Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit
06.08.2023
Started reading this a few days ago, but am only getting around to properly starting my journal now that I have begun the main text, not just the Preface and Introduction. Hegel has a strongly German writing style which gives me a headache, and is overall not the clearest besides—a couple times already in the analysis pages Findley has noted an uncertainty as to what Hegel meant. There is certainly much silly idealism already present in the wrok, but much of value as well. I found particularly insightful Hegel's comments on the universality of the Here and the Now, and also his observations on the (lack of!) difference between the object as it intrinsically is
and the object as it is to other things
.
19.08.2023
Hegel's writing style is admittedly insufferable. Many times he seems to repeat the same thing in only more inscrutable ways. Neverthless, the book continues to become more interesting. I think there is much to consider from what he wrote on the necessity of independence to unity and vice versa. And of course the discussion of self-consciousness is where the work really becomes fascinating; I have just finished the section on "lordship and bondage". I do quite agree with his critique of the lord being unable to acheive independent self-consciousness without the recognition of another independent being, and this relates to my own thought that posession of power is in turn posession by power. However, I do at the same time disagree with his speculation that independent self-consciousness must then be achieved in bondage. Certainly, I found his thought that one must work on something beyond oneself, and not merely to consume it to be astute; however, is this not also possible in love? Is it not possible to create in the surrounding world, to create for the loved? To open oneself up to be changed and thus also created by the other? To at the same time, by acting for the other, to change and therefore create it? And in doing so to freely create for the We that contains the I and the You? To create this We by creating the I and the You? (Here are thoughts that have been floating around in my head ever since I wrote Ty to czytasz...)
21.08.2023
The writing style continues to be insufferable. Of course Hegel is far much more of a metaphysicist and an idealist than I am (which is to say: I am not at all), but this continues to provide provoking thought. I do think that there is a certain beauty in choosing actively to embrace oneness with the world. I also must say that this quote of Hegel's:
In that way, consciousness has, for its mediating middle between the universal spirit and its singularity, or sensuous consciousness, the system of the shapes of consciousness as a life of spirit ordering itself into a whole—the system which is here under examination and which has its objective existence as world history.
reminds me somewhat of ideas such as Sagan's: The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
One wonders what Hegel would have wrote on organisms had the understanding of evolution arisen earlier. I am also brought, by Hegel's discussions on what discussions of organic nature, to recall what I read of Heidegger and disinhibitors in Agamben's The Open. Meanwhile, I would like to further think about this quote:
As it has been determined, true universality is here only inner essence; as determinateness of the species, it is formal universality, and, in contrast to the latter, true universality takes its stand on the side of singularity, which as a result is a living singularity, which through its innerness defies its determinateness as species.
from the posthumanist perspective.
However, the spherical surface, the world of the individual, immediately bears the double meaning of the world existing in and for itself and the situation, and that of the world of the individual. This would be so either insofar as this individual were to have only merged with the world, or insofar as the individual would have let that world in the way that it is, enter into it, and would have conducted itself towards it only as a formal consciousness – or else, it would be the world of the individual in the sense in which what is present and available has been inverted by that individual.
is a quote which I very much wish I had read before. This interplay, especially when expressed with phrases such as let that world in the way that it is, enter into it
, very much reminds me of my own conception of love.
26.08.2023
I return to journalling Hegel after a period of self-pity. His section on phrenology was admittedly more funny than I expected; I did have to laugh at his retorts to phrenological "science".
I do quite enjoy Hegel's focus on individual expression; it's something that very much related to my own philosophical and aesthetic interests. What he wrote about work/action being the individual is fascinating and touches on some thoughts I have had about art. I would like to say that I view my work as very individual, but what he has said about the allowing others to see one's work as being the extension of a desire to make it universal has indeed caused my to reflect. I have to consider in connection with my thoughts about recognizing values as absurd, but choosing to take them as absolute, transcendant even, as a means of self-expression and self-creation.
02.09.2023
I once again battle with and conquer self-pity. Still, I have read now a fair amount of Hegel in the past few days. Having read his commentary on morality and its relation with individual will, I can see his influence on the young Hegelians, here Stirner particularly. I will have to read The Ego and Its Own after this.
I also must admit that Hegel's writing on art has provoked me more than I expected. I did not expect myself to be so interested in "aesthetics" as an area of philosophy, but I find myself being drawn in—yes, perhaps for quite egoist reasons, as I enjoy the perspective it provides on my own relation to the art I create. His takes on language are bonkers but quite fun and thought-provoking.
03.09.2023
Hegel is such a "picture-thinking" hater, which is of course a large part of my disagreement with him (for his idealism and also for the fact I am much more of a picture-thinking than a word-thinker). Of course there is something very much to the fact that picture-thought is not particularly abstract and this is something which makes my communication with others more difficult; words often simply do not come to me, particularly in speech. And in situations where one would typically speak, I do not even think to.
... Though now he has admitted to the necessity of pucture-thinking anyways.
Having finished, I'm now certainly curious as to Hegel's conception of science. A strange, fascinating work overall. I resonated quite a lot with Hegel's appreciation of action, and his conception of history is thought-provoking (a shame that his political persuasions were as they were) and I did find the conclusion of the work, focusing on a knowledge which allows a certain rebirth, to be touching. Hegel is far more of a metaphysicist than I (I do not care for metaphysics at all) but there is a certain beauty in his outlook.