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- Jul 20
John, thanks. It's important to note, which I should have done in my prior post, that Westphal has written glowingly about Harris's work as well. So the remarks I quoted aren't intended, I'm sure, to detract from his work in any way. It was Harris who noted the gap in his own work.
Bill
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John, the neglect you mention may be in part due to some reasons mentioned by Westphal (2008, "Force, Understanding, and Ontology"). Quoting the first page of his article at length:
[Begin quote]
In Night Thoughts Henry Harris made plain that Hegel imbibed naturalism deeply in Jena. Harris states:"The balance of social influence has shifted so drastically between Hegel's time and ours ... from the religious to the scientific establishment, that Hegel's own contribution to this shift has itself become an obstacle to the right understanding of what he said. He wanted to swing religious consciousness into full support of a scientific interpretation of human life .... His own choice of language was conditioned by the Christian teaching, but also by the knowledge that the Christian doctrine of spirit was derived from Stoic sources." (Harris 1983, 302)
The Stoics were uncompromising materialists and naturalists. Harris (1998, 492) admitted, however, that Night Thoughts is less successful than Towards the Sunlight because he didn't have detailed knowledge of contemporaneous natural science and so could not explicate Hegel's philosophy of nature effectively. Similarly, Hegel's 1804-05 philosophy of nature is omitted from the collective translation of Hegel's Jena system edited by Burbidge and di Giovanni because
"its translation would require specialized knowledge that none of the [... translating collective] has and also because it is removed from the interests of all of them." (Hegel 1986, vii—viii.)
This lack of interest leaves two members of Hegel's philosophical system — his logic and metaphysics - precariously imbalanced because they lack their third supporting member, the philosophy of nature. This can only result in serious distortion of our understanding of Hegel's system.My point here, however, is that this imbalance also results in seriously misunderstanding Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The same weakness of Harris' Night Thoughts is, Iregret to say, also a key weakness of Hegel's Ladder.[End quote]So, the considerable work to understand Hegel's response to the natural science of his time has been started finally, by Ferrini, Westphal, and others. Ferrini has also shown that the myth of Hegel's ignorance of contemporary science began early in his career (2014, "From Disparagement to Appreciation: Shifting Paradigms and Interdisciplinary Openings in Interpreting Hegel's Philosophy of Nature").
BillThis 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 John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Hello Bill,As for the beginning of the Reason chapter, obviously that is a quite interesting part of the book. But it is also, I think, the first moment of this whole "Observing Reason" thing.It is followed by "Observing Nature", which is four moments, as I outlined.Then the sixth moment is about psychological and logical laws.The seventh and eighth moments have to do with physiology and phrenology.And, finally, the ninth moment is the second introduction. This is, by the way, quite an odd thing. It is an "introduction" in the middle of a chapter! And it is also a quite interesting part of the book. It is where Hegel first introduces spirit (as objective spirit). This is especially odd as the Reason chapter still has about six more sections before it ends, before we finally actually get to Spirit.But when this second introduction is seen, rather, as the conclusion to the whole "Observing Reason" thing, then we can see that this section begins with an abstract notion of Reason as the I that sees itself as all reality and ends with the concrete notion of Reason as [objective] Spirit..And this is the third moment of the book over all, after Consciousness and Self-consciousness. It is, moreover, a moment that is almost completely neglected by Hegel scholarship, except, perhaps, for the few words by your friend, Ferrini.John-----Original Message-----
From: bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Sent: Fri, Jul 19, 2019 2:24 pm
Subject: Re: [hegel] Another wrinkle
John, thanks for responding.If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that, because internal teleology is the definition of the organic (for Hegel), internal teleology must appear to Observing Reason (OR) as the definition of the organic.Yet throughout the discussion of Reason observing nature, Hegel articulates and develops the shortcomings of the misconceptions that OR holds. This is recognizable as Hegel's method. It seems to me that Hegel never brings OR -- in the Observing Nature section -- to a point where OR grasps nature in a way that would allow it to recognize inner teleology as the definition of the organic ...Or of the inorganic, for that matter. Throughout the section, even after he begins to discuss organic nature, he continues to bring in examples and discussions that are inorganic. I suggest that inorganic/organic are for him like acid/base -- two vanishing moments that don't exist as static, self-standing things.In 257 and 258 Hegel describes internal teleology. This is probably what you are remembering. However, he is very clear that Reason, instinctual at this point, continues to think of the purpose of a living thing as outside the organism, and even possibly in anther intelligence (258 and 259). So his presentation of internal teleology is for the purpose of clarifying OR's unsuccessful attempts to grasp the Concept and internal teleology.(In 257 and 258 Hegel uses Zweck [purpose] and Ende [end, result] in ways that appear [not quite always] to make a distinction, but Miller uses "End" in most cases.)(See deVries, 1991, "The Dialectic of Teleology," btw for an overview of Hegel on teleology and organicism.)I'm including my "outline"/marginalia for the beginning, not because it's directly related, but because it might stimulate some comments.- 231-233, Transition: Individual and Universal: The Problem of “Otherness”
- 231, Transition from UC to Reason
- 232, Reason and Its Other
- 233, Reason and Idealism: How Otherness vanishes for Reason in its first moment
- 234-239, Spurious Idealism and its Categories
- 234, The context and nature of idealism in its first moment
- 235, A spurious idealism and its spurious categories
- 236, The self-constrained “singular individual” in this spurious idealism: Pure consciousness
- 237, Antinomies of “pure consciousness” in the Singular Individual
- 238, Antinomies in Kant and “absolute empiricism”: Meaning and Perception in the new skepticism
- 239, Transition to the ascent to “Actual Reason”
BillThis 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 John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Hello Bill,I don't have the book with me here, though I can certainly look at things in more detail later.To begin with, I think the first paragraphs of Observing Reason, which might be paragraphs 240-243, are actually the conclusion to the introduction to the Reason chapter.Baille, by the way, is kind enough to mark off paragraphs 244-254. He places a chapter heading over para. 255. At any rate, these paragraphs, 244-254, have to do with the observation of nature in general. It is only with paragraph 255 that the particular problem of observing living things is introduced.Paragraphs 255-263 definitely have to do with internal teleology. I haven't read this section lately. I could certainly do so if necessary. But internal teleology is the definition of organic, as opposed to inorganic, nature. A living thing is that whose end is simply itself. This is opposed to external teleology where a thing is put to some use beyond itself.I did read through 264-284 the other day. Obviously this starts out by introducing the concept of the living animal: sensibilty/irritability/reproduction. This concept, then, is the inner which has an immediate outer and a mediated outer. After establishing all this, then he shows that laws involving these things don't work.But without question 255-263 deals with internal teleology.John-----Original Message-----
From: bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Jul 17, 2019 10:04 am
Subject: Re: [hegel] Another wrinkle
John, I'm putting together my own "overview." But even now I see several points of fundamental disagreement.So, you have:Bardis: "244-254 which deals just in general with the observation of nature;"Bardis: "255-263 which introduces the problem of life as embodying purpose--internal teleology;"Bardis: "264-285 this is the part that we are looking at, which deals with the concept of life in its relation to the structure of living things;"I don't break these up exactly as you do (that's not what I call a fundamental disagreement).First, preliminary to Observing Nature, which is part of a longer "observing" piece:- 240-346, Observing Reason (i.e., Observing Reason Observing: The Phenomenology of Self-Limiting Reason)
- 240-243, Return to Meaning, Perceiving, Understanding; why Reason observes [and observation assumes sensing and perceiving]
- 240, Reason immediately thinks of the world as its own possession (seinen/meinen)
- 241, Reason sets out to take actual possession of everything in the world -- but it can’t get no satisfaction because it is in fact deeper itself than this superficial purpose.
- 242, Reason believes that it apprehends things as sensuous particulars, mistaking sensuous expression for concept. [Pinkard trans. much clearer and closer to the original]
- 243, Prelude to Reason in its Observational Role: What it Looks for in Nature, Spirit (both of those in Sensuous Being), and Itself
That is important to Hegel's context: Observing Reason limits itself in a series of related ways. Now, to the fundamental differences.One, where you have "just in general with the observation of nature", I want to insist on: "244-255, Observing Externals." Reading these sections carefully, you can see that Hegel is criticizing various approaches that assume that to observe an object in its externals (that is, not Conceptually) is to observe it as it is.
Two, where you have "the problem of life as embodying purpose--internal teleology," I want to insist on just the opposite. Hegel is criticizing in sections 255-282 various attempts by Observing Reason to uncover laws based on external observables. (Eventually, this approach leads to inner and outer and the search for laws -- reminiscent of how the understanding conceptualized force.) So in 255/256-260/261, we get: The Laws of External Teleology (i.e. teleology according to Observation). That's why in 255 he writes, "Finding thus no place in the actual creature, it is what is called [sc. erroneously] a teleological relation, a relation which is external to the related terms, and therefore really the antithesis of a law. It is a conception completely freed from the necessity of Nature, a conception which leaves that necessity behind and operates spontaneously above it." (Miller)
And in 256: "It is true that, for the observing consciousness, this Notion is not the organism's own essence, but something falling outside of it, and is then only the above-mentioned external teleological relation." (Miller, emphasis added in both quotes)
Ferrini ("Reason Observing Nature," 2009) sees these divisions (using the section headings in her paper):- External Descriptions and Internal Differences in the Classification of Nature.
- The Laws of Inorganic Nature: their Theoretical Inwardness and Empirical Outwardness.
- Inner and Outer in Observation of Organic Life.
Moving from the Unhappy Consciousness, consciousness has concrete particulars on one side, and the universal aspects of these particulars on the other. The problem for it seems to be, how to link these two moments. (The two moments are inherited from UC, which is the significance of that section [and not the question of whether Christianity or Hinduism informs that part].) Reason tries to do this through observation (cf. Sense Certainty), laws (Gesetzen). My approach is to construct a table of contents based on this framework.BillThis 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 John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Hello Bill,If I were working on Hegel right now, then it is, in fact, just the Observing Reason section that I would be working on. Inspired by your post I did work through the relevant part of the section yesterday.Just to begin with, the section really needs a table of contents. Actually the whole section is called "a. Observation of Nature". It runs from paragraph 244 to paragraph 297. But this is in four parts:244-254 which deals just in general with the observation of nature;255-263 which introduces the problem of life as embodying purpose--internal teleology;264-285 this is the part that we are looking at, which deals with the concept of life in its relation to the structure of living things;285-297 which I would need to read again to properly characterize.At any rate, we are dealing with paragraphs 264-285. But 22 paragraphs is still a good many to deal with all at once. But this part is itself divided, more or less, into three parts:First, paragraphs 264-268 are an introduction of sorts, introducing the concept of animal life as sensibility/irritability/reproduction which is the inner of an animal, then the outer of each of the three inner moments, and finally the outer structure of the animal as a whole.Then paragraphs 269-275 which deal with the possibility of framing laws concerning the relation of different moments of the concept--primarily laws dealing with the relation between sensibility and irritability.And, finally, paragraphs 276-285 deal with the possibility of laws that relate the concept of life as a whole with the outer structure of an animal.So this is just a beginning, I hope, to dealing with the section.John-----Original Message-----
From: bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Sent: Mon, Jul 8, 2019 12:07 pm
Subject: Re: [hegel] Another wrinkle
John, not animal life alone. Hegel is explicit about this -- please read it."Irritability" in biology doesn't mean annoyability. It means responsive.Hegel explicitly speaks of viscera in a broad sense and the two senses of reproduction I mentioned -- please read Observing Nature. Maybe you've forgotten. So it's not simply "eating." "Sensibility, let us say, as a nervous system, Irritability as a muscular system, Reproduction as a visceral system, for the preservation of the individual and the species." (267 Miller)In 265 Hegel mentions and puts aside plants as life but undeveloped in terms of sensibility and irritability."Those first simple, organic properties, to call them such, are Sensibility, Irritability, and Reproduction. These properties, at least the first two, seem indeed to refer not to the organism ["Organismus," and by definition, life] in general, but only to the animal organism. As a matter of fact the vegetable organism expresses only the simple Notion of the organism, which does not develop its moments. Consequently, in regard to those moments, so far as observation has to take account of them, we must confine ourselves to the organism which exhibits them in their developed existence." (265 Miller trans.) (BTW, throughout most of Hegel's discussion of the "organism" in Observing Reason, the word Miller translates as "organism" is "Organisch," organic, as in "the organic," and not "Organismus."John: "And then, with sexual reproduction you affirm your species in the face of death." This seems way to existential to me. Animals aren't conscious of death when they reproduce (affirm?) the species.
How do you come to your conclusions about these "properties" as universal, particular, and individual, respectively? You don't have to educate me about universal, particular, and individual. Why the correspondences you give?BillThis 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 John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Hello Bill,The concept of animal life is the triad: sensibility/irritability/reproduction.This shows up first in the Observing Reason section of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Then it shows up in the section on Life as the immediate form of the Idea towards the end of the final volume of the SL. And finally it turns up, of course, in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature.This comes from Schelling's philosophy of nature. And Schelling got it from the biology in Germany at the end of the 18th century. A couple of books on this biology have come out quite recently.At any rate, sensibility is obviously the universal moment of the concept of animal life. The animal looks around and sees things.Irritability is the particular moment. The animal feels things that bother him--particular things immediately impinging on him.Reproduction primarily has the meaning of eating. This is the individual moment, first, in the sense that it is the synthesis of sensibility and irritability. You see something that you want to eat. You touch that thing, grab it.And reproduction is the individual moment, secondly, because by eating you reproduce your self, you affirm yourself.And then, with sexual reproduction you affirm your species in the face of death.Hegel doesn't go into plants in the Observing Reason section of the Phenomenology. But plants are all about reproduction. That is especially what their fruit and their flower is all about--as well as their roots and leaves. They are slightly irritable. They react, for instance, to the sun. But their sensibility is quite limited.John-----Original Message-----
From: bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Sent: Mon, Jul 8, 2019 9:03 am
Subject: Re: [hegel] Another wrinkle
John, I agree with you that living things are embodied (both per Hegel and sans phrase). But I also assert that this isn't simply insofar as they "reproduce" (in the 2 senses Hegel mentions in Reason, by reproducing their bodies by means of viscera [eating] and by producing new generations); sensibility (sensing) and responding to things that are sensed ("irritability") also require embodiment (as well as something to sense and respond to).I don't know what you mean by "simple perception," but Hegel presents even the sensibility of sense certainty as embodied (it turns, it has a here, it has a now)....I find it mildly curious that Hegel, in Observing Reason (265 ff.), presents sensibility and irritability before reproduction, especially since reproduction (as Hegel says) is more developed in plants than the other two.BillThis 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 John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Hello Srivats,The cool thing about desire as opposed to simple perception is that it means you have a body.You are hungry and need something to eat.With mere perception there is the question as to whether the "thing" is real or an illusion. But with desire, not only do you have a body, but the thing to be eaten must also be real with a body.Our first (and usually our only) concern about other living things is can we eat them? or will they eat us? Biology, the theoretical concern for living things without regard to fear or hunger, is a late development--or more usually a development that never really happens. At any rate, as I mentioned earlier, the Observing Reason section is about 18th century biology.I haven't recently read the opening section of the Self-consciousness section. I seem to recall that it has to do, first, with the animal being more or less the center of the world, with life in general simply being its food. Then life in general becomes the central concern, with the individual animal being just one part of a greater ecology.Of course I would need to read it again to see all the details. But just to start with I wanted to emphasize that we have left the realm of theory. We are no longer disembodied thinkers. Soon we will not only be hungry--but we will fight one another to the death! This chapter as a whole almost makes a joke of academic philosophy as the product of odd thinking machines.Certainly, life is the immediate form of the Idea. You could definitely call it an absolute, a self-sustaining ecology. And the next moment of the Self-consciousness chapter is where we desire recognition as beings that are more than simply alive.John-----Original Message-----
From: R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 5, 2019 9:32 pm
Subject: Re: [hegel] Another wrinkle
John,In the first reading, what you say is true. But in the paragraphs that follow, I think up until 171, Hegel characterizes Life as distinct from self-consciousness. The question of desire is not simply at the level of an animal or a man consuming something. Desire in its primordial form is that which marks the process of self-exclusion and other-inclusion that characterize the determination of the determinate form to subsist in the flux of the universe. It is the identity in difference of the stable forms that become determinate in the flux in order to develop the determination to subsist as stable forms.So the difference between desire and knowledge is the pre-eminence of the former. It is the former that drives the process of knowing through which self-consciousness (even primordially of emergent forms of life) differentiates an other, excludes that other from itself, and then incorporates it within itself to make the other (the world) its own. Self-consciousness is the move of desire to consume the world (not only physically, but conceptually).Life is that which resists -- at the one level, runs away like a rabbit from a fox. At the other level, it resists becoming other because of its history in human consciousness and desire -- e.g., the chair cannot conceptually become a book. The living thing is, until paragraph 171, not yet another I (except in some cases implicitly expressing the presence of many Is in-itself).So what I was trying to approach when I said that Hegel brings in obliquely the Absolute here, is his implication regarding the manner in which the forms of life don't depend on self consciousness. As Leibniz said (and I imagine he did, or may be someone else), claws and teeth don't exist for our knowledge -- they exist because the animal has to eat, to subsist. So what is the form of the in-itself that determines the existence of the teeth and the claws? Similarly (yet differently) a table doesn't exist simply because one self-consciousness is certain of its truth in its own world -- it exists because it is the objective spirit that has come into being-in-and-for-self through human history. For this reason a table cannot become anything arbitrary -- it can only develop. Here the Absolute is more complex than in the manner of its exhibition in simple Life. It is an Absolute that includes self-consciousness in its infinity.Srivats - << Previous post in topic