Hegel passage

Reply to Gregory

I've read and enjoyed some Fichte. I'm more interested in the spiritual guts of his theory than the metaphysical justifications. In Fichte and Hegel I find an intense humanism, a religion of Progress and self-consciousness.

Fichte:
To subject all irrational nature to himself, to rule over it unreservedly and according to his own laws, is the ultimate end of man; which ultimate end is perfectly unattainable, and must continue to be so, unless he were to cease to be man, and become God. It is a part of the idea of man that his ultimate end must be unattainable; the way to it endless. Hence it is not the vocation of man to attain this end. But he may and should constantly approach nearer to it; and thus the unceasing approximation to this end is his true vocation as man; i.e. as a rational but finite, as a sensuous but free being. If, as we are surely entitled to do, we call this complete harmony with one’s self perfection, in the highest meaning of the word; then perfection is the highest unattainable end of man, whilst eternal perfecting is his vocation. He exists, that he may become ever morally better himself, and make all around him physically, and, if he be considered as a member of society, morally better also, and thus augment his own happiness without limit.
...
Rousseau would not transplant men back into a State of Nature with respect to spiritual culture, but only with respect to independence of the desires of sense. And it is certainly true, that as man approaches nearer to the highest end of his existence, it must constantly become easier for him to satisfy his sensual wants; that his physical existence must cost him less labour and care; that the fruitfulness of the soil must increase, the climate become milder; an innumerable multitude of new discoveries and inventions be made to diversify and facilitate the means of subsistence; that further, as Reason extends her dominion, the wants of man will constantly diminish in strength, not as in a rude State of Nature in which he is ignorant of the delights of life, but because he can bear their deprivation; he will be ever equally ready to enjoy the best with relish, when it can be enjoyed without violation of duty, and to endure the want of everything which he cannot obtain with honour. Is this state considered ideal? in which respect it is unattainable like every other Ideal State, then it is identical with the golden age of sensual enjoyment without physical labour which the old poets describe. Thus what Rousseau, under the name of the State of Nature, and these poets under the title of the Golden Age, place behind us, lies actually before us. (It may be remarked in passing, that it is a phenomenon of frequent occurrence, particularly in past ages, that what we shall become is pictured as something which we already have been; and that what we have to attain is represented as something which we have formerly lost: a phenomenon which has its proper foundation in human nature, and which I shall explain on a suitable occasion.)

Rousseau forgot that humanity can and ought to approach nearer to this state only by care, toil, and struggle. Nature is rude and savage without the hand of man: and it should be so, that thereby man may be forced to leave his natural state of inactivity, and elaborate her stores; that thereby he himself, instead of a mere product of Nature, may become a free reasonable being. He does most certainly leave it; he plucks at all hazards the apple of knowledge, for the impulse is indestructibly implanted within him, to be like God.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Vocation_of_the_Scholar/Lecture_5

And of course Hegel thought that humans could never overestimate the glory of the human mind and its ability to know God (rough paraphrase.)

Quoting jjAmEs

I'm more interested in the spiritual guts of his theory than the metaphysical justifications.

I'm the opposite. Schopenhauer said that Fitche wrote convoluted nonsense. But I love those kinds of things! Do you know what parts of Fitche's works get really abstract?

Here is maybe the most famous of the metaphysical texts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_the_Science_of_Knowledge

Reply to Gregory

This article looks good, too, since I'm not sure you'll find an English translation. (I found one once but can't remember where,)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/#StarPoinJenaWiss

Here is the full quote of Hegel's swipe at Kant:

"Reason, as essentially the logos (notion), is immediately parted asunder into itself and it's opposite (the world), an opposition which just for that reason is immediately again superseded [into living in the Forms]. But if it presents itself in this way as both itself and it's opposite, and if it is held fast in the entirely isolated moment of this disintegration, reason is apprehended in an irrational form (Kantian intuition);and the purer the moments of this opposition are, the more glaring is the appearance of this content, which is either alone for consciousness, or alone expressed ingenuously by consciousness. The 'depth' which mind brings out from within, but carries with no further than to make a presentation, and let it remain at this level- and the 'ignorance' on the part of this consciousness as to what it really says, are the same kind of connection of higher and lower which, in the case of the living being, nature naively expresses when it combines of it's highest fulfillment, the organ of generation, with the organ of urination. The infinite judgement as infinite would be the fulfillment of life that comprehends itself, while the consciousness of the infinite judgment that remains at the level of presentation corresponds to urination."

Reply to jjAmEs

Thank you much

??

I actually don't like how Fitche grounded all judgment on reality upon morality alone. Hegel expounded on beauty, Forms of the individual and social history. Much more versatile

I read once that for Schopenhauer to see the relation of the will to the body as the relation between th e phenomena and noumnena was to see the forms. I love that because it is convoluted and backwards. Just as truth is

Reply to Gregory
I recognize where many of these quotes come from but not all of them.
As a general principle, I would appreciate it if the text was located by work and paragraph.

Reply to Gregory


I think you'll like this quote if you haven't seen it.

Hegel:
But even in Germany, the banality of that earlier time before the country’s rebirth had gone so far as to believe and assert that it had discovered and proved that there is no cognition of truth, and that God and the essential being of the world and the spirit are incomprehensible and unintelligible. Spirit [, it was alleged,] should stick to religion, and religion to faith, feeling, and intuition [Ahnen] without rational knowledge.[12] Cognition [, it was said,] has nothing to do with the nature of the absolute (i.e. of God, and what is true and absolute in nature and spirit), but only, on the one hand, with the negative [conclusion] that nothing true can be recognized, and that only the untrue, the temporal, and the transient enjoy the privilege, so to speak, of recognition – and on the other hand, with its proper object, the external (namely the historical, i.e. the contingent circumstances in which the alleged or supposed cognition made its appearance); and this same cognition should be taken as [merely] historical, and examined in those external aspects [referred to above] in a critical and learned manner, whereas its content cannot be taken seriously.[13] They [i.e. the philosophers in question] got no further than Pilate, the Roman proconsul; for when he heard Christ utter the world ‘truth,’ he replied with the question ‘what is truth?’ in the manner of one who had had enough of such words and knew that there is no cognition of truth. Thus, what has been considered since time immemorial as utterly contemptible and unworthy – i.e. to renounce the knowledge of truth – was glorified before[103] our time as the supreme triumph of the spirit. Before it reached this point, this despair in reason had still been accompanied by pain and melancholy; but religious and ethical frivolity, along with that dull and superficial view of knowledge which described itself as Enlightenment, soon confessed its impotence frankly and openly, and arrogantly set about forgetting higher interests completely; and finally, the so-called critical philosophy provided this ignorance of the eternal and divine with a good conscience, by declaring that it [i.e. the critical philosophy] had proved that nothing can be known of the eternal and the divine, or of truth. This supposes cognition has even usurped the name of philosophy, and nothing was more welcome to superficial knowledge and to [those of] superficial character, and nothing was so eagerly seized upon by them, than this doctrine, which described this very ignorance, this superficiality and vapidity, as excellent and as the goal and result of all intellectual endeavor. Ignorance of truth, and knowledge only of appearances, of temporality and contingency, of vanity alone – this vanity has enlarged its influence in philosophy, and it continues to do so and still holds the floor today.[14] It can indeed be said that, ever since philosophy first began to emerge in Germany, the condition of this science has never looked so bad, nor has such a view as this, such renunciation of rational cognition, attained such [a degree of] presumption and influence. This view has dragged on [into the present] from the period before our own, and it stands in stark contradiction to that worthier [gediegenern][104] feeling and new, substantial spirit [of today]. I salute and invoke this dawn of a worthier spirit, and I address myself to it alone when I declare that philosophy must have a content [Gehalt] and when I proceed to expound this content to you. But in doing so, I appeal to the spirit of youth in general, for youth is that fine time of life when one is not yet caught up in the system of the limited ends of necessity [Not] and is inherently [für sich] capable of the freedom of disinterested scientific activity; nor is it yet affected by the negative spirit of vanity, by purely critical drudgery with no content. A heart which is still in good health still has the courage to demand truth, and it is in the realm of truth that philosophy is at home, which it [itself] constructs, and which we share in by studying it. Whatever is true, great, and divine in life is so by virtue of the Idea; the goal of philosophy is to grasp the Idea in its true shape and universality. Nature is confined to implementing reason only by necessity; but the realm of spirit is the realm of freedom. All that holds human life together, all that has value and validity, is spiritual in nature; and this realm of the spirit exists solely through the consciousness of truth and right, through the comprehension of Ideas.[15]

May I express the wish and hope that I shall manage to gain and merit your confidence on the path which we are about to take. But first of all, the one thing I shall venture to ask of you is this: that you bring with you a trust in science, faith in reason, and trust and faith in yourselves. The courage of truth and faith in the power of the spirit is the primary condition of philosophical study;[16] man should honor himself and consider himself worthy of the highest [things]. He cannot overestimate the greatness and power of the spirit; the closed essence of the universe contains no force which could withstand the courage of cognition; it must open up before it, and afford it the spectacle and enjoyment of its riches and its depths.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/1818/inaugural.htm

Note the triumphant optimism. I think this goes with a vision of history as a movement toward greatness and completion. IMV, this faith in progress was fundamental. History is a nightmare from which we shall awake. All the trauma and stupidity were supposed to be a ladder to some kind of Star Trek future. No more slavery, poverty, superstition, etc.

And maybe the essence of 'pomo' is a loss of hope or faith. We fear that our technology will be what kills us and perhaps already enslaves us. We see that somehow we are still as vulnerable and clumsy as manatees. The internet is largely used for porn. We don't know the difference between professional wrestling and politics. And so on. This is us. The same old warmonkey.

Reply to Valentinus

Sorry. The long Hegel quote is from Phenomenology of Spirit, at the very end the section on phrenology. He was addressing a modern question basically: "what part of the head is you?"

"[Fitche] gave sophisms and even crazy sham demonstrations whose absurdity was concealed under the mask of profundity and of the incomprehensibility ostensibly arising therefrom." Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, §13

That's the only quote I have right now from Arthur boy. He's only making Fitche more attractive to me though

Schelling, Fitche, Hegel, and Kant only believed in God subjectively

Quoting jjAmEs

The same old warmonkey.

Hegel was wrong about deciphering history. It really has no rythm or reason

Reply to Gregory

You might like these quotes.

John Gray:
Progress is a fact. Even so, faith in progress is a superstition. Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This is the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. The growth of knowledge is real and - barring a worldwide catastrophe - it is now irreversible. Improvements in government and society are no less real, but they are temporary. Not only can they be lost, they are sure to be. History is not progress or decline, but recurring gain and loss. The advance of knowledge deludes us into thinking we are different from other animals, but our history shows that we are not.
...
Autonomy means acting on reasons I have chosen; but the lesson of cognitive science is that there is no self to do the choosing. We are far more like machines and wild animals than we imagine. But we cannot attain the amoral selflessness of wild animals, or the choiceless automatism of machines. Perhaps we can learn to live more lightly, less burdened by morality. We cannot return to a purely spontaneous existence. If humans differ from other animals, it is partly in the conflicts of their instincts. They crave security, but they are easily bored; they are peace-loving animals, but they have an itch for violence; they are drawn to thinking, but at the same time they hate and fear the unsettlement thinking brings. There is no way of life in which all these needs can be satisfied. Luckily, as the history of philosophy testifies, humans have a gift for self-deception, and thrive in ignorance of their natures.
...
Neither in the ancient pagan world nor in any other culture has human history ever been thought to have an overarching significance. In Greece and Rome, it was a series of natural cycles of growth and decline. In India, it was a collective dream, endlessly repeated. The idea that history must make sense is just a Christian prejudice. If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itself. Looking for meaning in history is like looking for patterns in clouds.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)

Quoting jjAmEs

You might like these quotes.

Nice! But what about Marxism then? They say they can predict human nature and the process of history through sociology, psychology, and mathematics

Quoting Gregory

Hegel was wrong about deciphering history. It really has no rythm or reason

Whether one considers his ideas of value or not, to describe the process Hegel is describing as "deciphering" overlooks a challenge he puts forward in his works. Hegel is not arguing for a particular interpretation of a widely accepted process. He is saying that the very idea of "History" is only possible if one accepts it as a starting point that a process is underway.

In various places, he accepts that other people may not agree with that idea.

Quoting Gregory

Nice! But what about Marxism then? They say they can predict human nature and the process of history through sociology, psychology, and mathematics

To me some of Marx's writings are great. If you ignore the neo-religious element, you get a powerful kind of anti-philosophy that calls out the battle of phrases for being only that. Beneath all our ideologies, we are animals in a physical environment that doesn't care about our feelings. Humans still have to work to survive, and the organization of work seems like a key thing to look at when trying to make sense of why people say what they say when they say it.

To make this more concrete, let's just consider what it means that our species has achieved a state of permanent revolution with respect to technology. We are constantly changing the ways we adapt to our physical environment, and this forces endless political/religious/cultural adjustments. For a long time now the world has not been some fixed thing that we can adapt to as a community. We've also been forced by technology (which aids an increased population) into a global framework. So humans have no world government but are locked into global interdependence anyway. Knowledge continually becomes obsolete. Yesterday's norms are taboos tomorrow.

I want to read Kants's critique of judgment from front to cover. He thinks judgement is between understanding (our caring for the world) and reason ( our caring for logic). Our highest ability is to judge. Schopenhauer attacked Kant for living in reason instead of understanding. Maybe Kant found pure judgment. I love that aesthetic. To judge is to act subjectively

I realize now. For Schopenhauer,

If consciousness is to your body as the world is to the Forms, then he is saying the same thing as Hegel. Phenomenology! (And the same thing as Kant) All five of the great German idealist were Buddhist par excellence. You come from nothing. Then you posit yourself. Then you posit the world. Then you come to realize through contemplation that you and everything are the Forms. Those thinkers fought between
themselves because they got to that state from different places (practical reason, judgment, reason general, understanding, intuitions, imagination [romanticism], and combinations of them).

Buddhism is a very fluid state of beliefs. There will always be debates among them within the movement of thought

" … the total disappearance of being would not be the advent of the reign of non-being, but on the contrary the concomitant disappearance of nothingness." Sartre

Quoting Gregory

You come from nothing. Then you posit yourself. Then you posit the world. Then you come to realize through contemplation that you and everything are the Forms.

I think I know what you mean, more or less, and I agree. Let me put it in my words. Perhaps you'll relate.

The intelligible order of the world (the system of things) is simultaneously a system of forms which are also known as concepts. As I understand the metaphysical parts of these thinkers (to oversimplify), objects are concepts are objects are concepts. 'Mind' is the structure of the world. This bleeds readily into the realization that the subject is an effect of language. The distinction of me versus not-me is one more part of the concept system. The true subject is also just the object. And the true subject is simultaneously the form or structure of the world and the concept system (system of forms and distinctions) of the transcendental subject.

The empirical ego is just one more piece of the world. The metaphysical subject is not really a subject anymore, though we're tempted to think of it that way because the concept is generated from the empirical ego. We know that the world is the dream of the brain. But then we realize that the brain is the dream of ...the brain? No. The dream is just being itself, which has a certain intelligible structure, which we call 'conceptual' in a bias toward the subjective roots of the realization. William James saw things something like this:

http://fair-use.org/william-james/essays-in-radical-empiricism/does-consciousness-exist

*As I said, I ended up finding myself more interested in the spiritual-political guts of these thinkers. The conceptual journey that we've both discussed is fascinating but a little bloodless in the end. For the most part we are locked into ordinary modes of talking. Metaphysical flights are a little like candy, except they are often connected to the spiritual-political guts that really move the millions. So it's something like theology versus a more embodied low-brow but passionate religious practice. Hegel didn't like the idea of some dark space that mind could never touch. He was a fiery humanity. Nothing could be hidden from the philosopher. Such an idea offended him. We were gods or God and in time we could fully discover our own glory. Fichte was OK with an infinite project. As long as we had a direction, it was OK if the journey was endless. We get closer forever, just like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, .... gets closer to 0 without ever touching it.

I don't know Buddhism all that well, but from what I know I do see the relationship. I see the dream system. The self is not some sharp, distinct thing. The dream tissue is 'organic.' Everything makes sense only in terms of everything else. Holism. All is one and one is all. It is an outsideless shape, unless one counts some vague notion of nothingness that is really just pure being, being with no qualities, the point at infinity of abstraction.

Reply to jjAmEs

That was great, but I think there is something else. Reality is like one of those sparklers on the 4th of July. The colors are Perfect Forms. But there is a continuum down the wand down to nothingness. Buddhism recognizes that Egos are all along the continuum at different places. The German idealists each had there own way of finding the "absolute experience". Only Schopenhauer was a full Buddhist

Quoting Gregory

Buddhism recognizes that Egos are all along the continuum at different places.

I really like this. This is also in Blake, who talked of mental states. An ego can move from state to state. In a way the states are realler than the egos. The stairway or wheel is what is most real. The egos are useful fictions that tie together a journey from state to state.

https://www.amazon.com/German-Idealism-Struggle-Subjectivism-1781-1801-ebook/dp/B002OSXS28/ref=pd_sim_351_1/140-5759656-3941344?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B002OSXS28&pd_rd_r=33682732-d01e-48b4-a64b-391f9b942aa1&pd_rd_w=8R2Vb&pd_rd_wg=oNKaZ&pf_rd_p=bab57536-7c8f-4781-a8ed-3e270b9cd303&pf_rd_r=47K4MSCDT7WX7MMG0ARG&psc=1&refRID=47K4MSCDT7WX7MMG0ARG

I want to get this! Hinduism is lopsided because it emphasizes "Brahma" as a substance. With Hegel at least, it seems to me his language dictates that we take his "Absolute" to be primarily an experience, since it is like the ultimate thought for him

Balance between subjectivity and the objective