Point well made and taken.

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 8:36 AM 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

I should just mention that I try to adhere to one principle when reading a philosophic text: the philosopher means what he says just as he says it. I know that this is not fashionable in our post-modern times when the text is seen as beyond the control of the author. But I find that when I read a philosopher by following this principle I am forced to take seeming points of incoherence as potentially coherent points when I put in the effort to find this coherence.

 

So, 117 remains one of those points where Hegel does something quite strange. It is up to me to figure out why he does this.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 9:32 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Para 118 PhS

 

 

If I understand correctly what you mean, let me see if I can offer a possible alternative way of looking at this.  Hosle for example (according to Zizek) was suggesting that there was more than a 3, perhaps a 4 or even a 5.  Crites argues that while the program for the work was laid out in the Introduction, as he went onward, Hegel had to deal with the difficulties of each specific detail in the sequences of patterns of consciousness.  That perhaps the Phenomenology was that which was an alternative view of the system.  So if we get down to the dimensionality of each pattern or the circle of circles, perhaps some of these are epicyclic and hypercyclic, and perhaps even 'inter-cycles'.  That is where as sense certainty closed in within itself, the perception section intersects with sense certainty, depending on the spiritual transition established at the end of sense certainty to get into perception and close the cycle as absolute.

 

Perhaps in my ignorance, I have always been a bit wary about thinking of Hegel's system as a fully complete system.

 

It's a bit like in the film Men in Black (I).  "You humans think size is everything.  Why should a galaxy only be huge?" or some such.

 

Srivats

 

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 2:22 AM 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

What is most peculiar about 117 is how the cycle is not self-enclosed or absolute as is typical of a dialectic but instead a cycle that kicks perceptual consciousness back to sense certain cognition.

 

When Hegel first gives an account of the thing with properties, the cycle of determinations seems self-enclosed.. And yet, when in 117 he arrives at the single property that appears within the thing taken as passive medium, he tells us that at this point we by right have the property as isolated from the thing as the properties home.

 

As I said, 117 has always given me trouble.

 

The setup in 118 seems to be the sweet spot of perceptual consciousness as it does not stray from what we know from modern philosophy.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 2:25 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [hegel] Para 118 PhS

 

 

Continuing with 118, I am a bit lost here too (this is my attempt, but corrections welcome):

 

1.  Perceptual Consciousness runs through the cycle of attributing essentiality to the object and then to the subject as it has with Sense Certainty.

 

2. This happens because the model of perception as 'truth taking' has been corrupted.  It is no longer simply accepting what is observed as true, but of reflecting on how the I (PC) perceives what it cannot take as a model of essential truth of the object as a simple -- the property.

 

3.  It becomes definitely known to consciousness that its 'perceiving is essentially constituted' as thus modulated: as it takes the truth it shifts its perspective on what it observes and begins to question what the truth is.  In this questioning, it depends on what it itself (PC) contributes to the process and thus shifts the perceptual process away from a simple truth taking into a reflection into its own self as it perceives.  

 

4.  This return into its own self is essential to perception, i.e., it is integral to the movement of the perceptual consciousness.  And this alters the truth of perception (not of the act, but of the process) as not a simple truth taking.

 

5.  Consciousness immediately recognizes this shift and attributes the error to its own perceptual flaw.  Thus this reflection does not result in the truth being what consciousness pointed to (as in Sense Certainty) but as the error of what the perceptual process brings about.

 

6. "But by this very recognition it is able at once to supersede this untruth; it distinguishes its apprehension of the truth from the untruth of its perception,  corrects this untruth, and since it undertakes to make this correction itself, the truth, qua truth of perception, falls of course within consciousness." In other words, since the perceptual consciousness actually corrects for the error and attributes the rightness to the object, the truth of perception as a process, is something that falls within consciousness. I..e. the truth of perception as a process is signalled by the way in which the PC deals with the possibility of deception.

 

7.  Thus consciousness proper in perception, is now a reflection what is true, differentiated from and at once intertwined with the taking of truth as an operation.  I.e., perception is not a passive process, but an active engagement.

 

In other words, the movement in which the perceptual consciousness attributes the truth to the essentially stable object is at the same time the very movement through which the perceptual consciousness is determining what is true without seeing that it is doing so.

Srivats

 

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 11:35 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

There is no doubt however, that Hegel takes in Leibniz's argument about internal differentiation and determination into his own account.

 

Srivats

 

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 11:34 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

Pushing the Leibniz connection a little bit.

 

The Britannica and the SEP entries on Leibniz, empiricism and rationalism are complicated and confusing..  However, I thought of Hegel's History of Philosophy lectures and found Leibniz on the net.  It just goes to show that Hegel's obscurity is not a lack of capability.  He is so incredibly clear in relation to his account of Leibniz's philosophy.  He divides his account of the philosophy into two parts a and b, in which a has seven characteristic features of monads.  Of these, the third below shows the face off which Hegel's Perception section in the PhS bounces off (to a degree, there are of course many more things happeneing here):

 

quote

In the third place, “however, these monads must at the same time have certain qualities or determinations in themselves, inner actions, through which they are distinguished from others. There cannot be two things alike, for otherwise they would not be two, they would not be different but one and the same.”(9) Here then Leibnitz's axiom of the undistinguishable comes into words.. What is not in itself distinguished is not distinguished. This may be taken in a trivial sense, as that there are not two individuals which are alike. To such sensuous things the maxim has no application, it is prima facie indifferent whether there are things which are alike or not; there may also be always a difference of space. This is the superficial sense, which does not concern us. The more intimate sense is, however, that each thing is in itself something determined, distinguishing itself from others implicitly or in itself. Whether two things are like or unlike is only a comparison which we make, which falls within our ken. But what we have further to consider is the determined difference in themselves. The difference must be a difference in themselves, not for our comparison, for the subject must have the difference as its own peculiar characteristic or determination, i.e., the determination must be immanent in the individual. Not only do we distinguish the animal by its claws, but it distinguishes itself essentially thereby, it defends itself, it preserves itself. If two things are different only in being two, then each of them is one; but the fact of their being two does not constitute a distinction between them; the determined difference in itself is the principal point.

end quote

https://www...marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpleibni.htm

 

It seems particularly apt to use Hegel's account of Leibniz here, because it would tell us exactly how Hegel thought of Leibniz, and not necessarily what Leibniz thought himself.

 

Srivats

 

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 9:12 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

For some reason the first time I posted this my phone seems to have deleted it:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...>
Date: Tue, Jan 1, 2019, 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Some difficulty in 117 PhS Miller
To: <hegel@yahoogroups.com>

 

I agree with you on the importance of the larger process at stake here. My difficulty here is when does focusing on the larger process allow me to disregard the importance of the close focus? How can I figure out when to disregard the detail? I can't. I have to push my reading to it's limit before I am able to take a step back. I'm fairly sure now, it will make larger sense as I go along. But when there is a movement that seems to follow the logic of the understanding, I feel compelled to follow it.

 

Srivats

 

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 1:11 PM 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com wrote:

 

For all the twists in the plot, Hegel stays with the common way of conceiving things and properties. It may sound convoluted but nothing he says strays far from common sense or what the empiricists have already said about the thing and properties.

 

And although common sense says contradictory things both about things and about properties, it employs various differences of respect to cope with these contradictions.

 

What Hegel is trying to do is show that these stratagems fail as the differences of respect do not hold.... But most of this already is the common knowledge of empiricist philosophers.

 

So, we might wonder why philosophers appear here and nowhere else. Moreover, if Hegel is to have only one philosophical position appear over the course of the exposition, why empiricism?

 

Perception seems to be the one mode where what is for us and for consciousness intermingle.

 

I take this to be the structural feature that might be used to explain the appearance of philosophy at just this point in the exposition.

 

Perception is also the one mode where the reader and natural consciousness seem to occupy the same space in the same way. Or it is the one mode of Consciousness where Hegel does not seem to need us to step in for consciousness. Even though we do step in, consciousness seems also to be present and active along with us.

 

What I mean to suggest by these remarks is that we learn little about what Hegel is up to if we focus too narrowly on the problem of making sense of the thing with properties that Hegel is here considering. What really matters is what all this sound and fury might signify.

 

• Alan

 

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2018 1:46 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Some difficulty in 117 PhS Miller

 

 

I differ with you here Paul,

 

The argument is the Perception section is not a description of a chrono-historical stage of consciousness.  It is rather a description of a pattern which exists in a 'primitive' (structural) form even in consciousness today.  It is something that emerges in different contexts in natural consciousness.  Beyond any description, this section is an argument why a strict philosophy of perception based consciousness and knowledge cannot hold significance on its own.  Therefore, Hegel has to choose a pattern that is the most rigorous of all in this pattern -- I don't know if this is so, but my guess is that he chooses Leibniz's.  Again, he doesn't mention Leibniz, and is not fully faithful to him, but as in sense certainty the base model is a kind of sense-empiricism, the model of perception being examined in 117 is akin to the Leibnizian model.

 

The consequences that emerge in the most difficult sequences in this paragraph make sense when seen with the Leibniz model as the criterion of truth in exhibition.  Such a view allows us to see the circular dance of the procession that the understanding goes through at this crossroads or way station.  It allows the disproof of the criterion by means of an experience of consciousness of the property that contradicts the previously held opinion about the object as a single, simple One.

 

Srivats

 

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 11:11 AM Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Srivats,

 

Here are the lines under examination:

 

4.. The object I apprehend presents itself as purely “one” and single.

5.  I am aware of the “properties” in it, properties which are Universal, thereby transcending its singularity! 

6. The first form of being, the objective reality of singularity, was thus an illusion.

 

Here are you're questions: 

 

> Why should 4 be the 'natural attitude' when 

> my natural attitude is nothing like it?  

 

I question this.   Why is your "natural attitude" different from mine?   I naturally perceive each objects in the world as "one" single object.  Don't you?   How do you "naturally" perceive each object?

 

> Why should 5 result in the falsifying of my 

> 'natural attitude'?  

 

Well, Srivats, insofar as the "natural attitude" is to perceive each object in the world as "one" single object, then the recognition that the object is a vehicle for countless "properties" that it shares with countless other objects requires careful thought and reflection.   

 

Are you saying, Srivats, that you already perceive objects as Unified by some Cosmic Scheme of shared properties?  That would be unusual, in my opinion.  In my opinion, most people naturally perceive each object in the world as "one" single object.   To see it otherwise requires careful thought and reflection.   Most people are not "naturally" thoughtful or reflective.  That takes TIME.

 

> And why, thus, should 6 result, i.e.., that as

> you put it, 'the objective reality of a singularity' 

> be an illusion?

 

This is the result of Philosophy -- careful thought and reflection reveal that each object in the world is really one single carrier for Common Properties that are shared by countless objects in the world.