Georg W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Introduction - Introduction to Philosophy

all right so we're looking at the phenomenology of spirit we're looking at a very very tiny portion of it right now the introduction and what's and while they're supposed to do in their introduction usually you guys read a lot of text in your classes do you know to skip the introduction I know I skipped quite a few introductions why why do you just get that reductions yeah this generally just sets everything up to bring you in okay yeah it's a set up if they're if their book is understandable by itself you should probably be able to like to figure out what it ought to be in the introduction after you've read the book all right any other reasons you don't read introductions yeah this too long you know like a 100 page introduction to a 40 page book that's probably imbalanced yeah that happens sometimes any other reasons I don't read it sometimes I'm lazy admittedly yeah I have to do a lot reading like you do the students and so I'm kind of selective in what I'm gonna read the introduction to and what I've not like to you could read the phenomenology of mine or phenomenology spirits how you translate Geist the German word without reading the introduction and I think you could get a lot out of it but Eagle is giving you these sort of keys to his method in part in that that very short introduction and Hegel's philosophy is a bit different than what you guys have been encountering so far Hegel is writing at a time when philosophy is particularly white in the sense that morning it's been developing you know something consciously for quite a while I think about the very first text that we started reading or Plato but you could go even further back before we call the pre-socratics philosophy has a long history philosophers respond to each other they write about each other and take each other's ideas into account by the time that Hegel is writing it's been going on for over 2,000 years and there had been some recent challenges people that we haven't read in this class that Hegel is responding to like Immanuel Kant who said look the whole history metaphysics and of morals up until this point is basically been a history of mistakes I'm going to try to set it on a right path once and for all and usually anytime somebody says that they're gone that once and for all what actually happens is that that subtle everything it's a mess yeah just adds more to the puzzle you know and now you've got one more ISM one more type of philosophy one more person to read they claim to you know solved everything or these outline the whole program and it turns out that that's not really the case now Hegel is the kind of guy and I think some of you are in this sort of load who wants to know about everything who wants to figure out how everything gets together he uses this word that you came across very early enough and you were like well what is that the absolute you know that's a good question and Hegel's not going to actually get a great answer he in this little section that were reading he's presuming that he has some sort of background knowledge about this when we're talking about the absolute we mean something like you know the whole or meaning or what is that what is the most meaning hole you know when if you're asking questions about what's the meaning of life you're in a certain sense asking absolute questions what is everything made up that's question about the absolute what am I gonna eat for breakfast after class that's not a question about the absolutely see the big difference between them what should I do with my life is that a question about the absolute or isn't that a question about the absolute it could go either way you know if you're saying what should I do with my life because I want to make a ton of money and money is really important money makes the world go around etc etc etc we might say that's that's you know just talk about it about but not all things well actually let's talk about the absolute if you think that money is the be-all and end-all by which everything is measured money is for you and absolute now there's something to that that's that's a grander way of thinking than just saying hey I want to make a buck isn't it somebody who actually believes that money is the most important thing in the world and they try to understand everything in terms of money that's a real project isn't that's kind of admirable somebody who thinks of the meaning of life in terms style and living the most artistic rich full experientially diverse life possible that will also be a stance about the absolute that's talking about what is what is greatest what is best when you say you know what everything consists in those are statements about the absolute as well and the goal is to figure out what actually is there's saying the yeah absolutely you notice there's a lot of interest in this right some people do think that money is the way to evaluate everything other people think that something like a religious standpoint would provide you with the keys to understanding everything and there's a lot of different alternatives out there as far as that goes some people think that human development and making actual the potential that's within us is what's absolute there's it's a lot of different candidates or this so how do we figure this out well we have to have some way of going about this because otherwise imagine that each single one of you have been at this moment got up and shouted what is most valuable in your life at this point in time or the classroom be like what's that clear your answers would be all over the place could any of you actually pay any attention to anybody else's answer while you're shouting at the top of your lungs in a vehicle says probably not it would be a pandemonium wouldn't it like it would be like what William James called the booming buzzing confusion it would be hard to make sense of so we want to look at things in a somewhat different more orderly systematic way and Hegel is adding a bit more stuff to the next to Hegel is a philosopher who thinks in terms of development culture time and history so now just think about this class this is an introduction of philosophy class you came in here and some of you had read some of the people that we were going to look at you know I remember the whole I did at the very beginning who who's heard anything about Plato's read Plato Thomas Aquinas was one had heard of the most and something you'd actually read then we started reading these guys in order in a sort of chronological order we skipped a lot of people and mentally but did you see any any progress moving as we went from like the ancient stuff into the medieval stuff and into the modern stuff did you see any progress being made or did it just seem like just those guys mix this and this guy thinks this this guy thinks this and they're all kind of full of it yeah very good yeah that's that's a sign of progress when you can take somebody else's viewpoint and go beyond it by because ever heard that expression standing on the shoulders of giants yeah you know if you're not a giant then you see how much go over the giant you still see further that's how it does don't you right even if you're just a tiny little dwarf you would see further than that giant us and Aristotle is one of those kind of Giants from Cicero you know Augustine maybe we're not actually smarter than that on our own individually but you know somebody like Hitler would say well you know we've made some progress beyond them the very fact that you know you can get Aristotle in the Aristotle you can buy this works in like you know the Greek in English on face book pages is about this long of a shelf you get another book about this thick you know that's got that kind of paper that they all would use for Bibles that very thin paper you know so you can pack a lot into it now you could you could do that or you could pick any other philosopher you like or any other think about any other thinker who's got something to say about what is most important what while Maya there might be a historian it might be a person at literature might be a poet it might be somebody in your field who actually wrote something interesting theoretical what makes people tick sooner or later they're all doing philosophy as soon as you start getting to a certain level of thought you're doing philosophy and there is progress that's being made and Eagle wants to try to figure out what does this all mean the absolute can change over time frame they can grow so word he would say in many respects in a better position than say Plato books or even Augustine ones or through Hegel today I suppose you'd say we're in a better position today than Hegel himself once so this idea of progress or development we call that dial-up somewhat different use of the term than what exercise meaning by us but nonetheless it's being used that way now you notice like that is a big word under phenomenology and that here's hails actual you know headline to this the science of the experience of consciousness that's what he is up to this this work that's what you know the introduction is about that's perfectly clear right the science of the experience of consciousness we understand more or less what each of those words mean that's a phonology is and there you go everyone understands perfectly no right only we're that simple let's look at each one of these in turn so you have this big Greek sounding word phenomenology you guys know from long you know go back in your elementary and middle school days whenever you got an ology what does that mean science or the study yeah very good so biology study of life BOS is life so you've got this big word of phenomena when we say phenomenon we often don't use it in a technical term we just mean something that is happening or something you want to talk about why sometimes we trotted out when we want to sound a little bit erudite so instead of saying you know i would like to talk about the traffic that's out there on nine and how people drive too fast you know it's a 40-mile thousand thirty here right thirty or forty thirty so it's a 30s zone here and it's a forty zone back there and people are driving 60 and 50 I don't like that now if you want to sound a little bit erudite you could say I would like to talk about the phenomenon of people driving faster than is warranted by conditions just by adding that word phenomenon in there it sounds a little bit higher level doesn't but all phenomena means is what here's what we notice well you could just as well say I've been noticing that people drive awfully fast on that road out there way over the speed limit myself included some of the time especially better watch it I've got one of those cars where it can go you know pretty fast if I'm not paying attention to it phenomenology means sort of the study of appearances the study of what it is that we perceived how the things actually appear to us this might say why would you need a science about that aren't you perceiving stuff already yeah that's a legitimate you know worry right there yeah that's one key there's a difference between what we call appearance and then reality right and we have had cases where what something appears to us at first turns out not to be the case now how do you know that it's not the case though a new appearance comes up right something else appears to you something else by you you think for example that this is coffee you take a sip it smells like coffees you're taking a sip and then it tastes like kerosene like that as kerosene tastes pretty bad shouldn't get in the habit of drinking kerosene I hope people by the way who's to gargle with Karis they get sick not a good idea now how do you know that well you're expecting one phenomenon and you experience a different phenomenon all we have Haga would say is a whole chain of candid appearances appearing to us that we take it when you find out that a friend is no longer the person that you thought them to be you know there was an appearance right and sometimes people human beings deliberately project an appearance that's not the reality is one of the cases I'll give you an example from what I was the student myself I had a hard time staying at staying awake in class when I was a student at times and there are certain dodges that you can do to try to appear like and you guys know that it feels like your eyelids start drooping having trouble keeping them open what else you know you get that fuzzy kind of feeling you lose a sense of time the words that are being said and become disconnected so what do you do to make sure that the professor doesn't think that you're actually falling asleep well you can't shake your eyes a bit like this and go like this right then they can't see that your eyes are closed definitely don't put your head down on your desk because that gives it away find some things stare fixedly at like you're deep in thought you know not every once in a while but you're paying close attention that's an appearance right that's an appearance that you're deliberately projecting what's the reality in that case yeah your your your checked out right and how does the professor know that something else might happen like suddenly your head falls or like you're falling asleep well you could have phenomena that are not expected but we do expect most of the stuff in our experience to be about the same so yeah it doesn't necessarily have that cavitation I suppose there could be some discourses in which that's that's an unexpected phenomena yeah they're a phenomenal player you know they're phenomenal warrior yeah that has that you're right that has a connotation of like being amazed by something we're being amazed when we're experiencing something unexpected side I think that'll make sense well so let's come back to this now so what appears what we take notice of that can change over time we can acquire better understanding of what's out there by having better appearances more reliable appearances but really all we have to work on our appearances now he's got this thing the science of the experience of consciousness so each one of these terms is important bad consciousness right start with the very last thing every one of you for Hegel is consciousness in the sense that he's talking about you are a conscious human being even if you weren't a human being you would be conscious of your environment but we human beings are conscious of not only of our environment but also much more we have the inner life don't - don't you have your own perceptions your feelings your memories you sometimes take about that think for example case where something that we use an unpleasant memory because those are easier to oftentimes to recall think of a case in high school where you were you were embarrassed for one reason or another way to bet that every single one of you your high school set of experiences includes at least one experience right college probably does do already know what's going on when you remember that where was that memory before sedimented somewhere in you right we would often say well it was like stored in your brain cells and the physical explanation of it there's other ways to explain it you're remembering who's that memory about what's that who's it about it's your memory right who's what's the memory who is the person that's memories about it's a memory of you being embarrassed it's not you remembering yourself a previous self who is yet at the same time the same person as you are otherwise you can't do you have any memories like that where it doesn't embarrass you anymore you're like yeah they're really embarrassed at the time but now I couldn't care less maybe there is a you know enough of a distance there's the feeling that that's no longer me if you don't have that if you actually remember it and you feel embarrassed again then you are being conscious of something in your inner life something that no longer exists of a past that is long gone but still has presence for you again the presence that's amazing that's just one thing that you do routinely you drop the shopping list you're probably not thinking yeah I'm doing philosophy you know I'm just going and getting you know whatever it is if you're gonna get some flour milk eggs you know Pringles whatever it is that you get you are orienting yourself towards your environment when you draw up a list you're making a plan for your son we take these things for granted but we don't realize just how much thinking it's going on in all this when you become infatuated with somebody you're thinking about them all the time they have become what Hegel says an object for you and you not only have mental representations of them you know you like thinking about them you know I saw them at the coffee shop and you know they smiled at me and that smile was such a great smile and you know all that sort of stuff right you also have feelings that come about those feelings somehow get infused into the very thoughts that you have about the person the images that you're working with you have desires expectations I wonder if I should call them and be able to send a text what should I text them that's all consciousness when you're working in your classes and you're thinking about how am I going to write this paper that you know I just got the assignment sheet for and I have no interest whatsoever in this subject and I admittedly have not been listening as well as I have been so I'm not quite sure you know what the teacher is looking for they're an awful teacher - I have no idea how to possibly please them and get out of this class that I can I have two weeks left in that might be the case for some of you right again that's all consciousness all these things together are consciousness and you notice I've described a whole bunch of activities that are distinctively human they take us beyond the merely animal and every one of us is capable of them every one of us does these fairly routinely without thinking about them but if we want to we could actually pay attention to them we could actually watch our consciousness taking place and there's a lot of techniques for doing this some are associated with philosophy some are associated with religion some are just associated with you know various training techniques things like that some are associate action with writing techniques but they all involve paying attention to consciousness so that brings us to this point of experience now Hegel has a very particular way of talking about experience that he says this is a little bit different than what you would ordinarily expect when we're talking about experience so I'm going to actually move you know very far into the introduction she says consciousness it grasps not only the object that it's thinking about it also grasps itself that sees whether there's no that an accord or a discord between the object in itself consciousness develops over time there's there's all sorts of distinctions that he's making along those lines and then he says when we're thinking about the standards that we bring to to look at these things the science by leaving a lot of the standards that would be normally bringing the side by a vegetable just you know taking it into ourselves paying close attention to what's going on we're unable to treat and discuss a subject as it actually is in itself and for the for itself in its complete reality so for Hegel you know we can get beyond the appearances we get more appearances but that's okay now how does this have to do with experience he says this dialectic process does he mean by that there's development there's a process by which you're moving up from once to the next so think for example about where you are now as a student just think about their skills as a student what are the key skills that you need to have that are gonna make it as a student in classes yeah that's more of a characteristic what are some of the like basic operations the skills of you okay so let's just take reading and writing with me on the side because that gets very complicated quickly there's a lot of interesting theories about that a lot of classes have you doing reading right I imagine that most of you are pretty good readers by this point how many of you started out as a great readers few of you might have how many of you had it develop as readers okay how did that happen you went from a lower stage to a better stage to a better stage did that happen just sort of like taking you know one piece of machinery out of your brain and putting another piece of the way human minds work did it happened just by you being placed in different contexts and sort of like a fish you know in different environments you just sort of figured out oh I'm no longer the river I better you know adjust to the lake then you probably had some struggle right did you have to think about did you ever learn techniques for reading what those include like taking notes writing questions outside what do you guys do to read well I don't know they teach you guys these days please don't walk well that's that's very helpful yeah the more you read and the better stuff you read the better a reader you become a better writer too by the way but also there are other techniques that they taught you that at first you were like oh I can't stand doing this but then after a while you're like wow this actually pays a lot for me and then after a while I'm part of your nature and then you know you can actually get to the point where you give them a trouble turning it on that's dialectical development you contain the old where you used to be but now you move to a higher stage you can still do things at the lower level you can still read just for pleasure right all learning all these techniques of studying and reading has not turned it off so that you can't pick up a book that you don't have to read for class and actually enjoy what you're reading if that happens something's going wrong something screwed screwed up along the way but you've managed to go to higher and higher stages you've encapsulated within itself so he says this dialectical process was consciousness executes on itself on its knowledge as well as on its object in the sense that out of the new out of it the new mature object arises is precisely what is termed experience so then he talks and very what you'd call metaphorical but he's actually being quite technical terms a little bit later he says the new object the new thing that you're thinking about now object doesn't necessarily have to mean an object like this the object could be your own processes of understanding it could be the history of something that could be the object whatever it is that you're thinking about the new object contains the nothingness of the first the new object is the experience containing that first object so that's what weird way to talking contains the nothingness of the first you know like you have a box of nothing that's very easy to get I just get yourself a box it's already got nothing in it he doesn't mean nothingness in that sense and we'll come back to that in a moment so he says in the treatment of this course of experience there's an element in virtue of which it does not seem to be an agreement with what is ordinarily understood by experience well we ordinarily think of experiences just kind of wandering or have feel this feel that oh there's a set of keys oh there you got colors within my pocket nothing is connected right nothing is is a systematic conjoined hole that makes sense just a bunch of things all strung together does your life sometimes feel like that particularly when you're tired or stressed out you're having a lower level of experience than more than what Hegel's talking about so he says on the view above given the new object is will this seem to have come about my transformation or a conversion of consciousness itself this way of looking at the matters are doing what we contribute when for example you decided to come to college and at first it might have been because you know you you are expected to go to college right I think I'm most of you at least come from households where that is the basic expectation if you're not doing in college they might know what the hell are you planning to do right and so it's kind of a path that that's more or less set out for you there's also other you know impetuses the guidance counselor's probably told you if you don't go to college you're gonna you know have a dead-end job and an unsatisfactory life because you're going to show you the statistics college graduates tend to earn more than and high school graduates all that sort of stuff that may have gotten things going but are you at the point now where you have sort of thought it through and realized yet this is where I belong I actually do want to be in college this is this makes sense for me this is something that I can get behind as an autonomous person not just as somebody who's being driven by outside forces yeah that's that's consciousness and that is you making a decision about yourself which is you engaging in what Hegel's calling experience yeah if you can tell yourself something like you know I used to think that going to college was just what I had to do is mom and dad wanted me to do that or you know I used to think that it was the smart thing to do just because I need to get a good job because the economy's tough but I don't want to live in a studio apartment my entire life eating ramen those sorts of things you still retain that that's still part of who you you were what you were thinking and now you say it but my thinking has progressed beyond that I now realize that there's something worthwhile here for me something intrinsically valuable that I want to learn or I want to do you could even be like you know I found a circle of friends that I actually enjoyed the English it doesn't necessarily have to be something academic but there's something that you're able to say I'm at a higher level that's what Hegel's long experience the higher level does not completely get rid of the lower level this is what when you're studying about the nothingness from the perspective of the lower level the higher level is nothing but it turns out not to be nothing it turns out to be everything it turns out to be what puts everything else into perspective your life is going to be a whole series of experiences like that it was great that's part of what makes life so interesting and we can share these with each other too by the way it's not just a matter of our own individual experiences like that we can have group experiences like that we can experience that as a culture with us is how this is all civilizations improve and also how many they can decline so he talks about the experience and consciousness he has concerning itself and he says now if we're serious about this that has to embrace everything this is where you might depart from hate this is where you might say yeah you know I followed you so far I can't like the stuff that you're saying experience okay now I got a better understanding of it it means having like these stages where the higher stage contains the lower stage and yet surpasses it that sounds great but do I really have to embrace nothing less than the entire system of consciousness the whole realm of the truth of mine and in such way that the moments of truth are set forth and they're specific and peculiar character that they here possess anybody has their project now now yeah I mean if you did you'd be Hegel that's why Hegel wrote this book the phenomenology he was trying to make sense out of everything he was trying to state yeah so we he says that consciousness good he's trying to build upon itself as you go and it retains all of the previous ones but you are beyond that and you go for higher levels yeah what was it except he says embrace nothing less than the entire system of consciousness so what that would mean is actually trying to understand not just your consciousness and your own development but all the important moments of development that have taken place through the history of mind civilization culture up to the point where you exist because you're actually a product of that so that would mean sort of you know this vast retrospective trying to figure out how did we end up here that's a big project so he's not dipping into the history not just dipping into it for Hegel philosophy is what is going to unite all of the other disciplines that study you being history economics political theory psychology all of those have their place within this giant vast to galleon system again this is one of those places where you know you might get on the Hegel train this far and let's say ah this is the station where I joke ah right the notion that we have to have a full systematic understanding of everything Hegel thought he supplied that in this book with an ontology of spirit but it's about this thing so you know a lot of stuff going on there he also seemed to think that history ended at 1807 which is when he published the phenomenology of spirit that all the essential changes transformations shapes of consciousness and all more or less been developed by that point that would be another place where you would probably say oh well Hegel you know you got some things perhaps right but that that one you're probably wrong about you know did history history in the sense of meaningful history or something radically new comes on the scene did that really end in 1807 with Napoleon you know in the Battle of Vienna who was supposed to be immediately fighting at the very time that he's finishing the proofs for the phenomenology which may not be true probably duh right I mean we think that history is still going human beings are still developing in important ways but you wouldn't have to necessarily abandon everything that Hegel sang to know at that point what's I was going to actually walk through these sort of guiding questions but let's actually look they add just a few of the things that are going on in this introduction I can see that we're not going to actually get through all of the introduction which is kind of funny the short piece and it is in fact supposed to be just an introduction so it should be easy to get your but I got taken too much time with examples let's look at where he's actually starting in this this this introduction so we have a schematic we want knowledge and we're trying to study the conditions of knowledge how does it may actually come to know things and what do we know these aren't conservative he's using here he's using consciousness right yeah in this case it's absolute or it can be any other object of knowledge and knowledge is some sort of relationship between the subject and the object he starts off by talking about two ways that we often conceive of knowledge knowledge is some sort of instrument or knowledge is some sort of what are we invited instrument well we don't think about instruments that you use to acquire knowledge how do you in fact experience the world that you want to know about some things you don't really need an instrument right the instruments inside of you is there a person in front of the room walking right now if you were to doubt them let's say you'd actually thought now maybe he's a hologram you phoned it in today is there a way you could test that would four projectors there's a simpler way get up walk up to me like polka means yellow agency solid you know and then well maybe you know dr. Sadler actually used his robot you know dr. Salvin and sent him in to teach the class with some pre-recorded lecture well they're instruments by which you can acquire knowledge about things these are kind of silly examples but think of other instruments how do you know what to wear for for going outside on any given day look outside yeah if it's sunny well yeah okay you check the weather what is that we east that's one of those things we take for granted it's part of our natural attitude it's part of our culture I just check the weather I mean that's something that we have available to us that that people you know long ago did they would have to just like look outside and kinda hope for the best we can check the weather it's gonna rain later today with a 50% chance how do they know that I mean you might say well they actually don't know that they're off in July but mostly they actually do know that how do they know that yeah weather pattern sources those okay so that's that's really good there's an entire system of instruments that they use and they correlate together that get them to be almost 50 percent accurate a lot of the time which is pretty good for meteorology given how complex the weather actually is in the old days you just have the Farmers Almanac and you'd consult that and that was almost as good as nothing really except for growing seasons now here's the interesting thing to think about does an instruments when you apply it to know something do instruments leave the thing that you're trying to know intact or do they sometimes modify think about for example of microscope you guys all remember putzing around microscopes in biology in high school what did you have to do in order to get something on that microscope yeah it focus it okay that's that's operating machinery itself could you look at anything it could be like say Apple look at this we had real close-up you stick it under there why couldn't you just stick that under there ah very good you have to be prepared a certain way instruments require that what it is that they're looking at be modified to fit that instruments and oftentimes we don't realize this that we're contributing something to the thing that we're trying to know and sometimes modifying in the process so what is our knowledge actually up is our knowledge actually have the thing itself words our knowledge in some respects an artifact that we create by the application of our instrument yes can't you say that our knowledge is just based off of we take that small piece of something yeah modified sir deserve it and then take any you know we got learn from that slice and apply as the whole yeah I mean we do that in fact the question is whether that's actually knowledge or whether that's just sort of some position on the basis that the part in the whole must resemble each other quite a bit and you know we're also still modified that part of memory now you know another possibility would be knowledge is more like a medium what does he mean by a medium think of the air in this this classroom is the air in this classroom interfering with you seeing me or hearing me the sound waves are being transmitted to your your ears is the is the sound muffled because of the air is it being modified in any way or are you getting a clear signal yeah marginal degree yeah and you can see me just fine right because we have life and we're not smoking in here you know to two generations ago students you can actually smoke while you're teaching when I was in undergrad we would light up right after class ended in the classroom it sounds crazy there are professors when not when I was a student but two generations ago who would lecture and they'd be smoking the whole time then people would be sitting back there smoking now imagine the he's in Atlanta serve with like five or six people smoking it'd be harder to see right some media end up deforming the signal that you're getting think about our media imagine social media like Facebook are you ever getting a really impression of things through the information that you're getting on Facebook let's think about profile pictures going to profile pictures truly represent the people who they they are profile pictures on in just in a visual way I mean you can you can look at them like yeah that's that's also that's a really good picture of that they they're quite attractive so people put up ugly profile pictures most of the time that we're gonna say no people will be like well here's my good side and all right let's get the lighting just right and then a lot then they'll modify it even more by using some instruments right like Instagram or Picasa or whatever you like some people I think Photoshop their pictures yeah take out you know the wrinkles or the blemishes or stuff like that so then you you have to be a little bit suspicious of some media in their ability to just you know communicate the reality to us directly and eagle says you know knowledge in general we can understand it with either of these these these models and we can start worrying about this we can start being concerned with what he calls this fear of falling into error how do we know that we're actually getting this straight you know straight information that we're actually getting true knowledge about the things that we're trying to study not only about things out there but sometimes even about ourselves you know we have to understand ourselves through instruments in the media as well so he says this fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust in the science with which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually doesn't know it's not easy to understand why and so we should place the distrust in this very distressed and we should think about what this fear of presuppose something has truth he says it starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrumented as a medium presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge more most more especially it takes for granted that the absolute stands on one side and not put on the other side cut off from the absolutely Hegel saying all of these things together are actually tied up together that the absolutes or what it is that we want to know is not something completely separate from ourselves knowledge is not something completely separate from ourselves I know it's often presented to us that way in text books here's the textbook textbook has information that's knowledge it's your job to fill your empty heads you know with that knowledge but what's going on is actually much more organic much more synthetic than just simply you filling your head with a bunch of data that works for computers but your mind is not a computer in that sense your mind is consciousness and your mind is already by virtue of thinking about these sort of things extending itself through all of this that's why objects can be phenomenal that's why they can appear to you because they're already within your consciousness to a certain extent you skip ahead a little bit so he's worried about not falling into [Music] things that are right yeah what does he mean by this our ordinary way of going about things not seeing any sort of mystery to to the world and to our own processes of thinking about the world just sort of taking everything as if it's just the way it is and that's that's just the you know how it how to end up when in reality the way things are is actually a product of very complex historical forces that have been going on for a long time then often you have deep assumptions built into them our first ways of responding to things are not just something that comes just from instinct or in nature it's something that comes to us from where we are in in history and in culture you know think about the idea of fairness how many of you like things to be fair okay now some people take that as a basic human you know reaction to things if we look at history is that so basic does it always have the same sort of force in structuring social relations as it does in our modern what we call liberal democratic society I don't mean in a political sense of like you know associated with the Democratic Party or progressivism I mean in the sense of like being for rule of law each person counting for for one moment all those sorts of things that we take for granted as part of our culture is that even the case everywhere in the world is that even the case everywhere in our culture how many of you been told that one time or another when you protest about something life is not fair better get used to it there's a contradiction there isn't there with even within our own culture where fairness is held up as this absolute great value and yet even within our own culture there are all these pockets where we're told life's not fair don't expect fairness that's what Hegel calls a productive contradiction and we'd go you know try to build something out of that the natural conscious natural consciousness of things would just say well you know you got your fairness over here and you're not in fairness over here okay that's it don't worry but if you're a you know if you're doing things philosophically you said well that does worry me it's the same culture right it's the same basic domain for moral discussion shouldn't there be some sort of consistency if mom and dad are right about life is not fair and I shouldn't expect fairness then you know when my political science teacher starts talking about basic you know fairness as structuring society what's going on one of those two better view right and the other one wrong or else maybe both of them are wrong is there some way in which both of them can possibly be right besides to say well you know you got your mom and dad over here and they handle things there and then you got your you know your academic over here and the two of them never meet well they do meet because they're meeting we're in you you're experiencing dissonance you're experiencing things not matching important things and you have to figure out how am I going to negotiate this conflict between them you can't just fall back into things so all that you know always take take something for granted now the opposite to this the natural consciousness would be what higgles bones cactuses and scepticism says and we can't really know anything not only shouldn't we take anything for granted once we do stop taking things for granted everything falls apart and you've known people like this right where they were very firm believers in one way of seeing things and when that worldview gets shaken like they gonna walk the the reservation totally and go crazy or they're like nothing matters to me anymore I can't trust anything and you find them you know involved with something equally you know you're rational later on because they had to throw themselves into something before they get to that they're a skeptic and the skepticism is corrosive and skepticism as a stance that people can't take there's a distinct human possibility for consciousness it's a way for consciousness hegel things to assert its own freedom as opposed to the object you could say no to everything they can say I don't believe you to everything but is it this is productive well look at you look at you as fire what do you think No why not yeah there you go when you when you to say no to everything because everything could possibly be wrong or misleading or deceptive you have you actually do close you're off close yourself off to things and you are taking a stance without seeming to take a stance right yeah you won't be able to progress and Hegel is all about consciousness progressing you know there may be different times for tackling different different topics you know one example of this is I have students who take you know the ethics class when they're supposed to you know in your junior and it's just not a good time for them and then they come and they think it's senior year and they're like yeah and all this finally makes sense together I can wrap my head around this but imagine saying I'm never gonna study any of this stuff because that they could all possibly be deceptive you would never make any progress imagine doing that with Locke I'm never going to love anybody because anybody could be a deceiver never going to have any of their romantic relationships because you know not actually they're all going to be bad they all could be bad what would that like to be like towards about 80 years old full of regrets I imagine right and when it would a life like that even be able to generate a full understanding of how it went long probably not it's only those who've progressed who can have a full understanding of where things go wrong so he talks about natural consciousness as something we want to avoid we also want to avoid skepticism the last thing that I'm going to talk about is how do we actually make progress with us so how do we get away from this Google seems to think that consciousness is stored long before you or me came on the scene went through you know I'm actually less a conscious legitimacy so I can do a better diagram consciousness comes through making higher higher stages it's much more complex than than this right in other words who would read a big thick book to explain in Campins by their da conflicts between different consciousnesses representing different points of view somehow behind the stage will incorporate what is right in those higher points of view and it will also be a product and part of reacting against what's wrong in those points of view so you know this will take place not only in human perception it will take place in law it will take place in political systems it will take place Hegel thinks even in the development of religions it'll happen through art it'll happen through everything that's important to human beings through economic organization all these different things there'll be some sort of conflict of perspectives and consciousness in the broad sense including all of us we'll have to find some way around that and it will reach a higher stage will that higher stage the finishing point no there will be another higher consciousness that it will come into conflict with and then it will have to somehow supersede that conflict and go further and further and further so this is a quite complex systemic development developmental process if you want to understand where we currently are you don't just want to you know accept things for granted then you want your consciousness to try to encompass all of these stages of now that's right we're gonna look at the master-slave dialectic next next class I'm not suggesting anybody get themselves a dungeon basement and like trying to enslave somebody so that they can experience it you know that's not what Hegel saying he said you you can think this out you can actually wrap your head around the development of this and if you think about any of your professions that you're going into to truly develop understanding and your profession is not just to know where it is currently but also how it got there now just so that you know those who are doomed doomed those who don't study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes not just for that reason but because that's what it means to actually have a full understanding of X so you know for example fashion right fashion is there are certain constants that aren't there certain things you can teach us principles that you're getting in your classes I hope all right they're not just saying all right everybody activity time there's some basic principles and how those develop those develop through somebody saying I think it's this way another person saying no I think it's this way well let's see if we can develop a more encompassing systematic view now is that the final stage no not yet let's keep going on what about education you think you know we're finished figuring out what's going on in education those of you that are considering F majors and that theory changes every five years it's kind of bad actually doesn't have a lot of understanding of its own history too by the way you know the history of the discipline even historians need to know the history of their discipline that's called historiography and how do you make sense of this you can think of this also in terms of more personal things your family's history does your family history mean something you know do you start out just by saying well mom and dad they're just mom and dad you know they're just that way how do they get to be that way they developed just like you're developing now not exactly the same way maybe you guys are advances beyond your mouth yet hopefully you are right hopefully its generation gets better than better that would be what Hagel is calling this is the process we need dialectic so that's an awful lot to take in I think so I think we'll leave up here do you feel somewhat better grounded in what's going on in this this piece of anything make sense any any pieces come together for you and then it did something

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

Views: 100,279

Rating: 4.8492756 out of 5

Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Student, College, University, Sadler, G.W.H. Hegel (Philosopher), Hegelian, Dialectic, Introduction, Philosophy, Phenomenology, Phenomenology of Spirit (Book), Absolute, Reality, Truth, Development, Progress, Consciousness, Knowledge, Skepticism, Meaning, Dialectical, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Academic), The Phenomenology Of Spirit (Book), German Idealism, Science, Experience, Gestalt, System

Id: 7Hh8OGEsmqA

Length: 60min 53sec (3653 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2013