Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice why she is wrong to prefer birthdays, which come once a year to un-birthdays which seem to come 364 times:

«And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!»

«I don't know what you mean by “glory,”» Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. «Of course you don't— till I tell you. I meant “there's a nice knock-down argument for you!”»

«But “glory” doesn't mean “a nice knock-down argument,”» Alice objected.

«When I use a word,» Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, «it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.»

«The question is,» said Alice, «whether you can make words mean so many different things.»

«The question is,» said Humpty Dumpty, «which is to be master— that's all.»

Had Alice been properly armed with a knowledge of the dialectic of sense-certainty, perhaps she could have shown Mr. Dumpty how very unmasterful meaning to say things can be. She may also have explained how very little he knows about this supposed 'I' in which he contemptuously reclines. Oh, Humpty Dumpty isn't the master of much! But then I suppose that is why, Alice's lack of Hegel competence notwithstanding, he falls from the wall as even little children know.

On Paragraph 74: fear of error = division between self and cognition = division between cognition and absolute = impossibility of cognizing absolute = impossibility of truth = fear of truth or lazyness that gives up on seeking truth.

I am struck by a parallel between Hegel's argument here and Plato's Meno. Meno argues that if we claim ignorance, we don't know what we are looking for and thus we can't set out in search of it (80d). How will you know you have found it if you don't already know what it is? Socrates responds by talking about the possibility of an immortal soul. If the soul is immortal, then learning may be recollecting knowledge we already have but have forgotten. Socrates notes that whatever the problems with recollection might be, it makes us ready to search, it makes us better and braver while Meno's objection makes us lazy (86b-c).

"The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in the antitheses of values. It never occured even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where, doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, "de omnibus dubitandum." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular variations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below-"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.


The "belief in the antitheses of values" juxtaposed with "de omnibus dubitandum" makes me wonder whether or not Nietzsche is reading Hegel right. Hegel isn't saying that all facts should be doubted at all; however, from context clues it seems that Nietzsche is referring to Hegel's dialectical method.

Class 09/31

I was impressed with the general preparedness of the group.

I think the core question today really was "What is consciousness?" Consciousness, the first phenomenal appearance of knowing, seems to have at least a double nature. It is an object known and a knowing. It is a "distinguishing" and a "relating".  Somehow, this double nature proves productive and allows consciousness to go "beyond itself." When it does, we call this process "experience."

The most immediate contrast seems to be between Hegel's account of learning or experience and one wherein some new object is not produced BY consciousness but is instead given TO consciousness. Throughout his writings Hegel emphasizes the need reason has for immanent causes not external causes (in part because an external cause simply begs another question).

At the moment, I am imagining that immanent, dialectical progress is like those illusions that you stare at which become something else just by staring. They become something they already are and the nature of your apprehension changes with the object. Nothing is added, and yet all the relations flip or switch and there is a "new" object/relation to object (always both together!). 

What does "Science" refer to in Hegel's writing?

"Science" comes up frequently in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit (or PhS). It translates "Wissenschaft" and is not an incorrect translation. Still, it can be misleading. What Hegel means by "Wissenschaft" is more like what we call metaphysics than what we call natural science.

The PhS is a ladder to Wissenschaft (cf. 77) and the Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic) is the book that the PhS is building up toward. The Science of Logic is neither about what we call science nor about what we call logic. It is pretty much a book of metaphysical inquiry [where Hegel takes the basic categories we use to think about the ultimate causes of things (Being, Essence, Idea) as a path to apprehending the nature of "ultimate reality" or truth.]

As you can glean from the Introduction to the PhS, Science is not phenomenal knowing. That is, it does not have to do with the appearances of things to the senses in space and time. Science has to do with the ultimate and abiding conceptual nature of things, what in studying Plato we call "Eide" or Forms.

That said, the PhS will deal precisely with this phenomenal knowing (to the senses, in space and time) NOT Wissenschaft. The PhS shows how phenomenal knowing leads us to the deeper truth of Wissenschaft by the unstable structure of appearance itself.

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Welcome to your Hegel Seminar class blog. Raise questions, test ideas and vent frustrations about the reading here. 

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