Hegel's Logic

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kennethamy
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 02:32 pm
@Ding an Sich,
Ding_an_Sich;152447 wrote:
It was something that I had read up on concerning Hegel. Hegel influenced the late Wittgenstein, or at least thats what the source said. But I still have yet to see anything resembling Hegel in any of Wittgenstein's works. Maybe they did mean it in a negative way.


Well Hegel influenced me. I once began a course in Hegel, but after a short time, I became so nauseated, that I had to quit.
 
Ding an Sich
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 02:39 pm
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;152459 wrote:
Well Hegel influenced me. I once began a course in Hegel, but after a short time, I became so nauseated, that I had to quit.


HA! Thats rich. Im almost done reading Hegel's Phenomenology. Im ready to move on to Schopenhauer after this. Hegel's going to be the death of me if I read anything else by him.
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 02:48 pm
@Ding an Sich,
Ding_an_Sich;152466 wrote:
HA! Thats rich. Im almost done reading Hegel's Phenomenology. Im ready to move on to Schopenhauer after this. Hegel's going to be the death of me if I read anything else by him.


You are obviously a glutton for punishment. What next? Heidegger? Derrida? Lancan? Remember, you are putting IQ points at risk. Look what happened to those on the forum who claim to have read Hegel and Heidegger. It is a warning.
 
Deckard
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 04:05 pm
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;152220 wrote:
The difference between Hegel and Wittgenstein could not be greater. As Wittgenstein would have put it, Hegel is a slum landlord, and Wittgenstein want to get rid of the slums and let it fresh air. Anyone who thinks that Wittgenstein was a good philosopher could not possibly do anything but despise Hegel, so anyone who thinks they have anything in common probably understands neither one.

Wit was a fan of Kierkegaard. Wit even learned Danish late in life to read K. Perhaps it was reading for pleasure. Of course K isn't Hegel and K disagreed with Hegel and his methods but K did not ignore Hegel or dismiss Hegel out of hand.
 
Ding an Sich
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 04:30 pm
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;152471 wrote:
You are obviously a glutton for punishment. What next? Heidegger? Derrida? Lancan? Remember, you are putting IQ points at risk. Look what happened to those on the forum who claim to have read Hegel and Heidegger. It is a warning.


Thats why I am not going to be reading as much of them as other philosophers. I will read Being and Time at some point, and then promptly wish to kill myself. Hegel was not a complete waste of time insofar as he helped me understand Kant a little better. I think I am going to stick to my trinity for the most part though: Kant, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein.
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 04:39 pm
@Ding an Sich,
Ding_an_Sich;152264 wrote:
Aparently Wittgenstein was influenced by Hegel in his later years, but I doubt it. I have not seen anything resembling Hegel at all in Wittgensteins works. Would you believe there are those that claim Wittgenstein's TLP has certain aspects to it that are Hegelian? Nothing could be further from the truth.



Well, my friend, I entirely disagree. However, I don't mind friendly disagreement, so cheers! We find in both men a reduction of logic into two primary elements. We find in both men a questing of dichotomies, and especially the self/world dichotomy. I will quickly admit that their styles are different, and that I prefer Witt's style. I probably never would have given a sh*t for Hegel if it weren't for Kojeve's excellent style, which is precise and to the point like Witt's.... I love concision, and Witt is a master. He's so concise that interpreting him is tricky, and more than a little open to debate. I welcome a sincere discussion of this issue. However, if I just sound too silly/crazy to you to be worth talking to, that's fine to, and we can just shake hands on that. Smile

---------- Post added 04-15-2010 at 05:46 PM ----------

Deckard;152485 wrote:
Wit was a fan of Kierkegaard. Wit even learned Danish late in life to read K. Perhaps it was reading for pleasure. Of course K isn't Hegel and K disagreed with Hegel and his methods but K did not ignore Hegel or dismiss Hegel out of hand.


If I remember correctly, K said something to the effect that H was good at what he did, dangerously good. I'm no expert on K, I admit, but I have read two of his books (Sickness etc. and Fear, etc.), and the men are different indeed. Kaufmann (one "n" or two?) paints both men as questionable in From Shakespeare to Existentialism, but maybe he's just biased. Still, it's quite a good book all in all, and he also tackles Heidegger. And speaking of Heidegger, I've got mixed feelings, but I think at his best that he too is a bright one.

In my opinion, it's risky to quickly write off any philosopher who captured most the intellectuals of his/her day, as one is probably at least missing the good stuff, even if one is aware of the bad. Negation is a riot. As soon as I started reading philosophy at all, I knew that "define your terms" was a dialectical shotgun. And this is why I have a certain distaste for Russell, and anti-metaphysicians in general. The "I-don't-get-it-thus-its-crap" is dangerously close to self-flattery. It's akin to what shrinks call denial/repression, no? We can only define our terms with other terms, and these we can also only define with other terms, as so on. Read the dictionary. One word is defined by another. A system of differences. The Derrida gang has a point in this area, despite a style that sometimes alienates me. Language is insep from "form of life." And yet I also don't like foggy mysticism. And indeed, it's not always easy to distinguish, but it seems that all the good philosophy is good precisely because it can walk the line. Smile
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 06:07 pm
@Deckard,
Deckard;152485 wrote:
Wit was a fan of Kierkegaard. Wit even learned Danish late in life to read K. Perhaps it was reading for pleasure. Of course K isn't Hegel and K disagreed with Hegel and his methods but K did not ignore Hegel or dismiss Hegel out of hand.


What has the fact that Wittgenstein read Kierkegaard (and so have I), but Kierkegaard read Hegel to do with Wittgenstein and Hegel? I don't get it. Is there some principle of transitivity involved here. I have read J.L. Austin, and you have read my posts. What conclusion should I reach about your relation with the writings of J.L. Austin?
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 06:18 pm
@Victor Eremita,
Long ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, those who never bathed, and could not count past their 10 fingers, admired the indulgent scribbles of a fraud named Hegel. Somehow, they had wondered from the path of true philosophy. How could men that had first admired the genius of a Cant have fallen so low as to mistake such senseless rambling as sublimity, as an improvement on Cant? And Cant had written so very clearly, after all. When it came to Cant, they Could. Hegel they should have Heckled. Foolish enough were they to mistake a work by Fichte as a work by Cant. But Fichte was an absolute idealist. Go Figga!

Scoopenhauer knew better. Who wants a unity when a dualism is available?
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 06:22 pm
@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;152526 wrote:
Long ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, those who never bathed, and could not count past their 10 fingers, admired the indulgent scribbles of a fraud named Hegel. Somehow, they had wondered from the path of true philosophy. How could men that had first admired the genius of a Cant have fallen so low as to mistake such senseless rambling as sublimity, as an improvement on Cant? And Cant had written so very clearly, after all. When it came to Cant, they Could. Hegel they should have Heckled. Foolish enough were they to mistake a work by Fichte as a work by Cant. But Fichte was an absolute idealist. Go Figga!

Scoopenhauer knew better. Who wants a unity when a dualism is available?


Very cute. You must be taking cuteness pills. But what does it all mean? Is it any wonder that no one takes you seriously?
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Thu 15 Apr, 2010 06:44 pm
@Victor Eremita,
Hegel is accused of being a mystifier, it seems. And yet he alienated a close friend by criticizing this friend's mystic-like dodge. "The night in which all cows are black." I like Hegel for sticking to the concept as the medium of philosophy. He refused the mystical, and strove to make philosophy scientific. Physical science can radically advance without a careful examination of its implicit metaphysics. And Hegel did try to extend to dialectic to the natural world, which was a mistake. He got carried away with his pretty toy. Too bad. Still, it was Hegel who could finally explain history in a cohesive, including the history of philosophy as a progress of self-consciousness, AKA the self-penetration of reality. Does this sound strange? Of course it does, at least to the ears of a dualist. Subject as substance? Whatever could it mean? And the all-too-clever skeptics clung to what was equivalent to the soul-superstition. Lord knows, right?, that the "self" and "reality" are oh so different....

Nevermind that they are never seen apart. Nevemind that the mysticism-protecting noumena was a place to hide God from reason. Nevermind that Kant was a puritan that could not tell a lie, who wanted to have God and Science simultaneously, and was quite acrobatic on the issue. (I once thought, as a child, that I had invented the PB&J sandwich.)

So maybe it's a matter of taste. Hegel's "God" is immanent, is nothing but man. Hegel could actually be accused of atheism, of narrowness, rather than mystification. He rejected the idea of a reality beyond the rational as irrational. And indeed, this is slick. For our notions of the trans-notional are obviously just still notions. What can transrational mean? Desire is key in Hegel's system, but it's a desire that evolved from the sort of thing men fight duels over. Desire, concept, nothing mystical required. Give man time, and he will evolve a complex culture. He will switch from pagan violence to a society that recognizes the individual as such as sacred. He does not, as most philosophers do, divorce philosophy from history. He presents truth in the context of motive. He presents the stoic and the skeptic as moments in the history of philosophy, as slaves who rationalize their cowardice. The slave, who refuses to risk his life for the prestige of mastery, is the driving force of history. He dreams up super-masters like God who are above both him and his worldly master. Still, he remains a slave, and the slave of a greater tyrant. Perhaps it's less shameful to be the slave of omnipotence. The stoic and the skeptic have their imaginary freedom, but the contradictions are fairly obvious. Can error evolve into truth? Is being finally accurately revealed by a self-evolving dialectic? Can enough disagreements, one improving on the other, finally add up to a cohesive and accurate picture of being? Is the way to accurately picture being the assertion that our picture of being was always the only being to begin with? And therefore not a picture? Was duality a necessary confusion on the way from a chaotic plurality? A useful confusion? A finally obsolete confusion?

Nevemind that synthesis and negation are notes and rests of the same music.
 
Ding an Sich
 
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 07:00 am
@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;152537 wrote:
Hegel is accused of being a mystifier, it seems. And yet he alienated a close friend by criticizing this friend's mystic-like dodge. "The night in which all cows are black." I like Hegel for sticking to the concept as the medium of philosophy. He refused the mystical, and strove to make philosophy scientific. Physical science can radically advance without a careful examination of its implicit metaphysics. And Hegel did try to extend to dialectic to the natural world, which was a mistake. He got carried away with his pretty toy. Too bad. Still, it was Hegel who could finally explain history in a cohesive, including the history of philosophy as a progress of self-consciousness, AKA the self-penetration of reality. Does this sound strange? Of course it does, at least to the ears of a dualist. Subject as substance? Whatever could it mean? And the all-too-clever skeptics clung to what was equivalent to the soul-superstition. Lord knows, right?, that the "self" and "reality" are oh so different....

Nevermind that they are never seen apart. Nevemind that the mysticism-protecting noumena was a place to hide God from reason. Nevermind that Kant was a puritan that could not tell a lie, who wanted to have God and Science simultaneously, and was quite acrobatic on the issue. (I once thought, as a child, that I had invented the PB&J sandwich.)

So maybe it's a matter of taste. Hegel's "God" is immanent, is nothing but man. Hegel could actually be accused of atheism, of narrowness, rather than mystification. He rejected the idea of a reality beyond the rational as irrational. And indeed, this is slick. For our notions of the trans-notional are obviously just still notions. What can transrational mean? Desire is key in Hegel's system, but it's a desire that evolved from the sort of thing men fight duels over. Desire, concept, nothing mystical required. Give man time, and he will evolve a complex culture. He will switch from pagan violence to a society that recognizes the individual as such as sacred. He does not, as most philosophers do, divorce philosophy from history. He presents truth in the context of motive. He presents the stoic and the skeptic as moments in the history of philosophy, as slaves who rationalize their cowardice. The slave, who refuses to risk his life for the prestige of mastery, is the driving force of history. He dreams up super-masters like God who are above both him and his worldly master. Still, he remains a slave, and the slave of a greater tyrant. Perhaps it's less shameful to be the slave of omnipotence. The stoic and the skeptic have their imaginary freedom, but the contradictions are fairly obvious. Can error evolve into truth? Is being finally accurately revealed by a self-evolving dialectic? Can enough disagreements, one improving on the other, finally add up to a cohesive and accurate picture of being? Is the way to accurately picture being the assertion that our picture of being was always the only being to begin with? And therefore not a picture? Was duality a necessary confusion on the way from a chaotic plurality? A useful confusion? A finally obsolete confusion?

Nevemind that synthesis and negation are notes and rests of the same music.


Hegel was not a mystifier, but an obscurantist. There is a reason why Im reading the Phenomenology, and it's not simply to read it; it's also to understand an important piece of philosophical history. The book itself is a living document, organic in a sense. The overall importance of Hegel should not be overlooked, even if one does not like him.

However, Hegel's thought I would consider nothing more than a pseudo-science, much like the rest of phenomenology today. There is a desire to look upon that world as rational from a Hegelian standpoint, but this completely neglects the irrational aspect of the world (and also by extension us).

History does not contradict itself at certain points, with the ultimate result being an absolute (this absolute good and knowing). This absolute will never be achieved due to the lack of conciousness on the part of most men.

Hegel was definetly and atheist (this is the man that said, "God is the sewer into which all contradictions flow"). Kant I am still questioning. I feel as though Kant was an atheist as well, but I am leaning more towards agnosticism for him.
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 07:06 am
@Ding an Sich,
Ding_an_Sich;152727 wrote:
Hegel was not a mystifier, but an obscurantist. There is a reason why Im reading the Phenomenology, and it's not simply to read it; it's also to understand an important piece of philosophical history. The book itself is a living document, organic in a sense. The overall importance of Hegel should not be overlooked, even if one does not like him.

However, Hegel's thought I would consider nothing more than a pseudo-science, much like the rest of phenomenology today. There is a desire to look upon that world as rational from a Hegelian standpoint, but this completely neglects the irrational aspect of the world (and also by extension us).

History does not contradict itself at certain points, with the ultimate result being an absolute (this absolute good and knowing). This absolute will never be achieved due to the lack of conciousness on the part of most men.

Hegel was definetly and atheist (this is the man that said, "God is the sewer into which all contradictions flow"). Kant I am still questioning. I feel as though Kant was an atheist as well, but I am leaning more towards agnosticism for him.


I commend your endurance, and your willingness to accept pain. But why do you think that Hegel is an important piece of philosophical history? He has had, so far as I can tell, no particular influence on philosophy, although he has had a baleful influence on world history through Marx (who has been said to "stand Hegel on his head". I always wondered how they could tell which end of Hegel was up).
 
Ding an Sich
 
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 10:03 am
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;152732 wrote:
I commend your endurance, and your willingness to accept pain. But why do you think that Hegel is an important piece of philosophical history? He has had, so far as I can tell, no particular influence on philosophy, although he has had a baleful influence on world history through Marx (who has been said to "stand Hegel on his head". I always wondered how they could tell which end of Hegel was up).


He is important because of his failure, at least to me. The whole enterprise of Hegel's Phenomenology is, while at times very spectacular and bewildering, nevertheless doomed from the start on the simple fact that the beginning pressupposes the end. From an epistemological standpoint its faulty. I do admire Hegel for his imagination (which is something that should be prized in philosophy), but I can't help but notice his lack of stability in his works. He's a sophist, but of the highest rank.

Marx was a fool. Thats all I am going to say about him.
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 10:14 am
@Ding an Sich,
Ding_an_Sich;152796 wrote:
He is important because of his failure, at least to me. The whole enterprise of Hegel's Phenomenology is, while at times very spectacular and bewildering, nevertheless doomed from the start on the simple fact that the beginning pressupposes the end. From an epistemological standpoint its faulty. I do admire Hegel for his imagination (which is something that should be prized in philosophy), but I can't help but notice his lack of stability in his works. He's a sophist, but of the highest rank.

Marx was a fool. Thats all I am going to say about him.


I don't think that Hegel was rational enough or smart enough to be a Sophist. Most of the Sophist were highly rational and intelligent people. They were given a bad press by Socrates and Plato. But, for instance, Protagoras seems to have had a first order intellect. Hegel, on the other hand..... Marx was not a fool. He was a bad person, however.
 
 

 
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