The issue of Hegel's World Historical individuals is a sore point here, cf.
archives from some time back on a Fukuyama thread.
I agree directly that there is a problem here with Hegel's philosophy of
history, at this point. To connect a world spirit with Caesar and Napoleon is view
that causes some wonderment in many, to say the least. What about Solon,
Buddha, Cleisthenes, Lao tse, Pericles, and I could annex dozens to this list, as
more worthy than Caesar. What of Cicero's plaintive view?
Especially puzzling is the case of Caesar, the one man who _undid_ a major
republic born in the age of the world's first great democracy. Caesar is a
wrecker, a destroyed, an empire builder. It is a puzzling mindset in Hegel and one
that makes no sense even on Hegelian terms.



In a message dated 12/20/2003 1:02:17 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jgbardis@... writes:
I admire the passion, Bob, with which you point out a seemingly absurd train
of thought.

I have no knowledge of Hegel's views on this matter; nor do I have any
insight into Paul's understanding of this matter.

I have, though, seen a view similar to the one below expressed in another
context.

On the Intro list there has been some slight discussion lately of Nietzsche's
doctrine of eternal recurrence. The main exponent of this doctrine in the
20th century was P. D. Ouspensky, along with his followers. They believed that,
while space and time were the first four dimensions, recurrence was the fifth
dimension; and the possibility of change in recurrence, what they called
eternity, was the sixth dimension.

Concerning Caesar and Napoleon, whether they were conscious of their roles or
not, for them there was no possibility of change. Ouspensky writes:

"To another type of people of the same category of exact repetition belong
historical personages: people whose lives are linked with the great cycles of
life, that is to say, with the life of peoples, states, countries - great
conquerors, reformers, leaders of the masses, revolutionaries, kings who build up
empires, kings who destroy great empires, their own or their enemies', all these
belong to this category. There can be no change in the lives of these people
either. Every word they pronounce affects the destiny of nations. And they
must know their parts perfectly. They can add nothing of their own, they can omit
nothing, nor change the meaning of what they have to say."

Most of the rest of us can, though, change - whether for the better or the
worse. From this point of view, then, certainly the more conscious people become
of their place in recurrence the better the world will be.

I don't know that the roles of Caesar and Napoleon are exactly comparable.
Napoleon, for instance, was almost purely a force of destruction. But from our
point of view, at least, the ancient regime was certainly in need of
destruction. So, yes, he would be a part of a positive and benevolent World Spirit.

But probably the idea of eternal recurrence is too myth-like to be of service
to modern people in understanding Hegel's view of history.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: robertfanelli002@...
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Wittgenstein-Hegel


Paul,

If everyone were as 'conscious of their role in the whole', as Caesar and
Napoleon were, then this planet would have been long gone without any human
beings. How can you possibly say the world needs more people like these
two
tyrants?

And 'if everyone were collectively conscious of our role in the Godhead
(the
World Spirit), it seems likely that our planet would be a political
utopia...'
Paul, I offer that your 'political utopia' would be loaded with papist
despots and the world would sink back into the dark ages.

You shall have to demonstrate that Hegel believed that Caesar and Napoleon
were part of a positve and benevolent World Spirit, not just textually but
factually.

Regards,

Bob Fanelli

John Landon
http://eonix.8m.com
http://blog.transeonix.com
Beta Project for
World History & Eonic Effect
2nd Edition
http://eonix.8m.com/2nd_ed/intro1_1.htm


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 12/20/2003 1:02:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jgbardis@... writes:

> I don't know that the roles of Caesar and Napoleon are exactly comparable.
> Napoleon, for instance, was almost purely a force of destruction. But from
> our point of view, at least, the ancient regime was certainly in need of
> destruction. So, yes, he would be a part of a positive and benevolent World Spirit.

John,

Thanks for responding.

There is no argument that the France of Louis XVI needed reform. But my main
objection is the equating of a speculative and metaphysical principle of a
'benevolent World Spirit' with that of a very real and despotic ruler as
Bonaparte. Of course he helped to change France especially with the Napoleonic code
etc; so did Hitler help Germany when he built the autobahn. As for Caesar, I
wonder how many people he crucified up side down. I suppose one may
rationalize all of history with the acceptance of Hegel's movement of World Spirit.
World Spirit may indeed be benevolent, but that is exactly the problem we have
with the concept of a benevolent God. The whole question of theodicy comes up,
Job and all.

Regards,

Bob Fanelli

>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I used to know a good deal more about Napoleon (and Caesar) than I do now, Bob. But Napoleon's destructive influence obviously spread far beyond the borders of France. He brought down the rule of the I don't remember who in Egypt. And I think he brought down the rule of everyone in Europe except England and Russia.

What was on my mind, though, is that Spengler writes:

"Napoleon has hardly ever been discussed without a side-glance at Caesar and Alexander - analogies of which, as we shall see, the first is morphologically quite inacceptable and the second is correct."

According to Spengler Napoleon holds the same place in the Western world that Alexander held in the Classical world. According to him Caesar holds the place in the Classical world that is equivalent to the Western world in the years between 2000-2200. So according to him our version of Caesar is probably waiting in the wings (or was it Hitler?).

Unfortunately my mentioning the name Ouspensky upset some people. But I think his applying Nietzsche's recurrence to great world figures does arrive at a conclusion that is amusing, and one that Spengler arrives at from different principles, I.e., they are pretty much required to do exactly what they do exactly when they do it. And so it probably isn't something that people like you and I should worry much about.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: robertfanelli002@...
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 9:58 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Caesar and Napoleon


In a message dated 12/20/2003 1:02:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jgbardis@... writes:

> I don't know that the roles of Caesar and Napoleon are exactly comparable.
> Napoleon, for instance, was almost purely a force of destruction. But from
> our point of view, at least, the ancient regime was certainly in need of
> destruction. So, yes, he would be a part of a positive and benevolent World Spirit.


John,

Thanks for responding.

There is no argument that the France of Louis XVI needed reform. But my main
objection is the equating of a speculative and metaphysical principle of a
'benevolent World Spirit' with that of a very real and despotic ruler as
Bonaparte. Of course he helped to change France especially with the Napoleonic code
etc; so did Hitler help Germany when he built the autobahn. As for Caesar, I
wonder how many people he crucified up side down. I suppose one may
rationalize all of history with the acceptance of Hegel's movement of World Spirit.
World Spirit may indeed be benevolent, but that is exactly the problem we have
with the concept of a benevolent God. The whole question of theodicy comes up,
Job and all.

Regards,

Bob Fanelli

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

If we are to think about Napoleon in a Hegelian context, I think we want to see
what Hegel said about him. And here I think that what Napoleon destroyed was a
series of ancien regime non-states in Europe (the Holy Roman Empire, e.g., which
for Hegel from the start -- The German Constitution, 1801 -- was not a [modern]
state), and what he installed was the appartus (not the electoral rights) of the
modern state: the Napoleonic code (or the rule of law), rational bureaucracy,
equality before the law.







Quoting JOHN BARDIS <jgbardis@...>:

> I used to know a good deal more about Napoleon (and Caesar) than I do now,
> Bob. But Napoleon's destructive influence obviously spread far beyond the
> borders of France. He brought down the rule of the I don't remember who in
> Egypt. And I think he brought down the rule of everyone in Europe except
> England and Russia.
>
> What was on my mind, though, is that Spengler writes:
>
> "Napoleon has hardly ever been discussed without a side-glance at Caesar and
> Alexander - analogies of which, as we shall see, the first is morphologically
> quite inacceptable and the second is correct."
>
> According to Spengler Napoleon holds the same place in the Western world that
> Alexander held in the Classical world. According to him Caesar holds the
> place in the Classical world that is equivalent to the Western world in the
> years between 2000-2200. So according to him our version of Caesar is
> probably waiting in the wings (or was it Hitler?).
>
> Unfortunately my mentioning the name Ouspensky upset some people. But I think
> his applying Nietzsche's recurrence to great world figures does arrive at a
> conclusion that is amusing, and one that Spengler arrives at from different
> principles, I.e., they are pretty much required to do exactly what they do
> exactly when they do it. And so it probably isn't something that people like
> you and I should worry much about.
>
> John
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: robertfanelli002@...
> To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 9:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Caesar and Napoleon
>
>
> In a message dated 12/20/2003 1:02:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> jgbardis@... writes:
>
> > I don't know that the roles of Caesar and Napoleon are exactly
> comparable.
> > Napoleon, for instance, was almost purely a force of destruction. But
> from
> > our point of view, at least, the ancient regime was certainly in need of
>
> > destruction. So, yes, he would be a part of a positive and benevolent
> World Spirit.
>
>
> John,
>
> Thanks for responding.
>
> There is no argument that the France of Louis XVI needed reform. But my
> main
> objection is the equating of a speculative and metaphysical principle of a
>
> 'benevolent World Spirit' with that of a very real and despotic ruler as
> Bonaparte. Of course he helped to change France especially with the
> Napoleonic code
> etc; so did Hitler help Germany when he built the autobahn. As for Caesar,
> I
> wonder how many people he crucified up side down. I suppose one may
> rationalize all of history with the acceptance of Hegel's movement of World
> Spirit.
> World Spirit may indeed be benevolent, but that is exactly the problem we
> have
> with the concept of a benevolent God. The whole question of theodicy comes
> up,
> Job and all.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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In response to the Wed24Dec03 post by Dr. Peter G. Stillman:

> If we are to think about Napoleon in a Hegelian context,
> I think we want to see what Hegel said about him.

Thanks, Dr. Stillman, for this orienting opening. (Perhaps
a number of newer readers may be unfamiliar with your
leading role in modern Hegel studies, in the Hegel Society
of America, and with the benefit of your participation in
this e-list. I choose to acknowledge your scholarly
contributions here.)

> And here I think that what Napoleon destroyed was a
> series of ancien regime non-states in Europe (the Holy
> Roman Empire, e.g., which for Hegel from the start --
> THE GERMAN CONSTITUTION, 1801 -- was not a
> [modern] state)

I agree emphatically, Dr. Stillman. In far simpler terms, while
Americans may find it easy to condemn Napoleon on 'moral'
grounds (e.g. he was not an American), nevertheless a well-
rounded historical approach to Napoleon's career reveals a
vital and complex character. Medieval political ideals still
tyrannized the European Continent, so Napoleon is rightly
seen as a Liberator in those circumstances. Hegel was right
to admire Napoleon as "the world historical person on
horseback."

By the way -- I don't care if anybody agrees with Hegel on
this point or not; the main thing here is to know exactly
what Hegel actually said, and why he said it.

> ...What Napoleon installed was the appartus (not the
> electoral rights) of the modern state: the Napoleonic
> code (or the rule of law), rational bureaucracy, equality
> before the law.

I agree again, Dr. Stillman. Furthermore, it is interesting
that Hegel admires Caesar for the *same reason* that he
admires Napoleon, namely, for Liberating the European
Continent. More precisely, Caesar opened the North to
global civilization as Rome had inherited it from ancient
Persia and Greece -- something the developing Northerners
urgently needed, although they resisted it violently.

Napoleon, for his part, compelled these same Northerners
to become aware of the modern State, as you suggest. If
these two men had not done these world-historical acts
(and if others had not done them in their stead), it is
possible that Europe might have remained as backward
as any common third world nation for all these centuries.

Hegel, it seems to me, saw this as clearly as anybody
could have seen it in 1831. This is why he admired
Caesar and Napoleon: reality is reasonable.

Best regards,
--Paul Trejo, M.A.

In a message dated 12/30/2003 1:54:26 AM Eastern Standard Time,
petrejo@... writes:

> By the way -- I don't care if anybody agrees with Hegel on
> this point or not; the main thing here is to know exactly
> what Hegel actually said, and why he said it.

Paul,

'The main thing' is not to just know what Hegel said, (though at times, that
is difficult because of his style and the translation), but to know that what
he said is true and factual. Often times, it seems, in this group, just
because we have found the appropriate quote, we may take a dogmatic approach to its
validity and factuality. After all isn't that what Philosophy is all about?

Regards,

Bob Fanelli

>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In response to the Tue30Dec03 post by Bob Fanelli:

> Paul,
>
> 'The main thing' is not to just know what Hegel said, (though at
> times, that is difficult because of his style and the translation),
> but to know that what he said is true and factual. Often times,
> it seems, in this group, just because we have found the
> appropriate quote, we may take a dogmatic approach to its
> validity and factuality. After all isn't that what Philosophy
> is all about?
>
> Regards,
> Bob Fanelli

Bob, there is nothing dogmatic about my approach to Hegel.
Not in the slightest. The 'main thing' is *first* to know
what Hegel actually said, since this is a Hegel List, after
all. It is patently absurd to offer opinions about Hegel
without first knowing what he said.

Certainly the point of Philosophy is to arrive at the Truth,
and certainly debate is crucial in that regard. Yet that is
very often abused -- people who do not read Hegel often come
to the Hegel List to share their opinions, opinions, opinions,
as if *that* is what Philosophy is about.

Philosophy is not about the politically correct attitude that
all opinions are equal.

Most urgently, it is the neo-Kantians -- the true dogmatists --
who come here and repeat endlessly their variations on the
Kantian theme that the Thing-in-itself is Unknowable; that
it is futile to seek the Absolute by way of human knowledge.

That is the real dogma. That is what must be challenged here.
But that can only be done with the Philosophy of Hegel, since
no other philosopher has approached Kant on his own terms with
the stated goal to upset Kant's dogmatic conclusions.

Given that, it becomes urgent to *know* exactly what Hegel said
and that is not easy to do. There have been great and famous
writers for the past 150 years who have given us absurd opinions
about Hegel (e.g. Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Engels,
Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, Derrida, and many, many more).

It is not easy to know Hegel. On a Hegel List that should be
the first priority. I think you should agree that it is absurd
to speak of Hegel without first knowing in detail what he said.

Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
any meaning at all.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo, M.A.

Bravo, as you were, proceed...
But FYI certain persons, not neo-Kantians lurk nearby not at all convinced
the issue of the phenomenal/noumenal is a matter of dogma. What dogma? From
Dewey to Rorty to everyone else, the issue of the noumenal is hardly a majority
opinion. Everyone is terrified of Kant, and I am puzzled. It is a more a kind of
desperation of dealing with something most simply cannot grasp, no blame for
that. But just at this point Hegel could equally be said to be dogmatic.
Anyway, proceed. This was merely a reminder of shadowy figures 'associated'
with the list reading everything you say with raised eyebrows.


In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:05 PM Eastern Standard Time,
petrejo@... writes:
Most urgently, it is the neo-Kantians -- the true dogmatists --
who come here and repeat endlessly their variations on the
Kantian theme that the Thing-in-itself is Unknowable; that
it is futile to seek the Absolute by way of human knowledge.

That is the real dogma. That is what must be challenged here.
But that can only be done with the Philosophy of Hegel, since
no other philosopher has approached Kant on his own terms with
the stated goal to upset Kant's dogmatic conclusions.

John Landon
http://eonix.8m.com
http://blog.transeonix.com
Beta Project for
World History & Eonic Effect
2nd Edition
http://eonix.8m.com/2nd_ed/intro1_1.htm


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
petrejo@... writes:

> Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> any meaning at all.
>

Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its translation to
general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the dialectic
argument.

So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in itself' is
knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such a thing is not a
fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself is knowable
is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once we extract
from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then dogma
disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most of us are interested
in Hegel.

Happy New Year,

Bob Fanelli

PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.
'


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In response to the Wed31Dec03 post by Bob Fanelli:

> ...Once we pass from understanding the text and its translation
> to general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate
> the dialectic argument.

That's true, Bob, but please don't get ahead of the steps.
In the year 2003, the main theme of my posts turned around
Hegel's Ontological Solution to the Problem of the Existence
of God. I posted e-mail on this topic for months. What
became of this? Many readers just nodded silently. The
next step should have been a general agreement as to its
meaning -- but that has not yet occurred.

> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in
> itself' is knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer
> proof of such a thing is not a fait accompli thus far.

That's not exactly the case, Bob. I offered Hegel's texts on
the Ontological Proofs of the Existence of God for months at
a time this year. The Proofs were offered. But the next step,
the 'general agreement' as to its meaning, was evaded by the
overwhelming majority of readers in 2003.

> Therefore to say that the thing in itself is knowable is
> dogmatic.

Not at all, Bob, since the proofs were offered. It's only
that the readers closed up their eyes, ears and mouths and
would not acknowledge Hegel's giant steps forward on this
vital topic. The dogmatism remains on the neo-Kantian side.

> But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once we
> extract from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving
> this, then dogma disappears. This, it seems to me is one of
> the reasons why most of us are interested in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
> Bob Fanelli

Where were you this year, Bob, when I was posting so many
dozens of posts, month after month, on the topic of Hegel's
Ontological Solution for the Proofs of the Existence of God?
Did you see them? If not, then I can understand your remarks
here. If you saw them, then the next step is yours -- the
agreement or disagreements with Hegel's intricate arguments.

> PS. Not all Kantians are dogmatic.

Agreed -- some Kantians are merely lazy and wish that
Hegelians or others bear the burden of proof, while they
sit back all snug and smug with their lazy philosophy of
not-knowing.

Happy New Year,
--Paul Trejo

Hi Bob,

The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished* or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and
external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from the other.

In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point, conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any resemblance to phenomena.

Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms distinguished as being independent and external to one another and therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally related and independent, they are internally related in such a way that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his
symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the very essence of his unconscious desire.

It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the proposition.

If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself. Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal* relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena. Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow *causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument, this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category of the
understanding, and the categories of the understanding are applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like. This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself. He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of phenomena is organized
around the positing of forces that render the phenomena intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is a knowledge nonetheless.

It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality, phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard, I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of residual Platonism we find in Kant.

Kind regards,

Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.


robertfanelli002@... wrote:
In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
petrejo@... writes:

> Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> any meaning at all.
>

Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its translation to
general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the dialectic
argument.

So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in itself' is
knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such a thing is not a
fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself is knowable
is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once we extract
from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then dogma
disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most of us are interested
in Hegel.

Happy New Year,

Bob Fanelli

PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.
'


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 1/1/2004 11:39:55 AM Eastern Standard Time,
lprbryant@... writes:

> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished* or
> *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things is already to know
> both sides of the distinction. This is the difference between a dialectical
> opposition or distinction and a merely empirical opposition.
>
> Levi,
>
> There are many ways to address the above statement. One is that when you
> say that you 'know both sides of the distinction' or that 'the thing-in-
> itself is opposed to phenomena,' you are referring to properites or qualities
> which you have structured within the confines of the phenomena or within the
> objects you have constructed of the phenomena, and which hopefully can be
> applied to the object as the thing-in-itself. There is no existential opposition
> or distinction between the two. Your dialect of Reason consists of discursive
> thought applied to the phenomena and certainly as you say, this dialect's
> movement constructs rational thoughts. Kant maintains that all you have are the
> categories which you have formed subectively of the phenomena which
> hopefully represents the thing-in-itself. '
>
> 'The thing-in-itself' is knowable in so far...' is an absurdity. There is
> no 'so far.' It has to be an absolute in all senses of the word absolute.
> The only things which we have thus far constructed about it are the spatial and
> temporal properties subject to the conditions of human sensiblity and
> understanding.
>
> "For just as appearances do not exist in themselves but only relatively to
> the subject in which so far as it has senses, they inhere, so the laws do not
> exist in the appearances but only relatively to this same being, so far as it
> has understanding. Things in themselves would necessarily, apart from any
> understanding that knows them, conform to laws of their own. But appearances
> are only representations of things which are unknown as regards what they may
> be in themselves." KRV B164.
>
> Hegel believes that his dialect will search out these 'laws of things in
> themselves,' well beyond appearances, phenomena, sense certainty, understanding,
> and so on. This is Hegel's absolute which is a goal indeed.
>
> I am sorry that I have not responded to the rest of your argument, but it
> would take up too much 'Hegel' time.

Happy New Year,

Bob Fanelli




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bob,

As far as I can tell, your remarks do not address the epistemological question of what warrants Kant to even speak about the thing-in-itself. This is the nucleus of the entire problem as post-Kantian German Idealists saw it. Kant was unable to consistently speak of the thing-in-itself as a beyond of knowledge and continued to think of it in terms of the categories of the understanding. Hence the inevitable conclusion that we do indeed know the thing-in-itself. It is this inconsistency in Kant's thought that marks a continued dogmatism in his system. Your remarks about not being able to respond to the rest of my argument by virtue of the fact that it would take too much "Hegel time" strikes me as symptomatic of that dogmatism. Hegel's argument is straightforward enough and has been formulated by dialecticians and non-dialecticians alike. It was one of the immediate criticisms that arose in the wake of Kant's first critique. I do not consider myself a Hegelian, but this
particular argument on Hegel's part strikes me as rather strong.

Kind regards,

Levi

robertfanelli002@... wrote:
In a message dated 1/1/2004 11:39:55 AM Eastern Standard Time,
lprbryant@... writes:

> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished* or
> *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things is already to know
> both sides of the distinction. This is the difference between a dialectical
> opposition or distinction and a merely empirical opposition.
>
> Levi,
>
> There are many ways to address the above statement. One is that when you
> say that you 'know both sides of the distinction' or that 'the thing-in-
> itself is opposed to phenomena,' you are referring to properites or qualities
> which you have structured within the confines of the phenomena or within the
> objects you have constructed of the phenomena, and which hopefully can be
> applied to the object as the thing-in-itself. There is no existential opposition
> or distinction between the two. Your dialect of Reason consists of discursive
> thought applied to the phenomena and certainly as you say, this dialect's
> movement constructs rational thoughts. Kant maintains that all you have are the
> categories which you have formed subectively of the phenomena which
> hopefully represents the thing-in-itself. '
>
> 'The thing-in-itself' is knowable in so far...' is an absurdity. There is
> no 'so far.' It has to be an absolute in all senses of the word absolute.
> The only things which we have thus far constructed about it are the spatial and
> temporal properties subject to the conditions of human sensiblity and
> understanding.
>
> "For just as appearances do not exist in themselves but only relatively to
> the subject in which so far as it has senses, they inhere, so the laws do not
> exist in the appearances but only relatively to this same being, so far as it
> has understanding. Things in themselves would necessarily, apart from any
> understanding that knows them, conform to laws of their own. But appearances
> are only representations of things which are unknown as regards what they may
> be in themselves." KRV B164.
>
> Hegel believes that his dialect will search out these 'laws of things in
> themselves,' well beyond appearances, phenomena, sense certainty, understanding,
> and so on. This is Hegel's absolute which is a goal indeed.
>
> I am sorry that I have not responded to the rest of your argument, but it
> would take up too much 'Hegel' time.

Happy New Year,

Bob Fanelli




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



Homepage: http://hegel.net
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

That's a nice argument, Levi.

But the understanding can't know the thing-in-itself, right?

In Medieval philosophy, and to some extent in ancient philosophy,
they talk about discursive reason which would be about the
equivalent to understanding, and then also they talk about the
intellect. They talk about the passive intellect, which may be like
speculative reason, and they talk about the active intellect, which
might be like Absolute Reason.

But of course Hegel goes through all sorts of different ways of
knowing in the PHENOMONOLOGY.

But of course ultimately the active intellect would be God - just as
for Hegel Absolute Reason is God. And really that's what allows us
to know the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that Hegel's position is
just a restatement of the Medieval position - but with an eye to
Kant.

But you strike me as a modern man, and probably you don't believe
anything of the sort. But then there is no ontological difference
between the understanding and dialectical reason. It's more like
smart people are dialectical and stupid people aren't. But then how
would that be anything more than arrogance? You might think you know
the thing-in-itself, but really perhaps you have only established
the possibility of knowing it - and even Kant recognizes such a
possibility.

John



--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, "Levi R. Bryant" <lprbryant@y...>
wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished*

or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things
is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the
difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a
merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition
or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished
are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the
proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the
color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference
I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I
am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that
the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to
draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball
must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or
opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and

> external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from

the other.

>
> In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point,

conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the
thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim
that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to
phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are
independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point
is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself
on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I
am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any
resemblance to phenomena.

>
> Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms

distinguished as being independent and external to one another and
therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or
opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent
on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished
implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical
structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an
opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other
term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical
argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such
that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a
dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally
related and independent, they are internally related in such a way
that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in
a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his

> symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient

progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some
external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the
very essence of his unconscious desire.

>
> It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's

argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is
that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of
phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of
phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself
as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely
empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the
manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of
phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-
itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be
externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself
in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-
dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical
negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the
proposition.

>
> If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to

be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the
requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a
normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that
phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself.
Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical
logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do
find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-
itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as
being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal*
relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena.
Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship
between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow
*causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument,
this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category
of the

> understanding, and the categories of the understanding are

applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid
applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves
in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the
world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does
in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship
of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot
consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like.
This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-
Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching
board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does
nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how
knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself.
He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding
in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of
phenomena is organized

> around the positing of forces that render the phenomena

intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit
the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling
that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is
draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about
the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What
Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is
internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we
cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena
without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some
absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge
of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous
theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is
a knowledge nonetheless.

>
> It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this

point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to
consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality,
phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard,
I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of
residual Platonism we find in Kant.

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.
>
>
> robertfanelli002@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> petrejo@e... writes:
>
> > Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> > first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> > the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> > no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> > any meaning at all.
> >
>
> Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its

translation to

> general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the

dialectic

> argument.
>
> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in

itself' is

> knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such

a thing is not a

> fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself

is knowable

> is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once

we extract

> from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then

dogma

> disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most

of us are interested

> in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.

Dear John,

As Kant argues, the understanding alone is incapable of knowing anything. The central thesis of Kant's critical philosophy is that concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. For Kant, of course, concepts belong to the spontaneity of the understanding, whereas intuition belongs to the receptivity of intuition. Consequently, in a Kantian framework, it's quite besides the point to claim that the understanding cannot know thing-in-themselves. Of course it can't because knowledge, for Kant, requires both concepts (understanding) and intuitions (sensibility). In fact, one can go one step further and argue that for Kant there is no real knowledge without the agency of reason. Where the understanding separates and distinguishes, thus thinking things independently of one another, it falls to the vocation of reason to organize, synthesize and unify the disparate. It is only with reason the systematic knowledge is established and that relationships are
drawn between the various syntheses established by the understanding and intuition. Kant treats this dimension of knowledge in the second half of the first Critique when he discusses the Ideas of Reason.

In claiming that we know the thing-in-itself I do not believe that Hegel is appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition as you suggest. Hegel arrives at this thesis on the basis of an immanent development or unfolding of the concept of the in-itself. When we think through the actual claims that Kant makes about things-in-themselves we quickly discover that the concept falls into contradiction. On the one hand, Kant wishes to say that the in-itself is completely unknowable insofar as it is transcendent to all experience. So far so good. According to this thesis we only have knowledge of appearances or phenomena. Yet on the other hand, Kant wishes to claim that things-in-themselves cause or affect the faculty of sensibility providing us with the manifold sensible diversity synthesized by the understanding. And this is the problem: According to Kant, the categories of the understanding (among which we find cause and effect) only have a legitimate employment with
respect to appearances. In Kant's view, the moment we suggest that time and space characterize things-in-themselves or that we seek to apply the categories directly to things themselves we fall into irresoveable paradoxes or antinomies. Nonetheless, Kant finds himself unable to avoid attributing causation to things-in-themselves. This logically entails that we do in fact have knowledge of things-in-themselves and that the category of the thing-in-itself is a contradictory or illegitimate category for Kant. In fact, given that Kant claims that we can only know appearances, how could this category not be illegitimate from the perspective of Critical philosophy, insofar as it posits an absolute transcendence beyond all appearances? Hegel merely things through the implications of Kant's own assertions and demonstrates how he says something quite other than what he thinks.

Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition. He has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no transcendent beyond to appearances and that being is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant called for in the first Critique without himself accomplishing it.

Kind Regards,

Levi

jgbardis <jgbardis@...> wrote:
That's a nice argument, Levi.

But the understanding can't know the thing-in-itself, right?

In Medieval philosophy, and to some extent in ancient philosophy,
they talk about discursive reason which would be about the
equivalent to understanding, and then also they talk about the
intellect. They talk about the passive intellect, which may be like
speculative reason, and they talk about the active intellect, which
might be like Absolute Reason.

But of course Hegel goes through all sorts of different ways of
knowing in the PHENOMONOLOGY.

But of course ultimately the active intellect would be God - just as
for Hegel Absolute Reason is God. And really that's what allows us
to know the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that Hegel's position is
just a restatement of the Medieval position - but with an eye to
Kant.

But you strike me as a modern man, and probably you don't believe
anything of the sort. But then there is no ontological difference
between the understanding and dialectical reason. It's more like
smart people are dialectical and stupid people aren't. But then how
would that be anything more than arrogance? You might think you know
the thing-in-itself, but really perhaps you have only established
the possibility of knowing it - and even Kant recognizes such a
possibility.

John



--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, "Levi R. Bryant" <lprbryant@y...>
wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished*

or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things
is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the
difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a
merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition
or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished
are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the
proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the
color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference
I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I
am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that
the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to
draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball
must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or
opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and

> external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from

the other.

>
> In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point,

conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the
thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim
that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to
phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are
independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point
is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself
on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I
am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any
resemblance to phenomena.

>
> Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms

distinguished as being independent and external to one another and
therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or
opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent
on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished
implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical
structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an
opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other
term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical
argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such
that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a
dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally
related and independent, they are internally related in such a way
that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in
a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his

> symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient

progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some
external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the
very essence of his unconscious desire.

>
> It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's

argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is
that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of
phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of
phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself
as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely
empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the
manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of
phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-
itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be
externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself
in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-
dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical
negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the
proposition.

>
> If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to

be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the
requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a
normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that
phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself.
Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical
logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do
find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-
itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as
being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal*
relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena.
Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship
between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow
*causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument,
this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category
of the

> understanding, and the categories of the understanding are

applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid
applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves
in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the
world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does
in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship
of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot
consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like.
This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-
Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching
board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does
nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how
knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself.
He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding
in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of
phenomena is organized

> around the positing of forces that render the phenomena

intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit
the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling
that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is
draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about
the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What
Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is
internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we
cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena
without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some
absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge
of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous
theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is
a knowledge nonetheless.

>
> It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this

point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to
consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality,
phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard,
I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of
residual Platonism we find in Kant.

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.
>
>
> robertfanelli002@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> petrejo@e... writes:
>
> > Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> > first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> > the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> > no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> > any meaning at all.
> >
>
> Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its

translation to

> general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the

dialectic

> argument.
>
> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in

itself' is

> knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such

a thing is not a

> fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself

is knowable

> is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once

we extract

> from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then

dogma

> disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most

of us are interested

> in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.

Homepage: http://hegel.net
Group Homepage: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hegel
other Hegel mailing lists: http://Hegel.net/res/ml.htm
Listowners Homepage: http://kai.froeb.netGroup policy:
slightly moderated, only plain Text (no HTML/RTF), no attachments,
only Hegel related mails, scientific level intended.

Particpants are expected to show a respectfull and scientific attitude both to Hegel and to each other. The usual "netiquette" as well as scientific standards apply.

The copyright policy for mails sent to this list is same as for Hegel.Net, that is the copyright belongs to the author but the mails are issued under the GNU FDL (see ttp://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)or but the mails are issued under the GNU FDL (see ttp://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thank you, Levi, for taking so much time with this.

So the conclusion is that "there is no transcendent beyond the appearances, and that being is absolutely immanent."

Is that what Hegel is saying?

It's like the old Zen saying: first mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; then mountains aren't mountains and rivers aren't rivers; and finally mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers - or something like that.

It is a shame, though, to throw all of ancient and medieval philosophy into the trash. Unfortunately, if we do that, no one, really, will even notice.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Levi R. Bryant
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Hegel and the Thing-in-itself


Dear John,

As Kant argues, the understanding alone is incapable of knowing anything. The central thesis of Kant's critical philosophy is that concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. For Kant, of course, concepts belong to the spontaneity of the understanding, whereas intuition belongs to the receptivity of intuition. Consequently, in a Kantian framework, it's quite besides the point to claim that the understanding cannot know thing-in-themselves. Of course it can't because knowledge, for Kant, requires both concepts (understanding) and intuitions (sensibility). In fact, one can go one step further and argue that for Kant there is no real knowledge without the agency of reason. Where the understanding separates and distinguishes, thus thinking things independently of one another, it falls to the vocation of reason to organize, synthesize and unify the disparate. It is only with reason the systematic knowledge is established and that relationships are
drawn between the various syntheses established by the understanding and intuition. Kant treats this dimension of knowledge in the second half of the first Critique when he discusses the Ideas of Reason.

In claiming that we know the thing-in-itself I do not believe that Hegel is appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition as you suggest. Hegel arrives at this thesis on the basis of an immanent development or unfolding of the concept of the in-itself. When we think through the actual claims that Kant makes about things-in-themselves we quickly discover that the concept falls into contradiction. On the one hand, Kant wishes to say that the in-itself is completely unknowable insofar as it is transcendent to all experience. So far so good. According to this thesis we only have knowledge of appearances or phenomena. Yet on the other hand, Kant wishes to claim that things-in-themselves cause or affect the faculty of sensibility providing us with the manifold sensible diversity synthesized by the understanding. And this is the problem: According to Kant, the categories of the understanding (among which we find cause and effect) only have a legitimate employment with
respect to appearances. In Kant's view, the moment we suggest that time and space characterize things-in-themselves or that we seek to apply the categories directly to things themselves we fall into irresoveable paradoxes or antinomies. Nonetheless, Kant finds himself unable to avoid attributing causation to things-in-themselves. This logically entails that we do in fact have knowledge of things-in-themselves and that the category of the thing-in-itself is a contradictory or illegitimate category for Kant. In fact, given that Kant claims that we can only know appearances, how could this category not be illegitimate from the perspective of Critical philosophy, insofar as it posits an absolute transcendence beyond all appearances? Hegel merely things through the implications of Kant's own assertions and demonstrates how he says something quite other than what he thinks.

Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition. He has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no transcendent beyond to appearances and that being is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant called for in the first Critique without himself accomplishing it.

Kind Regards,

Levi

jgbardis <jgbardis@...> wrote:
That's a nice argument, Levi.

But the understanding can't know the thing-in-itself, right?

In Medieval philosophy, and to some extent in ancient philosophy,
they talk about discursive reason which would be about the
equivalent to understanding, and then also they talk about the
intellect. They talk about the passive intellect, which may be like
speculative reason, and they talk about the active intellect, which
might be like Absolute Reason.

But of course Hegel goes through all sorts of different ways of
knowing in the PHENOMONOLOGY.

But of course ultimately the active intellect would be God - just as
for Hegel Absolute Reason is God. And really that's what allows us
to know the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that Hegel's position is
just a restatement of the Medieval position - but with an eye to
Kant.

But you strike me as a modern man, and probably you don't believe
anything of the sort. But then there is no ontological difference
between the understanding and dialectical reason. It's more like
smart people are dialectical and stupid people aren't. But then how
would that be anything more than arrogance? You might think you know
the thing-in-itself, but really perhaps you have only established
the possibility of knowing it - and even Kant recognizes such a
possibility.

John



--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, "Levi R. Bryant" <lprbryant@y...>
wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished*
or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things
is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the
difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a
merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition
or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished
are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the
proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the
color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference
I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I
am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that
the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to
draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball
must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or
opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and
> external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from
the other.
>
> In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point,
conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the
thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim
that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to
phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are
independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point
is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself
on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I
am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any
resemblance to phenomena.
>
> Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms
distinguished as being independent and external to one another and
therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or
opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent
on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished
implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical
structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an
opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other
term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical
argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such
that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a
dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally
related and independent, they are internally related in such a way
that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in
a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his
> symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient
progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some
external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the
very essence of his unconscious desire.
>
> It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's
argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is
that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of
phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of
phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself
as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely
empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the
manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of
phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-
itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be
externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself
in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-
dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical
negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the
proposition.
>
> If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to
be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the
requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a
normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that
phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself.
Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical
logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do
find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-
itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as
being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal*
relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena.
Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship
between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow
*causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument,
this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category
of the
> understanding, and the categories of the understanding are
applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid
applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves
in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the
world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does
in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship
of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot
consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like.
This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-
Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching
board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does
nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how
knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself.
He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding
in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of
phenomena is organized
> around the positing of forces that render the phenomena
intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit
the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling
that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is
draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about
the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What
Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is
internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we
cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena
without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some
absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge
of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous
theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is
a knowledge nonetheless.
>
> It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this
point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to
consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality,
phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard,
I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of
residual Platonism we find in Kant.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.
>
>
> robertfanelli002@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> petrejo@e... writes:
>
> > Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> > first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> > the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> > no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> > any meaning at all.
> >
>
> Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its
translation to
> general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the
dialectic
> argument.
>
> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in
itself' is
> knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such
a thing is not a
> fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself
is knowable
> is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once
we extract
> from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then
dogma
> disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most
of us are interested
> in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear John,

I'm not certain I would say that Hegel simply boils down to the thesis that there is no transcendent beyond to appearance and that being is absolutely immanent. It is indeed the case that Hegel rejects sterile oppositions such as those between the infinite and the finite, reality and appearances (Plato), form and matter, essence and existence that conceive one of the terms of these oppositions as being transcendent, beyond and completely innaccessible, while conceiving the other as being finite and immanent. Instead Hegel attempts to demonstrate how these terms are internally related to one another and mutually implicate each other such that reason necessarily passes into each. Thus, for instance, Hegel shows how essence is already indwelling in appearances and being such that being (existence) ought not be conceived as having an external relation to essence, or form ought not be conceived as externally related (contingently related) to matter. This is one of the great virtues of
Hegel's project. Yet I'm not certain that I would say that his thought simply boils down to a statement about immanence. As Hegel said, the truth cannot be stated in a single sentence. The dialectical movement of his system preserves all that comes before which is why Hegel has to be read so carefully. Thus, for instance, when, in the Logic, Hegel shows how Being passes over into Nothing and Nothing passes over into being, leading to the next dialectical movement of Becoming as the unity of being and nothing, we ought not suppose that Hegel has simply dispensed with Being and Nothing in favor of Becoming. Rather, Becoming sublates Being and Nothing in such a way as to preserve them while also negating them. No proposition of Hegel's system can be read in isolation without distorting the movement of his thought. This, I think, is the mistake that Heidegger, for instance, makes when he criticizes Hegel for claiming that Being is that concept poorest in content. Heidegger seems
to believe that Hegel holds that Being is dispensed with in subsequent dialectical developments. But Being is preserved to the very end. While Being is the poorest in content at the beginning of the system, it becomes the richest in content by the end. Heidegger seems to miss this eminently hermeneutic unfolding that progressively expands the richness and complexity of concepts as it demonstrates how they interrelate. This way of reading Hegel's propositions as isolated from their context and place in the system seems very common, and strikes me as accounting for many of the criticisms directed against his thought. While I would not describe myself as a Hegelian, I nonetheless think this mode of criticism fails to get at Hegel's thought.

For similar reasons, I think it is both unfair and untrue to suggest that Hegel simply throws previous philosophies such as medieval and ancient thought to the waste bin. Hegel objected to those histories of philosophy that simply write history as a parade of contingent and unrelated point of view, but also held that philosophy could not be practiced outside the history of philosophy. For Hegel the goal of good history of philosophy ought to consist in capturing the rational truth of a particular system and determining how it *necessarily* relates to the rational truth of other philosophical systems. In other words, Hegel argues that we can *retroactively* discover a rational and necessary development in the history of philosophy and that the task of the history of philosophy ought to be to articulate this necessity. Consequently, it seems to me that Hegel has the greatest respect for the history of philosophy... Far more respect, than say a thinker like Descartes or Hume who
seems to hold that we can simply dispense with that development or discover the one true position out of all the others. You need only open Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy to see that he was far from dismissing ancient and medieval philosophy. In fact, if you open any of the texts in the Encyclopaedia you will find myriad references to ancient and medieval thought. Moreover, Hegel's own philosophical language is deeply indebted to the ancients and scholastic thinkers in such a way that it is simply absurd to suggest that he wasn't in profound dialogue with them.

Kind Regards,

Levi


JOHN BARDIS <jgbardis@...> wrote:
Thank you, Levi, for taking so much time with this.

So the conclusion is that "there is no transcendent beyond the appearances, and that being is absolutely immanent."

Is that what Hegel is saying?

It's like the old Zen saying: first mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; then mountains aren't mountains and rivers aren't rivers; and finally mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers - or something like that.

It is a shame, though, to throw all of ancient and medieval philosophy into the trash. Unfortunately, if we do that, no one, really, will even notice.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Levi R. Bryant
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Hegel and the Thing-in-itself


Dear John,

As Kant argues, the understanding alone is incapable of knowing anything. The central thesis of Kant's critical philosophy is that concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. For Kant, of course, concepts belong to the spontaneity of the understanding, whereas intuition belongs to the receptivity of intuition. Consequently, in a Kantian framework, it's quite besides the point to claim that the understanding cannot know thing-in-themselves. Of course it can't because knowledge, for Kant, requires both concepts (understanding) and intuitions (sensibility). In fact, one can go one step further and argue that for Kant there is no real knowledge without the agency of reason. Where the understanding separates and distinguishes, thus thinking things independently of one another, it falls to the vocation of reason to organize, synthesize and unify the disparate. It is only with reason the systematic knowledge is established and that relationships are
drawn between the various syntheses established by the understanding and intuition. Kant treats this dimension of knowledge in the second half of the first Critique when he discusses the Ideas of Reason.

In claiming that we know the thing-in-itself I do not believe that Hegel is appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition as you suggest. Hegel arrives at this thesis on the basis of an immanent development or unfolding of the concept of the in-itself. When we think through the actual claims that Kant makes about things-in-themselves we quickly discover that the concept falls into contradiction. On the one hand, Kant wishes to say that the in-itself is completely unknowable insofar as it is transcendent to all experience. So far so good. According to this thesis we only have knowledge of appearances or phenomena. Yet on the other hand, Kant wishes to claim that things-in-themselves cause or affect the faculty of sensibility providing us with the manifold sensible diversity synthesized by the understanding. And this is the problem: According to Kant, the categories of the understanding (among which we find cause and effect) only have a legitimate employment with
respect to appearances. In Kant's view, the moment we suggest that time and space characterize things-in-themselves or that we seek to apply the categories directly to things themselves we fall into irresoveable paradoxes or antinomies. Nonetheless, Kant finds himself unable to avoid attributing causation to things-in-themselves. This logically entails that we do in fact have knowledge of things-in-themselves and that the category of the thing-in-itself is a contradictory or illegitimate category for Kant. In fact, given that Kant claims that we can only know appearances, how could this category not be illegitimate from the perspective of Critical philosophy, insofar as it posits an absolute transcendence beyond all appearances? Hegel merely things through the implications of Kant's own assertions and demonstrates how he says something quite other than what he thinks.

Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition. He has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no transcendent beyond to appearances and that being is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant called for in the first Critique without himself accomplishing it.

Kind Regards,

Levi

jgbardis <jgbardis@...> wrote:
That's a nice argument, Levi.

But the understanding can't know the thing-in-itself, right?

In Medieval philosophy, and to some extent in ancient philosophy,
they talk about discursive reason which would be about the
equivalent to understanding, and then also they talk about the
intellect. They talk about the passive intellect, which may be like
speculative reason, and they talk about the active intellect, which
might be like Absolute Reason.

But of course Hegel goes through all sorts of different ways of
knowing in the PHENOMONOLOGY.

But of course ultimately the active intellect would be God - just as
for Hegel Absolute Reason is God. And really that's what allows us
to know the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that Hegel's position is
just a restatement of the Medieval position - but with an eye to
Kant.

But you strike me as a modern man, and probably you don't believe
anything of the sort. But then there is no ontological difference
between the understanding and dialectical reason. It's more like
smart people are dialectical and stupid people aren't. But then how
would that be anything more than arrogance? You might think you know
the thing-in-itself, but really perhaps you have only established
the possibility of knowing it - and even Kant recognizes such a
possibility.

John



--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, "Levi R. Bryant" <lprbryant@y...>
wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished*
or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things
is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the
difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a
merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition
or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished
are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the
proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the
color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference
I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I
am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that
the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to
draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball
must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or
opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and
> external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from
the other.
>
> In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point,
conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the
thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim
that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to
phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are
independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point
is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself
on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I
am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any
resemblance to phenomena.
>
> Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms
distinguished as being independent and external to one another and
therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or
opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent
on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished
implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical
structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an
opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other
term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical
argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such
that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a
dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally
related and independent, they are internally related in such a way
that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in
a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his
> symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient
progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some
external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the
very essence of his unconscious desire.
>
> It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's
argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is
that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of
phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of
phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself
as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely
empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the
manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of
phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-
itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be
externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself
in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-
dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical
negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the
proposition.
>
> If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to
be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the
requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a
normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that
phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself.
Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical
logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do
find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-
itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as
being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal*
relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena.
Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship
between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow
*causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument,
this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category
of the
> understanding, and the categories of the understanding are
applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid
applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves
in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the
world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does
in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship
of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot
consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like.
This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-
Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching
board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does
nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how
knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself.
He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding
in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of
phenomena is organized
> around the positing of forces that render the phenomena
intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit
the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling
that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is
draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about
the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What
Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is
internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we
cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena
without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some
absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge
of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous
theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is
a knowledge nonetheless.
>
> It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this
point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to
consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality,
phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard,
I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of
residual Platonism we find in Kant.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.
>
>
> robertfanelli002@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> petrejo@e... writes:
>
> > Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> > first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> > the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> > no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> > any meaning at all.
> >
>
> Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its
translation to
> general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the
dialectic
> argument.
>
> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in
itself' is
> knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such
a thing is not a
> fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself
is knowable
> is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once
we extract
> from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then
dogma
> disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most
of us are interested
> in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.




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Certainly, Levi, what you say is true.

Perhaps Hegel calls the thing-in-itself 'essence' which is opposed to appearance. And their unity is actuality.

So certainly it would be incorrect to say that for Hegel appearance in itself was actuality.

But what does that really mean? Is this just a game with words?

Certainly I do believe that to really know the union of essence and appearance, to really know actuality, requires some sort of intellectual intuition.

In fact I believe the whole point of philosophy is to develop in its practitioners something like intellectual intuition. Otherwise what's the point? But I do know that Hegel does differentiate between sense-certainty, on one extreme, and Absolute Reason, on the other.

Obviously sense-certainty can't know the essence of anything. It can only know appearance.

And obviously I don't know what Absolute Reason is, except in theory, nor do I know what the Medieval Active Intellect is, again except in theory, but they sound like exactly the same thing to me.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Levi R. Bryant
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Hegel and the Thing-in-itself


Dear John,

I'm not certain I would say that Hegel simply boils down to the thesis that there is no transcendent beyond to appearance and that being is absolutely immanent. It is indeed the case that Hegel rejects sterile oppositions such as those between the infinite and the finite, reality and appearances (Plato), form and matter, essence and existence that conceive one of the terms of these oppositions as being transcendent, beyond and completely innaccessible, while conceiving the other as being finite and immanent. Instead Hegel attempts to demonstrate how these terms are internally related to one another and mutually implicate each other such that reason necessarily passes into each. Thus, for instance, Hegel shows how essence is already indwelling in appearances and being such that being (existence) ought not be conceived as having an external relation to essence, or form ought not be conceived as externally related (contingently related) to matter. This is one of the great virtues of
Hegel's project. Yet I'm not certain that I would say that his thought simply boils down to a statement about immanence. As Hegel said, the truth cannot be stated in a single sentence. The dialectical movement of his system preserves all that comes before which is why Hegel has to be read so carefully. Thus, for instance, when, in the Logic, Hegel shows how Being passes over into Nothing and Nothing passes over into being, leading to the next dialectical movement of Becoming as the unity of being and nothing, we ought not suppose that Hegel has simply dispensed with Being and Nothing in favor of Becoming. Rather, Becoming sublates Being and Nothing in such a way as to preserve them while also negating them. No proposition of Hegel's system can be read in isolation without distorting the movement of his thought. This, I think, is the mistake that Heidegger, for instance, makes when he criticizes Hegel for claiming that Being is that concept poorest in content. Heidegger seems
to believe that Hegel holds that Being is dispensed with in subsequent dialectical developments. But Being is preserved to the very end. While Being is the poorest in content at the beginning of the system, it becomes the richest in content by the end. Heidegger seems to miss this eminently hermeneutic unfolding that progressively expands the richness and complexity of concepts as it demonstrates how they interrelate. This way of reading Hegel's propositions as isolated from their context and place in the system seems very common, and strikes me as accounting for many of the criticisms directed against his thought. While I would not describe myself as a Hegelian, I nonetheless think this mode of criticism fails to get at Hegel's thought.

For similar reasons, I think it is both unfair and untrue to suggest that Hegel simply throws previous philosophies such as medieval and ancient thought to the waste bin. Hegel objected to those histories of philosophy that simply write history as a parade of contingent and unrelated point of view, but also held that philosophy could not be practiced outside the history of philosophy. For Hegel the goal of good history of philosophy ought to consist in capturing the rational truth of a particular system and determining how it *necessarily* relates to the rational truth of other philosophical systems. In other words, Hegel argues that we can *retroactively* discover a rational and necessary development in the history of philosophy and that the task of the history of philosophy ought to be to articulate this necessity. Consequently, it seems to me that Hegel has the greatest respect for the history of philosophy... Far more respect, than say a thinker like Descartes or Hume who
seems to hold that we can simply dispense with that development or discover the one true position out of all the others. You need only open Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy to see that he was far from dismissing ancient and medieval philosophy. In fact, if you open any of the texts in the Encyclopaedia you will find myriad references to ancient and medieval thought. Moreover, Hegel's own philosophical language is deeply indebted to the ancients and scholastic thinkers in such a way that it is simply absurd to suggest that he wasn't in profound dialogue with them.

Kind Regards,

Levi


JOHN BARDIS <jgbardis@...> wrote:
Thank you, Levi, for taking so much time with this.

So the conclusion is that "there is no transcendent beyond the appearances, and that being is absolutely immanent."

Is that what Hegel is saying?

It's like the old Zen saying: first mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; then mountains aren't mountains and rivers aren't rivers; and finally mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers - or something like that.

It is a shame, though, to throw all of ancient and medieval philosophy into the trash. Unfortunately, if we do that, no one, really, will even notice.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Levi R. Bryant
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Re: Hegel and the Thing-in-itself


Dear John,

As Kant argues, the understanding alone is incapable of knowing anything. The central thesis of Kant's critical philosophy is that concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. For Kant, of course, concepts belong to the spontaneity of the understanding, whereas intuition belongs to the receptivity of intuition. Consequently, in a Kantian framework, it's quite besides the point to claim that the understanding cannot know thing-in-themselves. Of course it can't because knowledge, for Kant, requires both concepts (understanding) and intuitions (sensibility). In fact, one can go one step further and argue that for Kant there is no real knowledge without the agency of reason. Where the understanding separates and distinguishes, thus thinking things independently of one another, it falls to the vocation of reason to organize, synthesize and unify the disparate. It is only with reason the systematic knowledge is established and that relationships are
drawn between the various syntheses established by the understanding and intuition. Kant treats this dimension of knowledge in the second half of the first Critique when he discusses the Ideas of Reason.

In claiming that we know the thing-in-itself I do not believe that Hegel is appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition as you suggest. Hegel arrives at this thesis on the basis of an immanent development or unfolding of the concept of the in-itself. When we think through the actual claims that Kant makes about things-in-themselves we quickly discover that the concept falls into contradiction. On the one hand, Kant wishes to say that the in-itself is completely unknowable insofar as it is transcendent to all experience. So far so good. According to this thesis we only have knowledge of appearances or phenomena. Yet on the other hand, Kant wishes to claim that things-in-themselves cause or affect the faculty of sensibility providing us with the manifold sensible diversity synthesized by the understanding. And this is the problem: According to Kant, the categories of the understanding (among which we find cause and effect) only have a legitimate employment with
respect to appearances. In Kant's view, the moment we suggest that time and space characterize things-in-themselves or that we seek to apply the categories directly to things themselves we fall into irresoveable paradoxes or antinomies. Nonetheless, Kant finds himself unable to avoid attributing causation to things-in-themselves. This logically entails that we do in fact have knowledge of things-in-themselves and that the category of the thing-in-itself is a contradictory or illegitimate category for Kant. In fact, given that Kant claims that we can only know appearances, how could this category not be illegitimate from the perspective of Critical philosophy, insofar as it posits an absolute transcendence beyond all appearances? Hegel merely things through the implications of Kant's own assertions and demonstrates how he says something quite other than what he thinks.

Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition. He has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no transcendent beyond to appearances and that being is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant called for in the first Critique without himself accomplishing it.

Kind Regards,

Levi

jgbardis <jgbardis@...> wrote:
That's a nice argument, Levi.

But the understanding can't know the thing-in-itself, right?

In Medieval philosophy, and to some extent in ancient philosophy,
they talk about discursive reason which would be about the
equivalent to understanding, and then also they talk about the
intellect. They talk about the passive intellect, which may be like
speculative reason, and they talk about the active intellect, which
might be like Absolute Reason.

But of course Hegel goes through all sorts of different ways of
knowing in the PHENOMONOLOGY.

But of course ultimately the active intellect would be God - just as
for Hegel Absolute Reason is God. And really that's what allows us
to know the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that Hegel's position is
just a restatement of the Medieval position - but with an eye to
Kant.

But you strike me as a modern man, and probably you don't believe
anything of the sort. But then there is no ontological difference
between the understanding and dialectical reason. It's more like
smart people are dialectical and stupid people aren't. But then how
would that be anything more than arrogance? You might think you know
the thing-in-itself, but really perhaps you have only established
the possibility of knowing it - and even Kant recognizes such a
possibility.

John



--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, "Levi R. Bryant" <lprbryant@y...>
wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> The thing-in-itself is knowable insofar as it is *distinguished*
or *opposed* to phenomena. To draw a distinction between two things
is already to know both sides of the distinction. This is the
difference between a dialectical opposition or distinction and a
merely empirical opposition. In the case of an empirical opposition
or distinction, the two entities, qualities or domains distinguished
are independent of one another. Thus, if I assert the
proposition "the ball is *not* black", thereby distinguishing the
color of the ball from the quality of the black, then only inference
I can make from this proposition is that the ball is not black. I
am not entitled to draw any other inference besides the fact that
the ball is some *other* color. I am not, for instance, entitled to
draw the inferance that *because* the ball is *not* black, the ball
must be *white*. Thus the nature of an empirical distinction or
opposition is such that the terms distinguished are independent and
> external to one another, such that I cannot infer the one from
the other.
>
> In this regard, Kant, and those who follow Kant on this point,
conceives the distinction or opposition between phenomena and the
thing-in-itself as an *empirical* distinction insofar as the claim
that I cannot know the in-itself on the basis of my relationship to
phenomena or appearances implies that the two, while related, are
independent of one another and external to each other. Kant's point
is that I cannot make inferences as to the nature of the in-itself
on the basis of appearances. Put otherwise, Kant's claim is that I
am not warranted in assuming that the in-itself shares any
resemblance to phenomena.
>
> Where an empirical distinction or opposition conceives the terms
distinguished as being independent and external to one another and
therefore only contingently related, a dialectical distinction or
opposition conceives the related terms as being internally dependent
on one another such that each term, quality or domain distinguished
implies the other term. Put in very simplistic terms, a dialectical
structure of argumentation therefore shows how one term of an
opposition or determination *necessarily* passes over into its other
term and vice versa. In demonstrating this passage, a dialectical
argument thereby shows that the two terms are interdependent such
that the two cannot be thought apart or that they maintain a
dialectical identity with one another. Rather than being externally
related and independent, they are internally related in such a way
that knowing one entails knowing the other. Thus, for instance, in
a psychotherapeutic context the relationship of a patient to his
> symptom is a dialectical relation in that the patient
progressively moves from seeing that the symptom isn't simply some
external inhibition or inconvenience that plagues his life, but the
very essence of his unconscious desire.
>
> It is in this spirit that we ought, I think, approach Hegel's
argument that we can know the thing-in-itself. Hegel's point is
that the thing-in-itself cannot be thought independently of
phenomena and is therefore already known from the point of view of
phenomenal knowledge. Kant's mistake was to conceive the in-itself
as being externally related to phenomena, as being merely
empirically distinguished from phenomena, rather than seeing the
manner in which it is internally related to the very essence of
phenomena. If Kant is led to assert that we do not know the in-
itself, then this is because he believed the in-itself to be
externally related to phenomena. Thus Kant conceived the in-itself
in relation to phenomena in a manner similar to the way in which non-
dialectical logic conceives negation. A non-dialectical logical
negation allows me to make no inferences about the content of the
proposition.
>
> If I simply left the argument here, then you would be right not to
be convinced in that I would simply be externally applying the
requirements of dialectical argumentation to Kant's philosophy in a
normative fashion, rather than actually *demonstrating* that
phenomenal knowledge leads us to a knowledge of the in-itself.
Rather, it must be asked whether Kant himself falls into dialectical
logic when he's led to conceive the in-itself. And indeed, we do
find Kant falling into a dialectical relationship between the in-
itself and phenomena, despite his best efforts to conceive them as
being indepedent of one another. This is evident in the *causal*
relationship Kant draws between the in-itself and phenomena.
Throughout the first Critique there is an obscure relationship
between phenomena and the in-itself such that the in-itself somehow
*causes* phenomena. However, by the lights of Kant's own argument,
this thesis is dogmatic and illegimate since causality is a category
of the
> understanding, and the categories of the understanding are
applicable only to appearances. Yet Kant is unable to avoid
applying the category of cause and effect to the things themselves
in thematizing the relationship between the phenomenal world and the
world as it is in-itself. Thus, despite his best efforts, Kant does
in fact posit a knowledge of the in-itself and also a relationship
of the in-itself to phenomena. In other words, we cannot
consistently draw this distinction in the way that Kant would like.
This *contradiction* was almost immediately recognized by post-
Kantian philosophers such as Solomon Maimon, and was a launching
board for the critique of transcendental idealism. Hegel does
nothing more than maximize on this contradiction, showing how
knowledge of phenomena already implies knowledge of the in-itself.
He develops this analysis in the chapter on force and understanding
in the Phenomenology, where he shows how our understanding of
phenomena is organized
> around the positing of forces that render the phenomena
intelligible at the level of the in-itself. For instance, we posit
the force of gravity to explain all the instances of objects falling
that we experience in day to day life. In short, all Hegel does is
draw out the implications of what Kant was already asserting about
the causal relationship between phenomena and the in-itself. What
Hegel ultimately demonstrates is thus that the in-itself is
internally related to the phenomenon as its soul, such that we
cannot think the one without the other (we cannot think phenomena
without the in-itself), and thus that the in-itself is not some
absolute transcendence which we can never know. While our knowledge
of the in-itself is indeed mediated by appearances (Hegel's famous
theses about the relationship between appearance and essence) it is
a knowledge nonetheless.
>
> It seems to me that Hegel's arguments are pretty strong in this
point. I cannot say that I've seen a case where one is able to
consistently draw an opposition between appearance and reality,
phenomenality and the in-itself that Plato or Kant. In this regard,
I think Hegel's move towards immanence is superior to the sort of
residual Platonism we find in Kant.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Levi R. Bryant, Ph.D.
>
>
> robertfanelli002@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 12/30/2003 3:25:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> petrejo@e... writes:
>
> > Nobody is being dogmatic about Hegel. Yet on a Hegel List the
> > first order of business should be to know what he said. Then
> > the next order of business should be to *ensure* that there are
> > no misunderstandings. Only then would a debate about Hegel have
> > any meaning at all.
> >
>
> Agreed. Once we pass from understanding the text and its
translation to
> general agreement of its meaning, the next step is to validate the
dialectic
> argument.
>
> So far, no one has validated the argument that 'the thing in
itself' is
> knowable. You may cite Hegelian text, but to offer proof of such
a thing is not a
> fait accompli thus far. Therefore to say that the thing in itself
is knowable
> is dogmatic. But to say that the thing in itself is knowable once
we extract
> from the Hegelian philosophy an exact way of proving this, then
dogma
> disappears. This, it seems to me is one of the reasons why most
of us are interested
> in Hegel.
>
> Happy New Year,
>
> Bob Fanelli
>
> PS Not all Kantians are dogmatic.




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear John,

You write:

> Perhaps Hegel calls the thing-in-itself 'essence' which is opposed

to appearance. And their unity is actuality.

No, I take it that essence is something other than the thing-in-
itself. But we don't need to get into this right now. It's
sufficient to simply point out that every being has a "that-being"
(existence) and a "what-being" (essence), and that for Hegel the two
are always wedded together. I take it that this is one of the senses
of his battle cry that "the real is the rational and the rational is
the real". The idea of the real evokes thoughts of existence,
whereas the idea of rationality evokes thoughts of essence. To say
that the real is the rational and the rational is the real is to say--
unlike Plato and Kant --that the two are always found together and
cannot be thought independently of one another. Every attempt to
think essence returns me to the singularity of existence, whereas
every attempt to think brute existence returns me to the being of
essence. Properly speaking it would be a mistake to claim that
essence is the thing-in-itself since essence, for Hegel, belongs to
the for-itself or reflection into itself (reflexivity), whereas the
in-itself does not yet reflect or posit itself. A reading of Hegel's
Logic is rewarding here.

> So certainly it would be incorrect to say that for Hegel appearance

in itself was actuality.

In fact, I take it Hegel would say that essence appears in the
appearance. Hence it would be misleading to suggest that Hegel
disagrees with the thesis that appearance is actuality insofar as
essence must appear... Recall that in the second part of the Science
of Logic Hegel begins his treatment of essence by a discussion of
appearance. There is no essence without appearance if only for the
simple reason that essence must differentiate itself from appearance
while appearing in and through appearance.

> But what does that really mean? Is this just a game with words?

No, I think it's a bit more than a game with words... Where
knowledge is concerned what would the alternative be? This strikes
me as the call of dogmatism. Is it not the case that knowledge must
be articulable in order to count as knowledge? In the past, I have
suggested that Hegel's dialectic moves through the tension that
emerges between what I mean and what I actually say. This appears to
be the case among Kantians and neo-Kantians with respect to the thing-
in-itself. On the one hand, by the in-itself they *mean* (intend)
that which is transcendent to all knowledge (since knowledge is
restricted to appearances), yet in actually attempting to *speak*
this point they betray that they do in fact have knowledge of the in-
itself in that they conceive it as affecting the subject or in a
causal relation to the subject. Hence the concept of the in-itself
falls into contradiction with itself and sublates itself. While our
knowledge of the in-itself certianly is not immediate, it is a
knowledge nonetheless. This is why Hegel associates it with
understanding, force and intelligibility in the Phenomenology.

> Certainly I do believe that to really know the union of essence and

appearance, to really know actuality, requires some sort of
intellectual intuition.

>

I'm a little unclear as to what you mean by intellectual intuition.
Are you using it in it's more traditional scholastic sense, as an
intuition of truths and realities that are not given in sensibility?
Or are you using it in a more Husserlian/phenomenological sense of
categorical intuitions where the intelligibility of a phenomenon is
given in its intentional fulfillment. Given Hegel's treatment of
sense-certainty and perception in the Phenomenology, I believe he
would be highly amenable to this second conception of intellectual
intuition. After all, sensibility and intelligibility form a
synthesis for Hegel, not an opposition.

> In fact I believe the whole point of philosophy is to develop in

its practitioners something like intellectual intuition. Otherwise
what's the point?

I can think of many other points to philosophy. This particular one
strikes me as somewhat idiosyncratic, or at least elliptical.

>But I do know that Hegel does differentiate between sense-certainty,
>on one extreme, and Absolute Reason, on the other.
>

This statement strikes me as being based on a misunderstanding of how
Hegel's dialectic moves. It is simply wrong to claim that Hegel
*opposes* sense-certainty and Absolute Reason in such a way as to
privilege the latter over the former. Indeed, Hegel demonstrates
that sense-certainty is overcome or sublated in the movement of the
dialectic... He demonstrates that sense-certainty necessarily passes
over into conceptuality. But this should not be taken to mean that
Hegel throws sense-certainty away or that it no longer functions in
reason. One need only read the passages in the Phenomenology of
observational reason to see what great respect Hegel has for
observational and empirical enquiry-- A point almost always
overlooked by those who would claim that Hegel believes there is no
place for observational inquiry. Here I'm inclined to agree with
Paul that people really ought to read Hegel before attributing claims
to him of this sort. At any rate, while the dialectical movement of
sublation indeed negates that with which it begins, the negated
content is also preserved in everything that comes after.
Consequently, Absolute Reason (which is really nothing more than the
claim that the world is all there is, i.e., immanence) would not be
Absolute Reason if it did not preserve sense-certainty within it.
Absolute Reason necessarily has a sensible correlate. For this
reason it is mistaken to suggest Hegel opposes the two. Rather,
being (sense) and reason (essence) are unified in Absolute Reason.

> Obviously sense-certainty can't know the essence of anything. It

can only know appearance.

Indeed, but sense-certainty passes over into essence of its own
accord *necessarily*. Moreover, essence would be nothing without
sensible particularity.

> And obviously I don't know what Absolute Reason is, except in

theory, nor do I know what the Medieval Active Intellect is, again
except in theory, but they sound like exactly the same thing to me.

I would suggest that the active, intuitive intellect differs from
Absolute Reason in that the former posits essences as transcendent to
the world which is the whole reason it must resort to an intellectual
intuition in order to explain our acquaintance with these objects.
For Hegel everything is immanent and there is a unity of sense and
reason. Absolute reason is that moment where this unity is
established or brought to fruition through the movement of the
dialectic. Of course, there's much more to it than this... One
cannot speak the truth in a single sentence.

Kind Regards,

Levi

Absolute reason is "nothing more than the claim that the world is all there is"!

Wow, Levi, that Hegel was certainly a long-winded bastard, if that was all he was saying. But, really, that conclusion works for me.

And intellectual intuition of the Husserlian sort is also fine with me.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: lprbryant
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 2:49 PM
Subject: [hegel] Re: Hegel and the Thing-in-itself


Dear John,

You write:

> Perhaps Hegel calls the thing-in-itself 'essence' which is opposed
to appearance. And their unity is actuality.

No, I take it that essence is something other than the thing-in-
itself. But we don't need to get into this right now. It's
sufficient to simply point out that every being has a "that-being"
(existence) and a "what-being" (essence), and that for Hegel the two
are always wedded together. I take it that this is one of the senses
of his battle cry that "the real is the rational and the rational is
the real". The idea of the real evokes thoughts of existence,
whereas the idea of rationality evokes thoughts of essence. To say
that the real is the rational and the rational is the real is to say--
unlike Plato and Kant --that the two are always found together and
cannot be thought independently of one another. Every attempt to
think essence returns me to the singularity of existence, whereas
every attempt to think brute existence returns me to the being of
essence. Properly speaking it would be a mistake to claim that
essence is the thing-in-itself since essence, for Hegel, belongs to
the for-itself or reflection into itself (reflexivity), whereas the
in-itself does not yet reflect or posit itself. A reading of Hegel's
Logic is rewarding here.

> So certainly it would be incorrect to say that for Hegel appearance
in itself was actuality.

In fact, I take it Hegel would say that essence appears in the
appearance. Hence it would be misleading to suggest that Hegel
disagrees with the thesis that appearance is actuality insofar as
essence must appear... Recall that in the second part of the Science
of Logic Hegel begins his treatment of essence by a discussion of
appearance. There is no essence without appearance if only for the
simple reason that essence must differentiate itself from appearance
while appearing in and through appearance.

> But what does that really mean? Is this just a game with words?

No, I think it's a bit more than a game with words... Where
knowledge is concerned what would the alternative be? This strikes
me as the call of dogmatism. Is it not the case that knowledge must
be articulable in order to count as knowledge? In the past, I have
suggested that Hegel's dialectic moves through the tension that
emerges between what I mean and what I actually say. This appears to
be the case among Kantians and neo-Kantians with respect to the thing-
in-itself. On the one hand, by the in-itself they *mean* (intend)
that which is transcendent to all knowledge (since knowledge is
restricted to appearances), yet in actually attempting to *speak*
this point they betray that they do in fact have knowledge of the in-
itself in that they conceive it as affecting the subject or in a
causal relation to the subject. Hence the concept of the in-itself
falls into contradiction with itself and sublates itself. While our
knowledge of the in-itself certianly is not immediate, it is a
knowledge nonetheless. This is why Hegel associates it with
understanding, force and intelligibility in the Phenomenology.

> Certainly I do believe that to really know the union of essence and
appearance, to really know actuality, requires some sort of
intellectual intuition.
>

I'm a little unclear as to what you mean by intellectual intuition.
Are you using it in it's more traditional scholastic sense, as an
intuition of truths and realities that are not given in sensibility?
Or are you using it in a more Husserlian/phenomenological sense of
categorical intuitions where the intelligibility of a phenomenon is
given in its intentional fulfillment. Given Hegel's treatment of
sense-certainty and perception in the Phenomenology, I believe he
would be highly amenable to this second conception of intellectual
intuition. After all, sensibility and intelligibility form a
synthesis for Hegel, not an opposition.

> In fact I believe the whole point of philosophy is to develop in
its practitioners something like intellectual intuition. Otherwise
what's the point?

I can think of many other points to philosophy. This particular one
strikes me as somewhat idiosyncratic, or at least elliptical.

>But I do know that Hegel does differentiate between sense-certainty,
>on one extreme, and Absolute Reason, on the other.
>

This statement strikes me as being based on a misunderstanding of how
Hegel's dialectic moves. It is simply wrong to claim that Hegel
*opposes* sense-certainty and Absolute Reason in such a way as to
privilege the latter over the former. Indeed, Hegel demonstrates
that sense-certainty is overcome or sublated in the movement of the
dialectic... He demonstrates that sense-certainty necessarily passes
over into conceptuality. But this should not be taken to mean that
Hegel throws sense-certainty away or that it no longer functions in
reason. One need only read the passages in the Phenomenology of
observational reason to see what great respect Hegel has for
observational and empirical enquiry-- A point almost always
overlooked by those who would claim that Hegel believes there is no
place for observational inquiry. Here I'm inclined to agree with
Paul that people really ought to read Hegel before attributing claims
to him of this sort. At any rate, while the dialectical movement of
sublation indeed negates that with which it begins, the negated
content is also preserved in everything that comes after.
Consequently, Absolute Reason (which is really nothing more than the
claim that the world is all there is, i.e., immanence) would not be
Absolute Reason if it did not preserve sense-certainty within it.
Absolute Reason necessarily has a sensible correlate. For this
reason it is mistaken to suggest Hegel opposes the two. Rather,
being (sense) and reason (essence) are unified in Absolute Reason.

> Obviously sense-certainty can't know the essence of anything. It
can only know appearance.

Indeed, but sense-certainty passes over into essence of its own
accord *necessarily*. Moreover, essence would be nothing without
sensible particularity.

> And obviously I don't know what Absolute Reason is, except in
theory, nor do I know what the Medieval Active Intellect is, again
except in theory, but they sound like exactly the same thing to me.

I would suggest that the active, intuitive intellect differs from
Absolute Reason in that the former posits essences as transcendent to
the world which is the whole reason it must resort to an intellectual
intuition in order to explain our acquaintance with these objects.
For Hegel everything is immanent and there is a unity of sense and
reason. Absolute reason is that moment where this unity is
established or brought to fruition through the movement of the
dialectic. Of course, there's much more to it than this... One
cannot speak the truth in a single sentence.

Kind Regards,

Levi





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In response to thsee Jan2004 posts by Levi R. Bryant:

> ...Hegel's argument [about the thing-in-itself] is
> straightforward enough and has been formulated by
> dialecticians and non-dialecticians alike. It was one
> of the immediate criticisms that arose in the wake of
> Kant's first critique. I do not consider myself a Hegelian,
> but this particular argument on Hegel's part strikes me
> as rather strong...

Thanks for the independent confirmation, Levi. It is quite
true that Hegelians are not completely alone in the debate
against Kant's Unknowable Thing-in-itself.

> ...Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here
> appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition.

Yes, Levi, this is agreed; and it is an urgent point. There
is nothing of the Mystical or Hermetic in Hegel's idea of
Spirit. Spirit is Reason. At the same time, Reason is not
the mere finite Understanding. Dialectical Reason is more
than just formal principles -- it is a science of logic because
it is based on the living model itself, the Living Mind.
This is not merely intuition, rather, it is based on scientific
observation, and it is rigorously logical.

> ...Hegel has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the
> inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the
> thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his
> assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of
> appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical
> philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no
> transcendent beyond to appearances and that being
> is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant
> called for in the first Critique without himself
> accomplishing it.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Levi

Nicely put, Levi. Hegel takes Kant's philosophy very
seriously -- he actually finds it to be the greatest advance
in Western philosophy up until the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel
corrections. This is the summit of Western philosophy,
so any modern thought after Hegel that does not directly
address the problems of the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel
progression is really a digression from the critical issues
of modern philosophy.

That is the main reason that I find Kierkegaard, Marx,
Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger
to be disappointing.

Best regards,
--Paul Trejo, M.A.

Paul Trejo wrote:

> In response to thsee Jan2004 posts by Levi R. Bryant:
>
> > ...Hegel's argument [about the thing-in-itself] is
> > straightforward enough and has been formulated by
> > dialecticians and non-dialecticians alike. It was one
> > of the immediate criticisms that arose in the wake of
> > Kant's first critique. I do not consider myself a Hegelian,
> > but this particular argument on Hegel's part strikes me
> > as rather strong...
>
> Thanks for the independent confirmation, Levi. It is quite
> true that Hegelians are not completely alone in the debate
> against Kant's Unknowable Thing-in-itself.
>
> > ...Hopefully you'll concede that Hegel is not here
> > appealing to some sort of intellectual or divine intuition.
>
> Yes, Levi, this is agreed; and it is an urgent point. There
> is nothing of the Mystical or Hermetic in Hegel's idea of
> Spirit. Spirit is Reason. At the same time, Reason is not
> the mere finite Understanding. Dialectical Reason is more
> than just formal principles -- it is a science of logic because
> it is based on the living model itself, the Living Mind.
> This is not merely intuition, rather, it is based on scientific
> observation, and it is rigorously logical.
>
> > ...Hegel has merely taken Kant at his word and drawn the
> > inferences that follow from Kant's own theses about the
> > thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant who remains Platonist in his
> > assertion of a transcendence beyond the world of
> > appearances, Hegel truly accomplishes the Critical
> > philosophy in that he demonstrates that there is no
> > transcendent beyond to appearances and that being
> > is absolutely immanent. This is exactly what Kant
> > called for in the first Critique without himself
> > accomplishing it.
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> > Levi
>
> Nicely put, Levi. Hegel takes Kant's philosophy very
> seriously -- he actually finds it to be the greatest advance
> in Western philosophy up until the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel
> corrections. This is the summit of Western philosophy,
> so any modern thought after Hegel that does not directly
> address the problems of the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel
> progression is really a digression from the critical issues
> of modern philosophy.
>
> That is the main reason that I find Kierkegaard, Marx,
> Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger
> to be disappointing.
>
> Best regards,
> --Paul Trejo, M.A.

Yes, these are good arguments. For Hegel 'appearance' is neither the
truth nor merely the false. We only come to truth throught appearances.
The truth 'seems' through appearances. Without appearances there is no
way to the Concept. The first who saw this was the philosopher and
logician Lambert (Neues Organon) who lived in Kant's days.

Best wishes,
Beat Greuter

Levi,
your argument has very well shown that there is something problematic about
Kant's distinction between phenomena and unknown things-in-themselves. If
things-in-themselves are unknown, how could anyone distinguish between them
and phenomena? But a Kantian could object by saying that you (or Hegel)
haven't quite grasp Kant's precise meaning of the term 'knowledge'. To
advance our discussion, then, we [i.e. you] should first clarify what is
meant by the expression 'knowledge of a thing-in-itself'.

Consider the propositions:
(1) X knows that a exists.
(2) X knows that a exists in such-and-such a way.

(1) affirms the simple existence of a, while (2) affirms a's modus of
existence. Which of the two would you consider as exhibiting 'knowledge of
a'? It seems to me that Kant considers only (2) as being 'knowledge of a'.

According to Kant, the sensible material becomes intelligible only after the
categories of the understanding had been applied upon it. Despite the fact
that the categories are universal and necessary [i.e. they belong to the
thing-in-itself!], they are features of OUR thought, which means that the
sensible-material-as-it-is independently-of-thought will never be known in
the sense of (2). It is of course in the sense of (1) because according to
Kant there must be a sensible material that exists in its own terms before
the categories are applied upon it.

Now, as you said, this kind of argumentation is arbitrary: (a) The positing
of a sensible-material-as -it-is-independently-of-thought is by no means
justified, and (b) the knowledge of the categories, as they are in
themselves, is presupposed in Kant's argument.

Although Kant did not manage to show that there is an unknown
thing-in-itself, he provided us with the important insight that reality
cannot be known independently of the categories of thought. If we want to
acquire knowledge of reality, we should (a) unify the content of thought
with the content of reality, and (b) critically examine the content of
thought so as to secure its universality and necessity, the two features
which guarantee the objectivity of thought.

And this is the aim of Hegel's programme. He managed, indeed, (a) to unify
the Kantian distinction between things-in-themselves and appearances, and
(b) to derive the content of thought in an immanent fashion (viz. in a
universal and necessary fashion).

The crucial question, now, is the following: Did Hegel provide us with
knowledge of things-in-themselves? He certainly provided us with knowledge
of them in the sense of (1). But what about knowledge of them in the sense
of (2)?

The problem is that the content of thought about a given object A is
constantly enriched by the sensible (and other) material, which exhibits its
reality through thought. The immanent derivation of the categories
undoubtedly gives us some elements, the most abstract ones, of A's modus of
existence. But the object always discloses a part of itself that has not
been captured by thought. Hence the derivation of the categories of thought
is always enriched, without of course losing its universality and necessity.
To put ii figuratively, it is like putting new categories in between the
already existing ones, without affecting the immanent character of the
derivation.

[But how do I know that there is always something to be known regarding
object A? (To be continued)]

Ioannis

_________________________________________________________________
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http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

Dear Ioannis,

Thanks for so clearly laying out your response to Hegel's argument. I think Hegel does indeed think that we have knowledge of how things-in-themselves exist in "such and such a way". As you point out, for Kant the categories only have a legitimate employment with respect to the manifold of the sensibility. However, Kant also finds himself compelled to apply the category of causality directly to thing-in-themselves in his thematization of the relationship between sensibility and the manner in which thing-in-themselves affect sensibility. From the standpoint of the Critical Philosophy, this employment is illegimate, yet it cannot be avoided. Hegel's point is that this employment indicates that thought overcomes the manner in which it is restricted to sensibility and thereby arrives at knowledge of the things themselves. In the chapter on force and understanding in the Phenomenology, Hegel extends this point to show how we have causal knowledge of the things in themselves. He
simply takes Kant at his word and proceeds to draw out its implications. The thesis is thus that the intellibility we find in sensibility is a product of thing-in-themselves, which implies that we posit the thing-in-itself to account for the intelligibility of phenomena. From this perspective, the knowledge of the thing-in-itself wouldn't simply be a knowledge that it is or exists, but a knowledge that exists in such and such a way. Kant begins by treating the thing-in-itself as a sort of absolute transcendence that is always beyond our ability to know it. Hegel, following the letter of Kant's own arguments, shows how this position ultimately falls into contradiction with itself, such that what begins by being seen as an absolute transcence returns to immanence through a relation of negation. In my view, this argument manages to solve a number of riddles pertaining to Kant's response to Hume. If there is something unsatisfying about Kant's analogies of experience as a response
to Hume, then it lies in the fact that while one can very well see how application of the category of cause and effect to appearances allows us to arrive at the thought of necessity demanded in causality, we are still at a loss to see why the manifold itself has this necessity. In other words, there still seems to be a gap between the category and the manifold. Kant himself recognized this problem in his treatment of the schematism, but his account of the schematism seems to only beg the question. In working through the inconsistencies of Kant's critical philosophy to show how intelligibility belongs to the things themselves, Hegel is able to overcome this problem and show how the thing-in-itself, far from being a point of absolute transcendence, belongs to the immanence of thought. I do not think we should take this to mean that we know everything there is to know about the thing-in-itself or that we have an unmediated relationship to things as they are in themselves. Given
what Hegel has to say about observational reason in the Phenomenology, it is clear that Hegel believes that our knowledge of the world is an ongoing process that requires inquiry and investigation. In these passages, Hegel sounds (to me) very much like Dewey who had an elaborate dialectical theory of inquiry and who, as is well known, was deeply influenced by Hegel. It seems to me that one of the worries often addressed to Hegel's concept of absolute knowledge is that it seems to deny the place of observational inquiry, suggesting that all knowledge is accomplished and we need not examine the world. This criticism strikes me as being based on a failure to read Hegel and seems to be undermined by his claims about observational reason.

Kind regards,

Levi


Ioannis Trisokkas <itrisokkas@...> wrote:
Levi,
your argument has very well shown that there is something problematic about
Kant's distinction between phenomena and unknown things-in-themselves. If
things-in-themselves are unknown, how could anyone distinguish between them
and phenomena? But a Kantian could object by saying that you (or Hegel)
haven't quite grasp Kant's precise meaning of the term 'knowledge'. To
advance our discussion, then, we [i.e. you] should first clarify what is
meant by the expression 'knowledge of a thing-in-itself'.

Consider the propositions:
(1) X knows that a exists.
(2) X knows that a exists in such-and-such a way.

(1) affirms the simple existence of a, while (2) affirms a's modus of
existence. Which of the two would you consider as exhibiting 'knowledge of
a'? It seems to me that Kant considers only (2) as being 'knowledge of a'.

According to Kant, the sensible material becomes intelligible only after the
categories of the understanding had been applied upon it. Despite the fact
that the categories are universal and necessary [i.e. they belong to the
thing-in-itself!], they are features of OUR thought, which means that the
sensible-material-as-it-is independently-of-thought will never be known in
the sense of (2). It is of course in the sense of (1) because according to
Kant there must be a sensible material that exists in its own terms before
the categories are applied upon it.

Now, as you said, this kind of argumentation is arbitrary: (a) The positing
of a sensible-material-as -it-is-independently-of-thought is by no means
justified, and (b) the knowledge of the categories, as they are in
themselves, is presupposed in Kant's argument.

Although Kant did not manage to show that there is an unknown
thing-in-itself, he provided us with the important insight that reality
cannot be known independently of the categories of thought. If we want to
acquire knowledge of reality, we should (a) unify the content of thought
with the content of reality, and (b) critically examine the content of
thought so as to secure its universality and necessity, the two features
which guarantee the objectivity of thought.

And this is the aim of Hegel's programme. He managed, indeed, (a) to unify
the Kantian distinction between things-in-themselves and appearances, and
(b) to derive the content of thought in an immanent fashion (viz. in a
universal and necessary fashion).

The crucial question, now, is the following: Did Hegel provide us with
knowledge of things-in-themselves? He certainly provided us with knowledge
of them in the sense of (1). But what about knowledge of them in the sense
of (2)?

The problem is that the content of thought about a given object A is
constantly enriched by the sensible (and other) material, which exhibits its
reality through thought. The immanent derivation of the categories
undoubtedly gives us some elements, the most abstract ones, of A's modus of
existence. But the object always discloses a part of itself that has not
been captured by thought. Hence the derivation of the categories of thought
is always enriched, without of course losing its universality and necessity.
To put ii figuratively, it is like putting new categories in between the
already existing ones, without affecting the immanent character of the
derivation.

[But how do I know that there is always something to be known regarding
object A? (To be continued)]

Ioannis

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus



Homepage: http://hegel.net
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only Hegel related mails, scientific level intended.

Particpants are expected to show a respectfull and scientific attitude both to Hegel and to each other. The usual "netiquette" as well as scientific standards apply.

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 1/1/2004 11:50:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
lprbryant@... writes:

> Kant was unable to consistently speak of the thing-in-itself as a beyond of
> knowledge and continued to think of it in terms of the categories of the
> understanding. Hence the inevitable conclusion that we do indeed know the
> thing-in-itself.

Levi,

I just want to clarify what you are saying. Do you mean that Kant knew what
the thing in-itself was based on his categories of understanding?

Bob Fanelli


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Bob,

I am not saying that Kant *believed* he knew the thing-in-itself, but that the logic of his position leads to this conclusion.

Kind regards,

Levi

robertfanelli002@... wrote:
In a message dated 1/1/2004 11:50:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
lprbryant@... writes:

> Kant was unable to consistently speak of the thing-in-itself as a beyond of
> knowledge and continued to think of it in terms of the categories of the
> understanding. Hence the inevitable conclusion that we do indeed know the
> thing-in-itself.

Levi,

I just want to clarify what you are saying. Do you mean that Kant knew what
the thing in-itself was based on his categories of understanding?

Bob Fanelli


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



Homepage: http://hegel.net
Group Homepage: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hegel
other Hegel mailing lists: http://Hegel.net/res/ml.htm
Listowners Homepage: http://kai.froeb.netGroup policy:
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only Hegel related mails, scientific level intended.

Particpants are expected to show a respectfull and scientific attitude both to Hegel and to each other. The usual "netiquette" as well as scientific standards apply.

The copyright policy for mails sent to this list is same as for Hegel.Net, that is the copyright belongs to the author but the mails are issued under the GNU FDL (see ttp://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)or but the mails are issued under the GNU FDL (see ttp://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 1/4/2004 5:18:15 AM Eastern Standard Time,
greuterb@... writes:

> Without appearances there is no
> way to the Concept.
>
> Of course I am taking this out of context, but that is my point about our
> access to finite knowledge especially when we attempt to reconstruct the
> ontological argument. Anyway we start, we need finite knowledge, or if you will,
> phenomenal knowledge, the knowledge of appearances. We have no accomplished
> access to so called infinite knowledge. Kant offered the $ 100, that is,
> finite knowledge in his analogy of things we can in fact know. The idea of $ 100
> versus the reality of $100 is a profound argument. One assured way to start
> to our goal of knowing Concept, God, Absolute Being, or whatever it is called
> is through the phenomena, that is, appearances. This pathway is strictly in
> terms of cognitve thinking, that is, factual empirical thinking and
> intellectual activity. Hegel himself starts his goal with sense certainty and
> understanding in the movement of consciousness toward the Absolute.

I hope some of you will respond to this discussion of Hegel's ontological
reconstruction of the Kant's argument.

Regards,

Bob Fanelli








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