- Dec 19, 2018If the infinite were not itself determinate (if I do not misunderstand this term) it would not be infinite. But of course it is self-determining, although there too not in some way that could be fully grasped by finite and/or discursive thinking in the sense of ratiocination. So, when we say "God is love", that is determinate, not even if we could affirm the opposite at the same time (or rather that love is itself hate, attraction repulsion, good evil, etc.,(not) sticking to the soulless term "is").This is why the infinite has to be, so to say, hidden, i.e. objectively and not by some wish to be mysterious. It does not lie passive to the mind of some other. That is why it is said in theology that while God can have no real relation to us, we may have, do have it to God, to the Absolute or to what is Absolute (all Hegel's philosophy arises from vivid awareness of this, I would and do argue). For here all relations are rationate or "of reason". Of course adoption of Absolute Idealism entails restatement of this situation. For here all relations are rationate or "of reason" (only, though this term is then no longer appropriate).I do not think Hegel means by "thinking" e.g. at 159, as one can see, finite ratiocination merely. But is it such finite thinking that is a self-thinking, for him? This is not the sense in which Mind thinks only itself, pretty clearly.ie with that. It is the sense involved in the claim to truth that thinking as such entails. "In thy light shall we see light". If this seems to you simple then you must be very complicated.'Is the I a vanishing finitude? We are advised to forget our fathers' house but would we say to our fathers that they are vanishing finitudes? Well, let the dead bury their dead, it was said, but still ...
Stephen Theron.f this seems to you simple then you are very complicated.From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 17 December 2018 20:57
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [hegel] metaphysicsWhere metaphysics has the absolute as the topic of its thought, speculation is the absolute as self-thinking.
And since thinking is by definition determinate, self-thinking is a finite thinking that exhibits the form of its self-thinking – not the content – as absolute or infinite.
Otherwise put, finite thinking as a self-thinking has for its content vanishing finitudes. It is this vanishing content of self-thinking that exhibits absolute or infinite form.
There is no content other than the vanishing finitudes.
This is radically deflationary because it eliminates any notion of the metaphysical however conceived as what thought is about.
- Alan
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 6:00 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] metaphysicsOne might rather say reason thinks the absolute but precisely not as an object and that that is rational. Meaning by reason not ratio (limited?) but intellectus (necessarily infinite and the infinite: the condition for truth in the mind, the truh or otherwise, for example, of your "reason is limit thinking", given that this can be understood ).
Stephen Theron.
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 13 December 2018 19:13
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [hegel] metaphysicsHegel rescues reason by showing how reason abides contradiction.
This is nonmetaphysical because reason does not break through its own limits to think the absolute as if it were some metaphysical object.
Instead, reason is limit thinking.
For Hegel, as with Kant, the illusion – metaphysical in nature - is to believe that there is something thinkably absolute beyond the limit.
The speculative truth of the matter is that what is thinkably absolute is reason at its own limits.
- Alan
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 12:53 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] metaphysicsHello Bruce,
Oddly enough I learned about this division of metaphysics into general metaphysics (which deals with the categories and is the function of the understanding or finite thought) and special metaphysics (which deals with the three Ideas and is the function of reason or infinite thought) from Heidegger (somewhere or another in one of the 20 sets of his lectures that I read).
This distinction applies immediately to Kant's first critique. The first part deals with the categories as determining the understanding (determining its ability to engage with objects outside itself). And the second part, of course, deals with reason which deals with the three ideas (each of which, and the three together, forms a whole).
Kant, of course, denied the possibility of reason--and hence of special metaphysics. To know the whole is simply not a possibility for him. Trying to do so leads to contradictions.
Hegel, then, tries to rescue reason, knowledge of the whole in its three forms, from Kant's attack.
So both Kant and Hegel deal with the categories, with general metaphysics--what Pippin correctly calls transcendental logic because the object is transcendental to us or outside us.
But Hegel tries to rescue special metaphysics or reason. Pippin seems to have no knowledge of this at all.
John
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