225 words and you couldn't answer me.
Let's practice: Donald Knuth created the KMP algorithm.
Help me understand the omnipotence of Hegel. Your turn.
Fine. Donald produced the KMP algorithm, an abstract method people can use with computers or other domains to do things with abstract representations (e.g. 'text'). (to develop programs that modify data)
Hegel produced the theory of dialectic, an abstract method of analysis people can use with cultural and historical concepts to do things with abstract representations(e.g. the notion of a 'state', 'culture', 'people'). (To develop arguments that modify concepts(aka brain data))
That's the best way I can put it in a fashion I think you'll find more agreeable. If you disagree, so be it, but I'd urge you to actually read Hegel or study the history of philosophy before making a statement that in physics would be something like the equivalent of saying Einstein's work was worthless. That could of course be the case, but I imagine you can see why many people would need a great deal of convincing argument to begin to side with you.
-------- more thoughts (not that you seem to have much willingness to engage with them, but, just in case you're bored and would like to stir up your ire, since this will likely sound like a whole lot of cruft and baloney and "gaseous word bending" to you):
And what is meaningful/useful/valuable to mankind? You began by saying meaningful, which is not by default, useful, especially to all of mankind--who is this invisible judge deciding what constitutes the definition of useful for all humanity? Oh. It's you, isn't it--or is it?
Love is a very meaningful experience for the parties involved. But love itself is pretty useless to humanity from a strictly utilitarian standpoint. One of its frequent side effects, babies, is useful, but that's not always the case, and plenty of babies are conceived without 'love' having any say in the matter. Plus, not all babies wind up bringing good to the state and thus good to a greater number--some are just drains on the commonwealth. Though of course a positivist would probably want to reduce the concept 'love' to something amenable to scientific description, such as a chemical state of the brain--but unless you're a total robot I think you'd see that we lose quite a lot in such a reductive picture of the concept.
Useful to humanity...would that be anything that enables us to propagate further? To allow our species, which has disrupted ecosystems and done greater environmental damage than all other forms of life, to continue? To make technology, which, though incredibly beneficial, also incredibly negative (the Unabomber's point) more efficient? is that usefulness?
This is precisely what I was talking about earlier re: incommensurability. I can't answer you because you've already determined you want to remain rooted in your utilitarian/positivist/scientific framework of thought and have no willingness to step outside of it. Yes, from that worldview, you have to admit Hegel is useless--all theories have sets of exclusion--things they consider valueless. Such a positivist train of thought considers a great deal of the work in the humanities valueless. If you want to say Hegel is valueless you'll have to work out a very hokey caveat to ensure all of the humanities and arts aren't also captured in that class of valueless things.
> "Help me understand Hegel. Your turn."
If you actually wanted to understand you wouldn't be so abrasive and terse about this. You'd be doing more work trying to understand my perspective, and not demanding that I conform to whatever bizarre expectation you have. You're asking for an explanation in very bad faith. You really only want fodder to confirm your own bias. You want to be able to say "see, all these people who value Hegel are fools"--but what's the point in that? What does that accomplish? you haven't broadened your horizons at all--you're only stroking your ego--there's better ways to go about that, like, idk, maybe follow Knuth and devise some algorithms?
Human beings can change their minds and consider things from different perspectives. That's one of our gifts. Why do so many insist on resisting it?
I read a dogmatic adherence to the scientific in your post--"Marxism is unscientific" (read the hidden value judgement: therefore marxism is BAD)--that's equatable to the sort of blind religious adherence that the faithful used to have when religions were the dominant paradigm.
Why are you trying to start a conversation if you're already dictating the parameters? The way you've responded to me indicates you expect me to give you the 'right' answer "225 words and you couldn't answer me", e.g. I have to say Hegel contributed such in a particular way for it to be "right"--that's not a conversation, that's you looking to reaffirm your prevailing worldview and dogmatic, cough and thus incredibly unscientific, way of thinking. You want to talk but only so long as the conversation adheres to the terms and conditions you've set out in your head. Basically you want to play schoolmaster and pat me on the head when I confirm 6 times 11 is indeed 66--but culture and conversation is not mathematics. It's messy. Just because something isn't scientific doesn't make it valueless.
That's not how a conversation or fruitful argument is supposed to work. We are supposed to play with each other's perspectives together and devise an answer. A good argument is a collaboration, not a conflict. The ancient greeks understood this. The Americans and modern keyboardists swiftly forgot. Your approach implies there's some correct answer you already have in mind--or something of the sort, like, Hegel's theory directly increased food production in country xyz.
Rather than working with me to determine if the theory is in fact valuable, you're just being difficult and obstinate. I'm happy to entertain your positivist perspective, but since you've yet to elaborate precisely why you need such convincing that one of the philosophers generally regarded as important and great in the tradition of western philosophy, by experts studied in the field is important I can't really work with you.
I don't understand why people forget knowledge of tradition is important in the humanities too. We seem to think it's okay to be near uneducated in philosophical thought, methodology, and history, to never have fully read or studied source materials, and to still question the legitimacy of Hegel's work, but we think it a total point of idiocy to have no knowledge of physics and attempt to levy a serious question as to the legitimacy of Einstein's output.
People are choosy as to where they direct their skepticism--as it has alway been, we retain our 'sacred objects' be they religions, rulers, or science.
Do you really want to dive into dogmatic positivism that far?
By all means go ahead, but you won't be very pleasant to get along with, at least in my opinion.
My problem with philosophy is that all this thinking is most often turned to its proper use - the justification of some power structure
All philosophy that puts forward a theoretical position, and thus is positive in content, will inevitably support some 'model for the world' some 'picture' or some 'state' which results in a particular power structure (since so much is bound up in the 'will to power') retaining dominance.
That's why only the philosophers who have primarily dissembled and worked in negative terms avoid this (Wittgenstein, Foucault, Nietzsche). For example, Foucault does not offer us some structuralist theory of history--he rather applies a structuralist method to historical contents to point out where "the apparently necessary is actually contingent" (the inverse of the Kantian project to discover the necessary among the contingent https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/ [sec. 3]). Just as Nietzsche's whole program was to point out the sinister nature of values, just as Wittgenstein's was to point of the sinister nature of theories or world-pictures. But even Nietzsche was not free from this. Some of his more positive statements and commitments (e.g. the will to power) have been used for nefarious purposes-- thus the nazis latched on to his ideas as justification for their political programs. But what Nietzsche was doing most frequently in practice and what the nazis eventually did with a subset of his ideas are two very different things.
Of course, one could derive some theoretical picture, and thus some vision of the world in which a particular structure (and thus power dynamic) holds by analyzing these thinkers too--e.g. Wittgenstein never offers a direct theory of language, but that has not stopped several people from developing theoretical models of language based on his work and what his 'therapeutic' (negative/disassembling) method revealed.
Whether or not philosophy is used to justify a power structure comes down to the theorist and how she employs theory--the same with science, which can also be utilized and deployed for political aims (e.g. see the ambiguity of data interpretation being used to produce arguments in favor of political action to stop climate change and in favor of nonintervention). It is not a problem inherent in philosophy itself, but it is a latent possible application or deployment of philosophical thought and method.
Even the philosophy of language is used to justify the rule of our species over the animal kingdom. The word of Marx taken as gospel was used to oppress and murder a lot of people, the use of Nietzsche taken as gospel was used to justify the murder of Jews and others, the practical application of the whole subject is soaked in blood up to a point where I am asking myself: has any good ever come out of it?
Thank you.
But what could we expect from this "super-logic" that claims absolute knowledge, when the author himself was a puppet and supporter of the Prussian state (to the point he claimed it to be the perfect model), a mysticist and religious pamphlet.
This is a man who wrote in the time after Newton, Lippershey, Pascal and many more, yet had no adherence to science.
> I'd urge you to actually read Hegel or study the history of philosophy before making a statement that in physics would be something like the equivalent of saying Einstein's work was worthless. That could of course be the case, but I imagine you can see why many people would need a great deal of convincing argument to begin to side with you.
That's apples and oranges. Einstein's work is clear, falsifiable and he doesn't rely on sophistry. Hegel's work is basically a set of claims about nearly everything he doesn't know a thing about. Notice we don't have anything like "Einsteinism" in physics, but you have a whole collection: Hegelianism, Marxism, Leninism.
Let's quote some of Hegel's nonsense:
> Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging towards its opposite ... Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence.
> Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist; it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated. What Spirit is must in that way have become its own, it must have described this circle; then these forms, differences, determinations finite qualities, must have existed in order that it should make them its own. This represents both the way and the goal—that Spirit should have attained to its own notion or conception, to that which it implicitly is, and in this way only, the way which has been indicated in its abstract moments, does it attain it. Revealed religion is manifested religion, because in it God has become wholly manifest. Here all is proportionate to the notion; there is no longer anything secret in God.
> I read a dogmatic adherence to the scientific in your post--"Marxism is unscientific" (read the hidden value judgement: therefore marxism is BAD)--that's equatable to the sort of blind religious adherence that the faithful used to have when religions were the dominant paradigm.
Marxism is bad. Like Hegel, Marx wrote without any substance, and his work has been refuted long ago. Its legacy is undeniably bad. Nobody sane discusses Marxism itself, other than it's historical place. To me, Marx and Hegel are prophets and enemies of reason.
The reason I bother to engage in this discussion is that Hegel was worshipped too long where I come from (the socialist block). I developed a distaste for that nonsense.
You're right that Hegel's work, especially considered in relation to developments in science and the amount of knowledge we have today, does seem almost more like an absurdist tract than a piece of interesting philosophy--you picked out excellent quote to illustrate this--'spirit' is a word that's more or less meaningless in the modern epoch.
However, it's important to consider the prevalent episteme or intellectual/epistemic milieu Hegel was working with--you cite Pascal, who did indeed make incredible strides in mathematics--but he also believed he'd had a direct experience of God, and went so far as to record a reminder of his religious experience and literally sew it into his coat--to us Hegel's terminology is dusty and makes little sense, and, you're correct, from a scientific point seems like a hell of a lot of substanceless hot air--but at the time he was utilizing a language many would have still comprehended--point is, it affected persons and how they perceive the world.
This is why philological study is incredibly important, and it's a shame so many, at least in the US are unfamiliar with the field--language is a living, evolving system, and our notions of what words mean, how to use them, and what concepts they capture is fundamentally, if not radically different than it was for our ancestors in the 1700-1800s. Philological readings help inform us of the historical importance of theories that otherwise fall out of our understanding as history progresses. For instance, the ancient greeks also had several notions of 'spirit' which are handled differently today--some retain the word in translation, others, realizing the word is more or less dead translate it instead as something like 'mind' or an equivalent psychological term--but this brings translation fundamentally into question, for the concept the greeks indicated by the term 'psyche' and the concept indicated by our term 'mind', with all the strides we've made in psychology, are radically different--our term brings a whole wealth of psychological propositions and concepts with it that the greeks did not have--so it keeps ancient works alive for modern readers, but we do have to wonder whether its not somewhat intellectually dishonest or leads some down paths of uncritical acceptance or faulty pictures of ancient thought--it's a fascinating problem.
As Wittgenstein said "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world". (He remains, by the way, the greatest philosopher, at least in my view)
I think you want a sort of scientific defense for Hegel's value--I can't offer that because there isn't one that I can conceive of. If you haven't read the work of Karl Popper I highly recommend it--he sketched out precisely why theories such as Hegelianism and Marxism cannot be considered scientific. Additionally I think you ought to check out the work of Thomas Kuhn, which shows that science isn't as rock-solid or immune to the accidents of historical change as you might think. Perhaps if you're feeling really radical and want to challenge your views about science check out Feyerabend's Against Method and Datson and Gallison's Objectivity (D+G's book was instrumental in changing my own views on science, they show, by examining scientific history and the gradual changes that the concept of 'objectivity' has undergone through the years that science, like culture, and like all human pursuit really, is messy).
As to the problem of Hegel's support of the Prussian state--you could levy this critique against many practicing scientists, thinkers, and human beings in general. We all have values and systems of belief. We all find it difficult to separate those values and beliefs form our work, even when we try our damnedest to do so. The unconscious is an unruly little beast. You really think researchers funded by big Pharma are scientifically pure and aren't lead to pursue particular results because of external factors such as the fact that is big Pharma continues to thrive, so do they? Make no mistake, all intellectual pursuits are tainted by politics and value judgements. There is no such thing as Thomas Nagel's 'view from nowhere'--you cannot escape your subjectivity. If you could you'd have no reason to pursue anything. Even the purest scientist must be stimulated by an interest or passion to investigate the world, which will necessarily factor into his perceptions. That's why the perfect scientist is in fact an unfeeling instrument--but of course the instrument is far less flexible than the human being--and the human being still needs to interpret the data--and even if we can devise machines that interpret, we can only devise them such that they follow the model of human interpretation, and thus, are still flawed.
This is why Nietzsche pinpointed valuation/value judgement as the root of nearly all of man's problems. Of course the ubermensch who can launch a radical "revaluation of all values" and disabuse us of our constant need to create and abide by valuations has yet to come--and more than likely never will. Nietzsche himself, gouger of values that he was, had plenty of them.
Nietzsche is fascinating case of someone who held science on a veritable pedestal but whose work is far from scientific, yet incredibly meaningful and effective.
So again, all I can offer to you is a historical defense of Hegel's work. This probably seems dissatisfying, as in theory then anyone could have pulled off the same--and the work loses any value beyond one of historical interest, e.g. it's no longer applicable--but that is a perennial problem--the old wrinkle as to whether the person behind discoveries or theories really matters, i.e. the idea that, had Einstein not reached his conclusions about physics, would someone else eventually have (or for an actual historical example, how Newton and Leibniz developed concepts and notations for calculus near simultaneously--Leibniz actually is another fine example, like Pascal, of a polymath who contributed enormously to mathematics and logic but had weird metaphysical notions that no longer resonate with modern audiences).
Reading Pascal leaves you with the impression that indeed, this was an intelligent man. Reading Hegel does the opposite, and he was born a whole 100 years later.
Pascal's writings are so comprehensible and consistent, it's a joy to read and we can easily put things into the context of his time.
Pascal did question the Church and Christianity, and his commentary was sanctioned for a period. So did Kant a century later, and although there is disagreement as to whether Kant was an atheist, he didn't write of God in the superstitial terms Hegel later used. It's possible Hegel was commissioned to discredit Kant after he (K) had discredited all proofs of God's existence. Schopenhauer saw Hegel as an agent of the Prussian state, which Hegel regarded as the ultimate model and a representation of God in the contemporary world.
Hegel's discredit of Newton whose undeniably significant work took place more than a century before his birth, appears to me as childish screaming for the "throne of the wisest" or plain stupidity.
Gauss, a true man of reason, had to say this about Hegel:
> "Noah got drunk only one time, to become then, according to the Scriptures, a judicious man, while the insanities of Hegel in the Doctoral Dissertation, where he criticizes Newton and questions the utility of a search for new planets are still wisdom if one compares them with his later remarks."
Unlike Pascal, who I must admit I am a big fan of, every attempt of Hegel to engage in maths was laughable. Although he mastered sophistry, his maths were not just wrong, he displayed complete ignorance on the subject.
The current discussions in philosophy surrounding Hegel is almost always centered on what Hegel did intend to say and what he didn't. On on one side, we have those who want to paint a better picture of the man, on the other those who see it as it is. It reminds of the discussions surrounding the Quran today.
Hegel is no more than a scholar who blindly followed the discredited Greek idea of explaining the world from pure thought with many unfortunate consequences because he excelled at sophistry, a quality some find attractive enough that it justifies putting their own reason to sleep.
Unfortunately, Hegel's absolutism is a sad legacy that still pollutes the minds of some wise philosophers who could otherwise have engaged in a more meaningful use of their minds.
This is what Schopenhauer had to say about Hegel:
> "Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation."
Hegel deserves to be discredited and distanced from philosophy or it will further damage it. If Hegel is to serve as something, it's as the ultimate example of a scholar too powerful to destroy whose influence is negative. Maybe Chomsky in regard to his linguistic work could be the contemporary equivalent of a scholar who puts to a halt an entire field, although he isn't half as bad.
Hm, so sure, we'll say Hegel was a horrible, illiterate, idiotic sophist. In that case you still have to admit his work was valuable to the field in that it provides a good example as to what constitutes sophistry. So, even if you want to interpret Hegel's work as worthless, intellectual dung-water you could argue that it's valuable in helping shape the philosophical field in a negative sense in that it provides an instance out of which a normative rule can be developed--namely Hegel's work is what philosophy shouldn't be.
I've given you two, admittedly very basic, since we're limited to comments, arguments for why you might consider Hegel's work meaningful/useful: a. It's historical (accidental) impact. b. It's being an example of how not to proceed (for a scientific analogue: an experiment that was unsuccessful).
Neither of these positions need to explicitly agree with Hegel's theories to see them as valuable. in either case you can say that Hegel's contribution was 'meaningful' while upholding the idea that he was 'wrong' (in fact the second relies on this).
Okay fine. We'll discredit and distance Hegel because he was 'wrong'. Does that mean we also discredit and distance every lick of philosophical work that in some fashion engaged with his productions?
By today's standards and developing knowledge in the field of linguistics the logical positivists of the 20th century were also 'wrong'. Should they too be eliminated from the philosophical tradition? Are they too unimportant? I'd like you to go and convince an analytical philosopher that work of Frege, Russel, and Whitehead should be eliminated from the philosophical discourse because it was 'wrong'. Or to use your own example, Chomsky was arguably wrong in putting syntax on such a pedestal--but his work was still fundamental in directing the progress of the field of linguistics. Without Chomsky's contribution there's a whole wealth of linguistic inquiry that may have not been undertaken. Concerning yourself with whether or not a historical and terminated event was 'wrong' outside of moral domains is really senseless--I don't see the point. Once again I stress that the humanities are not mathematics. There's not an evident 'right' answer to the things we define. It's idiotic to say that a given political system is 'right' and another is 'wrong' as you're only expressing your own value judgments. It is the same with metaphysics, history, literature, art...etc. etc.
You know, you continue to disparage Hegel but you've yet to produce any analysis as to why he's such a so-called sophist. In your previous post you quoted some of his material but provided no argument; you assumed that it is interpretable as nonsense de facto. That is not the sign of an intellectual, honest, or reasoned approach to the content. Schopenhauer was an incredibly intelligent philosopher but that remark on Hegel is not a valid critique, it is only a contentless value-judgement, dismissal, and ascription--to put that forth as an argument for Hegel's being a sophist is an appeal to intellectual authority, which is an argumentative fallacy.
Here let me engage in a similar exercise with Pascal's wager since to you that sounds >"approachable today because it deals with probability"
Well, Voltaire said this of Pascal's little wager: [That it was] "indecent and childish" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager)(See: Criticism, Nature as Proof of the Existence of God).
Therefore we ought to just discredit and distance Pascal's wager from the philosophical/religious tradition.
Does this sound like solid reasoning/argumentation to you? No? That's because it isn't. And in fact Voltaire's little quotation was based on a misunderstanding of Pascal's wager. Dumb move if I'm trying to effectively and actually discredit Pascal right? Reconsider your position on Hegel and your little employment of Schopenhauer and Gauss.
I'm going to be nasty now because your unwillingness to have an actual conversation instead of spiting your preconceptions at me has annoyed me.
I understand that reading actual critical thought and analysis beyond name and dung tossing is hard work and that we're all lazy, but really, it may do you some good.
For someone who is constantly touting the value of reason you're not very good in exercising it in this case. I can tell you're passionately against Hegel, which appears to be clouding your judgement and has you reaching for ad hominem and value-laden terms like sophistry, stupidity, and childish which are all void of significant analytical content; it's fine to deploy these words, but only after you've done and provided the analytical work necessary to back up your use of them--otherwise it just makes you look childish. You seem to have such a great aversion to Hegelian thought that it "puts your reason to sleep" and prevents you from analyzing the work from a value-neutral position--to the extent it's possible to step back and approach something without looking to reconfirm what you already believe.
Once more you don't seem willing to reconsider your perspective. Notice how you're not asking any questions. Just making statements. I would prompt you for further explanation, but at this point you've made so many reductive claims, value judgements, appeals to intellectual authority, and laudations of maths and science that I highly doubt you have anything interesting to say.
Your language is still stewing with an underlying vitriol, and you'll never be able to coherently reason about Hegel's place in the philosophical tradition, nor convince anyone he really doesn't belong, until you've purged your passion from your arguments.
It's funny, I don't even like what little I've read of Hegel's work; I find it to be a bit flat and over-reliant on baroquism to give the impression of significance, which makes his concepts difficult to untangle. But I'll admit I haven't read Hegel's work in full--that's why you don't see me putting forth value-judgements or arguments about his content. I gave you two approaches to answering why the work is 'meaningful' that don't require a comprehension of the work itself, but only account for its potential pragmatic (example of sophistry) or historical (recognition in the tradition of philosophy) significance.
You began asking why the work was 'meaningful' or 'useful'--but really you just want to argue against Hegelian thought, why, who the hell knows. It seems like you have some personal vendetta. Many of the world religions do not mesh well with the operations of reason. Yet nearly all of them, if not all of them, are incredibly useful. You're a militant rationalist, and like all militant rationalists, deaf to more nuanced calls to reason and suspension of your belief, susceptible to dogmatism when particular words are thrown about, and, also symptomatic, you find value-laden, scathing terminology from recognized intellectuals more effective or significant than any well-formed argument or honest and open engagement with the work.
I have done the attempt to read some Hegel, but couldn't keep doing the unhealthy brain gymnastics necessary to read such crap. What (to quote you) "intellectual, honest, or reasoned approach to the content" can be given to what Feynman would have called "meaningless chewing around"? We don't put a lot of effort in discrediting the Old Testament, do we?
Your and your fields' inability to move forward isn't surprising though, after all, it's philosophy.
I'll put this discussion to a rest.
I have to say I disagree with this; Marx wrote with very much substance, though he was a flowery writer, and he employed a certain method which he and Engels admitted was rather obscure and unfamiliar to the thinkers of their new time - but there's plenty of content there, such that many have been inspired by his work to take it in new theoretical directions.
The "refutations" of Marx come from everywhere, even from Marxists, their validity however is still up for question. For every refutation there is usually a Marxian counter-refutation lurking in the background. If you don't believe me, just look at the modern argument between the anarchists and Marxists and the economical argument that still rages to this day between the understandings of Marx's value theory and tendency of the rate of profit to fall, like Kilman's TSSI, Okishio, Samuelson, Morishima, Cockshott etc.
Does Marxism claim to be scientific? If so, is that a deserved critique of it? Ice cream is also unscientific, as is capitalism. Marxism uses the dielectical method, not the scientific one.