Half Hour Hegel: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Perception, sec. 114-116)

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In this forty-sixth video in the new series on G.W.F. Hegel's great early work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, I read and comment on paragraphs 114, 115, and 116 of the text, continuing our study of the second portion of the section "Consciousness," i.e "Perception: Or the Thing and Deception".
In these sections Hegel turns the focus on the properties of the Thing, i.e. the object of perception, unfolding the implications of their determinacy. These properties are determinate not only as "sensuous universals", but also by opposing themselves to the other properties, both within the Thing and in other Things.
This leads to more fully understanding what it is to be a Thing perceived -- it is not simply a medium in which the properties can coexist together, an Also, but rather a One, a unity that excludes its other. After having set out these developments, Hegel then turns to the relation between the perceiving subject and the object of perception. Truth here lies on the side of the object, and is conceived of as self-sameness or self-identity, and any difference from this on the side of the subject then becomes untruth, or deception.
In this video series, I will be working through the entire Phenomenology, paragraph by paragraph -- for each one, first reading the paragraph, and then commenting on what Hegel is doing, referencing, discussing, etc. in that paragraph.
This series is designed to provide an innovative digital resource that will assist students, lifelong learners, professionals, and even other philosophers in studying this classic work by Hegel for generations to come. If you'd like to support this project -- and also receive some rewards for your support -- please contribute! - / drgbsadler
I'll be using and referencing the A.V. Miller English-language translation of the Phenomenology, which is available here: amzn.to/1jDUI6w
The introductory music for the video is: Johann Sebastian Bach, Flute Sonata in Eb, BWV 1031 (Trumpet arr.), is available in the public domain, and can be found at musopen.org.
#Hegel #Phenomenology #Philosophy #Idealism #German #Dialectic #Spirit #Absolute #Knowledge #History

[@andrewcarteducation5718]

Your work is brilliant, you have enabled me to get this far, reading the book, which i know would have been closed otherwise. I'm not saying i understand it all, no way , but what you have done is provide something whereby, if people take the time, they can engage with Hegel's incredible work which is going to be life long.

[@GregoryBSadler]

The second video in this section, "Perception," of Hegel's Phenomenology -- here discussing the Thing and its properties as grasped in Perception, than raising the problem of deception in a preliminary manner

[@GregoryBSadler]

Marcelle Elliott You might be reading too much into "deception". Descartes, for one, writes commonly of the senses "deceiving" us.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Marcelle Elliott If you read this section, Hegel is actually using the term here (i.e. Täuschung) similarly to how Descartes and many others used the term "deception". There is, at this point, no need to read into it any "ethical load[ing]". Hegel doesn't have to have precisely the same project at every single point as Descartes for the way he's using the term to be pretty similar.

[@MrMarktrumble]

From Plotinus(how about Parmenides?): unity is the principle of being. From Heraclitus: all is war, and the balance of opposing forces create unity ( consider a bow, the bow pulls on the string, the string pulls on the bow, and the shape ( Plato's form?) is created by a dynamic balance of force).Form( the Also) is the principle of essence, no matter if self-identical by nature, or created by opposition. But the One of ones rests on and negates the whole cosmos. The cogito is the self same relation. thank you very much.

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're welcome

[@lyndonbailey3965]

Could you explain the opposition here, the active opposition..in which sense is 'white' vying with, agentively opposing saltiness or cubicality'..are they not mere static diffferences?

[@SequinBrain]

The gist probably won't change, but so far, I enjoy how this encourages us, not to do what we are taught most of the time, to immediately assume we understand everything about what we're looking at, but to realize the opposite, that we don't.

[@eatsbugs4577]

Perhaps it's the way I'm reading the text, but I'm really fighting to not see these different sections as some sort of temporal sequence, especially 114-115. If Now is not Now for Time and Space reasons, then it almost feels like the way we are coming to the Thing is a sequence. I'm sure I'm overthinking it, but I want to make sure that I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thoughts? And thank you!

[@EsjjiobaCommunism]

love the way it ends. I am kicking smokes right now and this is way head spec. hard ball, invisible.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Esjjioba Communism I have quite smoking many times (which means that, until the last time, I didn't really quit!). Good luck on kicking that one!

[@EsjjiobaCommunism]

Gregory B. Sadler now I think of you when I smoke, sometimes. anyway, it will be worth it. great words in this one. are there info theory people buzzing around this? it feels like a good rendition. words, letters (valvey let-ers) are like compression patterns, notes in phrases. tune building up.

[@DouglasHPlumb]

Esjjioba Communism I am quitting too. I fell off the wagon but I'll get back. Its so great to sit outside in the summer and read books like this and drink tea and smoke. That's the problem. These books always make me want to smoke.

[@ethanselkowitz4909]

This guy reminds me of The Dude. Just the sort of hippie way he speaks sounds like Jeff Bridges.

[@DouglasHPlumb]

Ethan Sells I wonder what he thinks of the nihilists.

[@ZootTM]

+Ethan Sells "That's like, just your opinion, man." Or shall I say: "You're out of your element, Donnie!" because Dr. Sadler reminds me more of Walter - that might be because of his expertise in anger.

[@GregoryBSadler]

+zootme Some of which is firsthand. . .

[@lyndonbailey3965]

' I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.'

[@lyndonbailey3965]

In what manner does the whiteness of one piece of chalk 'diffrentiate' itself from the whiteness of another piece of chalk other than that that other piece of chalk is another instantiation of the whiteness universal? It is easier to imagine the whiteness of the chalk differentiating itself from the blueness of a car

[@atzucatatzucat9615]

lyndon bailey Properties are universals, just like things are. So the same diferentation that Hegel does on things, it could be made on properties. The indifferent whiteness would be the analogous to the thinghood function, though maybe it would be better to call it "propertiness". So the indifferent whiteness is the ALSO of all other more concrete but also universals whites.

[@abcrane]

the chemicals/properties that make up the whiteness are always in flux, decaying, as clothing fades in a washer, chalk degrades in the air. if chalk unit A and chalk unit B are manufactured two years apart, or one is used in a moist climate, another in a dry climate, or if one day Sadler uses a hand sanitizer containing alcohol, and another day, a lotion containing oils, you will have two stages of this decay, hence the differentiation in whiteness. you see that cars in snowy (salted roads) rust faster than in warm dry climates. with Hegel, all is always in flux, nothing is fixed (except the absolute universal?) nothing is essentially a noun, but a verb, and even the verb is verbing. hence, the relativity of all, except with the universal absolute, which then becomes, in its coming full circle--having folded back onto itself, in a reversal of itself, a remembering of itself, and even a re-experiencing of itself, through space-time, recapturing all that it has ever been--arriving at the relativity OF (its own) relativity itself. this is perhaps why some men enjoy restoring vintage cars, an attempt at experiencing that absolute spirit, even for the bumpkins of the boondocks, this is an existential longing beyond the mundanity of day to day survival?

[@nateaasland2758]

Isn't it kind of ironic that Hegel says ' consciousness adding or subtracting anything would alter the truth' whereas in the introduction he mentioned that if you take away the work that consciousness did on the object, in shaping it, you don't get the pure object, but the same incomprehensibility ( i was thinking of using the word nothing but figured it wasn't fully appropriate ) that you had before applying the tool that is consciousness ?

[@nateaasland2758]

I have heard someone talk about in Hegels Logic ( idk exactly ) , that hegel says something like ' tautology is the ultimate contradiction'. I think this has to do with where he arrives here, with the A=A stuff. I guess it is a necessary step, but is it necessary only to show the weakness/failure of Perception?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Keep reading away at the text. . .

[@shonesanchez6636]

( 114 ) Or, in other words: " Common passed on this beat, I made it to a jam *Now everything I'm not made me everything I am* Damn, here we go again" - Kanye West

[@GregoryBSadler]

Dunno

[@lyndonbailey3965]

I have a horrible feeling that this would be easier to begriff if I had put the legwork into studying Kant properly

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, it can't hurt. . .

[@lukemccrae1617]

This sounds a lot like Freud, where the latent dream content in the unconscious is brought into consciousness by the censor/dream work

[@GregoryBSadler]

What’s “this”?

[@lukemccrae1617]

@@GregoryBSadler at 23:30 you read Hegel saying "If consciousness itself did anything in taking what is given, it would by such adding or subtraction alter the truth. Since the object is the True and universal, the self-identical, while conscious is alterable and unessential, it can be that consciousness apprehends the object incorrectly and deceives itself." In the first paragraph of "The Dream-Work" in Interpretation of Dreams Freud says, "We are thus confronted with a new problem ... that of examining and tracing the relations between the latent dream-thoughts and the manifest dream-content, and the processes by which the latter has grown out of the former." Then a bit later: "The first thing that becomes clear to the investigator when he compares the dream-content with the dream-thoughts is that a tremendous work of condensation has been accomplished. The dream is meagre, paltry, and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream thoughts." I'm reading the "condensation" from Freud as Hegel's "consciousness apprehends the object incorrectly and deceives itself." In Freud, the unconscious dream-thoughts are brought into consciousness by condensing them in ways that make sense to the individual consciousness, thereby misapprehending them. Freud's notion of unconscious behaves like Hegel's True and universal object.