Thread 24870610

As a general rule I do not trust philosophers who use complicated and undefined terms in their work. This is why I don't like Hegel. Hegel doesn't feel like he's trying to educate you, he feels like he's trying to trick you.

All the Greeks are much better on this. Particularly Aristotle. Aristotle will always clearly define a new term when he introduces it, and I appreciate that a lot.

>>24870610 (OP)
1. You are having a hard time following him
2. It could also be due to an inadequate translation.

>>24870654
Hegel is worse in German.

>>24870610 (OP)
I never read Hegel, but I know the summary of his works, something about the dynamics between slaves and masters, how masters are dependent on slaves, how the spirit evolves over time across the humanity's history.
That's all I need to know, no need to read all the mumbo-jumbo.

>>24870786
How do you know the summary is what he meant?

Most philosophy requires slow reading and careful analysis with copious note taking and secondary sources to understand wtf is going on, for that reason the majority of philosophy is not worth reading for your average joe. Even someone who is seriously interested in theory would be better suited reading secondary sources most of the time. This isn't always the case. Plato and Nietzsche are eminently readable for example, for their less formal structure, but that's an exception. I'm not saying this as a put down or a flex. It is genuinely not worth the time commitment for most people. Pic was me reading the Critique of Pure Reason as an undergrad...

>>24870610 (OP)
In his lecture about Plato, Sugrue divides the Philosopher and the Sophist in being and seeming. The Philosopher, Socrates, spends much time trying to define things because he is in pursuit of knowing the truth -- being. The Sophist, in contrast, never gets into words and what they actually mean, thriving in the realm of ambiguity, only seeming to know the truth -- seeming.

>>24870610 (OP)
Do you like Hobbes?

>>24872118
I tried to understand this but gave up. Seriously, wtf is that.

>>24870610 (OP)
>I do not trust philosophers who use complicated and undefined terms in their work.
Skill issue, midwit.

>>24870610 (OP)
>complicated and undefined terms in their work
Good instincts.

>>24870610 (OP)
>Aristotle will always clearly define a new term when he introduces it, and I appreciate that a lot.
This is not true at all and it's one of the biggest pains in the ass reading the Organon. To be fair this could very well be Theophrastus' fault because crucial undefined terms in earlier books will often be defined in later books

>>24872118
This shit just means "it's not just the goal, it's the friends we made along the way", kek.

>>24872668
Aristotle is definetely not fully clear, and it shouldn't be expected because the texts were meant as annotations for his classes, not as definitive works to be read for millennia, but at least he tries to be clear. Hegel doesn't, and I doubt that the difficulty of his ideas is nearly as high as their textual depiction. Philosophical ideas are often hard to follow, and the philosopher's courtesy should be not to make them harder with the writing.

In normal consciousness we think in terms of subject and predicate - the cat is on the mat. Hegel argues this sort of subject-predicate thinking is inadequate for understanding philosophical truth. If you take a step behind finite thought you find everything is connected to everything else, and the subject isn’t an empty “base” for a predicate, but is actually in that predicate. For example, “substance is subject” - this doesn’t mean substance (our world, our proper object) simply = subject, as if the whole world is a conscious being, but substance is a moment of the subject and vice versa - they’re different and the same at the same time; like how your personality is different from and identical to your ‘core self’ all at once, not like how the cat is on the mat, and can be somewhere else indifferently. Compare that to the silly debates we have here on the nature of consciousness, God, etc, which are always marred by finite thinking on all sides - this is that, and not that other, this contradicts this, you faggot pseud, etc, everything is in its own little cubby hole, and the debates run in circles because the arguers don’t see the circle they are in. So this is why Hegel’s hard to read, he is operating on a different plane of thought, as pretentious as that might sound, it’s radically opposed to how we normally think. He isn’t trying to trick anyone and his books are comprehensible. The Logic explains all his terminology in detail.

>>24870610 (OP)
>philosophers who use complicated and undefined terms in their work
the word you're looking for is "obscurantists"

>>24872704
Then don’t read him, why do you think we care? “It’s just too heckin’ hard I bet it’s all bullshit anyway!” Ok.

>>24870610 (OP)
Your intuition actually isnt wrong here imo. Hegel does suck for exactly this reason, and most of the philosophers who do this are bad. Youre not wrong. The more internal jargon required, generally the more bullshit and sperged out it is. Look at German idealism. The entirety of that movement was just fake dog shit from fools who were like "my thoughts are real."
So i dont fault you for this desu

>>24872704
Aristotle is 10 million times easier to follow and read than Hegel is. You need to understand a very small amount of jargon to follow Aristotle

>>24870610 (OP)
The Gauss quote? He did notably praise Aristotle, but I suspect it was mostly for mathematical purposes. He also had some odd thoughts about Plato, but I like his take that math gets you out of the cave. Whether he realized it or not he wound up at an agreement with Leibnitz, and despite his criticism of Kant still couldn't escape the distinction, and his demonstrations have generally been taken as Hegelian absolute.

>>24872900
Maybe, but Hegel's works are much better organized. There are some passages in the Organon that only make light of something in Parts of Animals, or in the Physics that aren't explained until deep into the Metaphysics, a major issue in Metaphysics that he promises to solve in book 7 but ends up putting off until the end of book 13 in the middle of an entirely different discussion, shit like that makes Aristotle difficult.