INTRODUCTION - Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

The next live Philosophy Portal course focused on the Écrits starts September 3rd 2023: philosophyportal.online/ecrits
In this video we explore the Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. First published in 1807 the foundation of philosophy was forever transformed after Hegel was capable of articulating a higher order understanding of the understanding the becoming of spirit in history.
This video is based on a 1977 publication of Phenomenology of Spirit which was translated by A.V. Miller with a foreword by J.N. Findlay. You can find an official publication of this work if you follow the links below:
www.worldcat.org/title/phenome...
www.amazon.com/Phenomenology-...
books.google.be/books/about/P...
Blog/Transcript for the episode: cadelllast.com/2018/10/26/int...
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[@PhilosophyPortal]

Phenomenology of Spirit playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLZpRs2zXm-VdeiLxeNmMZudwy2BCfGIIY

[@Ndo01]

Your explanation is so clear that I really wonder why Hegel had to write that way.

[@ElectricQualia]

Thanks for saving me hours of going through Hegel’s work! Loving it!

[@haticedundar3153]

i really benefited from your video, very useful diagrams/schemas. Thanks for your afford👏😊

[@RekzaFS]

I've watched a bunch of videos on Hegel in order to actually understand his system, and you're the first one to articulate it in an understandable way. Cadeau

[@thomassimmons1950]

Cadell,...this is my second time through the piece. Allow me to recommend Owen Barfield and his work on the Evolution of Consciousness. There is also a guy developing some of Barfield's ideas, along with Freud, Jung, Plato and Aristotle. His name is Mark Vernon; is a former psychotherapist with a doctorate in Philosophy. Interesting cat...

[@lvem]

your videos are very helpful, thank you.

[@ofe4280]

I have memories from when I was younger of this continuous loop of absolute knowledge and spiritual death, then at some point I just realized that it will never be truly real. I don’t know if that is exactly what Hegel is saying but it feels like he’s describing myself.

[@meg3418]

Brilliant video as usual from you Cadell. Apologies if this is apparent - and it all makes sense - what I am not understanding (and it may be in a later video so you can just point me to it) - what is the propulsion (might not be the right word but you will get what I am trying to say) to move forward, expand grow in knowledge. I agree that there is an entanglement - but what stops the feedback from just circling itself? The drive? but if so then it must have knowledge of what it is driving towards - or knowledge there is more or...(I am not sure if that makes sense). And if you are enjoying yourself overseas answer on return. I am hoping to get a grip of this before the Freud Masterclass :)

[@PhilosophyPortal]

I think this question of "propulsion" of movement is something that Hegel may not be able to offer us a fully satisfactory answer. The straw-man of Hegel is that he brings us to Absolute Knowledge and then leaves us with this static-fixed totality. This is not really Hegel since the closure of Absolute Knowledge is simultaneously an opening onto a new field (what psychoanalysis would call the drive). However, to go deeper into the movement itself (I think) we have to start to reach the levels of psychoanalysis and (what Lacan referred to as) "the Freudian field" and "reason after Freud". You may recall that this is connected to what I was saying in the "Exploring the Self" course in relation to the idea that Hegel cannot think historical sexuation, jouissance, drive, objet a, libido, and so forth. If you want to go really deep into this topic I would suggest Chapter 7 of Less Than Nothing: "The Limits of Hegel".

[@eucariote79]

thanks!

[@PhilosophyPortal]

You are very welcome mimzi :-)

[@ElectricQualia]

This sounds alot like the Dao De Ching. Would it be accurate to call this Dialectical panentheism?

[@conforzo]

All of the eastern religions, Taoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism etc are very Hegelian yes.

[@thomassimmons1950]

Is Zizek channeling Kant, in the notion of reality being (cracked)...that knowledge in Itself is fallen... impossible?

[@PhilosophyPortal]

I think that Zizek is trying to work through what happens between Kant and Hegel through to the consequences of 20th century psychoanalysis. In that sense I would interpret this trajectory as Kant = Impossible Outside (existing independent of our reason); Hegel = Impossible Inside (existing internal to our reason); Psychoanalysis (Freud-Lacan) = Impossible Inside (non-existing internal to our reason as an irreducible otherness). This is all related to the "Thing-in-itself" (or Absolute Being) vis-a-vis our knowledge. For Kant the "Thing-in-itself" (or Absolute Being) exists whether or not humans exist and we are barred-prevented from ever knowing it; for Hegel the "Thing-in-itself" (or Absolute Being) exists as an entanglement with the becoming of human knowledge (self-active Idea, i.e. the historical subject of Kant); for Freud-Lacan the "Thing-in-itself" (or Absolute Being) is an undeconstructible spectral otherness (non-being) constitutive of human subjectivity which can never be fully known (unconscious).

[@thomassimmons1950]

@@PhilosophyPortal Thank you sir. That was enlightening. I'm a retired construction worker, who has attempted to self educate my entire life. Your work has been a great gift this past year. Your zealous commitment and seeming un-flaging energy is very impressive. Don't wanna get to sappy, but again, keep up the good fight!

[@PhilosophyPortal]

Thanks for opening up about your history and your own drive. I really appreciate your engagement with the channel and so good to know whenever this work helps others. Hope the continue to the dialogue :-) To the end!

[@kylegiambra6885]

Sartre would claim that we are the project of producing ourselves as historical beings.

[@kylegiambra6885]

And that there is a being to knowledge the object of which is reason.

[@kylegiambra6885]

Or to modify a saying: “We’re all Hegelian in Nietzsche’s God’s eye.”