Half Hour Hegel: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Sense Certainty, sec. 109-110)

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In this forty-fourth video in the new series on G.W.F. Hegel's great early work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, I read and comment on paragraphs 109 and 110 of the text, finishing our study of the first portion of the section "Consciousness," i.e "Sense Certainty".
We have learned now through the dialectical investigation into what sense certainty is that it does not possess immediacy, but rather involves a whole complex of mediations that have progressively come to light, ultimately highlighting the role of the universal. Turning to the practical sphere, we find that the objects of sense-certainty did not provide us with the truth or the essence we originally sought, but rather sensuous things exhibit their own nothingness.
In trying to speak about singular, individual things as what is most real, consciousness would up in paradoxes, since everything is an individual thing, which means individual thing is itself an abstract universal. We must turn instead to the complex universal -- and to the perceiving subject, which provides the content of the next section of the Phenomenology
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, Partita No. 1 in Bm, BWV 1002, is available in the public domain, and can be found at musopen.org.
#Hegel #Phenomenology #Philosophy #Idealism #German #Dialectic #Spirit #Absolute #Knowledge #History

[@julieharrison4439]

Hi George, im from London and just wanted to say thank you so much for your videos. I'm in my 1st year as a philosophy undergrad. You seem to have the knack of making complex issues more understandable, so I watch you all the time. Just keep doing what you're doing. The mark of a good teacher is someone that allows the love of his or her subject shine through. And you do that! Much love Jules

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're very welcome! Glad the videos have been helpful for you

[@GregoryBSadler]

We finish up the first portion of the main body of the Phenomenology with this installment. Next week, it's on to the next section -- "Perception: Or The Thing and Deception"!

[@GregoryBSadler]

Marcelle Elliott I don't know that Marx said anything about it specifically -- but he wasn't really concerned with old, off-the-scene religions in his critique. If its becoming somewhat clearer, well, that's good at this point -- we've still got several more years to go in this series

[@MrMarktrumble]

Quoting a friend of mine (spoken ironically) " I am as "unique" as the next guy". perhaps I should live silently as a hermit....or learn the whole phenomenology. thank you

[@MrMarktrumble]

Marcelle Elliott I suspect you are teasing me. How would one explain the system of say the human body and its integrated functions of its organs? One cannot start at everything at once, so maybe you could start with the eyes, and work through all the implications ( for the eyes to work you need blood, for blood to work you need a heart etc. etc.). the organ only exists in an organ-ized body, and what initially seems as a stand alone entity winds up being bilaterally interrelated to other organs.

[@MrMarktrumble]

you have a good weekend too.

[@WeBreakTheChain]

At 28:17 you actually prove Hegel's point (perhaps without knowing it): Hegel is literally referring to his piece of paper i.e. the actual manuscript, we don't have it, so we have to abstract, thus moving into the realm of universality - we pretend that "this book right here" is the piece of paper. In the very practical method of your example you are doing exactly what Hegel says happens when you try and grasp a singularity via language. I just thought that was funny.

[@Winterwalker442]

The way you unwrap this stuff (Zizek calls it "Hegelese") is incredible! Thank you so much for your work Dr. Sadler!

[@dalepatterson9605]

I cannot help but think of Where the Wild Things Are when reading the line "but, despairing of their reality, and completely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and eat them up"

[@TheMadnessOfCrowds]

Thank you, Prof. Sadler. I am very much enjoying this series!

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're very welcome!

[@forlotta2066]

Thank you very much, as always. Glad to be finished with this section and moving onto Perception

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're very welcome!

[@AedarkZZ]

An incredible undertaking. Thank you!

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're very welcome!

[@gregorywilliams2714]

Thanks! You brought this very vividly to life for me.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Glad it was useful for you

[@eylon1967]

what we percieve as "space" actualy does change its place. not in relation to other geographic places, but in relation to other planets etc

[@bannork]

Thank you so much for this series Dr Sadler, you are truly a teacher, able to explain difficult concepts clearly and with humour and passion, and for free! God bless Dr Sandler and you tube for this, but there is one item of knowledge I fear you may have difficulty communicating to your students. Why are you so fond of heavy metal? I love rock and blues being a child of the late 60s but those bands could play acoustic as well as rock- and as you say our pleasure of an experience soon fades if repeated. I'm surprised this doesn't apply to your enjoyment of heavy metal!

[@GregoryBSadler]

+bannork You might check out my blog, Heavy Metal Philosopher - which, unfortunately, I haven't had the time to write in for a while.

[@joanluft2119]

Hervorragend! Danke vielmals.

[@stan3333stan]

These videos are amazing. Thank you so much.

[@GregoryBSadler]

+stan3333stan You're very welcome!

[@stan3333stan]

+Gregory B. Sadler If not for this section I wouldn't have been able to write anything in my essay, now I feel that I understand, I might watch the rest of the series out of curiosity.

[@GregoryBSadler]

***** Very glad it proved useful for you! By all means, watch the rest, and if you've got questions, come to my online monthly Q&A sessions

[@blondthought5175]

When Hegel speaks, my mind wanders. Nice tie.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, at least there's that

[@carolinamerighi6903]

Amazing work done, thank you! One thing, is it then the philosophical implication that Hegel inevitably is that as language refers to universals then particular objects cannot be picked out and that there is no thing as immediate knowledge.

[@GregoryBSadler]

+Carolina Merighi For Hegel, yes, there is no knowledge that is not mediated. That doesn't mean, however that particular objects can't be picked out. Just that, when they are, it's not just that occurring -- there's mediation involved

[@thegrandprole8508]

Its interesting how Kant doesn't come to you very intuitively. I would say that, in my experience as someone younger, reading Kant was a clarifying experience in that it made me make sense of what I was already doing. I might be wrong but it might say something about how in this digital age where representations of things are everywhere we naturally have a distance to the thing itself.

[@GregoryBSadler]

One could get that through so many other thinkers than Kant. Glad you enjoy him, though. I find his moral philosophy much more interesting than his speculative philosophy

[@StuartSafford]

I think that this is my favorite portion of Hegel's writings. If I could understand this, it would be quite an accomplishment. Things are quite a lot more complicated than perception dictates? I would like to linger in the moments of some perceptions. Is the term Nichtigheit the denial of a purported reality which is a supposed universal truth?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, I think you can understand it, but going at it the way Hegel does, that understanding takes a bit of time and reflection. In this case, the videos for this section end up being about 3 hours or so -- essentially one week's worth of a graduate-level seminar class -- and for each hour in the classroom, we'd end up putting in 1-3 hours outside.

[@StuartSafford]

Thank you for presenting it the way you do. I shall have to study it out some more.

[@MrMarktrumble]

to perceive is not just sense, but to have cognitive content. But wait, this happened in the mediation and the negation of this "this" for the This in general....

[@jonathanjonsson9205]

Interesting. I guess Kant would call these "universals" two different things - the universal concept of 'paper' would be a concept under which we can sort synthesized sense data, while concepts like 'here' and 'now' would be a priori and fundamental in that they are not produced by cognition, but rather ENABLE cognition - or in the case of 'here' and 'now', they are schematized forms of fundamental categories, which makes it messier (involving our forms of Anschauung), an easier example would be "all the papers" where 'all' would be a fundamental moment in both logic and cognition... And 'I' would simply be the underlying unity of apperception which makes any coherent conscious experience possible, not a movement of different "slices" of I, negating each other and negating the negations. This would put 'here', 'now' and 'I' firmly on the subjective side of the cognitive process, even though they would not make sense to us unless consciousness had sense data to work on... I am still looking for more arguments in Hegel for why object and subject should be considered as moving into each other, rather than interacting in a form of cognitive dualism, structure/data. I suspect it has to do with consciousness, because honestly, Kant has such a minimal and poor description of the transcendental I and how it relates to the empirical self... and even worse when it comes to intersubjectivity and other minds. I am open to Hegel challenging me further on this in the battle for my favorite German ;)

[@GregoryBSadler]

If you're looking for "arguments" in the Phenomenology, you're going to be setting yourself for disappointment. That's not really what's going on in the text, unfortunately

[@jonathanjonsson9205]

@@GregoryBSadler Thank you for your reply! This is me working through the text and my thoughts in the age old tradition of lengthy KZbin comments. I guess 'argument' is a poor choice of word, let's rather say that I'm willing to take the journey, and we'll see where we end up!

[@setroc6534]

Thanks for these Hegel video series it is quite illuminating on the thoughts and ideas found in the Phenomenology. Just curious is there a future possibility of doing a short video on Nicolas de Cusa?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Glad you enjoy the Hegel series. So, Cusa? It's been some time since I've read him, but I enjoyed reading him when I did, so, yes -- but more likely in the History of Philosophy channel I'll be bringing out. . . .

[@NoremakSeggob]

I definitely need more time with this, but I'm tempted to compare Kant and Hegel for a fuller understanding. To my knowledge, Kant claims we can only have knowledge when we combine intuition (e.g. immediate sense perception) with concept (e.g. language and universals). I do not see clearly where Hegel makes this distinction: the possibility that we can have an immediate perception of an object prior to language, as distinct from the concept (in language) that we later create and mediate this perception with. Is Hegel, from Kant's perspective, claiming that the combination of sensual intuition and concept is still not enough to give us knowledge about the senses, because our universals of language can never actually refer to the specific, temporal, spatial intuition that we have of an object? In objection to Kant, the two just cannot combine to give any meaningful knowledge, because the now that is experienced as it is in unmediated intuition becomes mediated and universalized and therefore a particular truth is diffused into the general?

[@Philiopantheon82]

Dr. Sadler, thanks once again. At this point i wanna ask you sincerely, is it possible to reconcile Kantian metaphysics into Hegel's method of metaphysics. I always stumble on this thought as many scholars are poles part when comes to Kant and Hegel, and weirdly enough i enjoy reading them both and i kinda see them meandering into the same stream, what is your view on that?

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'd say it depends on what you mean by "reconcile", and what aspects of their positions you want to be reconciled

[@Philiopantheon82]

Gregory B. Sadler, kantian metaphysical approach toward thing in itself and his epistemology for instance with dialectical Hegel approach. Many scholars for instance see Kant as skeptic with idea of noumina and see Hegel as the one who who completed Kantian method. While i believe Kant was not at all skeptic, he has his own worries about us doing metaphysics in a scientific way and for me Hegel probably has the same worry too!! Just not to get too demanding, i simply want to ask has Hegel answered the Kantian worries about metaphysics? Does the dialectical approach and grasping of negative is proper system of understanding the ultimate nature of reality?

[@abbeymaeliam1]

Dr Sadler, would this series of paragraphs constitute a good refutation of Wittgenstein's family resemblances and language games? Wittgenstein as far as I know wasn't a conceptual realist and I sense his suggestion of these categories of conduct is a tacit acceptance of universals on his part and therefore an inconsistency.

[@GregoryBSadler]

I don't see why this would be a "refutation" of family resemblances or the notion of language game, no

[@vultuur250]

Is Hegel disproving the existence of these particular principially unutterable objects in general in this passage? And, if so, would this be an expression of his idealism? I am not sure whether I disagree with Hegel here or just misread him: Can't an object be universal in one sense and particular in the other? For example take the 'I'; in paragraph 102 the particular 'I' of one moment is sublated to the universal 'I'. But isn't this 'I' which is universal in the sense of being mediated by negation, particular when it related to other 'I's (whereas it is universal when being related to different sense perceptions)? After all the difference between those 'I's , insofar as they are 'I', is unutterable too.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Keep reading and reflecting

[@DouglasHPlumb]

For only being able to define objects in terms of universals I would say draw a Venn diagram of all your universals and in the center where they intersect is the description of the particular to the limits of sense certainty and the language used to describe sensory perception. Wrt Kant, I wholly agree with what you say wrt the categories - who couldn't ? No one took up Kants project to expand the categories to my knowledge. If they did, it would be well read by Kantians and an incredible contribution. Kant said he left the project to someone else. I wonder if Kant could have done it 8-) Hegel isn't as deep, describing sense certainty in the context of causality - the now is really the 'then' as we perceive it. True to varying degrees, depending on what we are doing - digging a hole vs solving an equation.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Doug Plumb Hegel doesn't, I think, mean to address solving an equation as an activity falling into sense-certainty.

[@DouglasHPlumb]

Gregory B. Sadler Perhaps an equation was a bad example, but I don't think that stands in the way of my meaning.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Doug Plumb Well, it does a bit, if it is supposed to work as an example on your part of what you've got in mind here. Remember -- this is the section exploring the truth of sense-certainty, not of higher order activities, which are going to have their own, more complex development. As to the first bit, that's essentially what Russell and the other people into the logicist project tried to do. Gets very cumbersome and unmanageable very quickly, and takes us miles away from the phenomenon that's being explored dialectically here. As to Kant's categories, plenty of neo-Kantians tinkered about with them. There were, for some time, entire schools of Neo-Kantians, all mostly forgotten now.

[@DouglasHPlumb]

Gregory B. Sadler This nature of causality and the senses that he is covering is something that is well known today where maybe not so much back when he wrote it. Many of us have some scientific literacy and perhaps some rudimentary knowledge of systems theory just from operating our machines. I think of the sense perception as sort of a machine and recall that my washing machine doesn't start as soon as I push the button and the computer, like our brain, takes a while to "crunch the numbers". If there is one thing I have learned about philosophy, its to always read original works. So when I read Kant I only read Kant. Neo Kantianism is something I do not know nor care to know for now. I'll get the Routledge Guide to Hegel, as I did with Kant for prep work but other than that, stick only to originals. Your lectures are easy to follow and I think I am getting what Hegel has to say from you. So much to read and learn, its so difficult to decide where to put ones attention. Videos like this are great and I've spent more time watching yours than anything else in philosophy. If someone could only explain linear algebra like this - I mean really take it slow and get into the meaning of the ideas.

[@GregoryBSadler]

Doug Plumb I'm very surprised to read that someone hasn't created similar videos with linear algebra.

[@DavidGreybeard]

I'm still not certain where the critical voice of his dialectic comes from. Is it the mind of 'absolute knowledge' intervening and suggesting an incremental step towards itself? Is it perception that is the next passage intervening and anticipating itself. Or is it something purely developing as it is written?

[@GregoryBSadler]

He's already worked through the dialectic - and written a few starts - when he writes this work. Hegel's view is that the dialectical process of the development of consciousness is finished, at least in outline, and it's up to us to retrace it - and that's what this work is. That said, at each point, consciousness - the determinate shapes of consciousness in the course of development - is already advancing beyond itself, usually in a groping manner. that's also what we're following along

[@mandys1505]

paragraph 109: !!!!! oh, my ! Hegel is sounding the depths, speaking the profound mystic perception of the Eleusinian Mysteries!?!?!?? wow..... I like him more than ever, now. ~I'm kind of shocked! "in part he brings about the nothingness of such things himself in his dealings with them..." I don't think people are aware that Hegel is like this (?!?!?!?!?!???) This is the most amazed that i have been...so far :D

[@mandys1505]

I googled the question, "was Hegel a Freemason?" and i found a pdf for this book, "Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition" by Glenn Magee (2001). and so far, he states that yes, Hegel read mystics like Eckhart and Jakub Boehme. And that his childhood was surrounded by Hermetic influences. I thought of the Masons because this initiation paragraph just associated that in my mind....unfortunately, this author, (Magee) thinks that Hermeticism is about the "lust for power, not the Greek love of wisdom"......so he seems to have a pejorative view of Hermeticism.

[@RoyalAnarchist]

I'm glad I know some German so I could make more sense of "Zweifung"

[@derekburfoot317]

Talking about the intrinsic value of sensuous objects (commodity fetishism) is interesting coming from the view point of reading Marx before Hegel

[@GregoryBSadler]

Well, Marx doesn't arise in a vacuum. . . .

[@TTFMjock]

"What is called the unutterable is merely the irrational." Shades of Wittgenstein?

[@GregoryBSadler]

Life of Brian I wouldn't say so, no. Not out of the so many other people who discuss such matters

[@runawayemu60]

You misspelled “perceiving”. I before E EXCEPT after C!

[@GregoryBSadler]

Yep. Sometimes I misspell words. Anything to say about the substance of the video, or did you just want to complain?

[@runawayemu60]

Just wanted to feel smart for a moment amid all this struggling with Hegel! Thank you for these videos, they are amazingly helpful. Is there a reason you decided to do this with the Phenomenology rather than some other dense philosophical text? Why not Half Hour Critique of Pure Reason or Half Hour Being and Time? Also - how could Hegel have known what was going on in the Eleusinian mysteries when we ourselves have no idea?

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'll likely never do the CPR, since I don't find it interesting enough. BT could be for down the line, but more likely, I'd do Being and Nothingness. About the HHH project - thescholarpreneur.com/spp-027-how-to-be-a-crowdfunded-scholar-with-greg-sadler/