Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
One of the most difficult philosophical works ever written is Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In the "Introduction" to this work, Hegel attempts to aid his readers by describing the project that he carries out. But like so many things written by Hegel, the "Introduction" itself is formidable and very difficult to understand. In this paper, I attempt to "make sense" of the "Introduction" and, thus, contribute to the understanding of the Phenomenology. To achieve this end, I take the great liberty of comparing philosophers with blind men and Reality with an elephant. I take a series of claims made by Hegel in the "Introduction" and show how they make sense of his project once they are seen in the context of
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Kant has claimed that the history of philosophy, especially Rationalism and Empiricism, is characterized by a lack of awareness of the limitations of the human perspective. For Kant, human knowledge is not some passive activity but rather an active instrument which transforms the world in knowing it. As a result, all of your knowledge is limited to the phenomenal. It is limited in that you have things only in so far as they appear to you. In so characterizing knowledge, Kant, almost like Saxe and the Buddha, wants you to accept the limitations this conception of knowledge implies. It is in accepting your limitations that you can achieve all the benefits that Kant has to offer. It is into this context that Hegel finds himself. Hegel looks back over the history of human thought and finds claims about the nature of ultimate reality. Each thinker claims, like the Blind Men, that they have discovered ultimate reality. As Hegel points out, "For, if cognition is the instrument for getting hold of absolute being, it is obvious that the use of an instrument on a thing certainly does not let it be what it is for itself, but rather sets out to reshape and alter it." (Hegel, Phenomenology, p. 46) While everyone in the past has an appearance or aspect of reality, no one has gone beyond the phenomenal and discovered reality for itself. Further, no one has even reached the point that they recognize the limitations of their own perspective. But if the job of the philosopher means anything at all, Hegel argues that it must not only recognize the phenomenal character of its knowledge, but transcend this phenomenality and achieve truth. For it is only in transcending the phenomenal that you can reach Science or real true knowledge of what exists. "Science, however, must liberate itself from the phenomenality, and it can do so by turning against it." (Hegel, Phenomenology, p. 134) In many ways, the problem of the
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James continues to stir up an immense amount of controversy for such a short novel. Making a definite, educated decision on the actual truth considering the countless inquiries that develop while reading this story proves more difficult than winning a presidential election. That being understood, taking one particular side on any argument from a close reading of the story seems impossible, because the counter argument appears just as conceivable. Any side of the controversy remains equally disputable considerably supported by textual evidence from the novel. One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one ways is why Mrs. Grose believes the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equals even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants we...
In sections 190-193 of Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Sprit, Hegel looks into the relationship between the lord and the bondsman. In this examination of the relationship, Hegel makes the move to find out what both the lord and bondsman offer to each other in terms of existence and or identity. The formulation that Hegel made in the selected sections is that the bondsman had more to gain in terms of intellectual growth than his lord who becomes intellectually dormant due to the bondsman acting in the likeness of his lord.
Fogelin R. J. (1984) ‘Philosophy and Phenomenological Research’, International Phenomenological Society, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 263-271
...is an account of the birth of self-consciousness through intersubjectivity or the integration within culture. It is a dialectical interpretation that acts, for Hegel, as a form for perceiving the way in which the self comes to know itself through the other and through historical processes. The master/slave dialectic is an early account of intersubjectivity and also a lack of intersubjectivity because it is not based on equal recognition. Self-consciousness, for Hegel, is attained only through the recognition by another independent self. The human world is a world based on recognition, and the human being has within themselves the desire for recognition from other human beings. Hegel proposes that one cannot become a self-conscious individual without seeing oneself in another, and that each individual bases their existence on a world that is founded upon recognition.
Following in the path of Kant and Fichte, Hegel has become one of the most influential philosophers in history. His philosophy has influenced important people, such as Karl Marx, and influential schools of thought, such as the Frankfurt School. This influence rides heavily on the chapter, Master and Slave in his book Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter examines the relationship between two self-consciousnesses, and the process of self-creating. The relationship between the two self-consciousnesses and the eventual path to ‘acknowledgment’ or recognition of the self is outlined in the first line of the chapter: “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that
...omprehensible knowledge of a particular sort. After derisively comparing those believers in sense-certainty's capabilities of Knowledge to animals and Eleusinian devotees, Hegel returns to his theme of Knowledge as communication through language, insisting that to make a claim about the knowledge contained in sense-certainty is: "not to know what one is saying, to be unaware that one is saying the opposite of what one wants to say" (Hegel, 109). Left with the thingness or being of sense-certainty as an undifferentiated, universal and unintelligible generality, Hegel concludes by abandoning sense-certainty in its own right and moving on to the next level of complexity, namely perception, or thingness as understood the properties that define it.
Kung, Hans. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought As Prolegomena to a Future Christology. T&T Clark, 2001. hard cover.
The personal connection Americans have with their phones, tablets, and computers; and the rising popularity of online shopping and social websites due to the massive influence the social media has on Americans, it is clear why this generation is called the Information Age, also known as Digital Age. With the Internet being a huge part of our lives, more and more personal data is being made available, because of our ever-increasing dependence and use of the Internet on our phones, tablets, and computers. Some corporations such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook; governments, and other third parties have been tracking our internet use and acquiring data in order to provide personalized services and advertisements for consumers. Many American such as Nicholas Carr who wrote the article “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty, With Real Dangers,” Anil Dagar who wrote the article “Internet, Economy and Privacy,” and Grace Nasri who wrote the article “Why Consumers are Increasingly Willing to Trade Data for Personalization,” believe that the continuing loss of personal privacy may lead us as a society to devalue the concept of privacy and see privacy as outdated and unimportant. Privacy is dead and corporations, governments, and third parties murdered it for their personal gain not for the interest of the public as they claim. There are more disadvantages than advantages on letting corporations, governments, and third parties track and acquire data to personalized services and advertisements for us.
In today’s society, the mind is a set of cognitive elements which enables an individual’s consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. In addition, without our minds and/or conscious experiences, a person would not be able to understand what makes them who they are. Similarly, in Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat,” Nagel claims that even though there is something it is like to be an organism, humans are not capable of fully knowing what it is like to be a bat. In addition, Nagel supports his claims through the importance of an organism’s conscious experiences, memories, and knowledge which allow an individual to identify themselves. Therefore, in this paper I will discuss Nagel’s argument which I believe
Thomassen, J. & Schmitt, H. 2004. Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union. Tidsskrift for Samfunnsforskning, 45 (2), pp. 377-410.
As a conclusion on Majone and Moravcsik arguments, it is important to discuss if they are right in theirs claims about the democratic deficit in the EU or not.
The 'mind-body' problem has troubled philosophers for centuries. This is because no human being has been able to sufficiently explain how the mind actually works and how this mind relates to the body - most importantly to the brain. If this were not true then there would not be such heated debates on the subject. No one objects to the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun because it is empirical fact. However, there is no current explanation on the mind that can be accepted as fact. In 'What is it like to be a bat?', Thomas Nagel does not attempt to solve this 'problem'. Instead, he attempts to reject the reductionist views with his argument on subjectivity. He examines the difficulties of the mind-body problem by investigating the conscious experience of an organism, which is usually ignored by the reductionists. Unfortunately, his arguments contain some flaws but they do shed some light as to why the physicalist view may never be able to solve the mind-body problem.
George, S. and Bache, I. 2001.Politics In the European Union. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
“It was a new discovery to find that these stories were, after all, about our own lives, were not distant, that there was no past or future that all time is now-time, centred in the being.” (Pp39.)
Marks, Gary and Marco R. Steenbergen. European Integration and Political Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.