Paul,

 

Thanks, what you say is useful.

 

However, I am intuitively uncomfortable with reading these sections in terms of a chronological history.  It's not that there is no chronology in them, but I think the PhS is more a speculative history of the concept.  For example, if we read slavery as in prehistoric Africa, and let it go at that, we have no lead into the transformation of the slave consciousness into stoicism (common noun, following Eric), of which Stoicism may be a determinate development.  We have no way of pondering over the transformation of the slave consciousness as it occurs in the Christian concept.

 

Nor do we have an insight into how (as you would perhaps say, mistakenly) Marx sees the proletariat (as wage-slaves) as transforming the world -- now we know that this an error, but rather than simply condemn the error as you do, I would try to understand where this thought went wrong.  Don't respond to this if it is a red flag!

 

To me these are groups of patterns of consciousness -- a Hegel describes them in the Preface: way-stations of Spirit.  The logical development is just that -- logically necessary.  Where, when and how it happens is something that has to be studied in its determinate form.

 

Best

Srivats

 

 

 

 

 

On Tue, Sep 3, 2019 at 1:28 AM Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Srivats,

 

In my reading, the section from CONSCIOUSNESS to SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS is best understood as a "Restart".

 

Yet Hegel is "restarting" on a new and higher level.   It is a circle that is an ascending spiral, as Howard Kainz (1998) would say.

 

1. The section on Consciousness began with prehistoric "Sense-Certainty," and rose up by dialectical degrees to the level of Isaac Newton's discovery of Force and its corresponding new Understanding of the Cosmos.   This was still vital in Hegel's day.

 

This is the history of Consciousness in the Abstract.

 

2.  The section on Self-Consciousness will "restart" and begin with prehistoric "Master/Slave" awareness.

 

This is the history of Consciousness in the Negative.   It is the inglorious antithesis.  Hegel makes it clear in his Philosophy of History that the Master/Slave relationship begins in Africa.  His point is that every nation in the world began around a campfire, with a tribal chief, in constant battle with all other tribal chiefs of the region.   Thus, for Hegel, the Master/Slave relationship  is prehistoric.

 

One wonders in vain, then, how Hegel rises up to Isaac Newton, only to find oneself back as an African or German tribal chief, in another daily battle for sheer survival.   Will this chief become a slave by the end of the day?

 

My opinion is that Hegel's section on Self-consciousness is a "Restart", but on a higher level.   Hegel has completed his narrative of the evolution of Consciousness in the ABSTRACT.   That would be the Thesis.

 

Now, suddenly, we are thrown back into prehistoric times again.   Hegel now begins his narrative of the evolution of Consciousness in the NEGATIVE, that is, as Self-consciousness.   This would be the Antithesis.

 

Hegel will make this "restart" back to prehistoric times once more in this, his first magnificent book, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).

 

All best,

--Paul

 

 

 

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On Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 09:19:34 PM CDT, R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

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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