I was assigned your book How (Not) to Speak of God when I was in college and didn’t understand it at all. In fact, I thought it was idiotic and pointless. Now, I am so thankful I read it. Thank you for your work Peter!!
I’m almost done. This may be the best Rollins video that I’ve ever seen most clearly summarizing and articulating the core of his work. And it’s so good and so important. Thanks, Pete, if you see this. 🙏🏼
41:46 Peter-I enjoy your insights and clarity but specifically (and implicitly I believe you get this) dialectics in Hegel’s eyes is _not_ “thesis/antithesis/synthesis”-he referred to his speculative triads as “immediate/mediate/concrete” or “abstract/negative/concrete.” Likely this will seem trivial or pretentious to some, but it’s a terribly important distinction to make. To pull from Todd McGowan in _Emancipation After Hegel:_ The crucial problem is that thesis/antithesis evokes an _opposition_ which divides the world into friends/enemies, into right/wrong sides-Hegel’s concept here is that there is no such thing as a stable/isolated starting point called “thesis” which then runs into its counter “antithesis”. This is a dualistic fabrication borne from the desire for a solid sense of self-identity which seeks to base itself on external opposition. Our deep desire for internal consistency entices us to posit a clean cut friend/enemy (thesis/antithesis) distinction, rather than making the self-effacing, emancipatory move to inoculate ourselves with the mediating/generative cut of contradiction. Ideology transforms contradictions into oppositions in order to give us an enemy on which to direct the aggression stemming from our own failure. If you bifurcate the dialectic into thesis/antithesis, then you obscure the reflexive power of the idea that every position already contains its own internal divisions-as the “thesis” for Hegel always generates its own contradiction. The thought is that we shouldn’t view things gnostically, as if there is some full truth out there but rather that every position contains within it the failure to be complete/whole. When we utilize reason we see the contradiction driving within us, we recognize the fertility of lack in the evolution of thought. Rather than being a license to say anything, recognizing contradiction forces one to pay more attention to what is said. The danger in the word “synthesis” is that it connotes a type of progressive resolution-it waters down the dialectic into some optimistic march which resolves all antagonisms. But Hegel’s point was not that all oppositions resolve themselves in a tidy, progressive fashion-it was that there is an ongoing and unresolved messiness in life that we must reconcile ourselves to/engage with to keep growing. One cannot arrive at a “synthesis” that would eliminate contradiction because contradiction is the basic fact of all being. The new position is not some antiseptic “synthesis” but another perspective from which the earlier contradiction ceases to be contradictory-a “sublation”, a preserving _and_ a putting-an-end-to, without an annihilation of content. Sublation holds onto the old constellations while moving beyond, it recognizes their developmental value as interconnected articulations in the process of history. What is sublated is therefore not reduced to nothing. The old is always preserved as a necessary aspect of the new. As Hegel says in _Shorter Logic:_ “Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a past, but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results, resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the human intellect, but a Pantheon of godlike figures. These figures of gods are the various stages of the Idea, as they come forward one after another in dialectical development.“ “Synthesis” denotes an all-encompassing unity relieved of/cut off from the formations of the past. “Concreteness” is an agglomeration, a mélange which contains within itself all the content of its genesis-an ongoing process of growth which curates respect for the dirty roots. The richness of the sublated content in the concrete position entails a sensitivity toward otherness (the other out there and the other in me) an openness which keeps dancing with the messiness of the world rather than an obliterating progress which imagines it will reach a mastery of all truth. “The absolute idea may in this respect be compared to the old man who utters the same creed as the child, but for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime.” -Hegel, _Shorter Logic_ Sorry for the essay, I hope this helps some more than confuses. My trauma here is that Hegel didn’t view the dialectic as some surgical distilling machine to purify our domination of truth-but as an organic process which digs into our deterministic/totalitarian impulses to reveal the fruitful cut of contradiction at our core. In Hegel’s style of dialectic we get our hands dirty in the garden everyday.
Sorry about that. I always repeat this fact. If I used the word 'synthesis' it was a terrible oversight. There will be dozens of lectures on here where I explicitly say that this is a wrong reading of Hegel
On Icon Some would think that it’s a crypto-Christian space and others would think that it’s a crypto-atheist space. [And in the end, they agreed on the crypto…and created community] Brilliant.
i reckon in a way deconstruction is very akin to Stoicism’s “You will never reach the sage, for that is impossible, but you must spend your entire life getting as close as possible.” deconstruction, in its healthy form, is the true embodiment of this wisdom-knowing we surely have not arrived yet and that there is more work to be done; there is always evermore to refine and progress if we seek in honesty, humility, and courage.
@@WhiteStoneName many a time i’ve almost commented “aloha, Luke!” for this reason haha yeah i’ve really been diggin his perspective, i appreciate you turning me his way. definitely agree that his project is closely aligned with the Little Corner, a lot of why he’s been so helpful for me. would love to see him and Paul have a converzation one day. cuss, you and him as well would be mad cool! i also really think grappling with both Peter and Mark’s perspectives will prove to be quite fruitful, so i’m finna lean into it
why does the thing in the impossible real feel there is something missing in picture of Justice ? the subject came out of primordial chaos, why is he bugged on justice while there is no justice to fulfill ......das ding (other) is too complicated and excessive
I was assigned your book How (Not) to Speak of God when I was in college and didn’t understand it at all. In fact, I thought it was idiotic and pointless.
Now, I am so thankful I read it. Thank you for your work Peter!!
I’m almost done. This may be the best Rollins video that I’ve ever seen most clearly summarizing and articulating the core of his work. And it’s so good and so important.
Thanks, Pete, if you see this. 🙏🏼
41:46 Peter-I enjoy your insights and clarity but specifically (and implicitly I believe you get this) dialectics in Hegel’s eyes is _not_ “thesis/antithesis/synthesis”-he referred to his speculative triads as “immediate/mediate/concrete” or “abstract/negative/concrete.” Likely this will seem trivial or pretentious to some, but it’s a terribly important distinction to make.
To pull from Todd McGowan in _Emancipation After Hegel:_
The crucial problem is that thesis/antithesis evokes an _opposition_ which divides the world into friends/enemies, into right/wrong sides-Hegel’s concept here is that there is no such thing as a stable/isolated starting point called “thesis” which then runs into its counter “antithesis”. This is a dualistic fabrication borne from the desire for a solid sense of self-identity which seeks to base itself on external opposition. Our deep desire for internal consistency entices us to posit a clean cut friend/enemy (thesis/antithesis) distinction, rather than making the self-effacing, emancipatory move to inoculate ourselves with the mediating/generative cut of contradiction. Ideology transforms contradictions into oppositions in order to give us an enemy on which to direct the aggression stemming from our own failure.
If you bifurcate the dialectic into thesis/antithesis, then you obscure the reflexive power of the idea that every position already contains its own internal divisions-as the “thesis” for Hegel always generates its own contradiction. The thought is that we shouldn’t view things gnostically, as if there is some full truth out there but rather that every position contains within it the failure to be complete/whole. When we utilize reason we see the contradiction driving within us, we recognize the fertility of lack in the evolution of thought. Rather than being a license to say anything, recognizing contradiction forces one to pay more attention to what is said.
The danger in the word “synthesis” is that it connotes a type of progressive resolution-it waters down the dialectic into some optimistic march which resolves all antagonisms. But Hegel’s point was not that all oppositions resolve themselves in a tidy, progressive fashion-it was that there is an ongoing and unresolved messiness in life that we must reconcile ourselves to/engage with to keep growing. One cannot arrive at a “synthesis” that would eliminate contradiction because contradiction is the basic fact of all being.
The new position is not some antiseptic “synthesis” but another perspective from which the earlier contradiction ceases to be contradictory-a “sublation”, a preserving _and_ a putting-an-end-to, without an annihilation of content. Sublation holds onto the old constellations while moving beyond, it recognizes their developmental value as interconnected articulations in the process of history. What is sublated is therefore not reduced to nothing. The old is always preserved as a necessary aspect of the new.
As Hegel says in _Shorter Logic:_ “Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a past, but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results, resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the human intellect, but a Pantheon of godlike figures. These figures of gods are the various stages of the Idea, as they come forward one after another in dialectical development.“
“Synthesis” denotes an all-encompassing unity relieved of/cut off from the formations of the past. “Concreteness” is an agglomeration, a mélange which contains within itself all the content of its genesis-an ongoing process of growth which curates respect for the dirty roots. The richness of the sublated content in the concrete position entails a sensitivity toward otherness (the other out there and the other in me) an openness which keeps dancing with the messiness of the world rather than an obliterating progress which imagines it will reach a mastery of all truth.
“The absolute idea may in this respect be compared to the old man who utters the same creed as the child, but for whom it is pregnant with the significance of a lifetime.”
-Hegel, _Shorter Logic_
Sorry for the essay, I hope this helps some more than confuses. My trauma here is that Hegel didn’t view the dialectic as some surgical distilling machine to purify our domination of truth-but as an organic process which digs into our deterministic/totalitarian impulses to reveal the fruitful cut of contradiction at our core. In Hegel’s style of dialectic we get our hands dirty in the garden everyday.
Sorry about that. I always repeat this fact. If I used the word 'synthesis' it was a terrible oversight. There will be dozens of lectures on here where I explicitly say that this is a wrong reading of Hegel
@@TheOrthodoxHeretic by how/what you teach I figured this was the case. BTW, did you ever make that Tammy Faye movie?
On Icon
Some would think that it’s a crypto-Christian space and others would think that it’s a crypto-atheist space. [And in the end, they agreed on the crypto…and created community]
Brilliant.
i reckon in a way deconstruction is very akin to Stoicism’s “You will never reach the sage, for that is impossible, but you must spend your entire life getting as close as possible.” deconstruction, in its healthy form, is the true embodiment of this wisdom-knowing we surely have not arrived yet and that there is more work to be done; there is always evermore to refine and progress if we seek in honesty, humility, and courage.
Just started watching this this morning and thinking that there is a lot here that relates to our community. Funny to see you already here! 🤗
@@WhiteStoneName many a time i’ve almost commented “aloha, Luke!” for this reason haha yeah i’ve really been diggin his perspective, i appreciate you turning me his way. definitely agree that his project is closely aligned with the Little Corner, a lot of why he’s been so helpful for me. would love to see him and Paul have a converzation one day. cuss, you and him as well would be mad cool!
i also really think grappling with both Peter and Mark’s perspectives will prove to be quite fruitful, so i’m finna lean into it
Isn't all this retreading the ground of iconography? Just an existential, psychological iconographic knowing?
why does the thing in the impossible real feel there is something missing in picture of Justice ? the subject came out of primordial chaos, why is he bugged on justice while there is no justice to fulfill ......das ding (other) is too complicated and excessive
derrida was possessed by the spirit of mephistopheles, the spirit of negation.
deconstruction is a war against metaphysics.
Damn wok culture! I am much more of a spaghetti man