Half Hour Hegel: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface, sec 40-42)

In this eighteenth video in the new series on G.W.F. Hegel's great early work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, I read and comment on the fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second paragraphs of the text, from the Preface. He begins by briefly exploring what dogmatic thinking consists in, and then examines the status of historical truths, discussing what degree of necessity or scientific perspective historical inquiry can involve.

He then begins what will be a long discussion of the status of mathematical truths, mathematical modes of cognition, and how mathematics -- the discipline and approach held out as the preeminent one in early modernity -- does not really lead us into the heart of the phenomenon, as philosophical cognition does.

In this video series, I will be working through the entire Phenomenology, paragraph by paragraph -- for each one, first reading the paragraph, and then commenting on what Hegel is doing, referencing, discussing, etc. in that paragraph.

This series is designed to provide an innovative digital resource that will assist students, lifelong learners, professionals, and even other philosophers in studying this classic work by Hegel for generations to come.

The introductory music for the video is: Solo Violin - BWV 1004 - Partita for Violin No. 2 - Recorded in Brooklyn June 26, 2011 specifically to be dedicated to the Public Domain

My videos are used by students, lifelong learners, other professors, and professionals to learn more about topics, texts, and thinkers in philosophy, religious studies, literature, social-political theory, critical thinking, and communications. These include college and university classes, British A-levels preparation, and Indian civil service (IAS) examination preparation

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#Hegel #Phenomenology #Philosophy #Idealism #German #Dialectic #Spirit #Absolute #Knowledge #History

[asgilb]

When I read this initially, I read it as Hegel basically stating that the difference between mathematics and philosophy is that for math, once we have worked out a method, previous methods and the problems that led whatever someone to devise the new method have become superseded and redundant. You still need to understand the method and internalise the method; you still need to know how it works, why we bother using it... But it's historical genesis is little more than a curiosity or a novelty, or inessential to it. A method is basically a static formula to be applied to content from which it stands apart.
Philosophy doesn't work like that because the shapes philosophy takes are not so much methods as form of consciousness, where the knower them self is implicated in the content of the philosophy. We therefore need to know where that thinker is coming from (in a consciousness sense, not in an empirically historical sense) to figure out what their worldview actually means, how they relate to their world as a subject. Static formulas cannot achieve this kind of knowledge.

[GregoryBSadler]

We now start looking at Hegel's early discussions of historical and mathematical modes of cognition

[tomisaacson]

I'm so glad I came across this series! I don't know how I would've gotten my head around paragraph 42 otherwise. Great stuff! The text and the explanations.

[jonathanjonsson]

5:47 "you don't need to do philosophy in order to talk about coffee" - very true, but I find that the opposite is often the case.

[robertt]

This series is a fantastic supplement to my readings and secondary sources. Thanks for uploading them! Do you plan on doing the entire phenomenology?

[dialaskisel]

You may not need philosophy to understand coffee, but I do need coffee to practice philosophy :p

[dantheman]

In the first section, when Hegel criticizes the notion that the true is in a proposition, is analytic style of philosophy under this notion? There seems to be a lot of value in some analytic philosophy, but there also is an emphasis on clarity and propositions. It seems to treat philosophy almost as mathematics.

[DouglasHPlumb]

I can play any video on my Android device except these Half Hour Hegel videos. I can play other lectures from Sadler, all I have tried have been MP4.

[ryanw]

This is the best anime ever made. You will beat One Piece at this rate.

[lyndonbailey]

Trying to reconcile his comments about dogmatism here with his objection to arbitrary objections to the foundation stones of philosophical systems in general earlier in the preface. Is it that he would accept there is a certain minimal dogmaticism at the outset of a belief system?

[chrisepperson]

Could believing consciousness to be a force lead to Psolipsism?

[goldboolean]

AI is a new theatre of philosophy. An example in repect to this lecture: a gazillion datapoints in an abstract "3d" matrix so it can predict only the next word in an LLM type. It only proves what Hegel says. As far as peasants and plebs go I defer to Shapiro "Facts dont care bout your feelings" being facetious ofc

[lyndonbailey]

As for the aside piece, I would say yes it is desirable for people to get to grips with maths (providing they want to) however you are never going to escape the gap between peasant and expert no matter how you ratchet up educational standards...I would suspect the answer lies in something much more general, the questioning of the idolatry in general, although, admittedly, I do not have the foggiest idea about how to go about fixing this.It is an interesting aside anyway.