The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing...

>The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realised and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.

What did he mean by this?

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Yeah what DID he mean by this?

OP here, I figured it out after reading it over and over, or at least I think I have.
He means the truth can only be examined and known by something alien to it (i.e us), and that the path to truth is the constant contradiction, negation, and restatement of truth which is again negated endlessly, its end being its beginning, and its beginning its end.

Please tell me I got this right.

I'm just going to use this thread to post the theses I really struggle with and hopefully get advice, which may also hopefully be of use to others.

Objects given to cognition are first represented as self-contained and closed in on themselves by the Understanding. The subject as "pure and simple negativity" is the first step in dissolving this empirical view of things as unmediated; the subject negates the isolated character of the object given to it, and discovers its relational character to what is outside of it. But what really shocks the subject is when it learns that the exterior to which the object is related is only the subject itself. In so doing it "remembers" that it, as spirit, had posited the object in the first place; indeed representing it to the Understanding is only possible insofar as this is the negation of abstract Being, i.e., a subjective act. With the object realized as only the reflection of the subject to itself, we arrive at self-consciousness, and "the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose," i.e., the circle of cognition which can only begin to think by in the first place positing its own objects to itself, discovers that "it had its own end for its beginning," namely, self-reflection in the object it meant to understand. Thus self-consciousness "becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out": we always have this reflective power, but only realize it in reflection.

I'm afraid I still don't understand D:

Is it wrong of me to find this Lacanian?

Lacan is a Hegelian.

Phew, great.
It really reminded me of Lacan's view on self-discovery through wrong interpretations of art: that the subconcious can seep out.

1/ In what seems to be an initial moment, an object appears for observation. The object is a self-contained empirical fact for the observer, because it is represented to the Understanding.

2/ The subject, as pure simple negativity, negates the self-contained character of the object that the Understanding gives it.

3/ The negated object is now represented in relation to what is outside it, as a "reflection" of what it is not.

4/ But what the object is not is the subject: so the subject "discovers" that it had been reflecting upon itself along, in mediated form.

5/ Now attaining self-consciousness (i.e., consciousness of its own consciousness observing the object), the subject discovers that the object was posited by it all along, closing the circle of cognition and acceding to absolute knowledge.

The key facet of this is the "remembering" of the positing of the object. That is the why Hegel took the Phenomenology to be the introduction to his System: its reader is supposed to remember the history of consciousness that has already been attained in him, and so return to his place in absolute spirit by the end—only then is he ready to understand Logic, Nature, and Spirit in itself.

You're a fucking grade A poster, user. This is the most coherent and well laid out explanation I've seen. After looking up the paragraph online I found a number of interpretations, but yours is the most well written and consistent of all of them. Thanks.

I'm loosely adapting this from my own experience reading Hegel's lesser logic: this is again and again the pattern that moves him from one category to the next, but more, in the brief chapter "logic divided" or something to that effect, he lays out the dialectical three-step: Understanding as "empirical," "factitious" positing of the object, Dialectic as negation of the factitious finitude, and Speculation as positing of the "outside" which negation has just moved us on toward—but also as negating the negation such that the original moment is preserved in this new one.

I'm also drawing on Habermas's brief but dense summary of Hegel's critique of Kant, the first chapter of his book Knowledge and Human Interests. That's where I got the tip about the Phenomenology, and the role of what Habermas goes as far as to call "analytic memory," which it is the role of phenomenological analysis of historical consciousness to recall.

Wondering what other interpretations you had drawn on? I'm always interested to see what professional Hegelians think—I'm a lowly English major with a fever for dialectics.

Also worth expanding on is the subject's character as pure simple negativity, because it might bring us closer to seeing the Lacanian character that this poster and, well, Lacan himself had detected in the dialectic.

Adorno will say something like "the best magnifying glass is the splinter in your eye." Likewise Zizek argues reality is ontologically incomplete because of the subject at its center: the perpetual black spot in the corner of your eye that vanishes when you try to look for it. Hegel -could- look for it, because in his considerably less reified proto-capitalist lifeworld, he could posit himself as having attained absolute spirit—he also had god on his side securing the teleological dimension the argument requires insofar as it has posited its conclusion before getting started.

In any case, what these interpretations mean in this case is that the subject would turn out to be negativity because even if, within the realm of Understanding, he could run the object through the entire gamut of the doctrine of Being, analyzing its qualitative, quantitative, and measured appearances, and further through Essence, understanding how its essence "must appear!" as the greater Logic has it, he would still be missing the part of it that he himself puts forward, i.e., the fact of its being observed by a subject. That is how the subject is simple negativity: it's the negation of all in the object that appears, and, positively stated, "is" precisely what doesn't appear, the appearing-to-a-subject of it, or what Hegel calls the character of the object "for us," mediated subjectively. Now we're ready to move on through the rest of the dialectic when we discover the it was ours to begin with.

Lacan is a Hegelian who stopped about 1/4 of the way through the phenomenology, and didn't read anything else. Kinda like the folks who read Hegel and fixate on the Master-Slave Dialectic.

I believe Lacan's on record as calling himself a materialist.

The bottom line is that if you're a materialist, 90%+ of Hegel will be meaningless to you.

That's not really true. I think that for materialists, the most valuable part of Hegel is Philosophy of History/History of Philosophy, and the last few chapters of the Phenomenology. There is such a thing as Hegelian Marxism for precisely that reason: Marx can't talk about religion, culture, or art in history without boiling it down to mystified reflections of the labor process, or ideology.

>There is such a thing as a Hegelian Marxism

...Wut? Isn't Hegel's philosophy of History all about the development of spirit through material conditions, not material conditions resulting in different EMERGENCES of "mind"/"ideology"?

This one is breaking my brain
> That the truth is only realised in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist) – the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is alone Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself – it is externality (otherness), and exists for self; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself – it is self-contained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once. This self-containedness, however, is first something known by us, it is implicit in its nature (an sich); it is Substance spiritual. It has to become self-contained for itself, on its own account; it must be knowledge of spirit, and must be consciousness of itself as spirit. This means, it must be presented to itself as an object, but at the same time straightway annul and transcend this objective form; it must be its own object in which it finds itself reflected. So far as its spiritual content is produced by its own activity, it is only we [the thinkers] who know spirit to be for itself, to be objective to itself; but in so far as spirit knows itself to be for itself, then this self-production, the pure notion, is the sphere and element in which its objectification takes effect, and where it gets its existential form. In this way it is in its existence aware of itself as an object in which its own self is reflected. Mind, which, when thus developed, knows itself to be mind, is science. Science is its realisation, and the kingdom it sets up for itself in its own native element.

Spirit/mind precedes matter. Matter arose in order for spirit to present itself to itself.Science (=knowledge) is this presentation.

It's useful to remember that the Notion is the adequate presentation of reality/truth. As he says in Encyclopedia Logic, we are finite because our existence is inadequate to our idea. Fortunately, knowledge exists, and we can have adequate knowledge, which, again, is the Notion.

to add some historical context, lacan attended lectures by alexandre kojeve. the guy was largely responsible for introducing hegel (as well as marx and heidegger to a degree) to the post-ww2 french intellectual scene and is extremely influential. your favorite 20th century french philosopher probably took his courses or knew someone who did. he was quite a peculiar fellow as he wasnt a professional philosopher but largely worked as a statesman. he was instrumental in setting up the european union, spied for the soviets, and declared himself to be a god.

modern interest in hegel owes a lot to the man. during the mid 20th century, most in the continent were influenced by the likes of husserl while most in the anglosphere rejected hegelianism in favor of logical analysis. for example, russell was initially a british idealist who read f h bradley. i've read some claim that the alleged split between the two traditions can be thought of as a rejection and, on the other hand, an appropriation of hegelianism

also, i forgot to add that pre-ww2, french philosophy largely revolved around bergsonian lebensphilosophie or comtean positivism (who also developed a philosophy of history like hegel). the fact that people barely know about either of the two despite bergson being a philosophical celebrity during his time and comte being responsible for largely creating the field of sociology speaks to the influence of kojeve.

>i've read some claim that the alleged split between the two traditions can be thought of as a rejection and, on the other hand, an appropriation of hegelianism

how dialectical

Horseshit, unless "Time" is Real, which it isn't.

To clarify, reflection, ends, and beginnings, only exist in a purely 3rd dimentional state, which the known universe is not.

This thread has really piqued my interest in Hegel, where do you start? Are there any prerequisites (other than the Greeks)?

Kant and Hume will give some perspective, but no, there's not really any prereqs.

With Hegel, I'd recommend just giving it a whack and seeing what you can do with it. He will reference other thinkers as he writes: mainly Fichte, Schelling, and Kant.

Best introduction to German Idealism: Fichte's "Vocation of Man", which covers, in about 100 pages, an immense amount of ground: the transition from materialistic skepticism, to idealistic solipsism, to responsibility, law, and truth. It's not Hegelian, but it will at least get your mind headed in the right direction. You'll be prepared to deal with the kinds of problems Hegel deals with in his main work.

As for the first of Hegel's works to read, I'd recommend "Lectures on Philosophy, Art, and Religion". The writing is very digestible compared to say, the Phenomenology.

The more "scholarly" approach is to shoot for Kant first, but Kant is about as insightful as a bag of bricks. He's not very concerned about meaning or reality, more about how to prevent philosophy from getting involved in such things and laying the groundwork for the empty formalism that still predominates in (Anglo-American) Philosophy today.

Can you elaborate on this?

I don't understand .

What does Hegel mean with positing, determinataness/determined and mediated.

I read 2-3 dictionaries but none of them really fit the context.

Heraclitus, Parmenides, as many dialogues from Plato as possible, Aristotle's Organon, de Anima, Metaphysics, the Bible.

Some history of philosophy after Aristotle and: neoplatonists (Plotinus), early political philosophy (Machiavelli), rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz), Böhme, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Hume, Herder, German romanticists (Goethe, Hölderlin)

Then Kant, Fichte, Schelling.

If you want to read Hegel for Marx-related purposes, you want to read Smith and Rousseau more closely, also David Ricardo and the French Revolution.

>The subject as "pure and simple negativity"
wtf does this mean

Determinateness is what arises when being overflows itself due to being identified with Nothingness. Determinate being, or particular being, is defined by what it isn't. That's why Hegel's thought is often referred to as "negative". Insofar as we're dealing with determinate beings, we can only grapple with them negatively, by understanding what they lack.

Mediation just means that something is opposed to itself through some fixed variable. To use the being/nothingness example again, becoming mediates being and nothingness, because it's neither a presence nor an absence.

Thank you. I feel little bit better now that I had apparently understood negativity/negative and determinateness correctly.

Is there a "Hegel" dictionary out there? or a general philosophy dictionary?

Subject is pure and simple negativity insofar as it's determinate. Finitude=determination=negatively defined (finds definition in its lack)

Glad to have helped. Hegel's tough.

I dunno about any Hegel dictionary. But he (Hegel) did write 3 Encyclopedias, on Logic, Nature, and Mind. I'd recommend those.

You can pick up any one of them, look at the table of contents, where he lists every concept he deals with, from subjectivity, to mechanism, to "the good", to gravity and electricity. Pick the concept you want to learn about, and read the chapter.

The encyclopedias are Hegel's best work, imo. I wish I'd discovered them sooner! The Phenomenology is waaaaay more difficult without them.

Should've started out with those encyclopedias I suppose, heh.

and yes, POS was a real pos.

I find it Gnostic.

Martin Luther = Extraverted Gnostic?

Hegel = Autistic Gnostic?

You are not the first

...

he offers an extended discussion of gnosticism in his history of philosophy vol. i. but iirc, he considered himself a lutheran and viewed it as the highest form of religion. also, his first students, the so-called right hegelians, were largely protestant theologians. i do know that karl lowith wrote about the connection between hegel and christianity

you could point out the similarities of protestantism and gnosticism as the other user did. im sure there have been tomes written about this

That's just a forced reading imo.

Finished the preface and reread it. Fairly sure I got a decent comprehension. Really enjoyed it. Is the rest of the book this good? I've seen a few people saying the preface is the best part.

The parts about Observing Reason and Nature are pretty confusing and outdated but the rest is just as good, as far as I remember.

You have to already have a solid grounding on what ontological monism implies if you want to grasp it.
Grant that all things are one and that all things share a common substance, and the text makes sense. It's something like a leap of faith; Parmenides by way of Plato and Luther. If all is one, and one is all, then surely any apparent change in quantity can only come in the end to be reduced back into the monad; that is, any positing of multiplicity will be negated by the substance which is one and which reveals that which is split from it to have no substance at all. Substance is Being; Being is God.

Hegel's philosophy isn't based on monad, he's more of a Heraclitean than a Parmenidean, Becoming instead of the One. Have you ever actually read him?

Yes, I have read him, and I don't think it's possible to tie him down as a Heraclitean just because he approves of Heraclitus' vision of a cosmos in flux. "Monad" is a term whose modern significance stems mainly from Leibniz, and I would think it was obvious that I wasn't trying to describe Hegel in Hegel's terms.
If you want to say that there's no concept of unity in Hegel's thought then by all means, demonstrate it. If this isn't what you're trying to do, then I don't understand what you object to in my post, unless you just wanted everyone to know that you've read some Hegel.

I think he not only approves of Heraclitus model but his philosophy itself is built on difference (and constant rebuilding and sublating of difference) and doubleness (subject and object) as opposed to a monad. Hegel's Spirit is multiple at the same time it is one.

>Hegel's Spirit is multiple at the same time it is one.
Well there you fucking go, reaffirming what I said and contradicting what you were saying a minute ago. Kindly shut the fuck up before you embarrass yourself further.

You're either too thick for this or you're just plain baiting.

why can't we be nice to each other?

Funny, that's what I was thinking about you.

heraclitus is important to understanding hegel, but to use the famous river aphorism as an illustration, for hegel if the river is still moving you aren't done yet.

Wow amazing I also watched Evnagelion and Read Zizek/PKD. So great to find a philozofurr who agrees with my favorite meme writers/animes. This guy proabbly read the Dead Sea Scrolls before they were unearthed.

you're among the stupidest

Read Boethius you fucking idiot

dialectically that makes me among the smartest

...

deep down you're an insecure closeted queer

keep posting you're good at this

what the fuck is that supposed to mean? why are you complimenting me? i fucking hate the userbase on this site.

another great post

i want to read another of your good posts

well,buddy, lemme keep you in suspense. this post sucks.

good post do another one for me

fuck you these are terrible, what do you want frm me?

reply to me again bitch

HOLY FUCK HE STARTED TO MAKE SENSE TO ME TODAY

Been reading Fukuyama and I've noticed he is a great entry-level read regarding the main Hegel concepts that a modern person should care about. Fags that are just getting into Hegel should try End of History if you want a clean historical Hegel.

Philosophy is all about synthesis. Arguing whether Hegel's ontology is about one fundamental substance declined onto an infinity of objects or that the infinity of existence belongs to the One concept is just about the same thing. Read Spinoza both of you.

Fukuyama is a hack, dude said it himself. Neoliberalism is intellectual cancer. If you want a good introduction to Hegel, follow Spinoza as I said or understand basic concepts in Marx's theory of history, especially compared to Feuerbach, since they're both hegelians (young and old respectively), it's the most methodical way to make your way.

>Fukuyama is a hack, dude said it himself
He and his theory that the engame is scientific neo-liberalism is cancer, but his Hegel parts are OK and so are his parts about Nietzche's critique of the middle-class.

I've personally had Kierkagaard(in his disertation on irony) introduce me into the hegelian dictionary(absolute finitude ect...). Personally I think it's a bad thing to invite any marxist discussion regarding Hegel, unless you are just interested into history of philosophy. Most of Hegels stuff we have today are composed from the right-hegelians who have an orhodox reading of Hegel, shortly after his dead.

That's because you and I don't belong to the same tradition. There is a lot of left-hegelians or even right-hegelians that do agree with Marx in the continental (especially French) tradition.

>Neoliberalism is intellectual cancer.

Why do you think that ideology that has produced the most efficient results is "intellectual cancer"?

Because it produces results to a question that it has long forgotten, that belonged to a context long gone. I'm not saying our world is "modern" and therefore different, I'm saying that the problem with political philosophy is similar to the issue with political economy. It transforms the world around it and then try to answer a question that is obsolete, because neoliberalism shapes the world as much as it was shaped by it. Now we are entering an era of change marked with global political instability and neoliberalism is finally starting to show its glaring cracks.

Fuck you and fuck Spinoza and fuck secular Judaism.

400 later, still mad. It's crazy to think the reasons motivating collegial condamnations like Spinoza's herem still apply to this very day.

>condamnations
Look, you motherfucker, we're arguing about Hegel. First you want to reduce the man to a Heraclitean, now you want to reduce him to a Spinozan, OK, I get it, dialectical ontologies and whatnot. But you're still failing to convince me that Hegel lacks a concept of unity, and I'm still unclear on what else you object to in my post. Goddamnit you're retarded. Call me 'mad' all you want, you haven't made a coherent objection to my claim that ontological monism plays a central role in his system, not exclusively, no, but if you actually read my fucking post you'd see that I do talk about the role of multiplicity in his work. You're just too up your own ass about difference to realize that the opposite side of the dialectical coin is also important. Shut the fuck up and go back to whatever Euro hellhole you crawled out of.

>the object realized as only the reflection of the subject to itself

This makes Hegel sound like a subjective idealist. It's more that the subject realizes that subject and object are the same and follow the same rules.

Hegel does sound a lot like idealist to me. Especially when he comments on nullness of Kant

Of course he was an idealist, but an objective idealist.

What's the diff?

You're joking, right?

>First you want to reduce the man to a Heraclitean
I'm not that other guy. I'm convinced Hegel did read Spinoza and saw a lot to agree with (especially that radical ontological monism). I was only bringing Spinoza's name in case someone here never heard of him. I'm fairly sure we both agree on the matter at hand here.

Subjective idealism = The object is nothing but a projection of the subject.

Objective idealism = Subject and object are one.

What do you believe in and why? I'm bit of a fag and think it's bit of both, not either/or

I wouldn't say I "believe" in either. Subjective idealism strikes me as unsatisfying. Same with Kant's dualism. I want to believe there is an objective outside world.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Parallax_Example.svg/500px-Parallax_Example.svg.png

Parallax. A and B see the same "object" but both with different perspectives and thus confronting both perceptions lead to a more nuanced (yet incomplete) perception of the essence of things. Note that any displacement in A or B will cause for either of them a displacement in the object. I could go on and drone about this for ages.

>6
Well go on. I'm listening.

6 what. I have a train to take to visit my parents but gimme some contact info and I'll get back to you when it's fesible. That or read Zizek's Parallax, it's a brilliant synthesis of Hegel/Lacan and Kant.

Well do you use Veeky Forums discord, or Steam or Skype.I 'll check out Zizek when I'm comfortable with my Hegel.

Yeah I do use both steam and discord. Amanite #3408

in english, doc

So Hegel believed that objective reality was continually altering itself behind the back of consciousness?
And that consciousness would eventually reach a point wherein it identified objective reality as actually being consciousness itself?
I'm so confused.

Start with the Greeks.

Substance is Subject.

>or understand basic concepts in Marx's theory of history, especially compared to Feuerbach

Don't do this. This guy is just baiting you to become a Marxist.

Way to dismiss the analysis of class as not being worth discussing, queer.

>tfw I will never be a hot girl forcing you, another hot girl, to eat my toned and meaty ass