The Life of Hegel

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Күн бұрын

Hegel spent the first forty years of his life overshadowed by his two friends from the seminary, Hölderlin and Schelling. But in his last years, he was the most well-known philosopher in Europe. He lived a low-key life, but his engagement with history, art, and religion, as well as with the other thinkers of his era, shaped his philosophy. This is what we explore here.

Пікірлер: 70

@romancosentino2805 Жыл бұрын

Although Hegel was indeed a Bengals fan he famously remarked, after seeing Patrick Mahomes beat them in the afc championship, “I saw the Goat! This world soul tossing the pigskin!”

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

That's pretty great. I agree and love Mahomes.

@Immaterialgorl Жыл бұрын

I love this! I’m enraptured by this retelling of academic drama in the 18th century. Completely sold on the opening slide 😄

@eduardtoader5424 Жыл бұрын

Jesus did die as the most BASED figure indeed! Excellent video, thank you!

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

I think I was caught between saying "debased" and "abased" and then unconsciously settled on "based"!

@ossen5411 9 ай бұрын

pure unconscious moment

@annenicholsonmbtp 3 ай бұрын

This is such an important lecture. Thank you so much for talking about these things that are not frequently discussed.

@felipedim5 11 ай бұрын

When I started understanding the Phenomenology of Spirit (took a long time) I was very surprised at how funny it could be. Some of his metaphors are actually really good jokes.

@geraldineobrienbolivia 10 ай бұрын

How long.. are we talking about?

@felipedim5 10 ай бұрын

@@geraldineobrienbolivia At least a year and two read-throughs. Not the easiest book, to say the least, but it's quite beautiful and rewarding.

@sylviaowega3839 3 ай бұрын

Great informative video about Hegel and his relationship with Schelling! Hegel was clearly the more loyal friend I’d the two, whilst Schelling was perhaps more troubled with his growing fame and differences in outlook.

@addammadd Жыл бұрын

Thanks Todd, that was a fantastic lecture.

@_PanchoVilla 11 ай бұрын

Great work putting this together. Amazing to see the tombstone up close.

@dialectiks Жыл бұрын

Wonderful video!

@leanmchungry4735 Жыл бұрын

I enjoyed this, thanks prof

@DosEquisMan45 11 ай бұрын

Inspirational biography, loved it!

@Tuber-sama 4 ай бұрын

Such an incredible work, man. I usually have to choose between having a good and complex script or an well edited and produced video in lectures like these, but you, sir, did both.

@mirzaardi3274 Жыл бұрын

Thank you

@ryan_c_letsgo Жыл бұрын

awesome stuff! two things were briefly mentioned that i've often wondered about, maybe even could be some future Why Theory episodes -- 1) a greater elucidation of this whole 'conceptual sentences' approach, how exactly these function, why they're necessary, how to handle them etc... and 2) what's the deal with Schopenhauer and how does he fit (if at all) into the greater Why Theory universe love your work !!

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

Those are great suggestions. Thanks.

@ryan_c_letsgo Жыл бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 np-- its probably clear but i meant 'speculative sentence' -- i always do that for some reason. really could just extend the topic to "what's the deal with speculation"

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

@@ryan_c_letsgo I thought we could do something on the speculative proposition and link it to the ordinary proposition

@ryan_c_letsgo Жыл бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 sounds good -- i'd definitely find that useful

@AlphaNumeric123 7 ай бұрын

Great video, extremely well explained

@arthurrezende8137 8 ай бұрын

Thank you for the video!! I'm from Brazil and I'm looking content about Hegel; excelent material: didactic, interesting, informative and entertaining!

@alexander63736 6 ай бұрын

Wow bro. This was pretty good.

@nah8845 Жыл бұрын

Todd - I hate that you are so good at everything 😆 I'm so envious of your passion and dedication. Maybe I spaced it but I didn't hear you address the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis," debacle. I was expecting to hear that here only because I know how much you despise it. Thanks for the excellent storytelling and the goofy jokes woven throughout 🤣

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

I should have probably had that in here. And I realized I left out a couple of nice little lines from his letters as well.

@colesmatteo Жыл бұрын

this was great.

@Rico-Suave_ 6 ай бұрын

Great video, thank you very much , note to self(nts) watched all of it 48:03

@ianszabo2079 Жыл бұрын

Love Hegel with the Bengals hat on at the beginning; the most Hegelian football team

@novaaurora4738 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for a great video Todd! I swear I could go happily onward for the of my life with your voice and occasional joke playing on in the background. Could you point me in the direction of the works of Jameson that embrace the christianity-marxism lineage (from 32:32)? Also, don't you think that disavowing the philosophy of history lectures as not of Hegel but his students, but praising the history of philosophy lectures to be a little squirrely? Maybe there's some worthwhile discrimination between the two, that the latter's content better fits with Hegel's system, and the former's discrimination and other unsavory aspects do not.

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

That's very generous. I think that Jameson says this in Political Unconscious, but I was just speaking from general memory, so I'm not sure. Your point about the History of Philosophy is certainly valid, but I was just saying that it provides a good introduction to Hegel's work, not that it should be seen as the central foundation of that work, which is how readers have taken the Philosophy of History. So I wouldn't say that I was talking about them in the same way, although I should probably not put those side by side in the way that I do here. That I agree with.

@mandobrownie 11 ай бұрын

This is a nice piece of evidence to add to the pile for the claim that philosophers often lead extremely normal, usual lives!

@lotoreo Жыл бұрын

I always wondered about that quote of his: "The Owl of Minerva only takes flight at Dusk.". The original German version is: "Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.", which, when I read it as a Dutch sentence (my language), would translate as "The Owl of Minerva first starts her flight with the breaking of dawn/dusk.", which I think is interesting, because, first of all, it doesn't necessarily say she ONLY flies at the break of dusk/dawn, just that this is the first thing she does at that time, but maybe this just seems that way to me because I don't fully understand all the nuances of German. Secondly, the word "Dämmerung" doesn't necessarily translate to dusk, it could also mean dawn, which is interesting that there's a bit of ambiguity there. Though I suppose that since owls are nocturnal animals, he does probably mean dusk and not dawn. Anyway, good video, I'm always excited when you upload a new video, and this one did not disappoint!

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

It's a very good point about the meaning of "Dämmerung." But I think that the clue is found in the preceding sentences. It seems clear to me that Hegel is talking about being at the end of things.

@isonenainen Жыл бұрын

Great! Hegel seems to be one of the few philosophers who praise old age rather than young prodigy (he is anti-"original intuition" or "pure heart.") Maybe that's why he is the philosopher of anti-capitalism...

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

This seems to me a very significant point--taking old age as the point of departure rather than youth. It's both anti-capitalist and very anti-romantic, despite the time in which he was writing.

@ethanyu1323 Жыл бұрын

I read in an old book on Feuerbach a funny anecdote about Hegel I really like but don’t know if it’s real. One time when Hegel’s wife asked him if the immortality of the soul is real, Hegel doesn’t say anything but merely points at the Bible hahaha. A funny contrast with the Heine anecdote about Hegel calling heaven an eczema to the sky

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

I don't know about that interaction with Marie, but I have read Heine's book that discusses his interactions with Hegel.

@Parsons4Geist Жыл бұрын

Started from the bottom, now we're here hegel Started from the bottom, now my whole team here all the haters goin hate

@mythospraxis6764 Жыл бұрын

I really like this point about how Hegel has a comic element that articulates the dialectic. On the Kant comparison-- I'm sure you know this, but Kant has a passage in the Critique of Pure Reason where he makes fun of the philosophical dupe doing bad metaphysics who tries to "milk the bull." And that's funny. But it's not genuinely comical because it seeks to banish contradiction.

@ErikLW Жыл бұрын

Could you comment on the slip you pointed out at around 39 minutes? I noticed that there were other parts that seemed edited due to brevity/rambling, so I wondered at why you left that in (and I admired the fact that you did.) Thanks for posting the video. There was a lot that I didn't know, and the presentation was easy to follow. P.s. is that a new mic?

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

Same mic. I mistake History of Philosophy (a lecture series I love) for Philosophy of History (one I don't like so much). That's why the slip is revelatory in a rather obvious way and why I left it in. I tend to leave slips in. The editing is just putting together parts that I've recorded at different times.

@pt9973 10 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 Hello Todd Mcgowan 8233rd. Thank you for the talk. Really interresting, revelatory and comic. Im sorry to seek your attention so vulgarly. Your talk brought a question about the history Hegel lived in, his consciousness and dialectic. Im trying to understand the bourgeoise epoch and Hegel is for me, as a marxist,the most important teacher. He is probably also the most serious and present critic of Marx, not withstanding Marx himself and history. 39:48 💯💯Politics in Hegel🔥🔥 Is Hegel’s notion to politics a bourgeoise one? He understands politics in totality an takes it on through logic. Hence he has a ”passive stance” doing politics as a philosopher. This understanding of politics is formed not from his personal political stance but from his consciousness. Because the rational becomes after the fact, in the dusk, philosophy can’t be political because of history? If so, what are your thought’s, that Hegel was the greatest and last bourgeoise, greatest pre-capitalist (as before the industrial revolution) philosopher. And hence from a Marxist POV history, the consciousness has passed him because capitalism brought the possibility if may for Minerva’s owel to become conscious fly in the morning to make history in the dusk. Ps. sorry for the quirky continuation of the metaphor giving it a marxian jive.

@Lastrevio 8 ай бұрын

Today I started reading your book "Capitalism and Desire" and after reading the Introduction I wanted to ask you if you ever read the work of Byung-Chul Han. His books "The Burnout Society" and "Psychopolitics" offer a very similar critique of capitalism to yours.

@toddmcgowan8233 8 ай бұрын

He's great. You're right about the similarity.

@Lastrevio 8 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 "The capitalist subject imagines itself dissatisfied because it imagines itself constantly overcoming obstacles to arrive at the object, but in fact the obstacles are the object. If the subject can recognize its satisfaction in its obstacle, then the public world undergoes a dramatic transformation. Rather than seeking an object in this world and retreating with the object into one’s private oasis, one must embrace the public world as the site of the obstacle. Without the public qua obstacle, the subject would lose its ability to satisfy itself, which is why capitalism’s hostility to the public world itself is not sincere." From page 63 of your book - this reminds me of a point Noam Chomsky, Varoufakis and others often make about how capitalism has reached a point of monopoly where private banks and mega-corporations are deemed "too big to fail" in recessions and thus thrive not based on profit but from central bank money. As Chomsky often says, capitalism is already in an era of central planning, where a few minor mega-corps own most of the share market. This relates to your point because defenders of capitalism often argue about how the state needs to regulate the market less, but what we have now is the market regulating the state (i.e.: the private needing the public).

@jeanlamontfilms5586 7 ай бұрын

Hey Todd, do you think there are Hegelian implications in reappropriating the famous misquote from “Thesis, Antithesis, Sythesis” into “Thesis is the Antithesis of Synthesis”?

@EMC2Scotia Жыл бұрын

What book would you recommend for a biography of Hegel?

@toddmcgowan8233 Жыл бұрын

My favorite is Jürgen Kaube's book Hegels Welt, but it hasn't been translated into English. In English, the best is Terry Pinkard's biography.

@Nihil01 2 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 What do you think about Klaus Viewegs biography about Hegels Life?

@toddmcgowan8233 2 ай бұрын

@@Nihil01 I've only read it in German, so I cannot comment on the translation, but I think it's an outstanding book. It's far more than a biography. It's also a very good interpretation of Hegel's thought.

@Nihil01 2 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 Oh, wow, Thanks. I was avoiding books like the one by Klaus Vieweg and even more Klaubes Book because they appeared when there was an anniversary and I thought these where just popular books with no value or eve wrong Informations (like that Hegels Philosophy can be summarized to Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis...). I'm not worried about any translations though, I'm German xD. By the way I would recommend the KZbin-Chanel Julian De Medeiros. He makes really good Videos about Philosophy especially about Hegels Philosophy.

@bhashanathilakarathna2683 6 ай бұрын

Todd, can you name a book for beginners to start reading hegel?

@toddmcgowan8233 6 ай бұрын

From Hegel himself, I think that the Encyclopedic Logic is the best starting point. As far as books on Hegel go, I would do Frederick Beiser's Hegel. Although not perfectly accurate concerning his thought (in my view), it's a phenomenal introduction to Hegel.

@bhashanathilakarathna2683 6 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233Thanks

@camildumitrescu3703 9 ай бұрын

I always found pretty obvious that, if anyone would have been almost obliged to carry Schopenhauer through time, it Should have been that 1 student. Really. Therefore, because he did not rise to the occasion, he let old Arthur be burried by crazy Nietzsche. I know, it's controversial...

@EliaMarc 6 ай бұрын

You say and (I think also wrote, but not sure) that Hegel wasn't a great lecturer. But I read in other sources that he was actually great. The divide I notice is that in most german (modern) sources, he is described as a pretty good lecturer. But in most english speaking sources he is described as pretty bad. Wouldn't his popularity (especially as Schopenhauer famously held his lectures at the same time) and success disprove that? I mean the book Philosophy of History is written by notes of his lectures taken by his pupils, which there were many. Why would he be a bad lecturer but popular at the same time? (Also you as well as others think he's quite funny) I would love to hear your thoughts about this!

@toddmcgowan8233 6 ай бұрын

It was a long time ago, so who knows in the end? I have nothing invested in saying that he wasn't a good lecturer but am just giving the majority report. I hope it's wrong. But I haven't read any accounts by his students (in German, of course) vaunting his skill as a lecturer. There is more description of it as ponderous and halting, for a good reason, I think. He believed that he had to reinvent the whole system with each sentence. That's incredible, but it doesn't make it easy on the audience. As for why people nonetheless flocked to his lectures, that testifies to their sense of the importance of his thought. There are thinkers today that I would go to see over almost anyone else, and I would describe them as poor lecturers. It's not a verdict on their thought.

@EliaMarc 6 ай бұрын

@@toddmcgowan8233 Thanks for the answer! I don't know of the top of my head if you mention it but he also had a thick swabian dialect, which would be like speaking in your lectures in a thick southern twang. I can't believe anybody in Berlin would even understand him speaking, if there are still many problems of understanding him without hearing his dialect. I lived in swabia my whole life and still can't understand it. So don't worry about your pronounciation of german words, Hegel couldn't pronounce them too.