I don't understand Hegel. Not one bit in English...

I don't understand Hegel. Not one bit in English. It's like 80% impenetrable talk to me and I've read the recommended literature for him.

Do I just have sub 100 IQ and shouldn't even try? Funny enough, I've "comprehended" philosophers that were influenced by him like Whitehead, Husserl or Marx.

Just stop trying and follow the thesis-antithesis-synthesis meme like 80% of other people

he is the only philosopher ive ever really had trouble getting a good grip on, besides husserl's primary text, which i feel i at least got the gist of. he is just a tough nut to crack, but im now getting a better sense of how other philosopher's have used him, and am going to give it another try this year

Don't bother learning philosophy.

Wasn't that Fichte?

It's sort of funny to read philosopher talking about how other philosopher influenced them. It really clears out a lot of things from both philosophers IME. Just like Hegel talks about Kant.

Read Zizek first.

>It really clears out a lot of things from both philosophers IME.
It also opens up buckets of misinterpretation

Just watch /ourguy/ Sadler's video series on Hegel OP.

It helps a lot.

>anti-intellectualism on Veeky Forums
Sad

Same user. I'm told treating his works like a book you "read" is poor form. i.e. you have to sit down and dedicate a significant amount of time and thought to deconstruct what he's saying.

Possibly true in part - but it also seems likely he was just poor at expressing himself.

Come back to him later, that's what I intend to do.

>you have to sit down and dedicate a significant amount of time and thought to deconstruct what he's saying.
page by page.

>tfw this is actually my "coming back to Hegel" after reading him year ago.
tfw brainlet.

with this said I do understand more of him now than year ago, but it's still quite a thicket.

>“May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense - three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies - continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people from seeing what it is, with the device: mea caligine tutus. - May each day bring us, as hitherto, new systems adapted for University purposes, entirely made up of words and phrases and in a learned jargon besides, which allows people to talk whole days without saying anything; and may these delights never be disturbed by the Arabian proverb: "I hear the clappering of the mill, but I see no flour." - For all this is in accordance with the age and must have its course.” - Schopenhauer

90% of the time, "it" refers to consciousness.

I used to like Schopenhauer, but reading him again feels like he just was the first fedoratheist.

if you dont go back. but if you just see how they are being used, you can re-read to agree or disagree, which can be easier than just diving head first

I don't see it. Fedoras fall back on faux-purple prose. Schopenhauer is actually a good writer.

Well I didn't say he was a bad writer. I just think the content of his writing is cynical and edgy for no reason.

>no reason

>for no reason
He was really, really salty because he wasn't as popular as his contemporaries (Hegel and others) whom he despised. Somewhere in the beginning of the "World as Will and Representation" he even writes that the attentive reader would be able to distinguish parts of the book written when he was 30, and latter additions of the disillusioned old man (which contain most of the salt)