- Sep 2Bill,Your quote says science lacks actuality. Not that inversion lacks actuality. You are reading inversion into the ordinary notion of science completely. I am reading inversion as the transition from an ordinary notion of science to a speculative one. Hegel marks this transition by invoking the inverted world.A difference which is no difference is a diremption of the self-same and a sublation of difference. This is a fundamental insight of the new Science Hegel proposes, and argues the need for in the Preface.If you think this is bandying words, I have nothing further I can say.
Srivats.For the rest, it seems to me that your limited responses amount to bandying words. A distinction without a distinction may not be "nothing," but it is a distinction that rests on no true distinction, and it would be a determination without determination. I think Hegel says this is the definition of nothing.
Bill
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Again interspersed:Lots to comment on, but first, Preface 26.
When Science and consciousness each "appears to the other as the inversion of truth," the question to ask is what is this Science. I believe you are assuming that "Science " here is Hegel's completed speculative science. I don't think so. [No, this science is incomplete since it hasn't yet incorporated the ordinary consciousness within it and shown it its home. As you elaborate in the next paragraph -- also read my response again, I too say it is incomplete]
In 26 and environs Hegel is developing not only the natural attitude to science [Yoven points out that this anticipates and responds to an objection brought by Kierkegaard, p. 115], but also, and even more, the need for science to develop to truth so that it can "unite this element [simple consciousness] with itself ... In lacking that actuality, Science is but the content as in-itself, the purpose of which is still only inwardness -- not spirit, but a spiritual substance.... [27] This becoming of science in general, or the becoming of knowing, is what this phenomenology of spirit represents." (Yoven trans, p. 118)
Pinkard: "Accordingly, science has to unite that element with itself or to a greater degree to show both that such an element belongs to itself and how it belongs to it. Lacking actuality, science is the in-itself, the purpose, which at the start is still something inner, at first not as spirit but only as spiritual substance. It has to express itself and become for itself, and this means nothing else than that it has to posit self-consciousness as being at one with itself. 27. This coming-to-be of science itself, that is, of knowledge, is what is presented in this phenomenology of spirit as the first part of the system of science."
This supports the view I'm asserting, that "inversion" is a view constructed by the intelligence/understanding (and here, also implicit in everyday consciousness). [No doubt -- I have already stressed a perspectival difference between your criticism and my position].
I don't doubt that you've noticed something (most likely to me, it is the movement of the Concept), but "inversion" (whatever it means, and that is another part of the problem, since Hegel also suggests that it amounts, in truth, to nothing, a distinction without distinction - a distinction without distinction cannot be nothing - such a reading would go against the grain of Hegel's effort) misrepresents this something. "Inversion" "lacks actuality" and also lacks its own inner principle that moves [could you point to where the quotes are from for me please, Bill?]. The movement of the Concept, on the other hand, is immanent to the Concept -- Negation.
More to come I hope.
BillLooking forward to more.SrivatsThis 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 R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Bill
See my comments interspersed in red:Srivats, also see the Preface, Section 26:
"The situation in which consciousness knows itself to be at home is for Science one marked by the absence of Spirit. Conversely, the element of Science is for consciousness a remote beyond in which it no longer possesses itself.. Each of these two aspects [what does this mean?] [of self-conscious Spirit] appears to the other as the inversion of truth. [The element of Science of Spirit and ordinary consciousness see each other as an inversion of the truth]. When natural consciousness entrusts itself straightway to Science, it makes an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk on its head too, just this once; the compulsion to assume this unwonted posture and to go about in it is a violence it is expected to do to itself, all unprepared and seemingly without necessity. Let Science be in its own self what it may, relatively to immediate self-consciousness it presents itself in an inverted posture [which is an error, true, but which therefore makes inversion a process of setting right. However, it cannot be a process of stupid imitation, but of learning]; or, because this self-consciousness has the principle of its actual existence in the certainty of itself, Science appears to it not to be actual, since self-consciousness exists on its own account outside of Science. Science must therefore unite this element in its self-certainty with itself, or rather show that and how this element belongs to it. So long as Science lacks this actual dimension, it is only the content as the in-itself, the purpose that is as yet still something inward, not yet Spirit, but only spiritual Substance. This in-itself has to express itself outwardly and become for-itself, and this means simply that it has to posit self-consciousness as one with itself." (Miller, emphasis added)
The inverted view is Consciousness's own limited construction. Not only this, Spirit remains spiritual substance unless it shows ordinary consciousness how it belongs to it -- it must teach it to invert itself in the correct manner. Spirit has to appear -- it has to invert its in-itself and show itself as for-itself.Unless inversion occurs, and inversion become a methodological principle for it, natural consciousness cannot progress to speculative reason -- this is speculative reason's teaching to natural consciousness.
You refer to Section 171 in Self-Consciousness: "the autonomization of a shape as a living thing in the process of life is tagged explicitly as an inversion."However, if you read 171 carefully, you can see that "Life as a living thing" -- that is, life a a living particular, on one hand; and life as a thing on the other -- is called an "inversion" because it is inadequate!"Life is a living thing. This inversion [Life as a living thing], however, is for that reason again an invertedness in its own self.."[I think this because is wrong. The statements here are not elements of formal syllogistic proof of the Understanding where a 'because' and 'therefore' apply. They are parts of an exposition which may be framed as: 'whereas life is thus not simply the passive outcome of a process, but a living thing, and this is an inversion, it is also contradictorily an inversion in itself. The self-sustaining subsistence of the living thing in so far as it is the process of resisting diremption and dissolution into the process or flux of the whole, is only the essence of that negative process -- it doesn't have any being in itself.']Hegel follows with an immanent critique of this notion, and ends the section with a new proposal:
"Life consists rather in being the self-developing whole which dissolves its development and in this movement simply preserves itself." This is the biological emergentism view which is in some version Hegel's view of the whole.
I have no problem as this is a critique of the whole process, looking at the whole passage which ends with your quote:
"With this, the two sides of the whole movement which before were distinguished j viz. the passive separatedness of the shapes in the general medium of independence, and the process of Life, collapse into one another. The latter is just as much an imparting of shape as a supersession of it; and the other, the imparting of shape , is just as much a supersession as an articulation of shape. The fluid element is itself only the abstraction of essence, or it is actual only as shape; and its articulation of itself is again a splitting up of what is articulated into form or a dissolution of it. It is the whole round of this activity that constitutes Life: notwhat was expressed at the outset, the immediate continuity and compactness of i ts essence, nor the enduring form, the discrete moment existing for itself; nor the pure process of these; nor yet the simple taking-together of these moments. Life consists rather in being the self .. developing whole which dissolves its development and in this movement simply preserves itself." (Miller p 108).
Now this passage in this paragraph is a view of paragraph 160 which Mary has mentioned from the other conceptual history of self-consciousness:
"From the idea, then, of inversion, which constitutes the essential nature of one aspect of the supersensible world, we must eliminate the sensuous idea of fixing the differences in a different sustaining element; and this absolute Notion of the difference must be represented and understood purely as inner difference, a repulsion of the selfsame, as selfsame, from itself, and likeness of the unlike as unlike. We have to think pure change, or think antithesis within the antithesis itself, or contradiction. For in the difference which is an inner difference, the opposite is not merely one of two-if it were, it would simply be, without being an opposite-but it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself immediately present in it. Certainly, I put the 'opposite' here, and the 'other' of which it is the opposite, there; the 'opposite', then, is on one side, is in and for itself without the '0 thee . But just because I have the 'opposite' herein and for itself, it is the opposite of itself, or. it has, in fact, the 'other' immediately present in it. Thus the supersensible world, which is.the inverted world, has at the same 'time overarched the other world and has it within it; it is for itself the inverted world, i.e. the inversion of itself; it is itself and its opposite in one unity. Only thus is it difference as inner difference, or difference in its own self, or difference as an infinity." (Miller, p 99)
By now of course, force (an in-itself) is on the threshold of being replaced by self-consciousness (a for-itself).
Srivats
Bill
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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--R Srivatsan
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