#284

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Stephen Houlgate on Hegel’s Logic and his philosophy of being. They discuss the main aims of Hegel’s Logic and the use of categories, why Hegel believed Kant’s Logic is not critical enough, categories of thought and natural kinds, and separating thinking and being. They discuss Hegel and Heidegger on being, Hegel on objectivity and being presuppositionless, and pure being, becoming, and nothing. They discuss Nietzsche and Hegel on becoming, Dasein, Hegel and Frege on quantity, differential calculus, linking the Phenomenology of Spirit and Logic, and many more topics.
Stephen Houlgate is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He has his PhD from the University of Cambridge and his main interest is the work of Hegel. He has published numerous books, including the most recent two volume, Hegel on Being.

[@dionysianapollomarx]

Love Houlgate. His intro book turned me onto Hegel. Anticipating an awesome interview! Thanks for this video 😊

[@tommy2nes]

Hey at around 1:44 he is about to say something about quantity but the audio goes funny and mixes in with something else, do you have the unmuddled audio?

[@tommy2nes]

Am I right in this understanding which gets me to being vanishing into nothing? We have something in mind that is such as a table. Then we subtract the thing, the table giving us pure being but that just gives us nothing because there's nothing there anymore, therefore being has just turned into nothing. If this is correct tho I don't see how nothing goes back to being.

[@aenesidemus_schulze]

Because then there is(!) nothing - i.e. nothing is (the "nothing" does "exist").

[@mattiafabbri8944]

a nice way to look at it is the following. The concept of being, isolated from other determinations (i.e. pure being), implies only the conjuction "to be": "pure being is and only is". But that is complete void, no determinations; therefore "pure being is nothing". But again the inverse is at the same time true: "nothing is". In conclusion we have a synthesis between two empty pure concepts: "being is nothing and nothing is being, and so on". That synthesis is named "becoming". Hegel is fiirstly talking on a conceptual level; I think that your example of a table could be misleading. Concepts constitute, after all, a domain fundamentally (even if only partially) abstracted from the empirical world. That is the methodoligical approach that enables Hegels to talk about "synchronic contraddictions", for example: it's because they could be constructed on our heads and, then and only then, analyze empirical phenomena.

[@conforzo]

In the introduction to his Science of Logic, Hegel makes it clear to the reader than all concepts henceforth discusses, from Being to Idea, must be thought in pure abstraction, that is with no sensory representation. I think it's a disservice to your own understanding to try to mix Being and Nothing with Object Subject. Start with Hegels own instructions. Think the immediate Being with no determinations.

[@conforzo]

@@mattiafabbri8944 I'd be careful with calling it a synthesis. The point is that we should go back and realize that Being and Nothing did not exist at all in the first place and they were just moments of the Becoming.

[@conforzo]

@@mattiafabbri8944 And then we continue with Becoming realizing that didn't exist either, it was just a moment (The ceasing-to-be and coming-to-be) to determined being and determined non-being.

[@dubbelkastrull]

10:41 bookmark

[@hansfrankfurter2903]

Is it possible to be some kind of existentialist or Neitchean and also be Hegelian?

[@theotelos9188]

The existentialists dealt more or less with some of the themes Hegel approaches (Heidegger writes about Hegel, for instance and Sartre tries to re-envision some of Hegel's categories). Nietzsche is generally opposed to the systematizing of the German Idealists in general. But consider this: you do not have to define yourself in terms of these thinkers, you can take what you like from each and all and leave behind the rest. Happy thinking.

[@theotelos9188]

If I say Aristotle approached similar problems to Plato, it is not saying he agreed with Plato nor is it to say they landed exactly in the same place on the same themes they approached. It is pretty universally acknowledged that Hegel's attempts to reconcile human life with its external conditions in the PhG was influential to some of the latter existentialists - "approaching the same themes" can mean approaching them in radically different ways, even in complete disagreement! For instance, Heidegger and Hegel both approach questions for fundamental ontology, and disagree! Radically. To answer the original question - you can indeed be some kind of existentialist or Nietzschean and also be a Hegelian, sure. It might be difficult to manage, but as I said above you don't have to decide what you are, just engage with the thinkers. Don't listen to the pronouncements of obtuse people saying 'Nope,' you can think for yourself for instance when Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx or whoever says Hegelianism is opposed to their own approaches.

[@hansfrankfurter2903]

@@theotelos9188 I agree going through the SOL I was struck by the discussions around finitude , the true infinite seemingly preempting alot of existentialist discourse. The last section on the Concept , is in line with the existentialist pov that there is no external meaning. Although Hegel wouldn’t frame it in such a “one sided way”. Id love it you can recommend thinkers that draw on both these traditions.

[@theotelos9188]

@@hansfrankfurter2903 thank you for your comment. I appreciate your thinking and openness. Frankly, I believe you might be in a better position to make suggestions for me. I have read Hegel for a while, but only recently began working through the SoL. I am partial to Bergson and Whitehead, myself. But have become attracted to Hegel's inclusion in what has come to be known as 'process' philosophers.