Half Hour Hegel: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface, sec 15-17)

[@tolgacan13]

Lenin had said, one cannot be a Marxist without reading Hegel, and got into his Logic himself, keeping notes. I, as a non-philosopher (at least not on the paper), find a chance to decrypt his idiosyncratic and "annoying" language with these great video lectures. Thank you!

[@GregoryBSadler]

+Tolga Ozkurt You're very welcome. Yes, they were much more into the Logic in Lenin's time. The Phenomenology became the more read and studied as the 20th century proceeded

[@The31JOEISANERDS]

#17 actually broke my brain. I'm really confused by what is meant by substance and subject

[@jonathanmichael107]

Outstanding. I've got a graduate seminar on the Phenomenology coming up. This by far surpassed my expectations of what you could find online for lectures. I'll typically read a large passage, come back and watch your videos on it, go back and read it again. It's a great companion to the reading, and independent of the reading serves as great lectures. I'm a fan.

[@Tompsykhe]

Dear viewers: If you thought your mind was blown by the past videos of the series, this one will definitely take you to a whole new level of mindblowing philosophical awesomeness.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Thanks! -- very kind of you!

[@jujuandjesus]

Tomás L'Huillier Yep, on my 3rd listen. I was thinking, "Meh, how dense can Hegel really be?". I feel silly now. It really is like a loop that you just need to start to get into, like getting a key on a key ring (the circular spiral ones). Thanks for the warning, but I was still not able to contain the mindblowingness of this section.

[@QuintessentialQs]

Thank you so much for this series! I powered through the Preface, Introduction, and first 2 chapters of this book on my own, and it seemed like complete gibberish. And I'm pretty used to reading 18th and 19th century writers. I've been binging these videos over the last two days, and I am finding your expositions a key that unlocks the peculiarities of Hegel's writing style. I'm not unconvinced as yet that Hegel isn't a bit masturbatory, perhaps overrated, and certainly not very good at writing for clarity. But I'm coming around to the idea that he was at least a profound thinker. I've even been able to skip back ahead to the first chapter and find him rendered much more intelligible by the context provided so far. You're doing the Lord's work, here!

[@Motivic167]

Did you come around to the idea that he was a profound thinker in actual fact, over the last two years?

[@QuintessentialQs]

@@Motivic167 I now think of myself as some strain of Hegelian and dialectical movements have infected my entire way of thinking, lol.

[@lyndonbailey3965]

When you see Hegel attacked by people unfamiliar with him, they seem to be thinking of him as exactly the kind of thing he is critiquing here.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yes - he's usually anticipated many of the criticisms that people do make of his work/thought

[@groovybrat]

thank you sir,these lectures are truly delightful.your method of explaination is very clear and insightful,i am very new to this subject but my interest is only growing .thanks again i really appreciate it.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Glad to read it

[@zachbagnell1775]

Love hearing Bach at the beginning of each video :)

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yes, I might actually stick with Bach intros through the whole series. . . we'll see

[@zachbagnell1775]

The Fugue from Sonata No. 1 in Gm would serve as a great intro. The separate melodies unfolding at the start inspire a sense of being drawn in (for me anyway)

[@mburkhart41]

I was feeling a little momentum until I hit paragraph 17. I knew it was mind blowing but couldn't follow it very well. Excellent commentary!

[@GregoryBSadler]

Glad it was helpful for you

[@eddiebarger3850]

Thank you so much for all your videos. They've been instrumental in my self-study of philosophy. I've specifically enjoyed this video series and your other lectures about Hegel you've posted. It's been very rewarding to finally be able to wrap my head around such a difficult philosopher. If you ever get the chance, I'd love to see you put out something about his Science of Logic or Philosophy of Nature outline. Anyway, regardless of whether you do or don't cover more Hegel, thanks again, and I hope you continue all the other good work you do.

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're very welcome! We've got about two more years in on this project before I can start thinking about another "big book" like the Science of Logic.

[@MrMarktrumble]

Preface, sec 15-17 thank you

[@isaacpeachey8609]

The expression of knowledge through the universal is reminiscent of how, in Marx's Capital, he described how value can be expressed through exchange.

[@himathsiriniwasa7646]

Great explanation!

[@GregoryBSadler]

Thanks!

[@theamici]

Lol we are still at the preface. If commentary videos (it's a bit like a documentary I think, like documentary-commentary video being a subgenre of documentary in general) had its equivalent of Magnum opus, I think this would be your Magnum opus xD You should seriously get paid for the amount of work you're obviously putting into this. Give me a paypal link and I'll give just to be symbolic about it!

[@GregoryBSadler]

I've actually got a paypal link -- both on my maim channel page, and in the description of the video. As far as the "magnum opus" bit goes, I suppose it's easier to do something like that with such a massive work as a Phenomenology

[@MinorityMans]

Thanks for elucidating section 17.

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're welcome

[@davidgaughran5450]

Is 'If the conception of God as the one Substance shocked the age in which it was proclaimed...' a reference to Spinoza? By the way your videos are a great and valuable resource.

[@psychonaut689]

Yes it is :)

[@SteppinDarqawa]

I'll take a watching brief, 'til I've had an opportunity to access/assess Mr. Hegel's proposition in full.

[@GregoryBSadler]

+Umar Jafar Well, that in its full sense comes at the end. I suppose you can say that in a more restricted sense, that happens at the end of the Preface.

[@SteppinDarqawa]

+Gregory B. Sadler Ha, ha! It's happening again. After a second hearing; some explication and clarification appears here. I'll be quiet now.

[@lyndonbailey3965]

I've heard it said that Foucault has Hegelian elements, I did not see that before, but with the introduction of subject here, I think I can see it more, having said that, because of the influence of Bachelard, Canguilhem, Merleau ponty and so on, he does this weird thing of stepping back and looking at the subject as an object.

[@GregoryBSadler]

+lyndon bailey Well, Merleau-Ponty definitely drew upon Hegel. Foucault and his generation wanted to think of themselves as anti-Hegelian, but you can only go so far from Hegel before you end up somehow getting drawn into something that looks vaguely Hegelian

[@lyndonbailey3965]

+Gregory B. Sadler Haha.Well let's hope Hegel wasn't smarmy in real life. Is there any sense in which 'substance' in this section is connected to 'substantial life' in the earlier piece..is it echoing it or is it just a linguistic coincidence? ?

[@GregoryBSadler]

lyndon bailey substance and substantial life? No, there's no central connection at this point. Working out just what substance and substantial are is something that happens over the course of the process

[@Garland41]

I can't help but struggle to work through the implicit and explicit uses of Spinoza in 17. The struggle is caused by the relationality of Substance and Subject. For, in some sense, it seems that Hegel is adding the dimension of Subject to Substance, but the question of how that affects things eludes me. That is, is Subject itself a dynamism with Substance (an internal motivator or mobilizer), or is Substance like Spinoza and the Subject all the perspectives possible in Substance (i.e. similar to the modes in Spinoza). I do this not to read Hegel through Spinoza, but to get to the particularity of Hegel's thought as a negation of other thoughts. I do this as well in order to consider which argument I believe to be stronger because I have to understand if Hegel means Spinoza's Materialism by this statement "self-consciousness was only submerged and not preserved" which, if it was, then from my history with Spinoza, I don't think Spinoza would believe that. I'm sorry if this isn't a useful comment or, "I should try to understand Hegel by Hegel, not by Spinoza," but I find the Hegel as Hegel and Spinoza as Spinoza and the Spinoza or Hegel question, the comparison to be interesting at this point in the book. I've said in the past that I am reading this with a group, they have not read Spinoza, we all have our different influences, but we each come at Hegel from a different perspective and relate what he's said to what we've read to further expose what he might be meaning. So, again, I hope if this comment is seen, that it is not seen as a useless comment.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I wouldn’t overdo the Spinoza myself

[@davidhansen8087]

When comparing Spinoza and Hegel, remember that “subject” as a concept differs before and after Kant. When Spinoza writes on the subject of substance, he does not mean subject to object, but a subject to assess. I’ve seen some translators notes go into more detail on this, which may help clear things up.

[@Mindfuneral1349]

Hi Dr. Sadler. Firstly, I really appreciate all the videos you've recorded and have enjoyed watching many of them. Secondly, about sec 15, Hegel is saying that using a diversity of methods by which we attain knowledge, the many different forms we employ, is superior to seeing every problem in one way. The whole monochromatic formalism deal. Would this mean that Hegel would be open to using forms like astrology, mysticism, or potentially anything else because it might illicit new knowledge or content that the others can't? Would this lead to a greater understanding of the Absolute? I mean, he does critique the use of intuition, but is that because he doesn't want people using JUST modes of intuition to find truth, or is it because intuition is just a flawed method in the first place? Then of course, you could say that "wrong" types of thinking are faulty gestalts that lead to better ways of understanding Truth later on down the line, so are valuable anyway... Confusing. I just see the conclusion of sec 15 justifying the use of any method at all to find knowledge but I don't think that's exactly what Hegel is driving at. So what is he actually saying? haha. Thanks.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Intuition is a flawed method, in Hegel's view -- as he'll say in other place it's really a disguised way of just going with whatever the self likes, which is more about the self than about the matter that's supposed to be known or understood. He wouldn't be for just putting everything into the pot as a "diversity of methods" -- those methods can be divers, but in his view, they do have to be able to brought into a synthetic unity of perspective in conceptual knowledge

[@Mindfuneral1349]

Okay I assumed it was something like that. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing where he'd draw the line. So I think he'd say that the conceptions of neuroscience and phil of mind, for example, can be pretty opposed to one another because they talk in different ways about different things and are limited by their methods, etc. yet an acknowledgement of both is closer to a "synthetic unity of perspective". But what would Hegel say about disciplines like parapsychology and regular psychology? I know one is generally considered pseudoscience, but it's taken a little more seriously in certain professional circles than astrology is. I'm just trying to find a criterion for what makes one of the diverse methods legitimate. (If you talk about this in another video, you can point me to that.)

[@GregoryBSadler]

There isn't one single rule or criterion for that - that would in a way take the place of actually thinking about the case, which would go against Hegel's whole project. So, I'd say: keep watching, and of course reading and thinking about what's going on in the text As far as parapsychology goes, I suspect Hegel would be willing to give the people and ideas a look - but just that. It would be much more likely that besides neuroscience and philosophy of mind, he'd be bringing in other fields ranging from sociology to history to religious studies - both neuroscience and philosophy of mind give us rather parochially incomplete pictures of matters

[@isaacpeachey8609]

If I hadn't read Marx prior to picking up Hegel, I would be lost. The similarities make it easier for me to both understand Hegel and connect him to Marx.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, that's good.

[@DavidGreybeard]

Paragraph 15 seems to have a lot in common with paragraph 3. They involve how we take atomized information, think about it, and then come to terms with it. Except maybe we don't always come to terms with it and feel like we at least did something because we put effort into it and settle for the "self-originating". Hegel seems to have a quantized view of understanding where we take unorganized experience and divine "die Sache selbst" but process and comprehension are not necessary one in the same and on some level due to good fortune and hard work. Essentially an attuned perception that allows us to experience something's being? And this is especially fruitful if one does not label things as 'true' and 'false' but sublating everything into a network of information that has lead us to our current understanding? Hopefully this is not a boring show of diversity, but it reminds me of developmental psychology except in this field we develop as human beings and gain full cognitive capacity by age 30 or so. Our initiation into concrete and abstract thought is not influenced by 'tarrying' but by slow biological processes of neurons weaving and orienting to give us these capacities. Once we gain this ability we can then wander around in knowledge and, for the rest of our life, our cognitive leaps are purely based on thought and not by increase of brain mass. But in our baby days we show erratic quirks in learning especially with language. Namely, we have a tendency to attribute general properties to words meant to be specific while other times using language for something specific as if it were a general term. I think this is also indexed when we learn a new subject as adults but with 'tarrying' we sort this out not as a child and pause to blurt things out until we have mastered this.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I suppose you'll find out what Hegel's up to as you go through the entire work

[@thegrandprole8508]

I wonder if Hegel would apply a similar criticism to his successors in the Marxists. Marxist historians (at least those in the 20th century) in particular are often criticized for their approach of applying class struggle to the whole of a history. Would you say they are sort of missing Hegel's point in doing so?

[@GregoryBSadler]

+thegrandprole Yes - class struggle is something real, but not the entire picture

[@The31JOEISANERDS]

Thats exactly what i thought!

[@jeremyponcy7311]

I could be wrong but Marx seems to falsely attributes a sort of super artificiality to antagonism. Marx seems to very often imply that antagonism is wholly created by man and resolved by man. He places the subjective center stage and reduces the objective to an auxiliary role at best in the dialectic.

[@larianton1008]

7 videos down. Now this is starting to get interesting! I see a lot of non-duality in this passage. Is it just my bias, or is Hegel thinking along those kinds of lines?

[@GregoryBSadler]

It is indeed your bias. "Non-duality" can mean pretty much anything one wishes. You'll do best by sticking close to Hegel, whose thought is very complex, and not trying to read in other stuff to it

[@larianton1008]

@@GregoryBSadler Ok, thank you prof.

[@Foapzenoobmaster]

Hi Gregory, Re: "Substantiality" - Universal: immediacy OF knowledge - Being: immediacy FOR knowledge Is it just me, or is this concept also an extension of the "grasping/ expressing" dialectic mentioned earlier? For example [li mathalin]: A) 'immediacy OF knowledge' - in other words 'the lack of mediation OF knowledge' which refers to the ~lack of mediation required to GRASP the concept/knowledge at hand~ B) 'immediacy FOR knowledge' - in other words 'the lack of mediation FOR knowledge' which refers to the ~lack of mediation required to EXPRESS the concept/ knowledge at hand~ Is that a correct understanding?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, every lack of mediation is going to eventually be revealed as actually not a lack, i.e as mediated -- so these sorts of determinations are just stopping points. "Required"? I would say "seemingly required at this point"

[@Foapzenoobmaster]

:D I appreciate it, thank you.

[@georgee3945]

re #16. The emphasis on the absolute as complete self-identity with itself, denying all reality to the distinct and determinate, is something like Parmenides meant?

[@GregoryBSadler]

It's pretty difficult to know precisely what Parmenides meant, since we don't have a lot of his thoughts preserved in writing. . . but sure, when one conceives of the absolute in an abstract way, pure-self-identity, that sounds quite similar to what Parmenides sets out as "being"

[@georgee3945]

Thanks. Liked your comments on #17. Thank you for your hard work. A real public service.

[@GregoryBSadler]

George E You're very welcome! If you're interested in supporting the project, here's the site for that - www.patreon.com/drgbsadler

[@lyndonbailey3965]

I'm still not sure if I get the for/of distinction with relation to knowledge and being

[@bleddybear]

@ Gregory Sadler - In respect to section 17, the connection between knowledge and being and its mediation through the subject (i.e. person) seems to me reminiscent to Plato's Republic at the end of Book V (wherein Socrates discusses knowledge versus ignorance and opinion) -- is Hegel's thought here predicated on that? Or am I drawing an erroneous connection? Thanks. Bernard

[@chrissolomon1151]

Paragraph 17 is a bit hard for me to grasp. So is Hegel essentially saying that 'Truth' is not just some object which is "out there" that it is what it is with or without us saying so, but that instead us human beings, as subjects experiencing and interpreting Truth, play an essential role in shaping what Truth is? And is "Truth as Subject" also just another way of talking about idealism - that inanimate objects ("substance") have some degree of subjectivity or consciousness?

[@henriboschen5808]

Does the inclusion of the subject into the conception of truth mean that the truth has a potential for action independent of the human action? And can the thruth only become realised in form of being or can it also be realised in the universal? Thank you so much for your effort!

[@raphaelurbain7705]

In the notes of my version of "phenomenology", in french, it is said that the generation that heard of God as the One substance, is that of Spinoza. Is that so ?

[@GregoryBSadler]

That's silly verbiage

[@raphaelurbain7705]

​@@GregoryBSadler The translation I have from Pierre-Jean Labarrière, is particulary unintelligible. I wonder if it's the same for all french translations. Thank you a lot for that work. I am just begining but I'll go to the end.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Why wouldn’t you just use Hypolite’s

[@raphaelurbain7705]

@@GregoryBSadler It's the one I had, with which long time ago, I desperately try to understand more than 3 sentences in a row. It's my mother tongue. And I just discovered your channel a couple of days ago.

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@raphaelurbain7705 Easy enough to get a copy

[@beanatta3905]

Could a person trying to apply hegel to life end up doing the very monochromatic formalism mentioned? Apply his concept to the whole? Or is it truly immune from that?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Anyone can come up with a crappy reductive take on any philosopher, sure

[@Akuryoutaisan21]

Very helpful, thankyou.

[@spontaneousphilosophy1466]

Gregory B. Sadler I can't seem to get my tendrils around the section beginning at 32:49 and ending at 33:16. You say the following: "Being-that which we are actually knowing; not just the universal through which we are knowing-being is a deeper form of immediacy for knowledge, which then shows us that knowledge is mediating being." Would there happen to be an alternative way in which you could express this? (so that I might better grapple the True of what you are saying). Many thanks!

[@CompilerHack]

Fraser Logan I found that part difficult too. I found what he says after that to be a bit helpful- "Being gives itself to us as something that our knowledge _is related to_." I feel that means something like- the knowledge which is im-mediate to us via the Universal (which I understood as "Experience") is related only to ourselves, related only to the Subject who is having the experience. So Being is sort of like Perspective. So I understood that section as- Reality (ie. Substantiality) is a set of (ie. Covers/Embraces) Experiences (ie. Universal) from different Perspectives (ie. Being). But I think that's wrong because Hegel uses the word 'The True' to refer to Reality which is to be understood as Substance _plus_ Subject. And in my paraphrasing above, I have conflated Being, a part of Substance, with Subject itself. Hopefully, the next video will clarify this confusion.

[@pawekopytek7596]

I have a question. In the last section you explain the universals' "immediacy of knowledge" and the being's "immediacy for knowledge". If our knowledge of being is through universals then doesn't that mean that "immediacy for knowledge" just means "mediacy of knowledge" if universals mediate our knowledge of being?

[@GregoryBSadler]

There's usually no "just means" as the interpretation you want to follow out. There's a number of ways, as you read along in the text, you're going to see immediacy unpacked into mediation

[@TheRowanmoses]

This might seem way off but when you said that we can't use one single idea to make sense of everything. Din't Sauron also try and do the same things our scientists are attempting? "Singularity" or "Theory of everything"- "One ring to rule them all".

[@GregoryBSadler]

+Rowan Moses I don't think we have any idea what Sauron's ideas or reasoning was - we simply don't get more than the tiniest bits of it in Tolkien's books. One ring to rule them all is about power, not about making sense of everything

[@TheRowanmoses]

So in a way Sauron did not want to understand everything because understanding something for its own sake is love. Sauron just wanted totalitarian power by understanding enough about men, elves and the dwarves to control them.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Rowan Moses Again, we don't actually know.

[@TheRowanmoses]

+Gregory B. Sadler Yeah but I'm very restless with gaps in the text :)

[@eylon1967]

here after reading Marx being like "Ahhh so that's the context of what he wrote" every other second

[@kiransivan6712]

does it mean that universal is ultimately making sense to or roughly constitutes being.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'm not sure what you're asking here. See if you can restate your question a bit more clearly and I'll see if I can answer it

[@domwren]

I very unexpectedly came across Hermeticism and started to think that it felt Hegelian, only to find that academics have postulated and evidenced a strong association. I'm wondering whether I should approach this subject with Hermeticism in the back of my mind.

[@GregoryBSadler]

A few academics, most of whom are not taken very seriously by other Hegel scholars

[@Antiposmoderno]

what did he mean by intellectual intuition in 17??

[@GregoryBSadler]

An idea going around at the time

[@Antiposmoderno]

@@GregoryBSadler Kant thought that only God could have such an intuition, that is, how to create the intuited object. Does Hegel think it is possible?

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@Antiposmoderno Hegel is not a fan of the fad of intellectual intuition

[@Antiposmoderno]

@@GregoryBSadler thank you!

[@jake4435]

the metaphor for the night in which all cows are black, is this the famous 'night of the world'? or is that something completely different?

[@GregoryBSadler]

+Anton Resident They're different metaphors

[@GregoryBSadler]

The next three paragraphs. . . .

[@MrMarktrumble]

form is how matter is arranged, matter exists only as formed. Aristotle. Except now "matter: is knowledge, not hyle.

[@GregoryBSadler]

There's going to be a lot of back and forth about form and matter/content throughout the work

[@gwendeseminat8r]

We don't want to reduce what we have

[@gwendeseminat8r]

So universals have to be abstract

[@gwendeseminat8r]

Alright I'm gonna start writing

[@ShotTehTrick]

I see parallels between this and what modern day scientists practice, their attempt to prove that science has overtaken God and philosophy.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yes, that "science" (or whatever else) explains everything attitude isn't going away anytime soon!

[@jojoblazer777]

Or possibly the mathematician to the physicist; those are just examples of applications of these rigorously defined mathematical tools. hahahaha

[@sanabaloch5877]

don't you think Hegel become reductionist himself like Marx when he talks about science ?

[@GregoryBSadler]

So. . . you're asking whether Hegel becomes reductionist whenever he discusses science? No, I don't think that

[@sanabaloch5877]

I mean Hegel weared the google of science as he is trying to show scientific method even in thoughts....thanks for ur response ......and I really enjoying such precious lectures

[@lyndonbailey3965]

Evolutionary Psychology.....

[@lyndonbailey3965]

Hmm boring, Dawkins comes to mind

[@davidhansen8087]

What is interesting depends on what is known. Nietzsche comes to mind.