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- It is unfortunate that people are having so much difficulty simply with the external meaning of the text of the Phenomenology of Spirit. If all our efforts simply go to trying unsuccessfully to determine what is being said, then we have no possibility of looking at the underlying structure of the book.
As I mentioned earlier, the basic story being told is fairly straight-forward. Ancient Greece is seen as a time when people felt at home in their society. There was no alienation from social, political and religious institutions. Then with ancient Rome we have wide-spread alienation in every form. Christianity is the attempt, with some success, to end this alienation. This leads to Reason which, as Idealism, sees itself as equal to the world. So it is without alienation. But then the French Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the empire of Napoleon bring a renewed state of alienation to all. And German Idealism, especially Hegel's own philosophy, has the purpose, like Christianity in the earlier period, of ending this alienation.
So this is a quite simple, straight-forward, understandable story. But it is, as such, completely contingent. For someone from India, for instance, Greece and Rome are not formative. Christianity had only a very limited, very negligible impact. The French Enlightenment and Revolution are of no real relevance. German Idealism scarcely exists. If Hegel had lived in India in 1806 then the Phenomenology would tell a completely different story. Or if he lived in America today then the story would be completely different. It is Hegel's story.
But the underlying structure is not contingent. The underlying structure is the universal logic that informs the particular story.
As I have mentioned before, both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter have the same underlying structure made up of nine moments. One can readily see that the real difference between the two is that Self-consciousness has an emotion to it that is lacking in Consciousness.
So, for instance, the third moment of Consciousness is Perception. The third moment of Self-consciousness is the fight to the death. So is Perception like the fight to the death? One wouldn't think so--until one actually reads the Perception chapter. It is just one fool thing after another, an endless spinning around and back and forth. It is really like a fight to the death--that ends, in fact, in virtually the complete negation of everything involved. But it is very boring and tedious to read, because who cares about the thing and its properties? But a fight to the death! Now that is exciting.
Or the fourth moment of Consciousness is force and its expression. The forth moment of Self-consciousness is the work of the slave. Again, force and its expression is quite tedious and not very understandable. But we immediately understand the work of the slave as force and its expression. And we feel a certain emotion about the work of the slave that we don't feel about force and expression in general.
Or the seventh form of Consciousness is the inverted world, while the seventh form of Self-consciousness is the first form of the unhappy Consciousness. Again, the whole idea of the inverted world in itself is almost meaningless. And it certainly has very little meaning for us. But when the inverted world takes the concrete form of a consciousness that sees itself as unessential while taking "the unchangeable" as essential, then it is something we can immediately understand and for which we can find many examples. And its emotion is right in its name--"unhappy"!
But, none the less, the underlying logic is the same in both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter. This underlying logic is really what the book is about. The stories and possible emotions are just the lace on the panties.
John - John,Again, you are forcing your interpretation from the outside, as it were. You are not deriving your interpretation of the UC from the text itself -- from the language and words that Hegel put there.Where does Hegel mention Greece there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention Rome there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention Christ there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention the French Revolution there? Nowhere.Thus, you have forced your own interpretation on the text with but violence.Regards,--Paul--------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Saturday, February 2, 2019, 11:33:07 AM CST, John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
It is unfortunate that people are having so much difficulty simply with the external meaning of the text of the Phenomenology of Spirit. If all our efforts simply go to trying unsuccessfully to determine what is being said, then we have no possibility of looking at the underlying structure of the book.
As I mentioned earlier, the basic story being told is fairly straight-forward. Ancient Greece is seen as a time when people felt at home in their society. There was no alienation from social, political and religious institutions. Then with ancient Rome we have wide-spread alienation in every form. Christianity is the attempt, with some success, to end this alienation. This leads to Reason which, as Idealism, sees itself as equal to the world. So it is without alienation. But then the French Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the empire of Napoleon bring a renewed state of alienation to all. And German Idealism, especially Hegel's own philosophy, has the purpose, like Christianity in the earlier period, of ending this alienation.
So this is a quite simple, straight-forward, understandable story. But it is, as such, completely contingent. For someone from India, for instance, Greece and Rome are not formative. Christianity had only a very limited, very negligible impact. The French Enlightenment and Revolution are of no real relevance. German Idealism scarcely exists. If Hegel had lived in India in 1806 then the Phenomenology would tell a completely different story. Or if he lived in America today then the story would be completely different. It is Hegel's story.
But the underlying structure is not contingent. The underlying structure is the universal logic that informs the particular story.
As I have mentioned before, both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter have the same underlying structure made up of nine moments. One can readily see that! the real difference between the two is that Self-consciousness has an emotion to it that is lacking in Consciousness.
So, for instance, the third moment of Consciousness is Perception. The third moment of Self-consciousness is the fight to the death. So is Perception like the fight to the death? One wouldn't think so--until one actually reads the Perception chapter. It is just one fool thing after another, an endless spinning around and back and forth. It is really like a fight to the death--that ends, in fact, in virtually the complete negation of everything involved. But it is very boring and tedious to read, because who cares about the thing and its properties? But a fight to the death! Now that is exciting.
Or the fourth moment of Consciousness is force and its expression. The forth moment of Self-consciousness is the work of the slave. Again, force and its expression is quite tedious and not very understandable. But we immediately understand the work of the slave as force and its expression. And we feel a certain emotion about the work of the slave that we don't feel about force and expression in general.
Or the seventh form of Consciousness is the inverted world, while the seventh form of Self-consciousness is the first form of the unhappy Consciousness. Again, the whole idea of the inverted world in itself is almost meaningless. And it certainly has very little meaning for us. But when the inverted world takes the concrete form of a consciousness that sees itself as unessential while taking "the unchangeable" as essential, then it is something we can immediately understand and for which we can find many examples. And its emotion is right in its name--"unhappy"!
But, none the less, the underlying logic is the same in both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter. This underlying logic is really what the book is about. The stories and possible emotions are just the lace on the panties.
John - You misunderstood me, Paul. I was speaking of the Phenomenology of Spirit as a whole.
To try to understand some part of the book is like trying to understand ten minutes of a movie. You can watch those ten minutes over and over again, but you will never be able to understand how they work in the movie till you watch the whole movie.
As for Greece, this is dealt with twice in the Phenomenology. The first part of the Spirit chapter deals with ancient Greece through the medium of the plays of Sophocles. The final part of this first section then deals with ancient Rome. Then in the Religion chapter the section on the religion of art is a recreation of the religion of ancient Greece. This is then followed by the first ten or so paragraphs of the Revealed Religion section which describe ancient Rome as the time and place when Christ will come.
It should be obvious that the Self-consciousness chapter is dealing with ancient Rome as well, as it deals with a time and place which is characterized by slavery, stoicism and skepticism, and a place, then, where Christ makes his appearance.
So, then, Hegel deals with Christ, first in the Self-consciousness chapter when he deals with the unchangeable becoming an individual--or who else could he be referring to here? Then in the Revealed Religion section he gives the first presentation of his incarnational, Trinitarian Christian theology which he will repeat very briefly in the Revealed Religion section of the Encyc. and then in great detail in the third part of his lectures on the philosophy of religion. You really should read these lectures! They make very clear what is said somewhat obscurely in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
The French Revolution is not dealt with in the book. But the second part of the Spirit chapter deals, first, with the history of France from feudalism to the rise of the absolute Monarchy. This is then followed by the French Enlightenment. Here Hegel presents his Christian theology as the object of belief of piety in its losing struggle with the Enlightenment. Then the section is concluded with a description of the Terror in France. So, as an event in between the French Enlightenment and the Terror, the French Revolution is only implied. But this took place when Hegel was in college. You must have some awareness of the importance of all this for Hegel from his biography as well as from his writings on the subject. And, of course, Napoleon actually showed up in Jena for Hegel to see with him with his own eyes as he was completing this book.
So this is the context into which one needs to fit the business about the unhappy consciousness.
And, too, the unhappy consciousness runs to 25 paragraphs. It presents something of a history running from ancient Rome with its slavery, stoicism and skepticism to the advent of reason as Idealism. This, again, is the context. It is a specific context.
Actually the 25 paragraphs dealing with the unhappy consciousness are themselves highly structured. To truly understand them you really need to see the underlying structure. So, for instance, these 25 paragraphs make up three moments, the final three moments of the Self-consciousness chapter. And the paragraph about the grave is itself a third moment. As such it corresponds to the third moment as the fight to the death. So, then, to very briefly evoke this content of the third moment one can see why a mention of a grave is appropriate. The work is FAR more a work of high artistry than you could even begin to image. It really requires much careful study by those qualified to undertake such a study.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Feb 3, 2019 6:12 pm
Subject: Re: [hegel] The underlying structureJohn,Again, you are forcing your interpretation from the outside, as it were. You are not deriving your interpretation of the UC from the text itself -- from the language and words that Hegel put there.Where does Hegel mention Greece there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention Rome there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention Christ there? Nowhere.Where does Hegel mention the French Revolution there? Nowhere.Thus, you have forced your own interpretation on the text with but violence.Regards,--Paul--------------------------------------------------------------------------On Saturday, February 2, 2019, 11:33:07 AM CST, John Bardis jgbardis@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
It is unfortunate that people are having so much difficulty simply with the external meaning of the text of the Phenomenology of Spirit. If all our efforts simply go to trying unsuccessfully to determine what is being said, then we have no possibility of looking at the underlying structure of the book.
As I mentioned earlier, the basic story being told is fairly straight-forward. Ancient Greece is seen as a time when people felt at home in their society. There was no alienation from social, political and religious institutions. Then with ancient Rome we have wide-spread alienation in every form. Christianity is the attempt, with some success, to end this alienation. This leads to Reason which, as Idealism, sees itself as equal to the world. So it is without alienation. But then the French Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the empire of Napoleon bring a renewed state of alienation to all. And German Idealism, especially Hegel's own philosophy, has the purpose, like Christianity in the earlier period, of ending this alienation.
So this is a quite simple, straight-forward, understandable story. But it is, as such, completely contingent. For someone from India, for instance, Greece and Rome are not formative. Christianity had only a very limited, very negligible impact. The French Enlightenment and Revolution are of no real relevance. German Idealism scarcely exists. If Hegel had lived in India in 1806 then the Phenomenology would tell a completely different story. Or if he lived in America today then the story would be completely different. It is Hegel's story.
But the underlying structure is not contingent. The underlying structure is the universal logic that informs the particular story.
As I have mentioned before, both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter have the same underlying structure made up of nine moments. One can readily see that! the real difference between the two is that Self-consciousness has an emotion to it that is lacking in Consciousness.
So, for instance, the third moment of Consciousness is Perception. The third moment of Self-consciousness is the fight to the death. So is Perception like the fight to the death? One wouldn't think so--until one actually reads the Perception chapter. It is just one fool thing after another, an endless spinning around and back and forth. It is really like a fight to the death--that ends, in fact, in virtually the complete negation of everything involved. But it is very boring and tedious to read, because who cares about the thing and its properties? But a fight to the death! Now that is exciting.
Or the fourth moment of Consciousness is force and its expression. The forth moment of Self-consciousness is the work of the slave. Again, force and its expression is quite tedious and not very understandable. But we immediately understand the work of the slave as force and its expression. And we feel a certain emotion about the work of the slave that we don't feel about force and expression in general.
Or the seventh form of Consciousness is the inverted world, while the seventh form of Self-consciousness is the first form of the unhappy Consciousness. Again, the whole idea of the inverted world in itself is almost meaningless. And it certainly has very little meaning for us. But when the inverted world takes the concrete form of a consciousness that sees itself as unessential while taking "the unchangeable" as essential, then it is something we can immediately understand and for which we can find many examples. And its emotion is right in its name--"unhappy"!
But, none the less, the underlying logic is the same in both the Consciousness section and the Self-consciousness chapter. This underlying logic is really what the book is about. The stories and possible emotions are just the lace on the panties.
John