Notes of the 22 April 2015 session

C. (BB.) Spirit: VI. Spirit: C. Spirit that is certain of itself. Morality (364-409)

Wednesday, 22 April 2015 (notes by Marton Ribary)

Only the movement is real:

Hegel’s dialectical method has demonstrated that whatever is treated as stable will necessarily destabilise itself by having been contrasted with its opposite. The dialectical movement of reflection allows no room for the so-called “eternal truth” that philosophy has been chasing for too long. Inasmuch as thought is treated as a single, solid and stable piece of knowledge, it becomes immediately fragile to challenges. Only the movement is real, and therefore only the constant progress from one form to another can hold the claim to be true.

The reality of thoughts:

Consequently, contrary to the long-standing philosophical dogma, inasmuch as a thought is true, it must be real, inasmuch it is real, it must be moving and alive. They are not the eternal Platonic entities that mortal humans occasionally take part of when they have reached an advanced level of philosophical reflection. The age old contradistinction between mortal humans and immortal thoughts is a mistake – mortals do not borrow immortal ideas when they think. What I think here and now is not the same what Plato thought 2400 years ago. In short, there is no such thing as philosophia perennis (and thereby a good part of contemporary analytic philosophy is following a dead-end.) Just as humans are born, live and die, thoughts are living entities too.

The empty nature of morality:

In the previous section, Hegel has demonstrated with strong allusions to the French Revolution that absolute freedom is empty and eventually devours itself. He moves on to discuss whether morality can be used as a reference point for our conduct, and concludes that all externally set rules are empty and meaningless. Set rules destabilise themselves because what is treated as solid and unchanged falls victim to dialectical reflection. Moral standards set by another consciousness (God, society, the perfect law-giver, Kant’s formal rules etc.) turn out to be empty and meaningless, because they are dead and do not move forward, and because they are outside the consciousness (the “I”) who is supposed to follow them.

The acting conscience:

Internalised, dynamic and self-constituted standards seem to be the solution for the problem of human conduct. In what Hegel calls “duty”, conscience serves as the force of human action. Just as set standards turn into their opposite by dialectical reflection, abstaining from action and thereby creating a moral zero is similarly static and self-destroying. The “beautiful soul’s” solution to the moral conundrum of action eventually leads nowhere. By overcoming the self-destroying character of static standards of conduct, acting conscience (that is, duty) is capable of moving towards self-realisation without turning into its opposite and eliminating itself in the process. The key is that self-realisation is not achieved by reaching a set target or by living a perfectly moral life, but by being recognised by another consciousness. The acting conscience realises itself by being recognised by another.