On Sun, Sep 8, 2019 at 7:11 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

Dear Mary,

I am not exactly which question of mine you are referring to here.  I haven't yet spoken of stoicism etc., in this thread.  Could you clarify?

Best

Srivats

On Sat, Sep 7, 2019 at 11:33 PM Mary Malo reading_for_meaning@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Paul and others,

Hegel presents these various attitudes as attempts toward ethical happiness conceptually. Each is unable to bridge the rupture/cleavage in self-consciousness which leads to estrangement/alienation within self and with the world. A person may possess a single, combined or overlapping of these perspectives but only through conceptual examination of each stance do we find incomplete, one-sided abstractions which cannot make finite spirit objective to itself. He also addresses infinite cleavage and anguish as part of divine history (moments of divine diremption), a co-development of infinite with finite as generally the sublation of external objectivity.

"This is the moment of divine, developed objectivity, wherein divinity arrives at its most extreme mode of being-outside-itself no less than it finds its turning point there; and this moment of return itself consists in both the most extreme estrangement [Entfremdung] and the pinnacle of divestment [Entäusserung].

"Since this is the history of the divine idea in finite spirit, this history itself directly contains two sides: it is the history of finite consciousness itself as isolated in immediacy; and it is this history as an object for consciousness, as objective in and for itself, i.e., as the history of God as it is in and for itself. This is our concern here, that is the concern of the community. 

"The necessity of such a history is found, first of all, in the divine idea: God as spirit is this process, whose moments have themselves the shape of complete reality and thereby of finite self-consciousness; hence the divine idea actualizes itself in and to finite self-consciousness. The other aspect of the necessity of this manifestation, however, is that it take place for self-consciousness, precisely because it is this history in finite self-consciousness. God must be for himself as the whole of his revelation; only thus is he revealed. This history of his must be an object for him, but in its own objectivity and truth. This true history of finite spirit is what now must be grasped. (pgs. 91-92 LPR III)

To answer what I think Srivats is asking: for stoic, skeptic, beautiful soul, monastic, ascetic, unhappy consciousness, etc., in all forms of religious/secular development, happiness is conceptual only in relation to its opposite—anguish and need for reconciliation. God also experiences anguish, love, reconciliation, and freedom. Human 'happiness' with any of the above attitudes is merely escape—escape from internal antithesis and/or escape from external antithesis. Renouncing oneself and/or renouncing the world of others is faux wholeness. God and other as object remain in-itself but not for-itself. Hegel's development of these various positions co-exists with us today as part of our understanding but they exist sequentially as conceptual moments of finite and infinite spirit.

If I remember correctly, Stephen Theron reminds us there is one Spirit.

With regards,

Mary

On Friday, September 6, 2019, 07:23:00 PM CDT, Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Mary,

I rushed to my copy of LPR 3, directly to pages 304-310, and noticed that I have them marked in five different highlighter colors as well as margin notes.   This is one of my favorite sections of LPR 3. 

Among my notes is Hegel's emphasis on "Estrangement," or as Marx would say, "Alienation."    For Marx it was an economic term -- the worker's "Alienation" from the means of production.   For Hegel it meant something more. 

Beyond Marx, Hegel also finds a "religious" meaning to Alienation.   His consistent metaphor is the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."  

That is, Hegel finds two dimensions of Alienation: (1) Alienation from the World; and (2) Alienation from God, the Universal, "the deepest depth" (p. 305).

We are all immediately aware that in our innermost existence we are a Living Contradiction, he says.  We are both Good and Evil in the same person.  This is the root of our Alienation from God.

This split in our souls is "infinite anguish," he says (p. 306).   Here, indeed, is the Unhappy Consciousness!   Hegel says, "I know myself a.ways as what ought not to be" (p.. 307).

Now, Hegel implies that we have always had this feeling, going back into prehistory -- yet Hegel also says that with Judaism -- when God becomes One God -- that anguish reaches the point of infinitude, because of our infinite distance from the perfect righteousness of the One God.

I'm so glad, Mary, that you raised this citation from Hegel's LPR 3, because it speaks directly to the Unhappy Consciousness in a pre-Christian setting.   Hegel says:

"...Humanity is in a state of unhappiness.  It is 

this unhappiness that drives and presses human 

beings back into themselves...they renounce the 

world."  (Hegel, 1827, LPR 3, Hodgson, pp.. 307-308)

There is the key!   There Hegel speaks directly of spiritual Unhappiness!  There Hegel speaks of World Renunciation -- a spiritual status that we find in the most ancient Religions and priesthoods, long before Abraham was born!   That is exactly what Hegel gets at in his PhG narrative of the Unhappy Consciousness.

All best,

--Paul

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On Wednesday, September 4, 2019, 06:10:52 PM CDT, Mary Malo reading_for_meaning@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Paul,

I notice in the LPR 3, especially the 1827 Lecture, (part d. knowledge, estrangement and evil), pages 304-310, that anguish is treated similarly to the unhappy consciousness or alienated soul. Hegel emphasized religions and attitudes previous to Christianity (Parsee, Jewish, Stoicism, Skepticism) all demonstrated that inner (between God and man) and outer (between man and world) antitheses needed reconciliation.

Mary 

--

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