HEGEL COURSES Online

Joao V wrote:

Without the spirit these oppositions would certainly dissolve in a sea of grayness or, if inhabited by a mind unable to sublate the opposites and their relation of identity and difference  this yin/yang would transit through this mind as schizophrenia, as transits with solution of continuity, by which the mind is ruled by one or the other, alternatively even, without being able to recollect itself as what is identical to itself in the identity and difference of its opposites.

Is the mind – I mean ‘my’ mind, not the Spirit – able to ‘recollect’ itself in the shape of the “identity and difference of its opposites?” Is not the acceptance of such an identity the true schizophrenia, that is, living in the difference between the conceived identity and the actual reality of self-contradiction?

Schizophrenia might be the acute awareness of the difference as opposed to the sea of grayness that it longs for as an escape. The endurance of the intellect may consist precisely in the acceptance of schizophrenia.

I am not talking about schizophrenia as the “mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness.” Undoubtedly Joao meant the idea of ‘split personality’ that is the general meaning of the word outside medical usage. To describe the tension between philosophy and theology as ‘split personality’ involves the Hegelian notion of the overcoming of opposites in a higher unity, the reconciliation of opposites.

To endure the tension, I believe, is a greater achievement, than to imagine its reconciliation, because that produces the split between the higher ‘me’ that is pure philosophy, and the lower ‘me’ that stands within the opposition of both.

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! (Rom. 11:33)

That inner tension is characteristic of theology: knowledge of God united with the acceptance of unsearchable judgments and ‘ways past tracing out.’ That may be my ‘schizophrenia’!

William Yate wrote to me:

I’ve looked through many of the previous posts on this site, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you talk about how you view the relation between these pursuits. Surely, since they’re both important to you, you can’t see them as antithetical. And life is not so clean a thing that they could be utterly independent. So are they complementary pursuits in your estimation? Can one be pursued without the other? Which is the senior partner?

Good question! Sometimes I start sermonizing when I am supposed to be analyzing. And sometimes I start analyzing at the pulpit – no, no! My job there is to explain the Bible! So the confusion is real. Sometimes. My attempt to unravel the mystery of this strange marriage between philosopher and theologian follows here. Is it Jekyll and Hyde?

Credo ut intelligam! I believe in order to understand. This is the famous saying by Anselm that sums it up – well, partly. Christian faith to me is of course a matter of confession. I believe in the basic tenets of the Christian faith, as expressed in the so called Apostolic Creed and I share the Christian worldview. That did not require a sacrifice of the intellect, but the confession allows me to share in a culture and history that protects and expresses the ultimate mystery of the divine. The creed demands of me that I reflect upon my faith. My understanding of that creed – of my own faith – requires a double strategy.

The first strategy is that of a theologian. That is the seemingly simple task  of the interpretation of a very special text, the Bible. Any idea how difficult that is? There is no other task for a theologian but to explain and apply the text, this product of a different age and culture, to our own culture and time.

I find that Biblical text to be fascinating. From Genesis to Revelation, it is alive with miracles of depth and meaning. I find that depth in the unfolding story of a humanity that is intrinsically dependent upon a divine representative – a people or a person that acts as intermediary or ‘priest’. In the demand for right action in the context of justice, generosity  toward the poor and the weak and the demand for holiness. (In the books of Moses.) In its depiction of human character in the state of anarchy as in Joshua and Judges . In its subtle criticisms of (state-)power as in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. In the intricate nuances of the (Hebrew) poetry of Psalms and Canticles. In the demand for justice without compromise in the prophecy of Isaiah and Amos. And finally in the moving story of a very special person, Jesus of Nazareth, who expresses the divine character in human form. The absurdity of it! Credo quia absurdum: I believe it because it is ‘absurd’ and contradicts all reason. (Faith and reason are therefore from the outset dialectically opposed!)

The second strategy is that of a philosopher. Intelligo ut credam! I understand because I want to believe: reason is transcending itself. That means to me in the first place the explanation of the meaning of the text in universal – Greek – terms. The Hebrew and New Testament Greek of the Bible needs to be translated into the language of values and truth that Greek culture has given us. Philosophy can help us clarify what we already believe, and can help us differentiate between the essential and the peripheral. But this is philosophy from a theologians’ point of view!

And that is the point where an inner conflict arises. Surely this starting point in faith must contradict the freedom of philosophical discourse! Philosophy cannot accept any truth as pre-given. It has to ask for the proper way of ‘beginning’ its own discourse and can only find the answer to that in the question itself. That is the lesson of Descartes, that has been learnt by metaphysics – Thomas-style – and of course by Hegel – preface to the Great Logic. The problem with a philosophy that starts from the experience and history and culture of faith seems to be, that the inner freedom of philosophy is compromised. But does this mean that all philosophy is without presupposition?

All philosophy is preceded and informed by some form of natural experience, by a whole cultural system of opinions and sentiments and values, that have already determined me. To act as if we can think without presupposition – starting from zero – leads to pure abstraction. Nevertheless, one cannot presuppose the answer to a question either. Unless we can say, that what we are trying to do, is to understand who we already are. Not to establish some new being. Philosophy to me answers the question how I can be what I already am. What am I? This surely includes acknowledging who I am and what I am. Okay, so I’m a Christian minister. What does that actually mean? What history and what culture makes it possible for me to be this?

I think the Phenomenology is the prime example of this way of thinking. Given what I am, how can I understand how it came to be like this? Given my way of experiencing the world, how did that originate in history? Isn’t that Hegel’s basic question in the Phenomenology? So indeed, philosophy has a starting point within culture and religion. And they may be different for you and me. You may start from an atheist position, and I start from a creedal position. But the fact that we have to start somewhere is common. And I have to understand myself in such a way, that the possibility of the atheist position is made clear to me also. You have to do the same in your understanding of yourself with regard to my different viewpoint and experience. Otherwise our philosophies will merely reflect the choice for a particular viewpoint, which is then reduced to mere opinion.

I differ from Hegel mainly in this respect: that I do not believe that this History of the Spirit is an inner – organic – unfolding of the Divine Absolute. I believe it to be a history in which immanence and transcendence of the Absolute are both to be discerned. This history is not like an organic process, but like a real history, a history filled with ‘encounters’, gaps, interruptions of expectations, of a silent ‘force’ working underneath the surface of events. I believe that this history is witnessed to by the Biblical writers en the history of the Church. And I believe that Hegel took the ‘Kingdom of God’ – an eschatological idea – interpreted as the ‘unity of the Spirit in all things’ as his foundation. Then history becomes organic, the individual becomes the outer expression of the Absolute – in sum, Hegel then has to return to some type of Spinozism. I reject that. From my basic instincts. But. As long as I haven’t shown that by philosophical argument, I have only the Bible and the creeds to show as the source for that position.

So my work is cut out for me. Now I have to understand and find the proper argument for the possibility of my actual experience and faith. That is philosophy. For if I can understand what made ‘me’ possible, I can in the light of my own being understand all being.

But in order to know what to explain I also need to dig deep into the direct sources of my faith – and then I’m back at the table with the Biblical texts, the history of the Church and theology, and with the meaning of the apostolic creed.

The superficial answer would have been that theology and philosophy deal with the same topic: the Absolute. That answer, given by Hegel himself, doesn’t help me at all. Theology doesn’t work like that, it is not a reflection on the nature of the Absolute as such – as a concept. The God of the Bible in narrative, poetry and prophetic imagination turns out to be quite different from the concept of the Absolute. Someone called that the ‘Theological Difference’. That is where I stand – and that is sometimes quite confusing, I can tell you!

Every year, around this time, I make plans for the hegelcourses.com site. I have done this now several times and I must admit, that I have been too optimistic for two years in a row. For 2011 I had plans to read a large chunk of the Phenomenology, give regular classes on the text on fridays and write dozens of small blogs on hegelian philosophy.

I think I did 40% of all that.

Regular and paying visitors must have noticed, how the site fell silent during the last two months. There just isn’t enough time during the day to do it all. A new job and a new partner – it was a blessed year for sure! – did keep me away from Hegel.

But I still want to continue the site, I still want to read the great Phenomenology. To me it is important to remain occupied with philosophy, even though my main job is now that of a theologian. A very different discourse and practice indeed. The work of Hegel is fascinating, difficult, sometimes obscure. But it is a joy to try and figure out what he is saying and to get involved in his project. Which is nothing less than a complete understanding of our culture, of the Spirit that pervades all of reality. From his writings one can get a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of all phenomena, and marvel at the way everything is bound up within our history and culture. Ultimately his philosophy allows us to understand our own troubled times better than ever. But it has to be dug out of the text, first in a kind of paraphrase, then in terms of our own concepts and problems, and then it reemerges in the dialectic precision of our own thoughts. That is obviously the goal of the whole endeavor.

And it has been a delight to work with you in this dialog. I have learnt much from your questions and comments.

So the next few days I am going to work out just how much time there will be in the next year so I can present a pragmatic and feasible plan for the coming year. To those who have faithfully been following my Hegelian blogs, I promise that the work will continue.

To all of you: HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Wil Yates wrote:

Thanks for this post; I am looking forward to your further reading of Self-Consciousness. I’m still not entirely clear on dyad of life and desire. Based on previous discussions and my reading of Consciousness and the first few paragraphs of Self-Consciousness, I get the impression that “life” refers to the object of consciousness insofar as consciousness recognizes _itself_ “behind the curtain,” i.e. recognizes itself as inextricably bound up with, or constitutive of, the object it’s conscious of. (Somehow the connecting tissue—the vanishing mediator perhaps?—between consciousness’s object and life is “infinity,” though I don’t really understand infinity either.)

If SELF-consciousness is identical to itself, and self-CONSCIOUSNESS is itself its object, then the (secondary) object of consciousness is in itself identical to itself and as such is LIFE. (The primary object being the abstract identity of the ego.) Life expresses logically the identity of consciousness with itself in an objective manner. It is consciousness as a whole in itself. It needs the for itself to be this however. ) In other words: Life is the identity of self-consciousness as the object of consciousness. Recognition on the contrary is the explicit affirmation of itself in its other. That is not happening yet.

And I get the impression that “life” is the object of the “slave” self-consciousness that does all the work while the “master” self-consciousness onanistically enjoys its hermetic self-contemplation (“consciousness…enjoys only itself” [§163]). This seems to me to fit in with what Hegel says about “desire” as a negating or assimilating of the object in order to return to the purity of its insulation.

The slave identifies explicitly with itself as life. (It ‘clings’ to life.) But that presupposes the struggle etc. that we we will have to deal with later. Desire will lead to the inner distinction of self-consciousness as Lordship and Bondage. But I think we should not identify the shape of the Slave with desire as such. Both ‘sides’ express desire: the one as enjoyment and the other as labor. Both are oriented toward their object as Life. The difference is about the way they affirm their identity.

For you say, first, that “The necessity of the unity of self-consciousness becoming expressed within its other – its object – is Desire”; and, second, that “self-consciousness…has Life as its other and is Desire for itself.” Plugging the former definition into the latter we get: “self-consciousness…has…the necessity of the unity of self-consciousness becoming expressed within its other for itself.” But isn’t having this necessity _for itself_ precisely the solution to the problem of self-consciousness that brings us to Reason?

No, because it still needs to become expressed and it still needs to go through this experience to fully develop this necessity. This formula just contains what needs to be shown, but it is not the demonstration as such. The whole chapter tries ‘desperately’ to maintain everything within concrete singular self-consciousness and tries to prevent the emergence of a ‘collective’ or plural self-consciousness based on mutual recognition – which is an important characteristic of Reason.

Isn’t self-consciousness qua desire’s problem precisely that it _cannot_ recognize this necessity?

 

Not really, self-consciousness qua desire is driven by this necessity and it needs to become for it, but that is different. ‘Recognizing’ a necessity is a logical insight. Everything here is about expressing the essence, not understanding something formally .

This gets to the heart of my misunderstanding. I recently found a nice quote from Zizek describing the method of the PhG:
“Is not the basic strategy of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to undermine a given theoretical posi­tion by “staging” it as an existential subjective attitude (that of asceticism, that of the “beautiful soul,” etc.) and thus to reveal its otherwise hidden inconsistencies, that is, to exhibit the way its very subjective position of enunciation undermines its “enun­ciated,” its positive contents?” [The larger point for me is: what does this "staging" do that normal philosophical discourse cannot? But that is another matter...]

Nice attempt by Zizek to turn Hegel’s Phenomenology into a form of Lacanian psychology.

So to put it in Zizek’s terms, it seems to me that desire is the initial “existential attitude” or “position of enunciation,” whereas you define desire as the necessity that, in my view, is the goal to be reached precisely by unearthing the “hidden inconsistencies” of desire. Again keeping with Zizek/Lacan, the “necessity” of which you speak seems to me to be the “big Other” speaking through desire but of which desire is unaware. Or: you equate the necessity with desire, while my impression is that the necessity is going on “behind desire’s back.”
Apologies for the length of this comment; I’m struggling for a point of reference.

No apologies required, I am truly enjoying your remarks, (and laboring over them.). So my full self-consciousness is involved…

The necessity I spoke of is the logical insight that what was in-itself needs to become for-itself – something that to ‘us’ is obvious given the meaning of the terms involved: we already know that consciousness is its object in both meanings. (Life and desire.) Substance must become subject in other words. This necessity that we can see and express logically is inherent in the development as the drive toward greater explicitness. What is implicit needs to become explicit. That is the ‘staging’ that is going on here. Consciousness is questioned, self-consciousness is ‘developed’ – what is implicit then becomes explicit. But there is no need to turn to ‘Big Others’ to explain all of this, rather, the psychological and concrete self-understanding Zizek/Lacan speak of, presuppose the inner dialectics of self-consciousness.

New  Q & A session on wiziq this week.

Notwithstanding my good intentions, I haven’t been able to teach at WIZIQ on Fridays. Next week I will try again. Thanks for your patience.