Introduction to Hegel: Philosophy in the Sopranos
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- This is an introduction to Hegel's thought through the philosophy of the Sopranos. I look at Tony Soprano's torn identities while introducing concepts like the dialectic, the negation of the negation and Geist. While also looking at Hegel's interest in Antigone by Sophocles and its relevance to the Soprano's today. These are themes out of Hegel's thought in works like the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, and the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I also look at the psychology of the Sopranos.
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Then & Now great video as always !
A full analysis of Hegel's thought would make Lord of the Rings look like a quick commercial lol
awesome video
A thirteen minute video gives a "superficial" reading of a philosopher? No, really? You mean you can't complete the study necessary for a PhD in under an hour? Who would've thought it could be so complicated. Next you'll be telling us that reading a couple of books doesn't prepare one for solving all the problems of the Middle East, so Jared Kushner must therefore be either a fraud or a dimwit!
Walt Whitman ova here
Lmao
Whateva happened da Gary Coopa?.... Strong silent type... Uh?
Walter white
More like a $1 store birthday card
Always with the scenarios
Hegel said "All the world's indeed a Shinebox and we are merely Gabagool ovah here ."
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I don’t know who Hagel is but I doubt the finook had the makings of a varsity athlete.
He had the toughest philosophy in Essex County.
Till Ritchie got done with him and took the jackeeeet
I've watched this video somewhere around 10 times. I love the Sopranos. Actually, the show contains sub-detectable doses of history and philosophy, kind of like when you hide medicine in the food of a sick child. I also like how each episode of the show is a lower-resolution picture of the whole, which means you can start watching at any point and still be engrossed in the story. Finally, I'd like to point out Tony's obsession with the History Channel. You're doing good work.
This comment made my day, thanks! Yes, I like the History Channel touch - like his therapy, always digging into his unconscious past.
If it's "sub-detectable" then how do you know it's there?
@@ThenNow The history channel thing makes him more human
Hegel never had the makings of a varsity athlete.
The thesis-antithesis-synthesis model is popular because Hegel is so horrible to read, but it really doesn't capture Hegel's concept of dialectical development very well. The dialectic is a structure, a pattern, a logic of development that Hegel articules most clearly in his 'Science of Logic', a book in which he follows the movement of pure thought as it evolves through different concepts. In the Logic, thought begins with the concept of pure, indeterminate being. Thought then realises that this conception of being is so indeterminate, it is really pure nothing (conceptually its polar opposite). This is the first step in the dialectic, the first negation. Then thought realises that in its immediacy, pure nothing IS, and with this thought we return to pure being. Thought then takes a step back and reconceptualises the oscillation between being and nothing. This circuit of concepts (being, to nothing, to being, over and over again) becomes the content for the concept of 'becoming'. This second step is another negation, a negation of the first negation - this is 'the negation of the negation', the phrase you mention in the video. With this second step, we return to the starting point (being), only now a development has taken place, and that starting point is far richer and fuller in content (being is now becoming). It is important to note also that in 'becoming', the early moments of the process (being, nothing) are preserved as the content of the higher concept. Presevation is key to Hegel's idea of negation; negation does not just mean destruction in his philosophy.
Another, probably simpler way of describing Hegel's dialectic is the acorn/tree example. We start with an acorn. The acorn grows into a tree, spontaneously negating itself (that is, destroying and yet preserving itself). The tree then produces an acorn - an acorn which, as the theory of evolution shows, has had the chance to evolve and develop its genetic content, so to speak. With this second acorn our second negation takes place and we return to our starting point, but again, our starting point has been enriched. Development, change, evolution, has taken place. Repeat this loop over and over and you get a sort of time-lapse sense of development.
Sorry for the long comment, but relatively succinct antidotes to the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of Hegel (Plekanov called it the 'wooden triad' model, I guess because it sucks all the life out of the idea of the dialectic) are hard to come by, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
PS Love the channel keep it up
It is like a spiral. An ever repeating cycle but always evolving to higher levels.
Thank you so much for this. I am not a philosophy buff and recently got interested in it. I was looking for a satisfactory insight into the idea of Hegel's dialectic beyond the simplified accessible Triad model, and your unraveling creates a better insight for me. so much so it ties to my background in hard science.
@@emmanueloluga9770 If you want to dive a little deeper I'd really recommend Stephen Houlgate's book 'The Opening of Hegel's Logic'. It's big, but you can just dip into different sections here and there. I'm sure there'll be a pdf on libgen.me.
Ultimately though I think the Hegelian insights that are most useful for scientific investigation are preserved in historical materialism, Marx's method for studying history and human society.
Actually, read some of fichte and schelling first.
Modern humanities scholars are psychotic, focused on out-of-context technical trivia instead of using their specialized knowledge to provide some wisdom for living. Following Kant, Hegel split his mind from reality, split his mind into changing contraditions and waited for God. Its not a guide for man facing the universe. Man needs to know how to use his mind to identify the facts of concrete reality to survive. Philosophy is for life, not an arcade game for dizzy dwellers in Aristophane's clouds. Hegel is bad for your head.
>The acorn grows into a tree, spontaneously negating itself (that is, destroying and yet preserving itself).
Hegel, in his own bizarre context, liked Aristotle.
Your essays are hugely motivational and educational.
Very interesting material. Thank you for this video! I definitely enjoyed it. Want to dive deeper in some of your ideas. This has to marinate in my mind for a while now.
Not to negate anything from your brilliant analysis (pun intended) , but as a person who holds primarily Marxist philosophical (dialectical materialism) and historical (historical materialism) beliefs, I found the inablity of Tony and the rest of the people around him to overcome the limitations imposed on them by their particular position within the dominant relations of production (in their most vulgar form i.e. violent exploitative capitalism/ mafia) fascinating!
No matter how much he tries to avoid the darkness within him and change his behaviour and outlook on things (superstructure of "consciousness") , his fate is sealed by his unfortunate and almost 100% predetermined on birth, material base. It is bleak, heartbraking and eye opening.
Thanks for sharing this great content !
subbed and liked before the intro ads had even finished lol. The title was all I needed
Great reading of the sacred and propane
Most trustworthy channel in terms of validity of information and analyses.
I’m new to the sopranos. I realised when watching, one scene I’ll love Tony but then the next he does something I hate. It leaves me thinking, “that’s the type of person you like?”
Hegel never had the makings of a varsity athlete
Gradevole questo video, Grazie!
Well Done!
great video!
The Sopranos is best tv series ever! Pure art!
What a visual, Hegel lounging around on the couch binging the sopranos.
I ll double watch this
Interesting video and comparison of the show to Hegel.
The music was great in the video as well, you know the title/song name? Cheers
Yeah whenever I describe The Sopranos to people who haven't watched it I tell them it's not really about the mob. Its about Tony's family as well as the mob, and the tensions between the two dynamics.
I was aware of the Hegelian dialectic but never connected the philosophical dots. David Chase broke new ground with this, and Gandolfini really captured the rage as he's caught between the two worlds (something most men are probably familiar with, albeit on a smaller scale).
excellent, as usual
Bada bing.
This channel is amazing 😃
Deep understanding on Phill doing time,
I forget how much tho
Fascinating...
Very observant. The sacred and the propane.
Good stuff, particularly on Antigone. I wish you hadn't used the thesis/antithesis account of dialectics - it isn't anything Hegel said and is a bit misleading. Overall, good and creative video.
So what happens to bad ideas that come into the dialectic?- like Fascism (for example)? Are they totally annihilated or do parts of the idea somehow come to live in the synthesis? Sorry for the noobish comment, just trying to understand.
Opposites may attract - but not always, it seems. Sometimes there is no middle meeting ground.
Don’t conscious yourself out of a state of Dasein
sweet. now do one on how marty from true detective represents the failures of egoism
Have you read Dune by Frank Herbert? I think it's right up your alley
I must be Hegel.. because I watch it over n over looking for meaning of everything in the show... I’m obsessed... the difference is idk why I do it.. the show really speaks to me I guess.. like tony I have a criminal past that funded my life. Unlike tony I turned it around and try hard to improve myself every day. Constantly thinking about if what I’m doing or how I’m acting is appropriate or right. Am I thinking about things correctly. Am I not seeing things correctly or can I see it from a different slant. Or trying to understand why people do things they do and why.. because I can’t sometimes understand people’s actions.. I admire tony in many ways. I also deplore things he does but not him personally.. I do feel I have many of his qualities. But I don’t give in to the evil side as easily as tony . And his selfishness turns me off. But for some reason I’m fascinated and can relate to tony although I don’t agree with some of his actions. I was really disappointed tony gambled away Marie spatafores money for a house and relocation.taking the easy way and cheap way out sending Vito jr to Idaho.. at the same time I admired him for feeling obligated to do something and not ignoring the situation like Phil who I hate
The thing with Spatafore shows Tony's conflict with life. His gambling is his mafia self and wanting to do something for Vito Spatafore's family is his ideal self which he says were about family and we take care of each other blah, blah, blah. He's conflicted often between his thuggish gangster self and wanting to believe he's a good father, boss, American, Italian and decent person.
I think Tony is a lot like his mother, a cluster B personality disorder, which is at the core of who he is. Him and his sister Janice both have these characteristics just like their mom Livia. I'm not sure where in there they are whether it's narcissist, sociopath or borderline or some of each but their there somewhere in my opinion. This drives everything in their lives and until it is acknowledged and dealt with will drive everything in their lives. Even Melfi by the end of the show realizes she is probably making him a better sociopath and more manipulative by treating him when her colleagues start discussing how treating sociopaths only makes them better sociopaths, but she herself is addicted to him by this time.
The psychological dynamics is probably the most interesting part of this show for me.
There you go Billy, be nice to girls and share the bike! ‘Kid falls off and smacks his head’
The final synthesis is heaven.
"Don't beat yourself up about this"🤗
One thing I'd quibble about in your conclusion - that Synthesis is best represented as a 'balance' between Thesis and Antithesis. It's not meant to be balanced at all. It's meant to be ruthless in its dissection of each, and if (for example) the Antithesis is more suitable to the progress of the dialectic, then the Synthesis will mostly consist of the Antithesis. This notion of 'balance' in the development of ideas is an infantile interpretation. Progress is not balanced, it is biased heavily in favor of what is most suitable.
I'm new to philosophy. I studied commerce in college. It is not possible for me to go back to college and study philosophy. So if anyone guide me how to study philosophy, I mean books and philosophers, then I would be really grateful.
This is not Hegelianism. It's a heuristic exercise on one small aspect of his thought applied to a tv show. Fair enough. By the way, the one philosopher I would suggest reading other established thinkers on him before tackling primary texts. U n r e a d a b l e.
“For if the facts contradict my theory, the worse for the shinebox.”
There is a difference between aiming for rationality and actually practicing it. I’ve always tried to act rationally and be mindful of it but of course I act irrationally some of the time too 🤷♂️ just a thought.
Thesis, antithesis and synthesis is not Hegel.
who is then?
@@lombeiranaits4390 Kant and Fichte both mention it. StephenSchleis is correct in criticizing this. A lot of (especially english) introductions get this wrong. In Hegels Method, which is the speculative Method, those thoughts also play a role but its very simplified here and not true to detail like explained in this clip.
Oof. I really like this channel. I'm in full support of introducing thinkers to the general public. But here, I don't know man.
Hegel's contradictions are always immanent and due to the concept's own internal structure. This is what's supposed to make the knowledge acquired "absolute." Take away this, take away Hegel. Period. Not just any conflict will be truly Hegelian. If the opposition is instead a merely contingent contrary, it's not only non-Hegelian, it's also a matter of external reflection and the content becomes subject to sociohistorical conditioning.
"Thesis-antithesis-synthesis" says nothing about whether the contradiction proposed is an immanent result.
That's the primary issue here. You show two contrary ways Tony is oriented without showing how this is in any way dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Coming away from this video, why shouldn't I take my love for both vanilla and chocolate ice cream as a Hegelian contradiction? Is the decision to get vanilla with chocolate chips the "synthesis," the negation of the negation?
A Hegelian negation of the negation is not a disagreement with a disagreement or showing what's right about both views and combining them. It is a concept's own immanent self-sublation. Being and nothing, which internally point to one another, just do end up as becoming. Determination and constitution, due to their own internal relationship, just do end up being one-sided aspects of limit. We ourselves are rational in the sense that the valid concepts we use have these internally necessary logics. We might be irrational in how we use such concepts, but now we're talking about rationality in a different sense.
Thus, you don't really introduce Hegel as such here. You mentioned that he was interested in relations between family and civil society and that he expressed this partly through Antigone. Great, but how did Hegel think this? You take his result without what actually makes it Hegel--how he got there. I get that you want to simplify him. But in doing so, it's no longer Hegel. Like math, Hegel can only be simplified so much. Like math, you only learn by doing. Sometimes, stuff is just hard. But it kinda seems like people on UA-cam, with their tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of subscribers don't really care about Hegel as much as getting to loosely apply his results. That's kind of a bummer.
"Off?" Türk müsün gardaş? :D
Criminally underrated comment
The thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing isn’t exactly correct, but you can work it into Hegel provided that the antithesis isn’t considered to be “opposite” but rather “whatever comes after contradiction”. That is, every determination is a negation of the previous determination, and Truth can be known only by completion of the whole, elevating Spirit to a recontextualization of its constituent parts. Every moment (or every perception) is an antithesis, or negation, of the previous moment. The Aufhebung negation of the negation (synthesis) isn’t a conglomerate of two moments, but realizing that there’s falsity in all sequential moments, that only the universal Time or universal Perception (so...experience as a whole) contains Truth. We understand our past by seeing it as a necessary part of our entire lives, that who we are today is generated by the entire sequence of perceptions/moments that led to this very moment.
This kinda reminds me of DMT
I must say I never spotted any absolute idealism in the Sopranos, but what do I know !
The best way to read Hegel is to, first, split ones mind from reality. A tab or two of LSD should suffice, but, if that's not available, a few hours of cable TV news will do. The resulting contradictions will allow the most feliticious reading of the the Master Of Those Who Don't Know.
I read lot on Hegel, especially lately since i had so much time on my hand. This Title sounded interesting. The execution was disappointing. Its like a student read Hegels wikipedia page and did a Movie analysis based on it. Its not hegelian just because you throw the terms synthesis and dialectical around you.
oh my god and i wrote that before the "Marx believed that the final synthesis of history will be communism". No he didnt. He never wrote that anywhere and thats immensly misinterpreting his writings...
@@PrimoSchnevi hahaha I know. However, this is better introductory stuff, even though it's superficial. Only a fool will take this as it is and never expand upon its content to find better and wealthier insights. Your criticism however is warranted, but somewhat exaggerated.
You just described every philosophy student - immature man children narcissists who love to stroke their own false self ego and pat themselves on the back for how intelligent they are
> time on my hand.
What do you think of the Heideggerian existentiale, time-on-my hands?
@@TeaParty1776 i could barely answer that question in german, let alone in english where im not so firm with the jargon
Anyone interested should look up Antigone as well. It’s actually not a message promoting adherence to law and order over everything. But the point that adherence to law and order over everything will bring ruin to yourself. You might actually recognize the story in many other tv shows.
most left twitter video of all time
The negation of negation it simply a creation (synthesis) of something new by reconciling the two opposites (thesis and antithesis).
I’m not a fan of the Sopranos but this was really good
Who and how is someone not a fan of the sopranos?
Have you read Marxism?? I’ve been listening to you for years but this remark on Marx really makes it clear you haven’t read any of Marx’s work
Talk about clickbait! Good work.
If we forget history then maybe no hope for synthesis
Yayygel
xD
Roses are red
Words are glue
Hegel would have loved the Sopranos
As you do
You can't compare Tony to us normal people. He was a remorseless killer who even killed his own nephew. The idea that evil can be counteracted or forgiven by an occasional good deed and that this is the human condition is a lie.
Yes, that's why Paulie donates to the church. Him hoping putting money in the church will buy him a spot in heaven. But Tony is like a normal person, the human sides of him do shine and drive the watchers to connect themselves to him. So when we do get to see him be a monster. It's cuz we all have dark sides, but his is darker. He's a mob boss. (Also just a character)
To understand Hegel read Hegel.
i think Machiavellianism is a stronger them in ths show, yor accent is convincing tho
Without Italians it is no longer the same true? :) You will find substitutes I'm sure.
Philosophy:the art of discussing common sense as if it's rocket science...
12:10 When did he learn that history isn't as rational as Hegel thought? Weird claim to kind of just throw in there.
So to hell with the king, especially when he is acting like a brat; do what you want as long as you think you are right. We are all under obligation to break laws we find interfere with our pursuit of happiness.
I'm not well read in philosophy or Hegel but isn't the idea that human history is all one gradual improvement in personal freedom incorrect? More humans live today in slavery than at any time in history and we see a clear correlation with the adoption of agriculture and social stratification in human cultures, with fairly egalitarian hunter gatherers becoming serfs and kings (okay, other specialized occupations too, but you get the idea). The transition from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles did not instantly destroy all personal freedoms, with even medieval peasants laboring less to live than modern first worlders, but the trend to me is clear. As state governments have grown more complex and centralized they have gotten better at exerting control over their populace, and often do in horrifying ways like modern China or any number of dictatorships. Compare all this to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who we know labored little and suffered no dystopian surveillance states.
Everything I just wrote is pointless if Hegel has a different definition of freedom in mind, such as I dunno, the freedom to live despite being type 1 diabetic, like I enjoy and humans before 1921 did not
Very allegorical.
Word to the wise. Rememba Pearl Harbor.
One word/name: Freud
Anyone else ever call it Hegelian Dianetics for shits?
Dear UA-cam, please don't allow anymore Hegel videos which talk about: Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. You're complicit in killing the thought of a great philosopher
philosophy students are responsible for killing the thought of every great philosopher through history, so there's that
No disrespect I came across your video but I think you're wrong in the way you say it. There's a lot more Dynamics
And when its all said and done people will try and find comfort in why are we HERE .
1k likes? Criminally low, youtube is a backward world isnt it
Passing familiarity with cinema's grammatical structure makes it pretty clear that Tony was killed in the final shot.
Any chance that was intentional, to trick the audience into thinking a certain way? It’s entirely ambiguous.
@@Ammoniumbicarbonat I don't think enough people understand cinematic grammar for it to qualify as obvious. Not ambiguous at all. And that's not even factoring in all the other evidence from the last season.
First
Bruh, nah. 1) If Hegel were alive today he would be posting about how people should do slavery again, and 2) The Sopranos isn't about what it means to be a person, it's about what it means to be a man.
this guy's delivery is so slow
Mate you need to speak faster, this should be a good video but it's actually torture
you can always speed up the video..
The philosophy of the sopranos? Kill first, ask later...do I still need to watch the video?
f**k me this was pretentious