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- Aug 2
John, so your objection is to my inferring that you claim "that the Vichy government was irrational not to participate fully with the Germans in the annihilation of the Jews!"
And your correction is that it is "perfectly rational [for the Germans or their puppets the Vichy government] to liquidate a group of people [Jews in France] in order to take their possessions and money."
And then you imply, given this second premise, that the Vichy government acted rationally only because they got more money from the wealthy Jews by protecting them than they would have gotten as German puppets for giving them up.
Keep digging!
Bill
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From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2019 10:52:23 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [hegel] 'What is real is rational and what is rational is real.'Unsubscribe
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My goodness, Bill, I certainly didn't say that the Vichy government was irrational not to participate fully with the Germans in the annihilation of the Jews!I find it remarkable how seldom any understanding is achieved in these posts.What I said was that the Jews in France were very rich. If the French Jews had been liquidated, it would have meant the "liberation" of vast amounts of property and money. So this is perfectly rational--to liquidate a group of people in order to take their possessions and money.When the holocaust is talked about, there is rarely any mention of the large amounts of property and money that changed hands.So the French Jews presented a large amount of property and money--just there for the taking.The Vichy government was a puppet government of the Germans. What the Germans said--they did. But here they resisted. How did they get away with that? First, they turned over large numbers of Jews to the Germans. The turned over endless thousands of Jews to the Germans. I guess you can look it up if you want. How many thousands of Jews did they turn over to the Germans? But they had to do what they were told. The Germans wanted them to turn over all their Jews.It was a fortunate thing that so many thousands of Jews had taken refuge in France. This meant that the Vichy government hand many Jews, many thousands of Jews to turn over to the Germans without actually turning over any French Jews.But the Germans wanted all the Jews! One might imagine that money changed hands here. The Germans were given many thousands of Jews. And perhaps they were also given much money. As a result the relatives of Proust and Zola and Dryfus were saved.But if the French had put up any sort of fight--they would have been able to save all those Jews--all those thousands of Jews--that they gave up.so there were reasons all around--but many, many thousands of Jews were given up by the French.John-----Original Message-----
From: bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Chris Fanelli <fanellichris@...>; Joe&Anne <josephcol@...>
Sent: Thu, Jul 25, 2019 10:15 am
Subject: Re: [hegel] 'What is real is rational and what is rational is real..'
Bob, a number of your points are good ones, but I draw different conclusions from the same premises.To clarify: I don't deny that the Holocaust (and many other genocides and crimes against humanity) occurred.. But I think the sense of "real" in the Doppelsatz is a distinctive Hegelian sense.You quote Hegel: "The rational is synonymous with the idea, because in realizing itself it passes into external existence. It thus appears in an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena. It wraps its kernel round with a robe of many colors, in which consciousness finds itself at home."You maybe take this to mean that because the rational is described as "an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena," ALL forms, figures, and phenomena must be rational. (To the same degree?)
Then you in my view contradict this: "The more rational, the more real or actual." This is my view of Hegel, which I think I stated. I think where I differ from almost everyone involved in the discussion, if not everyone, is that I take rationality and real, for Hegel, to apply everywhere, including the domain (purported to be) independent of humans. (I also think that for Hegel there is one universe or whole, and humans are a part of it; but that the connection that relates the parts and moments of this whole isn't our thought, but the functional teleology that arises from the Idea and is expressed immediately through the Concept. Reason is our true subjectivity.)
Evil can be said to arise as the undeveloped Concept, lacking in ways. But, importantly, it is not developed to coincide with the Concept. Humans go awry -- we have the freedom to organize ourselves in ways that lack any except the most attenuated connection to the idea or concept. This freedom is "providential," if you prefer that language, but what we do with it often isn't.
The part about the rational being "outside the domain of human behavior" is incomprehensible to me. How would that square with the Doppelsatz? Nothing inside the domain of human behavior (where we find the Holocaust) is real or rational? One could argue that nothing inside or outside the human domain is fully real or rational.You also lose me when you write that Hegel's "reality is not the ovens of the Holocaust, rather the description of the ovens, the linguistic structures needed to describe such horrors." I think you get to this from the Idea. I believe it's mistaken to equate Hegel's Idea with linguistic structures (even if linguistic structures, like everything else, have some relation to the Idea).
And I think it is also mistaken to claim that the real for Hegel is "the description of the ovens, the linguistic structures needed to describe such horrors." For example, in Observing Nature (this is what I've been reading), Hegel through a number of sections discusses sensibility, irritability, and reproduction as "properties" of the organic -- or that's the way it looks. He's actually criticizing Haller, Link, and Kielmeyer, who developed language and methods to examine quantitative relations between those three properties. It was in a strong sense a paradigm for biological science in that place and time. Now the basis of Hegel's criticism is that dealing merely with externals and the relations among them can't get to true understanding. For that, you have to approach the organic (and everything else, we can add) through the Concept -- because the Concept is the undeveloped real, and the undeveloped rational. Were Kielmeyer and the others irrational? No, says Hegel, because despite themselves they had an "instinct of Reason" (not fully developed reason, not absolute reason) that both moved them towards their inadequate ideas of external quantification as a way to grasp the organic, and kept them looking for something better. The point of this long, fascinating digression is that Kielmeyer, etc. has linguistic structures; and according to Hegel, these weren't fully rational. This is to say that there are degrees of rationality for Hegel, and that linguistic structures per se aren't fully rational for him. By the way, the instinct of reason also comes from the Concept.When you (and others) say the Holocaust was rational inasmuch as we can understand it, you assume that we can understand it. John seems to think it made perfect economic sense (and adds that the Vichy government were somehow irrational not to participate fully, unless they had good economic reasons). Mary and Paul (and John) seem to think it was rational because it somehow served God's purposes -- the Holocaust was providential... To me all this seems pretty repulsive. But we do live in a time when folks seem able to accept anything if it's politically expedient. When wasn't this true?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 robert fanelli robertfanelli2001@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2019 6:06:13 PM
To: Hegel Hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Chris Fanelli <fanellichris@...>; Joe&Anne <josephcol@...>
Subject: [hegel] 'What is real is rational and what is rational is real.'UnsubscribeIt appears that you have subscribed to commercial messages from this sender. To stop receiving such messages from this sender, please unsubscribe
Dear group,
Bill said:ยท <It occurs to me that all the participants in this discussion so far assume that the Holocaust was real in Hegel's sense. I think not. ><From Hegel's perspective (as evil as genocide truly is), such events are simply not real because they aren't rational. In more idiomatic English, there's no there there. It was a vacuous event that, because of its vacuity and scope, had overwhelming consequences. >I offer:I disagree. The Holocaust was real and in order for us to understand it as well as possible, it was rational.Hegel said (PR, Preface):" The rational is synonymous with the idea, because in realizing itself it passes into external existence. It thus appears in an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena. It wraps its kernel round with a robe of many colors, in which consciousness finds itself at home. "I offer:Here it is clearly stated that the rational is expressed as that which is described in 'an endless wealth of forms, figures and phenomena.' and such rational structures are the kingpin of cognitive understanding of reality. The more rational, the more real or actual. It is not dealing with deeds, human behavior as to whether it is real in itself. In other words the rational is outside the domain of human behavior. Hegel places no examples of rational or ethical behavior at this point of his treatiseHegel said:"Against the doctrine that the idea is a mere idea, figment or opinion, philosophy preserves the more profound view that nothing is real except the idea."I offer:The 'form' is the frame of reference as to what is real and what is rational. Hegel is referring only to the forms of cognitive understanding. His reality is not the ovens of the Holocaust, rather the description of the ovens, the linguistic structures needed to describe such horrors.
Regards,
Bob Fanelli
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