful to ask the question, \u2018How did\nthis come about?\u201d Was it mere\nmisinterpretation as we see for example in the reasoning of Christian\napologetics or is there something in Hegel\u2019s philosophy itself which can give\nrise to such unabashed indignance and totalitarian power? I do not see how this question should strike\nfear in the heart of Hegelians or indignant affronts. If Hegel and Hegelian\u2019s are correct and we\nhave obtained objective certainty in the \u201cLogic\u201d what does it matter if one\nquestions it \u2013 why react at all? As\nKierkegaard tells us what does it matter that Galileo denied his finding that\nthe earth revolved around the sun when his life was stake by the church? If 1 + 1 = 2 and Hegel has obtained deductive\nlogic in all its immanence \u2013 what does it matter if we entertain the question\nof its sort comings? Why react\nindignantly? What really is at stake\nhere in such a reaction? <\/p>\n\n\n\n One more thing, \u201cIdea\nhas nothing to do with finite minds, it is simply the Idea of Plato in Hegel’s\nsense: that which grounds the intelligible and objectively existential as one\nin accord with itself.\u201d We see in\nChristianity that Plato\u2019s forms took on the face of the Christian God and later\nthe face of Descartes mind\/body split which led to mechanistic philosophy \u2013 I prefer\nto simply give the \u2018face\u2019 to the other \u2013 the he or the she \u2013 as it is rightly theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I have mentioned I\nmuch more to write and have written about the aether you and others (apparently)\nascribe to but I will save that for a later post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Best Regards, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not surprised about the confusion, it is endemic to\nHegelianism itself as I told you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On your first comments on the beginning of the Logic, it is\ndeductive and not inductive. Being is Nothing, and cannot be otherwise no\nmatter where, when, who, or what name it is called by. If one thinks\nimmediately, one does not think at all and that is necessarily that these mean.\nIf something were immediate, it would not be anything at all. If Being\nimmediately is Nothing and Nothing immediately is Being, then they are the\nmovement called Becoming, etc. There is no induction here, there is no way to\nthink this differently if this movement is what we are thinking. Not even an\nalien from the mystical plains of the 12th dimension with intellectual\nintuition who does not speak by only uses intuitive telepathy could controvert\nthis. To think otherwise is simply to assert something else. This proof only\nrequires that one think these in their purity away from external contingent\nelements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Hegel, and I by extension of that project, can do\nnothing to ease your doubts about why the beginning is fine. I would say that\nyour doubts are ultimately unfounded, for at the beginning of the Logic all\nknowledge of what logic is are out the window. That’s why no argument can be\ngiven to you, there isn’t even the shadow of any argumentative structure to be\ngiven at the outset. It is not asking you to take it on faith, for if you\nreally have such concerns the answer lies in the immanence of the Phenomenology\nof Spirit\u2014that is if your question concerns these issues of onto-epistemic\nrelations or whether this or that conception of the Absolute really can be\nabsolute. Your focus on the ethical, the Other, too are dealt with in the\nPhenomenology as it is one of the ways that we may conceive of ourselves and\nthe world and its ultimate purpose and meaning. Certainly you will not find\nyour position as you hold it spelled there, but considerations of why ethics\ncannot be the stopping point of philosophy is certainly there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning the ruse of Being\/Nothing, it seems I was not\nclear enough: the ruse is not what the Logic does, the ruse is what we do to\nourselves. The confusion we experience in the beginning with being surprised\nthat Being is Nothing, mainly about why, arises not from Hegel having hid\nanything, but because it seems almost without fail we lose ourselves to this\nmovement and strangely (but conveniently for the exercise to prove its\npoint) forget how we got to the starting\nposition in the first place. If we keep that in mind we get a perfectly\nreasonable external explanation for why we can do the movement of\nBeing-Nothing-Becoming. There is no mystery at the end of the day about why\nit’s experientially possible, and further there is no mystery about why this is\nlogical since we engage a pure thinking of thinking. Concepts are logics, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the Idea, well yes, I agree. There is nothing\nother than the Idea. This, however, is nothing spooky, rather it’s a banal\npoint if one grasps the simple meaning: the Idea is the unity of concept and\nobject, i.e. it is simply the self-articulated thing itself. A atom is an Idea,\nan apple tree, a dog, a worm, the solar sun, the ecosystem. Any thing which\nachieves self-differentiated articulation in being is the Idea. The concept is\npure articulation, the object is the body of this articulation, the Idea is the\nrecognition that these are the same thing just as form and content are the\nexact same thing. It’s Platonic only in intelligible purpose (and Kantian to\nthis end as well insofar as the Ideas are the ideal of reason’s consummation of\nknowing the thing itself), otherwise it is closer to Aristotelian form. To know\nthe in-itself is simply to know this articulation of being from within, as a\nself-articulation in the same manner that we know that a species of animal is\nwhat it is according to the specification of its genetic plan of articulation.\nTo me, it is a rather mundane yet fitting concept. To know this is and is not\nmetaphysical, which is really something quite a few say: Hegel makes the metaphysical\nmundane even at its most metaphysical (such as Being-Nothing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Hegel’s logic being the alternative to the\nonto-epistemic split of the absolute: it is and it isn’t. It is if what we are\nseeking is the self-articulating absolute which is intelligible in and for\nitself. It isn’t in that, well, obviously Hegel isn’t the first or the only one\nthat just never made the split to begin with. Heidegger also makes no split of\nthis kind, Spinoza, the neo-Platonists, etc. One can find even the truths Hegel\nputs forth in his logical derivations\nall over the place in a rather unsurprising matter since those who thought\nthrough these concepts in their intelligibility were by and large thinking the\nexact same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, this brings up the question that I think ultimately\ndivides you and I: What are we looking for? What question have we posited that\nwe are seeking an answer to? Because this question radically transforms the\nground upon which we judge the offered answers. It’s often not a conscious\nquestion, and once we find something satisfying it is not necessarily clear to\nus what we had bee looking for anyway. Here I am, once a staunch materialist\natheist convinced of scientism, and now I’m a staunch Idealist theist who\ndespite his love of empirical science has for the most part almost no respect\nfor it as a the theoretical unity it is. What brought me here? I could give\nsome tale of how I have always valued Truth and that I’ve searched for it all\nalong, but along the way what I thought Truth was changed many times, so was\nwhat I searched for in the beginning what I received in the end? I don’t know.\nAt first I believed ethics was obviously the highest philosophy because it was\nthe immediately practical, but then I thought it was ontology that would tell\nus ethics, and then epistemology and its skeptical issues took over and I\nthought ultimately everything was relative despite strong intuitions against\nit, and so on and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerning theoretical violence to both and approach, I\ndon’t know what that refers to. Hegelian philosophy is generally hated\nprecisely because it is seen as this, it seems to make no commitments to\nvaluing one side over another. I would like a concrete example. Regarding\nviolence itself, while I once was against it absolutely, I have no qualms with\nit now. Real violence and theoretical violence are fine by me, it has its use\nin rational practice. I suppose you take Hegelianism to have some sort of\nuniversal violence, but that’s not what I see. Within the field of philosophy\nthe violence is everywhere, and as Jay Bernstein says in his lectures on the\nPhenom: Why would we think it wouldn’t? If a way of thinking is a form of\nconsciousness, and that is itself a social life world which takes itself as\nTrue, why wouldn’t it rise against any opposition to crush it? To question a\nthought is to question a life. If you question my life, and I believe (perhaps\nI know) that my life is true against your claims that it isn’t, what person\nworth calling living would simply lay down and let someone else just end their\nlife? The animal fights against its death, so too does the thought fight\nagainst its destruction. We are what we think, and if we have any conviction in\nour life as our life we must and will retaliate. It is rather interesting, but\nof course it only appears in one context: the absolute clash. Violence is only\napparent when there is no successful interpenetration of the mind, where the\nOthers refuse to open up and remain Other all the while insisting in\ninteraction based on their lifeworld imposed on the other. We’re not talking\nabout people indifferent to each other, we’re talking about people who for\nwhatever reason see a need to interact yet find no basis for interaction, and\nthis leads to violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for why I react, well, we’re having a dialogue of course.\nNothing I despise more than misunderstandings, and so I fight your assertions\ninsofar as they are assertions about me, my conceptions. What you believe, how\nyou believe, and what you shall do that does not pertain to me isn’t of\ninterest in the discussion. Were this some kind of meet and greet, a mere\nsharing of ideas in which i put forth mine, you yours, and we take what we\nlike, then there would be no issue. But you and I are not playing that game. I\nhope and believe we are not, and that instead we are attempting to pry open\nthat mystery of the Other through this interplay of progressive revelation\nthrough argument. As you claim and question, so I answer and attempt to reveal\nmyself as these thoughts to you, and likewise you reveal yourself to me in my\nassertions and questions. To some extent we think and believe we understand\neach other, and to another extent each believes the other simply misunderstands\nand the more we attempt to explain the more we realize there is perhaps a\nfundamental barrier, the barrier at which the Other is not going to step into\nour shoes not because they do not will to, but perhaps because they can’t. As\nFchte says, each person’s philosophy tells of who they are. If you and I have\ndifferent paths it is because we are to that extent essentially different\npeople who cannot really conceive the reality of the Other. It does not mean we\ncannot accept that, I accept far stranger things which I shall never experience\nor know for myself. But just as you say that I cannot comprehend your notion of\nlove in that I do not know the love of a child, perhaps you cannot comprehend\nme because you do not know the same deranged passion for universal\ncomprehension which leads one to entertain pure thoughts over any other given.\nTo me the differentiated unity and circularity of thought is just exhilarating,\nit captures exactly the kind of mystery I want to grasp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, sorry for rambling, I do enjoy the exchanges. I’ve\nbeen reading on mathematics lately, particularly some basic things on negative\nnumbers in foundational theories. If 2+2=4, well, mathematicians seem to have\ngiven up on that being of significant meaning long ago haha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ———————————————————————————————– Hey Antonio,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have been reading some books and essays on Hegel which has\nkept me busy. One book I really like is:\nThe Unconscious Abyss: Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis by Jon Mills<\/p>\n\n\n\n It takes an in depth look at Hegel\u2019s notion of Schacht<\/em> and less mentioned abgrund.<\/em> \nHe draws out parallels with Freuds notion of the unconscious. He also spends a lot of time at the beginning\non Hegel\u2019s mentors in this regard such as Boehme, neo Platonism and Shelling. I have written about the notion of Chaos in\nthe Presocratics in my philosophy series especially in Hesiod so the\nconnections are rampant. The ground\nwhich is no ground is where consciousness emerges and the birth place of\nSpirit. The Phenomenology starts with\nthe immediacy of consciousness, the pure \u2018this\u2019. Similarly, the Logic starts Idea from Being\nand nothing as pure indeterminacy. As\nsuch, they seem to echo the abyss at the very start, just as the Phenomenology\ntraced the anthropological start with the immediacy of consciousness. Hegel refers to the abyss as a \u201cnightlike\nabyss within which a world of infinitely numerous images and presentations is\npreserved without being in consciousness\u201d (EG \u00a7 453). Perhaps the nothing is the abyss as the pure\nnot of Idea but there is much more to it than simply nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have found that there is much more Hegel would tell us\nabout the nothing than we see in the beginning of the Logic. Also, the groundless ground never leaves\nHegel in the form of desire and drive which is a movement all the way through\nhis analysis. I have written much about\nthis already elsewhere but for now I will just say that the nothing at the\nstart of the Logic and from which Spirit arises cannot be at rest. It is genitive replete with \u201cinfinitely\nnumerous images and presentations without being in consciousness\u201d. For me, this marks the erased trace which\ncannot come into consciousness of the Other. \nHistory is that dead account which must drive Spirit towards\nself-objectification as what must give account of itself before there is self\nand consciousness. The origin, the\narche, is abyss for self and fully realized Spirit. It is merely a footprint that is the\nunconscious trace, the mystic writing pad of Freud, of what is anarchical\u2026a\npast not my past. To encapsulate Spirit\nas a homogenous whole in self-determined Idea is to remake the Other into the\nSame, i.e., as soul which has slipped and encapsulated its mortal bounds\u2026Spirit\nas whole and universal in Idea. Yet,\nwhat remains behind the unity and oneness which culminate from the many is the\nOther. The Other is taken up at an earlier\nstage in the Logic as a necessary objectification of what will otherwise cloth\nIdea. In my thinking, this is why Idea\ncan never rest from its work \u2013 the absolute dismantling of any such infinity\nwhich can be thought as absolute Other. \nThe abyss and the culmination of Spirit in Idea share one essential\npredicate \u2013 abolition to the point of extinction for any ethic of the Other\nwhich is the \u2018not\u2019 (the negation of Hegel) dealt with: from the solitary abyss,\nto the unity of same-other and the self-determining Idea. What if Idea has an eternal choice \u2013 itself\nor Other\u2026that which is not itself even as the \u2018not\u2019 but truly can only remain\nas a choice, an ethic, a decision to not count equality with God as a thing to\nbe grasped, achieved, completed in-itself but to face us in the simplicity of\nthe he, the she, the it we\/history\/Spirit could only retain as remnants of\npresentation, image, even Idea \u2013 all mistaken in Hegelian desire as the \u2018not\u2019. Could it be that this Other can never be\nfounded\/accounted for in solemnity as Idea but in a once that has no origin, no\nmediation and can only be retained as disembodied images, as erased traces\nwhich cannot come to consciousness but only doomed to the abyss from which\nSpirit must rise once again until the simple evocation who faces us gives place\nto found Idea? I do not think this\nethical decision can be arrived at from origin and epistemology only maligned\ninto what will ever be the \u2018not\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have much more to write about from my studies and your\nhelp in understanding and thinking about Hegel. \nEven if you contest these points as I am sure you will, surely conceded\nthat merely attempting to grasp, overcome, refute the difficulties of Hegel\u2019s\ngenius must make us better in some yet unqualified sense for having tried. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Much more to write and think through with regard to your\nprevious comments. However, in short I\ndo not see the included middle of deductive logic in Hegel\u2019s start of the Logic\n\u2013 unless perhaps it is nothing which is inductively, IMO, thought to pass over\ninto becoming – where is the included middle from the premises in the\nconclusion (becoming)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concrete examples of violence taken from Hegel \u2013 through\nFeuerbach into Marx and Engels as dialectical materialism\u2026shall we say\nStalin? I find similar paths which we\ncan speak of later in the road through capitalism to authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do like the give and take, the challenge towards better\nthinking and the learning I have in the encounter with you. I do not take it as any form of violence or\nattempt at domination. For me it is fun,\nnot as demeaning to you, but as friends connecting in more significant and\nsatisfying ways than what many folks seem to have no real desire for. I never want to offend or put you down. I only ask that we help each other be better,\nachieve more meaningful goals in our philosophical aspirations. I know that everything can be reduced to\npower relations to those who are so inclined to psychologically require such\nmutilations of meaning but I really believe you and have no need to fall into\nthat abyss \ud83d\ude09 take care\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark<\/p>\n\n\n\n ——————————————————————————————- Hey there Mark,<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the last response seemed to show any hard feelings or\nannoyance from me it wasn’t intended, I enjoy the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding there being more to say of Nothing, it is my\ncomprehension that it is true and false. It is true in that the Absolute which\nNothing is to explicate is more than a mere abstract Nothing, it is false in\nthat when we speak of Nothing we’re not using it as a higher category of any\nkind. Each concept has its specific place of poverty or richness in the system\nand each is used in accord with those levels of relation and cognition. I think\na fundamental talking past each other is occurring in that you are attempting\nto translate your Levinasian terms into Hegelian terms, but while I can point\nout partially what is in error, I also\ncannot pinpoint the error in that I really have no background on Levinas to\nknow what it is that you are trying to get across here. In dealing with the\nunconscious, or with the ethics of the Other, I do not know what this is really\ntrying to get at. I wrote a lengthy response which was a rant about how I\nfundamentally cannot agree that otherness among the human in is not possible,\nand that true others are something truly beyond human cognition and capacities\nof experience, however, I realized we are talking of the Other in completely\ndifferent senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have any book or articles that would give me an\noverview of Levinas’s philosophy I think it would clarify things between us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n —————————————————————————- Antonio,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have never taken anything you said as offensive – its\ncool. I have been busy after my wife’s\nsurgery doing house chores and helping her out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, in my reading of Hegel lately I am thinking\nthat Hegel may have had it mostly right. \nI do think he has charted out the inner\/outer workings of the self as it\nrises through externality to its abgrund which is a transcendent essence. I just do not think the self ends up in\nmonism – a universal Idea. OR, if it\ndoes end up in a universal, I see it more as a co-existing singularity which\ncan never be done away with by the universal (as it would not be universal\nthen). Here is a thought for you –\nsuppose you end up at the end of Hegel’s road to the universal Idea. Is that all that is left to do? For Aristotle, no. For Hegel, I think yes. I do not think singularity can be resolved\ninto the particular. Suppose the end of\nthis phenomenological life is to rise to the universal Idea which somehow still\ncannot by essence do away with singularity as I think Hegel and Aristotle had\nvarying notions about – how could it be universal if it does not essentially\ninclude singularity? What if, when we\nhave achieved the Hegelian crown, the next phenomenology which perhaps, we can\nstand on our tip toes to see from here is to willingly lose it all albeit\nperhaps in a particular way ;-). – Just\nas Hegel thought Spirit had to externalize itself to know itself – after it has\nachieved this Hegelian knowledge of itself the next thing might be to willingly\nand consciously without all the trappings of Godhood become or better humbly\ndwell in its singularity – something like a self-willing mere human (or some\nequivalent). Why? – to welcome the Other – the other\nsingularity which ‘knowing’ as such can never conquer, transcend or integrate\ninto a higher Concept. What if the co-\nexisting of the absolute singularity has to necessarily recognize the Other –\nthe other absolute singularity that it can never be but only choose to\nrecognize that absolute vis-\u00e0-vis Ethics. \nThe abyss would no longer be relegated to the ‘not’ of drive and desire\nbut the Ethics of an Other which the absolute leaves room for to be an Other\nabsolute which radically exceeds its own Godhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I wanted to flesh out deductive logic a little\nbetter than I did previously. In\ndeductive logic the conclusion MUST follow necessarily from the premises. The way it does this is by establishing a\nnecessary not a sufficient relationship to the premises. For example,<\/p>\n\n\n\n All men are mortal. (First premise)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Socrates is a man. (Second premise)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (Conclusion)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The included middle is men plural and man singular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conclusion unites mortal and Socrates vis-\u00e0-vis the\nincluded middle in a necessary relationship. \nIf deductive logic does not accomplish this, it cannot be thought as\nsuch. However, this does not make\ninductive logic false. Inductive logic\ngives us greater degrees of certainty as to truth value but can never\naccomplish necessary certainty as deductive logic can. I would go on to add\nthat the truth claims of deductive logic have a much narrower field of possible\nclaims because deductive logic rest on the apodictic certainty of tautology –\nthe conclusion simply explicitly restates what the premises already said so it\nis merely the statement A=A. Science is\nreally almost all inductive logic. I\nthink Hegel is as well. See if you can\nstructure a categorical imperative in the example above from the beginning of\nthe Logic. I do not see how it can be\ndone because becoming is not an included middle or even anywhere in the\npremises in nothing and Being. It seems\nto me the included middle may be undifferentiation. I might add that Hegel seems to repeatedly\n‘define’ undifferentiation as nothing. \nOnce this is done many predicates can follow such as immediacy. However, the abyss which is the immediacy of\nthe unconscious or not yet able to rise to consciousness is not really nothing\nas in some unexplained or at least vague fashion there are images, drives,\nrestlessness, desire, etc. without coherence. \nIt is not really nothing in a strict sense of no-thing – no thing which\ncan be named or thought. I think it may\nbe that nothing is an impossibility of thought just as infinity is as\nwell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, as far as Levinas, I would recommend “Totality\nand Infinity” which was Levinas’ most famous early work and\n“Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence” as his probably more famous\nlater work. “Otherwise than Being\nor Beyond Essence” is more philosophically technical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Best Regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark<\/p>\n\n\n\n ————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am reading this introduction <https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/373332.To_the_Other?ac=1&from_search=true<\/a>> overview on Levinas. I read his essay “Ethics As First Philosophy” and while I could follow the first half, the shift to the Other as such was incomprehensible to me. I also listened to this short lecture <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RaPNYQ_qdII<\/a>> , and combined with some other short clips I got the impression that I hardly disagree with the notion of letting the Other be and reveal themselves, etc. My disagreements come more from the ontological claims, but they are not clear to me yet such that I can say I truly disagree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, I hope that insofar as I come to learn some of\nyour language I may be able to better clarify our true differences so that our\notherness remains not implicit, but is explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know about the book but that video was\nhorrendous. Therefore, I tried to\nquickly put together something that might address your concerns better with\nontology. It is rather long and I really\ndid not have time to proof it so I apologize in advance for both…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always like these summaries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emmanuel Levinas <https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/levinas\/#LogOthThaBei<\/a>>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the logic of ontology meant here as the logos of\nbeing, the essay states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The second chapter [of Otherwise Than Being or\nBeyond Essence] approaches Heidegger’s theme of language as the way in which\nBeing becomes, the way it temporalizes. Levinas adopts Heidegger’s argument\nthat the logos gathers up Being and makes it accessible to us. But Levinas will\nargue that the lapse of time between lived immediacy and its representation\ncannot really be gathered by a logos. Therefore, the lapse poses a challenge to\nlanguage itself and falls, much the way that transcendence did, outside the\nrealm of Being as process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am going to quote some from this dissertation you can\nget freely on the web here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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