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- Apr 26, 2016
Chuck, if I may, a red flag here is excluding the Introduction from the body of the PhG. It's essential. It tells us how Hegel will let consciousness work out that it must be self-consciousness, and how self-consciousness will have to work out that it must be spirit. We as spirit can see this.
Bill
"Being is spoken of in many ways." (Aristotle)
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From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of C A V cavermette@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 2:13 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Hegel's Problem and "The Real Issue"
Wil,
"I don't agree that the subject-object dichotomy, or mind-body problem, as it is also related to Descartes' work, is Hegel's "real issue"."
Neither do I. And you will also now notice that this is not what I am insinuating at all.
"What leads you to say that? Hegel dispatches that kind of false issue in the first third or so of the Phenomenology (btw, my text is hardly 500 pages; which text are you reading?)."
I had my old copy of the Baille translation here, and the number I gave was intentional.
Like I said, my approach to the book is very idiosyncratic. The number corresponds to how many pages constitute sense-certainty to the beginning of the absolute knowing chapter. (I perhaps ought to have included the content of the absolute knowing chapter though, I admit.) I've called this (...everything in the book minus the preface and introduction) the "body" of the PhG.
So, look at my argument. Notice what Hegel's problem really is. The body of the PhG can't contain an argument, why? Because if there is an argument in it, then Hegel has not let experience speak for itself. If there is an argument in it, then he begs the question against his romanticist opponents. So he has to be clever. He has to present what comes - oh so close - to being an argument but verges on being a poem (in the introduction) and while the preface contains arguments they are - in my view - not philosophical, but meta-philosophical, (it is Hegel complaining (...whining even) about being a philosopher.)
So when I asked about "the real issue" here, I asked about because now I have a problem. Though I did not always, I now read Hegel as having given us - inter alia - a metaphysics. So reading the book now, I would get wholly different results.
So we might closely read §3. I'll take a crack at it. Hegel whines fluently with false pathos as if to arrogantly praise himself that what passes for authentic philosophy that answers to the real issue is (1) the attempts to satisfy (2), and (2) the demand for "such" explanations. Which explanations does Hegel have in mind? "Such" here is a modifer which in application to "explanations" renders the singular term "such explanations" wholly indeterminate and Hegel knows this very well.
By occurring at the very point following Hegel's discussion of the extant analogy between philosophy and an anatomy he at least has a certain form of reader on his side. For of course just prior to this Hegel has discussed several things which could be counted as "senseless explanations" and he is basically making a one-sided comparison with the present fluently but coming off as sensible by having already made the qualification that really this vicious mode of assimilating the concept that is suggested in the preface is impossible to begin with.
But lets be charitable to Hegel. Perhaps this thought in §3 is not a vicious mode of assimilating the concept. Perhaps he is not being merely fluent - the preference of the romanticists, but is rather being strictly sensible - the preference of the enlightenment. If he is being sensible here, then we can read his assimilation of the concept here as virtuous, rather than vicious. Perhaps Hegel is wholly outside of the demand to satisfy such explanations as he would have to be in order to maintain consistency. Don't worry, I am well aware that the introduction to Hegel... *cough* I mean "the concept" is a few paragraphs away, and I do know that Hegel can certainly be interpreted in the preface as being absolutely vicious so as to arrogantly praise himself. In any event, I certainly would hate to have been fluent senselessly here, as I take it Hegel is in the preface.
So, there's a close reading for you, I am sure there are problems with it. The Preface I believe has inspired many because Hegel is complaining of how he finds himself committed to precisely the fluent senselessness which he complains is senseless. It's a marvelous moment in the history of philosophy. But we should not edify it. The real mystery is whether or not Hegel is himself avoiding the real issue.
What is the real issue? In my view, it is consciousness. What is the real issue for Hegel? This is precisely my point, he doesn't know. (Nor does he care.) What he does know is that it is wholly inappropriate here for him to now, without having furnished a philosophical system (...an exposition of the concept) he is way out of bounds splitting the philosophical landscape into two as if to say "some know what the real issue is, and some don't", and even more out of bounds to insinuate that he is above the fray. This - I take it - is what Rocio Zambrana calls normative ambivalence.
Once Hegel starts talking about "the real issue" though, it seems to me as if... here comes the precariousness, and we now have as readers to wonder throughout the book where Hegel's assimilation of the Concept is precarious/ambivalent or where it is coherent and sensible.
So, Wil, what does this mean, and why should you care? (I do owe you that. I'd hate to have a crummy reading on my hands.)
I for a long time read Hegel as being occupied with semantics, or meaning. I also read him as having in mind what Brandom calls a "normative pragmatics". But now that I think he really does have a form of metaphysics in mind, I find myself really wanting to grasp the ethical dimension of the book. That is to say, I would readily confess that the Reason chapter is still difficult, and that really, I don't think I my grip on Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Knowing is all that good. Hegel refers to many, many things over the course of the way, so it is very difficult what what is for him something concrete shows up for me as an abstraction.
This was a winding and prolix act of explication. Hegel hasn't written clearly enough here to deserve any kinder treatment. "Such writing" is garbage, and Hegel I think knew this - sooner or later - following the publication of the Phenomenology. In §3, a philosopher dodges the real issue... and satisfies the concept which it is being argued ought to be empty. That's the real issue.
So to put the upshot of §3 in the form of a slogan:
In §3, The real issue is that everyone is avoiding the real issue, even Hegel. Hegel's issue is that Hegel should not be in the position where he is committed to doing this.
Phew! Alright Wil. I've laid my cards on the table. You might check if there is any bluffing you can infer. I imagine I'm far off the mark in many respects.
Best,
-ChuckOn Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 11:50 AM, eupraxis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:Chuck,
I don't agree that the subject-object dichotomy, or mind-body problem, as it is also related to Descartes' work, is Hegel's "real issue". What leads you to say that? Hegel dispatches that kind of false issue in the first third or so of the Phenomenology (btw, my text is hardly 500 pages; which text are you reading?).
With all due respect, I am wondering if you are being a tad cavalier in throwing all of these issues out to us. Rather Pavlovian feeling. This particular question of yours, like the innate ideas one earlier and others, has the Analytic attitude written all over it. It is thereby, to my mind, a false question. And sorry to say, a waste of time — unless you have a serious contention with Hegel's way of disarming such presumptions of (in both reflexive senses) Consciousness. Hegel proceeds forward by leaping backwards at each juncture to show the inadequacy of the prior assumption, giving a wider berth to the comprehensibility of Reason in its traversal of itself on the way (back?) to Philosophy. And back to the beginning, free of the fixations of onticality.
The issue is hardly what you seem to presume. It is, rather, the freedom of Spirit.
Wil
-----Original Message-----
From: cavermette@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Apr 25, 2016 11:29 pm
Subject: [hegel] Hegel's Problem and "The Real Issue"
Hello Hegel Yahoo Group,
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel introduced us to a problem, what I shall call "Hegel's Problem".
I finished reading the Phenomenology of Spirit for the first time back in 2012. My the concrete reading of it is 1000+ pages long... we closely studied it. It is in more than one inbox. So rather than bore you with the details, or flooding your inbox with the ridiculous arguments which are contained in that inbox, I will present here what is - in essence - my "reading" of the Phenomenology. That is to say, I will tell you what I think the book is about. I have developed a very idiosyncratic way of looking at this text.Descartes introduced us to a problem: "How do I know that I am Descartes?" The rest is history. Call Descartes problem "The Subject-Object Problematic."
How do we overcome the subject-object problematic? I am glad that you asked.
All we would need to do is furnish a scientific exposition of a certain empirical object: consciousness. Call this exposition the ESEC.
First, Hegel knows that both the romanticists and Kant are wrong about consciousness.
But Hegel has a dilemma, for he also knows...
(1) Either the ESEC overcomes the subject-object problematic, or it does not.
(2a) If the ESEC contains a single philosophical argument, then the SEC does not overcome the subject-object problematic, and the romanticists are right.
(2b) If the ESEC contains a single philosophical argument, then the SEC does not overcome the subject-object problematic, and Kant is right.
(3) But if the ESEC contains no argument, then there is no ESEC.
So, the SEC must contain arguments, but it can't.
This is Hegel's problem.
How did Hegel deal with his problem? I settled my opinion on the matter about four years ago, in a discussion with my interlocutor at the time. One of the keys to my reading is understanding what Hegel means when he speaks of "the real issue". So here, I propose that we talk about that issue. Here is the famous passage, §3 of The Phenomenology of Spirit. Emphasis is on where Hegel refers to what I have here called “the real issue”.
"The demand for such explanations, as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake. Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of arriving at it. The purpose of itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. Similarly, the distinctive difference of anything is rather the boundary, the limit, of the subject; it is found at that point where the subject-matter stops, or it is what this subject-matter is not. To trouble oneself in this fashion with the purpose and results, and again with the differences, the positions taken up and judgments passed by one thinker and another, is therefore an easier task than perhaps it seems. For instead of laying hold of the matter in hand, a procedure of that kind is all the while away from the subject altogether. Instead of dwelling within it and becoming absorbed by it, knowledge of that sort is always grasping at something else; such knowledge, instead keeping to the subject-matter and giving itself up to it, never gets away from itself. The easiest thing of all is to pass judgments on what has a solid substantial content; it is more difficult to grasp it, and most of all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it."
Jerry Fodor once told introduced a comical notion: "The Law of the Irrelevance of First Chapters". I think Hegel's preface contains - in so many words - an attitude Fodor would share with him. So let us pretend that first chapters are not irrelevant.
So what do you think Hegel is referring to when he speaks of "the real business at issue" so early on in the PhG? Why would he start complaining about people who ignore "the real business at issue" at such an odd juncture in the exposition? What is the real business at issue, what is the real issue which he complains too many people dodge?
Best,
-Chuck
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