Ok -- that makes sense.

 

On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 9:23 AM 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

One could argue that every section is an allegorical metonym, or in Hegel’s words circles within circles.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 9:25 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Some thoughts on Jean Wahl

 

 

Stephen, there seems to me to be an allegorical dimension to the Unhappy Consciousness, as to the other sections in the book. If I bring in a post-religious reading by a philosopher, theologian and a priest here, Crites, the suggestion is that the Unhappy Consciousness is an 'allegorical metonym' (terrible phrase, but denoting a movement of a part that mimics and is emblematic of the movement of the whole and of all the other parts) of Spirit-in-search-of-itself.  While I respect the history of Hegel reading to this group tremendously, I feel most at home in this kind of reading.  I don't feel intellectually satisfied either by Kojeve's reading or by Wahl's today.  Just as the philosopher is a child of her time, so is a reader a child of his.

 

Srivats

 

On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 2:14 AM 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Your comments recall how most anyone begins as a reader of the work. The allusions are unending making interpretation difficult. If one is fortunate, one finds a way to focus the discourse.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 3:25 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Some thoughts on Jean Wahl

 

 

Paul, I am pretty clear that Wahl’s justification for seeing Christianity in the Unhappy Consciousness would be in terms of what is known of Hegel’s prior interests and reading, i.e. the theological manuscripts and also perhaps the Critical Journal essays. What else does the empty tomb signify?

 

Paul and Everyone else, I would like to say a little more about the chapter as a whole that concludes with the Unhappy Consciousness sub-section. This has two titles, the titles “B. Self-consciousness” and “4. The Truth of Self-certitude”. In other words, Part B. of the book has only one Chapter.. The first Part “A. Consciousness” has three chapters. Strangely, Part C. of the book has no name, but includes all the rest of the book. “Truth” is to be taken in a wide sense (“the truth of the matter”, i.e. the end result, or upshot). The other part of the title (Gewissheit seiner selbst) has the sense of “Self-certitude”, “self-assurance” or Miller’s “Self-certainty”. All the metaphorical uses of Gewissheit in my dictionary retain the core meaning of certainty. The expression is unusual, but the core meaning seems to be being sure of one’s ground in whatever setting. Contrary to any expectation of a tripartite structure, there are only two sub-sections, “Independence... of Self-consciousness” and “Freedom of Self-consciousness”, though the introduction is quite long and so might be considered an untitled sub-section. The first titled sub-section starts with “desire” and “life” and includes the famous “struggle to the death” by which order is imposed by the sword. This is common ground to any society with a class structure and not specifically German or European, though the language is that of German feudalism. It basically discusses the economy.

 

The part on the Unhappy Consciousness is the concluding part of the second section on Freedom. One might argue that the second section on Freedom is an outcome of the first on the Economy, as only economic production permits freedom. However, it seems to me that the two sections can be seen simply as rivals. In the reception of Hegelian ideas for example, it is sometimes pointed out that Wahl’s religious stress on the Unhappy Consciousness is a rival to Kojève’s political reliance on the Struggle for Recognition as the key to the book. It puzzles me that Desire and Work should reappear in the Unhappy Consciousness section. Perhaps intellectual work is meant? I guess I should re-read the chapter. Perhaps there are some clues in the less well known paragraphs.

 

All the best

Stephen Cowley

 

 

From: Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel]

Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 7:04 PM

To: hegel@yahoogroups.com ; hegel@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [hegel] Some thoughts on Jean Wahl

 

 

Again, Wahl is entirely mistaken to project Christ and Christianity into Hegel's narrative in the Unhappy Consciousness.   Hegel's never mentions Christ even one time, so no matter how many dozens of times Wahl repeats hus error, it remains an error.

 

All best,

--Paul

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

 

On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 4:07 PM, 'Stephen Cowley' stephen.cowley@... [hegel]

<hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

[Continued. I have looked again at the chapter on Self-consciousness of which the passage on the Unhappy consciousness is the concluding part. There is a parallel with the first section on Consciousness, which begins with the observation of a tree and a house (a natural object and a human artefact), but in which there is a certain incursion of scientific material by the end of the chapter on Force and the Understanding. The equivalent to science in dealing with self-consciousness is history and hence we might anticipate similar incursions of historical material into the concluding portions of the self-consciousness chapter. Whilst the imposition of order by the sword could happen anywhere, the terms Stoicism and Skepticism have an ambiguity: they are both names, behind which lie historical individuals (Seneca, Sextus Empiricus), but also general modes of thought. Montaigne was a skeptic and Schulze was a skeptical contemporary of Hegel, for example; while the the French revolutionaries were often stoical in outlook. Both chapters then, function as transcendental deductions concerned with the possibility of experience in general, but as experience is always particular, they include scientific and historical material in their latter sections, as we move from the generality of immediate experience to more mediated and conceptual material. – SC]

 

The Unhappy Consciousness in Christianity (Miller, 213-18)

 

Again, I share my own notes before turning to Wahl’s interpretation. 213. The unhappy consciousness changes its focus from the Unchangeable, accompanied by its own self-abnegation, to the embodiment of the Unchangeable. We wish to identify ourselves with (the cause of) Christ. Hegel introduces an equivalent term here: das entzweite Bewußtsein. In Miller, this is “divided consciousness”, but entzweite also has the sense of broken (in two, like a twig). This sheds some light on the nature of the unhappiness, or misfortune, of the unhappy consciousness. 214. This movement towards embodiment is itself threefold, corresponding to:

• Pure consciousness
• Desire and Work
• Self-awareness.

215. Christ may be present to pure consciousness, but his presence is not realised. 216.. Even here, there is an advance of sorts on Stoicism and Skepticism (though Hegel is not clear on what it is). However, he adds, the unhappy consciousness does not know that its own object is its own self, i.e. that its idea of Christ is its own self. [Because it is not, one might reply. The objects of a mind are not necessarily themselves within the mind. ] 217... This first attitude then, is devotion (Andacht). Hegel famously says: “Its thinking as such remains the formless chiming of bells, or a warm fog of incense, a musical thinking...” Hegel finds a reason for the failure of the Crusades in the fact that the physical grave of Christ is something inessential. 218. The world of desire and work (the economy, in other words) impinges on consciousness by its own thinking of itself. It approaches with a kind of self-certainty, but is still lacking due knowledge of its own significance.

 

[It seems odd to me to contrast two pagan philosophies with early Christian religious observance. Admittedly, both are shapes of consciousness that aim to project a unitary character on experience. However, Stoicism was primarily an ethical stance, skepticism a method of intellectual inquiry, and Christianity a form of piety. For the Greeks and Romans, Christianity also involved turning to an independent and (initially) foreign literature for inspiration. Seen more broadly though, both the former were responses to the breakdown of an earlier civic religion, while the latter is a seeking for a new religion, that only later (through desire and work, as Hegel puts it) colors the rest of life. The thread of the narrative, in other words, ranges through quite different fields: political conflict, science, economic life, personal and public forms of piety. It is possible though, that they may become in turn the central concern of a social development (the Schwerpunkt, in Herder’s terminology).

 

The main points that Wahl draws from the text are as follows: 213. We move from the Jewish law to the God of Christianity. We have our expectation of Christ. [But these are extended, altered and corrected by Scripture – SC] 214. Hegel emphasises the distance, even of the incarnate Christ. 215. We look first at pure consciousness. Wahl says: “It will be only later that one ill see that the attention lent to the Unchangeable by consciousness is at the same time an attention paid to consciousness by the Unchangeable.” (180) Wahl calls this “theological relativism” and “mystical monism”. [The relativist interpretation was that of Feuerbach and David Strauss. – SC] 216... Christ is a different figure from the gods of Olympus. Both can be thought of as amalgams of universal and particular, but Christ is a figure of a different order. 217. Piety at fist has the form of feeling. Wahl invokes Schleiermacher as an example. He writes: “Schleiermacher’s thought represents well both the thought of the disciples at the moment of Christ’s death and the thought of the Germanic world.” (184) Jacobi too feels such a longing (Sehnsucht). Wahl attributes a “painful consciousness” to the disciples. [This is overcome in the New Testament, e.g. Acts. – SC] The incarnate Christ is a This, subject to the dialectic of the world of sense (as expounded in Chapter 1 of the Phenomenology). Hence we find a tomb in place of the divine life we seek.. Wahl attributes to Hegel the idea that (naive) piety is something to be surpassed. The disciple, the crusader, the romantic are cases in point. 218. The world of desire and work is to be sanctified. Wahl suggests that religion is to be subverted by the union of subjective and objective in absolute knowledge. The unhappy consciousness will reappear in the Phenomenology on the path to the spiritual daylight of the present.

 

Christianity renders the abstract oppositions of the previous world views concretely. Wahl summarises:

 

“Judaism [...] becomes the Christian unhappy consciousness and gives birth to the idea of the incarnation; and the succession of Kings gives birth to the son of God. [...] But Christianity, although it can, in contrast to Judaism the religion of the indeterminate beyond, be called the religion of the incarnate beyond, remains a religion of the beyond. It concludes a sensuous element that gives rise to a new opposition.” (189)

 

Thus we arrive, not at a synthesis, but at a point of contact that can become a synthesis only through enlargement. This realises itself through:

• Contact (the death of Christ, Crusades, romantic longing)
• Work and communion (Candide, Faust, the blessing of bread and wine)
• Asceticism (Cloisters, priesthood and laity).

Thereafter comes the Renaissance and Reformation.

 

Conclusion

 

One conclusion would be that Chapter 4 – Self-consciousness is essentially a transcendental deduction, with illustrations. Such a deduction is concerned with the limits of possible experience, with the presupposition of particular forms of experience. It proceeds from:

• Life (including primitive economic life), to
• Independence (and dependence), to
• Freedom (at first that of withdrawal, then that of a religious shaping of society).

Hence, a certain amount of actual experiential matter is appropriate, but only to guide the reader through an otherwise abstract presentation. There is an ambiguity as to whether Christianity is to be realised or transcended in the latter stage.

 

Wahl’s book made an impression in France. Subsequently, according to Jacques D’Hondt, Hegel’s name became better known through the surrealists. The curiosity this awakened was met first by Alexandre Kojève’s lectures in Paris in the 1930s, later published. Politics and the struggle for recognition was the primary theme in these. Then came the famous translation and commentary of Jean Hyppolite on the Phenomenology, completed in 1946. As a result, the Phenomenology for long remained the central text in the French – and French influenced - reception of Hegel. This was considerable in the heyday of existentialism, on which Wahl later wrote.

 

Wahl thought that the model of division and reunion of the unhappy consciousness was applicable more generally to experience, as perhaps to the theology of sin and redemption.. This remains an alternative view to the common emphasis on social recognition, initiated by Kojève, as a key to Hegel....

 

(This concludes my remarks on Wahl.)

Stephen Cowley

 

 

From: 'Stephen Cowley' stephen.cowley@... [hegel]

Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2018 2:21 PM

To: hegel@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [hegel] Some thoughts on Jean Wahl