'The real is rational, and the rational is real' (philosophy as idealism/humanism)

I think the key term to understand in what Hegel is talking of is the Aristotelian/Platonic idea of 'intelligibility'. It is that which actually prevents it from being simply 'a faith' but rather what Aristotle et al would have regarded as a matter of science.

(However it needs to be acknowledged that ancient conception of 'science' was worlds apart from the modern. As is well-known, Aristotelian physics is what moderns would describe as anthropomorphic, in that objects are possessed of aims and purposes, and so on. And also much of Aristotle's physics was definitively overthrown by Galileo. So that has to be borne in mind.)

But all of that said, the original notion of 'intelligibility' was derived from Platonist epistemology, whereby the mind knows intelligible objects in a manner different from the knowledge of sensory objects. Rational knowledge was in that sense apodictic and universal, whereas sensory knowledge was grouped with opinion and belief. This is how knowledge of the mathematical structure underlying the phenomenal world became esteemed in Western culture. You still see it in mathematical physics, with the caveat that the break between the pre-modern and modern conception of science completely changed the notion of what 'intelligibility' amounted to. This is because the Galilean conception revolved completely around what was measurable and observable, whereas by comparison the ancient conception was almost poetic in a sense. And that was reflected in the imaginative vision medieval cosmology, where the 'superlunary' represented the changeless world of ideal forms - something very close to heaven, in fact. Whereas, now we've been out there, and it's mostly stars, gas, rocks and empty space.

But Hegel was an heir to the rationalist tradition. So when he talks of the 'rationality of the real', I suspect it's derived from that traditional understanding of the 'intelligible nature of the world' more so than anything that modern mathematical science would countenance. I notice that in Russell's comments on Hegel in HWP, he says that his idea of 'the Absolute contemplating itself' is fundamentally Aristotelian in nature.

(Have a read of this very brief passage, Augustine on Intelligible Objects, which I think conveys well the traditional/Platonic notion of 'intelligibility' which is mainly lost to the modern tradition.)

This is as heavy a topic as I've seen.

I've often thought about reality in terms of rationale or intelligence. From my observations, the more intelligent (possibly rational) a subject is made out to be, the closer it approximates to reality. This is especially seen in the evolution of the theories of the atom and is seen in its infancy in the theory of dark matter and energy.

To give it my own special twist of irony, there are branches of spiritualism which define spirit as the intelligent principle of life.

We can't deny the part intelligence plays in our understanding of reality and we can't deny that we 'know' more from our observations of the many aspects of reality than what is directly derived from sensory-inputs. And while reality is the undeniable part of what we are, it is still the most elusive part of what we know.

So, what determines whether we walk the rational path?

Quoting Wayfarer

I think the key term to understand in what Hegel is talking of is the Aristotelian/Platonic idea of 'intelligibility'.

I very much agree.

Hegel:
The meaning or sense of which we speak is none other than the essential or the universal, the substantial in an object, which is the object concretely thought. Herein we always have a double aspect, an exterior and an interior, an external appearance which is intuitively perceptible and a meaning which, precisely, is thought. Now, because the object with which we are concerned is thought, there is here no double aspect; it is thought itself which does the meaning. Here the object is the universal; so we cannot ask about a meaning which is separate or separable from the object. The only meaning or determination which the history of philosophy has, then, is thought itself. Herein thought is the innermost, the highest, and one cannot, therefore, settle on a thought about it.

Quoting Wayfarer

ut all of that said, the original notion of 'intelligibility' was derived from Platonist epistemology, whereby the mind knows intelligible objects in a manner different from the knowledge of sensory objects. Rational knowledge was in that sense apodictic and universal, whereas sensory knowledge was grouped with opinion and belief. This is how knowledge of the mathematical structure underlying the phenomenal world became esteemed in Western culture.

Indeed. The issue not touched on here is the gap between mathematical and non-mathematical concepts. Clearly mathematical concepts are relatively stable. They seem to be about as eternal as anyone could ask them to be. It's the same with logic. But away from math we enter the wilderness of metaphor and context. This is where Wittgenstein and Derrida shine. Clearly there is meaning, but perhaps most meaning is just not cleanly separable from context and it's vehicle. This is 'god' (as pure meaning) becoming entangled in the world of action and ambiguity. We still have idealism, but we have an idealism that opens itself to contamination or rather confesses/discovers its contamination.

Quoting Wayfarer

But Hegel was an heir to the rationalist tradition. So when he talks of the 'rationality of the real', I suspect it's derived from that traditional understanding of the 'intelligible nature of the world' more so than anything that modern mathematical science would countenance.

Indeed, and that's because science is not interested in (does not have as its project) looking into its own ground. I love philosophy, but one can always take an anti-philosophical pragmatist position and just identify the rational with the tools that work. I have played with this idea myself, but there's a certain emptiness to it. As it enlarges into a theory of theory, it starts to repeat something like Hegel's dialectic of breakdown and repair. We only question the tool that works against us and stop questioning as soon as we get it working again. But we get back to Hume's perception of our blind faith in induction.

Quoting Wayfarer

(Have a read of this very brief passage, Augustine on Intelligible Objects, which I think conveys well the traditional/Platonic notion of 'intelligibility' which is mainly lost to the modern tradition.)

I did look at it. It reminds me of Husserl, who of course is rekindling old insights. We definitely seem to agree on these objects. For me the tricky part is in the genesis of concepts and how they work together. We have intelligible sentences. We create new meanings of amazing complexity. How stable are these meanings? They are stable enough for human purposes, but I think a certain ambiguity haunts all meaning.

Quoting BrianW

This is as heavy a topic as I've seen.

Hopefully in a fun way! But yeah it does seem to strike right at the heart of philosophy --a description of its basic project or grasp of itself in relation to the world.

Reply to sign Well, we're coming at it from slightly different perspectives. My approach has generally been a 'where did we go wrong?' type of approach. What I mean by that is, I see the adoption of scientific or philosophical materialism as a kind of catastrophe that befell the Western cultural tradition. It's like the barbarians took over the university, or the parasite replaced the host. OK I'm exaggerating of course. But remember Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was all about 'a metaphysics of quality'. What is actually, truly, really, good? - not just as a matter of social custom or individual opinion but intrinsically valuable. Recall that the customary attitude of methodological naturalism is that whatever is good, must be either utilitarian, or a social construct (our resident pragmatist will endorse that.) But what if there's a real good, the knowledge of which is inherently liberating?

I think the problem is that this is too near 'religion' for most people. They instinctively will shy away. And that's a cultural phenomenon too, because of the way that the Platonist understanding was assimilated into Christian theology. A major part of Enlightenment philosophy was rejecting Christian scholasticism. And to be fair, scholastic philosophy in practice was a suffocating dogma for the most part. But the main remaining sources of that kind of generally Platonist and Aristotelian understanding, are the neo-thomists.

So partially through them, I have re-discovered something which I think is really vital to Western culture. It is that Platonist sense of the mathematical regularity and intelligibility of the Universe. The problem is, that mathematical physics has now altogether lost any connection whatever with the humanist side of that tradition, to refer to your other theme. Humans are, after all, an evolutionary fluke, the children of chance and necessity, accidental tourists. As long as this attitude persists, confusion will only ever flourish. Something has gone wrong.

Quoting BrianW

From my observations, the more intelligent (possibly rational) a subject is made out to be, the closer it approximates to reality. This is especially seen in the evolution of the theories of the atom and is seen in its infancy in the theory of dark matter and energy.

Exactly. And note that we have a movement from less to more rationality. We have increased complexity in our determination of reality.

Quoting BrianW

To give it my own specially twist of irony, there are branches of spiritualism which define spirit as the intelligent principle of life.

Yeah, and I think there is some truth in that. Hegel, right or wrong, thought of reality as a kind of seed that grows into a self-knowing tree. The dialectic was going somewhere specific. One thought or position quietly determined the next position. But this only becomes visible as thought becomes aware of or determine its own nature. Spirit has to become aware of itself as the process of becoming aware of it. This is all quite seductive to me. But I can't say that I just simply believe all of it. I think much of it is indeed just a description of what is going on. But does the seed have a fixed future? I'm not so sure about that.

Quoting BrianW

We can't deny the part intelligence plays in our understanding of reality and we can't deny that we 'know' more from our observations of the many aspects of reality than what is directly derived from sensory-inputs.

Indeed. Language is 'there,' like the world. To deny it is to employ it. Within language we can speak of a world prior to language. And we can also speak of round squares. The world prior to language may be something like the shadow of pure meaning, pure mind. If language is thoroughly 'incarnate,' if the word is always already also flesh, then our very distinction of meaning from non-meaning ('sensation') is troubled by an ambiguity. Indeed, all of our distinctions become troubled by context and embodiment.

Quoting BrianW

So, what determines whether we walk the rational path?

For me this is the humanism. We are dealing with the perception or experience of value. 'It values.' I think rationality is today's holy ghost, the 'substance' of the individual that makes him worthy of being recognized as truly human. Stirner theorized an archetype of the 'sacred.' I think he's on to something. Human's have a god-shaped hole into which various 'divinities' can be plugged. The transformation of divinity is not just a matter of dialectic (debate) but also of war and work in the 'material' world. The terrible 'other' of philosophy is a violence that feels no need to justify itself in rational terms. This 'satanic' 'I' is, when transformed into a 'we,' more or less 'absolute spirit' --a community that experiences itself as the living body of the divine. So the 'evil' position is separated from the perfected humanism by a mere pronoun.

Quoting sign

...the essence of the real can be grasped in concepts.

I'm left nonplussed by this sort of wording. As in, "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react", not the incongruous American nonplussed.

Essences are bunk; "The Real" is language on holiday; concepts are fraught with issues. All together the OP is a fundamental misuse of language.

But then, that's Hegel in a nutshell. Nuts.

Quoting Wayfarer

My approach has generally been a 'where did we go wrong?' type of approach. What I mean by that is, I see the adoption of scientific or philosophical materialism as a kind of catastrophe that befell the Western cultural tradition.

I think I see what you mean. Natural science is the 'god who delivered.' Everyone, independent of their ideology, wants (to varying degrees) the comfort and safety that technology has provided. But we seem to be out of control as a species. Who knows what will happen? We've built things that might extinguish us as a species. Mostly we just concern ourselves with the near future.

Ideologically we seem to have a battle of the humanisms --if one includes religion as a kind of humanism. We could also include humanisms as kinds of religions. What I have in mind is a cultures object of ultimate concern, the authority with which it determines the real and also the virtuous human being. As I mentioned before, I don't think materialism is the essence --except to the degree that the denial of afterlife makes this world the center of attention. From my perspective, vegetarianism or animal rights activism or over even men's rights activism are all 'spiritual' expressions. Humans mostly impose themselves in terms of the same old divine predicates. Justice, mercy, omniscience, love. So from my point of view, the problem is a pluralism that might prevent any unified/organized approach to solving the technological threat.

Can we bring ourselves together? Or do we just thirst for an other? Do we need an enemy? I don't know, but I suspect that this compulsive 'othering' is part of the problem.

Quoting Banno

I'm left nonplussed by this sort of wording. As in, "so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react", not the incongruous American nonplussed.

Essences are bunk; "The Real" is language on holiday; concepts are fraught with issues. All together the OP is a fundamental misuse of language.

But then, that's Hegel in a nutshell. Nuts.

Before I argue with you on this, let me say that I recognize your intelligence, even if we disagree. Maybe this is unnecessary, but I'd say real conversation is only possible with a minimum of friendly respect. So take my response in this light.

******

'Language on holiday' is 'language on holiday.' What am I to make of this metaphorical verbiage? What is this personification of language? Language isn't a lad who can go on vacation. That Wittgenstein sounds like a real poet (said with disgust at poetry masquerading as Science.) Surely you see how 'metaphysical' 'language on holiday' is? And God stepped off that train and parted from the Light from the Darkness, language in a hard hat from language with a beach towel.

More seriously, I love Wittgenstein. But he can be transformed all too easily into one more meta-physician. Before long our true Wittgensteinian can embrace a methodological stupidity. Anything that requires interpretation is 'language on holiday,' nevermind that 'language on holiday' (some secret re-installed at the heart of the great 'demystifier') requires an army of specialists for its infinite explication. One way among many others to grok WIttgenstein is to just start really listening to people and stop trying to fit talk into artificial theories of talk. Is this the fundamental fantasy ? An escape from the burden of interpretation? An excuse to write off the pesky other who just won't confirm us in our [s]prejudices[/s] wisdom?

Moreover you repeat the pattern that Hegel describes. What Hegel is saying is 'language on holiday.' Therefore it is unreal or silly or not worth acknowledging. And if you get together in a gang of Hegel-haters, then Hegel is unreal, unread. His whole point is that the 'real' (what we take seriously and recognize) is mediated by a group that (insasmuch as it has become philosophy) identifies itself with the rational, the sensible, the non-silly. Choose your synonym. I had to grab one synonym or another to point at a basic structure.

When Hegel wrote that all philosophy was idealism, that of course didn't make sense to me at first. And that's because I had a cartoon notion of idealism in my head ---that idealism was about ghosts in individual heads, a radical misunderstanding. To the degree that you dismiss Hegel in terms of some sense of universal rationality, you confirm him in this regard by ignoring or denying what is unintelligible or irrational to you. Only what we can make sense of (verify through critical discussion) is what our kind of people take as real.

Wittgenstein's 'form of life' is a repetition of Hegel's universal spirit. It's a groundless ground. The 'thing-in-itself' is nowhere to be found. Nothing is hidden. I'd say if you open your mind that there's a very nice continuity to be seen. Of course Wittgenstein had a different feeling about philosophy. Hegel was grandiose, a optimist, a humanist with organ music. Maybe his dream embarrasses us. We must all be tiny technicians, sweeping away the language that is trying to sneak out for a smoke break. Gellner's critique is at least well aimed at the potential of Wittgensteinian lingo to become a theology of complacency. And note that your linguistic-philosophy justified denial of Hegel just makes the Logos primary all over again, repeating what it thinks it is criticizing. And you are truly missing out if you haven't found anything fascinating in Hegel. That's like a jazz fan who hasn't really got into Coltrane from my perspective.

Hegel:The meaning or sense of which we speak is none other than the essential or the universal, the substantial in an object, which is the object concretely thought. Herein we always have a double aspect, an exterior and an interior, an external appearance which is intuitively perceptible and a meaning which, precisely, is thought. Now, because the object with which we are concerned is thought, there is here no double aspect; it is thought itself which does the meaning. Here the object is the universal; so we cannot ask about a meaning which is separate or separable from the object. The only meaning or determination which the history of philosophy has, then, is thought itself. Herein thought is the innermost, the highest, and one cannot, therefore, settle on a thought about it.

Compare:

“EVERYTHING in the cosmic universe is composed of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand [something] is to free form completely from matter.

“Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

“The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive [i.e. sensory] stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon (i.e. receive the impression of) the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal [sup] 1[/sup] datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and identifies it as a particular something.

“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable [i.e. intelligible]. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.”

1. Aristotle's Greek word, that is commonly and traditionally translated as "[mental] image" is “phantasma” (plural: phantasmata), a term used by Plato to refer to reflections in mirrors or pools.

From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941. (Additional paragraphing, notes and emphasis added).

That is a very dense passage, which I have posted here on several occasions. But do note the almost exact parallel between the bolded paragraph and the gist of what Hegel says above it. This is not coincidental.

Quoting sign

We have intelligible sentences. We create new meanings of amazing complexity. How stable are these meanings?

On this view, they're stable because they perceive 'what things truly are' by the knowledge of their forms and types. I think this is the logic that underlies the whole idea of 'taxonomy' for example as devised by Linnaeus, although I haven't studied it in depth.

But there's also a good essay by Kelly Ross, Meaning and the Problem of Universals, which considers this in depth (and although not without its own muddles, in my view, at least it tries to relate the whole question of universals to contemporary issues in philosophy.)

Quoting Wayfarer

On this view, they're stable because they perceive 'what things truly are' by the knowledge of their forms and types.

Thanks for the [s]Aristotle[/s] quote. I think it's quite clear that they were at one on this issue. Meaning is not subjective. It is objective. It is the possibility of knowledge, the form of knowledge. I still haven't studied him as I should. I am aware of Hegel is often compared to Aristotle, and I think it's clear why. The difference is time, at least judging by Kojeve's interpretation.

For Kojeve anyway, Aristotle could have knowledge of the world because everything in it was cyclical. We can watch animals be born, mature, reproduce, and die. We can gather this distribution through time up into a unity. No problem, right? And then even in politics we have just a few systems that repeat. HIstory doesn't really move forward! The circle can be grasped by studying history. Reality has a stable structure behind all its movement. Note that Schopenhauer actually took this position, denying essential change.

But (as I understand it) Hegel was reacting to Newtonian science, the French revolution, and the Kant-inspired idea that the knowledge of the impossibility of true knowledge was the highest knowledge. This of course lowered the value of man's rational essence. Hegel was a 'Satanist' on the level of the 'we.' The thing-in-itself was an alienating humiliation to be broken over his humanist knee. Anyway, the unification of all humanity and its eventually technical conquest of the world became a living possibility. Moreover 'man' was becoming autonomous. At the same time there was a knowledge explosion. There was something new under the sun everyday. Time was no longer the repetition of the same. It was creative. Hegel wrote that philosophy could only understand what had already happened. So only at the end of history is perfect knowledge possible. Maybe Hegel thought he could see the beginning of the end of history in Napoleon, that world-spirit on horseback, spreading a world-wide culture of self-conscious freedom --of masters and slaves synthesized as citizens. It's one hell of a dream.

Anyway, for me the instability of meanings is related to their being about one another (texts on texts on texts) and in our accumulating knowledge of the world. We are creating the world as we try to make sense of it. Note that Derrida is in this same tradition of Aristotle-Hegel-Husserl-etc. And so are Wittgenstein and Heidegger. But they are thinking the depth of the incarnation. We can't peel the flesh off the essence. We can't find the artichoke beneath its leaves. So we get something like an embrace of the mess that is trying always to climb out of itself.

Quoting sign

Aristotle could have knowledge of the world because everything in it was cyclical.

Actually it was a quote about Aquinas' theory of knowledge, which draws on and elaborates Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. I'm really labouring to try and impart this basic principle: that the 'intelligible form' of things, and also their mathematical qualities, can be known in a way that the material, particular, individual cannot. The 'active intellect' (nous) draws together the (material-sensory) datum with the (intelligible-rational) form to understand meaning by way of 'the concept'. And I think that is the origin of the idea of 'the real as rational', originating with Plato, neoplatonism, and Aristotle. Nothing really to with cyclical at all, sorry. It has to do with the 'intelligible forms of things'.

Now that I think of it, Dermot Moran (who also wrote the Routledge Companion to Phenomenology) wrote an important book on the influence of Eriugena on German idealism. And Eriugena cut his scholarly teeth on the translation of the Greek texts of (pseudo)-Dionysius which is the vessel for many of these ideas. It really is the grand tradition of Western philosophy.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Eriugena continued to have a relatively clandestine but still important influence on Christian Neoplatonists such as Meister Eckhart and especially Nicholas of Cusa. The first printed editions of his works appeared in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that interest in him was revived, especially among followers of Hegel who saw Eriugena as a forerunner to speculative idealism.

Quoting sign

Meaning is not subjective. It is objective. It is the possibility of knowledge, the form of knowledge.

Do you know Horkheimer's The Eclipse of Reason? That was written in the aftermath of WWII as a reaction to Nazism. But Horkheimer's analysis of the main point is exactly this - that meaning is - well, not objective in the modern sense, so much as transcending subjectivity and objectivity. But you will notice how thoroughly philosophies of meaning are relativised and subjectivised here.

Anyway - I have to log out for a good few days - I am doing a number of self-directed training courses this week for a software project starting early in the NY and really have to concentrate, I get on here and the hours just fly past. But, a great exchange and I thank you for it.

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Wayfarer

Quoting Wayfarer

Actually it was a quote about Aquinas' theory of knowledge, which draws on and elaborates Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. I'm really labouring to try and impart this basic principle: that the 'intelligible form' of things, and also their mathematical qualities, can be known in a way that the material, particular, individual cannot. The 'active intellect' (nous) draws together the (material-sensory) datum with the (intelligible-rational) form to understand meaning by way of 'the concept'. And I think that is the origin of the idea of 'the real as rational', originating with Plato, neoplatonism, and Aristotle. Nothing really to with cyclical at all, sorry. It has to do with the 'intelligible forms of things'.

I get it Aquinas, Aristotle, Hegel. Indeed, the idea of the idea. No complaint. We are on the same page as far as I can tell on that particular issue.

As far as denying the importance of cycles, I think you are missing the connection. Of course the concept is what knowledge is made of. But how does the philosopher know if/when his knowledge is complete? How can I know the nature of the dog, for instance, if I haven't seen everything that the dog can manifest? Now let's consider how the philosopher could have a complete knowledge of man himself. His own nature has to be a more complicated version of an animals' nature, manifesting a finite number of modes which can be integrated in concepts via memory. I don't claim that this gets it all just right or is the final story, but I think it's good theme. Time is a fundamental issue. Does reality become more complex? If so, we would expect later philosophies to give better accounts. On the other hand, a certain 'eternal' core of human nature could be manifested very early in human history.

Quoting Wayfarer

Do you know Horkheimer's The Eclipse of Reason? That was written in the aftermath of WWII as a reaction to Nazism. But Horkheimer's analysis of the main point is exactly this - that meaning is - well, not objective in the modern sense, so much as transcending subjectivity and objectivity. But you will notice how thoroughly philosophies of meaning are relativised and subjectivised here.

I've looked into Horkheimer. I liked what I read.

You mentioned 'subjectivization' of meaning, but the annihilation of the isolated subject seems like a big theme in continental philosophy. The subject has its substance outside of itself. The mighty ego is being brought down to something spoken by Language. What I can imagine you not liking is the thought of dissemination, the out-of-control-ness of the meaning process. And I read Derrida as someone who just wants to tell the truth. I'd bet he was tempted by nostalgia, but he seems to have embraced the openness, the ambiguity, the play.

I think we basically have the same vision of what life is good for. What may open or close certain thinkers for us is the political aspect of our thinking. I'm basically a stoic when it comes to politics. I don't believe that I have significant power to change the course of the world, and I therefore don't worry about it. Sure, vulgarity and stupidity dominate from the perspective of one who has become more sophisticated. Indeed, vulgarity and stupidity are in some sense the shadow cast by exactly this sophistication. The social version of humanism (which can indeed be a holy humanism, open to the divine) is maybe for me a daydream. Or I can live it here and there with people in my life on a small scale. Or I can have profound conversations about the higher things online with people who aren't afraid of that sort of thing. I'm not saying that you should be like me and not worry. I really don't know. I guess I just enjoy the sense of seeing what is, finding general structures.

Quoting Wayfarer

Anyway - I have to log out for a good few days - I am doing a number of self-directed training courses this week for a software project starting early in the NY and really have to concentrate, I get on here and the hours just fly past. But, a great exchange and I thank you for it.

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Wayfarer

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it too. I look forward to your return.

The first meaning of idealism given by the SEP is

SEP:
something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality

From the 'idealistic' point of view I want to present, the definition above is a misunderstanding of idealism. Or rather the idealism I'm equating with philosophy itself is obscured by the definition of idealism above. A less deceptive name in this context might be meaning-ism. If that sounds trivial, good.

My suggestion is that idealism is trivial, another name for philosophy itself. I think this is revealed by something like a phenomenology of philosophy. How does philosophy show itself?

The philosopher brings me the meaning of reality, its conceptual/objective determination, what it is in more or less detail. What I have in mind is something like the philosopher opposed to the sophist, the ironist, the anti-philosopher. The philosopher claims to know or claims to aspire to know the objective/unbiased truth about reality. He may tell us that reality is made of meaningless objects, but this is still the meaning of reality we are to accept as the unbiased truth --to the degree that we recognize the claim of rationality/objectivity (and are fully human?).

How do we know that he is unbiased, objective, rational? Philosophers challenge one another with different presentations of the meaning of reality, its intelligible structure, including the meaningfulness or not of sentences. This forces the turn to reasoning about reason itself (for instance, linguistic philosophy.) To the degree that linguistic philosophy is ' the view that philosophical problems are problems which may be solved (or dissolved) either by reforming language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use', Hegel was a supreme linguistic philosopher, who just watched philosophy go till he saw the structure of its movement (or at least an illuminating approximation of it.)

'Idealism' is the phenomenology of philosophy, unveiling its basic structure. It points to what philosophy is doing without noticing it is doing, further revealing reality by uncovering philosophy's own role in this reality. Philosophers determine ('ascertain or establish exactly') just what reality is. This determination is meaningful, articulated. This is the 'ultimate foundation' in the quote above. A better phrase is the ultimate determination of all reality. This is ultimate as final, the last word. The philosopher aspires to the last word about reality. The philosophers belong to a community in the world. This community with its practices and standards is the 'spirit' that determines (makes sense of, decides the meaning of) reality in the first quote. Its philosophers focus on the fundamental, the primordial, the big picture, the authoritative. 'Spirit' hasn't aged well given modern biases. But 'mind' suggests disembodied individuals and a distance from the intelligible objects of everyday life. Such objects are not denied as 'mental,' they are merely recognized as objective, intelligible without bias. 'Reason' is perhaps best, but again this tempts some to imagine an isolated as well as disembodied private language locked in a theoretical a-historical subject, a questionable construction.

Quoting sign

something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality
— SEP

From the 'idealistic' point of view I want to present, the definition above is a misunderstanding of idealism.

Agree. And I think that's because of the way that 'mind/spirit/reason' became conceived after Descartes. It was Descartes' error to posit 'res cogitans' as an objective 'something'. This is the basis of Husserl's critique of Descartes, which I think is given in the beginning of the book Crisis in the European Sciences (published posthumously).

I think there's a much better quotation given in the SEP article on Schopenhauer:

It is a perennial philosophical reflection that if one looks deeply enough into oneself, one will discover not only one’s own essence, but also the essence of the universe. For as one is a part of the universe as is everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else. For that reason it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe if one comes into substantial contact with one’s ultimate inner being.

Among the most frequently-identified principles that are introspectively brought forth — and one that was the standard for German Idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who were philosophizing within the Cartesian tradition — is the principle of self-consciousness. With the belief that acts of self-consciousness exemplify a self-creative process akin to divine creation, and developing a logic that reflects the structure of self-consciousness, namely, the dialectical logic of position, opposition and reconciliation (sometimes described as the logic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis), the German Idealists maintained that dialectical logic mirrors the structure not only of human productions, both individual and social, but the structure of reality as a whole, conceived of as a thinking substance or conceptually-structured-and-constituted entity.

As much as he opposes the traditional German Idealists in their metaphysical elevation of self-consciousness (which he regards as too intellectualistic), Schopenhauer philosophizes within the spirit of this tradition, for he believes that the supreme principle of the universe is likewise apprehensible through introspection, and that we can understand the world as various manifestations of this general principle.

I agree with the gist of this, in fact I think it's important. This is why I mentioned Dermot Moran's book on the way Eriugena's theology influenced German idealism (via the medieval mystics, Eckhardt, Cusa, and others.) But the statement about 'the basic energies of the universe' I think is mistaken. Where the 'identity' comes from, is that the individual nous is a microcosmic reflection of the eternal intelligence. Reason, in the individual, mirrors, and originates from, its source in the divine intellect. So it's not like an 'energy' or 'juice' - very vulgar expression that it is.

So to answer the question about 'objectivity' and 'rationality', the medieval mystics would have used the term, not 'objectivity' but 'detachment'. It is central to Meister Eckhardt's sermons. And 'detachment' has a spiritual quality, because it requires self-abnegation, the negation of ego. Whereas science brackets out the ego by considering only what is quantifiable and publicly-knowable, so it altogether lacks that sense of discipline introspection and self-knowledge that you find in the German mystics and idealists. It is entirely objectively-focussed on the supposed 'real world out there'.

Quoting Wayfarer

And I think that's because of the way that 'mind/spirit/reason' became conceived after Descartes. It was Descartes' error to posit 'res cogitans' as an objective 'something'. This is the basis of Husserl's critique of Descartes, which I think is given in the beginning of the book Crisis in the European Sciences (published posthumously).

Indeed, and Heidegger and other thinkers continue the demolition of this picture. 'Language is the house of being' is 'idealism' as my (mis)reading of Hegel has it. Language is the essence of the world (a 'truism' obscured by language itself), its intelligible structure for us, not me. This is initially no more 'mystical' than talking to one's neighbor about the same barking dog.

The objective is the negation of the subjective. To place objects before an isolated subject is (once one steps outside it) a massive theoretical prejudice that obscures the phenomenon of world 'and' language. I see the worldly object as an object that is really there precisely in terms of other's also being able to see it. I see it in its objectivity as the possibility of others seeing it. The worldly object (a pleonasm) is fundamentally the vision of an 'ideal we' 'within' an 'I' who strives toward this 'we' as his 'substance,' what is substantial and 'real' in himself. Personally I don't see how sincere denials of this don't simply confirm in their very denial, hence the 'triviality' of idealism which is yet 'theology' in a counter-intuitive sense of that term. Philosophy is silly from the outside, else it would be complacent common sense averse to questioning and the 'spiritual' eros and telos. 'Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy' because that which is already intelligible is just common sense, 'prejudice,' the norm being questioned. On the other hand, it's only in terms of what is already objective or rational or authoritative that one can be heard as other than a fool. So philosophy depends on what it would overcome, the same objectivity or rationality or determination of the 'public' real (pleonasm) being questioned.

Quoting Wayfarer

Where the 'identity' comes from, is that the individual nous is a microcosmic reflection of the eternal intelligence. Reason, in the individual, mirrors, and originates from, its source in the divine intellect.

I like this. I think we can also speak of reason as the divine intellect. To be reasonable in the highest sense of the word is to incarnate the 'divine intellect.'

Houlgate on Hegel's Phen.:
Absolute knowing understands itself to be the consciousness that being, or substance, comes to have of itself. The individual, who knows 'absolutely', knows himself to be a specific individual: 'I, that is this and no other I.' He also knows this knowing to be his own activity --'the self's own act.' Yet he also knows his own activity to be the activity of substance itself: he knows that substance knows itself in his knowing...Unlike religious consciousness, therefore, absolute knowing does not take itself to be one with being that is essentially other than it, but it knows itself to be the very knowing that being has of itself.

This 'being' or 'substance' or 'subject-object' is 'God' if we like the term. I think the eros of philosophy in the highest sense is as Hegel wrote 'religious.' Again it seems that to deny this is simply to impose a higher authority. 'No, philosophy is not theological. My philosophy determines the real otherwise, in terms of something higher than in terms of something higher.'

Quoting Wayfarer

So to answer the question about 'objectivity' and 'rationality', the medieval mystics would have used the term, not 'objectivity' but 'detachment'. It is central to Meister Eckhardt's sermons. And 'detachment' has a spiritual quality, because it requires self-abnegation, the negation of ego. Whereas science brackets out the ego by considering only what is quantifiable and publicly-knowable, so it altogether lacks that sense of discipline introspection and self-knowledge that you find in the German mystics and idealists. It is entirely objectively-focussed on the supposed 'real world out there'.

I think we are really at the heart of things here. Science in one understanding of itself (a quasi-religious understanding) is a passivity before the real. Its other understanding of itself (or the other pole of a continuum of understandings) is Bacon's implicit power-as-knowledge. Scientism (which I don't really want to hate on but just analyze) also takes the power-as-knowledge into a political context where science is a tool and not the thing itself. Indeed, the explicit worship of pure power probably doesn't even bother to make a case except ironically, deceptively.

I think we can also agree that phenomenology is also about 'detachment.' It offers itself up to things as they show themselves, without trying to control what it finds. IMV, it just makes sense that this same basic movement appears in different forms. 'Only as phenomenology is ontology possible' is another way to describe the real as rational, which is not to ignore shades of feeling and meaning but only to emphasize the approximate repetition. May we say that 'spiritual' traditions are just traditions whose jargon seems iffy to us in terms of 'our' own sacred jargon? (I do not mean to imply that all traditions are equal in their power. I only suggest a similarity in structure.)

I think Hegel brought in many ways to have a problem that others avoided but is less a provider of solutions than he is a source for new problems.

Apart from cribbing metaphysics from ancients and contemporaries, he introduced the dynamic of different people colliding in real time as the closest our experiences get to let us know what built consciousness. Maybe it takes a certain kind of structure to talk about that sort of thing. How ever the activity of reason is seen as the theater of the real, it is missing the mark to read that structure as an explanation for what is happening. Why go on about the necessity for a process if a thinker can cut to the chase and just tell you stuff.

Put in another way, this is the beginning of what we struggle with as psychology. Events are formative but it is difficult to accept that as a ground and say anything helpful afterwards.

Quoting Valentinus

Apart from cribbing metaphysics from ancients and contemporaries, he introduced the dynamic of different people colliding in real time as the closest our experiences get to let us know what built consciousness.

Hi. Thanks for jumping in. I like what you say above. I'd like to suggest that Hegel had no choice in his own eyes as far as 'cribbing' from others. This is just history as system. The texts he assimilated were the 'stains' of those collisions in real time. Anyway, I very much agree about consciousness being 'built' by different people colliding. Also, just to clarify, I think Hegel is great without buying into all of his system. His philosophy is massively optimistic and a product of its time. I do think that he's a central figure in philosophy. It's hard to do more than tweak Hegel, I'd say. Even anti-philosophical positions are brilliantly sketched already Hegel.

Quoting Valentinus

Maybe it takes a certain kind of structure to talk about that sort of thing. How ever the activity of reason is seen as the theater of the real, it is missing the mark to read that structure as an explanation for what is happening.

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting a gap between us and reality in its nakedness? A Hegelian might say that this gap is a negation without determination, a question mark appended to what we already believe and do. Fair enough. Hegel insisted on this instability. For me the issue is whether there really is a terminus where 'philosophy' becomes 'science.' I'd say that there is in some rough and imperfect sense, and that this would just be someone adopting a misreading of Hegel (for instance) and never finding a reason to let it go. Of course this subjectivizes the thing and transforms it into something with smaller ambitions. Hegel becomes a kind of rationally religious 'poet' for the individual conscience.

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Reply to sign
Your points are well taken in regards to how Hegel's work stands in relation to others.

I just want to emphasize that he brought in a dynamic that was new at the time and is still new. Not just from the point of view of a theory but as a way to perceive events.

I am less inclined to see his challenge from the point of view as a narrative than as a set of conditions I may or may not be able to accept at all.

Quoting tim wood

Will someone define, for present purpose, "rational," "is," and "real"?

Hi. Thanks for joining the thread. The very idea that 'rational' and 'real' can or need to be defined in a few other words is questionable in my view. I invite you to hunt through the dictionary from definition to definition and somehow find yourself the magical thing that nails all these words down.

Moreover you ask (insincerely?) for the very context out of which you ripped the words that are now to be defined, as if words had magical meanings in a hidden realm independent of context. This, by the way, is how Wittgenstein and Derrida extend and develop the basic Hegelian insight.

I think you miss an important point here. You seem to be dismissing my words as irrational or empty in order to deny them as determinations of reality, of what's-going-on. Is this the case? In that case it seems to me that you are after all insisting that the irrational is unreal , unworthy, not-the-case, without value. And do you not do so in terms of some universal reason--as not just your opinion as opinion? (This is the implicit humanism. You don't appeal to scripture. You reason with me in terms of a shared authority within us both, the reasonable people we ought to be as philosophers.)

Quoting tim wood

Reality and rationality are qualities - accidents. Not in themselves substance.

What is this 'substance'? Sounds like a synonym for reality. I can't be sure. I will say that I am not particularly attached to this or that piece of jargon. What I offered was what I found to be a plausible interpretation of two famous statements by Hegel. The first is in the OP. The second is that all philosophy is idealism (which is not so say the same idealism in every case.) I made a case that this was a simple phenomenology of philosophy, a mere description of its structure. I even called it 'trivial,' and yet this 'triviality' seems likely to be denied in a way that confirms it, at least to the degree that it is accurate.

Reply to sign
Reply to sign Quoting sign

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting a gap between us and reality in its nakedness?

I am not sure about that. Whatever purposes it may serve compared to other theories, Hegel has a gap in time between ideas starting and becoming other things through a process. On that basis, he is militating against anybody like you or me saying what that all amounts to. Now, there are many of his critics who observe he did not apply some of those conditions to himself. He argues for a kind of acceptance that is not consonant with his own expressions of a completed world.

I am less interested in his conclusions on where it all going and more interested in the conditions he brought into view that were not discussed before he troubled us.

Quoting sign

That the essence of the real can be grasped in concepts.

What if you're not an essentialist? (I'm not.)

Or rather, in my view, concepts are something that individuals perform--they're abstractions that individuals create, abstractions that range over a number of particulars, because it's easier to deal with the world via these sorts of abstractions.

And then "essential" properties are simply the properties that an individual considers necessary for the concept they've formulated. In a nutshell, they're properties that an individual requires to call some x (some arbitrary particular) an F (some concept term, per that individual's concepts).

So while there are essentials in that sense, it's simply something that individuals make up, a way that individuals think about the world (as are concepts in general).

Quoting sign

Where does the idealism come in? It does not come in as the 'mental' of some isolated subject. It comes in as language, which is essentially objective. I don't choose what the signs mean, and as a philosopher my goal is to have my signs recognized by others as being objective, as revealing the world-in-common.

Obviously I don't agree with any of that, either.

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Reply to tim wood
Sorry if I misunderstood you. I don't mean to be rude. I'm happy to try to find common ground if that is possible.

Quoting Terrapin Station

What if you're not an essentialist? (I'm not.)

I think you are bound to misunderstand me if you try to zoom in on this or that word and interpret it within this or that narrow system. By 'essence' I mean something like the intelligible structure. If you deny essentialism (which is great), then you are still presenting the intelligible structure of reality to me. 'Essentialism doesn't ascertain reality rationally.' You are telling me what's going on (not just for you but for us), making sense in the 'name of' [synonym for rationality.].

Quoting Terrapin Station

Or rather, in my view, concepts are something that individuals perform--they're abstractions that individuals create, abstractions that range over a number of particulars, because it's easier to deal with the world via these sorts of abstractions.

I understand what it tempting about this view, but I think you are missing that language is an intrinsically social phenomenon. Individuals as individuals don't create concepts, though we must allow for occasional individual contributions to the culture. Note that the 'I' is one more word that we learn to use. To convert this dimly understood 'I' into a metaphysical absolute is questionable, in my view. It is one more sign in the system, albeit a central sign for getting around in the world.

To 'be in language' (to make sense of this very sentence and the post you responded to in the first place) is to live in a kind of 'we.' This is not to deny the 'subjective' aspect of experience but rather to make sense of it. Just as the predator makes no sense apart from its prey (or makes only abstract or limited sense), the language user makes no sense apart from the others he shares language and a world of objects with. Are you not otherwise forced to imagine a kind of ghost in the machine?

Quoting Terrapin Station

And then "essential" properties are simply the properties that an individual considers necessary for the concept they've formulated. In a nutshell, they're properties that an individual requires to call some x (some arbitrary particular) an F (some concept term, per that individual's concepts).

So while there are essentials in that sense, it's simply something that individuals make up, a way that individuals think about the world (as are concepts in general).

While that theory is a little rigid, I mostly agree, but the protagonist here is mostly the community living 'through' the individual. As children we mostly believe what we are told. We learn a language. We learn what 'one' does, how 'people like us' see things. Only as we become mature do we begin to question what 'one' does, and we still have to do so in terms of the language and values we learned from others. We turn our 'programming' against itself. On the other hand, individuals tend to seek the recognition of the community. They are productive, honorable, reasonable. The 'I' strives to become 'better,' usually in terms of recognizable values. Even Stirner, a radical (anti-)theologian of 'I,' felt the need to publish his book and share his annihilation of every claim (the claim as claim) on the [s]individual[/s] Unique. To be clear, I understand the allure of the radically free and self-constructed 'I,' but then that's been one of 'our' values for a long time now.

Kant:
Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.

Quoting sign

...as a philosopher my goal is to have my signs recognized by others as being objective, as revealing the world-in-common...

Quoting Terrapin Station

Obviously I don't agree with any of that, either.

And your signs are here why? Maybe you don't seek recognition from me personally, but these are publicly presented signs. Your ideal community may be listening. 'Mr. Station gets it. He sees through the illusion and/or confusion.' This community can be (has to be?) elitist/exclusive. Indeed, excluding the 'bad' subjectivity is the point, the goal. Your public disagreement is a withholding of recognition from my subjectivity (as you interpret it) as not objective or rational.

Quoting tim wood

. I did not ask what the terms "real," "rational," or "is" mean; I asked for a definition "for present purpose."

Quoting tim wood

I am not prepared to discuss either idealism or humanism,

Note that the entire gist of my post was about idealism and humanism.

Because I was describing philosophy at a high level of abstraction, the words 'real' and 'rational' must retain their ambiguity here. Roughly the 'real' is what's-going-on. The 'rational' is trickier. Philosophy has been linguistically self-conscious now for a long time. Plato was already a dialectical philosopher. We as philosophers largely try to determine what it is to be rational, and philosophy is something like a permanent identity crisis. New determinations of the rational (the authoritative method for determining reality for 'humanists') lead naturally to different determinations of reality. (All of this is trivial, one might say, but I find it clarifying. I aim for a neutral description of a basic structure.)

I thought I'd sketch what I think is the strongest non-philosophical position. I'll use 'ironism' and 'ironist' but I have a certain kind of skeptic in mind. Such a skeptic would be skeptical about being a skeptic.

The ironist doesn't completely believe in the project of philosophy but loves it anyway. The ironist identity is unstable at the level of speculation (bound of course to everyday life otherwise). The ironist is instead stabilized (if it all) by myth recognized as myth or metaphor recognized as metaphor. There's no particular reason the ironist would have to deny some other questionable faculty for grasping something like 'the absolute.' And maybe 'faculty' is still too rigid.

Hegel's description and successful demolition of the ironist in his Lectures on Fine Art applied only to egoistic ironists. Schlegel may have been in his mind, but:

SEP:
For Schlegel, a fragment as a particular has a certain unity (“[a] fragment, like a small work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog,” Athenaeumsfragment 206), but remains nonetheless fragmentary in the perspective it opens up and in its opposition to other fragments. Its “unity” thus reflects Schlegel's view of the whole of things not as a totality but rather as a “chaotic universality” of infinite opposing stances.

If a literary form like the fragment opens up the question of the relation between finite and infinite, so do the literary modes of allegory, wit and irony—allegory as a finite opening toward the infinite (“every allegory means God”), wit as the “fragmentary geniality” or “selective flashing” in which a unity can momentarily be seen, and irony as their synthesis (see Frank 2004, 216). Although impressed with the Socratic notion of irony (playful and serious, frank and deeply hidden, it is the freest of all licenses, since through it one rises above one's own self, Schlegel says in Lyceumfragment 108), Schlegel nonetheless employs it in a way perhaps more reminiscent of the oscillations of Fichtean selfhood. Irony is at once, as he says in Lyceumfragment 37, self-creation, self-limitation, and self-destruction.

“Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty,” Schlegel writes in Lyceumfragment 42: “for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.”

Are we sure he's not an egoist?

SEP:
In his essay “On the Limits of the Beautiful” (Über die Grenzen des Schönen, 1794), he argues that love is the highest form of aesthetic enjoyment and can only be realized between free and equal beings (Beiser 1992, 248)

When I first started talking philosophy online, I already loved this notion of irony. I've examined some amazing systems since then, but I don't think anything has conquered the irony, which can apparently synthesize without synthesizing.

And let's not forget one of the most potent (anti-)formulations of this position:

Nietzsche:
This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae...It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—He cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.
...
If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.”...The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....

The passage above is just thing itself IMO. When life down here is just perfect (which doesn't happen too often), I think that passage captures the sense of being beyond all systems, behind all serious words. I think this is the grasp of the absolute that Hegel wasn't satisfied with. He wanted a conceptual elaboration. I suspect that he had this kind of feeling about his system. That system was a poem of the real. It was the truth that could be told for a 'we.'

As spectacular as Hegel is and as much as he gets right, I think 'life' is the master word in all of its anti-systematic ambiguity. The ironist as I conceive him contains Hegel. Does Hegel's system really contain the ironist? It tries. Was Hegel himself also an ironist who nevertheless constructed and presented Hegel's system? I'm guessing that sometimes he was.

This irony, the 'laughter of the gods'...

The gods laugh at man through man. Is this what humanism chases ? flees?

bc im out i dont have time to respond in detail and in a way adequate to this thread : but id want to note that there is a robust philosophical tradition that accepts that which exceeds rationality - and instead sets up camp at the limit. its like catching parts of the stream that are amenable to rationality. sifting for gold. deleuze and the 'plane of immanence' come to mind.

theres no performative paradox in asking that philosophers be rational and also asking that they accept something outside rationalitys limit.

in the same way the fisherman accepts that there is something beyond fish, or methods for catching fish. theres the ocean.

Wasn't it Euclid that proved that not all that is real is rational, by manipulating the square root of two?

Oh hang on, do you mean .......

Never mind. :yikes:

Quoting csalisbury

ut id want to note that there is a robust philosophical tradition that accepts that which exceeds rationality - and instead sets up camp at the limit. its like catching parts of the stream that are amenable to rationality. sifting for gold. deleuze and the 'plane of immanence' come to mind.

I guess I'd just exclude these philosophers from the narrow idea of philosophy that I was working with or include them as late philosophers who determine that which determines to be indeterminate--a critique of pure reason or of language on holiday or of the primacy of the theoretical. The key here for me is that [synonym for rationality] is the authority appealed to in order to distinguish philosophy from mere opinion. It's because philosophers don't accept 'well, God told me so' and instead demand an argument or an elaboration that (only) the rational is real. The philosopher I have in mind doesn't believe irrational claims He refuses them as descriptions of reality.

Note that this includes the rejection of claims about the 'thing-in-itself.' So even if philosophy admits its blind-spot, it does so to deny access to this blind spot to others. It 'knows that it does not know' in order to reject 'inhuman' or 'theological' claims of direct access. Kant knows that pre-critical philosophy is wrong precisely by insisting on a kind of absolute ignorance of things in themselves. Absolute knowledge in the Kantian style is knowledge of absolute ignorance or ignorance of the absolute. It's this tangle that Hegel wrestled with, it seems to me. It left humans at an infinite distance from Truth, offending Hegel's intuition that the human mind was divine.

Quoting csalisbury

in the same way the fisherman accepts that there is something beyond fish, or methods for catching fish. theres the ocean.

Indeed. And I am more ironist or mystic than philosopher. But to clarify my point, let me ask you a hypothetical question. How would you react if a philosopher insisted that he understood everything? He claims that he is a fisherman who somehow caught the ocean itself on his hook? I expect that you'd be skeptical indeed. My point is that 'that which exceeds rationality' or 'the ocean' plays an important role in the game. It can function as an 'absent' center. 'I know that I don't know --and yet I know that you can't know.' This humble 'not knowing' is itself a 'vision of God' held fixed.

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Reply to sign
I don't know. I have read a lot of Nietzsche. Mostly by accident, really.
If you want to open up that side of things, maybe it deserves its own thread.

Reply to Valentinus
I'm tempted. My threads haven't exactly been taking off, though. I'm trying to minimize my annoyance of other people without just saying nothing. I'm surprised by the reception of my OP so far.

And then in some ways it makes perfect sense to discuss post-philosophy or ironism here in order to emphasize the contrast. I'd love to get your opinion on the Nietzsche quote above. It's one of my very favorite passages in all of philosophy.

Reply to tim wood Quoting tim wood

Maybe there is. Philosophers accept rationality because it's rational. If you're obliged to accept something and you're irrational, then you're obliged to accept everything. Or, another way, if the rational man accepts reason because it's reason, what reason, what "because" does he have for accepting the non-rational?

Because it's there.

You're 'obliged' to accept what's there.

You don't really have a choice. You can take any sort of attitude toward those aspects of 'what's there' that you don't like. Still, it's there. And it will keep being there. It will keep lapping at your doorstep. If you want to make it a principled thing of what to accept - rational or irrational - then go ahead. the irrational will keep appearing. So, eventually, for anyone, its a matter of how you deal with it. Maybe you only 'accept' the rational. ok. so how do you deal with the stuff you don't 'accept'? Because it will still be there.

What is 'acceptance?'

Quoting sign

Indeed. And I am more ironist or mystic than philosopher. But to clarify my point, let me ask you a hypothetical question. How would you react if a philosopher insisted that he understood everything? He claims that he is a fisherman who somehow caught the ocean itself on his hook? I expect that you'd be skeptical indeed. My point is that 'that which exceeds rationality' or 'the ocean' plays an important role in the game. It can function as an 'absent' center. 'I know that I don't know --and yet I know that you can't know.' This humble 'not knowing' is itself a 'vision of God' held fixed.

why fixed?

Quoting sign

I guess I'd just exclude these philosophers from the narrow idea of philosophy that I was working with or include them as late philosophers who determine that which determines to be indeterminate--a critique of pure reason or of language on holiday or of the primacy of the theoretical. The key here for me is that [synonym for rationality] is the authority appealed to in order to distinguish philosophy from mere opinion. It's because philosophers don't accept 'well, God told me so' and instead demand an argument or an elaboration that (only) the rational is real. The philosopher I have in mind doesn't believe irrational claims He refuses them as descriptions of reality.

Note that this includes the rejection of claims about the 'thing-in-itself.' So even if philosophy admits its blind-spot, it does so to deny access to this blind spot to others. It 'knows that it does not know' in order to reject 'inhuman' or 'theological' claims of direct access. Kant knows that pre-critical philosophy is wrong precisely by insisting on a kind of absolute ignorance of things in themselves. Absolute knowledge in the Kantian style is knowledge of absolute ignorance or ignorance of the absolute. It's this tangle that Hegel wrestled with, it seems to me. It left humans at an infinite distance from Truth, offending Hegel's intuition that the human mind was divine.

Yes, I agree with your picture. I think philosophy's wrong to think it knows more about the function of the 'thing-in-itself' than others. A lobsterman knows more about the 'thing-in-itself' than Kant. A fortiori he knows more than Hegel. There are maybe some things Hegel knows more about. But Hegel is still the privileged boy, protected by his position. Every stab at knowledge is limited by its stance. FIshermen are less likely to miss this than philosophers. But its true for both. Its not a matter of knowledge at this point. Its a matter of balancing pride and humility. Its knowing what one knows, and knowing the right stance to take towards what one doesn't know. Philosophy can give the illusion of knowing more than one does.

Quoting csalisbury

why fixed?

If I insist that there is a blind-spot for human reason determinable by reason itself, then I have at least one sure result, in the name of this same limited reason. 'I know that you don't know.' I hold fixed not only my own distance from 'God' or 'naked reality' but also yours.

I'm not trying to take sides here (or really I'm the ironist) but trying to point out the tension in a position that seems quite humble. Indeed I think this position can be quite humble. But let's think of those who dismiss everything 'spiritual' or 'metaphysical' in terms of this kind of humility. It can be a will not to know, a dodge. 'Language on holiday' for instance (seemingly anti-metaphysical) is a metaphysics in a phrase. Is this not Anyone's metaphysics?

*I found some old writing where I was griping about Hegel being hard to read, ultimately a rationalization to give up on something that required stretching my mind. I saw this by chance recently after a poster had called Hegel nonsense and I thought 'oh brother, I was basically just like that not so long ago.' I was holding fixed the idea that content was restricted to a particular form.

Quoting csalisbury

Its a matter of balancing pride and humility. Its knowing what one knows, and knowing the right stance to take towards what one doesn't know.

I agree.

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Reply to tim wood I'm not sure in your case, everyone has their own.

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Reply to tim wood sorry, if I've offended. My answer was not intended to be dismissive. I'm not sure how else to answer your question.

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Quoting tim wood

In what sense? In what way?

(a month late.)

I meant that real life will keep funneling you challenges, challenges you have no choice but to address, and that exceed any rational, philosophical framework. You have to address these problems in order to even begin to discuss the phil stuff, online. Transcendental conditions of the possibility of posting, if you like.

You have to take care of the details of living before you post.

Reply to sign Everything may be connected and you see a thread in the tangled web that leads from the Church to rationality.

One may ask the question is the transformation recognizable? Do you see the Church in rationality and the latter in the former.

I think the change from Church (faith) to rationality is drastic and the two don't look like each other at all.

I guess you think the Church is an ape and rationality is man. The proper comparison would be the Church is a bacteria and rationality is man.

The difference is just too wide to make a sensible connection. Is this a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy?

I don't know. Enlighten us.