On Tue, Sep 3, 2019, 9:38 PM John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Hello Srivats,

 

Gadamer is a philosopher I greatly admire--although I have not read his essays on Hegel.

 

During the 1930s and 1940s, during the time of Hitler, he made use of his certificate in philology and confined himself to the scholarly study of ancient Greek philosophy. In that uncontroversial capacity he was neither bothered nor required to join the party. After the war he was called to take an administrative post as a German who had not been a Nazi or otherwise involved. So he only finally got to write and seriously take up philosophy in his 60s. At any rate, to read his work written, I think, in the 1960s, is like a window back to philosophical situation in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s--a situation that was otherwise almost completely destroyed.

 

In regard to your final note below on the word "inversion"--it is odd that Proust uses that word for homosexuality. Or at any rate the word he uses is translated in that way. Having been, at one time in my life, a great devotee of Proust, I can't help but see the word having primarily that meaning. I have no idea what connotations the German word might have--or might have had in Hegel's day.

 

John

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Sep 1, 2019 8:57 pm
Subject: Re: [hegel] The transition between the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness Sections in PhS

 

Let me bring in a few lines by Gadamer in his chapter "Hegel's Inverted World" in Hans-Georg Gadamer, :Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies. Translated and with an Introduction by P. Christopher Smith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976) (all pagination below refers to this volume) 

"The function of the "inverted world" within the whole of Hegel's history of the experience of consciousness is much more difficult to ascertain than that of almost any other section. Still, for my part, I would characterize this doctrine of the "inverted world" in the chapter on "Force and Understanding" as one of the most central in the
structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit."  (p 35)

"from the start, one must understand the task which Hegel proposes for himself in the Phenomenology, namely, to treat self-consciousness, Kant's synthesis of apperception, not as something previously given, but as something to be specifically demonstrated as the truth in all consciousness. All consciousness is self-consciousness. lf we recognize this as the theme then the position in Hegel's system of the chapter on the "inverted world," which I am about to discuss, becomes clear." (p 37).

"It is convincing, therefore, when Hegel speaks on page 111 of the "innerly true" as the "absolute universal", and thus not merely sense universal, which has developed for the understanding." That is the noeton eidos, if I may express myself in Plato's terms for the moment. In it "there now opens up for the first time a supersensible
world as the true world above the appearing world." Here is the step which Plato takes. The universal is not the common element in sense appearances which doxa has before it. It is the ontos on, the eidos, the universal of the understanding and not that of the sensuous in its appearing otherness." (p 40).

"The supersensible world is said to be the true world. It is "what remains in disappearance-a way of putting things often found in Hegel. We will encounter precisely this expression again when we set about understanding the "inverted world." For, to give an indication of where we are headed, it will emerge there that what remains is precisely what is real where everything is continually disappearing.. The real world exists precisely as continual change, constant change. Constancy, then, is no longer merely the opposite of disappearance, rather, it is the truth of disappearance. That is the thesis of the "inverted world." (p 40.)

"The weakness of the world of ideas is, then, that it is only in opposition to the perceived world taken as unreal. Aristotle's objection to Plato's doubling of the world is meant similarly. Why this copy of the perceived world? Why the noetic world? Is not the mathematically figured world lacking in what is most important? 'Is it not the "true world" only for this changing, moving, perceived world, and does it not lack the principle of change and alteration which constitutes the being of the perceived world after all?  Accordingly, Hegel concludes, "The first realm of laws was lacking in this, but as the inverted world it now contains it," A world which contains the arche kinese6s, and as such is the true world, is an inversion of Plato's world in which motion and alteration were supposed to be naught. This world too is supersensible, that is, the alterations here are not merely "different" and hence unreal, but rather are understood as motions. This world is not just the tranquil realm of laws which all alteration must obey, rather it is a world in which everything moves because everything contains the origin of change in itself. That appears to be a pure reversal, and modern philosophical research has also struck upon the image of "reversal" for Aristotle's reinterpretation of Plato's doctrine of ideas. The tode ti, not the highest eidos, is the primary substance· (J Stenzel). 

Gadamer then writes of how the content of inversion is refined in the Logic, and what its relation is to the Encyclopedia (in his own reading of course -- not any, but as an exemplary hermeneutic exercise).  He then has a fascinating reading of how the word "verkehrt" in German is both inverted and perverse -- and compares it to the function of literary satire. 

This is a quite beautiful and rich essay. And worth reading.  By all indications the book is written late in life.

I chanced across it in a difficult reference in Houlgate's Phenomenology reader.

Srivats

On Mon, Sep 2, 2019 at 6:21 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

Again interspersed:

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 8:04 PM bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

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. 

Bill 

Looking forward to more.

Srivats

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From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2019 11:33:58 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [hegel] The transition between the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness Sections in PhS

 

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Bill

See my comments interspersed in red:

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 8:28 PM bill.hord bill..hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

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: not

what 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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