On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 7:15 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

Bill,

Thanks for this challenge.  Let me rephrase, I think Hegel's Notion (in the full sense of the term) of inversion is the most important and unique contribution of his thought to Western Philosophy.  The Notion of inversion is clearly the seed of the concept of becoming, and later of contradictiion in the Science of Logic.  He may not use the term (I haven't read enough of Hegel to know this), but the idea is there, being refined and reapplied,  infusing his thought through and through.  The becoming of being into nothing, and of nothing into being, and the transition to becoming, from thence to determinate being.  The diremption of the self same, and the unity of the different, etc. 

In terms of his own argument, I see his development of the term inverted world, as the sublation of the aporia of the Understanding -- viz., the first supersensible world of the law of identity.  Without the idea of inversion, though the term may not be used (it survives into the Self-Consciousness Section that follows, though), the very idea of speculative thinking falls to nought because unless Hegel can argue that the identity is identity in difference, and that difference is within identity's pores, he cannot develop the concept of thought's internal transformation and transitions of the patterns of consciousness.

If you say Hegel has a strong realist element to his thought (by implication of your point of approval of Kojeve against his generally poor reading of Hegel), he is a realist simply because he sees that the world doesn't reduce to the identitarian laws of the first supersensible world, thus introducing the Notion of difference through inversion in the second supersensible world, incorporating the variance of the real in the realm of thought itself.  Through all this Hegel inverts the Notion of the world as a self-same, stable entity, free of contradiction.

Srivats

On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 7:03 PM bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Srivats, I know that I owe you another response, also about Force and Understanding, but this includes some of the same observations.

First, "inversion" just doesn't seem to hold up as Hegel's methodological principle. He hardly uses the word anywhere else. This makes me think it is the Understanding's principle, and leads into aporia.

Second (a move like Hegel's in the "transition" from Consciousness to Self-Consciousness), it's fairly hard to get a good grip in Hegel's use and abuse (i.e. criticism) of the natural science of his day -- what is he doing? However, it is fairly certain that Force and Understanding is a case of Hegel working with or against (particular) physical science. Here's my suggestion. The concrete universal emerges as the object of consciousness at the end of Perception. This concrete universal is the Earth, or the concrete whole. In F&U consciousness, in order to grasp this whole as a whole, performs what you might call an inversion: it tries to grasp the whole by reducing it to a lawful interaction of forces, everything is supposed to be constituted by attraction and repulsion. One kind of reduction that Hegel presents is the dual-world model with a true supersensible world beyond appearances (that seem to contradict the 2 forces explanation). However, we find that the Understanding's forces explanation fails because each of the supposed forces is implicit in the other -- they are one, or an identity in difference.

So, the Understanding's reductive explanatory model leads into a number of aporia. Then we have self-consciousness, which I earlier suggested is a sort of interlude (though a necessary one) before we return to Reason and the continued examination of the whole. The necessity of the interlude comes from the failure of the reductive approach. Self-consciousness is necessary (but not sufficient) as the kind of consciousness that can arise to a proper grasp of the whole -- absolute knowing. (As Reason, consciousness continues its search for reductive explanatory laws, unsuccessfully.)

Kojeve asserted that Self-Consciousness is the key to the book, but we also know that he ignored (or worse, ridiculed) Hegel's engagement with empirical sciences. (He ignored Observing Reason.) Unfortunately, Kojeve was a very poor reader of Hegel, who influenced many readers (and I say this despite the fact that he recognizes Hegel as a realist).

Bill 

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From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2019 9:13:07 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [hegel] The transition between the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness Sections in PhS

 

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Dear friends,

The transition from the consciousness section (Three chapters Sense-Certainty, Perception, Force and the Understanding) to the section on self-consciousness is a difficult one to follow.  I have come to realize that it is actually a double move: 

One, it is of course as widely discussed (and by Hegel) the progress from the point of immediate, raw realization that self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness, and is therefore the true object of knowledge.  As Hegel argues in the last section, in order to fully actualize this incipient realization, 'we' need to chart the progress of self-consciousness from a different direction, which turns out to be from that of Life and the practical aspect of self-consciousness.  There is also the promise that the truth of self-consciousness and its identity with consciousness will become clear with Absolute Knowing.  So we wait for this while we also at the same time see glimpses of its possibility.

Two, the transition is also one which inaugurates the conscious application of the methodological principle of inversion which is developed in the last part of Force and the Understanding as the law of the second supersensible world.  Up to this point the reader has (more precisely I have) been flailing as Hegel tacks in a seemingly random fashion between consciousness and self consciousness through the previous chapters.  Even at the end of this chapter, the inversion whereby the inner self and the inner world fold into each other, the mediation of the phenomenon collapses, and we 'go to the other side' not only to see, but to give ontological meaning to the inner world, the methodological move isn't quite clear: i.e., we don't understand yet fully here how the principle of the second supersensible world is applied, viz., all that is identical suffers diremption and all that is different comes together (sublates).

But in the self consciousness section, the autonomization of a shape as a living thing in the process of life is tagged explicitly as an inversion.  Then in the trial by death, the intention of self-consciousness to establish its truth by staking its life and taking the other results an inversion of its purpose -- self-consciousness loses itself into nothingness by losing its basis in living and the two collapse into one.  This inversion results in the sublation of the pattern of consciousness to one in which one side realizes that life is as important to it as pure self-consciousness, inaugurating the dependent consciousness of the bondsman.  Then of course there is the inversion of the relationship between the lord and bondsman.

So the point I am making (to clarify it to myself) is that the purpose of the consciousness chapter, in addition to being a starting point for the patterns of consciousness on the way-stations of spirit, is also to provide the methodological first step in the ladder where the principle of Hegel's investigation of the path of spirit is laid out: that the progress of spirit is to be comprehended through the law of the second supersensible world: diremption and sublation. 

Perhaps obvious, but each of us has to learn for him/herself.

Srivats

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R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
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Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
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--

R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
Telangana 500026
Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
Landline: +91 40 2773 5193

--

R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
Telangana 500026
Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
Landline: +91 40 2773 5193