HCJ 2 – Hegel

Hegel, possibly one of the most difficult philosophers to understand. Trying to learn his philosophy was truly an effort, so I will try to break it down as simply as I can.

It is said that if Kant didn’t exist, then Hegel’s system wouldn’t have ever been. Now that is something to think about.

All joking aside – Kant was the teacher of both Hegel and Schopenhauer, and so it is said that Kant’s thinking is sprinkled across their theories.

Hegel

There are two things that distinguish Hegel’s philosophical arguments: the strong and almost confusing emphasis on logic, and ‘the dialectic’.

The dialectic can be described as the process of opposing and resolving until we come to the ‘Absolute Idea’.

Hegel only believed in the whole – ‘The Absolute’. He believed that everything leading up to the whole is partially untrue, but they are all needed to come to the whole. We must use our logic to reevaluate until we arrive at the Absolute.

But what does this mean?

Hegel created a triadic structure to show how we may arrive at the Absolute:

 

THESIS

This is our first proposition, but this is incomplete and untrue.

ANTITHESIS

This is a reaction to the thesis, but is also incomplete.

SYNTHESIS

Both the thesis and antithesis are brought together as a new whole.

 

This system is repeated until we can arrive at the final conclusion – the ‘Absolute Idea’. We compromise until we reach the absolute truth. This makes him a teleological philosopher as he believes that all aparts lend themselves to the ends, the conclusion of life. Now, that’s a familiar word – ends. Kant’s Kingdom of Ends can be thought of when considering this.

An example given in Bertrand Russell’s ‘History of Western Philosophy’ is:

Thesis – the uncle is reality.

However, this implies the existence of a nephew. This now commits us to the existence of a nephew, so:

Antithesis – the newphew is absolute.

But this is not complete, as there is no uncle in the proposition, so:

Synthesis – the absolute is composed of both the uncle and nephew as a whole.

However, there are many other incomplete aspects to this absolute whole, so we may repeat the triadic system until it is satisfactory with no holes in it.

There is, however, an assumption that every proposition has a subject and a predicate. For example – there is an assumption that the proposition ‘the uncle and nephew are the absolute’ has to contain a subject – the uncle and nephew individually, and a predicate – they have to have necessary conditions for it to be so (the uncle himself must be related in some way, and so on). Hegel says that we must consider the whole uncle-nephew composition. Relations cannot be real.

A and B are not two. They are one in the same whole. The whole, the unity, the absolute, is considered alone to be real.

Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer is a peculiar one. He believed that the life we are living is suffering, and we are suffering from the original sin. He also believed that women were evil because they cause life. We must commit suicide in order to escape this life. I see Schopenhauer as Hegel’s evil twin.

Hegel believed that we are suffering in this life because of the original sin, but believed that we could redeem ourselves from it.

In comparison with Kant, Schopenhauer believed that there was only one big noumena, which is the universe itself. Everything had a will – a will to be, the force. The force is strong. There is no consciousness.

HCJ 2 – Kant

Kant is perhaps one of my favourite philosophers, purely because of how much of a challenge his ideas are. He seems to step back from the ordinary and give a completely parallel perspective.

Kant goes against the a posteriori stance of Hume, and claims that something can be known completely indepdenently of experience – synthetic a priori.

Before I go on, I think I should define the different types of a priori and a posteriori:

A PRIORI

A priori is described as the necessary and universal way to know of things. We know things through reasoning, and we can only think of things in terms of space and time.

• Analytic: The statement would be true in itself, we could analyse the truth within the statement. E.g. All bachelors are unmarried.
• Synthetic: We can assess physical experience and create connections through our reasoning: cause and effect. E.g. We know that fire causes pain because we have realised the link between the touching of fire and the subsequent feeling of pain. This is what Kant believes. Kant’s theory of  there being a union between rationalism and empiricism (synthetic a priori) is known as the ‘Copernican Revolution’.

A POSTERIORI

To obtain knowledge through a posteriori is to obtain knowledge through raw sense data, dissociated perception, or simply: our senses. It is contingent.

• Analytic: It is not possible to mentally process a posteriori knowledge.
• Synthetic: The only way to know a posteriori, which is from experience. E.g. Some bachelors are bald.

Kant went on to say that we can only think in terms of space and time, it is necessary as it is our only perception.

Example: Rose tinted spectacles – you think you cannot think of anything not pink if you have only ever seen through rose tinted spectacles. We don’t have the experience without the spectacles, this makes it a necessary and universal. We have always been human, and so we cannot think of anything outside of space and time.

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You can prove using synthetic a priori the existence of both space and time – we cannot imagine anything that doesn’t occupy space and that is out of time. Space and time is a necessary and universal precondition of perception.

The universe exists independently of one’s own mind.

The phenomena are the apearences, and the noumena are the things themselves. These two ideas are vital to Kant’s understanding of the world and epistemology. All of our judgements are of the phenomenal realm, but we will never know of the nourmenal realm as it is independent of our experience.

For example, if you look at the pen, then it is understood in the phenomena, but if it is then taken away/hidden, it returns to the noumena (the pen still exists, but we are not experiencing it).

‘Unity of perception’ – this means that individual thoughts and sense data are sythesised into a whole picture. All experience is united as one perception.

Difference between waking and dreaming: waking consciousness is not dependent of sense data but of necessity. Dreaming is a random series of sense impression, there is no cause and effect in dreaming.

Objects of perception must conform to the mind. The mind creates imaginings by filtering raw sense data into the 12 categories, which can be deduced by synthetic a priori. These are:

1. Unity
2. Plurality
3. Totality
4. Reality
5. Negation
6. Limitation
7. Substance
8. Cause and effect
9. Community
10. Possibility
11. Existence
12. Necessity

All possible perceptions are synthesised from these, and exist in the mind as phenomena.

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Another thing to consider when talking about Kant is his ethics. Kant has ‘descriptive’ morality, rather than ‘prescripted’ – Hume.

The Categorical Imperative: this is a a maxim that should be done, but isn’t known necessarily from experience. We should act for the sake of duty, not for our own personal want of being moral. For example: You must stop at the red light.

The Hypothetical Imperative: this is a statement that consists of ‘if‘. For example: If you want to be good, then you must share your food. It doesn’t have to be done.