Full Lecture: Hegel’s Most Difficult Idea
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- Hi guys, thanks for joining this lecture. It’s part of a lecture series titled ‘spurious infinities’ which I’m hosting live every Monday.
If you’d like to access the audio for all my lectures (100+), plus edited transcripts and my ebook, please visit:
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Thank you for watching, and thank you to the patrons who help me keep these classes open-access!
See you tomorrow,
Julian
#hegel #philosophy #dialectics
Hi guys, I had a blast with this lecture and hope you found it to be helpful. If you’d like to join me for all the upcoming lectures, I post the audio each week for patrons and the ebook version will be released at the end of the lecture series. See patreon for more info: www.patreon.com/jenalineandjulian
Also, next week we’ll be covering self-relating negativity. At least that’s what I feel needs to come next. It’s already running throughout this lecture I just don’t say it directly
Listening you from Bangladesh and I'm translating Zizek's "Violence" into Bangla. Thanks a lot for your works on him, it’s helping.
wow, this was great! a lot to mull over, but an excellent summary and overview of the main thrust of Hegel's philosophy! I'm concerned about how many people unfamiliar with Hegel's thought will be able to follow everything you said here, we shall see, but for me this was perfect!
It's so strange to me that Hegel's thought needs such a long and complex run-up to help us understand his core insight, which is really just one idea, and I think the same goes for Zizek too, his whole philosophical contribution is basically one single insight, but to unpack that simple insight, you need years of reading and listening to lectures. But that's the wonder of philosophy I suppose.
There is also a third meaning of Hegel's term "Aufhebung", besides "lifting up" and "putting aside", namely simply "vanishing".
I really appreciate these lecture videos. I’ve been listening to them nearly on a daily basis trying to catch up. I started reading Kant almost 7 years and began the whole Continental thing 6 years ago. It’s been an adventure lol 😂
Oh interesting nice timing, I was just in Berlin a few days ago and visited Hegel's grave. Greetings from California where I am now tho!
Listening in the early hours of Christmas morning from Bermuda.
This was incredible and challenging.
Merry Christmas everyone
Greetings from Colombia. Thank you for sharing your amazing knowledge!
ok so long time listener here and it's been a few months and i'm only now catching up and this was *absolutely fantastic*
The pacing,structure and explanation was superb sir. Superb 😊👌🏽💯🌟
Beautiful set of ideas very well explained. Hegel's dialectics reminds me of a western philosophical take of some of the ideas expressed in daoism and zen Buddhism.
Certainly there are many parallels and essential points between Hegel, Phenomenology, Post Modern Thought, Schopenhauer and Daoism and Zen and Buddhism proper.
@@thenowchurch6419 It appears there are are some similarities but mostly there are mega differences and Hegel is not to be confused with those things mentioned
@@telemahos2 The only mega differences would be between Hegel and Schopenhauer.
Phenomenology borrows from Hegel though its focus is on the individual personal experience as opposed to society and the Geist.
Post Modern thought borrows extensively from Hegel.
Zen is very focused on the importance of the present reality as was Hegel, Daoism has the pendulum swing of the Dialectic in it while Buddhism proper focuses on the Mind.
Of course Hegel did not posit any meditation or mind cultivation techniques which Buddhism does but I do not consider that a mega difference.
@@thenowchurch6419 The Hegelian thought centres in the irreducibility of contradiction... Buddhism and the rest you mention have nothing of that, quite the opposite in fact; therefore, these two could not be further away from each other - and any talk about similarities etc. is misleading
@@telemahos2 Please present a statement of Hegel's positing the irreducibility of contradiction.
As I read him all apparent essential contradictions are reconciled in the Absolute Spirit eventually.
That is ultimately what Buddhism, Daoism, and Zen purport.
Listening from India, julian, and im a beginner in philosophy having only read some marcus Aurelius! Im interested to learn more from people like you!!
This was immensely enjoyable to watch. I'd love to see Julian have a dialogue with Johannes Niederhauser (another fantastic modern interpreter of Hegel)
Oh right, greeting from Texas, USA 👋
5:15
Enjoy your videos muchly. Thanks, from Vancouver BC
As a musician i find this extremely interesting. When one plays beethoven it is necessary to have an almost inexorable control of everything. And yet you still feel subject to the music.
We only feel the music thru time..other wise space fills the notes with nothing.
Eres un genio Julián, saludos desde España!
Was finally able to finish this up: absolutely fantastic! I (like many others) was taught the T/A/S as being Hegelian, but while reading Fichtes work I began to feel otherwise; it never worked nor made sense when reading Hegel either. This was an excellent video and clarified so much. Good work, my friend!
So glad! Thanks for sharing
🇵🇷🇵🇷🇵🇷
Once again extremely grateful. Didn't think I'd have much access to stuff like this without going to college
Just picked up the phenomenology. Been flipping through it. I’ve listened to basics on Hegel. So right away I’ve found some profound quotes… also immediately read some stuff that made my head hurt.
hello from Burma (Myanmar). I very much appreciate your lectures.
Brilliant Lecture !
Kudos for your Great efforts !!
Can you give your insights on how can we contrast Hegel's True Infinity with that of Schelling's Abyss ? or in terms of Negative vs Positive philosophy ?
Greetings from Newcastle, England
Kick-ass lecture.
👋 Hello Julian! I'm joining from Buenos Aires Argentina. Thanks for the nice lesson. Greetings from the world football champion 😁
Does the ebook contain this in written form ? Amazing video wished I could read it :)
You guys, I mean both you Jenaline & Julian remind me of Adam drivers movie Paterson(2016).
The movie has a brilliant philosophical approch and appreciates simple living coupled with its appreciation towards art.
❤️ Adam driver and Jim jarmush. Thank you!
Brilliant.
Hello, I'm listening from Lisbon in Portugal :)
I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD HEGEL
"fegel", slip tongue justified... 😂😂😂 . great video, now i can properly explain to people that hegel dialectics is not as simple as thesis antithesis syntesis progression...thanks a lot!
Does anybody know where exactly in the logic Hegel says that that thing about having to count 3 as 4? Would make my day!
Cheers from Mexico!!!
Wow! Nice!!!
I do appreciate a discerning mind.
I'm from North East India🇮🇳
I love your videos. Thank you.
Hi Julian I wonder if you can help me. You mention a play called The Visitor, in a previous lecture, about a rich woman who returns to her hometown. It was a way for you to illustrate speculative idealism. Do you know who wrote it? I would love to read it but there are many films, series and whatnot with the same title that are clouding my searches. Many thanks in advance.
Sure, it’s great! It’s actually called the visit: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visit_(play)
@@julianphilosophy Sorry for the delayed reply. Thank you. I found a copy of it archived - what a great play! I also found a superb BBC adaptation. It’s a bit crackly, but some of the decisions (mainly script edits) made in its adaptation are clever. I think you will enjoy it - here: ua-cam.com/video/EUMK5ySagOU/v-deo.htmlsi=ViWk1RICbWfeRINZ
This is a messy not thoroughly worked out idea but I feel like I have to get it down somewhere. Tying back to the Bible this absolute of Kant that is necessarily beyond reason we can maybe construe and say means that it is beyond language. And I think of this as the state that necessarily intrinsic with the Garden of Eden. When God's love was so apparent that it need not even be stated. It is only retold to us through the Bible. But within this absolute of the love of God, the gift of life, is of course its antithesis as well to go back to Hegel.
Hence why there is both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in the garden. But knowledge of what precisely? I would think it is the knowledge of negation itself. That there is necessarily a negation of the love of God within the garden (thesis, antithesis, synthesis...). The love of God being the gift of life. And the fall of man from partaking in the forbidden from of knowledge is a parable of the first dialectical movement.
Where the unfurling and instantiation of language itself occurs. Our nascent state before language as such lost. Man now knows death, hunger, and labor. All things already contained in the absolute of the Garden of Eden in the form of the tree of knowledge. The naïve atheist criticism of God putting it there simply being what it is, naïve.
How you likened Hegel's contribution to metaphysics to the new testament is apt because like you said, it is revolutionary in that not all is lost. Within language through the word of Christ, we can hope to regain our unfallen state. As Christ said, that when there is love between us, his flock, he is there. And this is precisely where I find the word of Christ in Marx. What would it even mean for the free development of individual to be ends in themselves?
I can only imagine it as some dialectical movement in which this which seems subjective becomes pre-subjective. Simply a given that need not even be stated or politicized in any kind of formalism as utopian as that sounds. Sorry for my long rant. I'm sure there are plenty of holes but I was compelled to get my thoughts down for other more discerning eyes.
Please do an Hegelian Zizek analysis of Beef.
In the structuralist conception, Sign refers to concepts in the mind, the Sign being Hegel's Absolute Idea. Sign (Linguistic Sign/Words) is the synthesis between signifier (meaning) and signified (sound-image), being two sides of the same coin. The post-structuralist assertion is that things come in three-- the unity of the sign (synthesis) can be broken down into the movement from signifier to signified, which forms an endless progression of events, a spurious infinite.
I suppose that in your interpretation of Hegel, time would be the fourth component (in addition to thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis)? That would mean that everything is planned out beforehand and we don't really have free will. So I don't see how it is much of an improvement over Fichte...
I think your still stunk in thinking that things always must follow sequentially. Which makes sense because thinking otherwise goes against what we experience.
But an analogy with bootstrapping in computer science I think helps with understanding what is meant by “dialectical movement”. That embedded within the signifier itself is the process of unfurling. The negation of itself onto itself which is the process of sublimation.
This sounds like nonsense but the “chicken and egg” problem is a real thing in bootstrapping so it isn’t a trivial matter if you understand what the issue is. Yes, at some point someone did in punctual manner write the line of code for the first compiler. But the issue of the chicken and egg occurs exactly when the higher level abstraction of code referring back to itself occurs. Abstraction that necessarily facilitates the further development of compilers. So is nontrivial.
Zizek has at one point also mentioned quantum physics as something analogous as well. That it is in itself that a particle’s position and velocity can not be known simultaneously. Not to conflate the technical realm of sciences with philosophy but like I said, these are all just analogies. Analogies I would argue that are not insignificant. As they reveal an unintuitive form of reasoning that in itself implies ontological incompleteness. Dialectics of dialectics. So it is more than just the rote unfurling of an endless chain of signifiers.
And sorry but I am not exactly sure what you mean by "everything is planned out beforehand and we don't really have free will" which is really at the crux of your point. I mean, the beauty of being a finite thing that inhabits particulars is that we are precisely at the moment of this unfurling. Like any time anyone has ever said anything about a particular dialectical moment in history, it has necessarily past to state the obvious.
But to further elucidate my example analogy of bootstrapping, what I mean by "negation of itself onto itself " is that bootstrapping simply isn't the process of tacking on more code at the end of generated code (an analogy here for endless chains of signifiers but I will spare you).
The code must tell itself what exactly it changed about itself. Thus altering or even negating the memory currently being stored. The compiler is written in the language that it itself intends to compile. To pull itself up by its bootstraps hence the name. And like I mentioned before, yes at some point there was a start with a initial compiler probably written in some low level language like assembly. But that does not trivialize the chicken and egg problem that arises.
And if we really wanted to follow this analogy through we could say the precursor of this assembly language is analogous to a kind of precondition of language that we inhabit. And everything I've argued so far is that Hegel precisely shows that it does not have to be the case that the precondition of signifiers necessarily means an endless chain is the logical conclusion. This really is a case of the old adage of the sum of the parts being more than the whole. Kind of. The whole being the whole tangle mess that's been elucidated so far.
Dialectics. Ba-dum tish.
@@bdinh3130 I think you are getting your philosophical traditions mixed up. Hegel-->Structuralism-->Post-structuralism. Hegel is a proto-Structuralist thinker. Structuralism develops Hegel's ideas into a systematic method for studying social phenomenon. Structuralism is about pure negativity within systems which give rise to meaning. For instance, 'pat' and ''bat' mean two different things because 'p' contrasts with 'b', even though they don't mean anything on their own. At any single point in time each element in the system reflects its contrasts with all other elements in the system because each time you choose what you want to say, you are in effect excluding all these other options, and their absence is felt through your positive choice of words.
Post-structuralist philosophers wish to "crack open Hegel" and destroy the ontological unity of the Sign/Absolute Idea. Post-structuralism wishes to take away this ontological grounding, so that signs (signifier in the structuralist lexicon) don't refer back to anything. The post-structuralist view of endless signifiers is thus post-/anti-Hegelian. Time remains a significant element, even in Structuralist thought. This is especially so when dealing with History and I do not think that Hegel dealt with this problem sufficiently. My objection with regards to time was in direct response to the arguments proposed in this video: That Hegel would have thought that free will gave meaning to life and avoided the problem of Nihilism. The opposite is actually true-- That the perfect plan already existed in God's mind and that over-determination is what gives meaning to life.
" I mean, the beauty of being a finite thing that inhabits particulars is that we are precisely at the moment of this unfurling. Like any time anyone has ever said anything about a particular dialectical moment in history, it has necessarily past to state the obvious. " --Precisely why I said it is precisely this element of time that has been overlooked.
@@bdinh3130 Medeiros said that Hegel liberates subjectivity from the tyrannical grasp of the liberal progressive view of history for a more utopian communist view of history that heaven is in the here and now. However, Hegel's view of the Christ being the "vanishing mediator" for God and the Holy Spirit (Though vanishing mediator, being a post-structuralist term, is a term which Hegel would not have used himself) means that God now dwells in us and that the essence of God works through an individual's subjectivity. One's being unfolds over time, so to speak. So if we remove time from the equation, it would mean that everything in the universe has always existed and will always continue to exist according to God's plan, or that the entire world unfurls in an infinitesimally small amount of time. By reductio ad absurdum, such a perfection necessarily exists outside of the dimension of time. If time doesn't exist, humans cannot make sensible choices to develop their essence or being. Meaning that humans don't have free will.
The converse isn't true. Time could exist and humans could still lack free will.
@@misanthrope-kf6qi I can see you are more well read than I am. I now realize how certain presuppositions I had were beyond the scope of anything the video discusses itself about Hegel. But I would like to hear your thoughts on the conception free will.
Not wanting to introduce more names in the discussion than necessary here but after careful deliberation I believe the main point of contention if the conversation were to go long enough is that I pressoppose Kojeve's interpretation of Hegellian negation with Heideggerian reflection. That both necessarily imply each other serving the ontological role of difference or more importantly nothingness itself. That "a real presence in Being" as Kojeve puts it, necessarily mean you can't just remove time from the equation as you suggest as a thought experiment and still cohere ontologically.
Or in Lacanian/post-structuralist terms, apologies if you are not a fan of pyschoanalysis, that there is no true essence and only the negation of differences. The slight of hand being that we presume that subjectivity necessarily presupposes an essence. Rather than essence already being within the negation of subjectivity itself. And this is the absolute come particular and where in lies the ontological incompleteness, going back to Kant and Critique of Pure Reason. The continual sublimation of the absolute.
A seemingly forward movement as discussed in the video but at the center of all this is a recursive nature of unfurling that must be the case unless there is such a thing as time that does not pressuppose subjectivity or a subjectivity that does not pressuppose time. Chicken and egg problem to go back to my original analogy on ontological incompleteness. This gap and this "real presence in Being" being what we could construe as free will.
I've had a theologian friend argue for a presubjective "I" of God being necessary to facilitate everything afterwards. Throwing my analogy of bootstrapping back at me since it requires that first initial implementation. But that's where I'll say my analogy breaks down, haha. And bring up the second analogy of quantum physics, in that a position and velocity can not be simultaneously known. And this is maybe where faith comes in.
Sorry if you think I am further muddying the conversation, this is my sincere attempt at conveying my thoughts. I am not an academic and pursue these ideas as more than a hobby but less than a raison d'être.
Santa Cruz, California
Hi! From Syria🇸🇾
The problem is that there's no absolute time but relatuve time. Thereby I suggest that there's no one absolute but multiple absolutes.
Question: did Hegel think of consciousness as such a fundamental principle that, from a higher perspective, it isn’t dependent on the brain? Or even simpler, is there something as a soul in his model? I know philosophical idealism is quite general to begin with, so specifying the basics, so to say, is more relevant to me. At least I presume he saw the world as mental in nature, while our minds have access to the domain of phenomena of which we can’t deduce the ‘thing in itself’, and that phenomena and noumena can’t be really separated, but what this further implies for us is unclear to me. (Excuse me if you already mentioned it).
Hegel does not believe in the noumenal, I think. The nature of reality is pure reason whose movement gives rise to phenomena.
@@misanthrope-kf6qi agreed. Noumena don’t exist as independent reality according to Hegel (at least to our understanding). But I’m curious what his idealist model implies for our own minds
hey you seem well known on this matter , could ypu please answer a question ive had for a while? hegel says that the noumena doesnt actually exist but i dont think this is possible as that would mean objective reality doesnt exist which in my opinion is just wrong as that would mean there is nothing objective in any of our realities , which means there is nothing objective in what you experience and what i experience , both our realities are purely subjective.
@@kushchopra4300 the world is objectively realized within the mind. There is a seeming duality between subject and object that can be collapsed according to Hegel if I’m correct. While there is no thing-in-itself outside the boundary of the mind, one could say that reality as a whole (the spirit) is actualized ‘within’ that which encompasses both the subject and object (arguably consciousness itself), or in other words: the distinction between phenomena and noumena presupposes the fallacious belief that objective reality should somehow be ‘beyond’ our mind/apprehension. It is not entirely correct to state that there is no objective reality in Hegel’s model. It is just that this reality is realized insofar as there are subjects to perceive and actualize it. But I might be wrong of course.
Think of it like a game. Where are the buildings when you don’t see them in GTA? Certainly not nowhere. They are part of the game that _could_ be rendered. But they are also not objectively present; they would have to be seen/actualized by the player. You see? Both the player and the content of the game need to be present for there to be a game to begin with.
The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice, is the phrase, I believe.
Yes indeed thank you!!
Ausgezeichnet!
I am from Chennai, India!
Can you please explain why zizek is a strange Marxist as Jorden Peterson refers him?
Hi! I did a video on this a while ago. Should still be in the archives 😊
@@julianphilosophy Sure then, will go through your short videos again.
Veracruz,Mexico
My sense of time was affect by this lecture 😳😳
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
🧡
I'm pretty sure you read Heidegger instead of Hegel
Switerland here
This has to be some kind of miracle, an American who can pronounce German words!
i think he’s part german
Jean-Paul Sara, Luang Prabang, Laos.
are you half german or why is your german so good
from Bangladesh 🤗
🇮🇹 Italy
Hegel is not an anti-(Kantian) formalist. Rather he brought Kantian idealism to its teleological end. The end of philosophy is Hegel, so to speak. Hegel raised Reason to its absolute and annihilated the need for metaphysics. The form of Pure Reason is precisely the dialectic-- Mathematics cannot be Pure Reason because it does not take this form.
By imbuing human reason with the essence of God, one has no need for the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal. They are in fact one and the same. Human beings can have direct access to the truth through phenomenology alone. So Hegel was the formalist of formalists, the most eminent Western philosopher of Pure Reason.
Estonia Tartu
This is not Hegel's most difficult idea. Hegel's Doctrine of the Concept is much more difficult than his Doctrine of Being. The Science of Logic only gets progressively harder as the book continues.
Finite, infinite only relates to English language, so maybe not the best explanation
I want to eat a figel
Привет из России! From Russia with love