Hi there!

I'm reading through the Phenomenonology the first time along with lectures and I got stuck on the concept of "infinity" (Chapter on Consciousness).

Is difference infinite? The absolute is infinite?...

I just read a paper describing how Hegel was a secret influence on how Nabokov understood storytelling and was wondering if any resident Hegelians have found novels, films, etc that could be deemed "Hegelian"?

He never said it. In fact, what people usually refer to when they quote this implies the exact opposite. Here is the passage they usually refer to:

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, - that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present. Looked at in this light, nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution. Nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times.

He means that we learn nothing from history because there is nothing to be learnt from it. No two situations are exactly alike, and there is no point in deducing universal and general principles from history, because there are none. He wasn't making banel snarky remark that people are dumb and fail to understand things from the past. I do not know why this quotation is so often attributed to him, nor why his position is so widely misrepresented through it. I hate it when people smugly quote it.

think about it

The Hegel Test of Rational Competence evaluates an individual’s ability to distinguish sound reasoning from persuasive rhetoric, identify logical inconsistencies, and critically assess the validity of an argument, regardless of the authority, reputation, or sophistication of the person advancing it.

The test measures logical precision, analytical rigor, and the ability to apply standards of reason consistently.

The Test:

Demonstrate whether the following claim by Hegel is true or false. (How do you know whether the following claim by Hegel is true or false?)

“Contradiction is the rule of the true, non-contradiction is the rule of the false.”

This was originally posted on [r/rationalphilosophy](r/rationalphilosophy)

I don’t know why but the ending really got me going. All the talk about imagined geniality (sorry I’m Swedish so I don’t know the English translation), and the critique against those who wanna take the “kings road” to truth and knowledge, without really putting in the effort etc was really nice. Ironically the complexity of the preface is showcasing this since it tries to summarise a complex work into a couple of pages. There seems to be so many parallels to the modern Information Age where everyone just wanna read summaries, wiki articles, or ask AI to “eli5” explain complex topics. I didn’t really grasp what he meant by “the dead burying the dead” in the very end, but it sounded like a good metaphor for something hehe. I guess I will have to reflect on that.

Anyway. Now I’m staring with the introduction.

Title

3 children and a teacher were shot and killed at school today in my home state. It didn't even make the top of r/news.

I recall Sandy Hook, and genuine shock on some people that a person could be permitted to make such a series of choices. Then Uvalde, and the reaction was short-lived rage.

If you were to put me blindly through a time machine, I could theoretically ascertain the year I'd been sent to (absent of factoids) by a certain... geist to how someone reacts to a phenomenon like violence at school. What, in the subject's estimation, is the socially permissible reaction to these events?

South Park addressed this years ago with Karen Marsh screaming in horror at recurring school shootings, and everyone responding with a general tone of "you're harshing the vibe, worring about things we can't control."

I, personally, would not fault a person for lying down in traffic in protest of "moving on" from tragedies like this at all. But the person's actions would not be considered "socially permissible," in my opinion. Centrists alone would dismiss him as performative or ungenuine. Or, at the very best, "going about things the wrong way."

How does geist relate to how a society collectively agrees to move along in the wake of revelatory catastrophe, tolerating the intolerable?

I’m currently taking a class in college called The Meaning Of Art and we’ve been getting into Hegel this week. Something that came up was how Hegel had a ranking of art forms, from architecture being the most basic, then sculpture, painting, music, and literary/language at the top. What do you guys think of this?

Я узнал что на самом деле тезис антитезис, синтез ввёл шеллинг. А у гегеля было абстрактное + противоположное = конкретное. А абстрактное также по самому гегелю это это максимально узкое познание. Тоесть выходит любой тезис - узок, а если нет - аблюстен, но абсолют же практически не достижим, что за бред

Miller, Phenomenology, §165

There is desire and satisfaction (identity, universal, sense-certainty).

There is Existence, repulsed by and attracted to satisfaction.

Existence is oblivious to itself. It's everyday consciousness.

Then, there is the consciousness of Existence, which is the positing of an object.

Perception and Understanding are the modes of consciousness of Existence.

Then, there is the consciousness of consciousness of Existence, which is the Phenomenology.

Consciousness of consciousness of Existence is the reduction of the object.

When consciousness of consciousness of Existence no longer sees the differences in Desire, it is Self-consciousness.

Put differently, Existence is an awareness of difference, which is the repulsion of identity. When consciousness is aware that the differences are not different, it has surpassed the differences and become Self-consciousness.

An example is our capacity to ask questions about consciousness itself amid our reduced capacity to see good and evil.

But, what Self-consciousness knows in knowing itself "requires a still more complex movement."

Miller, Phenomenology, §164

In order to understand what is happening, let me explain what doesn't work.

Desire and satisfaction don't work because they are vanishing moments, a repetition of the same.

In order for it to work, the opposition must persist and the identity must be repulsed.

In other words, it mus be a persistence of consciousness of something, a consciousness of consciousness of something.

Consciousness of consciousness of something is both attraction and repulsion, which is the subsistence of self-consciousness itself.

Desire is Attraction and Existence is Repulsion, the Desire to Desire.

It has always been there from the start, but only implicitly as an object.

We have been mired in the object.

The Understanding remains mired in the object because it only goes so far as to posit both sides as substances or attributes of a substance.

The stages of consciousness only go so far as to reflect on the different objects of consciousness (Phenomenology).

Only when the "sensuous covering" is completely removed do we have the pure movement, the pure Notion.

Only the Science is its proper form.

Artificial objects are a repulsion and the positing of a master.

Когда начал изучать философию слыхал о том,какой же Гегель трудный или непонятный но прочитав я его некоторые строчки из разных книг я все дословно понял и даже скажу что сам о таком рассуждал большее из всего.Сделав анализ могу с полной увереностью сказать о том,что не каждому суждено знать то что есть в мире,как говорилось в книге Джорджа Оруэлла "1984" лучшая книга та,где написано то,что ты уже знал,и лучше не знать то о чем не думал лично.

According to Marci Shore (Prof at UToronto, much praise to her) Hegel taught that enough of something can turn into a different thing.

I have been thinking about money which is really several different kinds of stuff. Money that we are all familiar with on a daily basis for paying rent and buying food and birthday presents is one thing, but Money, such as a Million $, is really something different, requiring meetings with bankers, insurance of possessions and so on.

This is explained in the Musical Show "My Fair Lady" where a dustman, Mr Dolittle inherits a very large sum of money which makes him extremely uncomfortable. "Five Pounds, I can enjoy Five Pounds, but not all this" he sings. This money comes with responsibilities!

Then there is Billions, a completely different Kettle of fish. To buy and sell villages, towns and factories, to disturb politicians. What I have in my Visa account seems to me to have little to do with this kind of money. Does it obey different rules, to grow faster and keep growing, mine grows only slowly if at all. I can order my life to "Do None Harm" but maybe a billion will surely clash with someone?

If this post makes sense does it suggest that Billions should be taxed differently, inherited differently, and keep growing? Or maybe Bernie Sanders is right and there should be no Billionaires?

Miller, Phenomenology, §163

Force is the Notion of self-determination without resistance.

It turns into its opposite, flux, because flux equally fits the definition.

Consciousness adds law, an image of stability, but fails to mix the ingredients together.

Law becomes a Notion with an inner difference.

Law is diluted into Movement. Movement is diluted into Contradiction. Contradiction is diluted into Infinity.

Self-consciousness is knowing where the Notion of Infinity comes from—its history.

Law only imitates self-consciousness because it explains itself, and this is its attraction.

For instance:

God is Force.

General Relativity is Law.

Physicists are searching for quantum gravity to produce a theory of everything so that it can explain itself.

I would like to open a discussion on a pedagogical and epistemological paradox regarding our first encounters with Hegel’s philosophy. Moving from a personal phenomenological anecdote, I hope to arrive at a broader speculative question:

When I was 15 years old, I came across Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit for the first time. I was searching online for texts that might break up what felt like a monotonous routine back then, and I stumbled upon this book.

Despite lacking any formal background in philosophy such as the works of Kant, Hume, Spinoza, or Descartes I experienced a profound cognitive alignment with Hegelian thought. To be clear, I don't mean a passive absorption, but an active engagement of understanding and critique (in fact, I’ve partially distanced myself from some of it since then). It felt as though my worldview was being continuously reflected for what it was through his writing, almost as if it resonated right through me. Even as I read other philosophers later on, I never quite experienced that same feeling again. Rather, there was an immediate, intuitive resonance with the notions of process, relationality, and Aufhebung.

This experience has led me to reflect on how Hegel might be absorbed by a younger mind. Children and adolescents often possess a fluid intuition of reality, one that is less rigid than that of adults, whose thoughts are often pre-formed and heavily structured.

As Hegel might put it: adult thinking has often been strictly categorized by the abstract identity of the Understanding (Verstand).

Youth, therefore, seems naturally more receptive to dialectical movement, precisely because it hasn't yet ossified the world into fixed, isolated dichotomies.

The issue, however, is that this creates a stark tension with Hegel’s own methodology. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel famously critiques the Romantic desire for immediate knowledge (unmittelbares Wissen) or intellectual intuition, asserting that philosophy must be a rigorous science requiring the "labor of the notion" (Anstrengung des Begriffs). And yet, the Phenomenology itself is the story of the education (Bildung) of natural consciousness, which begins precisely in a state of naive immediacy (Sense-Certainty) before undergoing its necessary dialectical despair.

In short, the paradox lies in this double movement: the Phenomenology demands the abandonment of immediacy, yet it cannot help but start from it, while natural consciousness is not swept away, but rather guided through its own immanent skepticism.

TL;DR:

Is it possible that youthful "plasticity" offers a privileged point of entry into dialectical thought, or must this initial intuitive encounter be fully "negated" and sublated for the true Anstrengung des Begriffs to begin? What are your experiences in this regard? And on a personal note: do you think I should pick up the Phenomenology and read it again from scratch?

I’m curious as to what Hegel believes with regards to the indirect realist / direct realist / idealist theories of perception? I’m sure he doesn’t fit neatly into this taxonomy but what is his view?

I’m guessing he answers this in the Philosophy of Mind but I haven’t gotten to that part of the system yet. I’m very new to Hegel

A little philosophical plot twist happened in the comments of the META Map.

u/Artist-in-Residence2 pointed out that the structure of the META Map bears some interesting similarities to Hegelian dialectics.

Which is hilarious to me because:

I have never actually engaged seriously with Hegel's work. 🙈😂

So I thought it would be more interesting to actually look at the proposed correspondence.

The comparison was roughly:

Hegelian reading:

«Position → Negation / Resistance → Sublation (Aufhebung)»

META Map:

«Orient → Meet Resistance → Learn»

And there is a genuine structural resemblance here.

The META Map begins with an orientation.

Then reality pushes back.

That resistance isn't automatically treated as an enemy or failure. It becomes information.

The orientation is then revised, refined, integrated, or sometimes discarded.

In shorthand:

Orient → Encounter → Update

That certainly sounds Hegel-adjacent.

But there is an important distinction I want to preserve:

Structural correspondence ≠ historical influence.

I didn't start with Hegel and construct the META Map from his philosophy. If anything, this is an example of discovering that two different maps may have developed similar structures around a similar problem.

And I learned something else interesting from looking into Hegel:

The famous “thesis → antithesis → synthesis” formula is actually a simplification of Hegel rather than the way Hegel himself straightforwardly presented his dialectic.

The concept of Aufhebung is much richer. It can carry the sense of overcoming, preserving, cancelling, and lifting something into another determination simultaneously.

That is much closer to what I'm trying to express with Learn.

The goal isn't:

«“My original idea was wrong, therefore destroy it.”»

It is closer to:

«“Reality showed me something my previous orientation could not adequately account for. What survives the encounter?”»

And that brings me to the second part of u/Artist-in-Residence2's comment: Kierkegaard.

The Kierkegaardian objection is fascinating because it pushes in almost the opposite direction.

A conceptual system can become so comprehensive that it starts pretending it has captured the thing itself.

But grief is still grief.

Love is still love.

Fear is still fear.

A person actually has to live an existence. A taxonomy doesn't experience it on their behalf.

And this is where I think the META Map's own prime directive becomes especially important:

«A map exists to improve orientation. It must never become indistinguishable from the territory.»

So perhaps there are two useful warnings here.

From Hegel:

Don't mistake a single, isolated determination for the whole. Contradiction and resistance can reveal limitations in our current understanding.

From Kierkegaard:

Don't mistake the conceptual system for the existence it is attempting to describe.

And from the META Map:

Don't mistake either one for the territory.

😂

So thank you, u/Artist-in-Residence2, for pointing me toward a philosophical framework I apparently managed to walk adjacent to without realizing it.

I'm going to have to actually read Hegel now.

Which means there is a non-zero probability that my next META Map update begins with:

“Well shit. Hegel had thoughts about this.” 😂

And perhaps that's the most META part of the whole thing:

A map can teach you something about itself by showing you what you failed to see.

Reality first.

Always.