Hegel

Of all the philosophers we have ‘seen’ so far, it wouldn’t be a bald statement to say that Georg Hegel is by far the most complex one to understand…after reading some of his work such as Phänomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of the Spirit) I can only wonder if he understood himself.

I don’t disregard any of the work I have read, I admit I find it extremely interesting and intriguing… however while going through every sentence I feel like my mind is being twisted by force by a huge hand of alternative interpretation and my own lack of understanding…. Basically, ‘I know what he is saying but I don’t know what he is trying to say’ When I actually do understand what he is trying to say, I start to think if my own interpretation makes sense of his ideas, proves them right or wrong or figure something out to contribute to his perspectives. Sometimes I fail miserably.

The language is very interesting, as with many other philosophers in our encounters we can see certain langue that is common among the ‘philosophical vocabulary’ but not among ours. I wonder what some other colleagues in the seminars think of the idea of ‘consciousness’ of ‘self-evidence’ ‘pure-thought’ ‘empirical analysis’ etc. I wonder how one can achieve any contemplative understanding of the concepts we see, without having a certain reference to the language. Of which I am sure it some of us are absolutely alien to.

Let’s look at some of his main ideas;

The principal concepts evolve around the consciousness and the awareness, examining with a pure eyes, or a look of purity to see reality. (This is already quite a complex matter and it’s only the preface)

The ideas of pure thought, clarity of vision, transparency are commonly sought among many of the philosophers we have studied, and more contemporary thinkers too. This Hegelian pursuit is not very different of that of the current Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso who often speaks of clarity of vision and eyes unclouded, where one philosopher would say ignorance, another would say confusion, in the Dalai Lama’s case is hatred but the point remains.

I agree with Hegel when he criticises René Descartes and his ideas of knowledge before establishing how it is he knows anything. Hegel takes us back to more Greek ideas such as the awareness that we do not know anything for sure (Socrates) but with more elaborate metaphysics and perhaps a language that is more understandable even if he remains misunderstood, it is better not to be understood than understood and regarded as lunatic like Aristotle or perhaps even Plato.

So Hegel’s phenomenology (deriving from the Greek phenom, to appear, to occur) contradicts the Cartesian understanding which he considers it to be illogical due to the impossibility of an infinite regress. The idea explains that we can’t know without first knowing the ‘Absolute’ the entire universal scheme that explains it all. You can’t know how an entire apple looks like if you have only seen half-eaten apples, therefore you can only aware of what you’re looking for but you don’t know how it looks like or what is because you haven’t experienced it, which inherently is self-contradictory because if you don’t know how the entire apple looks like or what it is how can you be sure that it exists? Or how will you know when you’ve found it? This contradiction is what Hegel was so fond of and tried to explain beyond the realm of logics and sought in the realm of antagonists (which our beloved Bertrand Russell despises so much), metaphysics. 

He tries to explain this paradox through the division of consciousness, which is quite interesting and confusing at the same time. The energy of consciousness is the key to the contradiction between knowledge and the idea of knowledge because it allows one to be aware, without before knowing what the absolute is, to seek the absolute, almost like inherent blueprints of the house we have to build and how it looks like.

The idea of consciousness in this form goes against the principal idea of the ‘origin of ideas’ by John Locke such as Tabula Rasa which claims that we are born pure, without any conditions in mind, without any previous ideas other than those we develop ourselves. Hegel says that the condition we are born with is the consciousness, the guide to the Absolute.

All I can contribute to this idea is that we can only elaborate more ideas which we cannot claim are truthful, simply theories based on other ideas and other theories that seem ‘logical’ thus pursuit this idea with contempt. Observation without interpretation is also a key pursuit in this dilemma that goes beyond Hegel, Kant, Locke or Descartes.

But what contribution can I make to any of Hegel’s ideas?

….

There are those who contribute by simply attacking the superficiality and differences of the text itself such as the 20th Century thinking Walter Kaufmann who said

“Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking at the table of contents is a very decided preference for triadic arrangements. ... But these many triads are not presented or deduced by Hegel as so many theses, antitheses, and syntheses. It is not by means of any dialectic of that sort that his thought moves up the ladder to absolute knowledge.”

But I beg to differ, I am sure there is some sort of valuable knowledge that we can obtain from the introspective look of Hegel’s work.

A quick but interesting reference to Hegel can be found in Chris Horie's video. Here's the link:

The Social Contract

The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is an interesting piece of mid-18th century ‘progressive-politics’ work. As a politics student I find in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s texts intriguing amount of information (subject of the following analysis) which is quite enjoyable.
We have to see Rousseau as an architect, as well as other 18th century philosophers and those previous to him he envisioned a certain protocol of government to people’s doctrine in his own fashion that will fulfil man’s needs at best. The Social Contract is the blueprint of this vision.

It has mild controversy, and very little of it can be linked to Rousseau’s thinking without linking it to the time and place he belonged to. This will come later.
The fundamental ideas are quite cohesive, after all he is seeking a ‘political right’ and as such it is only normal that from ideas like his sprung new ideas that helped flourish the French Revolution and the American Revolution… with some discrepancies of course.

First, it is important to identify that Rousseau creates a division in man himself. The division between the individual and the group he belongs to, the people, the ‘sovereign’. An idea similar to that of Karl Marx in a near century in regards to the ‘bourgeoisie’ and the ‘proletariat’ however, within man, this means in private one behaves and express his ideas in a certain way but when one identifies himself as one more person in a governed society then his self-portrait is communal (another idea of identification later developed by Karl Marx). There is the ‘me’ in myself and ‘me’ in my country. There is a behaviour focused on servitude for the greater good and a mental behaviour that must be kept intimate and distant to others.

Rousseau was loyal to the idea of the people being governed through the consent of the population and not by force, particularly by aristocracy or a monarchy which relays in a more stable and traditional hegemony unlike nowadays with fluctuating candidacies every 4 years etc. It may seem less democratic but more stable. This idea was clearly not taken in consideration by the fathers of the United States of America.

The social contract involves discipline of acceptance, tolerance and cooperation. People accept the responsibility of the government in protecting them thus the submission into the rights they swore not to break, a very legitimate, righteous and sustainable form of regime however Rousseau believed in capital punishment given the case where one person breaks this sacred covenant.
I reason this idea with no incredulous beliefs towards Rousseau because I know like everyone else we have studied that he is a victim of his own time and condition thus capital punishment was standardised, however there are more resolute and dignifying ways of ‘re adaptation’ into society instead of such harsh punishment that one can not revoke.

Here is where I differ with Rousseau and quite frankly with our own social contract too, where we punish wrong doers and exclude them from our society in jail for the rest of their life time (if not kill them depending in which country or state within the country they have been prosecuted). What we must understand is that this form of legal punishment doesn’t develop a person’s understanding, doesn’t re insert them adequately into our society or helps them interact with us again in a healthy way; it excludes them, confines them and resents them. Apart from the fact that we might also kill an innocent person.

However this is Scandinavia’s work to do (given their superiority in human rights) and not diseased mid-18th century Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I find quite satisfactory and idealistically inspiring those concepts where he claims that the government is as strong as the people, where one part of the government should be ruled by the whole people… it really does create a unified self-esteem of its own, the morality of the PEOPLE.

The specific political clauses are not extremely relevant but there are interesting points of view that we can apply today. This social contract raises questions regarding how the government conditions us, his most famous quote “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” opens a notorious debate regarding the society one is born into.
We didn’t choose any of the laws we live in, we vote but we don’t choose anything… most of the most important decisions that are made every day have no link to us other than the social, financial or religious repercussions our governments decides to channel through us.

Man’s conditioning, nonetheless is experienced way beyond the political into the natural where we find ourselves born into chains not of bureaucracy but genetics, social class, financial situation, etc. and thus we can only reflect such paradigm into our society and its system. We were born with chains of many kinds.
If we look at India’s casting system, and the principles of the Code of Manu we can see how the chains man is born into are of a political essence that sprung five thousand years ago and only remnants of genetic material have notion of. As well as those they commonly share in the society they live in.

Regardless of how truthful Rousseau’s interpretation of man’s political antithesis of tabula rasa may be, our conditions go much further than those imposed by the government we may have accepted, for they are vessels of the same essence as us.

A Modest Proposal - Dr. Jonathan Swift

This post will examine the main concept of the essay by Dr. Jonathan Swift: A modest Proposal and indulge to skip details of whether he was being sincere or not about his points of view or if this modest proposal was the consequence of too much whisky and an empty stomach. The essence of this text is what turns a modest proposal into a philosophical proposal.
Jonathan Swift tries to tackle poverty and famine in 18th century Ireland by suggesting that the families should eat their children, specifically (if possible) infant babies of approx. 1 year old.
There is no need to go into more detail than this, whatever other information provided such as the way to cook children or what time of the year they will be at the prime of their taste is irrelevant to me; what I consider interesting is the mere proposal...
I try to see this as rational as possible, I try to get rid of the emotional and ethical attachment and try to create from this 'outraging' or 'ridiculous' text something that I can investigate with philosophical theories and possible outcomes. A journalistic interpretation. Nothing else.
If we spoke of Human Rights, this would be considered cannibalism, a moral obscenity that jeopardises the institution of 'family' and degrades (Irish) society into an animalistic and uncivilized barbaric pseudo-culture. However, the laws of nature beg to differ, the only preserving human instinct is survival: the attachment to life, geographical and intellectual expansion and procreation. We indulge ourselves to be men of principles because we assume that our lives are not in jeopardy, once our only true possession (life) is under threat we do anything to hold it with us, ANYTHING and anybody who interposes Morality before life is an idiot.
We look at Lions for instance, dominant species of the Sabanna; When the mother Lion has more cubs that she can bare to take care she eats the weakest ones, those that would not survive the winter or shortage of food for several days, she makes the decision of selecting an amount that she knows she can take care of and from that number pick the strongest cubs, the weaker ones die and with the energy she obtains by eating the weaker cubs she is able to protect and feed the living cubs more efficiently. This instinctive choice is made in order to survive.
Jonathan Swift's idea does not deviate very far from the very concept I just illustrated.
If we step aside from the controversy, the sarcastic and dark sense of humour and the ridiculous 'bonus' to eating children (turning their skin into gloves for the ladies) we can recognise a possible solution to starvation.
Once again, our moral values are not something we are born with, the seeking of values is. I have witnessed 'cannibalism' myself. In India I saw a 'saddhu' religious aesthetic eat a dead man's flesh while he was being incinerated; grotesque as this may sound the 'saddhu' was performing a religious ritual, something that was asked by the loving family members of the diseased one.
In 1986 (I believe) A group of Argentinean athlete's plane crashed in The Andes, a mountain range with a very hostile weather, they had no food and they were starving to death, they survived by eating the corpses of their dead friends and colleagues.
Some of my fellow seminar mates said that this was just a joke by Swift, that he was not being serious, how could he be? - Personally, I don't care. Not to disrespect their opinion but simply it makes no difference whether he was joking or not, he stated a clear point, and if it wasn’t because of people’s moral fibre, this would be an absolute remedy.
A Journalist is not a moral guide, an ethical instructor of the masses nor should he aspire to be. Simply narrates facts interpreted by his own conditioning.
If we become dis- attached from this conditioning (emotions, moral values, insecurities, confusion, doubt) and we are able to observe, we can find clarity.
The Irish people had been presented with an offer to solve their huge famine and starvation problem, whatever they decided to do it was their choice and hopefully most of them found a way out of their terrible condition without having to eat one of their family members, but if the time came when they were about to starve to death, let me tell you that it was not because of a lack of choices, but because of a lack of rationality. Your attachment to morality can never be stronger than your attachment to life, since morality is your interpretation of how a righteous life should be and what’s a righteous life without life? An illusion.

Needless to say I enjoy controversy.

Seminar Paper

Seminar paper: David Hume –
An enquiry concerning human understanding
Different ideas:
1st Section:
Different parts of philosophy

• The division between two different types of philosophy or philosophical points of view: 1) Studies the experience and analyses various objects, taking in consideration its structure, colour and the light which is presented under and try to interpret them in a way that is different to the usual and common understanding. 2) The second type of philosophy deals with the behaviour and the reasoning of man, whereas the 1st group look at the actions of man and try to reason upon them, the 2nd group questions the behaviour and reasoning that will lead to the action. They look at ‘the foundation of morals’
• David Hume seems to be more inclined to belong to the 2nd group and hopes to achieve an appeal to the wise and the knowledgeable alike.
• He speaks of hidden truth, a possible interpretation of an experience that has not yet been approached.
• He describes one type of philosophy being able to bring man into perfection, (supposedly a man of unbreakable moral values and philosophically aware) and there are other philosophers that are affected by their emotions becoming an obstacle to their understanding.
• David Hume believes in mistakes being able to become lessons so long as we are able to understand it. He is intrigued by popular contradiction and feels the need to investigate an alternative point of view to the ‘common’ ideas.
• He distinguishes two aspects of man, where one is reasonable and can become aware of science and help him grow intellectually but also he can be distracted and kept busy by the common lifestyle, occupied by social life and labour. This can be solved when science becomes your passion, if science becomes your social life and your labour you can become a man of balance.
• He doesn’t entirely reject metaphysics and believes there can be reasonable ideas deriving from it.
• Metaphysics is easy and not explanatory enough so it can never be used as an exact science or way of knowing.
• David Hume believes that Metaphysics cannot serve a good purpose to science due to its ambiguity, abstractness and shapeless form therefore it serves a greater purpose in art.
• The true pleasures of life can only be felt through science and education. David Hume strongly believes in being able to enjoy life through science.
• Metaphysics is a dangerous belief because it can lead to things that are unreal and one can become curious by these false creations of the mind. Metaphysics is ‘deceitful philosophy.’
• David Hume understands the complexity and power of the mind, as he gives little of explanation to his interpretation of the mind and its power one can acknowledge that he does not speak of things he is not 100% aware of.

General Concepts from this section:
• Division between different ways of philosophy
• Mistakes leading to reasonable conclusion
• Different aspects of man and the equilibrium between mankind through science
• Not entirely rejecting metaphysics but understanding there is no reason within.
• Mind as a complex matter that is yet not fully understood.

2nd section:
Origin of Ideas

• Hume recognises the difference between mind in a moment, and the moment we recall. Memory can never recreate experience.
• He acknowledges what someone may tell you because he recognises the terminology you use aka ‘I’m in love’ but one cannot experience what you do by merely explaining what this experience is.
• Hume divides thoughts and ideas from the way they are expressed. This is a relevant division since often wisdom and information is lost not through the interpretation of mind but through the interpretation which is language.
• He distinguishes the power of mind at the moment of first interpretation.
• What hasn’t been experience simply doesn’t exist. If there was no sense perception involved, it is impossible to corroborate the fact.
• Sense perception leads to the creation of ideas.

General concepts from this section:

• Memory cannot recreate experience only recall a microcosm of it.
• Understanding the terminology implied does not mean being able to experience what’s mentioned.
• First interpretation is the most pure.
• What has not been perceived by any sense simply cannot exist.
• No idea is created without the interpretation of senses.

Seminar questions:

1. To what extent is useful to create a division in the way one understands philosophy? E.g.: Hume’s ideas of philosophy understanding the action of objects and the ideas of understanding behaviour that leads to those actions.
2. Based on our understanding of Hume’s ideas what can be identified as ‘hidden truth’?
3. Does philosophical awareness lead a man to ‘perfection’?
4. To what extent is Hume’s idea of mistakes still allowing us to achieve truth possible?
5. If mind cannot recreate through memory the exact experience then how ‘truthful’ is memory?
6. Can language deteriorate information from the moment it is perceived to the moment it is being spoken about or interpreted?
7. To what extent does the idea of ‘what hasn’t been perceived simply cannot be proven to exist’ logical?

John Locke

Part of our latest task was to analyase and study 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding' By John Locke (1690)

In this essay we find some of Locke's most thorough and complex theories regarding various ways of knowing but also some political ideas like the government's role in society, disputes over property control, rights, revolution, etc.

I will begin by expressing my ideas on what I find easiest to analyse when it comes to Locke, which is his ideas about the government's role in society:

I like how Locke believes that the government should not take a major role in society other than to help solve property disputes. Frankly the idea of arbitrary unbiased third party that helps reconsile land owners with one another and helps them solve their land disputes is very appealing. I think Locke had in mind a much smaller and powerless governmental body than the idea of government we have now, especially when you read his ideas on revolution and that if a government simply doesn't fulfil people's requirements then they can be overthrown.
I'm not exactly sure how he intends to replace the government he dismantles since the government is simply a group of men, selected by the people to represent them, if such elected men are not fit to deal with the tasks required who else can they choose? Perhaps it's not a matter of removing each government we dislike and learning how to choose the right people so there is no need for revolution.
Nevertheless I agree with Locke that revolution is a freedom and governments should fear their people for power lies truly in their hands and not the institution.

Coming back to Philosophy, when I read Locke's concern human understanding I face two problems: My lack of understanding late 17th century writing and philosophical contradiction (sometimes the 1st one needs more thorough reading than the latter one).
Locke believed that our senses were the key to obtaining knowledge, infallible tools given at birth that would suck in information and help us understand. I don't know if John Locke was familiar with interpretation, I really think he was but he often forgot that the essence of interpretation ignores our senses but our senses can't ignore interpretation for they are linked to a mind process of understanding almost immediately after our senses perceive that which is to be perceived.

My point is that we can see the same thing and still interpret different things thus obtaining a different knowledge. I can show somebody a beautiful rose and ask 'how beautiful is this rose sir?' and he may say 'that rose is not beautiful at all, sir' - we are both staring at the same rose but our interpretation is different, so what is the truth here? There is simply no such thing, the rose is what it is, full stop. There is neither beauty nor ugliness within; it's just what it is. That's interpretation. It gets harder than that.

Two men stare at the northern lights, one says: 'The northern lights are incredible!' and the other replies 'I've never seen those, but I tell you what's incredible... seeing god painting the sky! Now that's a wonder' *pointing at the northern lights*
These men stare at the same phenomenon but their interpretation of what it is is completely different. One would be said to have obtained the right knowledge, experiencing the northern lights for the first time, the other who claims to have seen divine intervention... would obviously be incorrect. Ultimately Locke was right, they have both obtained knowledge through their senses, but one of them got the wrong knowledge.

Senses provide us with information, but once we interpret this information we transform that which is, into something else. Locke never speaks of mere observation; therefore I can't find him as wise as some may think he is.

I agree with Locke that knowledge is obtained through experience but to a certain extent because once again, this experience is interpreted and transform into something else by our understanding of this interpretation, Locke also believes that there is a real knowledge behind what we experience, as Plato thought there is a perfect shape somewhere beyond our interpretation and the cave which is our mind and I agree with them.

What I certainly can't agree with Locke is his idea matters of faith going beyond reason and experience, individuals should be guided by their private revelation but these revelations should never be imposed by the church or the state. I would say by anyone, science however disagrees with John Locke and here is where I believe he contradicts himself because there is no knowledge only a belief of knowledge and he who believes in this knowledge knowing that no knowledge is true then simply has faith. If we believe that there is no knowledge only faith of the supposed knowledge then Locke believes that nobody can impose this ideas to anyone, however he does the opposite. Science is not infallible.

Nobody should impose any knowledge to anyone, just simply allow this person to experience and let them discover their own interpretation. Both Science and Religion claim to reveal knowledge but only they reveal a way of knowing, another way to interpret things.

Lastly I'd like to talk about Locke's ideas of liberty and different rights people should have. I agree with him that we should all have rights of liberty, property, expression and life, however the way he exposes them in his essay is too syntagmatic, he listed them with a number of priority and said that men should have them so long as they don't contradict each other. It should be more of a Paradigm where all of our rights are just a group of rights, related to each other by the purpose they have in common but cannot be prioritised one over the other.

John Locke covered many different theories and ideas. His essay concerning human understanding is very long.

I will write another post that furthers this examination of Mr Locke's theories.

...or I could summarise everything with this video.

First Seminar (The Part I didn't Miss)

The seminar just went over in examined detail what we went through when we read chapters 1 to 9 from our Bertrand Russell book. Indeed, I am one of the 25 students that did buy the book and read what was assigned.

Interesting as it may be I'm not a big fan of everything we went through in the seminar or perhaps the way some key figures were approached. I might have misinterpreted the lecturer but Aristotle was very undermined and underrated, we are talking about the genius student of Plato. Guilty of such phrases as "He who has overcome his fears will truly be free" ...something that once was only spoken by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha). Master of the rhetoric and a great role model to myself due to his political inclination "Man is by nature a political animal".

It seems that the lectures take us to the very essence of interpretation itself where the content is not the prime subject but the vessel of the content itself aka The Philosopher in matter.
I feel very inclined towards exposing an alternative to the image that was portrait of him by our lecturers who seem more eager in worshipping the confused and paranoid Rene Descartes who of course was not fond of the great Aristotle either.
On the other hand I find it appealing to hear from those who are here to educate me, ideas that don't correlate with my own, this is an excellent example that the personal quest for truth is but personal and entirely in solitude since even those who are there to guide you must sometimes mislead you.

Nevertheless I am very happy with my first seminar. However I must add that Rene Descartes was just crazy and he came to the same conclusion as Socrates came two millennia before him which is that we simply know nothing, for it was Descartes who believed that as long as a theory can be created to question your idea of truth then you will never know for certain, leading to the conclusion that nothing is certain unless you find no one creative enough to create a theory that will question your truth.
Furthermore his argument towards existing through the thought, which is 'we think therefore we exist' is nothing but superficial and empirically questionable since it is possible to experience through the act of no mind. If we follow the law (which in Journalism has great relevance) that once we experience we will be able to interpret, thus believe we know, proving that we exist.

Correcting Mr Descartes 500 years too late. "We experience, therefore we exist"
Somebody should have introduced him to meditation, the connection between soul, mind and body where mind becomes dormant and the soul can experience on its own.

Redundancy and discovering what was once discovered is something we human beings have been perpetuating through history. The Dark Ages was like pressing the 'reset' button from our historical database and once we reached the 17th century we celebrate Descartes modernity of thought but we forget that once, before our memory was erased there was a greek philosopher that preached the same ideas, perhaps even with more eloquence.

A lesson of Irony, both Socrates and Descartes died because of their beliefs, were Descartes was fond of sleeping and the Queen of Sweden (his boss) was not. Honorable death. Socrates on the other hand decided to accept his punishment by the law and solemnly drunk the poison that killed him minutes after. [The Last Days of Socrates by Plato - Excellent book]

I look forward to the next seminar.



Let the foul language and the cartoons fool you not! There is a lot of important information in this video

Firt Seminar (The Part I Missed)

Sorry as I was for arriving late to the seminar (merely 5 minutes) I was more sorry when I realized I missed my favourite part of philosophy which is anything that has to do with Socrates, father and pioneer of what I interpret as philosophy. Let's just say that in Politics & Global Studies my role model is Nelson Mandela, here I have Socrates.

When I got to class the lecturer was going over Plato, Socrates’ friend and student.
It seems (at least so far) that Socrates is barely mentioned, he did nothing but set an era from presocratic to postsocratic, he is but a mere chronological division in the vast ocean of philosophy, I couldn't disagree more... Socrates is as relevant to History as the supposed birth of Jesuschrist, setting the year 0 thus commencing a new era, the beginning of times. Socrates was not far from this achievement for it was him who came with the ultimate conclusion and most revealing piece of philosophical evidence in history! "All I know is that I know nothing", registered by his fellow student Plato in 'Republic' Socrates contradicts all understanding of philosophy claiming to know nothing.
Knowledge is just a belief, there is nothing that we could know for certain, not even gravity is for certain...every scientific discovery has a percentage of error, everything. All we believe to know is just an interpretation based on different memories that recollect through experience and belief, through empirical and idealist methods produced by our mind through logic and sense perception.

I strongly believe that this blog will not leave the Greek wheel of birth for our quest of truth is nothing but a witch hunt which will lead us to the only inevitable truth which was previously mentioned by Socrates. Nevertheless as a strong empirical believer I will experience this quest myself in order to reassure what I so strongly believe thus removing whatever drop of idealism I have left within me.