Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 5)

Hello and welcome to the fifth session of contemporary readings of Hegel with Ray Bracier. I'm going to hand it off to him right now. Okay, hi. So today we're going to move on. We're going to try to see the connection between three distinct moments in Hegel's phenomenology. his discussion of, well, principally his relationship between his discussion of absolute freedom and terror and the culmination of the phenomenology, which is Hegel's account of absolute knowing.

So, what I'm going to do is try to kind of establish what I think are underlying connections between what Hegel says about the absolute, or what he calls the absolute notion or the absolute concept and these his account of the French Revolution and the reason I'm trying to establish this connection is because I think in order to understand what's going on in the phenomenology and in order to understand what I mean Hegel's entire project and it's claimed that philosophy

is a comprehension of its own time and thought, we have to understand in what way the phenomenology is conditioned by the French Revolution. Because Hegel is writing the phenomenology in roughly 15 years after the revolution, you know, six, and I think it's important to try to grasp the way in which his own speculative overcoming of Kantian criticism is intrinsically conditioned by a rupture, a break that's happened.

a rupture in spirit, so to speak. Evolution represents the advent of modernity. And it's because, in so far as Hegel is self-consciously philosophizing modernity, his philosophical self-consciousness is conditioned by this rupture, this kind of, the rupture of modernity. So I'm going to try, so in other words, I'm going to try to explain the link in a way between revolutionary rupture, the break between, the break represented by political modernity, cultural modernity, and Hegel's account of the absolute, of what he calls the absolute.

Okay, so, what I'll do is to, you know, the first quotation on the handout is from paragraph 162, which actually occurs in the middle of Hegel's discussion of force and understanding. So it's really the first chapter of the phenomenology. It follows on the discussions of sense certainty and the thing and its properties. And there's a remarkable moment, you know, in a way that kind of, you know, interrupts Hegel's account of the understanding, where he basically gives, I think, what is, in a way, the kind of the fundamental distillation of his most profound philosophical insights.

So in a way, if you want Hegel's definition of the absolute, here it is. And it doesn't come at the end of the book. It comes relatively in the opening sections of the book. So I'm going to read out the sections in bold from paragraph 162. This simple infinity or the absolute notion may be called the simple essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood. This is neither disturbed nor interrupted by any difference, but rather is itself every difference, as also their supersession. It pulsates within itself, but does not move. Inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest. It is self-identical,

for the differences are tautological. They are differences that are none. This self-identical essence is therefore related only to itself. To itself implies relationship to another, and the relation to self is rather thundering, or in other words, that very self-identicalness is an inner difference. these sundered moments are thus in and for themselves each an opposite of another thus in each moment the other is at the same time expressed or each is not the opposite of another but only a pure opposite and so and so each is therefore in its own self the opposite of itself

In other words, it is not an opposite at all, but is purely for itself. A pure self-identical essence that has no difference in it. Now, this is one of the, you know, this is a real kind of an extraordinary passage in Hegel. It's also another notorious passage for the difficulty of what it seems to be trying to communicate. But I think what is crucial to understand here, in a way what distinguishes a metaphysical reading of Hegel from a non-metaphysical reading, is how one understands what Hegel is saying here.

And I think that the key for Hegel is to understand what Hegel is saying is that he's trying to give an account of essence as contradiction. What he calls the absolute essence is contradiction. And insofar as essence is, if one remembers the metaphysical tradition, essence is both the act of being, is both the existence of an entity, and its quiddity, its whatness.

But what Hegel is saying is that both the act of being and the quiddity, both that something is and what it is, are basically constituted by contradiction. But in order to really understand what this means, Hegel's point is that it's not a contradiction between independently constituted terms. So in other words, Hegel is saying that we have to think what he calls the absolute essence as this movement of contradiction,

where contradiction is no longer reducible to an opposition between substantially determined terms or identities. So in other words, the metaphysical understanding of this passage, the traditional metaphysical reading of Hegel, sees him as saying something like, well, there is an absolute, okay, there's an absolute, the absolute notion, which then somehow splits, okay, divides from itself and engenders another, something other than itself. and this other is its opposite. But then somehow, you know, having divided into

self and other, it reunites with itself, it returns into itself having reintegrated its own difference from itself. So in other words, you would read this as a kind of a three-step movement, okay? From a movement of identity, difference and then re-identification. Actually, but this is exactly what Hegel is not saying. In other words, what Hegel is saying is that the attempt to parcel out the movement into these three distinct stages or terms is the result of an abstraction, an abstraction of the understanding.

It says what we have to think is how we have to think the coincidence of identity and difference or of fission and fusion. I've characterized on the handout as the indivision of division and indivision. So what he's saying is, as he puts, and this is the next, you know, the crucial passages, what he's saying is that we have to get, you know, the traditional dilemma that plagued all, you know, substance-based metaphysics was the relationship between the one and the many. okay if being is essentially one if to be is to be essentially one how can multiplicity issue force from ontological unity from being as

substantial integrity and Hegel is saying that this is a false question because once we've gone beyond, once we've desubstantialized being or desubstantialized essence, we understand that essence is the coincidence of indivision and division. And this is why he says in the next section in Bold and the Handic, for the division into the two moments has already taken place. excluded from the self-identical and set apart from it. What was supposed to be the self-identical is thus already one of these two moments instead of being the absolute essence.

So what he's saying is that the absolute essence is not the first, it's not, is neither the first nor the final stage of this process. And to think of the absolute essence as an independently existing identity is already to have abstracted it from the movement, the movement of fission, which actually constitutes its own identity. This is why he's saying that the opposition between identity and difference, or between self and other is an abstraction that only, you know, that is, you know, that

unfolds if one has separated one term and, you know, through an act of intellectual abstraction, if one has separated one term and juxtaposed it to the other. So what he's saying is that we have to think the kind of a relation kind of a relation which actually constitutes its terms okay so this is a claim about the primacy of relation but it's no longer a relation between you know independently existing terms so therefore it's not so therefore it's not a relation between two distinguishable things but it's actually a self-relation and this is

he goes famous claim about self you know the concept of self-relating negativity contradiction is self-relating negativity in so far as identity, you know, the nation of a thing as identical is precisely constituted through its not being, through its not being, not being what it is. Each thing is contradictory, which means that the relationship between self and other is internal to every constituted entity or thing, which means that it's a mistake in

fact. What he's actually saying is that there are no independently existing things or separable substances or entities. What is primary or what is essential is the movement of contradiction, which he says has always already happened. This is why he's saying the division into two moments has already taken place. So if you think of the famous kind of slogan, one divides into two, what he's saying is it's not that there's one to two and then somehow kind of fuses back into one. He's saying that the splits, one is already two. the one has always already split into two two you know each each moment each distinct moment

is contains within itself this because it's really it has the relationship to its own other within itself it is itself nothing but this you know primordial division this is why he when he goes goes on in the passage the finalist of the final section in bold the different moments of self-sundering which simply means splitting and of becoming self-identical or fusion are therefore likewise only this movement of self supersession the movement of self supersession is that the the self

sundering and the self identification have always already vanished into one another there's no there's no kind of there's no sequential articulation of these moments and then he goes on for since the self identical which is supposed first to sunder itself or become its opposite is an abstraction or is already itself a sundered moment, its self-sundering is therefore a supersession of what it is and therefore the supersession of its dividedness. The supersession here is to be understood in terms of sublation or the overcoming of its dividedness,

but also of its identity or of its indivision as somehow separable from its dividedness. So Hegel's conclusion, its becoming self-identical is equally a self-sundering. In other words, self-identification is the same as self-division. What becomes identical with itself thereby opposes itself to its self-sundering, thereby puts itself on one side, or rather it becomes a sundered moment. So what he's saying is that each step, we have to bear in mind every stage of the dialectic, these, any moment, whether it's these moments being kind of shapes of consciousness or shapes of spirits,

each of them is only each of them is only separable by a kind of by an intellectual abstraction which makes it seem as if there is a relationship between two terms self and other or a distinction between knowing and truth or between for us and in itself but you know in the most fundamental level for Hegel these the separability or the distinctiveness of each moment is only an abstraction and to think

speculatively is to grasp the the coincidence of this of distinction and distinction and division. So I realize now this is an extremely abstract kind of characterization of Hegel's conception of the absolute. But I think it can be rendered more... I think hopefully by the end we might have achieved greater traction on how this remarkably abstract characterization can be understood in relationship with time. Because what I'm proposing is that there's a link

between what Hegel calls this absolute essence and a new understanding of time, because this is also the the rupture of modernity ushers in a new kind of self-consciousness which means a new experience of time so i think what i want to do today is to try to kind of you know make you know establish a link between this you know fearsomely abstract characterization of the absolute and And a completely concrete account of time as occurrence or time as what happens or what befalls us. But in order to do this, we have to kind of go through a couple of intermediate steps.

So what I want now to do is to focus on Hegel's account of the revolution. and it comes actually in the section, it comes in the section immediately following the discussion of Lord and Bondsman, which we discussed last time. And the discussion of, no, I'm sorry, it comes in the section on reason, okay, which happens several hundred pages after the discussion of Lord and Bondsman. But in order to understand the connection between Lord and Bondsman and absolute freedom and terror,

we have to quickly recapitulate his account of stoicism, skepticism and unhappy consciousness. These are shapes of spirits, in a way, whose incompleteness allows us to understand what Hegel finds flawed in the shape of self-consciousness that emerges in the French Revolution. So first of all, stoicism. So once we've overcome...

Stoicism really is the first shape of self-consciousness that emerges out of the self-consciousness of the bondsman who has realized that he can achieve or realize his freedom through work understood as universal formative activity. But the way in which, nevertheless, the way in which the bondsman understands his own freedom initially is incomplete. In other words, the result of this incomplete understanding is stoicism,

as Stoicism is the form of self-consciousness in which one works on oneself in order to liberate oneself from worldly bondage. In other words, the Stoic seeks to transform his own subjectivity or consciousness in order to realize his freedom or understood as his independence from objective determination. So in Stoicism, Hegel writes, thinking consciousness as determined in the form of abstract freedom is thus only the incomplete negation of otherness.

It's incomplete, so negation of otherness understood as objective determination but it's incomplete because it negates, it's the subject negating his or her determination at the hands of worldly constraints, but without trying to transform those worldly constraints as such. So you withdraw from the world and in order to achieve a kind of serene indifference to its travails and injustices.

So this is the first incomplete manifestation of self-conscious freedom. The next moment is skepticism. okay skepticism writes Hagel involves a split between two kind of moments in self self-consciousness in in in skepticism carries out a more radical negation of the otherness of the world. So Stoicism carried out a partial negation of otherness or alterity. With skepticism, according to Hegel, self-consciousness achieves a much

more radical suspension of its objective determination because it suspends objectivity as such. It famously says, you know, it leads to a kind of a suspension of judgment about as to objectivity, as to what does or does not exist, because it tries to show that any determinate claim about the world can be contradicted. And because of this equipolance, because of this the equivalence of every affirmation or negation about objective states of things the skeptical consciousness seeks merely to suspend all judgment and achieve a kind of again another serene indifference to the world

so it asserts its own freedom its own independence but only at the cost of negating the independence of the world or its own determinations its own determination at the hands of something that is other than this so Hegel writes this consciousness is therefore the unconscious thoughtless rambling which passes back and forth from the one extreme of self identical self consciousness to the other extreme of the contingent consciousness that is both bewildered and bewildering it does but it does not itself bring these two thoughts of itself together. At one time it recognizes that its freedom lies in rising above all the confusion and contingency of existence, and another

time equally admits to a relapse into occupying itself with what is unessential. Now what he's saying is that skeptical consciousness is split between two things between the essential and unessential and between self-identical self-consciousness and heterogeneous self-consciousness or between an independent self-consciousness and independent self-consciousness and the claim is that because every judgment about any certainty about what is any claim to knowledge, any self-conscious assertion about what exists can be shown to

be immediately undermined by its negation. That means that this subverts the necessity of judgment. It subverts the necessity of any judgment that claims, that asserts a connection between an object X and a property Y. But skeptical self-consciousness is at one and the same time the judging consciousness, the consciousness to judge or to assert, and the consciousness that undermines every assertion. And it doesn't only undermine every assertion, it also undermines every negation,

because every negation of an assertion can equally be contradicted by another assertion. An infinite alternation between affirmation and negation leads to a kind of sheer indetermination. It doesn't yield a determinate negation. It just yields this kind of interminable oscillation between affirmation and negation or between assertion and denial. And the result then is, and what Hegel says is that interesting is that this self-consciousness,

although it asserts its sovereign autonomy, its freedom, its absolute freedom from any objective determination, it refuses, it wants to say that I can, assert anything and its contrary, but nothing in the world compels me to affirm or deny anything, contradistinction to anything else, it doesn't realize how, as it oscillates between these two moments of affirmation and denial and also of necessity and

contingency it doesn't realize how these are poles of itself it is itself how it can't stop asserting because the problem of the skeptic faces is that he wants to reach this definitive suspension of judgment. By its own nature is compelled to keep judging. So even the contradiction of assertion is yet another kind of assertion. So the ultimate cessation of assertion or the definitive suspension of belief or of faith in the world is unachievable. So, and this is why, you know, skeptical consciousness, says Hegel, you know, is split, its deeds and its words always belie one another.

It has itself a doubly contradictory consciousness of unchangeableness and sameness. but it keeps these two poles apart so that it's always any assertion will be contradicted by it but it is itself generating the assertions because it doesn't accept any external authority and this is the result is this kind of infantilism it's a kind of it's an assertion of autonomy and independence, but of a puerile sort. And interestingly enough, if you look at Hegel's concluding sentence here, it's talk, the talk of skeptical consciousness,

is in fact like the squabbling of self-willed children, one of whom says A if the other says B, and in turn says B if the other says A, and who by contradicting themselves buy for themselves the pleasure of continually contradicting one another. The term self-willed here is crucial. It recurs frequently in the phenomenology, and Hegel says that self-willed autonomy or self-willed freedom is unsatisfactory. It's one-sided.

So Hegel thinks that, you know, again, self-consciousness has to achieve its freedom and independence through another, but it can simply assert its freedom and independence one-sidedly, abstractly canceling or negating the claim made upon it by its other, whether this other is the world or another self-consciousness. consciousness and Hegel will show that both those things must go together. Self-consciousness will only be able to realize its freedom and independence by recognizing the independence of its other which fuses the independence of

another subjects and of the object as such okay now we then move to okay the third movement of this kind of in these in the sequence of incomplete assertions of independence is the unhappy consciousness which is really the first manifestation of religious consciousness this is very important because now we We've got three stages here. We've got stoicism, then we've got skepticism, both of which are kind of epistemic stances. But with the unhappy consciousness, epistemic frustration gives rise to religious reverence. I think for Hegel is essentially religious and it's the turn to religiosity inspired by the alleged failures of epistemic satisfaction.

If one cannot achieve epistemic satisfaction through conceptual understanding or through knowledge, one renounces it in the name of some experience of alterity, which is even more radical than those countenanced by stoicism and skepticism. So the unhappy consciousness now sees necessity, universality, and independence entirely outside of itself. instead of trying to reconcile

these two moments within itself what it does is it breaks off its own freedom or its own kind of independence and reifies it in the form of an external transcendence which is divine or supernatural and prostrates itself before this this alterity, this otherness, which it holds to be superior to it, and which it claims conditions all of its activities, whether cognitive or practical. So in other words, the unhappy consciousness renounces its own claim to freedom and independence.

It reifies its own freedom and independence in the shape of a god, a divine force. And it finds satisfaction only by, you know, abjuring its own independence in the name of, you know, an objective independence that it has itself generated. So this is the other contradiction. The unhappy consciousness generates the radical independent alterity before which it prostrates itself. but then at the same time claims that it is utterly dependent. So it claims to be utterly dependent upon an independence

that it has itself generated. That's the contradiction. So Hegel writes, For though this consciousness renounces the show of satisfying its feeling of self, it obtains the actual satisfaction of it, for it has been desire, work, and enjoyment. As consciousness it has willed, act, and enjoyed. In other words, he's saying that this is a religious consciousness that gives up, that offers up its enjoyment, its satisfaction, its desire, work, and enjoyment to God. The unhappy consciousness does everything for the sake of God. But Hegel's saying that it derives satisfaction

from this sacrifice of self-satisfaction. So he goes on, Similarly, even its giving of thanks, in which it acknowledges the other extreme as the essential being and counts itself nothing, is its own act which counterbalances the action of the other extreme and meets the self-sacrificing beneficence with a like action. It delivers over to consciousness only the surface of its being, yet consciousness also gives thanks. And in surrendering its own action, its essential being, it really does more than the other, which only sheds a superficial element of itself. These last lines actually is Hegel's critique of the metaphorics of sacrifice,

specifically in Christianity. What he's saying is that when we give thanks to God, for his munificence and beneficence, and specifically for having sacrificed his son for the sake of our salvation. In fact, this is, you know, initially the unhappy consciousness views the divine sacrifice, God's sacrifice of his son, as being a greater sacrifice than any carry out. So it sees itself as infinitely indebted to God. But in fact, says Hegel,

it's consciousness that has carried out a greater sacrifice than God. Because God, you know, because God is infinite, in making himself finite through his Son, he is sacrificing he's not really sacrificing anything because God because the finite is entirely dependent upon the infinite sacrifice of a part of himself in finitude and the finitude of death, Christ's death on the cross is itself immediately cancelled up, swallowed up in God's infinity, if God's infinity is understood substantially

as something that is entirely sovereign and independent of finitude. So this is why Hegel writes, if the other extreme, by which he means God, the divine extreme delivers over to consciousness only the surface of its being he means that the surface of its being is its own finitude the surface you know the finite is only a part superficial parts of the infinite so in sacrificing a part of itself the infinite is really sacrificing nothing whereas the the

unhappy consciousness or the consciousness that sacrifices its own you know enjoyment its own desire for self-satisfaction to the divine to God is is actually sacrificing the substance of its being. This is why he's saying, because in surrendering its own action, its essential being, you know, to God, it really does more than the other which only sheds a superficial element of itself. And in a way, what Hegel is saying is that substance of the infinite here is derived from the self-sacrificing of finite substance. It's generated.

It's the self-sacrificing of finite substance that generates the alleged infinity of divine substance. So this is another, you know, and again, this is another kind of example of an incomplete or contradictory affirmation of of independence no why this is no the unhappy consciousness is here we have an articulation between two you know these two epistemic moments skepticism and no with the unhappy consciousness we have you know the like I guess the kind of the essential prefiguration of

a kind of religious consciousness and a religious experience of the infinite which and Hegel will try to bring these two together he will try to show her you know conceptual self-consciousness the experience of freedom and independence that drives conceptual self-consciousness must be brought together the experience of infinite alterity, which is at the core of religious consciousness. And in absolute knowing, what he wants to do is to bring about, in a way, he wants to show that the satisfaction

of her cognitive desire and the satisfaction of her spiritual desire can only be ultimately be brought together in reason as absolute knowing. but we'll return to this in a few minutes. Now we're going to move, we're moving now to his discussion of the French Revolution and the French Revolution, French Revolution oscillates back as a complete denial of,

obviously it's thinking of an assertion of human freedom. It's the first kind of, you know, unqualified assertion of human independence, of human beings as capable of self-determination, independently of any divine ordinance, as represented by the institution of monarchy. So in the French Revolution, there's a new understanding of freedom, of self-conscious freedom, which is incarnated in the notion of the general will.

And the revolution, the revolutionary consciousness sees itself as implementing the requirements of the general will, where the general will is the will of one and all. The general will overcomes the particularity of the individual will and says that what is good freedom for the individual can only be achieved through collective freedom, freedom for all. But Hegel says that this is still only, once again, a still incomplete or abstract conception of the freedom of self-consciousness.

And it's because of its abstractness that it fails to reconcile the contradiction between the universal requirements of the general will, the particular requirements of the individual will. And this tension, which is at the heart of the revolutionary will, is what generates the terror. So, in other words, what Hegel is saying is that the terror is a direct consequence of the one-sided or abstract conception of universal freedom in Jacobin self-consciousness.

So he writes in 589, just as the individual self-consciousness does not find itself in this universal work of absolute freedom, co-existence substance, so little does it find itself in the deeds proper and individual actions of the will of this freedom. Now, two things quickly here. What he means is that the individual self-consciousness is now forced to renounce all its private interests, its self-interest, on behalf of the general will, of the common will. This general will is incarnated in the state, the revolutionary state, the republic.

after the decapitation of the king. And in a way so that the freedom of self-consciousness is substantialized in the revolutionary republic, which is to say the revolutionary state. But the revolutionary state is vitiated by this contradiction between the general will and the private will. freedom is now, you know, suffers from this kind of, you know, crippling debility, according to Hegel. The contradiction between the universal and the particular. And then he goes on in this same, the next sentence from paragraph 589.

before the universal can perform a deed it must concentrate itself into the one of individuality and put at the head an individual self-consciousness for the universal will is only an actual will in a self which is a one but thereby all other individuals are excluded from the entirety of this deed and have only a limited share in it so that the deed would not be a deed of the actual universal self-consciousness. Universal freedom, therefore, can produce neither a positive work nor a deed that is left for it only negative action. It is merely the fury of destruction. Now, why? Hegel here insists that the universal can perform a deed.

In other words, for it to actualize itself, it must concentrate itself into the one of individuality and put at the head an individual self-consciousness. Because, he says, because this conception of the general will is abstract and one-sided, the effectuation of the general will can only be achieved through another particularization. It can only be incarnated in another individual or group of individuals. In this case, Robespierre or the Committee for Public Safety.

So in other words, the paradox is that because of the abstract nature of the general will in this context, its requirements can only be articulated through the consciousness of individual subjects or individual wills. and it's you know it's they can only be implemented through the actions of these same of these same individuals so what happens is that the effectuation of the general will actually excludes you know many all other individuals the

effectuation of this abstract universal necessitates the exclusion of all other individuals so in other words this is why you know the Rob spear assumes you know sees himself as the you know as the the most piece for the general will and his decisions are all taken on behalf of the general will but he assumes absolute authority the absolute authority of the universal in a way which supersedes the the demands of any of all other individuals and the result of this is the terror okay because of this because of this kind of contradiction

between because the universal will can only be effectuated in a kind of a a particular will, and this particular will must disregard all rival claimants to the general will, you know, it can only attack or disqualify all those rival claimants, which is, and this is, of course the terror so this kind of you know this abstract universal freedom can produce neither positive work nor a deed there's left for it only negative action it is merely the fury of destruction

and this is now the next paragraph is is important here this is a paragraph 590 so Hale is saying that the in the revolutionary states there's an abstract opposition between the universal in particular as if they haven't been they're not properly mediated with one another and therefore not properly kind of you know harmoniously articulated in 590 for that That universality which does not let itself advance to the reality of an organic articulation and whose aim is to maintain itself in an unbroken continuity creates a distinction within itself

because it is movement or consciousness in general. And moreover by virtue of its own abstraction it divides itself into extremes, equally abstract, into a simple, inflexible, cold universality, and into the discrete, absolute, hard rigidity and self-willed atomism of actual self-consciousness. So once again, this universality, this abstract universality is split. It's split between the universal, between an abstract particularity, and you know which takes a shape of a universality which is incapable of

countenancing the demands of particularity which sees particularity is equally abstract and on the other hand into the what he calls the kind of the self-willed atomism actual self-consciousness, which is to say that only it's the, you know, the Jacobin, you know, the representative, the self-appointed representative of the general will, sees his individual self-consciousness as, you know, the infallible arbiter of the dictates of the general will. And Hegel then goes on in the next section, the relation then of

these two, since each exists indivisibly and absolutely for itself, and thus cannot dispose of a middle term which would link them together, is one of wholly unmediated pure negation, and negation moreover of the individual as a being existing in the universal. So in other words these here that the kind of you know the universal in the particular or necessity and contingency can only negate one another so the the necessity of the revolutionary requirements can only be the negation of the contingency of the requirements of particular interest and this unmediated negation

is unmediated pure negation which which doesn't allow the which doesn't understand that concrete universality requires concrete individuality that the proper mediation of the universal in the particular is that can only be achieved through a concrete a concrete universal which is an individual and it's the freedom of the individual okay which is satisfies the desire for freedom of of self-consciousness in the absence of this reach you know the individual as

concrete universal what you get is this this fury of this abstract negation is unmediated pure negation which simply negates the merely as a dispensable and contingent obstacle to the satisfaction of universality so therefore Hegel writes the sole work indeed of universal freedom is therefore death a death to which has no inner significance or filling for what is negated is the empty points of the absolutely free self it is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths with no more significance and turning off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water so you know execution by

guillotine is you know it's a perfectly rational death and in a way the the unlike the forms of public execution carried out in medieval societies such as you know hanging drawing and quartering or beheadings here now we have an execution which is completely perfectly rational so you devise a you You know, an instrument, you know, the guillotine is a way of administering death, which is allegedly painless and therefore maximally efficient.

But because of this, because of its efficiency, it deprives execution of any symbolic pathos. This is why death by guillotine is the coldest and meanest of all deaths. It's an insignificant death because the individual here is insignificant. The individual's refusal to conform to the requirements of the general will is simply is not invested with any kind of internal meaning or significance. It has no

spiritual significance and this recalcitrant individual here is merely the the head of the abstract incarnation of individuality, as opposed to its concretization. Okay, so this is why this execution, you know, terror, revolutionary terror, deprives the particular,

that the deprives particularity of even the significance of resistance because it's simply seen as an as a kind of as a pathological obstruction to the satisfaction of universality and obviously and this is where Hegel is going to make a link with Kant because Hegel says Hegel sees in this kind of you know, terror of absolute freedom, a kind of a prefiguration of Kant's categorical imperative where once again there's an unmediated opposition between the universal and the particular or between the requirements of the moral law, which is you know analogous to the general will, and the

particular self-interest which Kant's castigates as you know as pathological. So therefore, you know, just as the Jacobins, you know, simply execute any kind of particular inclination which resists the satisfaction of the general will, so the moral law requires the complete, the extirpation particular, or any particular pathological inclination which impedes the realization of narrative. This is the link that Hegel is making here.

And the final paragraph 591 is simply kind of elaborating on this point why he thinks that the factionality, the abstract conception of the general will, or the abstract conception of universality, generates division within itself, it generates factionality. Because it's incapable of properly mediating the individual and the universal, it means that any attempt to realize the universal will always pits one individual against another

individual or groups of individuals against other groups of individuals, which is the hallmark as he sees it of an abstract revolutionary militancy. This is why he writes, you know, the government is itself nothing else but a self-established focus or the individuality the universal will but the government which wills and executes its will from a single point at the same time wills and executes a specific order and action on the one hand it excludes all other individuals from its acts and on the other hand it thereby constitutes itself a government that is a specific will and so and so stands opposed to the universal will consequently it is absolutely impossible for it to exhibit itself as anything else and what is called

government is merely the victorious faction and in the very fact of its being a faction lies a direct necessity of its own and it's being government makes it conversely into a faction and so guilty so what he's saying here is that this logic the logic of abstracts of the abstract realization of freedom creates this inevitable antagonism where each individual who lays claim to the authority of the general will

immediately finds him or herself contradicted by another and therefore the result is you can only the authority of government becomes dictatorial because you have to assume absolute authority in order to be able to realize carry out the requirements of the general will but in in assuming absolute authority or dictatorial authority you immediately you know inculpate yourself as an oppressor or as trying to assume the absolute authority of the monarch.

So this is the kind of the vicious logic which vitiates this abstract conception of freedom. okay so now okay we've gotten to this stage here now so why is this relevant to what Hegel is going to say about absolute knowing because Hegel does think that you know the French Revolution is this it's an assertion of the freedom of self-consciousness and it's it's an assertion which realizes that self-consciousness must be self

determining it cannot accept any external authority any supernatural or divine authority for you know that would impede the realization of its freedom so he thinks that this is a the entirely positive and necessary achievements of revolutionary consciousness but he thinks it's you know it's still and complete because it hasn't properly reconciled it hasn't reconciled the universal in the particular but also it hasn't reconciled the two aspects of

of self-consciousness. A self-consciousness which sees its freedom, its cognitive independence as lying entirely within itself, sees itself as being able to, in a way, to reshape the world in its own image. This is the abstract subjectivism, I guess, of Kant's critical philosophy. I mean, Kant sees, Hegel sees a critical philosophy as a kind of, you know, as a kind of a cosmological analog of revolutionary Jacobism.

But it still leaves... it has an abstract conception of heteronomy, because it can only conceive of heteronomy, which is to say dependence upon another in terms of something that is absolutely transcendent. In other words, some kind of divine or supernatural transcendence. And this is why, in a way, even jaccommonism is interestingly accompanied by a form of deism.

It's not atheistic. It simply sees the general will as ultimately, you know, kind of consonant with the will of a divine creator, but a divine creator who's no longer a kind of simply a prime mover or a kind of a philosophical deity as opposed to a deity, you know, the Abrahamic God, the God of reason as opposed to the God of revelation. and

what's missing and so what Hegel's going to say is that in a way this what religion has the resources to achieve what revolutionary reason lacks which is to say the kind of the the the achievement of a communal self-consciousness in which universality and particularity are reconciled albeit imperfectly and what he's what he's going to say in his transition to absolute knowing is that there is what is religious consciousness is the consciousness of infinity of infinity understood qualitatively as

opposed to kind of merely the potential infinity of an interminable sequence and he says that this is what is most important about religious consciousness the religious consciousness is you know and we structured around the experience of a radical alternative a radical independence which is you know the the the independence of qualitative infinity. But this experience, because this infinity refuses to be rationalized, because consciousness,

in a way, refuses to recognize it has itself generated, this infinity, This is a concept of infinity which is incompatible with the satisfaction of freedom, with the imperative for self-consciousness to achieve freedom, its own rational freedom. On the other hand, the obverse of this is the purely rational understanding of freedom, which doesn't acknowledge the role played by the community.

okay doesn't you know doesn't understand the role played by the community in the realization of freedom and therefore ends up with a one-sided you know assertion of freedom and of rational self-determination at the expense of all particular inclination which it views as as pathological or as deviant so what he's saying is that the task now is going to be to bring these two forms these two the form and content of self-consciousness of self-conscious experience and self-consciousness is self-experience

together and this is what he thinks happens in absolute knowing To understand absolute, we must reiterate Hegel's definition he gave right at the very beginning of what he calls the absolute. He said, in a preface he writes, the true is the whole, but the true must be grasped as subject as well as substance. So in other words, here's a kind of Hegel's most schematic characterization of the absolute in Hegel, is that it's the becoming substance, the becoming subject of substance.

And remember, this was very important because Hegel refuses, he says, So the mistake of dogmatic metaphysicians is to appeal to a kind of direct apprehension, an immediate apprehension of the absolute or an intuition of the absolute, which unwittingly substantializes it. So what Hegel is doing, I want to suggest, is that he's desubstantializing the absolute. The becoming subject of substance is the desubstantialization of the absolute in a way which allows us to rethink substance,

which is to say being, as occurrence or as the occurrentness of time. But this is very abstract yet, and we can't quite understand what this means. To start understanding what this means, we have to see how the three moments of objectivity, at the end of his chapter, in his account of absolute knowing, Hegel reiterates what he takes to be the three stages of cognitive objectivity. the immediate being for self for sense certainty the determinate thing for perception and the universal essence for the understanding and here's this is in

789 he's this is a paragraph 789 from absolute knowing thus the object is in part immediate being or in general a thing corresponding to immediate consciousness imparts anothering of itself its relationship or being for another and being for itself i.e. determinateness corresponding to perception and in part essence or in the form of a universal corresponding to the understanding so what he's saying is that the notion of substance and remember substance i think here is just another word for objectivity is has three aspects it has the aspect of the immediate being the immediate being

apprehended in sensation the the determinants the thing in its property the determination of an object with properties which is you know apprehended in perception or the object of perception and finally the the universality which is grasped through the understanding okay and these are the three and what he was that these this is the the concept you know that a proper kind of conceptual understanding of the

notion of objectivity requires understanding the interdependence of these three moments now so the question that we know that Hegel wants to move beyond the understanding so we've got we've had consciousness okay apprehends the object as an immediate being as a determinate thing or as a universal essence so self-consciousness in a way has to apprehend objectivity beyond these the determinations of consciousness but it still has to apprehend this objectivity without in a conceptually because self-consciousness is intrinsically notional or conceptual so therefore it's

it must achieve a conception of objectivity that integrates that retains all these these moments of objectivity for consciousness but in a way goes goes beyond them and goes beyond them specifically in understanding the universe the universality of the thing or the universality of objectivity as not simply entirely independently of it in other words so long as one remains at the level of metaphysics

substance has universal determinations but these universal determinations are fixed and immutable if one goes to the level of the Kantian critique of metaphysics one understands the universal determinations of objectivity as residing in the subject all these conceptual determinations are subjective and they are not they don't you know they're not characters of things in themselves so now that the task is going to be to have a notion of objectivity that is neither you know static that is neither essentialist in a

metaphysical sense nor subjectivist in a transcendental sense challenge and this is why and to do this we need to kind of go beyond we need to integrate the experience of infinity which is the hallmark of religious consciousness so this is why this diversion through religious experience is necessary for Hegel reason must think objectivity beyond the reified universal of the understanding without seeding transcendence or religious intuition in other words to say that there is that there is transcendence okay so it's a way of saying that there is transcendence

because universals are not universal determinations are not fixed and static but the transcendence is neither divine it's neither kind of anchored in a divine substance nor is it the transcendence of the unknowable thing in itself which can't be conceptually determined at all so this is how hegel is going to try to bring together subject and object he must find a way of giving rational form to the religious apprehension of infinity and this is so in paragraph 794 he says what's been going on in the phenomenology is that there are these two series. On the one hand, you've got self-consciousness affirming its own sovereign independence,

either affirming its own independence one-sidedly, which is a kind of subjectivism, or abnegating its own independence one-sidedly and granting independence and sovereignty to the object, which is to say to the supernatural or the divine. And both, so, absolute knowing involves superseding the one-sided assertion of independence abnegation of independence. In other words, reason and religion. And he writes, so this is the next sentence in bold here.

The unification of the two sides has not yet been exhibited. It is this that closes the series of the shapes of spirit. For in it, spirit attains to a knowledge of itself, not only as it is in itself, absolute content, nor only as it is for itself as a form devoid of content or as the aspect of self-consciousness but as it is both in essence and in actuality or in and for itself. So what I think Hegel is saying here is that what spirit is in itself is intimated in religious experience. Spirit is infinity. It's actual infinity. Religion has an intimation of this infinity but it refuses to give it conceptual determination.

It refuses to bestow conceptual form upon it and therefore to shape it and to grasp it. So that's infinity in itself. But otherwise, self-consciousness can only affirm its own sovereign independence in a way which is devoid of content, okay? Which is devoid of content, and this is, as in mind here, is Kantian subjectivism. So the point is to bring these two things together, to bring essence and actuality together so that self-consciousness can achieve,

you know, can realize its freedom and independence both in and for itself. And this is what is said in the next chapter. Now I'm going to move, okay, we're running out of time, so I'm going to move very fast now in order to leave enough room for discussion. So, but this next sentence in bold is important. So the movement is from the consciousness of infinity in itself, a religious consciousness, to self-consciousness, to the self-consciousness of infinity in and for itself, or spirit. And Hegel writes, For experience is just this, that the content, which is spirit,

is in itself substance, and therefore an object of consciousness. But this substance, which is spirit, is the process in which spirit becomes what it is in itself. this process of reflecting itself into itself that it is in itself truly spirit it is in itself the movement which is cognition the transforming of that in itself into that which is for itself of substance into subject of the object of consciousness into an object of self consciousness I into an object that is just as much superseded or into the notion next quotation in bold I think is very significant Hegel writes insofar as

spirit is necessarily this eminent differentiation its intuitive whole appears over against its simple self-consciousness and since then the former is what is differentiated all is what is differentiated it is differentiated into its intuitive pure notion into time and into the content or into the in itself so okay no so the consummation of the self-consciousness of spirits requires

understanding exactly how spirit has been knowing itself and all through these stages we know self-consciousness has been you know generating its own its own object its own other in many different ways, but now has acquired the resources to actually conceptualize its own self-relation explicitly, to realize it now understands that the other which it took to be independent is in fact another manifestation of itself,

therefore that it can only achieve its freedom and autonomy not only by recognizing by recognizing how the autonomy that the independence of the object or the independence of substantial reality I what is in itself can only be achieved through the mediation of spirits as collective self-consciousness. So in other words, the relationship to objectivity is mediated by intersubjectivity, by the relationship

amongst a community of self-consciousnesses. So that what is in itself, which is what is absolute in a substantial sense, is necessarily mediated by the work of mutual recognition, the mutual recognition amongst a community of self-consciousness. And this would be, this is spirit, but now spirit which has grasped that what substance, it is itself substance, and that

the substance in its independence, in its substantial independence, happens, okay, is effectuated in and through subjective self-consciousness. This final, so here's a final quote. So this is a claim now. The movement is from the subjective representation of substance, i.e. from the representation of substance as something that exists, you know, out there independently of anything we think or believe about it, to a notion of substance as reflecting itself into itself as subjects.

So in other words, the subject now understands itself as the self-reflection of substance. And here's one final passage from the Absolute Knowing chapter. This is paragraph 803. Substance, just by itself, would be intuition devoid of content, or the intuition of a content which has determinants would be only accidental and would lack necessity. Substance would pass for the absolute only insofar as it was thought or intuited as absolute unity, and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside of it into reflection, and reflection does not pertain to substance, because substance would not be subject, would not be grasped as reflecting on itself and reflecting itself into itself

would not be grasped as spirit. This whole, this is a reference to Kant. Kant, in a way, overcomes, supersedes the metaphysical conception of substance through his resort to forms of intuition. And space and time is forms of intuition. It's an intuition devoid of content. so that in other words that what is non-concept show you know independent of the concept is the spatial temporal manifold which in a way has no no has no intrinsic necessity within its conceptual necessity is superimposed or

or allegedly superimposed, depending on your reading of Kant, onto this spatiotemporal manifold. So all the content of substance falls outside of substance into reflection. It's transcendental reflection in a way that determines how substance can be objectively determined. transcendental reflection explains how substance can be objectively determined but in itself it is it's it's void of determination itself is void of determination and so so what hegel is saying is that only by grasping substance

as subjects or by grasping the subject as substances reflection into itself can we understand how substance is self-determining how substance is self-determining but only through its subjectivation only through its emergence as its subject okay finally I'm gonna wrap up so what what is there's a look obviously there's a this is there's a lot going on here there's a lot that needs to be unpacked but I think that this final account I mean Hegel's claim that substance is must be conceived as reflecting itself into itself as subject

is you know really completely shouldn't really philosophical insights which I think through which Hegel is trying to kind of think, you know, prefigure a revolution in philosophy analogous, so kind of the French Revolution, which which means no going beyond the the whole metaphysical understanding of substance but also going beyond both the Cartesian and the Kantian conceptions of

of subjects subjectivity and I think would the end result of this is I think that it's a mistake to think that absolute absolute knowing is not the substantial the absolute substantialization of knowledge in the sense in which it would be a kind of the apprehension of an infinite catalog of of facts or some kind of the you know the iteration of an infinite series of judgments or assertions so in a way absolute knowledge is not knowing everything where everything is seen is understood as the totality of facts okay rather i think that absolute knowing and he

uses the word absolute knowing or absolute knowledge absolute knowing means there is nothing that can't be known. There's nothing that is unknowable. That's the first thing. It doesn't mean that knowing consummates itself. You know, some kind of completely self-actualized substance. It's not about the substantialization of knowledge. On the contrary, it's about its radical desubstantialization in a way which unbinds knowledge from the constraints of a metaphysical

conception of objectivity. So, and I think that what Hegel is saying is that we have to understand, to understand the absolute not only as substance but as subject, and and not where the becoming subject of the absolute can be understood as some kind of, as the actualization of a potency, as it would be in Aristotelian terms, is to understand the absolute as what happens, as the absolute as an occurrence. The absolute is what happens, it's what occurs. And I think that what Hegel is doing is that he's desubstantializing time. In other words, he's saying that with the advent of modernity, we have a completely new experience of time.

Time no longer as the unfolding of a sequence. Time is no longer kind of simply the kind of, you know, the circular motion, the repetition of a cycle. But nor is it simply a linear trajectory from beginning to end, as it would be perhaps like on the, I guess, a kind of an eschatological or theological conception. These are substantializations of time. What Hegel is saying now is that what is absolute is time as an absolute occurrence, as a break in self-consciousness.

and so that the self-consciousness of time, of the occurrence of time, is also the self-consciousness as contradiction or as rupture. So the whole then, when Hegel's, you know, the whole is not a completed actuality, a consummated potency, completeness. And, you know, a current incompleteness, which means understanding what Hegel's calls contemporaneity, our own time or the present, actually the Benjaminian term now time is perhaps more apt, as a split between what has been and what will be. Time is nothing between future and past, but a split which can't be simply understood once again as a

between two separately existing terms the absolute is the current actuality of substance substance time and actuality here is vertical kite and this means you know reality but also effectivity of effectuation and this is the it's this effectuation that I think is the contemporaneity or them you know the the contemporaneity that philosophy must strive to comprehend so long as substance is represented the or she you know the no substance will be understood

in term as conceptless and this is space and time understood as forms of intuition as juxtaposed to the concept of conceptual determination on the substance is represented conceptual necessity remains extrinsic to substantial determination in other words once again conceptual necessity is superimposed upon you know an intuitive spatial temporal manifold which in you know which in itself is devoid of determination and hegel is saying that we We must think, by thinking substance as subject, we can think of conceptual determination as intrinsic to objectivity.

And finally, self-reflecting substance, this claim that the absolute is self-reflecting substance, means that the subjects which is conceptual self self-relation is you know the iteration of you know the the the occurrence of what Hegel calls you know the absolute essence in division as division this is in the opening passage so this means that the actuality of the absolute is substance becoming subject as a temporal break or a rupture we have to think of the the absolute as the occurrence of time where the occurrence of time is no longer thought as is to

be thought as precisely as a kind of as a radical discontinuity that kind of a break or incision into the continuity into any kind of substantial continuity and absolute knowing is the effectuation of the structure so that what Hegel calls absolute knowing you know the becoming subject of substance is precisely it's thinking it's thinking the presence you know what is happening now as a radical break as a session as a radical discontinuity okay I'm gonna stop now because I've gone on for a long time and I know there's a lot of questions here so go through okay okay sure okay

Mine is actually the first question. Okay. It's still having difficulty grappling with this idea of freedom, version of freedom that is the mover of sorts of its own procreation or contingent existence. Is this not the role of the master over the object for itself? well freedom in a way all know what Hegel has been saying is first of all that

freedom cannot be achieved freedom can only be achieved in and through motion or the concept but also only in and through spirits which is to say that freedom is either collective or not at all very simple so the master is unfree the master thinks he's free but in fact you know he's unfree because his self assertion of sovereignty is actually conditioned by the labor of the bondsman or the slave so in other words what he's saying is that there's a freedom is not

simply the absence of determination but nor is it self-determination if the self is substantialized if the self is understood as somehow subsisting independently of any religion because you know the self is actually constituted by its relationship to another and another self-conscious not just another self-conscious but a community of self-consciousness is that means that it cannot, it doesn't understand its own freedom so long as it

doesn't understand how its independence, the achievement of its independence is necessarily you know mediated by upon the independence of others. Independence, any Any individual independence depends upon the independence of others. So... From... just to hop in and add to that, then determining what qualifies as a subject becomes a crucial problem.

Or no? or not because there's a subject yes I mean our self-conscious subject and for he go well for he go the whole point is that you know we both abstractment decarce and and can't have incomplete understandings of subjectivity he thinks that's an interesting thing he actually doesn't use the word subject very often in the text, the kind of the main sections of the phenomenology. He uses it in the preface and introduction, but most of the time he's talking about consciousness or self-consciousness. And in a way, what he means by, in a way, it's, or you only get, you know,

the term subject appears at the very beginning of the book and at the very end of the book, because he thinks that the, you know, to understand what a subject is, you have to understand you have to understand what self-relating negativity is or you have to understand what it means for substance to be reflected into itself because that's what the subject is and anything short of that is not a subject in any kind of proper sense he thinks so once again so he you know so the subject is precisely not you know a pre you know an individual it's not the kind of the subjects of you know individual consciousness nor is it an aggregates

is it the sum of an aggregates of these individual consciousnesses yet nor is it some kind of entirely this anonymous invariant which isn't cats you know the eye or he or she read the thing that thinks and in a way the king you know the what he's doing is that he's he's showing how transcendental subjects can only be understood as through the kind of collective self-consciousness which he thinks is what spirit is.

so spirits is subject but spirit is nothing but the reflection into self of of substance and if you go back to and to understand this you have to go back again to what you know that passage from the force and understanding we're talking about the absolute essence so the absolute this is kind of absolutely this is what the absolute is for Hegel this kind of in division as in division of division and indivision you know contradiction and he thinks that this is what if you

this is why you can't in a way you can't really understand subjectivity without understanding this substances reflection into self through contradiction and that means that the subject is neither but I mean that the subject is neither their individual nor is it an abstract universal and but it's it this doesn't you know he doesn't end up in a kind of historicism it's not like it's not as if there being these different kind of the subject isn't just this you know

the you know whatever kind of historical self-consciousness human beings have have enjoyed and this is very important I mean history Hegel here is not time is irreducible to history this is what he's saying what is history history is merely a catalogue of recorded facts so in a way any appeal to history is going to be is you know appealing to history is no more nor less than appealing to geology or biology or anthropology what he wants to say is that you know it's given that all these species

of knowledge depend upon a kind of you know what he calls a spiritual self-consciousness they you can't understand the history of spirits or the history of subjectivity of any series of facts any any series of historiographical facts appeals to kind of and so this is why he's saying that we don't know history is unknown so that time what has happened is not yet determined because the consciousness you know self-consciousness

is entails you know in a way a relationship asserting a relationship to the past and the future which will determine what has happened this is why you know every kind of self-consciousness you know self-conscious is an attempt to think what has happened but what has happened you know it is not objectively fixed at the level of empirical facts what has happened in a way still up for grabs and this is a benjaminian you know most if this is Rebecca Rebecca come a has this very benjaminian reading but I think this is I think this is a kind of a positive fruitful way to make sense

thing about the link between subjectivity and time there's a link between subjectivity and time where to be a subject is to be is a sub you know subjectivity at a time of temporal self-consciousness or historical self-consciousness but in a sense where history is understood as the interval between you know the past and the future and an interval who's you know these kind of parameters can simply stipulated by appealing to historiography. So I mean this is what he says, like, you know, it's a more radical claim than any kind of

historicism which says that, you know, what it means to be a subject depends upon, you know, your kind of socio-historical kind of circumstances. He's saying that in a way, what it is to be a subject is to experience time in a certain way, but to experience time in a way which is irreducible to chronology, to any chronology, whether that chronology is cosmological, biological, or even historiographical. I think Hunter is the next question.

Okay. Hunter, do you want to go? Yeah, let me see. Yes, my big question is why absolute knowing would ever know itself any less than absolutely, or how the unfolding of human history needs to happen at all? Okay. Hunter, you're still muted right now. We still can't hear you. Your mic might not be working, but if you type in the sidebar, I can speak for you. Sorry.

Not sure. or maybe oh can you speak one more time nope okay maybe um you can type in the sidebar and we can move on to a different question for now okay um so kevin had a question he's he's watching the video on YouTube right now. And his question is, what is the negative's relation to time? And what is the negative's relation to the whole or the absolute? Okay, well, there is a relationship

between time and negativity. And it's, you know, in a way, you know, when Kant says that time is formless or formlessness as such. so time is precisely what resists any kind of positive characterization and attempt again in other words time look chances time yields no shape I was subordinated to movement for for Aristotle time is the number of movement with respect to before and after, which is to say that time is merely gauged in terms of physical movement and in fact ultimately it's reducible to actualization, where actualization

is the actualization of a potential, so time merely measures the degrees of actualization. In fact, the term actuality has this Aristotelian provenance. So, once famously, as Deleuze says, with Kant, time is no longer freed from its subordination to movement. So time is no longer the number, a measure of movement. And in fact, we have to think of time as somehow the condition for movement. Time is this independent dimension within which all movements occurs. So time has a kind of link to negativity because it's difficult to give it a positive conceptual characterization

once you decouple it from substantial movement. and I think in a way that also time being this thing which is always you know as Augustine already said that even it's you can't even decompose time into presence time has no substance okay time is you know paradigmatically linked to the negation of substance because substance is what is actual or self present or self identical albeit to a relative degree whereas time is what is

never self present or self identical and you put however hard you try to you cannot grasp time in terms of of any kind of substance so in a way so I think So this is, I guess, the most fundamental sense in which time is linked to negativity, because it is not. It has no being. It's a negation of being. You can try to kind of recuperate time within being through the notion of becoming, but once again we're becoming is the way in which you know the sensible

participates in the intelligible and becoming is understood as actualization and actualize it in the logic of actualization is exchange of countries and but no with I guess with I guess was modernity with the soft go modernity time is decoupled from from substance so no the challenge is to kind of is to think it's you know and to think it's you know independently of substance you know no longer to subordinated to substance as traditionally conceived so

So I guess, so time is also, I mean, here's the other link to time. There's a link between time and contradiction, because how do you avoid contradiction? You can say, well, nothing can be simultaneously P and not P. So long as there's an interval of time, contradiction is avoided. You know, if A is P, you know, at T1, and then not P at T2, there's no contradiction. Okay, so you can always kind of stave off contradiction by appealing to time,

but only by appealing to an interval of time. The problem would be, well, how do you define the character of this interval in and of itself? And of course, you can't. It's measured in relationship to something else. Every interval of time is measured chronometrically in some way. and in itself then time once time is decoupled from measure then time becomes that which is essentially contradictory because time is that which is as in mctaggart's famous argument for

the non-existence of time is because in order to you can't time doesn't any attempt to understand time involves you know determinations which are either which are incompatible with self-identity or self-presence so any attempt to understand the difference between the past the present and the future involves trying to understand this difference independently of the identity of a present because you can't fix the identity of the present independently of the past or the future

but you can't fix those identities independently of the identity of the present and and the problem is that time has no identity time is the negation of identity So I think that's the link between time and negativity. So shall I address Hunter's question? Hunter, we might be able to hear you now too. Can you hear me? Perfect. Great. So I'll just read what I just wrote before. so yeah in the final two paragraphs of absolute knowing 805 through 807 he does talk a lot about

the catalog of historical knowledge and the unfolding of history and you know generations knowing about previous generations and you know turning actuality into knowledge and So, well, that seems to go against the reading. You're sort of distilling the sort of absolute, the break, the discontinuity. So what are your comments on those past few, last few paragraphs, but also specifically how, like, I don't see how the unfolding of history as this kind of increase of knowledge

or self-knowing is entailed by his concept of the absolute. Like why, you know, he seems to really want to say that the absolute, you know, didn't know itself very well before and now like knows itself really well because of Hegel. And, you know, how, yeah, like how why would there ever be less than absolute absolute knowing okay yes okay very good question so he writes in you know I think the final paragraph he's a way it's you know he talks about the becoming of spirits and then you know

In a way, he's prefiguring his kind of system, his philosophy of nature, nature being understood as a kind of self-externalization of the concept. And he talks about the becoming of... You know, the becoming of... Nature is a living immediate becoming of spirits. but it's this becoming another site which is history history is a conscious self-mediating process he says spirits emptied out into time this externalization this can also says equally an externalization of itself a negative is the negative of itself this becoming president

as a slow-moving succession of spirits a gallery of images each of which endowed with all the riches of spirit moves this moves us slowly just because a self has to penetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance consistent perfectly knowing what it is in knowing its substance this knowing is its withdrawal into itself in which it abandoned its outward existence and gives its existential shape over to recollection now these okay always say you know what I've been in my interpretation okay is dubitable and you know questionable but I think that the issue is this is that when Hegel talks about history and when he talks about this kind

of this you know he uses the word recollection so you know spirit achieved self-consciousness in a by recollecting its previous stages or moments. But the claim is like, when does this recollection happen? in you know it happens in absolute spirits but is absolute spirits early the you know the culminating point of a process of a series which terminates

with absolute spirits if it does an absolute spirit is substance of the traditional sense because nothing it's the end of this movement okay you've got the self externalization then the return into self but the return into self is definitive read what Hegel says about the absolute notion it's because it's contradictory it's it has no kind of stability okay it has no kind of equilibrium, okay, there is no, it can't remain within itself, okay, it's always divided against itself, so I think, you know, one can understand this claim about, you know, absolute spirit as a

kind of historical self-consciousness, yes, but history now is understood from the vantage point of the present. And this doesn't go against... So in other words, what counts as history, how we understand the historical events that led up to us, that led up to our particular self-consciousness, is something we do from our present vantage point. But it seems to me that it's not necessary to interpret this as Hegel saying there is this absolute historical sequence out there. This historical sequence constitutes a kind of a, you know,

spirit historical substance. As if then, and this is a traditional metaphysical reading, where you say each, you know, spirit has to go, no, sorry, the absolute has to go through these stages, okay? each stage is imperfect but eventually it culminates in absolute spirit absolute spirit because absolute spirit is actual it can only be actual absolute spirit is now here and now okay but then you you know but then and this would be the end of that's the that's a very kind of that was a very prevalent reading um but it's also the reading that people thought was absurd and that made Hegel sound completely ridiculous.

I think the better or a more plausible reading of this is that, yes, of course, self-consciousness in the present is historical necessarily because modernity is the sense of history as a structure of occurrence, a structure of occurrence which has generated what is happening now, but this generation need not be understood as an ineluctable historical sequence. Whether or not you're willing to substantialize history and say that the absolute, you know, it actualizes itself in and through history, where history is the medium for self-actualization

of the absolute. And if Hegel was saying this, all his precautions against hasty substantializations or preemptive substantializations would count for naught. I think if one, you know, given the epistemic challenges he set himself at the beginning, you know, clearly historical knowledge, you know, is every bit as conditioned by, is every bit as dependent upon specific conceptual resources

as any other kind of empirical knowledge. This is why there is no such thing as absolute historical knowledge. There can't be such a thing as absolute history, which is not the same as saying that the absolute occurs as history. If you can understand the absolute occurring as history, without subs with processing once you eat history is eventful history is a vent look currents and not simply this substantial medium within which all these events are contained and serially connected to one another and so on and so yes no I I realize that this is a

Okay, and then the... So knowledge of historical stages is important for our, you know, our contemporary, for our self-consciousness now. Our consciousness, you know, now, in this present, for our actual self-consciousness. but of course this this you know this historical knowledge is like our physical knowledge or biological knowledge or political knowledge it is itself not not absolute remember the distinction of an absolute knowing and absolute knowledge absolute knowing means the ability for knowing to be self-determining and you know self-effectuating but it doesn't mean

knowing everything there is to know believing that you know there's nothing else to know that you've achieved definitive and satisfactory knowledge of every fact about the world like the de-substantial I Oh, I'm hearing... hold on. The desubstantializing of history, then it's like retroactively positing the whole of history. It's not like the absolute is what really generated the whole of history. It's like the starting point is the present, basically. And yeah, I guess I kind of understand that.

So that the consciousness of history is internal to self-consciousness in the present. So that spirit is essentially historical because as self-conscious it cannot but be conscious of everything that preceded it. but its self-consciousness of its own historicity, you know, of what came before it, is imminent to it, you know, is part of its own kind of internal structure. Then you also have a question here about knowing, yes, the, what is it about absolute knowing that requires that it knows itself less than absolutely?

Well, in a way, again, like it's... Okay. I mean, maybe they're understood in a way, because it's not like there was a time when it knew itself less exactly. Yes. It's that this is the concept now, and so the previous stages are retroactively directed, basically. Yes, and it's not as if you could somehow stand outside of history. I mean, this is, I think, the absurd traditional interpretation. Hegel is saying, now that history has not completed, I can stand back, I can look at the entire sequence of history and kind of measure the degrees of proximity to the absolute. And now we have absolute knowing, and it's me, and it's my philosophy,

and everything else was just leading up to this. That's, I mean, lots of people have thought that's what Hegel was saying. but I mean I think Hegel is too intelligent to have said something so I mean it's not the problem is not that it's an arrogant claim I mean Hegel's was nothing if not arrogance the problem is that it's it's kind of conceptually incoherent I think given his own you know kind of commitments given his own philosophical commitments there can be an absoluteness to knowing to knowing which doesn't mean that it's again it which doesn't require us to understand this knowing as the kind of the encapsulation of the totality of

facts or the totality of truths under okay yes the increase the the radical breaks Hegel articulate seemed seem to consolidate together as a sort of increase. Okay, so now this is the question about, there is a progress. Here, in Hegel's account, there is a progress. And the phenomenology is an account of cognitive process, of coming to self-consciousness. But again, the question is, is this progress internal to the phenomenon? Because remember, the phenomenology culminates in Hegel's own philosophical self-consciousness of the present of modernity, of this break inaugurated by the French Revolution.

And the logic, the necessity that is at work, he says, is operating behind the back of the shapes of consciousness that he is studying. He's saying it's in itself for us, for we, the phonological observers. So once again, what he's saying is that now we can see how the otherwise contingent series of shapes of consciousness can be understood in terms of the unfolding of a kind of necessity, the accumulation of determinate negations.

But again, what Hegel says about necessity, what is necessity is retroactively constituted. You understand how what happened was necessary for you to be conscious of the present and the way in which you are now. But this necessity is precisely what you need to construct now. And what you're not doing is kind of, is reifying it and saying that this necessity is somehow, once again, you can't substantialize it and say that this necessity, that the sequence has a necessity independently of my current self-consciousness. And I think Hegel is very clear about that. He's saying that the necessity,

a necessity because the necessity is not simply understood as the actualization of a possibility. He's not saying that this had to happen, you know, this always had to happen in the way in which it did, because if you did that, that understanding you'd be talking about a a kind of substantial becoming. We're talking about substantial becoming. Whereas he's saying that this notional becoming is necessary in and for the notion,

in and for the self-understanding of the notion. Now, what complicates this, of course, is his philosophy of nature. So the claim, the interpret, you know, I mean, the biggest obstacle for the interpretation I'm giving, or for the non-metaphysical interpretation, is Hegel's philosophy of nature, where he does seem to be saying that nature, that there is a necessity, you know, conceptual necessity operative in nature, which leads ineluctably to the development of human self-consciousness. And not just human self-consciousness, but ultimately European German self-consciousness. So I think the philosophy of nature is the biggest, is the, yeah, problem to this kind of, you know,

allegedly non-metaphysical reading, but then people have made attempts and, you know, Terry Pinkard has tried to kind of come up with an account of Hegel's philosophy of nature. But it's true that there Hegel does talk about necessity and he talks about conceptual necessity, you know, in nature, and that's a problem for my reading or for my attempt, you know, for this kind of the attempted interpretation here. But I think in the phenomenology, it's possible to avoid that, to say that the necessity, he's not talking about historical necessity in a metaphysical sense. And I think that's, I think that the evidence for that

is pretty substantial. Okay. So, Aaron, your question is next. I'll repaste the first one if you want. Sure, you want me to read it out or is it fine? Can you say it, Frank? I think, yes, so it's, is the subject's understanding of itself as self-reflection of substance comparable at all to the fusing of Wilfrid-Seller's manifest in scientific images, i.e. can it be understood as a task of understanding how the empirical world of physics I advise the conceptual normativity of language spirits. I mean, can it be understood that the difference of knowing something to be true makes in the world? Yes, I mean, obviously, that's one way. I mean, I think, yes, there's a...

It's certainly comparable. It's more explicit in Hegel. I mean there's a there's a Hegelian moments in Sellers and I think when he talks about the using the images on you know reconciling kind of you know efficient causation you know physical causation with normative necessity yes he's definitely trying to bring them to achieve the kind of reconciliation that Hegel is yes and it's you know the difference understood is the difference of knowing something to be true makes in the world that's her cognitive

self-consciousness somehow contributes to the realization of the world or contributes to the kind of nature's self-effectuation you have to be very careful here because it can contribute in a kind of if it's contributing in a you know teleological if there's a perfect continuity a teleological continuity from the you know from the kinds of them that unfold in nature to the kinds of becomings that unfold in cognition then that this is metaphysical in an objectionable sense

in a sense which is I think anti-modern because you know the you know the in a way the kind of the the erosion of the centrality of necessity is part of the destitution the critical destitution of metaphysics metaphysics is all about necessary connections seeing that the world can be known because there are nest you know the mind is a faithful mirror of nature and the necessary connections and thought mirror the necessary connections and things that's metaphysics we now know you know through a whole we now know that there are no you know empirical science has gradually corroded or you know faith in necessary

connections in things okay so that so necessity was relegated to the mind or to the subject. And also in Hegel are trying to find ways to kind of, you know, to understand, to reconcile normative or conceptual necessity with natural contingency, without regressing to a kind of a metaphysical, you know, a traditional metaphysical position, which always requires the appeal to a divine you know a divine a preordained correspondence between the natural order and the conceptual order once you if you relinquish this

correspondence or this pre-established harmony you have to find another way of reconciling necessity and contingency Actually, you know, Hegel arguably goes further along this, you know, in terms of I think, you know, he goes further along this way than Sellers does. Maybe Sellers remains too Kantian, because in Sellers the fusing image remains something like a kind of an ideal or an infinite task. Whereas Hegel insists that it can be that the fusion is actual but not definitive.

I mean, I think the challenge in Hegel is to understand how absoluteness can be, how absoluteness is compatible with alterity. okay with alternative or with something can be absolute without being yes that's I think that's the kind of the part of the challenge of understanding Hegel so I think and I actually think that you know sellers in you know is it midway between Kant and Hegel so I think they're definitely a Galian insights in in cellars, but the fusing, you know, the stereoscopic fusion remains, you know,

well in a way it's because of like, perhaps I think because he was frightened or he feared a kind of the excesses of what he took to be a kind of, you know, dogmatic Hegelianism, in a way he shot, you know, he wanted to, you know, not simply say that the kind of the the fusion could be effect you know could be effectuated but if it's not effectuated it remains something like a regulative ideal and well you know Hegel's got a critique of that of the whole idea of infinite task. And let me ask the other part of your question. What is the original German

for absolute knowing? So a Christian question, I mean, so that became clear, it's das absolute wissen, yeah? Wissen, yes, it's wissen, yes. But so in Terry Pinkert's translation, and I kind of, at least with my German knowledge, agree with this. This can't really be translated as knowing and Pinkert doesn't use absolute knowing at all. Only absolute knowledge shows up in Pinkert and Yeah, I have a hard time also I've seen Eric Cannon as out of cognition of knowing in a lot of places I've never seen this and as knowing and so I guess I wanted you to talk more about Then what sort of are these two separate terms in German and Hegel that I'm missing somehow that absolute knowing and absolute knowledge

Or are they the same German term that are being translated in two separate ways in English? And this is more of a sort of exegetical necessity that we need to understand this concept in two different ways to understand the distinction between absolute knowing and knowledge. But that in the German is the same term. Yes, and the Miller is the other book I have. yes I mean I think it's the there is a distinction between a canon you know and this and and but I think you know I think the distinction I'm trying to make is in a way I think that Finley's translation is fortuitous even if it's you know in

exact because it allows you know it allows us invites us to make a conceptual distinction and Miller it is absolutely knowing knowledge and law she's a not a canon is in canon is acquaintance at canon is cognition and you know I need to think more about why he uses the word visna as opposed to erkennen. I think maybe to mark a distinction between the three stages.

I guess, acquaintance, cognition, and knowledge as kind of these three stages. So I think using the term vissen, you know, for, you know, in the final, in the kind of the final stage, I guess would perhaps, yeah, allow him to mark that this is the kind of the ultimate stage. but regardless I mean whatever term he's used I still think I mean I struggled for a long, I mean in a way this is the biggest obstacle to kind of understanding

Hegel is that what on earth would absolute knowledge be what on earth would absolute knowledge be would it mean knowing knowing everything there is to know knowing everything there is to know in a way which is incorrigible and infallible that's which is to say having divine knowledge, knowing what God knows that's obviously the traditional interpretation which invites derision well there's another Mika suggested wouldn't it just be as a security of knowledge

well yes but the security of knowledge is already available with consciousness and self-consciousness I mean knowledge has a kind of knowledge has a kind of reliability without long before you get to the stage of absolute knowledge. In other words, you can simply arbitrarily, you know, Hegel's critiques of skepticism means that, you know, you can have, you can vanquish skepticism, you know, without the resort to absolute knowledge. I mean, I think Hadell's argument against skepticism works independently of his account of absolute knowledge.

So in other words, it doesn't seem that absolute knowledge is required to stave off radical skepticism. And the whole image of the self-moving substance is an image of God too, no? Well, look, is God the absolute essence? Here's the question. Is God the absolute essence? In that passage I quote, this is when Hegel talks about the universal blood, the absolute essence of everything. Is that God? It doesn't sound much like God, or at least you could call it God if you want to,

but it's not sure what kind of you'd be gaining by calling it God. you know it certainly has very little to do with any kind of traditional metaphysical characterizations of God so although I think absolute knowledge is is absolute the question is what does the word absolute mean and I think the problem is understanding the relationship between the absolute and the whole. And Hegel says the true is the whole. And people identify the absolute with the whole, where the whole is understood as this definitively actualized,

you know, the whole is what encompasses everything. Everything is a part of the whole. but the whole would be this actually existing totality but then if it's an actually existing totality animated by what Hegel calls the absolute essence which is contradiction then how does it secure its perpetuity you know how does it's in other words I think that there is a Hegel clearly believes that in the idea of an infinite totality of an infinite whole that's what the absolute is it's an you know the notion it's an infinite whole an infinite whole has

parts but it's not clear that well I mean you know I think the you know the key Slovenian claim is that an infinite totality is precisely something that can't be bounded it's unbounded and therefore it doesn't have a kind of it doesn't have the kind of it will never reach the point of homeostatic equilibrium that the traditional notion of whole implies

and again the metaphysical reading says yes the absolute is the reconciliation of every contradiction therefore the absolute is definitive you know it can't be um you know absolute knowing is just a kind of the the recollection of the the self-differentiation of you know the absolute in and through speculative thinking but there's nothing more you know this is different there's nothing more to think nothing more to be discovered. So Ray, I just want to give you a time check. I don't want to go over what you're able to.

We're at Proff40 right now. Okay, well, I'll try to address the next questions. So yes, I mean, look, I think about Hegel's actuality. In a way, clearly, every philosopher has, you know, thinks partly there's a tension between their insights. In Hegel, it may be that there are kind of these theological residues in Hegel, though perhaps they're not as virulent as has sometimes been claimed. And it's true that he often says lots of things that invite this kind of traditional reading.

But the traditional reading is precisely what makes Hegel anachronistic. And he makes Hegel completely anachronistic. All this stuff about reconciliation and the end of history. and the idea that rational self-consciousness culminates in the Prussian state. Hegel has been ridiculed for all these claims. So I'm not saying that he doesn't say things which are ridiculous, but maybe he's ridiculous in a more interesting way. And this interpretation of him is, I think, reductive. It's not that he doesn't say things that invite this interpretation,

but he also says things that are very, very much more intriguing and surprising. And he says a lot of them. Okay? I mean, there is ample evidence for the kind of, you know, for the non-metaphysical reading. So the question is whether... And it seems, you know, in this remarkable claim that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought, means that philosophy is conditioned by time where time is precisely not simple kind of is not chrono is not chronology or historiography then that means that there's always going to be something new to think and then the question is is

you know this hegel give us some of the resources we need to think well not just to think what is happening now but to think of happening as such the reactivation of hegel can't just be taking hegelian categories and transplanting them into the into the present that would be kind of that would be a way dogmatic hegelianism it's the claim that what hegel allows you to understand is the structure of happening or of occurrence as such and because he's a thinker of contradiction he's a thinker of antagonism you're really you know unparalleled thinker of antagonism and this is in a way his most vital and

you know still yeah still kind of current contribution so yes so that's what you know that's what kind of animates this this kind of this reading which you know I admit is you know you know has to you know there are lots of difficult questions it has to answer but it's really you know and but the readings proposed by Komei and then and you know Zizek and Dolar are really kind of I think that this is a they're in line with this kind of

interpretation and in fact you know clearly this is you know huge X been saying stuff like this for a long time there's another question here Evan do you want to speak so there's a mark about Fred Beiser absolute idealism for Hegel so says Beiser entails rational intelligibility monistic holism and vitalistic self-movement yeah Beiser is you know an excellent historian but his I mean he's basically given you the kind of the metaphysical Hegel this is just a traditional Hegel and that's fine but that's

exactly the reading I'm you know oh you know all the authors that we're considering are kind of you know or most if not all are challenging this reading so this is just a traditional reading okay I think you can decouple the claim about rational intelligibility from the monistic holism and vitalistic self movement and actually Bizer's readings a curious one well maybe it's not so curious maybe he just really hates Pippin's reading because in a way like it's happens reading is you know which is quite old now was dedicated to saying that this is exactly what I'm not to understand he go so yeah I think that much as I admire by his work I think okay go I don't find them very me it's

just the traditional reading he's giving you basically I don't have a question you know he doesn't use a Schillingian unbedding unconditioned do you think the term absolute and Hegel is comparable yes I mean yes it is and the distinction between unconditioned and absolute is kind of intriguing I think unconditioned or you know unthinged is it sometimes been trans I think you know that I guess it's a kind of a I think it's it's a it's a it's a it's a more attractive word than absolute because absolute suggests this huge monolithic thing okay

whereas I think to deat you know to kind of to de-substantialize the absolute is to precisely not to understand as a thing and not even a process because you know it's when people say oh the absolute is a process in you know in movement yeah but a process is still a thing however internally differentiated it is next question is by Ivan yes I've been I'm having trouble understanding if self-consciousness equals substance as subjects and time has no substance per Augustine yet

subjects achieved its self-consciousness through recollection of itself in time how is this possible without some kind of substance within temporality which could Well, I think I'm going to answer in a similar way to the way in which I answered Hunter. I think you also was kind of asking a version of this question. In other words, yes, what is the subject or what is self-consciousness doing when it's recollecting? When it's, you know, what is, how are we to understand historical self-consciousness? well because the

clearly the distinction between you know past and future is constitutive of consciousness and this is part of Augustine's whole account if consciousness is also kind of structured around the difference between what has been and what is not yet what is no longer and what is not yet then this is this is the kind of the experience of the passing of time which resists kind of

reduction to chronology so hegel would just be saying that's self-conscious any moments any kind of realization of self-consciousness will be structured around the difference between what is what is no longer and what is not yet the past and the future but this doesn't so because he's not know obviously this is not the past no can't be interiorized to as if consciousness was a substance though so the question is really like if I'm if I'm denying that history has a substance

I'm and I just relativizing it to consciousness and saying that it's entirely subjective so that its self-consciousness gets to decide what has happened gets to kind of gets to adjudicate you know the difference between future but at the stage and I think the response to this is at the stage when Hegel what has happened with absolute knowing is that the distinction between has been overcome. The distinction between thought and being has been overcome. So in a way, there's no longer... so the distinction

between what is merely internal to self-consciousness and what is external to self-consciousness is also overcome. What he's saying is that, you know, that the difference between you know what is no longer and what is not yet is constitutive of self-consciousness but in a way which isn't simply kind of which in a way which can simply be subjectivized or understood as in a completely subjectivistic register. So self-consciousness, in a way, so that it's

internal, so you know, in a way self-consciousness has a memory, you know, it has a kind of, it's engaging, it's recollecting its previous moments, but this is a conceptual recollection. It's an act of conceptual construction and therefore it's an act of conceptual construction which is adjudicating happened what has happened to lead you know to to lead up to it you know to make it be having the experiences that it's having now so I think that we don't have to substantial eyes temporality either objectively either kind of by saying that history is this kind of you know

absolute medium nor saying that self everything is simply unfolding internally to self-consciousness because it's because the distinction between the you know interiority and exteriority has been superseded I'm sorry I just need to plug in my computer I'll be right back no problem or and we're 10 to 1 right now so we've already gone 20 minutes over maybe I didn't want to pick up more time piling on another question but I just point for you. But you know, I totally understand it. So much to think over from the lecture.

Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, I just have to plug this in. Yes. Okay, sorry. So yeah, I don't know if that's... Yeah. So it's recollecting itself. Right. Right. But, you know, look, it's a question of what is time? Is time a form of interiority, which it is in Augustine and Kant, or is it a form of exteriority, which it is, you know, in metaphysical tradition? but then the problem is what kind of exteriority is it? What is time? And I'm not saying that Hegel has a definitive answer,

but I think he offers an answer which overcomes this distinction between interiority and exteriority. Which is the conceptual... Sorry, I didn't mean to... Yes. The conceptual... So I don't use it that the conceptual or sort of discursive or normative structure of how you structure those recollections within subjectivity yes yes because you're going to there's two aspects to this is that one is that you're going to you know there's a kind of there's a recollection the

sense of that you know again what is you know what would be recollection for a collective self-consciousness and obviously that's disputing what has happened and what hasn't happened is is disputed that's also something over which you know there is our contradictions you know think of the debates about genocides or think about debates about imperialism. You know, history is nothing if not fraught with disputes over what happened. So what Hegel is saying is that these disputes can only be conceptually adjudicated. We need to have, we need conceptual resources to be able to make sense about what has happened.

any assertion or denial about what has happened actually adjudicated so we have to kind of and conceptual self-consciousness is necessary in order for us to make sense of doesn't simply mean trying to achieve consensus but actually understanding what the fundamental contradiction and French Revolution is a great example because and even for Hegel it's a completely divisive event it's an event which is either the opening of a new era of which must be affirmed and you know and for which we must you know you know and

to be facilitated or it's a disaster it's a kind of an absolute disaster and we must prevent it from ever happening again. So I think with Hegel, you know, recollection is not simply, you know, remembering what has been as if what has been is can be kind of, you know, uncontroversially adjudicated. There's a there's a fundamental kind of, you know, division or there are going to be kind of radical disagreements about what what has happened constitutive of it seems to me of spirits because the idea of a spirits that's you know the idea of a

spirit that has achieved that is in perfect kind of harmonious self agreement about what has happened you know that would mean that would be a spirit that is no longer riven by contradiction or division and you know again that's a common interpretation of what Hegel means by the end of history and this I think this goes against the kind of this what he says about you know the absolute essence as contradiction the absolute essence everything that is is contradictory so therefore how can contradiction be definitively reconciled earlier I asked would it be fair to say that the

present the rupture between the past and the future could be characterized as negation of a negation of a negation if the past and the future don't have that substance yes and in fact he does I mean I didn't Hegel does have a philosophy of time and his philosophy of nature he begins by talking about the difference between space and time he talks about I mean let me see if I can find it yes his definition of time yes it's in 257 of so you know section one of his philosophy of nature mechanics

so sir time okay here's the definition of time no time negativity as point relates itself to space in which it develops its determinations as line and plane but in the sphere of self externality negativity is equally for itself and so and source determinations these are posited in the sphere of self-externality and negativity and so doing appears as indifferent to the inert side-by-sideness of space negativity thus posited for itself is time time is negativity posited for itself okay here's no another time as the

negative unity of self externality it's similarly and out an abstract ideal being it is that being which as much as it is is not and in as much as it is not is it is becoming directly intuited this means that differences which admittedly are purely momentary directly self-stablishing are determined as external, i.e. as external to themselves. So he gives, I mean, he explains, he defines time in this section of discussion of physics. So he links space and time. But in a way what I think he's saying is that time is, in a way, is kind of the most entry form of this

contradictoriness it's the most schematic his account it seems like the most schematic presentation of what he says about the absolute essence because time is contradictory time is negativity for itself but it's not yet negativity in and for itself and i think self-consciousness is negativity in and for itself which is why self-consciousness it seems it seems to me is structured by as an intimate relationship with time it's also temporal consciousness did you just say that time is negativity in itself and self-consciousness is activity in and for itself no he says it's the for

itself or it says negativity thus positive for itself is time negativity for it okay that's great thank you very much okay then there's So Hunter has another remark. It most seems to me like Emerson's self-reliance is a meaningful comparison. We start with the present and its concerns and recast history according to the needs of present contradiction and hopes. Yes, I mean...

Yeah, basically, yes. I think this is a very appropriate comparison. I guess, I mean, all I'm trying to suggest is that Hegel, I think that Hegel is a thinker of discontinuity. he just think you know he's rather he wants to think the continuous sorry the coincidence of continuity and discontinuity and in that sense he wants to think how any relationship to we can only relate to the past through a sense

of any continuity with the past must be an assertion of discontinuity to say we must also be conscious of everything that separates us in the past but this is a condition of understanding or linked to it and I think that and this is this would be modern self-conscious as opposed to thinking that there's an unbroken or a seamless continuity where the present is only ever a continuation of the past okay it's so we're yeah do you would you like to say which sections will be

reading for next week and then yes actually yes just let me double check I I hope we can look at the like the logic I know and I know we're kind of behind um is this week four or four are we already is this week four this is um the fifth week actually we're already in week five yes okay we're even further behind uh than I thought um look um If you want, I'm happy. I mean, originally, yes, I had planned to look at, you know, the openings, you know, extracts from the Logic.

And I was going to go immediately to the secondary stuff. And I think it was, well, it's already week five. It was going to be, I think, Kome and Dolar. Random. science or spirit of trust? Yes, the end of the spirit of trust. Okay, if we do that, then the problem is that we can't... I wanted to, you know, if we do Brandon, Kome and Dolor and Zizek, that's three sessions. If we do the logic, we'd have to add a kind of

a ninth session which I'm willing give up you know one of the secondary readings and I'm really don't mind which I mean whatever you know I'm much more interested in hearing what you have to say about the logic I like I'm really I'm really loving hearing you personally talk about Hegel. And so I'd be okay with missing one of the ones about secondary literature. Okay. Well, that's okay. Then the logic, yeah, fine. Then let's do...

Hey, Ray, did you see what I said? It was a suggestion. Because it's widely said that the reflection part of the logic is the most compacted figures in the dialectical process, I was suggesting maybe we do the reflection part of the logic. Okay. And we get the point compressed form. I mean, I agree. I completely agree. And it would actually be continuous with today's discussion as opposed to focusing on the opening. So I'm happy to do the logic of essence. And I think, I'm just trying to find the original syllabus I had because I do have a version of the syllabus with it an extract from the

Logic of Essence I can pull it up and then share it on my screen right now okay okay one sec Okay, well, Luke, if we're doing the doctrine of essence, then it's... I think it's page... All right, so here's what I have as the... Yep, go on. Here's what I have as the syllabus up here.

and you can click on my window down at the bottom it doesn't have the essence so this was just the introduction it's the essence so okay let's do essence the page references for essence I have a PDF of Pinkard's no the Giovanni translation of the science of logic which is the most recent one so the doctrine of essence is 337 I think we should do up to well we should

begin with becoming of essence so we should read from pages from page 326 the Giovanni translation of science of logic to are you we is this posted on the classroom this reading syllabus I guess we should go to contradiction but that's enough it's a quite a lot of reading. When I mentioned it, I was just referring to exclusive... We could do more, but like even just the reflection, it gets the figures of, you know, presupposition

and external reflection and determinant reflection, which I think captures the key parts of it very well well that would take us up to 353 so that's yeah so that's pages it's all just like a a repetition of that you know rakey Reveal that one, Michael. So, okay, let's then say 326, pages 326 to 353 in the Giovanni translation. And I actually have, I'll send a PDF, because I think I have a PDF of it.

Okay. Okay, so we'll do that. And then, I guess after that, we'll decide which of the secondary stuff people would like to actually do, basically. super um if you yeah if you send me the pdf i can post it in the classroom okay okay okay great okay um so yeah there's no class next week because i'm traveling again so the next class will be on the um two weeks time which i think is the um the 27th correct of november 27th of november yeah Everyone heard that?

27th is the next class. And Ray, are you going to post the Science of Logic stuff? ASAP? I'm just curious. Yes, I'll send it tonight. Yeah, I'll send it tonight. So that way you can... I'll post it as soon as you send it. Okay, thank you. Okay, okay. Great, thanks, Ray. Great, thanks. Okay, thanks. and so we'll see you in two weeks time. Sounds good. Have a good night. Good night.