r/hegel

Does Hegelian dialectic describe the movement of thought, reality, or their identity? If contradiction is constitutive rather than accidental, does determinate negation reveal reality’s structure—or the conditions under which reality becomes intelligible?
I’m interested in whether Hegel ultimately dissolves the distinction between ontology and logic.

I've read a bit of Hegel's Idealism and Hegel on Self-Consciousness by him in uni. But at the time, I was put off by his writing/argument.

Is he really worth putting in the effort? I had the urge to pick him up again recently, considering I didn't give his work a proper chance a few years ago.

Miller, Phenomenology, §149

There's a level of the flux of appearance where the simple inner world or the simple understanding of consciousness produces simple universals. Simple negation, simple universals, simple determinations.

There is a deeper level of the flux of appearance that is "absolutely universal difference," where you can't break things down any further. This is the negation of negation, when negation itself is a moment of the flux of appearance.

"This difference," not the difference in the first place where consciousness unknowingly simplifies the flux of appearance, is the universal difference that posits into the inner world.

What consciousness posits is its truth, selfsameness or self-preservation.

And this truth is from an image of stability it's most familiar with—the law.

Hey y’all. I’m on page 3 of the preface to Phenom. Of Spirit, A.V. Miller translation, and Hegel writes,

“The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where I can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing—that is what I have set myself to do.”

Firstly, Hegel is a beautiful writer. Secondly, what is meant here by Science? What’s up with the capital letters? Thirdly, how is love of knowing/actual knowing different to what he writes earlier on page two about the bud disappearing in the “bursting-forth” of the blossom?

Thanks.

Is there anything I should be aware of before I start reading it? I bought the A.V. Miller translation.

Can anyone give us a good explanation on what is true infinity?

I’m interested in whether Hegel’s dialectic should be understood as describing how reality itself develops, rather than merely how thought progresses. If contradiction is genuinely constitutive of development, how should we understand the relationship between logical contradiction, historical development, and the Absolute?

Ciao a tutti,

Herein I would like to present the continuity and differences of deployment of dialectics between J.G. Fichte, F.W.J. Schelling and G.W.F. Hegel in regards to their respective conceptions of the Absolute. I would like to start with thematizing their respective systems by first providing philosophical problems against each one reacts and, since problems are the backbone of answers, I would attempt to clarify how each one's deployment of dialectics is conditioned by them(and so is what it is). Given grandiosity of each figure, the only way to do justice for all is to a have book-length discussion of the evolution of the dialectics of the Absolute between them. Alas, since it is just a reddit post by a non-academic all I can provide is instead violance with a little smudge of fairness. I will attempt to make it concise, hopefully informative, (even more-) hopefully simple, light-hearted and maybe not-so-light on the head, general outline of each one's approach to the Absolute. So people would know that Hegel is not a literal panlogist, that Schelling is not a Spinozist,or,God forbid, any kind of a dualist, or that Fichte does not actually think that oxygen exists for the sole reason of me communicating with you.

Disclaimer: this is simply exhibition of my own, probably awful, understanding of the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel as individual thinkers and the moments of the whole known as German Idealism

Fichte and his F(Act)s:

As it is with every problem of philosophy since late 18th century, the usual suspect or at least accomplice is Immanuel Kant. The uproar of critical philosophy swept everyone, leaving no bystander neutral to the phenomenon of transcendental idealism in its wake. For the sake of ommiting digressions, I will presuppose one is acquinted generally with the Great Kant's philosophy in general terms and proceed to the drama that Critique of Pure Reason evoked.

The key features critics bombarded were bifurcation of appearance/thing-in-itself and the introduction of rhapsody of separate faculties (sensibility, understanding, reason) without grounding it in exact unified principle. The major antagonist of this arc is F.H. Jacobi who maintains that nihilism is the result of kantian thinking. Jacobi’s argument is that a complete system of reason that purports to explain the world, of the kind present in the notion of determination by negation in the Ethics, has a fatal lack. As Jacobi puts it, "Reason is a mechanism ‘. . . all philosophical cognition, as it is effected in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, i.e. by mediation can therefore ‘necessarily always only be a mediated cognition’. If rational comprehension consists in nothing other than the logical ‘mediation’ of ground and consequence in the ‘dissection, linking, judging, concluding and grasping again’ then it obviously always only moves in a connection which it has constructed itself".

The world, or any fact in general, is explained by finding its condition (Bedingung). Condition in virtue of which fact is as it is is the ground for explanation in general, but ‘to the extent to which something can only be considered to be grasped whose condition is discovered, it is itself conditioned’. The problem is that the conditions in a system of reason are those posited by thought itself, and are thus conditioned by thought. Thus Jacobi concludes that as we posit conditions as basis of explanation, we are always within the chain of conditions. In this way there is no way of arriving at what is not conditioned, the Absolute, the ground of the real existence of what we try to understand within reason. The real ground simply cannot have further conditions of itself, which Jacobi terms Seyn, being. Being-as-such cannot be known(within reason), because it would then be on the basis of the condition: it is ‘that which cannot be explained: the indissoluble, immediate, the simple’. It cannot be finally understood in terms of reflection, of its relation to anything else.

Those aware of Saussurian linguistics, may find themselves familar with the exposition of sign's identity as negative (e.g. pen is not den is not a hen ad infinitum). One can observe the lack of positive terms, same as lack of positive conditions for Jacobi, that may give the actual word an iterable meaning. By themselves, words or things cannot even be determinate as different based on this negative interplay of conditions, they require that for which they are different - that remains identical - that, as positive, may impart on them designation as different. To summarize: nothing within the chain of difference tells us how it is that we can be aware of the chain of difference. This awareness must be of a different order from the chain of difference because it entails a prior identity that is the condition of difference. As one may put it, there would be no possibility of a not-I becoming aware of itself unless it already had within it what could result in the I, which means in these terms that it must already in some way be an I. The journey for such marker beyond chain of difference is the search for the Absolute.

The fact is that while Kant espouses multiplicity of faculties, they do have grounding in the desubstantialized principle of unity of aperpception of I, which roughly states that any representation is always accompanied by the implicit 'I think'. K.L. Reinhold sought to elevate this in his Elementarphilosophie by establishing a single, foundational fact of consciousness (Tatsache des Bewusstseins), that may go along the lines of "In consciousness, the representation is separated from both the subject and the object by the subject, and is related to both." . Now, G.E. Schulze was anything but satisfied with this response. In Aenesidemus the skeptic asks that if consciousness requires a subject to separate itself from an object via a representation, then how does the subject become aware of itself without spiraling into infinite regress? Fichte, who was actually assigned to review that work, had to concede that objection is on point. So what did he propose? Well nothing feels as faimilar in philosophy as radicalization of the prior conceptions. The solution was what he called the Deed-Act(Tathandlung) that unites being and doing: the I,insofar as it exists, posits itself; the I,insofar as it posits itself,exists, absolutely reciprocally. The existence of the I is its contemplative activity, the verb and noun are unified in one identity. Fichte argued that we have immediate, non-sensory awareness of our own activity. When you think "I," you are simultaneously performing an action and being aware of that action. The method he arrived at was basically analysis of identity A=A. A=A by itself does not tell whether A exists, it is strictly conditional(if it exists, it exists as itself). Since the proposition A = A is absolutely certain, something within it must be unconditional. That unconditional element is the connection between the two sides, the "if... then..." itself. The connection itself for Fichte does not come from A but from judgement on A by mind. In other words, for A = A to be a valid thought, there must be a unified, continuous consciousness that poses the first A, retains it, and compares it to the second A. Therefore, the proposition A = A is only possible because of a deeper, hidden proposition: "I am I" or "I = I.". This already establishes assymetry of A, which needs I to exists, and I, which "is at once the agent and the product of the action; the active, and that which is brought about by the activity.". As such, then, anything is only through the I, all of reality is but posited by I within I for I. One can already see how analytic/synthetic distinction here is subverted.

Fichte's Absolute, properly understood, is self-constituting actvitity. The unfolding of the Absolute involves tripartite scheme by making use of the fact that every knowledge has content and form. Since Fichte's is the science of knowledge/knowing, and the generally knowledge has its constitution in content+form as conditioned, he wishes to ground it in 3 principles: unconditioned in form and content, conditioned in content and unconditioned in form, conditioned in form and unconditioned in content. The first principle, the thesis, is aforementioned Deed-Act wherein content is form and vice versa. Fichte asks, "what is I without not-I?" and, concludes the second major principle of opposition between I and Not-I; it is unconditioned in form(for nothing in the form of I am I gives a hint at of form of opposition) and conditioned in content(Not-I has to presuppose prior I as a cornerstone of its identity). Now, Fichte says, if all reality is in I, and Not-I has to be for I to make sense, we have a certain antithesis on our hands where Not-I, as actual opposition, has to have a reality for I, yet, as radical Not-I, is outside I in which all reality is and so has no reality. The solution is as follows: Absolute I posits divisible I against divisible Not-I, which basically becomes a blueprint for his reconstruction of mind's opposition to the material world that also serves for the possibility of coming to the existence of self-conscioussness. Importantly, Fichte's Absolute is ethical. Because the Absolute I has fractured itself into finite human beings facing a resistant material world, our entire purpose is to overcome that resistance. Every time you make a moral choice, exercise your free will, or master a piece of the physical world, you are trying to reunite your finite self with the infinite freedom of the Absolute. Therefore, the Absolute is less of a "thing that is" and more of a moral goal that ought to be achieved through endless striving (Streben).

Interlude - Hölderlin and Novalis:

Hölderlin realised that Fichte’s notion of the Absolute I that is grounded in intellectual intuition is deficient. In a letter to Hegel he claims Fichte’s absolute I " contains all reality; it is everything, and outside of it there is nothing; there is therefore no object for this absolute I, for otherwise the whole of reality would not be in it; but a consciousness without an object is unthinkable, and if I am this object myself, then as such I am necessarily limited, even if it may only be in time, thus not absolute; thus there is no consciousness thinkable in the absolute I; as absolute I (Ich), I (ich) have no consciousness, and to the extent to which I have no consciousness I am (for myself) nothing, therefore the absolute I is (for me) nothing."

What it entails is that self-objectification of activity that is neccessary, for it is activity on activity, the latter being objectified, already is in a posession of a concept of an object that it can exploit. So either object limits this pure subject of I or if there is no object then entire construction is impossible. As such, knowledge depends upon the loss of the Absolute: ‘Synthesis namely only ever arises via the conflict (Widerstreit) of multiplicity against the original unity’. Th reunification in propositinality of subject-object implies the original structure, or whole, of which they were split into(subject and object). Identity cannot be this Absolute because it rests upon redoubling of an I: into I(as subject)=I(as object). So, essentially, all identity is re-identification, it is relative, not absolute identity. As Novalis succintly puts it, ‘The essence of identity can only be established in an apparent proposition (Scheinsatz). We leave the identical in order to represent it’. In attempt to establish something is the same as something else we have to split what is the same to show it is the same, as in the proposition A = A, where there are two different As. We therefore cannot represent it as the identical which we left. We cannot represent it as non-identical either, for non-identity=non-identity is already as-something. Crucially, what was left was not as-something, it was made into as-something to establish identity, but,as such, it is the original whole of identity/non-identity and therefore cannot be represented in terms of identity. Much like impossibility of establishing being in terms of propositionality of subject-object as Hölderlin remarked.

The question is, how do we approach it then? Why Absolute went out of its prior unity and realm of expreince came to be?Every answer to this question already presupposes the existence of a world of experience.

Schelling, the Odyssey of Reason:

Schelling's commitments are two-fold: he believes, formally, Spinoza's system is how philosophical system should be, but also, he wants it to be the system of freedom, not necessity, like Fichte's. Add to this his support of the remarks made by heroes of the interlude against Fichte.

Schelling's core project is in taking the propositionality - subject-object - to its absolute thinkable limit. He starts off with acknowledging knowledge as knower-known or subject-object, going out to explain knowledge from object's side - how purely objective becomes subjective in his philosophy of nature - and from subject's side - how purely subjective becomes objective in a progression of transcendtal idealism. Importantly, there is nothing throughout heaven or earth that is not subject-object for Schelling. The so-called subject-mind?Hah! Mere objectifying of subjective into I(as subject)=I(as object) wherein two activities of progressing into infinity and locating itself within infinity(object and subject) are mediated by a third. The Nature as mere-object, collection of object-things?You wish!Nature is now immanently self-finitizing infinity, also known as productivity, which is again a lock of two forces(subject-object) mediated by a third. Here he preempts Nietzsche for, ‘force in general’ is, as the Naturphilosophie showed, problematic, because it is impossible to suggest that all is force: ‘For we can only think of a force as something finite. But no force is finite in terms of its nature unless it is limited by an opposed force. Hence, when we think of a force (as we do in matter), we must also think of an opposed force’ . This meant it could not be claimed that the Absolute be understood as a force(or activity), which is a term that necessarily relies upon its other for it to be manifest at all, thereby rendering it invalid as a term for the totality.

Putting aside the dual-enveloping system, Schelling grounded them in the sameness that precedes subject-object e.g. they are the same before they are different. Schelling gives the cleanest analysis of predicativity here: "The true sense of every judgement, e.g. that A is B can only be this: that which is A is that which is B, or that which is A and that which is B is the same/one (einerlei). Thus even the simple concept is grounded in a duality: A in this judgement is not A, but something = x, which is A; thus B is not B, but something = x, which is B; and not this (not A and B for itself) but the x that is A and the x that is B is the same, namely the same x. In the proposition cited three positions are really contained, first A is= x, secondB is = x, and only out of this follows the third, A and B are one and the same, both namely x . . . the properly understood law of contradiction really only says that the same cannot beasthesame something and also the opposite thereof, but this does not prevent the same, which is A, being able, as an other, to be not A"

The absolute identity here is the same essence as subject and as object, but they differ in form. Making use of Novalis, Schelling designates this left-behind A as essence, and its form as A=A. A and A=A are the same using Novalis example. Importantly, for Schelling this difference makes more sense to be spelled as rather = and A=A. His interest is in copula, that,quite literally is just is and A=A is also just is. Its essence is being. Its not ontological proof wherein existence is included in essence, its essence is existence in precisely same terms as that which is essence is that which is existence... "we propose to more closely define this {relation of the universal and particular}. In the case of what is absolute, universal and the particular are simply one. Its concept (to absolutely be) is also its particularity. It is, of course, absolute in both respects; consequently, it is neither like any other thing (through some universal concept) nor unlike it (through its particularity). It is absolutely and essentially one, and simply self-identical."

Schelling,following Fichte, blurs analytic and synthetic together into a concotion of construction=demonstration. Schelling's aim is to show that demonstration, being mere movement within identity of something, is exhibited in construction and so is automatically valid method. His construction was essentially summarized as follows:

"What has recently been called synthetic method is surely a true image of this absolute method, but one pulled apart in reflection. This is because what reflection represents as a process with thesis, antithesis, and synthesis lying outside one another, is unitary and internally related in the true method and in every genuine construction of philosophy. The thesis or categorical element is unity, the antithesis or the hypothetical is multiplicity, but what is pictured as synthesis is not the third element, but the first, absolute unity, of which unity and plurality in their very opposition are merely different forms. In just this way philosophy’s every construction is a universe for itself and comprehends in itself—because its particular element can separate itself as form from essence and can intrinsically be doubled—both unity and multiplicity, without itself being one or many in this sense."

"...we must especially consider this: because of the complete relativity of this contrast (since neither a finite entity nor an infinite one is in itself, but only in relation) every particular being insofar as it accepts the entire absolute into itself is negated as a particular (finite or infinite) entity and merely reunites the finite and the infinite within itself."

"Therefore each of them, the finite and the infinite, insofar as it is really, i.e., absolutely posited, is the entire unity of the finite and the infinite, neither of them finite nor infinite viewed apart from its ideal determination, but absolute and eternal. —From this, it is self-evident that this unity of the finite and the infinite, which is in the absolute and is the essence of the absolute, is a real unity and also an identity of identity, as we have previously shown (Journal for Speculative Physics, vol. 2, no. 2).17 For considered in itself, the finite and the infinite contain, each of them, the same (formal) identity of the finite and the infinite. Therefore we had to understand the former, real unity before we understood the latter, formal one"

"For everything that is a unity composed of the universal and the particular is in the absolute form, and only the unity, as unity, is the form and is identical to essence. The universal and the particular subsist as opposites for precisely this reason: they are mere factors of form, and to the extent they are real, each is again for itself the unity of the universal and particular; they are also just ideally differentiable, and opposed to one another not in an essential (qualitative), but only in an inessential way. The idea, therefore, is always and necessarily absolute, since in it the universal and the particular are necessarily identified; then, too, it cannot cease to be absolute by, e.g., being related to an object, for as absolute form it includes absolute substance in itself and is itself the absolute object."

Using thesis-antithesis-synthesis formula of Fichte, he invites the diachronic use of dialectics that Hegel uses as well. Finite and infinite here stand in for object and subject. So, what Schelling essentially conveys is that to analyze subject, or object, is to already consider it as not mere subject but as already subject-object, as relational and mediated. This means, so to say, pure subject or pure object are expressed as SUBJECT-object and OBJECT-subject - whatever has the emphasize in the dyad, gets the title upfront. Schelling's construction here means that, by means of intellectual intuition, we ascend to the 'form of a form' from which we can validate the latter. "This unity causes each of them to form an image of the totality and with this to mirror the other within itself. Thus it happens in the same way and for the same reason that everything is one and yet each item is separated. . ." - everything shares the same essence - the formula of identity - but it expresses it differently, thus difference here is in form; by going from concrete real forms to formal forms of forms we can validate them.

Schelling makes the case then, that knower-known, subject-object or the affirmer-affirmed exist first as one identity. Using the last pair, Schelling explains that affirmed is already affirmer because it affirms something(affirmer) as affirming itself, and the affirmer is affirmed for she is always affirmed as affirmer by the affirmed. Their identity is always presupposed. Schelling explains co-existence of totality and partiularity this way:

"As the eye, when it sees itself in the reflection, e.g. in the mirror, posits itself, intuits itself, only to the extent that it posits what reflects – the mirror – as nothing for itself, and as it is, so to speak, One act of the eye, by which it posits itself, sees itself, and does not see what reflects, does not posit it; in this way does the totality (All) posit or intuit itself, by not-positing, not-intuiting the particular; both are One act in the totality."

"...for being, actual, real (wirkliche) being is precisely self-disclosure/ revelation (Selbstoffenbarung). If it is to be as One then it must disclose/reveal itself in itself; but it does not disclose/reveal itself if it is just itself, if it is not an other in itself, and is in this other the One for itself, thus if it is not absolutely the living link [Band, in the sense of copula] of itself and an other."

So to say, the Absolute sees the affirmed-affirmer(the 'Real', affirmed as natura naturata/collection of objects and also affirmer as natura naturans/the creative power) and affirmer-affirmed(the Ideal) as the other, as a particularity opposed to totality, just to realize that those are for it, to realize that it itself is the copula/totality of totality and particularity, unity of unity and multiplicity. One can already see here that Schelling and Hegel do share a likewise vision of an Absolute.

The issue for Schelling arises when we realize that while he succeeds in explaining transitioning, he does not quite explain why it happens. This is the cornerstone of Schelling and Hegel's disagreement: for Hegel every knowledge is mediated, even immediacy is mediated through sublation of mediation; for Schelling, all knowledge is mediated bar knowledge of the Absolute(nothing within chain of difference can make us aware of it as chain of difference) .

Therefore, Schelling struggles to explain the fact of transition, which led him on to theorize on Absolute's freedom and contigency to take on and become articulable in the first place by means of lockdown of contradiction-unity of potencies. Shortly, the potencies are stand-ins for types of modalities(potential potency,pure actuality and act in potency/potential in act), causes(material,efficient,final) and articulability(pronominality,predicativity,propositionality)The first potency(in Ages of the World, also known as Ground from Freedom Essay) is a potential potency, pure non-being in a sense that it is a non-willing will, it wills only itself, pure contraction - pronominal, quodditative being. Pronominal being is required for determinacy, for things to have a specific ‘quoddity’, but if it were an absolute and exclusive force this would mean we were stuck with the One that has everything swallowed up inside itself. Even at the level of the emergence of a nature, there must be more than this. There must be predicative being which flows out, spreads out, gives itself(also known as Existence from Freedom Essay). When pronominal being becomes negative it does not cease to be, and the same applies to predicative being: if they did cease to be, the process would stop. The negative belongs to the positive: although pronominal being is unknowable, knowable kinds of being cannot be without it: ‘For it [pronominal being] is not non-being(nicht nicht Seyendes) because it completely lacks light and essence, but rather because of active closing off of essence, thus because of effective power’.

The dialectical implication here(the first potency must contract something to be contractive, the second must expand against something to be expansive) is a contradiction, and, as any contradiction, it needs a resolution to even be a contradiction. The resolution is a third potency which mediation that unifies them - the propositional being that puts 'that' and 'what' together. Using Hogrebe's metaphor of film projector: "The projector could either remain stuck with one unmoving image (pronominal being), or could run the film at the speed of light so that nothing is seen but a flash (predicative being), or could establish a dynamic which allows the intelligible unfolding of the differing dimensions. It does so by moving the static image via the force that would produce the flash, which is itself thereby prevented from dissipating itself in one go (propositional being). At this level the theory is reflexive: the moments become the ‘other of themselves’".This doesn't work. Schelling says, for unity to be as unity it again must possess heteregenous elements it unites despite themselves, were they to be abolished, unity collapses into one and nothing ensues. So it is a closed circle where contradiction is insofar as untity is and vice versa. Here Schelling crowns freedom: it is the free act of act to unite in freedom the freedom and necessity(potencies) of himself, wherein, then, third potency as the highest becomes the prototype of the 'sameness' and first and second potencies sediment as real and ideal blueprints of the world that are reflective of the third.

As such, therefore, Schelling is confronted the impossibility of self-grounding reason and was not able to fully subsume under the reason entire system. Emergence cannot be explained as emergence for Schelling - only after the fact it happened, which is why, after explaining transition based on a free choice, he realized the consequence of it implies no full system is possible. Funnily enough, no matter how appaling it was probably for him to realize, the incompletion here is the completion, precisely the incompletion of a system here validates his stance against pure rational completion, incompleted is completed as incompleted in being incompleted.

Hegel and the Owl of Minerva circling around the Absolute:

We went a bit too far ahead by involving Schelling's later response that, in contradistinction to Hegel's, generated of a sorts a matrix that silently divided foregoing generations of philosophers, if not directly, then by association of core assumptions. Now, going back, confronted with back then Identity Philosophy's impasse of emergence/transition of the Absolute, Hegel stepped on the scene. "Given absolute relationality/mediatedness of knowledge, how do we explain everything without struggling with seemingly immediate Absolute that grounds said knowledge?" - and Hegel, knowing simplest answer is the most ingenious one, says "Behold, we can explain everything by explaining everything".

As was remarked, Hegel does make use of the same diachronic dialectics Schelling introduced - which Hegel described as identity of identity and difference in relation to Hegel(although somewhere else he remarked it too). This is where Hegel's famous claim that "the true is the whole" becomes considerably less innocuous than it sounds. The whole cannot mean a completed object sitting behind its appearances, waiting for philosophy to take a sufficiently elevated viewpoint and recognize it. If the Absolute were simply an already-completed identity, then difference, finitude and becoming would be external to it, and we would have returned to precisely the problem that motivated Schelling. The Absolute therefore has to include the path by which it becomes what it is. The result is not merely the end of the process; the result is the process having become intelligible to itself. This essentially implies the start with pure indeterminate being, the in-itself. The issue with this one is that indeterminateness is determinateness, determined as indetermined and therefore beholden to external opposition, to be indeterminate is to subsume this opposition as moments of itself, in which neither one nor other is itself, it self-referring negativity of in-and-for-itself.

The starting move of being and nothing, each on their own, collapsing into each other's(importantly, the opposition here is result of determining being on its own, its iternal to it), instead of giving birth to outside term to referee from without, has its truth in the movement itself - in becoming, the vanishing that itself vanishes into quiescent unity of existence. A determination, precisely insofar as it tries to be completely what it says it is, discovers that it cannot remain that determination without referring to what it excludes. Negative therefore is precisely not external to the positive but has it within itself to determine itself as-negative. In a way, the entire approach here is also a kind of Odyssey where the immediate Being, to truly become immediate one and not determined as one(and so beholden to positedness of external opposition) mediates through all determintions to become immediacy-as-sublated-mediacy. Fichte already collapsed synthetic/analytic distinction in Deed-Act, Schelling already showed identity of demosntration(analytic) and construction(synthetic), and, following the line, Hegel remarks

"If the terms analytic and synthetic are used as opposites, the first premise may be regarded as the analytic moment, for in it the immediate relates to its other immediately and therefore passes over, or rather has passed over, into it – though this connection, as already remarked, is for this very reason also synthetic, for it is its other that it passes over into. The second premise considered here may be defined as synthetic, because it is the connection of the differentiated, as differentiated, to that
from which it is differentiated. – Just as the first premise is the moment of universality and communication, so is the second determined by singularity – a singularity which in referring to the other is at first exclusive, for itself, and different. The negative appears as the mediating factor, because it holds itself and the immediate of which it is the negation within itself. In so far
as these two determinations are taken as referring to each other externally in some relation or other, the negative is only the formal mediating factor; but, as absolute negativity, the negative moment of absolute mediation is the unity which is subjectivity and soul".

"But the method of truth that comprehends the subject matter, though analytic as we have seen, since it remains strictly within the concept, is however equally synthetic, for through the concept the subject matter is determined as dialectical and as other."

"The concept shows itself . . . as the unity of being and essence. Essence is the first negation of being, which can thereby become appearance, the concept is the second, or the negation of this negation, thus being which has been restored, but as the infinite mediation and negativity of being in itself."

The core innovation here being is the modification of identity as 'behind the scenes' of opposition to the very fact/movement of the opposition itself in which it realizes itself; identity exists only as something that differentiates itself, negates its one-sided determination, and returns to itself through that negation, the identity-in-difference.If the Absolute is genuinely Absolute, there cannot be a point where explanation simply stops and we invoke an ineffable act lying beyond reason. The Absolute must be able to account for its own differentiation. But this does not mean that Hegel wants to return to Fichte and make the Absolute a giant cosmic subject that simply does things. Nor does he return to Schelling's identity behind subject and object. Instead, he radicalizes the problem itself:The Absolute has to be the movement by which identity differentiates itself, and not some identity existing prior to that movement. The idea Hegel relentlessly practiced throughout entire Logic was to show how something in its determinateness requires the other to be itself, but, the external conflict becomes an internal one wherein the external self-reference to the other gives anidentity to itself, the realization that in itself its other is the one to give it identity, the other for itself in itself. It,so to say,goes from immediate indeterminancy that is external and then pivots through determinate indeterminateness into determinate determinateness which is original immediacy realized as-immediacy

"Now, on closer examination, the third is the immediate, but the immediate through sublation of mediation, the simple through the sublating of difference, the positive through the sublating of the negative; it is the concept that has realized itself through its otherness, and through the sublating of this reality has rejoined itself and has restored its absolute reality, its simple self-reference. This result is therefore the truth. It is just as much immediacy as mediation – though these forms of judgments, that the third is immediacy and mediation, or that it is the unity of the two, are not
capable of grasping it, for it is not a dormant third but, exactly like this unity, self-mediating movement and activity. – Just as that with which we began was the universal, so the result is the singular, the concrete, the subject; what the former is in itself, the latter is now equally for itself: the universal is posited in the subject. The two first moments of triplicity are abstract, untrue moments that are dialectical for that very reason, and through this their negativity make themselves into the subject. For us at first, the concept itself is both the universal that exists in itself and the negative that exists for itself, and also the third term that exists in and for itself, the universal that runs through all the moments of the syllogism; but this third is the conclusion in which the concept mediates itself with itself through its negativity and is thereby posited for itself as the universal and the identity of its moments"

The much-maligned spell of substance as subject thereby becomes clear as result-as-result is process understood in its necessity; to be as-itself it it has to differentiate itself, relate itself to an other, lose itself in this other, and return to itself through that relation. This is the point at which Fichte's insight returns in a transformed form. Fichte already understood that the I cannot simply be an isolated identity: the I requires the Not-I in order to become determinate. But Fichte ultimately retains the asymmetry, there remains the Absolute I which generates the opposition and the finite I which struggles against it. Schelling attacks this asymmetry by putting identity prior to the distinction. Hegel instead asks whether we can dispense with the privileged position altogether. There is no need for an Absolute standing behind the movement and causing it. The movement is the Absolute, it becomes itself through its own self-differentiation, "The absolute is the absolute form which in its diremption of itself is utterly identical with itself, is the negative as negative or the negative that rejoins itself and in this way alone is the absolute self-identity which equally is indifferent towards its distinctions or is absolute content. The content is therefore only this exposition itself. As this self-bearing movement of exposition, as a way and manner which is its absolute identity with itself, the absolute is expression, not of an inner, nor over against an other, but simply as absolute manifestation of itself for itself."

To sum up: the first identity was immediate. The second has passed through its other. It has become an identity that knows itself as identity through difference. What looked initially like an external negation is retrospectively recognized as a moment of the thing's own self-determination. This I should now violently impart of on entire evolution of thought heretofore exhibited: Fichte's Absolute says "I am." Schelling's Absolute says "I and Other are one." Hegel's Absolute says: "I become what I am by becoming other than what I immediately am." The movement which began with the Kantian demand for the conditions of knowledge therefore ends up turning against the idea of a final condition standing outside the conditioned. Fichte located the unconditional in the self-positing I. Schelling pushed the unconditional behind the subject-object distinction into absolute identity. Hegel's move is to make even that identity subject to the demand that it explain its own differentiation.:there is no hidden ineffable Absolute behind the curtain - pull the curtain away and you find the movement itself. There is therefore no pristine identity waiting at the end for us to recover, because there was never a pristine identity sitting outside the movement to begin with. The Absolute doesn't have a dialectic.The Absolute is the dialectic.

Hi all, I've been re-reading the Introduction to the Aesthetics and I'd like to discuss a passage that I think shows why art, for Hegel, is rooted in freedom itself:

>"Man brings himself before himself by practical activity [...] This aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself. Even a child's first impulse involves this practical alteration of external things; a boy throws stones into the river and now marvels at the circles drawn in the water as an effect in which he gains an intuition of something that is his own doing. This need runs through the most diversiform phenomena up to that mode of self-production in external things which is present in the work of art."
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (T.M. Knox trans., Aesthetics, Vol. 1, p. 31).

Context.

Right after Hegel claimed that man has the urge "in whatever is directly given to him… to produce himself and therein equally to recognize himself" (p. 31). The boy projects himself into the ripples and finds his wonder there – they are the intuition of his own doing. Art is this urge elevated to the level of Absolute Spirit in sensuous form.

Why I think it is important, and how it connects to the rest of the system:

1. It is the motivation behind art (which, as Hegel points out, can be most irrational, like “barbarous, tasteless” ornament): art is about freedom’s need to express and recognize itself in its alienated forms. Hence the rationality of irrational ornament.
2. It ties art to the lordship-bondage section of the Phenomenology – the boy’s self-consciousness, like the servant’s, is formed via its alienated action, i.e. action directed at something external in order to recognize itself in it (§195-6, Miller trans.). In fact, this may be seen as a continuation of the theme of formation (Bildung), which runs through the entirety of Hegel’s work. For example, in the Philosophy of Right Hegel speaks of Formierung (“bringing the external into subjective consciousness”) as the way in which we appropriate objects (§§54-57).
3. Houlgate, in his entry on “Hegel’s Aesthetics” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, claims that for Hegel art’s role is to give sensuous expression to the true nature of freedom; the boy’s passage may be seen as an anthropological basis for this claim.

Doubts/questions:

• Do you think that Hegel’s analysis of aesthetic externalization is a continuation of the theme of labour in the Phenomenology, or is it essentially different (play vs. production under necessity)?
• Do you think that Hegel’s emphasis on art as self-recognition in the external conforms to his overall message about alienation, and how does this relate to alienated labour (see especially Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)?
• Do you see the development of self-consciousness in the boy as analogous to the process of Bildung/formation outlined in the Philosophy of Right?
• If art no longer satisfies our highest spiritual urges today, does that mean we will always be “throwing stones” into the void, just looking for other mediums to externalize ourselves? Does this tie into his thesis on the "End of Art"?

References:

• Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford: OUP, 1975, Vol. 1, p. 31.
• Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford: OUP, 1977, §§195–196.
• Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet, Cambridge: CUP, 1991, §§54–57.
• Marx, K., Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
• S. Houlgate, "Hegel's Aesthetics", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009).
• S. Sayers, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes, 2011.

When I read or hear about Hegel, I often stumble upon 2 explanations that sound kinda wrong to me.

1. It's often said that in his dialectics / speculative method, there's an Aufhebung. I'm a german native speaker, so I know the multiple meaning of the word, and that it can mean to end, to preserve and to lift at the same time. And in Hegel's example of a seed that becomes a blossom, then a flower and a seed again, I see how there are thing ended and lifted. But how is the blossom preserved in the flower? In this example, you could argue that it's an infinite cycle, so sooner or later, the flower will become a blossom again. But often times, things aren't like that.
2. I sometimes heard that Hegel said: Reality and its knowledge or recognition both move dialectically, so they can't be completely different "things". And that means nature must be structured in a reasonable way; nature and thought are basically the same - the world is spirit. WTF? Just because there's a parallel, doesn't mean they're the same, does it? Or does Hegel even say anything like that?

I’m wondering whether Hegel’s account of recognition ultimately requires a permanent structure of otherness. If Spirit fully reconciles itself with itself, what remains of the “other” through which self-consciousness initially becomes possible?