Editor's Note: 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 15/11/2014. I have been reading Charles Taylor’s book “Hegel” and his discussion on the Phenomenology of Spirit on “Spirit”. What follows are notes on my reading, and my reaction to Hegel’s ideas...
Editor's Note: 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 Certainty and...
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.
Editor's Note: 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 civilizations that...
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...
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 archetypes and...
Having already written about Hegel's master/slave dialectic, I read and describe Charles Taylor's interpretation of this section. I attend to what Taylor says about the mechanisms underlying this dialectic; why self-consciousness is motivated to challenge another.
When I first read Hegel on "the unhappy consciousness", I struggled to make sense of it; a strange conversation gave it new meaning. The epiphany came about as we started talking about why dogs are so happy; why a dog's life can be said to be perfect, and enviable too! And not just any dogs - domesticated dogs. What we seem to want is an external standard and confirmation of our purpose...
Reading Hegel about a form of consciousness he calls "unhappy", because not only does it define itself as a dichotomy, but it divides and separates the aspect of itself that it feels to be unchangeable and essential. This leaves a self that sees itself as a changing transience, and that strives to relate to the truth, i.e. to the unchanging aspect of itself which was divested, and Hegel sees this...