Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 29/10/2014 This is an element in the chapter “Reason”, which I have already explored as a whole, but within which I am now focusing on a single concept to be found in C.AA. “Reason” V. “The...
The significance of Reason was not immediately apparent for me. At first it seemed no different, except by semantic quibbles, from thought. In retrospect this occurred because when I scrutinized what would be a mind that self-defined as Reason, what I was actually considering was a rational mind. And a rational mind could be just a thinking mind whose thoughts all conformed to some (logical) set...
A summary of Phenomenology of Spirit (by Hegel) on Reason. This chapter describes the ongoing evolution of a consciousness that knows that it itself and its experiences are both explicable by, and manifestations of, reason. This has existential and practical implications, and leads consciousness to prove its assumptions: testing science, desire and ethics, and its relation to society.
This is an index for all my posts on Hegel. The order of publication is indicated by the numbering and otherwise this order basically follows the Phenomenology of Spirit. Contextualizing Hegel’s Philosophy [4] Reading Hegel on “Sense Certainty” [1] Taylor Reading Hegel on “Sense Certainty” [5] Reading Hegel on “Desire” [2] Reading Hegel on “Lord and...
Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 14/10/2014 I seek to redefine the meaning of words and objects, to enrich them with knowledge of the cosmos they contain. To see the world in a grain of sand – which are its continents and the animals and...
Health: The weighty costs of non-caloric sweeteners A new study shows that metabolic changes induced by non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) (e.g. elevated fasting glucose) are induced by (and can be directly induced by) changes to gut bacteria. Include human demonstration. Further hypotheses: (1) Increase in bacteria that break down dietary components, esp. energy extraction including fats...
In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, consciousness evolves into “Reason” – a mode of thought that considers everything that is, including itself, to be determined by rationality. This concerns the introductory material of C.AA.V “The certainty and truth of reason”, §231-243. The unchanging certainty of reason Before this point, the ascent of consciousness had...
Loc.2716 “Observation of Nature” C* starts seeking universals (and itself) in things, but this proves an endless task, so it limits itself to finding the essential properties of things. But these ‘characteristics’ also prove changing, and hence it must regard them as ‘vanishing moments’. Thence it seeks the law which underlies these universal yet changing characteristics. It does this by...
Sitting with Lucretius in the garden There are moments when the jungle before me implodes under the weight of its own complexity. Every stone is a mountain writ small, and the invisible air conceals a maelstrom of atoms and vacuums. The appearance of stability dissolves: reality rearranges itself into a catalogue of magnitudes. The substance of “being” comprises yardsticks and...
Nb. this is on the bit starting C.AA.V(231), but before it begins C.AA.V.A (nb. noted below) [231] “But in this object, in which it finds that its own action and being, as being that of this particular consciousness, are being and action in themselves, there has arisen for consciousness the idea of Reason, of the certainty that, in its particular individuality, it has being absolutely in...
