PREFACE (1) - Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

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In this video we explore the first part of the Preface in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. In the Preface Hegel attempts to clearly explain both the aim and result of the Phenomenology of Spirit as a book project. He wants to make it clear that he is attempting to bring philosophy to the level of a science of spirit that can make sense of the absolute as both substance and subject. He sees the biggest enemy to this project, both a metaphysical idealism which reifies substance in or with an intuitive oneness (or A=A), and a scientism which neither understands its own historicity or its duty to historical subjects to bring them to the level of absolute knowing. Hegel thus sees his Phenomenology, not as a foundations of science, but as a coming-to-be of Science, and ultimately a Science of the Notion that can help us both explain and address the idiosyncratic nature of self-becoming that has opened in the modern world.
First published in 1807 the foundation of philosophy was forever transformed after Hegel was capable of articulating a higher order understanding of the understanding as 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.
Blog/Transcript for the episode: cadelllast.com/2021/12/26/pre...
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[@telosbound]

Yesss

[@PhilosophyPortal]

☀️

[@thomassimmons1950]

Brilliant beginning to a noble project. I will be following and commenting as you move forward. My mind is exploding already and we're barely out the GATE!

[@PhilosophyPortal]

haha, this is ending (the Phenomenology of Spirit project) with the beginning (the Preface)! I will do one more video completing the Preface before the course starts on 15.01.22.

[@totonow6955]

❤​@@PhilosophyPortal😊

[@britthp1]

Thank You Cadell🙏

[@kehindeonakunle7404]

Brilliant lecture. Pls, enroll me in your philosophy class.

[@PhilosophyPortal]

Check Philosophy Portal!

[@ghostboy152]

Very much appreciate this video and everything you do. It is amazing how you are able to communicate with great clarity very profound things. I think in the history of philosophy, in the immediate future, new thinkers will be indebted to your efforts. Also, around 38:00 on the subject of Aristotle's teleology and science, you mentioned that there are several books wrestling with teleology. Could you please name some? Also, have you read Incomplete Nature by Terrence Deacon? If so, any thoughts? to me it is maybe one of the first signs of a new kind of science. Thank you very much

[@PhilosophyPortal]

Thanks for your comment. In regards contemporary books wrestling with a direct relation to the problems of teleology that I think Hegel is pointing towards, actually, the book that was on my mind, and the one I have spent the most time with, is Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature. I would also recommend Evan Thompson's Mind in Life. Finally, if you are not aware of the tradition, I would say there is important background reading here in the literature on autopoiesis stemming from Maturana and Varela's work (Autopoiesis and Cognition). I would, however, strongly emphasize that I do not think any of these authors really go into the depth requires to think what Hegel would call the "Science of the Notion". Nonetheless, they are steps in the right direction. I am especially fond of Deacon's concept of "absentials".

[@ghostboy152]

@@PhilosophyPortal Thank you for your recommendations! I will seek them out asap. It's very funny that I also totally had Incomplete Nature in mind when you talked about teleology! I too am very fond of absentials. I would say that it has colored and altered the way I think about almost everything these days, especially causality and free will. If anything should awaken you from a dogmatic slumber, I think this book is it. Truly a step in the right direction. I am an absolute beginner to Hegel, but am very excited about his ideas, and now especially this Science of Notion. Thanks again!

[@thomassimmons1950]

OK...second time through, and going to start laying down some spontaneous thoughts... disconnected or no. It occurs to me Heidegger's statement, that Meister Eckhart is the father of German thought is more true than I realized, as I contemplate this piece, I'm sayin. Allow me to grow a tree growing out his acorn: Eckhart>Luther>Leibniz>Kant>Hegel> Schopenhauer>Neitzche>Heidegger. Shame the whole project ran ashore on the reef of two World Wars. But hey...shit happens.

[@PhilosophyPortal]

That is very interesting acorn/tree to me, starting with Eckhart. I had not made the connection to him before, but now I am very stimulated to read an overview and his original texts.

[@Wrenasmir]

Hi Cadell - if I’m unable to make the live lectures, will I miss out on important information in this course, or will all the live sessions be available as recordings to watch later? I saw you mentioned pre-recorded videos will be available but I wasn’t sure if these were the same as the live session recordings. Thank you in advance.

[@Wrenasmir]

Also, a follow-up question: will there be a reading schedule each week, where we should read to a certain point before your lecture?

[@PhilosophyPortal]

Hi @@Wrenasmir all of the live lectures will be recorded and stored. You will be able to access them not only during the course, but indefinitely afterwards. There will also be readings that are spaced out bi-weekly, so that, hopefully, by the end of the course everyone will have been able to complete their first reading of Phenomenology of Spirit.

[@Wrenasmir]

@@PhilosophyPortal Fantastic, thank you for this information. I’m looking forward to signing up and starting the course next month.