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Hegel Today

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31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Hegel Today

#31
post #22

Seeing people getting excited about hegel is like seeing a kid learning physics and getting excited about newton's laws. Surely, it's a step forward to one's individual knowledge, it is a stepping stone, but the human intelect has gone beyond that and there are bigger problems to be solved. So, when adressing an individual, props for discovering a great philosopher. When adressig a community of people/philosophers go…

Who or what superseded Hegel then?

Nietzsche?

Re: Hegel Today

#32

For those new to Hegel, The Accessible Hegel by philosopher Michael Allen Fox is a great nutshell introduction book. As a software engineer, I was surprised to see how some of Hegel's ideas describe dynamics I've observed in my career. His dialectical process resembles how software systems evolve over time, and his "Spirit" reminds me of the ferment of ideas and collaboration on the Internet. The beauty of Hegel's ri…

Reminds me of the Foucault quote "Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly…

Of all people, I wouldn't quote Foucault to make sense out of anything.

Re: Hegel Today

#33

Ah yes, the man who believed that the human struggle was a deterministic process of synthesis crashing into antithesis over and over again, with each new generation overturning the prior and then regressing back a bit, building from small tribes to modern civilization. A process of continual improvement that, according to Hegel, can be logically derived from first principles so that the arc of civilization just happe…

I’m not even sure where to start with this because it’s such a vulgar misreading of Hegel… Hegel generally rejected the “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” triad (which mostly comes from Fichte.) Dialectics, and his overall system of immanent critique, have considerably more subtlety and complexity than the determinism and teleology that you suggest. An even cursory reading of any of Hegel’s major works reveals how entirely misplaced most of your post is. I agree that a lot of Hegel’s political philosophy is marked by naivete, but this doesn’t mean his system can be rejected wholesale. That we should avoid this wholesale rejection in the face of apparent contradictions is actually one of Hegel’s basic points!

Re: Hegel Today

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the Foucault quote "Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly…

Of all people, I wouldn't quote Foucault to make sense out of anything .

Foucault has acquired a bad reputation in some circles as a nonsense-peddler but in my opinion it's not really deserved. Anyone interested in getting a sense of his thought should check out the transcripts of the lectures he gave at the College De France [1]. You can find a pdf of the anthology "Society Must be Defended" [2] online and this is not a bad place to start. Whether you agree or disagree with the content, you should find the lectures fairly lucid and not expressing the kind of internally inconsistent anti-reality skepticism and relativism you may expect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_lectures_at_the_C...

[2] http://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/2288168/a517f61536...

Re: Hegel Today

#35

Ah yes, the man who believed that the human struggle was a deterministic process of synthesis crashing into antithesis over and over again, with each new generation overturning the prior and then regressing back a bit, building from small tribes to modern civilization. A process of continual improvement that, according to Hegel, can be logically derived from first principles so that the arc of civilization just happe…

I’m not even sure where to start with this because it’s such a vulgar misreading of Hegel… Hegel generally rejected the “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” triad (which mostly comes from Fichte.) Dialectics, and his overall system of immanent critique, have considerably more subtlety and complexity than the determinism and teleology that you suggest. An even cursory reading of any of Hegel’s major works reveals how entir…

"vulgar" is a much classier insult than I'm used to here

Re: Hegel Today

#37
post #22

Seeing people getting excited about hegel is like seeing a kid learning physics and getting excited about newton's laws. Surely, it's a step forward to one's individual knowledge, it is a stepping stone, but the human intelect has gone beyond that and there are bigger problems to be solved. So, when adressing an individual, props for discovering a great philosopher. When adressig a community of people/philosophers go…

Wonderfully useful insight, thanks, now I know exactly what I must do. I'll study the most recently launched programming language, operating system and shell. I'm sure they're better and far more useful than C, linux or bash, just look how old those things are!

Re: Hegel Today

#38
post #37
post #22

Seeing people getting excited about hegel is like seeing a kid learning physics and getting excited about newton's laws. Surely, it's a step forward to one's individual knowledge, it is a stepping stone, but the human intelect has gone beyond that and there are bigger problems to be solved. So, when adressing an individual, props for discovering a great philosopher. When adressig a community of people/philosophers go…

Wonderfully useful insight, thanks, now I know exactly what I must do. I'll study the most recently launched programming language, operating system and shell. I'm sure they're better and far more useful than C, linux or bash, just look how old those things are!

You completely missed my point. I m am not even sure you read my comment, especially the last paragraph. I make an analogy of hegel as being one of the basic building blocks of philosophical knowledge.

Also, I do not subscribe to the latest philosophical trends as these are mostly rehashes/reskins of old ones. Similar to many modern programming languages

Re: Hegel Today

#39
post #22

Seeing people getting excited about hegel is like seeing a kid learning physics and getting excited about newton's laws. Surely, it's a step forward to one's individual knowledge, it is a stepping stone, but the human intelect has gone beyond that and there are bigger problems to be solved. So, when adressing an individual, props for discovering a great philosopher. When adressig a community of people/philosophers go…

Who or what superseded Hegel then?

Dialectic materialism by engels and marx. If you take their communist ideas out of the equation (because we may not agree on that), on their philosophical system, they took all the great dialectics of hegel, advanced it further and replaced hegel's idealism with materialism (very, very roughly speaking).

Re: Hegel Today

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the Foucault quote "Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly…

Of all people, I wouldn't quote Foucault to make sense out of anything .

Why?
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