On Thu, 2 Aug 2018 at 23:08, 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Let me add another example to mull over.

 

You host a Western friend who is visiting India for the first time and has only a casual knowledge of Hindu culture. You visit a Hindu temple that you both are visiting for the first time. Your friend will probably be struck in many ways by the strangeness of what he sees while you will be struck by a multitude of indicators of how this temple differs from other such temples.

 

So, what is significant to you and what is significant to your visitor will be radically different because of the different understandings you each bring to this visit.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2018 10:29 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] identity and difference

 

 

I've read this post a couple of times.  There's something I don't quite understand about the problem. My day has been very busy.  I'll reply tomorrow -- still thinking.

Srivats

 

On Thu, 2 Aug 2018 at 14:09, 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

You ask: “What is the structure of significance?”

 

Maybe better put: what marks something as significant?

 

Answer: from something, something else may be inferred.

 

Example: a murder suspect has in his possession the wallet of the victim. This is significant because it strongly suggests that the suspect might be the murderer.

 

Example: a family has a cross hanging on their living room wall. This is significant in that it strongly suggests that the family is Christian.

 

If we did not know the wallet was the wallet of the victim, then we would not notice what it signified. We could not draw the inference. Or if one did not know that the cross is associated with Christianity, then one would not make the connection of the cross on the wall to the religion of the family. Again, one could not draw the inference. Typically, things that signify are not the source of their own significance. The source is the knowledge one brings to the situation.

 

So, you say:

“To me, it would seem that rhythm as a logico-temporal form of intellectual recognition is the only immanent source of significance.  To that extent, the rhythm and harmony of thought would have to be the play of habit and intention, or necessity and freedom.”

 

An immanent source of significance would be something that is self-signifying. But rhythm is not self-signifying. It is not immanent. We for our own reasons can decide where to put the accent. We can create our own rhythm. The notion of a counter-rhythm suggests this possibility.

 

For the understanding, the repetitive back and forth of the dialectic of being/nothing is seamless and senseless. For the understanding, the fact that thought cycles signifies that this thought means nothing because for the understanding what cannot be pinned down or specified lacks meaning. And since in the Phenomenology, the dialectic signifies to natural consciousness its inability to pin down its object, the dialectic signifies failure. The same dialectic signifies to the reader something positive because such a reader is alert to the absolute form of the dialectic that signifies the true. Once again, significance relates to what one brings to - or better still, what one develops from - one’s reading.

 

The Phenomenology can be read as a mystery where nothing seems to make much sense until we reorient our point of view. Our natural habits of thought that determine, for example, what a dialectic signifies block comprehension. Only when we eliminate such habits can we appreciate the speculative significance of the dialectic. Only when, for example, we piece together enough clues are we able to see that we have been misconstruing the significance of what is in full view. We thought we have been watching the pathway of despair that natural consciousness follows when, in fact, what we have been watching has the significance of being the progression of our own education to the standpoint of science.

 

I would submit that what is unique to speculative thought is what uniquely specifies thought: the perspective shift that transforms nonsense into sense, or what transforms something commonplace into something significant.

 

Most readers of the Phenomenology do not see what motivates Hegel to call the dialectic the truth of consciousness first because they do not recognize the absolute form and second because they do not associate the true with such a form. In short, most readers of the Phenomenology do not know the significance of what they are reading because they are unable to relate what they read to the web of inferences - the web of significations - to which what they read relates.

 

The key question is always: what is Hegel trying to tell us? What is the significance of his exposition?

 

• Alan

 

 

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 10:14 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] identity and difference

 

 

Alan

 

There seem to be many points in your post.  Let me try to respond (in parenthesis) to some of your comments

 

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 at 21:51, 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Hegel mentions rhythm and harmony.

 

The rhythm relates to the repetitive cycle where a distinction is drawn and then withdrawn only to be drawn again. The accent would come on the moment when the distinction is withdrawn. The meter would simply count the moments of the cycle which in a dialectic are two. We get the Hegelian triad by having the first moment counted twice, first as immediate and then as a mediated return to the first.

 

This is a pleasing image. But it does not explain anything. It does not explain why there is this rhythmic movement or what it might mean.

 

[How would something mean something if one weren't to have an external foundation to tell us that that significance is right?  What is the structure of significance?  To me, it would seem that rhythm as a logico-temporal form of intellectual recognition is the only immanent source of significance.  To that extent, the rhythm and harmony of thought would have to be the play of habit and intention, or necessity and freedom.

 

In addition, the rhythm and harmony metaphor seem to be important to distinguish Hegel's position from those that insist on a flash of insight, of an immediate oneness, a burst of knowledge.]

 

As for the harmony, this pictures the disparate moments that form a whole just because of the way that they differ. Being and nothing are not simply discordant. They also are one - they also are in harmony - as becoming.

 

But again, this is nothing more than a pleasing image. It does not explain.

[See my previous entry in this post].

 

 

I should also note that I fudged one issue in my post yesterday.

 

For Hegel, “God is being” is not potentially a speculative proposition because god does not fall into being. As Hegel says, being is too poor a determination to be a determination of god. However, since the nonspeculative understanding of god does treat logical determinations such as being, infinite, ground, and actuality as attributes of god, the Logic can be read as a deconstruction of such misconceptions.

 

Much of the commentary by Hegel in his remarks are critical observations about the traditional metaphysics of substance. The overarching criticism is of the view that the absolute - and thus god - is conceived as a substance with attributes. Speculation as critique is a critique of this conception of the true or absolute..

 

So, more appropriately, and logically speaking, for Hegel, “God is the true or absolute”. God as taking the subject position - and thus presented propositionally as self-standing - falls into the true or absolute.

 

[Yes, the proposition/exposition "God is the true or absolute" definitely reads better than "God is Being".  We (in our group) also immediately (with the help of the commentaries) picked out the point that God is Being is not Hegel's own formulation -- it is a speculative reading of what was probably God's assertion to Moses.

 

However, I guess at this indeterminate (beginning or end) point in the exposition, Hegel perhaps felt that God is the true or Absolute would not cause the kind of problem God is Being would have.]

 

But again, this does not happen at any point in the Logic. This is more of a meta-reflective point about the distinction between nonspeculative talk - god talk - and properly speculative talk which is Hegel’s system.

 

So, the absolute as infinite is the self-divided, self-sustaining infinite movement that exhibits the characteristic form of its movement. This is not the movement of some god. It is the movement of a reason that can only be actualized by the finite human intellect. The infinite as emergent and self-generative is the infinite weaved into being by the finite human intellect as made evident by Hegel most forcefully in his Logic.

 

[This is a point you have made many times, but it is easier to get in this response to my own thought process!]

 

 

However, there is one more twist. Although Hegel has much to say about god in the Logic, unlike being, the infinite, ground or actuality, again, god is not a determination of the Logic. The god of the Logic as the god of philosophy is a free-floating concept meant to represent the metaphysical ultimate which in the tradition is conceived in a variety of ways, many of which Hegel critiques along the way..

 

God only appears as a determination in the Phenomenology and in the lectures on religion. That is, god only appears as a determination outside of the system. And as outside of the system, god is only a determination for consciousness.

 

And as such, god ultimately serves as the hinge between representational and speculative thinking.. God pictured as dying so that the religious community might emerge as the final truth of consciousness - a truth poised between its own past/future - is the impasse (the community stuck in time going nowhere) that speculatively becomes the dialectical motor for the speculative development.    

 

• Alan

Thanks

Srivats

 

•  

 

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 3:42 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] identity and difference

 

 

This is immensely clear, yet I have to wrestle with how it actually is organic to 61-62 specifically..  I am not trying to fit your post into the preface -- but if I have to understand my question to "get what the falling into or out of the thinking subject signifies, and in what register, to what purpose and how", I need to anchor it there and then go on..

 

As you say your post goes part of the way: it explicates the logic of the exposition of "God is Being".  What it seems not to do for me is actually address how the metaphor of rhythm works here.  

 

Let me explore this dissatisfaction further:

 

If we accept that the metaphor of rhythm is not something to be discarded, which i think we shouldn't because it addresses explicitly the difference between immediate identity (which speculative thought does not fall into) and informed, structured process of identification (which seems to be what the concept is about).

 

How should this metaphor of rhythm be read?

 

Logically, what you say (your option 2 in the option 3), i.e.., "the second sort of identity statement would beg the same question. But it is closer to what Hegel has in mind. We are being invited by Hegel to understand god as Hegel understands being.." 

 

In other words, to understand god as being, one would have to begin down the road which proposes that god has to be understood as Hegel understands being and follow its consequences.  That is the proposition is not one of an attribute, nor of a categorical container, nor a  statement of immediate identity. It is the beginning of a process of identification which seems to raise more questions.

 

I'll stop here.

Srivats

 

 

 

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 at 04:01, 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

“God is being” read theologically says that without god there is no being. Theologically, god is the source of all that is. Or, existence is an emanation of the supreme being. So, when Hegel says in paragraph 62 that since being is the essence, god ceases to be a fixed subject and has fallen into the predicate - has been absorbed into the content - he is saying something quite radical.

 

And what is most radical butts up against propositional form.

 

“A rose is red.” “A rose is a plant.”

 

In the first sentence, red is an attribute of rose. Rose is the substance. Red is the accident.

 

In the second sentence, rose is a species that falls under the genus plant.

 

So, we might ask: which of these two senses is meant when one says, “God is being”?

 

For Hegel, neither sense is meant.

 

Being is not an attribute. Nor is being a more comprehensive concept under which falls the less comprehensive concept god..

 

So, if “God is being” is meant to have a speculative sense, then what is this sense?

 

Well, one sense that still stays within the bounds of discursive thought would be to say that what we have is an identity statement. God and being are co-extensive.

 

But then if this identity statement is to be informative, then one of two things must be happening.

 

Either two terms whose senses are well understood are shown to be identical. For example, we learn that the morning star is identical to the evening star.

 

Or, one term is used to enlighten us about the other. Definitions are like this. So, when we say bachelor is identical to an unmarried man we are informing someone about the meaning of bachelor by attaching an informative predicate, one that defines the term bachelor.

 

The first sort of identity statement would in the present case beg the question: how precisely are god and being identical? The statement is not informative. It is perplexing.

 

The second sort of identity statement would beg the same question. But it is closer to what Hegel has in mind. We are being invited by Hegel to understand god as Hegel understands being.

 

Stripped down, this amounts to saying that we are being invited to understand substance (god) as subject (being understood as the infinite movement of the concept).

 

Now, on this understanding, substance becomes a moment of the infinite movement.. What is first taken as self-standing falls into the infinite movement.

 

So, it is not that the subject as something discrete falls into the predicate as something else that is discrete. It is that the predicate properly understood is both the falling into and that into which the subject falls.

 

The speculative predicate does violence in this way to the subject. God ceases to mean something that is a self-standing substance. God becomes a moment of being speculatively comprehended as an infinite movement..

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 11:17 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] identity and difference

 

 

Srivats, responding to your response,

 

Since Hegel regards measure as the transition to essence, I think there is more than a spectre. In some important sense, grasping the meaning of a begreifende propostion depends on grasping its rhythm -- that is, the rhythm of the proposition as the sublation of the moments of subject and predicate. In the examples included in 62, Hegel refers to the predicate as essence.. In other terms, the predicate, as essence, is the internal rhythm (or measure) of the subject [subject 1 in 60, not the "I"] in its immanent otherness.

 

One assumption that may be unwarranted here is that "To be or not to be" is a begreifende proposition. Is it a proposition at all? Is it "speculative"? 

 

I do recognize, however, that Shakespeare has a firm grasp of the significance of measure that rises perhaps to begreifende thought quite often. 

 

Even if, however, Shakespeare was a speculative thinker, and recognized the begreifende nature and impact of character, things, and action, and if he portrayed this in the character of Hamlet Jr. to the extent that Hamlet has speculative thoughts (reaching toward the whole as he does), Hamlet struggles with this and some of his sentences are certainly not begreifende propositions.

 

I agree with this paragraph of yours:

 

"What I am trying to say here in line with 60, is that explicitly speaking, as in the first paragraph under number 60, the firm, crystallized Subject Predicate relationship of the proposition, flows out in such a way that the predicate is no longer an abstract external characterization or determination of the hypostatized subject, but is part of the subject in its development according to its Notion.."

 

I think the I of the second part of 60 is already under the influence of ratiocinative thinking (cf. Hegel's comments in 63), being used to ascribing and questioning predicates at will, and so this I resists the begrifende nature of the proposition, not because the subject and predicate in the begreifende proposition become interchangeable (as Alan seems to suggest), but because that predicate expresses the essence and measure of the subject, and the subject finds its essence and measure in the universal predicate. The poor "I" is left -- as long as he resists begreifende truth -- outside of the Concept: finite, undefined, and lost.

 

The important point is that the universal/essence (begreifende predicate) is the measure (rhythmic harmony) that was in the Concept for the subject all along. Hegel uses the word "formally" to qualify 61 because in that section he uses no examples.

 

There are two examples of speculative propositions in 62: "God is being"; and, "the actual is the universal..." I think 62 is a brief summary of how these begreifende propositions, understood Conceptually, disrupt non-begreifende thought.

 

Bill 

 

"All things exist, yet they do not exist equally." (Ian Bogost)

 

This email may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this email in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this email. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this email is strictly prohibited.

---

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2018 9:10:04 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] identity and difference

 

Unsubscribe

It appears that you have subscribed to commercial messages from this sender. To stop receiving such messages from this sender, please unsubscribe

 

There surely is the 'spectre' of measure as a qualitative determination Bill, and it must be acknowledged in its nuance since Hegel's effort in his work is to explore the path toward thinking beyond hard-bound categories. 

 

Let me reproduce the text of my exploratory post (of which I said I am not sure of what I am doing, to which your responded)

 

quote

I agree with what you are saying. I also think further that the abstract subject and predicate are sublated through this indecision of the content in such a way that the speaking/thinking subject that performs this utterance will also fall into the Notional 'form' of the proposition. In other words, the question "to BE or NOT to be" begins to inform the thinking subject through the Notional comprehension of that expressed indecision.

 

But this falling in is not a formless collapse. It occurs with a rhythm that is characteristic of that particular Notion. This submission to the rhythm is what makes someone other than Shakespeare's Hamlet comprehend the dilemma

end quote

 

What I am trying to say here in line with 60, is that explicitly speaking, as in the first paragraph under number 60, the firm, crystallized Subject Predicate relationship of the proposition, flows out in such a way that the predicate is no longer an abstract external characterization or determination of the hypostatized subject, but is part of the subject in its deve

(Message over 64 KB, truncated)