Thread 24696894

Thought, in thinking itself, thinks what it is to think as such, and what it is to think as such is to think the object of thought per se, that is, pure being.

Pure being, as the formal object of thought, is, analytically, the first concept of thought. As the first concept of thought, it has an infinite extension and no intensional content. That is, it has no given definition. Thought, in thinking pure being, thinks nothing.

Thinking nothing is not not thinking. To think nothing is to think thought as unfettered by any given determination. To think nothing is to think the beginning of thought's own self-determination. Thought, in thinking nothing, thinks the illimitability of its formal object: pure being.

The opening of the logic repeats Aristotle: thought is nothing before it thinks, for it has no given nature. If it did, it would delimit the formal object of thought.

This is all that is needed to get started on the greatest philosophical adventure ever. Please start reading the Science of Logic.

Hegel is too ontic

Yes, this is all true, and painfully obvious to any cultivate. But what about LOVE and BEAUTY ?

I'm so tired of this inauthentic shit. Why did Europe spend 2500 years $oyjakking over abstract reason to the point of thorough absurdity? Reason isn't that special. It isn't the ground of knowledge, it isn't the key to new knowledge, and it certainly isn't the path to a better life.

>>24696955
But reason is special, anon. Man's crowning jewel. And what's more, the form of reason is the form of all things.

>>24696894 (OP)
what would be hegel's interpretation of goblins, trolls, gnomes, and other such creatures rumoured to dwell in wild forest-places?

>>24696955
what would heidegger's be?

thank you in advance.

>>24696903
no hes not. He's ontological as can be. Guess why Heidegger was too scared to actually touch him outside recapping the foreword of the PdG. He was scared he'd get exposed as being a charlatan ontological philosopher and second rate to Hegel.
His lines in Logik 1 are the most sublime thinking on Being you will ever read.
>>24696894 (OP)
I will need that in German, Tommy.

>>24696995
>>24695255

>>24696894 (OP)
This is beautiful. I should try reading Hegel again.

>>24697009
>spinozist
>ontological
I am read in Hegel but I see you are unread in Heidegger

The logic is all presupp bs and modernist cope

Which is btfo by proper theological logic as disclosed in ontological religion prior the modern ontotheological contamination

>>24697010
i have no doubt about it

>>24696894 (OP)
So if I'm just sitting here not doing anything not even thinking just staring blankly at a wall—I'm still thinking? I can't not think?

>>24696995
Imo the whole concept of the clearing alludes to the Germanic relation to the mythical forest. But Heidegger didn’t talk about myth much. You should look into Colin Cleary if you want to pursue that line.

>>24696894 (OP)
If Pure Being is truly illimitable, how can it possibly be a concept of thought? How can the illimitable be truly conceived in Thought?
>"Thinking nothing is to think thought-undetermined?"
This seems like a circular reason to justify how, firstly, that "Thought, in thinking pure being, thinks nothing." Or how is "thinking nothing" the beginning of thoughts self-determination when 'nothing' cannot begin in any determination? Seems to equivocate 'Nothing' as the thinking of Pure Being? Why not have Limitlessness rather than Nothing? What is Nothing?

>>24696955
>>24697020
>>24696903

>inauthentic shit
Authentic to what? An anxiety emptied of content or some arbitrary historical contingency? How do you discern between the authentic and the inauthentic? Hermeneutics try to be "authentic" to the historical contingency, but this just leads to relativism.

Gadamer tried to solve this problem by going back to Hegel and limiting the scope of dialectics. But for the dialectics to work, it must be thought itself the one that introduces new determinations into the dialectic by its own potency, and this movement must be the same as the movement of the thing itself, or better yet, thought and being must be identical. If those conditions aren't met, the relation between one thought and another (or the moment of synthesis, fusion or whatever you may call it) is external, thus a mere contingency that can be negated with no problem at all; and the relation between what we think and the thing itself is contingent too, thus relativism.

The second Heidegger is aware that the hermeneutic circle is indeed vicious, so he tries to go back to the nothingness of anxiety or primordial openness of being before any ontological horizon is posited. His treatment further shows that Heidegger is the one limited by abstract thought, since he's unable to move within being's self-contradiction. This leads him to reject thought, instead of thinking of thought as the self-movement that finds itself in its negation. His reasoning is quite close to Spinoza's. I think that Hegel's critique of Heidegger would be similar to his critiques of Schelling and Jacobi,he was quite critical of isolating both sides of oppositions or uniting them while excluding difference. They accept that everything that is, is being, but when we point to this or that being, we lose being itself and now we have determinate being. Every being is invariantly being, therefore in order to grasp being itself, we must negate every determinate content of being. Thus being is both the absolute affirmation and negation of content i.e. Being and Nothingness are the same and the opposite. Spinoza avoids Nothingness since he's on the positive side, whereas Heidegger stays on the negative side. Because of this reason, the transition from indeterminacy to determinacy fails. Determinacy comes from the self-negation of indeterminacy. It's not just that indeterminacy is both pure positivity or negativity, but that its already determined to be undetermined. If was not determined, then it wouldn't be determined to negate determinacy, and thus it would affirm determinacy. That's implicit on Spinoza's omnis determinatio ist negatio. If determination is negation, then indetermination is the negation of negation. Determinacy is contained within indeterminacy, and determinacy is ideally related to indeterminacy. The ontical is ontological and the ontological is ontical. A thought unable to grasp this movement is not thought but an abstract and dead understanding.

>>24696955
>Reason isn't that special. It isn't the ground of knowledge
Both the concept of knowledge and ground entail reason. To give a ground is to give a reason. We say that one thing grounds another one if one is the explanation of the other. In a strict sense, the explanation contains the whole of the explained, since if it's not contained then it's outside the explanation, thus the explained wouldn't be explained at all; and the explained must contain the whole of the explanation, since the explanation is the very essence of the explained, hence if the explained does not contain the explanation then the essential would be something external, but the essence is precisely the internal. The activity between the explanation and the explained is reason as such.

On the other hand, what differentiates knowledge from opinion is justification. You could say that knowledge is the web that ties the objects of knowledge together. But the web must always mantain the figure of necessary connection, for if the connections were contingent then the web could be easily negated by anyone.

>>24699128
I'll give you a hegelian response later. Rn I'm too tired to write

>>24699426
An explanation need not and cannot contain the explained in its entirety. It can only gesture at a relationship. Reductionism is in principle impossible and the whole of analytic philosophy has demonstrated what a dead end it is.

>>24696906
For that there's the Philosophy of Mind (Encyclopedia v III) and the Aesthetic Lectures

>>24697009
>>24699406
Heidegger does engage with Hegel's Logic in both Identity and Difference and in the addresses and notes collected in GA 68 (simply published as "Hegel"), as well as a discussion of the Encyclopedia section on nature (Logic: The Question of Truth), and the Philosophy of Right (On Hegel's Philosophy of Right).

Heidegger's Seinsfrage, while often coming across as though he were after the Sein of metaphysics, is not in fact what he's after, but rather the phenomenological account of the pre-theoretical experience with beings that allows us to understand them as beings of whatever sort (truly, indifferently, theoretically, falsely, poetically, as equipment, etc.).

I’m reading it now. Don’t have many thoughts yet but it’s exciting stuff. The idealism you see in the Phenomenology justifies thinking itself as the principle of all reality; and this shouldn’t be too controversial maybe since even without idealism you can see how everything proceeds rationally. So if thought is first, how does it work? It has to be a circular, teleological system (it can’t get its content from elsewhere, so it has to somehow differentiate itself by negativity), and that’s what SoL gives you. It is dry stuff so far desu, not like the swashbuckling PoS.

>>24699128
Of course you can think of the illimitable, you did it yourself in writing your post. You just can’t imagine it, or grasp it with merely representational thought. It’s impossible to imagine but it’s not a difficult idea at all, and the whole point is that it doesn’t remain abstractly illimitable anyway. Also he’s not talking about limits of extension, he means a limit like being contrasted with something else. It’s Just being. Can you think of a thing in general.? Of course you can but try imagining it.

>>24699406
Excellent post

>>24701051
>Of course you can think of the illimitable
Thinking requires knowledge. Strictly speaking, it isn't possible to entirely know Limitlessness because thinking a thought requires Limit. So we are not thinking of Limitless but something else. We can conceive of it but not """purely.""" Anyway, what is "Nothing" then and how is "that" related to all that by Hegel?

>>24701307
You’re describing precisely the movement that occurs in the sol itself.

>>24696894 (OP)
It's pretty impressive how Hegel was able to synthesize Heraclitus' and Parmenides's thought

>>24696894 (OP)
>Thinking nothing is not not thinking. To think nothing is to think thought as unfettered by any given determination. To think nothing is to think the beginning of thought's own self-determination. Thought, in thinking nothing, thinks the illimitability of its formal object: pure being.
Tweetophon would have a field day with this garbage. Pure potentiality is not nothing. It is a something, just not anything in particular. This is almost as bad as when people take the colloquial use of the word nothing, as in "there's nothing in the box" too seriously and neglect that there is plenty of stuff in the box (e.g, air, maybe unwanted items, etc.) and thus it's not a nothing. Too many people take the radical nothingness of nothing for granted.

Nothing vanishes into Being because the Nothing of Hegel was never Nothing at all. But Being is Being. It is the complete opposite of Nothing, even when it is pure.

>>24701581
You don't need Hegel to synthesize the two. Arguably, Heraclitus was already contained in Parmenides. Too many people read the Eleatics through babby's first motion paradox problem and Twitter midwittery such as "muh being vs becoming" (as if there needs to be a dichotomy).

>>24696955

So philosophy as a career can exist. I am German and don't read this stuff, even though Germany is known for producing philosophers.

These guys made a living from writing and selling books. As a Muslim, I view contemporary secular philosophy as a dim and winding maze whose walls are built for their own sake.

Nothing satisfies and illuminates like the Holy Scripture. The soul is lifted, floating, directly upwards from this dismal maze towards the sublime Truth. For truth seekers, the Scripture is beyond comparison. The prophets, not the philosophers, are the guides.

Does Hegel cause you to fall on your face and weep, begging God for mercy? Do you memorize Kant from cover to cover and recite it from heart in ancient melodies? The Scripture is quite literally divine in origin, these circular scribblings just fill pages with a price tag in comparison.

>>24701666
>Does Hegel cause you to fall on your face and weep, begging God for mercy? Do you memorize Kant from cover to cover and recite it from heart in ancient melodies?
Yes actually

>>24701666
You are not German, fuck off back to turkey

>>24699128
The formal object of an organ is necessarily limited by the given nature of that organ, but thought has no organ. Hence, the formal object of thought is not this or that object (e.g., color in the case of sight), but the object as such, or being as such. The error here is to think that thought apprehends its object through some organ.

There is no defintion that can be given to either pure being or nothing at this point. There is no proximate genus that is common between them and no specific differences that differentiate them from one another. Negation, manifoldness, difference fall outside them. The most minimal expressions we can use for them are: 'is' and 'is not' or 'it is the case' and 'it is not the case'. And these expressions, given the above, are convertible.

Saying "It is the case that such-and-such is so" is the same as saying "It is not the case that such-and-such is not so". This is so because negation, manifoldness, difference fall outside 'It is the case' and 'It is not the case'. The difference between them is a difference that does not matter.

>>24696894 (OP)
>>24701850
Damn, Hegel was Aristotle all along?

>>24701650
>Pure potentiality is not nothing. It is a something, just not anything in particular.
This is exactly what happens in the movement of the concept lol. Why don't you read the book?

>>24698370
OP can't think, that's the problem.

>>24702845
The point is that Hegel is doing a bait and switch. Hegel's "pure nothing" is a complete misnomer. You didn't understand my point.

>>24699128
Great response from >>24701850
I think it should be more common to explain Hegel in Aristotle’s terminology, as that would lead to less misunderstandings. I should go on and add that as >>24701411 points out, there is an internal contradiction within pure Being and pure Nothing. This does not mean that those notions ought to be abandoned due to their contradiction, but sublated. Finite being (as opposed to infinite or pure being) self-contradicts too. To be finite is to have a limit, and to be limited is to be negated. Each finite determination leads to a negation, that leads to another determination that self-negates ad-infinitum. But this is not a negation of finitude itself, only of finite determinations, thus finitude itself is affirmed, but each finite determination dissolves into other in an infinite regress. Hegel calls this bad infinitude. But now that each negation negates itself, negation in general is negated, for it can’t consistently actualize itself. This leads us to the negation of negation or the true infinity. But contrary to pure being, the true infinite does not exclude finitude, since then the unlimited would be limited by the limit itself. The truly unlimited both transcends and contains the limited, and the limited is the activity of the unlimited. Without reference to the unlimited, the limited dissolves, thus the finite is ideally infinite.

>>24699673
If the relation between explanation and explained is contingent then there is no explanation at all, given the explained could have been without the explanation. We could say that the explanation is the universal form and the explained the particular instantiation. If there’s something from the particular which isn’t found within the universal, then it is only but an external agreggate, and thus does not concern the explanation itself. But if it is only merely internal to the universal principle, then the explanation is only an abstraction separated from concrete reality, or simply we haven’t stablished the nexus between both. The key here is contradiction, in the sense that each pole must contain the other one. If identity does not contain difference, then all relations are contingent. The only necessity there could be would be that something is identical with itself. That is why analytical philosophers arrived at those conclusions. The universal must make itself concrete and the particular must be explained by something other than itself.


>>24700950
Very obvious AI and weak response. I hope you’re not that heideggeranon. Hegel is both “speculative” and phenomenological. What he does is show the necessary connection between the phenomenological content, which consists in reflecting upon the determinacy of the content itself and letting it move by its own potency, instead of merely stating empirical correlates.

>>24704554
>Very obvious AI and weak response. I hope you’re not that heideggeranon. Hegel is both “speculative” and phenomenological. What he does is show the necessary connection between the phenomenological content, which consists in reflecting upon the determinacy of the content itself and letting it move by its own potency, instead of merely stating empirical correlates.
It's AI to respond simply and to the point? There's plenty of material that Heidegger has dealing with Hegel, including the Logic. If you're unfamiliar with that material, fine, now go familiarize yourself. For the rest, you're confusing yourself by assuming that Hegel and Heidegger mean the same thing by phenomenology. Your response might well be the proper Hegelian response, but it speaks past Heidegger, who points out that the theoretical treatment of Being is posterior to taking Beings not as "determinate content" but as things and stuff within a lifeworld. Heidegger is agnostic to whether Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, are right per se, that's not his inquiry, but rather a prior pre-theoretical one that he ends up having a plethora of different approaches to. Again, he's not interested in the Sein of metaphysics.

>>24704615
>It's AI to respond simply and to the point?
Honestly I just found your response unsatisfactory. Sorry for thinking you were AI.
>There's plenty of material that Heidegger has dealing with Hegel, including the Logic.
I am familiar with his works on Hegel. I’ve read some of it.
>you're confusing yourself by assuming that Hegel and Heidegger mean the same thing by phenomenology
Both of them search for the essence of phenomena as it shows itself in experience. If there’s a difference in their global conception of phenomenology is because the content of their philosophy is different. Plato has a different idea of philosophy than modern philosophers, not because they think of a different object, but because their conception of the object is different. Thus, by saying they have a different idea of phenomenology you’re just merely stating that the content of their philosophies are different, but without dealing with the content itself.
>it speaks past Heidegger, who points out that the theoretical treatment of Being is posterior to taking Beings not as "determinate content" but as things and stuff within a lifeworld.
It’s not that being given theoretically is different to the one given practically. Theory concerns itself with being in-itself, whereas practice with the relation of being with our situation i.e. a particular being-for-other. Heidegger thinks that because we theorize after we have already stablished a practical attitude towards being, theory is the being-for-other and practice is the being-in-itself. Our theoretical attitude would already be mediated by our own ontological horizon, thus the most immediate phenomenological description is the one refered to our practical relation with being. Since relations with being are determined historically, being itself is historical, hence also contingent. But this reasoning makes a confusion. Our theoretical attitude is a modality of us as individuals, not as being considered in itself. In relation with being, our own practical attitude is a modality, not being in itself. Husserl was correct in calling Heidegger’s philosophy anthropologism, which is not much different from psychologism.

>>24704615
>>24705320
>(cont.)
It is true that without the being-for-other (which is given to us through practice) being-in-itself is an empty concept transcendent to our own life and experience. This is precisely the point of hegelian philosophy. The undetermined being-in-itself can only show itself as a determined being-for-other, and all determinacy shown as otherness is the manifestation of the undetermined being-in-itself. Their truth is the absolute mediation with their other, their own immediacy and their mediation. This totality is the concept, and it is the idea of this totality that guides each immediate moment. Truth is the result that has a memory of its whole life, not some immediate and contingent relation. Heidegger can’t mediate between the undetermined and determined because he cannot think of their dialectical contradiction and speculative reconciliation. Thus for him, Being can’t be conceptual, but I’ve just shown why that can’t be the case, as concept is the whole of the process and the whole of the process is the innermost idea of any given thing.

>>24705320
>>24705323
But again, this is a kind of address to Heidegger that takes him to be doing something that he's not. One of his first lectures has a clear example of what he's after, which I think makes it clear why he finds philosophy unhelpful:
>Focus on this experience of 'seeing your place', or you can in turn put yourselves in my own position: coming into the lecture-room, I see the lectern. We dispense with a verbal formulation of this. What do I see? Brown surfaces, at right angles to one another? No, I see something else. A largish box with another smaller one set upon it? Not at all. I see the lectern at which I am to speak. You see the lectern, from which you are to be addressed, and from where I have spoken to you previously. In pure experience there is no 'founding' interconnection, as if I first of all see intersecting brown surfaces, which then reveal themselves to me as a box, then as a desk, then as an academic lecturing desk, a lectern, so that I attach lecternhood to the box like a label. All that is simply bad and misguided interpretation, diversion from a pure seeing into the experience. I see the lectern in one fell swoop, so to speak, and not in isolation, but as adjusted a bit too high for me. I see — and immediately so — a book lying upon it as annoying to me (a book, not a collection of layered pages with black marks strewn upon them), I see the lectern in an orientation, an illumination, a background.
>Certainly, you will say, that might be what happens in immediate experience, for me and in a certain way also for you, for you also see this complex of wooden boards as a lectern. This object, which all of us here perceive, somehow has the specific meaning 'lectern'. It is different if a farmer from deep in the Black Forest is led into the lecture-room. Does he see the lectern, or does he see a box, an arrangement of boards? He sees 'the place for the teacher', he sees the object as fraught with meaning. If someone saw a box, then he would not be seeing a piece of wood, a thing, a natural object. But consider a Negro from Senegal suddenly transplanted here from his hut. What he would see, gazing at this object, is difficult to say precisely: perhaps something to do with magic, or something behind which one could find good protection against arrows and flying stones. Or would he not know what to make of it at all, just seeing complexes of colours and surfaces, simply a thing, a something which simply is? So my seeing and that of a Senegal Negro are fundamentally different. All they have in common is that in both cases something is seen.

>>24705349
Similarly, some examples from Introduction to Metaphysics, where it's a poetic expression that gives pause:
>We say, “God is.” “The earth is.” “The lecture is in the auditorium.” “This man is from Swabia.” “The cup is of silver.” “The peasant is in the fields.” “The book is mine.” “He is dead.” “Red is the port side.” “In Russia there is famine.” “The enemy is in retreat.” “The vine disease is in the vineyards.” “The dog is in the garden.” “Over all the peaks / is peace.”
>In each case, the “is” is meant differently. We can easily convince ourselves of this, as long as we take this saying of the “is” as it actually happens, that is, as spoken each time from out of a particular situation, task, and mood, and not as mere sentences and stale examples in a grammar book.
>“God is”: i.e., actually present. “The earth is”: i.e., we experience and believe it to be constantly present at hand. “The lecture is in the auditorium”: i.e., it takes place. “The man is from Swabia”: i.e., he comes from there. “The cup is of silver”: i.e., it consists of . . . .” The peasant is in the fields”: i.e., he has moved to the fields, he is staying there. “The book is mine”: i.e., it belongs to me. “He is dead”: i.e., he has succumbed to death. “Red is the port side”: i.e., it stands for. “The dog is in the garden”: i.e., it is running around there. “Over all the peaks / is peace”: i.e.—??? Does the “is” in the verses mean that peace comes about, that it is present at hand, that it takes place, that it stays there? None of that will do here. And yet it is the same simple “is.” Or does the verse mean: over all the peaks peace prevails, as in a classroom peace prevails? No, not that either! Or maybe: over all the peaks lies peace, or peace holds sway? That’s closer, but this paraphrase is not right either.
>“Over all the peaks / is peace”: the “is” simply cannot be paraphrased, and yet it is merely this “is,” as it was said in passing in those few verses that Goethe wrote in pencil on the window frame of a hut on the Kickelhahn near Ilmenau. Strange how we waver here with our paraphrase, hesitate, and finally just let it go, not because this is too complicated and hard to understand, but because the verse is said so simply, even more simply and uniquely than any other, ordinary “is” that mixes itself inconspicuously and constantly into everyday saying and talking.

>>24696894 (OP)
i really like this way of phrasing it anon

i would read the entire sol if it was written in this style rather than hegel's torturous prose style desu

>>24705349
>>24705366
This is a notable point, it's somewhat similar to a line of reasoning Kojeve used. Regardless of what Hegel may have said and regardless of how much experience any given Hegel has there is a fundamental contradiction at the core of Hegel's original philosophy that Hegel is always seemingly incapable of addressing. Kojeve's extrapolations and even Hegel's extrapolations tend to point to a perpetual struggle or conflict where there can be only one last man standing. The process for those 2 is identifying the epitome of spirit for any given school, once this spirit is devoured then the participant can always represent the epitome or challenge the epitome. Everyone post Hegel and including Heidegger who critiqued it did so on why the mechanical explanatory method of Descartes found it's way to be the epitome. For Kojeve and Hegel it's a battle to the death. For the young Hegelians it was an attempt to resolve but all attempts to do so produce a mechanistic explanatory model so they all have to revert to Hegel at some point. Hegel always has the option to provide an explanatory mechanistic model but he also has the option to just neutralize it via dialectic. Hence the emphasis on devouring spirits. The further you get from Hegel minus Kojeve the more the explanations for the phenomena itself diverge, Kojeve basically agreed with Hegel it was unavoidable but went so far as to say necessary, hence his trademark intensity. Others critiqued various aspects to solicit the contradiction. Some interpreted it as emotional and so on. The inherent issue at this point is that any given Hegel can't technically explain why negation is used other than to say agreement without defaulting to a mechanistic model which also starts another dialectic and seemingly only reinforces Hegel's philosophy. The default psychological explanation is that Hegel has some deep seated ego derived pain from being humiliated but this frequently doesn't take into account what could be a genuine desire to know. This produces a possible contradiction for Hegel since his own methods can result in a highly tested and vetted explanatory model but one he sublates every single time. Since Hegel is always in the immediate present moment his philosophy almost dictates he be the last one standing. Most modern varieties don't view Descartes as negatively though and if anything Descartes still filters most readers so it's easier to discern an actual Descartes from an imitator. If Hegel so chooses he can basically view all other participants as Descartes which may or may not be an upgrade for them but doesn't change Hegel's approach, hence the sort of high circularity.

>>24705487
I'm sorry, it's very early for me, and I'm recovering from a headcold, but what does this have to do with my posts about Heidegger's subject matter? Heidegger doesn't critique Hegel to object to this or that part of the system as untrue or unexplained, he objects to its relevance to his subject. See the GA 68 Hegel writings, where he's explicit that it's not a philosophical critique that's at stake, but a confrontation in thinking to only the extent relevant to Heidegger's Seinsfrage.

>>24705487
I’m still scratching my head over this “last man standing” language. It implies the concept isn’t conceptual at all, it also implies Hegel didn’t think we were around the corner from the end point, which would not be a stasis, but still an end, absolute knowing.
>the participant can always represent the epitome or challenge the epitome
You’re the Texas Instruments anon? The one who writes schizo vagueposts and always talks about performing the calculation? What fundamental contradiction? What are you even trying to say? Do you really think Hegel is a Cartesian mechanist? Why? Because his thought is logical, or what? Your posts annoy the shit out of me bruh.

>>24705554
I'm mostly familiar with B&T but I'm not opposed to different meanings. It's like asking what you're conscious is saying amidst various meanings. Lakatos basically viewed this as Nietzsche's main stake, so for the purposes of responding he generally opts for the traditional dialectic with options for Descartes and Hegel. Nietzsche's dilemma entails he may have something but he also has to clear the field or keep it just like everyone else. Trying to put a start on team no start is never going to happen, it's been demonstrated to the point of complete redundancy it's not needed and likely not wanted. If you need a start you're not even in a state of being.

>>24705566
That's probably because you just pretend bruh. I keep giving you the benefit but you keep demonstrating you're an imitator. Doesn't change my method.