Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (2000)

But what could we expect from this "super-logic" that claims absolute knowledge, when the author himself was a puppet and supporter of the Prussian state (to the point he claimed it to be the perfect model), a mysticist and religious pamphlet.

This is a man who wrote in the time after Newton, Lippershey, Pascal and many more, yet had no adherence to science.

> I'd urge you to actually read Hegel or study the history of philosophy before making a statement that in physics would be something like the equivalent of saying Einstein's work was worthless. That could of course be the case, but I imagine you can see why many people would need a great deal of convincing argument to begin to side with you.

That's apples and oranges. Einstein's work is clear, falsifiable and he doesn't rely on sophistry. Hegel's work is basically a set of claims about nearly everything he doesn't know a thing about. Notice we don't have anything like "Einsteinism" in physics, but you have a whole collection: Hegelianism, Marxism, Leninism.

Let's quote some of Hegel's nonsense:

> Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging towards its opposite ... Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence.

> Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist; it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated. What Spirit is must in that way have become its own, it must have described this circle; then these forms, differences, determinations finite qualities, must have existed in order that it should make them its own. This represents both the way and the goal—that Spirit should have attained to its own notion or conception, to that which it implicitly is, and in this way only, the way which has been indicated in its abstract moments, does it attain it. Revealed religion is manifested religion, because in it God has become wholly manifest. Here all is proportionate to the notion; there is no longer anything secret in God.

> I read a dogmatic adherence to the scientific in your post--"Marxism is unscientific" (read the hidden value judgement: therefore marxism is BAD)--that's equatable to the sort of blind religious adherence that the faithful used to have when religions were the dominant paradigm.

Marxism is bad. Like Hegel, Marx wrote without any substance, and his work has been refuted long ago. Its legacy is undeniably bad. Nobody sane discusses Marxism itself, other than it's historical place. To me, Marx and Hegel are prophets and enemies of reason.

The reason I bother to engage in this discussion is that Hegel was worshipped too long where I come from (the socialist block). I developed a distaste for that nonsense.

You're right that Hegel's work, especially considered in relation to developments in science and the amount of knowledge we have today, does seem almost more like an absurdist tract than a piece of interesting philosophy--you picked out excellent quote to illustrate this--'spirit' is a word that's more or less meaningless in the modern epoch.

However, it's important to consider the prevalent episteme or intellectual/epistemic milieu Hegel was working with--you cite Pascal, who did indeed make incredible strides in mathematics--but he also believed he'd had a direct experience of God, and went so far as to record a reminder of his religious experience and literally sew it into his coat--to us Hegel's terminology is dusty and makes little sense, and, you're correct, from a scientific point seems like a hell of a lot of substanceless hot air--but at the time he was utilizing a language many would have still comprehended--point is, it affected persons and how they perceive the world.

This is why philological study is incredibly important, and it's a shame so many, at least in the US are unfamiliar with the field--language is a living, evolving system, and our notions of what words mean, how to use them, and what concepts they capture is fundamentally, if not radically different than it was for our ancestors in the 1700-1800s. Philological readings help inform us of the historical importance of theories that otherwise fall out of our understanding as history progresses. For instance, the ancient greeks also had several notions of 'spirit' which are handled differently today--some retain the word in translation, others, realizing the word is more or less dead translate it instead as something like 'mind' or an equivalent psychological term--but this brings translation fundamentally into question, for the concept the greeks indicated by the term 'psyche' and the concept indicated by our term 'mind', with all the strides we've made in psychology, are radically different--our term brings a whole wealth of psychological propositions and concepts with it that the greeks did not have--so it keeps ancient works alive for modern readers, but we do have to wonder whether its not somewhat intellectually dishonest or leads some down paths of uncritical acceptance or faulty pictures of ancient thought--it's a fascinating problem.

As Wittgenstein said "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world". (He remains, by the way, the greatest philosopher, at least in my view)

I think you want a sort of scientific defense for Hegel's value--I can't offer that because there isn't one that I can conceive of. If you haven't read the work of Karl Popper I highly recommend it--he sketched out precisely why theories such as Hegelianism and Marxism cannot be considered scientific. Additionally I think you ought to check out the work of Thomas Kuhn, which shows that science isn't as rock-solid or immune to the accidents of historical change as you might think. Perhaps if you're feeling really radical and want to challenge your views about science check out Feyerabend's Against Method and Datson and Gallison's Objectivity (D+G's book was instrumental in changing my own views on science, they show, by examining scientific history and the gradual changes that the concept of 'objectivity' has undergone through the years that science, like culture, and like all human pursuit really, is messy).

As to the problem of Hegel's support of the Prussian state--you could levy this critique against many practicing scientists, thinkers, and human beings in general. We all have values and systems of belief. We all find it difficult to separate those values and beliefs form our work, even when we try our damnedest to do so. The unconscious is an unruly little beast. You really think researchers funded by big Pharma are scientifically pure and aren't lead to pursue particular results because of external factors such as the fact that is big Pharma continues to thrive, so do they? Make no mistake, all intellectual pursuits are tainted by politics and value judgements. There is no such thing as Thomas Nagel's 'view from nowhere'--you cannot escape your subjectivity. If you could you'd have no reason to pursue anything. Even the purest scientist must be stimulated by an interest or passion to investigate the world, which will necessarily factor into his perceptions. That's why the perfect scientist is in fact an unfeeling instrument--but of course the instrument is far less flexible than the human being--and the human being still needs to interpret the data--and even if we can devise machines that interpret, we can only devise them such that they follow the model of human interpretation, and thus, are still flawed.

This is why Nietzsche pinpointed valuation/value judgement as the root of nearly all of man's problems. Of course the ubermensch who can launch a radical "revaluation of all values" and disabuse us of our constant need to create and abide by valuations has yet to come--and more than likely never will. Nietzsche himself, gouger of values that he was, had plenty of them.

Nietzsche is fascinating case of someone who held science on a veritable pedestal but whose work is far from scientific, yet incredibly meaningful and effective.

So again, all I can offer to you is a historical defense of Hegel's work. This probably seems dissatisfying, as in theory then anyone could have pulled off the same--and the work loses any value beyond one of historical interest, e.g. it's no longer applicable--but that is a perennial problem--the old wrinkle as to whether the person behind discoveries or theories really matters, i.e. the idea that, had Einstein not reached his conclusions about physics, would someone else eventually have (or for an actual historical example, how Newton and Leibniz developed concepts and notations for calculus near simultaneously--Leibniz actually is another fine example, like Pascal, of a polymath who contributed enormously to mathematics and logic but had weird metaphysical notions that no longer resonate with modern audiences).

All philosophy that puts forward a theoretical position, and thus is positive in content, will inevitably support some 'model for the world' some 'picture' or some 'state' which results in a particular power structure (since so much is bound up in the 'will to power') retaining dominance.

That's why only the philosophers who have primarily dissembled and worked in negative terms avoid this (Wittgenstein, Foucault, Nietzsche). For example, Foucault does not offer us some structuralist theory of history--he rather applies a structuralist method to historical contents to point out where "the apparently necessary is actually contingent" (the inverse of the Kantian project to discover the necessary among the contingent https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/ [sec. 3]). Just as Nietzsche's whole program was to point out the sinister nature of values, just as Wittgenstein's was to point of the sinister nature of theories or world-pictures. But even Nietzsche was not free from this. Some of his more positive statements and commitments (e.g. the will to power) have been used for nefarious purposes-- thus the nazis latched on to his ideas as justification for their political programs. But what Nietzsche was doing most frequently in practice and what the nazis eventually did with a subset of his ideas are two very different things.

Of course, one could derive some theoretical picture, and thus some vision of the world in which a particular structure (and thus power dynamic) holds by analyzing these thinkers too--e.g. Wittgenstein never offers a direct theory of language, but that has not stopped several people from developing theoretical models of language based on his work and what his 'therapeutic' (negative/disassembling) method revealed.

Whether or not philosophy is used to justify a power structure comes down to the theorist and how she employs theory--the same with science, which can also be utilized and deployed for political aims (e.g. see the ambiguity of data interpretation being used to produce arguments in favor of political action to stop climate change and in favor of nonintervention). It is not a problem inherent in philosophy itself, but it is a latent possible application or deployment of philosophical thought and method.