Notes of the 19 November 2014 session

B. Self-consciousness: IV. The truth of self-certainty (104-138)

Wednesday, 19 November 2014 (notes by Marton Ribary)

Hegel introduces a number of social metaphors in section B entitled “Self-consciousness”. The perplexing question is whether the social turn of the Phenomenology is genuine. Does Hegel now embark on outlining a social philosophy after the epistemological section A entitled “Consciousness”? Or are his social metaphors merely means for speaking more easily about the complex nature of perception?

Lord and bondsman:

Hegel introduces these concepts in §189 as two forms of consciousness after “the dissolution of that simple unity” of pure self-consciousness. One is “immediate” (or rather “existing” for the German seiend), the other is “in the form of thinghood”; one is “independent … whose essential nature is to be for itself”, the other is “dependent … whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another.” “The former is lord, the other is bondsman.” The constellations of lord and bondsman seem to replicate the opposition of subject and object at the level of self-certainty, that of the being for itself and being for another at the level of perception, and that of understanding and appearance at the level of consciousness. The dialectical process has now moved onto the subsequent level of self-consciousness which may or may not be inherently social.

Social reading vs phenomenological reading:

It is difficult to decide whether Hegel’s social terms function as mere metaphors facilitating the reasoning about the complex, repeatedly self-refuting, dialectical nature of perception, or whether Hegel thinks that at the level of self-consciousness, phenomenological thinking necessarily turns into social philosophy. Lord and bondsman can be understood as two sides of the same perceiving process: the “lord” who realises that in perception he is completely independent from all perceived objects, and the “bondsman” who finds himself dependent and entangled with his own perceptions. According to this reading, lord and bondsman are abstract configurations of the same perceiving soul, and the social reading facilitates to enlarge the process.

The method á la Plato:

In Plato’s Republic political philosophy was merely a means to talk about the soul as the macroscopic structure of society mirrors the microscopic structure of the soul. Hegel seems to offer a similar approach. The history of the World-Spirit is an enlarged version of the history of the individual perceiving soul. The variations of social forms over historical time mirror the variations of the stages the self-reflective soul goes through during a lifetime.

Parallel histories of the individual soul and the World-Spirit:

The social and the phenomenological reading are not mutually exclusive after all. At the level of self-consciousness, the self-reflective “I” necessarily goes beyond and doubles itself. The outpouring of the “I” results in two self-conscious entities which we may understand as two aspects of the same perceiving subject (phenomenological reading) or two opposing social actors (social reading). Hegel’s text is open to both readings, and they can be understood as the microscopic and the macroscopic version of the same process – one as the self-reflective thinking process of the individual soul, the other as the history of the World-Spirit.

Notes of the 25 February session

B. Self-consciousness: IV. The truth of self-certainty (104-138)

Wednesday, 19 November 2014 (notes by Marton Ribary)

Hegel introduces a number of social metaphors in section B entitled “Self-consciousness”. The perplexing question is whether the social turn of the Phenomenology is genuine. Does Hegel now embark on outlining a social philosophy after the epistemological section A entitled “Consciousness”? Or are his social metaphors merely means for speaking more easily about the complex nature of perception?

Lord and bondsman:

Hegel introduces these concepts in §189 as two forms of consciousness after “the dissolution of that simple unity” of pure self-consciousness. One is “immediate” (or rather “existing” for the German seiend), the other is “in the form of thinghood”; one is “independent … whose essential nature is to be for itself”, the other is “dependent … whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another.” “The former is lord, the other is bondsman.” The constellations of lord and bondsman seem to replicate the opposition of subject and object at the level of self-certainty, that of the being for itself and being for another at the level of perception, and that of understanding and appearance at the level of consciousness. The dialectical process has now moved onto the subsequent level of self-consciousness which may or may not be inherently social.

Notes of the 5 November 2014 session

A. Consciousness: III. Force and understanding (79-103)*

Notes by Marton Ribary

Hegel demonstrates the same dialectical movement by which opposites are first unified in order to be later disintegrated by self-supersession which eventually leads them being collapsed to one another. The process was first demonstrated at the level of sense-certainty, then at the level of perception, and finally (in the current section) at the level of understanding. Even though the unification, disintegration and collapse of the opposites may seem to run in a vicious circle, the process actually results in a reflected form of consciousness higher than before, but at each level the same process starts over again.

Force:

The German term Kraft describes the movement between the “being-for-self” and the “being-for another” which are the more reflected forms of what traditional, dogmatic epistemology would call subject and object. The Force is an intermediary between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. However, it is by no means a substantive entity, but rather the process or movement which happens between the two. Hegel’s example of gravity is quite illuminating in this respect: gravity does not exist as a thing, it is the process by which two physical bodies relate to each other. The Force is the energy[1] which resonates between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, and eventually abolishes their separation so that the subject and object shall collapse into each other

Understanding:

With the expression and withdrawal of the unreflected dynamic process of the Force, consciousness reaches its reflected counterpart which Hegel calls Understanding. The reflected nature of the same dynamic dance between the perceiving subject and the perceived object achieves that the way things appear and the way they express themselves are clearly distinguished in consciousness. In §145, Hegel writes that “Our object is thus from now on the syllogism which has for its extremes the inner being of Things and the Understanding, and for its middle term, appearance”. (88)

The supersensible worlds:

With the reflected dynamic dance of Understanding, consciousness discovers itself as subject to laws. Similarly to the laws of gravity which defines the behaviour of distinct physical bodies, Understanding is discovered as a set of laws by which the sensible world is grasped. The realm of static laws is the first supersensible world which, however, is subject to the same dialectical movement as all elements in the Hegelian system. This means that the first supersensible world, i.e. the realm of laws, is destined to contradict and eventually supersede itself so that it may turn into its own opposite in the second supersensible world. In §§156-157, Hegel writes that “in the play of Forces this law showed itself to be precisely this absolute transition and pure change; the selfsame, viz. Force, splits into an antithesis which at first appears to be an independent difference, but which in fact proves to be none … Through this principle, the first supersensible world, the tranquil kingdom of laws, the immediate copy of the perceived world, is changed into its opposite.” (96)

Infinity:

The content of the law in the first supersensible world is infinity which encapsulates the recurring unification, disintegration and collapse of the opposites. However, infinity as the content is an empty idea and one would do great injustice to Hegel if jumping to this end-result as the “meaning” of Hegel’s philosophy. Jumping to infinity would be just another empty philosopher’s slogan which Hegel always warns against. It is not the content, but the process which matters. The endpoint is indifferent, what matters is rather “the way of the Soul which journeys through the series of its own configurations as though they were the stations appointed for it by its own nature.” (§77 on 49) To use an analogy not far from Hegel’s spirit, without the stations towards the Cross, the death on the Cross would be a mere execution, rather than an act of salvation.

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[1] In a Heideggarian vein we may exploit the etymological potential of the Aristotelian neologism of ενεργεια which is the contracted form of εν-εργον-ειναι, or in its well-known Heideggerian mirror-translation, the “in-dem-Werk-sein”. (Marton Ribary) In attempt to identify Hegel’s Kraft in the Aristotelian-Hedeggerian vocabulary, φυσις may be another likely candidate. (Howard Kelly)

*Page numbers in these notes refer to G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) and its reprints. A document collecting the notes of the reading session is available on the group's dropbox. Please e-mail Marton Ribary (marton.ribary@gmail.com) to join the reading group and gain access to the group's dropbox folder.

Notes of the 22 October 2014 session

Introduction & A. Consciousness: I. Sense-certainty & II. Perception (46-79)*

Notes by Leif Jerram

Hegel’s Framing of the Question:

We discussed what the basic issue or question was that Hegel was setting out to tackle. We concluded that he was trying to develop a question which rejected the primacy of epistemology and interrogate ‘natural assumptions’ about approaching the world. Instead, he was asking about the nature of the mind as a medium or instrument to approach self and world, while at the same time asking about whether there was any sense to a subject-object dualism. He seems to be pointing to a conclusion where knowledge and the appearance of knowledge are equally important – or possibly the same thing. Ultimately, it seems that Hegel rejected the idea of the mind as a pure method for approaching the world. Instead, the apparatus of perception, the thing perceived and the perceiver must share some sort of overlapping relationship - and possibly that relationship is Hegel’s ‘problem’.

Language, the Universal, and the Particular:

We spent some time discussing the section on language, where he highlights that our words are general, but the things that they refer to are particular. Words try to define something unique and whole unto itself, but are fundamentally and obviously unable to do this. The obvious inability of language to do this is ‘divinely’ useful to us – it corrects a prejudice we hold about what sense-certainty offers us.

Consciousness:

Hegel seems to be operating with two potential meanings for consciousness. In some readings, it seems he means ‘awareness’, while in others he means ‘awareness of our awareness’ – a more ‘formal’ or ‘meta-level’ definition of consciousness. We asked several times whether consciousness ‘of itself’ needed to be a reflexive sort of consciousness. Jaymal helpfully pointed out that this could be because we read an introduction, where consciousness might be more grandly defined, and then a section on the senses, where a narrower definition might be more suitable.

Time and temporality:

It seemed significant that there were several references to time and temporality, and the ‘progress’ of the mind through it. This implies a fundamental impermanence and/or accretiveness about the ‘project’ of producing the conscious mind.

*Page numbers in these notes refer to G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) and its reprints. A document collecting the notes of the reading session is available on the group's dropbox. Please e-mail Marton Ribary (marton.ribary@gmail.com) to join the reading group and gain access to the group's dropbox folder.