Reading Hegel

[Yuppie Grinder]

As soon as I'm done with Grundrisse, I'd like to read Hegel's Logic as well as other things. I've heard he's a terribly difficult writer who assumes his readers are already well versed in philosophy. Do I have to read Kant, Spinoza, or anyone else to make sense of Hegel, or can a careful reader jump head on into Hegel and get just as good of an understanding?

[thethinveil]

It would be good to familiarize yourself with the impact of Hegel's writing not just the precursors. You should look over the left and right hegelians. And other german philosophy to consider is Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzche. I like Marcuse's "Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity" as well as Adorno's Negative Dialectics, the first of which is a nice overview of Hegel and the second of which is an expansion on Hegel's theory of dialectics. Also understand that Hegel was resurrected by Lenin and Lukacs and then by the Frankfurt school.

It wouldn't hurt to read Kant, Hume and Descarte as well but to go after Kant it would require a huge reading in itself.

[Yuppie Grinder]

It would be good to familiarize yourself with the impact of Hegel's writing not just the precursors. You should look over the left and right hegelians. And other german philosophy to consider is Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzche. I like Marcuse's "Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity" as well as Adorno's Negative Dialectics, the first of which is a nice overview of Hegel and the second of which is an expansion on Hegel's theory of dialectics. Also understand that Hegel was resurrected by Lenin and Lukacs and then by the Frankfurt school.

It wouldn't hurt to read Kant, Hume and Descarte as well but to go after Kant it would require a huge reading in itself.

well reading is like one of the three things i do in life so not a problem

[o well this is ok I guess]

It's recommended to read Kant for pretty much any philosopher after Kant. He's not the easiest, but Hegel is pretty impenetrable in comparison soooooooo

[BeingAndGrime]

The Routledge History of Philosophy has a great volume called The Age of German Idealism. I am finding it a great introduction to Hegels thought (a large portion of it is devoted to Kant as well, which I suggest checking out before moving to Hegel). Basically it is divided into sections, each one around 20-30 pages, written by a different philosopher, all at quite a high level. 3 sections are dedicated to Hegel, the first to his phenomenology of spirit, the second to his logic and theory of the mind, and the third to his concept of spirit and politics.

You can find it online. If you need help you can PM me.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

". . . best means for getting a headache!"
- Lenin, making the most lucid analysis of Hegel ever.

Also, Lenin is way better when you quote him out of context nine times out of ten.

[blake 3:17]

". . . best means for getting a headache!"
- Lenin, making the most lucid analysis of Hegel ever.

Also, Lenin is way better when you quote him out of context nine times out of ten.

Isn't he always quoted out of context?

[$lim_$weezy]

Please don't try to read anything by Adorno to make Hegel easier. Adorno is far more confusing and convoluted than Hegel ever was. Not to say he isn't a great thinker.

I would read, definitely, for sure, without question, "The Philosophy of Hegel" by W. T. Stace. If you find Kojeve to be too dense, which he is really pretty dense as well, try Stace. It's easy to read and he goes through EVERY SINGLE DEDUCTION in Hegel's system (except the philosophy of nature).

[thethinveil]

I was thinking of what might enrich your reading of Hegel, when I suggested Adorno. Adorno is pretty hard reading but I think he is even clearer than Hegel, but that is probably just me.

[Thirsty Crow]

As soon as I'm done with Grundrisse, I'd like to read Hegel's Logic as well as other things. I've heard he's a terribly difficult writer who assumes his readers are already well versed in philosophy. Do I have to read Kant, Spinoza, or anyone else to make sense of Hegel, or can a careful reader jump head on into Hegel and get just as good of an understanding?
Do yourself a favour. Forget about it. It's completely useless save for philological reasons and a case of morbid curiosity. And anyway, trying to comprehend Marxt through Hegel is a terrible, terrible idea.

You might profit off of Lucio Colletti's Marxism and Hegel, though.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Do yourself a favour. Forget about it. It's completely useless save for philological reasons and a case of morbid curiosity. And anyway, trying to comprehend Marxt through Hegel is a terrible, terrible idea.

You might profit off of Lucio Colletti's Marxism and Hegel, though.

I'm pretty much a strict materialist and don't buy teleology or the ideal for a minute, but I read all sorts of things I know I won't agree with philosophically. I like having my positions challenged.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm pretty much a strict materialist and don't buy teleology or the ideal for a minute, but I read all sorts of things I know I won't agree with philosophically. I like having my positions challenged.
Then read Popper, or Mannheim, or someone whom you won't have to break your neck while trying to understand :D

That pinnacle of idealism can hardly challenge one's materialist viewpoint since it doesn't even demonstrate its underlying assumptions (all philosophy is idealism - that is self-evident to Hegel, and he merely sets out to work out in full, to the last minute detail, the steps flowing from that; do you think that solypsism is challenging?).

[diagrammatic]

As soon as I'm done with Grundrisse, I'd like to read Hegel's Logic as well as other things. I've heard he's a terribly difficult writer who assumes his readers are already well versed in philosophy. Do I have to read Kant, Spinoza, or anyone else to make sense of Hegel, or can a careful reader jump head on into Hegel and get just as good of an understanding?

I've not made it to Hegel yet, so I honestly have no answer. But I highly recommend Spinoza regardless because he's awesome and will change your life.

[ulysses]

I have heard good things about this Hegel scholar Terry Pinkard, who has written a book called German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Thought it was a pretty good read, starts with Kant, goes through a buncha neo-Kantians (Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, et. al.) then through Hegel, followed by Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. It puts forward a good historical context in which the ideas took shape, looking at the social, political and economic torsions that were taking place in Germany while situating the philosophical systems and ideas within this context. I'd recommend it. He also has done a few works on Hegel, which I have not checked out yet.

I think you should just go for the Hegel first without any help. Maybe reading a bit on Kant (in the book I referenced, which lays down Kant's philosophical project pretty clearly) and then reading Hegel, who was indeed responding to the Kantian problematic of leading a dutiful life as an autonomous self-legislating Subject, but with Hegel, vis-a-vis a contemporary religion as the objective guarantee for Reason. A lot of Hegel's ideas are kinda stolen from other German idealists, i.e. Fichte and Schelling, which he wrote a paper earlier in his life on the comparison of their philosophical systems.

Anyway, have you read Phenomenology of Spirit? I would recommend reading that before getting into his Science of Logic. I personally haven't read the Logic yet, but would be down to do a reading group on it if others are interested.....

[~Spectre]

Hegel is nonsense.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Hegel is nonsense.
Gee, thanks for that useless contribution.

I'm pretty much a strict materialist and don't buy teleology or the ideal for a minute, but I read all sorts of things I know I won't agree with philosophically. I like having my positions challenged.
I used to think that, actually. I would urge you to give teleology another chance. This essay (http://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/downward_spiral_ch06.pdf) may help explain its importance to materialism. I would also recommend to use control-F to find the term so that you won't have to go through the entire paper.

[Philo]

Personally, I'd say Hegel is largely a waste of time. Obscurantist nonsense, and to the extent that Marx borrowed from him (whatever that is, is debatable), it was to his detriment.

That being said, if you absolutely must read Hegel, as some others have said, what he's trying to do makes a lot more sense in the context of the fallout from Kant. Understanding what basic concerns motivated Kant, and what the impact of his ideas were, makes Hegel less impenetrable, because you can kind of see what sorts of concerns he was wrestling with.

Also, Hegel being so impenetrable, again if you must read him, I'd say it's almost mandatory to have secondary sources as companion volumes. Personally I'd recommend Frederick Beiser's introductory work (which I believe is just called Hegel, it's in the Routledge Philosophers series), as well as his book German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801, which is a historical overview of the whole movement and period. In fact, I'd read that first. Beiser is probably the best intellectual historian of German idealism.

Oh, and finally, you might find The Hegel Dictionary by M.J. Inwood helpful. It is a topically-organized "encyclopedia" which has detailed, but not overly-so, entries on either what Hegel thought about a particular topic, particular terms/concepts of his, etc.

So, to summarize, I'd say start by reading Beiser's German Idealism. Then read his Hegel in conjunction with Hegel's work, using the dictionary as a reference when the going gets tough.

Again, if it were up to me, I wouldn't waste time on this wooly-headed mystic and I'd read Frege instead.

[$lim_$weezy]

I find the level of Hegel hate here to be ridiculous, and anti-dialectics to be ridiculous too. The kind of politics you get out of analytic philosophy is nothing like Marxism at all. Where are the radical analytic philosophers? Hegel is definitely worth the time.

[Philo]

I find the level of Hegel hate here to be ridiculous, and anti-dialectics to be ridiculous too. The kind of politics you get out of analytic philosophy is nothing like Marxism at all. Where are the radical analytic philosophers? Hegel is definitely worth the time.

There have been many leftist or left-leaning "analytic" philosophers. First of all, many of the members of the Vienna Circle and the associated Berlin Society, the first real "movement" of analytic philosophy, were socialists and saw their opposition to traditional philosophy, attempt to construct an ideal language, etc. as part of a broader social/cultural struggle. Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap were both socialists. Otto Neurath was a Marxist economist and social theorist, and served as an official in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. The de-politicization of this philosophy occurred when many of the (surviving) members of the Vienna Circle and related groups fled to the US and the UK to escape persecution in their native countries. A cost of this was that they had to basically "keep quiet" about politics, as they were under scrutiny. George Reisch has an excellent book on this called How the Cold War Transformed the Philosophy of Science.

The broadly post-positivist trend that dominates so-called "analytic" philosophy today owes its heritage to the debates within logical empiricism immediately following this migration, though in the United States at any rate it has taken an unfortunately metaphysical turn from the 1970s-1980s on, due in large part to the work of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Even still, some of the most important thinkers in this post-positivist tradition were or are socialists; Donald Davidson comes most prominently to mind. There's also the obvious Noam Chomsky.

There are other strains that make up so-called "analytic" philosophy besides the dominant post-positivist one, as well. American-style pragmatism has produced a notable number of socialists and fostered engagement with socialist or left-leaning thinkers, with Sidney Hook coming most immediately to mind as an actual Marxist, though there is also Cornel West (who is left-leaning, though not a radical by my standards). And of course there was so-called "ordinary language philosophy" in the UK, among whom some of the leading figures were socialists; J.L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle, most prominently. And that's leaving aside Wittgenstein himself (whom I like to distinguish from his OLP "offspring"), who spoke favorably of Lenin's politics, supported the communist student organizations at Cambridge, was friends with prominent socialists (like friggin' Piero Sraffa), and was invited to teach at Kazan University in the USSR, Lenin's old university. That a Cambridge philosopher would be invited to the early USSR speaks volumes.

Furthermore, we Wittgensteinians, who make up the largest faction of the anti-dialectics crowd, are hardly a majority tradition in Anglophone philosophy, we've always been a small minority because we question traditional philosophy itself. So it isn't quite right to identify the anti-dialectics crowd, including myself, with "analytic" philosophy as most Anglophone philosophers understand the term, because we fall decidedly outside the mainstream of what that term means.

I could easily level the criticism at "Hegelian" philosophy that one gets shitty politics out of it, by pointing out that Hegel himself was an apologist for the state, by pointing at the endless parade of authoritarian "dialecticians" (Stalin and his cronies coming foremost in my mind), the politically useless at best Frankfurt School, etc. Now, you might object "but these don't represent all Hegelians!" Perhaps, but then it is just as wrong to lump anti-dialectics with a monolithic "analytic" philosophy.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

To the commentor above, Stalin was actually notorious for being shitty at dialetics. But that isn't the point of this thread.

Hegal once said that "To be a philosopher is to be a Spinozian". So personally I would recommend that you read Spizonova's Ethics since he largely invented the scientific method as it is applied to philosophy. Additionally his secular Pantheism can be seen as a precursor to determinism and materialism.

Also if you are looking at a book on Dialectical Materialism then I'd recommend Mao's work On Contradiction, since it is much better written than most dialectical works.

[Philo]

To the commentor above, Stalin was actually notorious for being shitty at dialetics. But that isn't the point of this thread.

And I think most traditional philosophers are "shitty" inasmuch as they accept traditional philosophy. The point is that I can apply the same types arguments about "horrible politics" to dialectics that were leveled at "analytic" philosophy, so making those criticisms really doesn't show us much beyond the fact that a lot of people have bad politics.


Hegal once said that "To be a philosopher is to be a Spinozian". So personally I would recommend that you read Spizonova's Ethics since he largely invented the scientific method as it is applied to philosophy. Additionally his secular Pantheism can be seen as a precursor to determinism and materialism.

Thanks, but I have read Spinoza's Ethics, I have a copy sitting on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, it's exactly the sort of a priori nonsense that anti-dialectics opposes.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say he "invented the scientific method as it is applied to philosophy." Spinoza's method was arch-rationalist. He was operating in an early Enlightenment context where the paradigm of "certain knowledge" was mathematics, this question of "certain knowledge" being one of the prime concerns after Descartes. So he wanted to apply an analogous "geometrical method" to that employed in Euclid's Elements, making his philosophy appear more rigorous than competitors' (such as Descartes, Gassendi, etc.) according to certain standards of the day. That is, he made his work aesthetically and grammatically resemble early modern mathematics. But there is hardly anything scientific about positing axioms and "deriving" their "consequences" through purely conceptual arguments, particularly when these axioms and related claims make substantive claims about how the world is.*

Inasmuch as there is an inventor of "scientific" methods as applied to philosophy, Hume would be a much better example out of the classic philosophers, as one of his most common forms of argument was to show that we routinely believed things that simply could not be justified by the standards of post-Cartesian (including Spinoza's) philosophy, and that the arguments of such philosophy fall apart under scrutiny anyway. He would then explain our beliefs and practices by turning instead to supposed biological, historical, or psychological facts about humans. Even then, I don't really agree with Hume (another traditional philosopher, in the end), but he's significantly better as an example of philosophers being "scientific" than Spinoza.

As for "determinism" and "materialism," I have no patience for either inasmuch as they are metaphysical theses. With "materialism" I may have to qualify this as I do not accept materialism as an ontological thesis about the "fundamental nature of reality," because I think trying to posit any such theory is already barking up the wrong tree. I'm still absolutely a historical materialist, which is a historiography and method of social analysis.


Also if you are looking at a book on Dialectical Materialism then I'd recommend Mao's work On Contradiction, since it is much better written than most dialectical works.

It's also worse-reasoned than most dialectical works, which is saying something!

Anyway, you may be interested in this (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_all_philosophical_theories_are_non-sensical.htm) if you want an outline of the general contours of the Wittgensteinian position I'm supporting. It's short and free.

*As opposed to the more complicated case of purely formal sciences like mathematics, which Spinoza was trying to resemble. You can get an outline of roughly my understanding of formal sciences here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-mathematics/

[$lim_$weezy]

True, non-continental philosophers may be politically Marxist, I guess that's not my point. My point is more that as a project analytic philosophy (by which I guess I meant any anti-dialectical philosophy I've come across) is not conducive to radicalism, and I guess I don't see how you could get Marxism out of its postulates. Could you recommend me a thoroughly "analytic" or anti-dialectical text that might help? I tried reading some GA Cohen and Robert Brenner, but thought it was pretty bad. In the structure of its categories, to be very broad, it presupposes a stasis. I've read a bit from the anti-dialectics page, and I'd like to have more arguments or debates about it, but maybe here isn't the best place.

Further, I definitely think that Hegel's Logic is an important philosophy text to read, and there are things to be extracted therefrom. "Dialectics" was propagated by Stalin and whomever else, but in the end they also called the USSR a lot of things it wasn't, or praised what it did badly. And once more, I wouldn't consider myself a "Hegelian", really, and there's an interesting counter-Hegelian tendency coming from Althusser and Spinoza, just as an example. So yeah.

Edit: Okay, I'm going to write up my thoughts about the article on your position and post them when I'm done.

[L.A.P.]

Anyway, you may be interested in this (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_all_philosophical_theories_are_non-sensical.htm) if you want an outline of the general contours of the Wittgensteinian position I'm supporting. It's short and free.

Rosa.... :ohmy:

[$lim_$weezy]

I would like to preface my response by saying that I'm not a dogmatic “dialectical materialist”. I don't posit a dialectic of nature, which seems to be what Rosa is critiquing. And as far as I know, no modern dialectical philosophers hold that either, although I can't speak for most people on the Left.

First, the article's position simultaneously upholds logic and its own viewpoint unquestioningly/a priori and denounces every other a priori as illegitimate. It is a typical preference of identity over difference, the problematic "this and no other!". Since the author can't believe her theories are true, what does she believe about them? Convenient fictions to convince others of her viewpoint? And why this logic--why this a priori set of A=A and so on? Are the rules of logic a priori, or are they empirical?

Second, the truth-statuses of M1-type propositions are said to depend only on all or some of three things:
(1) The meaning of the words contained therein
(2) certain definitions
(3) A series of supporting arguments or 'thought experiments'
In contrast, M2-type propositions' truth-statuses are said to depend on their “experimental or factual confirmation”, or on “the way the world happens to be”.

"The way the world happens to be" is exactly what we're trying to decide, so opting into that is problematic. I don't see why there can't be contingent "a priori" truths, in the sense that "a priori" is a problematic concept. Thought doesn't sit still, outside the world and think about it and make propositions that don't affect it. Rather, things I think and don't go "verify" may still refer to the way the world is, outside a narrowly scientific context.

Third, to understand any proposition relies on its truth or falsity, not just M1-type propositions. Only the generic, outside-the-world, "purely logical" self can believe otherwise. It is further clear that this supposition is untrue and also unprovable.

Fourth, basically the only thing that you can point to is science as your model, meaning it becomes a purely utilitarian argument. Without anything you say about this theory being true or false, and furthermore confronting it from a non-dialectical standpoint, how can it ever be convincing? You take anti-dialectics as your framework (yes it's a framework, just like any other, admit it or not) and attempt to refute dialectics from outside (at least in the article).

This is my first stab at it, but I don't feel like I've really expressed myself well enough... there are far more assumptions in the position that I'll keep thinking about.
I hope we can keep this discussion more civil than the tone of these articles.

[Luís Henrique]

There have been many leftist or left-leaning "analytic" philosophers.

But this is because we use outrageously different standards for those people than we use for Marxists. All those guys were "leftists" more or less in the sence that Kautsky or Bernstein were leftists. They certainly had no coherent critique of capitalism, did not understand the ideas of capital or value, and had no scientific theory of exploitation.

All things that would get us all screaming in unison, "reformism! reformism!" if they were the case with Marxists.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Anyway, you may be interested in this (http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_all_philosophical_theories_are_non-sensical.htm) if you want an outline of the general contours of the Wittgensteinian position I'm supporting. It's short and free.

Short, free, sophistic and sophomoric...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

And that's leaving aside Wittgenstein himself (whom I like to distinguish from his OLP "offspring"), who spoke favorably of Lenin's politics, supported the communist student organizations at Cambridge, was friends with prominent socialists (like friggin' Piero Sraffa), and was invited to teach at Kazan University in the USSR, Lenin's old university. That a Cambridge philosopher would be invited to the early USSR speaks volumes.

But it wasn't the "early" USSR. It was 1935 USSR, at the height of Stalinist persecution of communists, and at a time when "Diamat" was the official philosophy of the State.

Now that I think about it, I don't remember Wittgenstein ever making any criticism of "Diamat". Perhaps he wasn't so much anti-dialectical as you fantasise...

... or, more probably, nothing of this "speaks volumes", except to say that Wittgenstein was an odd guy who did odd things more out of psychological unstability than out of politico-philosophical coherence.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

First, the article's position simultaneously upholds logic and its own viewpoint unquestioningly/a priori and denounces every other a priori as illegitimate. It is a typical preference of identity over difference, the problematic "this and no other!". Since the author can't believe her theories are true, what does she believe about them? Convenient fictions to convince others of her viewpoint? And why this logic--why this a priori set of A=A and so on? Are the rules of logic a priori, or are they empirical?

And, if they are empirical, with what mental apparatus do we decipher the empiric evidence? How do we think about the empiric evidence, if what is under scrutiny are exactly the laws of thought?

But, if the rules of logic are a priori - then how are they not the M1 kind of proposition, ie, metaphysic propositions?

The only way out of this conundrum is to declare that they are not propositions at all - but this hardly saves the day, for, even if they are not propositions, propositions can be made about them:

1: The law of non-contradiction is self-evident.

And we are back with the problem of deciding whether 1. is a metaphysical proposition or an empiric one. Further, we can easily see that "empiric propositions" about the rules of logic don't tell us anything about such rules:

2: Aristotle made ample use of the principle of non-contradiction.

It is, unhappily, only the metaphysical propositions, like 1, that actually say anything about such rules.


In contrast, M2-type propositions' truth-statuses are said to depend on their “experimental or factual confirmation”, or on “the way the world happens to be”.

And this is trivialised to the extreme. The archetypal "empiric proposition", "Tony Blair owns a copy of Das Kapital" - from now on referred to as M2 - can be, it is claimed, understood it even though one hasn't a clue whether or not it is true. Indeed, as long as one knows the English language, it is possible to understand it without knowing its truth value. But knowing the English language is far from trivial. One does not know what "own" or "copy" mean, except by knowing, in a looser or firmer way, how those words relate to the whole system of the English language. It implies the knowledge and understanding of ownership relations and of the complex idea of "copy".


Third, to understand any proposition relies on its truth or falsity, not just M1-type propositions. Only the generic, outside-the-world, "purely logical" self can believe otherwise. It is further clear that this supposition is untrue and also unprovable.

It depends, of course, of what we mean by "understand". Concerning M2, we figure that either Mr. Blair has a copy of Das Kapital that belongs to him (ie, it wasn't lent to him by Mr. Cameron, nor it belongs to Mrs. Blair), or that he doesn't. We don't necessarily understand what such ownership entails (for instance, Ms. Lichtenstein makes a great deal of a comment by Marx that he had fortuitously acquired a copy of Hegel's works, as a gift from Freiligrath - which would indicate that Marx was so uninterested in Hegel that he wouldn't even own a copy if not for Freiligrath's kindness).

(And consequently, we see that a very ordinary empiric proposition such as

3: Karl Marx owned a copy of Hegel's works

can be "understood" in several different ways and levels, varying from a simple confirmation that the books were effectively in his shelves to an in-depth discussion of what kind of influence they had in Marx's thought.)

Further, there is a problem with meta-propositions. Consider:

M2': M2 is an empirical proposition.

Is M2' an empirical proposition? If so, what kind of experimental or factual confirmation would show us that it is so? Or what about,

M2'': M2' is an empirical proposition.

Or,

M2''': M2'' is an empirical proposition.

Or M2 followed by n apostrophes, stating that M2 followed by n-1 apostrophes is an empirical proposition?

Luís Henrique

[Rafiq]

Take Hegel with a grain of salt. He's semi-useful but do not identify him with Marxism, know that Marx's theoretical basis was a response to Hegel's logic, not a manifestation of it.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Comrade #138672]

Rosa.... :ohmy:Her critique of Hegel is closely tied with her critique of dialectics. She rejects dialectical materialism as well.

[L.A.P.]

trust me, I know. I argued with her on this forum before she got banned, I was a noob who didn't know of what they were talking about at the time so she handed my ass to me.

[black magick hustla]

Short, free, sophistic and sophomoric...

Luís Henrique

some1 opened your old wounds....

how is it "sophistics"? "sophism" is more or less defined as masking bullshit as something profound with a lot of difficult words. that article is pretty clear...

[Luís Henrique]

how is it "sophistics"? "sophism" is more or less defined as masking bullshit as something profound with a lot of difficult words.

No, it is not. It is defined as an invalid reasoning:


an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid; especially : such an argument used to deceive

Sophisms may very well be phrased in very day-to-day verbiage:


- Is Rex a dog?
- Well, yes, as you can see.
- And is he yours?
- Yeah, I take a lot of pride on that.
- And has he yet fathered puppies?
- Sure, my neighbours and friends who have *****es frequently borrow Rex to impregnate their pets.
- So Rex is yours, and Rex is a dog?
- Yes, I have just said that.
- And if he yours, and he is a dog, does it necessarily follow that he is your dog?
- Of course, I can't see how it wouldn't.
- But you have also just told me that Rex is yours, and that Rex is a father, isn't it?
- I guess I did.
- And so, if Rex is yours, and Rex is a father, we might conclude that Rex is your father, might we not?
- Er... seems logical, though it still sounds somehow weird.

Classical sophism, no difficult words at all, no real (or apparent, or fake) depth either.

Luís Henrique

ETA: How am I supposed to refer to the females of the Canis domesticus species in English, without being politically incorrect? Doguesses, perhaps?

[Paul Pott]

Perra(s)

[Captain Ahab]

Rosa Lichtenstein has posted a response to both Luis and Slim in this link:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion.htm

EDIT:
Rosa Lichtenstein has further replied to Luis' comment in response to the link:http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion.htm#Luis_The_Irascible

[Luís Henrique]

Rosa Lichtenstein has posted a response to both Luis and Slim in this link:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Dialectical_confusion.htm

Reading Ms. Lichtenstein's drivel isn't one of my predilect ways of wasting time, but I can't help but noticing this glaring sophism:


In comparison with the rest of Soviet history, 1935 (not 18 years after the revolution) is indeed part of its early history. The Soviet state lasted until 1991 -- approximately 74 years. 18 years represents approximately 24.3% of its history; less than a quarter. If this isn't part of its early history, what is?

So, according to Ms. Lichtenstein, history divides itself mathematically. The sheer fact that the Soviet Union had gone from a dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship against the proletariat means nothing: if an event is in the first half (or perhaps the first third, perhaps we have an "early", a "middle" and a "later" Soviet Union...) it belongs to "early Soviet Union". We see how mistaken are the pre-historians who divide pre-history into "Paleolithic", "Mesolithic", and "Neolithic", where the former lasted hundreds of thousand years, and the latter barely ten thousand.

Luís Henrique

[Estragon]

I've not made it to Hegel yet, so I honestly have no answer. But I highly recommend Spinoza regardless because he's awesome and will change your life.

I second this. Spinoza can be tough to read (at least, working through the entire Ethics is definitely a chore) but he beats the shit out of Hegel on the accessibility front. I recommend reading Hegel's "Philosophy of History" in that it is relatively less opaque (after the introduction) and has a subject that is more concrete and less abstract. I agree that his Idealism and teleological outlook is naïve and hard to take, but for all that he has some ideas that will change the way you look at the world. Only the aforementioned Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Marx himself (in progress) has done that for me. Kojeve is the first commentator most people look to, but I have never read him so I've got nothing (I'm sure he's good and challenging).

In general, when I read Hegel, I imagine myself confronting a man whose insights are fierce and unrelenting, but who has absolutely no poetic sensibility and therefore tries to explain the counter-intuitive in the most literal and excruciating way imaginable. Not fun, but definitely worth the nub-ground teetch.

[Hester23]

Hegel does indeed assume that the reader is well versed in philosophy, and he is definitely not a quick read. He is, however, definitely worth it. To understand Hegel you really must first read Fichte, to whom Hegel was responding. You really should acquaint yourself with Kant as well, since Hegel was also responding to him. I recommend that you read the terrific section on Kant in the Encylopedia of Philosophy; that will give you a good idea at least of what he was about and why Hegel responded to him as he did. With Fichte and Hegel be prepared for one paragraph going on for pages and for one sentence consisting of half a page or more. Their styles are extremely complex, typical of the German idealists of the nineteenth century. But, as I said, if you can tough it out, Hegel will enrich your life.:D

[Synthesis-]

I was told to read in order Kant, Fichte then hegel to get the context of german idealism. I was also told that Fichte made the best case for Idealism. I picked up Hegels, Phenomenology of spirit and his Philosophy of Right I intend to read it beginning tonight but i know its going to be a hard read.

[savage anomaly]

Thanks, but I have read Spinoza's Ethics, I have a copy sitting on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, it's exactly the sort of a priori nonsense that anti-dialectics opposes.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say he "invented the scientific method as it is applied to philosophy." Spinoza's method was arch-rationalist. He was operating in an early Enlightenment context where the paradigm of "certain knowledge" was mathematics, this question of "certain knowledge" being one of the prime concerns after Descartes. So he wanted to apply an analogous "geometrical method" to that employed in Euclid's Elements, making his philosophy appear more rigorous than competitors' (such as Descartes, Gassendi, etc.) according to certain standards of the day. That is, he made his work aesthetically and grammatically resemble early modern mathematics. But there is hardly anything scientific about positing axioms and "deriving" their "consequences" through purely conceptual arguments, particularly when these axioms and related claims make substantive claims about how the world is.*


What you say about Spinoza isn't true at all. Spinoza's Ethics does not in fact rely on any a priori assumptions about metaphysics. Spinoza rejects all the trappings of metaphysical transcendence of Descartes. Instead of being the arch-rationalist, Spinoza reduces reason to the plane of the immanent - to the plane of power, rather than deifying it as Descartes does. Spinoza's language is a product of his time, but his ideas put him far closer to Nietzsche than to Descartes. You should read Antonio Negri's "The Savage Anomaly" (which is where my username comes from), which offers a reading of Spinoza's TTP and Ethics that reveals him as very unique among his contemporaries for his total rejection of transcendence, his nondialectical approach to social organization, and his amazingly modern union of metaphysics and politics. This is not the same metaphysical straw-man Spinoza that Hegel (mis)read- in fact, another excellent book, Pierre Macherey's "Hegel or Spinoza" is all about Hegel's misreading of the "indigestible" kernel of truth in the Ethics that Hegel was unable to understand because of his own biases. Hope you find these as interesting as I did! If you give him time and a lot of thought, you'll really realize how astonishingly modern Spinoza is - but you'll also be frustrated by how badly he's been misread for centuries.

[D-A-C]

If it was me, I would start with a secondary work on Hegel (basically somebody summarising Hegel's work) and then as you read that you'll get a sense of which of his works interest you, and you'll also get handy starting places for those topics via quotes and the references at the end.

You could also dive right in and just read his work because if you can't understand his work in isolation from other thinkers, at least to me, that's always highly indicitive of the writer/thinkers faults.

If a specific work of his is written in response to another thinker, or about another piece of work, then that's where secondary works on Hegel are great for pointing that out and doing a bit of comparison work for you so you can just jump right into the topics of discussion.

With that in mind however I'm just wondering why your reading Hegel?

If its because you just want to, then that's great.

However, if its to do with Hegel's relation to Marx I just wanted to quickly recommend that after your done, maybe you should consider reading some of the work of Louis Althusser because, for me at least, he puts forward a brilliant case that Marx broke with Hegel and spends alot of time getting rid of all the Hegelian/Idealist elements that contaminated Marx's work and particularly the subsequent intepretations of Marx's work.

Hope that helps :)

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Reading Hegel is perversely pleasurable in the same way that, say, vomiting after a heavy night out is. It's an absolute nightmare when you're going through it and you'll wish you were dead, but after it's all over you feel awash with relief because you aren't reading Hegel vomiting anymore.

[G4b3n]

I would suggest reading some short works that breaks down the idealist dialectic so you can understand Hegel's outlook more in depth.
Either way, it will be difficult to understand coming from Hegel himself.

[Tim Redd]

Reading CLR James analyses of Hegel's writing can be extremely useful. They are on the marxist dot org archive.

[darkblues]

db

[Tim Redd]

I also instinctively follow Wittgenstein...i have penetrated his earlier work (tractatus) but not his later work...has anybody a view on this...i.e. a preference for early or late....or both???I like Tractatus though Wittgenstein disowned this work in his later life. I disagree with what I understand to be his later life view that there is no real definition of the concept truth. However I agree with his belief that most of philosophy is actually reducible to study of the sciences.