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Hegel's Concept of Experience: With a Section from Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit in the Kenley Royce Dove Translation
English, German (translation)
- GenresPhilosophy
155 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Martin Heidegger
519 books3,270 followersMartin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 6, 2018
One does not read ‘Hegel’ by Heidegger in order to find out more about Hegel. One reads it to find out more about Heidegger and how he thought. Everything Heidegger wrote after ‘Being and Time’ is about Heidegger and his reinterpreting of B&T. B&T is not really about the question of being. If anything, it’s on the meaning of being and in this book Heidegger switches it around to being as truth, or in other words: being as presence, the revealing and gathering of the logos, or as he’ll say in this book’s earlier section the grabbing, the encircling and the rising up of the thought as a thing (I’m paraphrasing only because I don’t want to look up the exact quotes).
Hegel’s Ideas, Logic and Phenomenology are discussed. Hegel said in his ‘Ideas’ that our understanding of our being (or its meaning) is based on our tradition, context and culture which change over time and the ‘cult’ we belong to make our beliefs that we have. Einstein said ‘that our theories determine how we see the world’. Heidegger takes those themes and makes them his own, and I’ve read elsewhere that he spends the rest of his career doing just that.
In this book, Heidegger said ‘metaphysics ends with Hegel and his ‘Science of Logic’’. It’s not a bad thing. He just means that everything that needed to be said about the fundamental structure of the first principles of being and essences has been said and a new way of thinking about the problem is required.
Heidegger will dissect the introduction to the Phenomenology. The original title according to Heidegger was to be ‘The Science of Experiences of Consciousness’. I had no idea. That’s what I got out of the Phenomenology when I read it too. To me, it is a guide book on who I am and what my I is. Heidegger connects the dots between Kant, Hegel and Himself (and even some Nietzsche) all within this small book.
Three books that are prominently featured within this book are 1) Kant’s First Critique, 2) Hegel’s Phenomenology and 3) Heidegger’s B&T. Kant will say the ‘I think’ is never correct, it’s always ‘I think I think’. Kant thinks of our experiences as ontic (‘the furniture that makes up the world’). Hegel thinks of them as ontological (‘what the furniture is made up of’), sense certainty is the start of our truth but then comportment to reality is made metaphysically. All three of these books connect intimately (in my opinion) and the books all skirt morality, the nature of the good, and are mostly concerned with the nature of the real or truth or knowledge, and realize that ‘goodness’ is up to the individual to work out for themselves. Heidegger and Hegel seldom speak of the ‘good’, and Kant does it only outside of his first critique).
In this book, Heidegger mentions the ‘ontological difference’, the difference between the thought and being, the substance of Parmenides’ ‘the one’. Later on, Heidegger will call that difference with the place holder ‘God’ and Derrida will ‘deconstruct’ ‘La Difference’. Heidegger discusses being and becoming while discussing Hegel (and some of Kant). He makes the actual equivalent to the necessary and Hegel’s Absolute. It’s possible that Sartre read this before writing ‘Being and Nothingness’ because there was a lot of overlap with Heidegger’s Hegel and Sartre’s. Sartre gets ‘Being and Time’ completely wrong within his book (Dreyfus will say that in his course on B&T, because Sartre takes one line in Division II on death and anxiety and writes his book based on that misreading. It really is awful philosophy, ‘Pierre is not a waiter he’s just acting as a waiter, ‘people are not gay they just do gay acts’, etc. , ‘we have radical freedom always and especially when we are prisoners’), but he gets most of Hegel except for the ‘nothingness’ part!
This is not a book in as much as it is a series of essays and notes laid out for presenting live to an audience of some kind. Heidegger writes the essays such that anyone could follow him as long as the person has read Hegel and Kant’s first critique.
Hegel’s Ideas, Logic and Phenomenology are discussed. Hegel said in his ‘Ideas’ that our understanding of our being (or its meaning) is based on our tradition, context and culture which change over time and the ‘cult’ we belong to make our beliefs that we have. Einstein said ‘that our theories determine how we see the world’. Heidegger takes those themes and makes them his own, and I’ve read elsewhere that he spends the rest of his career doing just that.
In this book, Heidegger said ‘metaphysics ends with Hegel and his ‘Science of Logic’’. It’s not a bad thing. He just means that everything that needed to be said about the fundamental structure of the first principles of being and essences has been said and a new way of thinking about the problem is required.
Heidegger will dissect the introduction to the Phenomenology. The original title according to Heidegger was to be ‘The Science of Experiences of Consciousness’. I had no idea. That’s what I got out of the Phenomenology when I read it too. To me, it is a guide book on who I am and what my I is. Heidegger connects the dots between Kant, Hegel and Himself (and even some Nietzsche) all within this small book.
Three books that are prominently featured within this book are 1) Kant’s First Critique, 2) Hegel’s Phenomenology and 3) Heidegger’s B&T. Kant will say the ‘I think’ is never correct, it’s always ‘I think I think’. Kant thinks of our experiences as ontic (‘the furniture that makes up the world’). Hegel thinks of them as ontological (‘what the furniture is made up of’), sense certainty is the start of our truth but then comportment to reality is made metaphysically. All three of these books connect intimately (in my opinion) and the books all skirt morality, the nature of the good, and are mostly concerned with the nature of the real or truth or knowledge, and realize that ‘goodness’ is up to the individual to work out for themselves. Heidegger and Hegel seldom speak of the ‘good’, and Kant does it only outside of his first critique).
In this book, Heidegger mentions the ‘ontological difference’, the difference between the thought and being, the substance of Parmenides’ ‘the one’. Later on, Heidegger will call that difference with the place holder ‘God’ and Derrida will ‘deconstruct’ ‘La Difference’. Heidegger discusses being and becoming while discussing Hegel (and some of Kant). He makes the actual equivalent to the necessary and Hegel’s Absolute. It’s possible that Sartre read this before writing ‘Being and Nothingness’ because there was a lot of overlap with Heidegger’s Hegel and Sartre’s. Sartre gets ‘Being and Time’ completely wrong within his book (Dreyfus will say that in his course on B&T, because Sartre takes one line in Division II on death and anxiety and writes his book based on that misreading. It really is awful philosophy, ‘Pierre is not a waiter he’s just acting as a waiter, ‘people are not gay they just do gay acts’, etc. , ‘we have radical freedom always and especially when we are prisoners’), but he gets most of Hegel except for the ‘nothingness’ part!
This is not a book in as much as it is a series of essays and notes laid out for presenting live to an audience of some kind. Heidegger writes the essays such that anyone could follow him as long as the person has read Hegel and Kant’s first critique.
August 7, 2016
Negativity and experience are two key words and concepts in the thinking of Hegel, and his Hegel finds Heidegger thoughtfully probing and questioning these concepts in its two respective sections. The first, entitled “Negativity. A Confrontation with Hegel Approached from Negativity,” is the shorter of the two, but by far the more difficult to understand and think through. This primarily stems from the fragmentary, often note-like state of the section, which despite allowing us an interesting look into Heidegger’s thought process is far less readable and accessible than his polished and presented works. But the difficulty of deciphering the thinking of this confrontation with Hegel is well worth the struggle, as it aids in the understanding of the thoughtful-leap of seynsgeschichtliche Denken. The second section of this book is entitled “Elucidation of the “Introduction” to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” and this is precisely what it is; a more polished text (except for the final sub-section, which takes up a similar sketch- or note-like style) of a close reading and thinking through of Hegel’s “Introduction,” akin to the lecture and seminar notes that make up some of the other earlier volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe.
We shall begin by looking at the latter portion of the book, the “Elucidation,” before turning to the section on “Negativity.” This is because the former (which is the latter in terms of placement in the book) thinks into the ‘originary essence’ of Hegel’s thought, and thus into the heart of Western metaphysics as onto-theology, while the latter (former in placement in the book) deals with Hediegger’s confrontation with this philosophical manifestation in attempts to clear the way for a different thinking.
In the “Elucidation,” Heidegger thinks through the original sub-title of Hegel’s Phenomenology that was mysteriously dropped: “The Science of the Experience of Consciousness.” Heidegger reads through and explicates the introduction to the Phenomenology, as it speaks to this experience of consciousness, which Heidegger finds to be at the heart of Hegel’s thinking throughout the entirety of his text, as it moves at the heart of the dialectical motion. Splitting the introduction into five sections, he carefully goes through paragraph by paragraph. This text could have value for one seeking an introduction into Hegel’s thinking, as Heidegger explicates and elucidates what Hegel has written, but one would have to be familiar or at least somewhat comfortable with Heidegger’s own often difficult ways of phrasing his thought. We are not here going to retrace Heidegger’s retracing of Hegel’s thought; rather we will look at a few main points of this retracing rethinking.
First, the primacy that Heidegger accords to experience in Hegel’s text, as well as the totality of the thought undertaken throughout the Phenomenology. Heidegger distinguishes Hegel’s ‘experience’ from that of Aristotle and Kant. For Aristotle and Kant, says Heidegger, experience has to do with perception, dealing with beings. Hegel flips this on its head, for experience according to Hegel leads one to being, to what Kant terms the transcendental. Experience for Hegel also deals with beings, but it looks through them, goes through them as the passageway towards being, which for Hegel is the Absolute. Experience is the multidirectional dialectical motion through which the object is transcended through consciousness towards its objectness (Gegenständlichkeit), its being set over against the conscious subject and thought as object, through the concept, and thus makes its way back to the Absolute. But experience is multidirectional because of the way in which it also moves, for-us as observers of this consciousness and not for the understanding of the consciousness undergoing the experience, in the direction back from the Absolute down through consciousness. This is expressed in the introduction by Hegel as the Absolute shining its ray which touches us, and Heidegger makes much of this metaphor. It is this shining of its ray of truth down through all its manifold manifestations which allows us to trace the historical path of consciousness’ development and labor into its own knowledge of its place within the Absolute. Moving through beings towards being, this thinking is ontological. And this being, the Absolute, thought as highest being or the being most in being makes this thought theological. Thus does Heidegger here, once again, find Hegel’s philosophy, the height of Western metaphysics, to be onto-theology.
Within this ‘experience of consciousness,’ Heidegger finds the essential grounding of idealist and modern metaphysical thinking which is expressed as the subject-object relation of re-presentation (Vor-stellen). Essentially, the subject places the object before itself, over against itself, as object, objectifies it, and thinks it as represented object. As Heidegger puts it here, “for modern thought, a being is that which is represented to and placed alongside consciousness in consciousness for consciousness” (86). Consciousness, as representing subject, is placed at the center of everything, and for Hegel this center moves, historically, through time, upward towards its own knowledge of itself as partaking in and/as working through the Absolute. This motion is enacted through ‘the labor of the concept’ that is the experience of consciousness. Thus does Heidegger find the experience of consciousness to be not only at the heart of Hegel’s thinking in the Phenomenology, but as the grounding of re-presentational thinking at the highest point in the thought of the Western metaphysical tradition.
But experience turns away from that which it cannot negate through its experience and thus cannot grasp, objectify and conceptualize; what it cannot experience is turned away from, thought as nothing and is thus lost on the journeying towards the Absolute, is it not? But it would be this lost inexperienceable which cannot be negated, but which negates the Hegelian dialectic, and thus shatters the Absolute and brings the whole of the System crashing down. This forgotten shadow, forgotten in the shadows of dialectical experience, haunts Hegel’s thinking as the unthought. But we have strayed here from Heidegger. Let us return, in turning to the section on “Negativity” in which a different unthought aspect of Hegel’s thinking is taken up.
In the fragmentary section on “Negativity” Heidegger confronts Hegel as not having adequately thought through negativity and nothing. Heidegger, through confronting Hegel’s thought, seeks to clear the space for the leap into the abyssal essence of the nothing as Ab-grund.
It is this section of the book which accords it its place within Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, its publication following that of his Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (translated as Contributions to Philosophy). It involves Heidegger in a confrontation with Western metaphysical thought and the necessity of a coming leap into an other way of thinking of being, not as Sein but as Seyn (not as the beingness (Seiendheit) of beings (Seiende)). Heidegger finds a confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy to be necessary for an overcoming of metaphysics, as it stands at the height of human spirit, of consciousness, and of re-presentational thinking. He accentuates that the confrontation must come from that which “must in fact lie concealed in Hegel’s philosophy – as its own essentially inaccessible and indifferent ground” (4). Negativity is found by Heidegger to be this unquestioned and unthought ground, and so Heidegger seeks for a way in which to think it.
Heidegger believes that negativity remains unthought by Hegel because his philosophy “never takes seriously the not and the nihilating – it has already sublated the not into the “yes”” (37). The negativity of Hegel’s thought is but a moment of a greater positivity – it misses the absolute refusal that is the negative nihilating, the nothing. For Hegel, there is nothing outside the Absolute. And it is precisely this nothing, outside of the Absolute and its positivity and presence, that Heidegger seeks to think. “Negativity is swallowed up in positivity only for metaphysical thought” (12), as it is made the positive power by which representational thinking operates. It is through negation that the subject conceptualizes and represents the thing to itself as object set over against itself. But Heidegger writes that this is negativity only for metaphysical thought. But how then would the negative, the nothing, be thought otherwise, outside of metaphysics?
Heidegger sketches out an answer on page 29, as follows: “The nothing as the a-byss (Ab-grund), beying (Seyn) itself. But here beying not in a metaphysical sense, not in orientation toward and from beings, but from out of its truth.” The negative of the nothing would be Seyn itself, as it is nothing – no being, especially not the being most in being. One cannot look to beings to think Seyn, for it has withdrawn into the nothing in order to let beings be. Seyn cannot be posited as the ground of beings, through which they are grounded, and so it is the nothing as abyss, as Ab-grund or absence of ground. And yet Seyn is in a sense the ungrounded ground that is no ground, for Seyn is the between or in-between of the difference between being and beings; it is the clearing in which being may unfold, but in the granting-clearing Seyn withdraws, as it is nothing but this giving-withdrawal. Thus is Seyn the abyssal ground that is no ground, the absence of any ground, the abyss.
This section, “Negativity,” is not yet a thinking of Seyn, as much as it is the preparation for the leap into this thought – akin to the winding up for the leap spoken of in the Beiträge. This section, and this book Hegel in its entirety, is a transitional piece for Heidegger’s thought of a thought to come. It clears the space by confronting, questioning, and thinking through the thought of Hegel, which, as mentioned above, is absolutely necessary for any overcoming of metaphysics. The overcoming would have to be a leap, a complete change, but not a leap over. The ground must be cleared, metaphysical thought must be questioned and worked through, de-structured (Destruktion), so that thought may make a thoughtful leap – into the abyss.
To leap outside; perhaps the unthought shadow mentioned fleetingly before is not so very different, or rather, it is different, though it seeks this way outside, this other way of thinking, just as eagerly. But here is not the place to plumb this abyss. Another time – it is ever coming.
We shall begin by looking at the latter portion of the book, the “Elucidation,” before turning to the section on “Negativity.” This is because the former (which is the latter in terms of placement in the book) thinks into the ‘originary essence’ of Hegel’s thought, and thus into the heart of Western metaphysics as onto-theology, while the latter (former in placement in the book) deals with Hediegger’s confrontation with this philosophical manifestation in attempts to clear the way for a different thinking.
In the “Elucidation,” Heidegger thinks through the original sub-title of Hegel’s Phenomenology that was mysteriously dropped: “The Science of the Experience of Consciousness.” Heidegger reads through and explicates the introduction to the Phenomenology, as it speaks to this experience of consciousness, which Heidegger finds to be at the heart of Hegel’s thinking throughout the entirety of his text, as it moves at the heart of the dialectical motion. Splitting the introduction into five sections, he carefully goes through paragraph by paragraph. This text could have value for one seeking an introduction into Hegel’s thinking, as Heidegger explicates and elucidates what Hegel has written, but one would have to be familiar or at least somewhat comfortable with Heidegger’s own often difficult ways of phrasing his thought. We are not here going to retrace Heidegger’s retracing of Hegel’s thought; rather we will look at a few main points of this retracing rethinking.
First, the primacy that Heidegger accords to experience in Hegel’s text, as well as the totality of the thought undertaken throughout the Phenomenology. Heidegger distinguishes Hegel’s ‘experience’ from that of Aristotle and Kant. For Aristotle and Kant, says Heidegger, experience has to do with perception, dealing with beings. Hegel flips this on its head, for experience according to Hegel leads one to being, to what Kant terms the transcendental. Experience for Hegel also deals with beings, but it looks through them, goes through them as the passageway towards being, which for Hegel is the Absolute. Experience is the multidirectional dialectical motion through which the object is transcended through consciousness towards its objectness (Gegenständlichkeit), its being set over against the conscious subject and thought as object, through the concept, and thus makes its way back to the Absolute. But experience is multidirectional because of the way in which it also moves, for-us as observers of this consciousness and not for the understanding of the consciousness undergoing the experience, in the direction back from the Absolute down through consciousness. This is expressed in the introduction by Hegel as the Absolute shining its ray which touches us, and Heidegger makes much of this metaphor. It is this shining of its ray of truth down through all its manifold manifestations which allows us to trace the historical path of consciousness’ development and labor into its own knowledge of its place within the Absolute. Moving through beings towards being, this thinking is ontological. And this being, the Absolute, thought as highest being or the being most in being makes this thought theological. Thus does Heidegger here, once again, find Hegel’s philosophy, the height of Western metaphysics, to be onto-theology.
Within this ‘experience of consciousness,’ Heidegger finds the essential grounding of idealist and modern metaphysical thinking which is expressed as the subject-object relation of re-presentation (Vor-stellen). Essentially, the subject places the object before itself, over against itself, as object, objectifies it, and thinks it as represented object. As Heidegger puts it here, “for modern thought, a being is that which is represented to and placed alongside consciousness in consciousness for consciousness” (86). Consciousness, as representing subject, is placed at the center of everything, and for Hegel this center moves, historically, through time, upward towards its own knowledge of itself as partaking in and/as working through the Absolute. This motion is enacted through ‘the labor of the concept’ that is the experience of consciousness. Thus does Heidegger find the experience of consciousness to be not only at the heart of Hegel’s thinking in the Phenomenology, but as the grounding of re-presentational thinking at the highest point in the thought of the Western metaphysical tradition.
But experience turns away from that which it cannot negate through its experience and thus cannot grasp, objectify and conceptualize; what it cannot experience is turned away from, thought as nothing and is thus lost on the journeying towards the Absolute, is it not? But it would be this lost inexperienceable which cannot be negated, but which negates the Hegelian dialectic, and thus shatters the Absolute and brings the whole of the System crashing down. This forgotten shadow, forgotten in the shadows of dialectical experience, haunts Hegel’s thinking as the unthought. But we have strayed here from Heidegger. Let us return, in turning to the section on “Negativity” in which a different unthought aspect of Hegel’s thinking is taken up.
In the fragmentary section on “Negativity” Heidegger confronts Hegel as not having adequately thought through negativity and nothing. Heidegger, through confronting Hegel’s thought, seeks to clear the space for the leap into the abyssal essence of the nothing as Ab-grund.
It is this section of the book which accords it its place within Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, its publication following that of his Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (translated as Contributions to Philosophy). It involves Heidegger in a confrontation with Western metaphysical thought and the necessity of a coming leap into an other way of thinking of being, not as Sein but as Seyn (not as the beingness (Seiendheit) of beings (Seiende)). Heidegger finds a confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy to be necessary for an overcoming of metaphysics, as it stands at the height of human spirit, of consciousness, and of re-presentational thinking. He accentuates that the confrontation must come from that which “must in fact lie concealed in Hegel’s philosophy – as its own essentially inaccessible and indifferent ground” (4). Negativity is found by Heidegger to be this unquestioned and unthought ground, and so Heidegger seeks for a way in which to think it.
Heidegger believes that negativity remains unthought by Hegel because his philosophy “never takes seriously the not and the nihilating – it has already sublated the not into the “yes”” (37). The negativity of Hegel’s thought is but a moment of a greater positivity – it misses the absolute refusal that is the negative nihilating, the nothing. For Hegel, there is nothing outside the Absolute. And it is precisely this nothing, outside of the Absolute and its positivity and presence, that Heidegger seeks to think. “Negativity is swallowed up in positivity only for metaphysical thought” (12), as it is made the positive power by which representational thinking operates. It is through negation that the subject conceptualizes and represents the thing to itself as object set over against itself. But Heidegger writes that this is negativity only for metaphysical thought. But how then would the negative, the nothing, be thought otherwise, outside of metaphysics?
Heidegger sketches out an answer on page 29, as follows: “The nothing as the a-byss (Ab-grund), beying (Seyn) itself. But here beying not in a metaphysical sense, not in orientation toward and from beings, but from out of its truth.” The negative of the nothing would be Seyn itself, as it is nothing – no being, especially not the being most in being. One cannot look to beings to think Seyn, for it has withdrawn into the nothing in order to let beings be. Seyn cannot be posited as the ground of beings, through which they are grounded, and so it is the nothing as abyss, as Ab-grund or absence of ground. And yet Seyn is in a sense the ungrounded ground that is no ground, for Seyn is the between or in-between of the difference between being and beings; it is the clearing in which being may unfold, but in the granting-clearing Seyn withdraws, as it is nothing but this giving-withdrawal. Thus is Seyn the abyssal ground that is no ground, the absence of any ground, the abyss.
This section, “Negativity,” is not yet a thinking of Seyn, as much as it is the preparation for the leap into this thought – akin to the winding up for the leap spoken of in the Beiträge. This section, and this book Hegel in its entirety, is a transitional piece for Heidegger’s thought of a thought to come. It clears the space by confronting, questioning, and thinking through the thought of Hegel, which, as mentioned above, is absolutely necessary for any overcoming of metaphysics. The overcoming would have to be a leap, a complete change, but not a leap over. The ground must be cleared, metaphysical thought must be questioned and worked through, de-structured (Destruktion), so that thought may make a thoughtful leap – into the abyss.
To leap outside; perhaps the unthought shadow mentioned fleetingly before is not so very different, or rather, it is different, though it seeks this way outside, this other way of thinking, just as eagerly. But here is not the place to plumb this abyss. Another time – it is ever coming.
August 12, 2025
"The 'limit' of thoughtful thinking is never the deficit that is left behind but is the concealed undecidedness that is enforced in advance as a necessity of new decisions. In this limit lies the greatness, the creation of what is most inaccessible and most questionworthy, even against one's own knowledge. The 'presuppositions' not that which has fallen by the wayside, but that which is thrown ahead. ('Pre-suppositions' especially not in a 'psychological-biological' sense, but resolved upon in the essential abyss of the thinking of beyng).
That which is historically essential in every thinking is the concealed encroachment into the pre-suppositions that is inaccessible to itself and therefore carried out mindlessly. The grounding of that which is questionworthy can indeed never be the goal of a 'world view' and of 'faith', but it can be that of philosophy, which alone wants being. The first beginning of Western thinking carries out the broadest and richest and most concealed pre-suppositions, and its beginning consists precisely in this, not in that it supposedly starts with the least and with what is empty.
The pre-supposition, the fore-projection of that which one day is to be caught up to, is: the groundlessness of the uninterrogated truth of beyng.
But the catching up to this pre-supposition, the elaborating positing of the same, is not the consummation of the beginning but again a beginning and thus more pre-supposing than the first: beyng itself as a-byss; beings and their explicability from now on no longer the refuge, shelter, and support."
That which is historically essential in every thinking is the concealed encroachment into the pre-suppositions that is inaccessible to itself and therefore carried out mindlessly. The grounding of that which is questionworthy can indeed never be the goal of a 'world view' and of 'faith', but it can be that of philosophy, which alone wants being. The first beginning of Western thinking carries out the broadest and richest and most concealed pre-suppositions, and its beginning consists precisely in this, not in that it supposedly starts with the least and with what is empty.
The pre-supposition, the fore-projection of that which one day is to be caught up to, is: the groundlessness of the uninterrogated truth of beyng.
But the catching up to this pre-supposition, the elaborating positing of the same, is not the consummation of the beginning but again a beginning and thus more pre-supposing than the first: beyng itself as a-byss; beings and their explicability from now on no longer the refuge, shelter, and support."
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July 12, 2023This is mainly of interest for purposes of studying Heidegger above studying Hegel, or even their relation (here I'm distinguishing between their relation and the way in which Heidegger received Hegel, which seems to me an important distinction).
Heidegger has interesting comments, and the majority of this book is notes/drafts/unfinished workings, but it has the downside of either being close to indecipherable (elliptical, as translator's mentioned; vague) or downright wrong. Most criminal is that, despite his obvious familiarity and knowledge of Hegel, Heidegger shoehorns the thesis-antithesis-synthesis programmatic from outside of the subject matter, a self-evident mistake if there was one. In charity, there were complications to this, e.g. noting that the synthesis guided/related back to the prior thesis and antithesis such that he could avoid the limp schema, but in general it falls flat. Why? I am not sure why he would do this, there is no evidence as to whether he presented any of this in lectures etc., which is the only feasible possibility I could see such a simplification, but given he presupposes substantial knowledge, it seems entirely misplaced.
Any good comments on Hegel himself are not unique to Hegel, but they are given in his unique Heideggerian terminology, which can serve some interest. Overall, however, this is mostly useful for understanding Heidegger and Heidegger alone: for his development, working/writing style, and what seems to be his mistakes.
Heidegger has interesting comments, and the majority of this book is notes/drafts/unfinished workings, but it has the downside of either being close to indecipherable (elliptical, as translator's mentioned; vague) or downright wrong. Most criminal is that, despite his obvious familiarity and knowledge of Hegel, Heidegger shoehorns the thesis-antithesis-synthesis programmatic from outside of the subject matter, a self-evident mistake if there was one. In charity, there were complications to this, e.g. noting that the synthesis guided/related back to the prior thesis and antithesis such that he could avoid the limp schema, but in general it falls flat. Why? I am not sure why he would do this, there is no evidence as to whether he presented any of this in lectures etc., which is the only feasible possibility I could see such a simplification, but given he presupposes substantial knowledge, it seems entirely misplaced.
Any good comments on Hegel himself are not unique to Hegel, but they are given in his unique Heideggerian terminology, which can serve some interest. Overall, however, this is mostly useful for understanding Heidegger and Heidegger alone: for his development, working/writing style, and what seems to be his mistakes.
February 16, 2023
From what I remember, it was like Hegel was still more metaphysical than he thought he was
December 12, 2009
This was a weird one, and I'm not surprised it's out of print. There are better books by Heidegger about Hegel out there, or even sections (see 'Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,' or the last sections of 'Being and Time,') and there are introductions to Hegel which can be understood without wading through Heideggerisms (of the 'The Absolute absolves itself in its absolution' variety). The important point is that Heidegger knew very well that Hegel wasn't a crazy pre-critical metaphysician; that Heidegger thought Hegel was still doing 'metaphysics,' inasmuch as the subject takes the place of substance as the object of metaphysics while retaining all that was wrong with metaphysics in the first place; and that Heidegger heideggers Hegel, by claiming that the 'standards' (i.e., normative restraints) conscious *gives itself* (thus Hegel) are *given to* consciousness by the absolute. So, for Hegel we ideally make up our own minds, while for Heidegger our minds are made for us, and we should recognize that and not try to change it.
I have my doubts about the quality of the translation (of Heidegger), too, but don't have the German to double check.
December 30, 2023
Spirit-Time and Being: Hegelian Ontology and the Shadow of Aristotle in the Scholastics
With the aim of forging a new Ontochrony, Heidegger throws out the whole history of Ontology since Heraclitus, including Descartes and Kant, as being faulty due to its conception of time, as all of Continental Philosophy it is rooted in Aristotle’s definition of time, not the Ontologic or Being-centric definition. To Heidegger, the existential-ontological constitution of the wholeness of being is grounded in temporality, and it seeks to explore whether time itself, as the horizon of being. He admits, however, that in Kant, Descartes and Hegel, the Ontology of Temporality does shift throughout their works. Later in Time and Being, he explores the complexity of Hegel’s usage of Time and acknowledges that at points uses a fully embodies concept of Being-Time:
All research - and not least that which revolves around the central question of being - is an Ontic possibility of existence. Its being finds its meaning in temporality… “Time" has long functioned as an ontological or rather Ontic criterion for the naive differentiation of the various regions of existence. One distinguishes a "temporal" being (the processes of nature and the events of history) from an "untimely" being (spatial and numerical relationships).. Aristotle's treatise on time is the first detailed interpretation of this phenomenon that has come down to us. It has essentially determined all subsequent conceptions of time - including Bergson's. From the analysis of Aristotle's concept of time, it also becomes clear that Kant's concept of time moves backwards within the structures emphasized by Aristotle, which means that Kant's basic ontological orientation - despite all the differences of a new question - remains the Greek one.
He posits that space and time are not merely adjacent concepts but are intrinsically linked, with space being the undifferentiated exteriority of points, which he refers to as "pointuality." Hegel's dialectical approach leads him to view space as the abstract multiplicity of points, each point representing a negation of space yet remaining within it. This conceptual framework allows Hegel to assert that space, when thought dialectically, reveals itself as time, which is quite advanced for his day and proceeds the Space-Time understanding of 20th century Physics. Immanual Kant was the first intellectual to predict Quantum Entanglement in his early works on Newtonian physics, as well as correctly describing planet-formation before anyone else. Here Hegel likewise makes philosophized predictions about Physical laws, several of which have proven to be mostly true. He argues that space is time's "truth," and through the negation of negation - where points set themselves apart within the spatial continuum - time emerges. This dialectical process culminates in the concept of "becoming looked at," where time is perceived as the continuous transition from being to non-being, represented by the ever-changing 'now.' Hegel's analysis aligns with the traditional, or "vulgar," understanding of time, emphasizing the primacy of the 'now' and its role in the perception and experience of time.
Hegel's perspective is grounded in the concept of the spirit as the self-conceiving conceptuality of the self. He views the spirit as absolute negativity, a process of constant self-overcoming and progression. This dynamic process is what Hegel identifies as the essence of the spirit, characterizing its development as a negation of negation. In this framework, time becomes the immediate manifestation of this negation, making the spirit's appearance in time an essential aspect of its realization. Hegel equates the progression of the spirit with historical development, viewing world history as the spirit interpreting itself in time. However, the exact ontological nature of the spirit's "falling into time" and its realization remains somewhat obscure in Hegel's analysis. Despite this, Hegel's work represents an effort to grasp the concretion of the spirit, positing that the spirit doesn't fall into time but exists as the original temporalization of temporality, giving rise to world time and allowing history to emerge as an intra-temporal event. Hegel, then, despite understanding Aion as an Archetype and that God resides in the "Archetype of Time", still doesn't fully understand Time of Being according to Heidegger:
The Aristotelian categories which Heidegger begins his academic career analyzing in his thesis on Duns Scotus he maintains in opposition to the Platonic forms. Medieval Scholasticism utilizes the concept of transcendence to apply these Aristotelian categories. These categories are seen as forms of order within a delimited area, peculiarly incorporated into the metaphysical worldview of the time. This forms a metaphysical foundation with the modern scientific approach, which seeks to homogenize empirical reality for theoretical analysis. Duns Scotus' approach, and most of Western philosophy including Catholicism and Protestantism, is characterized by an empirical orientation, understanding that forms of meaning originate from empirical reality. This relationship between forms of meaning and categories of natural reality, Heidegger realizes, collapses reality in on itself, as it did in Nietzsche's rejection of Plato. Aristotle's four causes (αἰτία), especially on the material and formal causes naturally lead to the Aristotelian view that the essence of a being, especially a natural being, is intimately linked to its inherent principles of motion and rest, underscoring the idea that the nature of a thing is not an external attribute but an intrinsic quality that defines its very being.
Hegel in his youthful 1793 university thesis defense "On the Calamities of the renaissance of the Wurttemberg Church" writes about this influence of Naturalism in the West:
In his 1918 "The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism”, Heidegger writes about the replacement of Platonic Ontology with Aristotle's naturalism in the medieval and scholastic ages as a critical shift which led to both Catholicism and Protestantism becoming fundamentally Materialistic and laying the foundation of Atheism. The scholastic-aristotelian view held by the Augustinian-medievel monk Luther became purified in the new dichotomies of faith verses works and scripture verses tradition- dichotomies which were foreign to the early christian Judeo-Platonic mindset. Heidegger writes in his 1921 "Augustine and Neoplatonism "Luther was strongly influenced by Augustine during his decisive years of development. Within Protestantism, Augustine has remained the most highly esteemed church father." Augustine's reading of Plato is nothing new, Heidegger mentions "Christianity at Augustine's time was already strongly permeated by Greek and Neoplatonism" as even Paul's metaphysics are fundamentally rooted in the Platonic interpretation of Heraclitus' Logos. Rather, Augustine represents a shift in the understanding of Sin and Grace in relation to the existing Neoplatonism of early Christianity, leading eventually to Luther’s new dichotomies. This shift represents the beginning of the metaphysical schism between East, which kept the Biblical iteration of Platonism intact, and the West, which made significant revisions first with Augustine, then in the Scholastics, and then finally perfected in Protestantism's full adoption of Subjective Materialism still under the guise of absolutism. This metaphysical Atheism is shown in Anselm of Canterbury's proofs for the existence of God, starting a tradition in Western Christianity of trying to prove with medieval-Aristotelian logic the existence of God, which has had the opposite intended effect. This desire to prove the existence of God puts on display the deeply Materialistic, Naturalistic and ultimately Atheistic foundations of European Christianity after the Great Schism of 1054:
As Plato notes in his discussions on the divide the line, Being is like light in that it discloses the world to us but it is not known to us through externality. And this is the militantly introspective nature of Heideggerian ontology, it nearly sees Newton and scientific developments as harmful to humanity. Technological progress merely obscures the critical question of Being and knowing one's Being. Ontology is a nebulous and enigmatic undertaking, like trying to bite one's own teeth, and Heidegger in particular is even more dramatic than any given historical ontologist.
Heidegger sees Platonism as critical to preserving even the possibility of metaphysics and a super-rational realm of being, in opposition to Nietzsche, who, as a passionate self-described Anti-Christian, hated Platonic Ontology. Plato's conception of truth (άλή&εια) keeps the importance of Being intact, unlike Aristotelianism. Heidegger discusses how Plato's allegory goes beyond a simple narrative to serve as a metaphor for the transformative power of education and the pursuit of truth. The process of enlightenment, as represented by the ascent from the cave, is not merely about the acquisition of factual knowledge, but involves a fundamental change in the way one perceives and understands the world. This transformation is central to Plato's concept of education, which is not merely the transmission of knowledge but the cultivation of the capacity for critical thinking and philosophical inquiry. The purpose of the allegory is to highlight the limits of sensory experience, and thus, the invalidity of the Empirical view of meaning. Duns Scotus' approach is characterized by an empirical orientation just like the rest of Scholasticism, including Luther and his Claritas Scripturae, recognizing that forms of meaning originate from empirical reality. This de-mythologization of reality forced the creation of a Mysticism in externality, establishing the foundation of Atheism that we see in Protestant communities which inevitably secularize due to this medieval inheritance where subjectivity is misunderstood as Absolutism. Heidegger borrows heavily from Platonism, but still wants to eradicate the idea of "absolute" truth found in the Platonic-Judeo continuum.
The Absolute Spirit of Hegel in Heidegger: The Owl of Minerva Sets Flight at Dusk
Nietzsche once wrote "The whole of Hegel is a misunderstanding, but an interesting misunderstanding”. Likewise Heidegger was enamored by Hegel, although he spent significant time writing against him. Heidegger wrote to Jaspers on June 25, 1929 about his main lecture in the summer semester of 1929:
Carl Schmitt, a philosopher and prominent intellectual in the Nazi party, wrote that "Hegel died" in 1933 when Hitler took power. Schmitt, who had renounced Catholicism and joined the Atheist-Nazi religion, saw Naziism as a repudiation of Hegelian Theism. Heidegger disagreed and wrote here
For the Anti-Metaphysicians, even Heidegger observed, religion simply takes on a new and self-deceptive face, as Hegel explicitly warned. Heidegger in his early years strove to prove that the National-Socialist party was the manifestation of the perfect state in a Hegelian sense, despite Hegel arguing that a monarchy, not a führer, was the ideal form of government. He criticized liberal democracy and communism because they did not stay true to the depth of a people's “shared heritage”, which he saw as critical for the world-historicity of the individual and culture, but rather were abstract concepts existing above the particulars of a society. After the fall of the Third Reich (he didn't die until 1974), he placed his hope in Communism and Socialism, as these intertwined religions maintain the basic philosophic Hegelian-Feuerbachian Marxist dialectal patterns of Nazism. In other words, they are religious Eschatologies.
Heidegger engages Hegelianism many times throughout his career. His Ph.D Thesis is headlined with a motto from Hegel and in of his last works is a tome titled “Hegel and the Greeks”. Hegel's specific readings of key Greek philosophical concepts such as Εν (the One), Λόγος (reason), Ίδέα (idea), and Ένέργεια (reality or actus). These terms, central to the philosophies of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, respectively, are reinterpreted through Hegel's dialectical-phenomenological lens as he attempts to integrate them into his speculative system. Heidegger challenges the notion that Hegel's speculative dialectic can fully capture the essence of these Greek philosophical concepts, suggesting instead that Hegel's approach may oversimplify or misrepresent the nuanced and sometimes incommensurable nature of ancient Greek thought. This critique extends to a broader interrogation of Hegel's philosophical project, considering the extent to which his system truly captures the spirit and depth of Greek philosophy, or whether it imposes a teleological narrative that distorts the original intent and richness of these ancient philosophical systems. In his 1951 Hegel and the Greeks, Heidegger muses on the inescapable pull of the Hegelian answer to the antinomies of reality:
Heidegger believes that Philosophic questions are inherently unsolveable, and any hope of even finding the right question to ask is found not in history, but in the individual's experience of Being. He sees this pursuit of the absolute in Hegel as admirable, but like all Western philosophy, obscuring the true question of Being. To paraphrase Heidegger’s approach to Hegel:
'he who does not know these Antinomies is a little philosopher; he who thinks he has the key is not modest; he who thinks that, in the absence of philosophy, the dogmas of this or that sect will make them disappear is under an illusion. Hegel, for trying to resolve the antinomies of reason; that was his right as a great metaphysician. I only say that he did not resolve them, and that even in his error he was much less original than he thought.'
The motto of his early Ph.D. Thesis on Duns Scotus is from Hegel:
With the aim of forging a new Ontochrony, Heidegger throws out the whole history of Ontology since Heraclitus, including Descartes and Kant, as being faulty due to its conception of time, as all of Continental Philosophy it is rooted in Aristotle’s definition of time, not the Ontologic or Being-centric definition. To Heidegger, the existential-ontological constitution of the wholeness of being is grounded in temporality, and it seeks to explore whether time itself, as the horizon of being. He admits, however, that in Kant, Descartes and Hegel, the Ontology of Temporality does shift throughout their works. Later in Time and Being, he explores the complexity of Hegel’s usage of Time and acknowledges that at points uses a fully embodies concept of Being-Time:
All research - and not least that which revolves around the central question of being - is an Ontic possibility of existence. Its being finds its meaning in temporality… “Time" has long functioned as an ontological or rather Ontic criterion for the naive differentiation of the various regions of existence. One distinguishes a "temporal" being (the processes of nature and the events of history) from an "untimely" being (spatial and numerical relationships).. Aristotle's treatise on time is the first detailed interpretation of this phenomenon that has come down to us. It has essentially determined all subsequent conceptions of time - including Bergson's. From the analysis of Aristotle's concept of time, it also becomes clear that Kant's concept of time moves backwards within the structures emphasized by Aristotle, which means that Kant's basic ontological orientation - despite all the differences of a new question - remains the Greek one.
He posits that space and time are not merely adjacent concepts but are intrinsically linked, with space being the undifferentiated exteriority of points, which he refers to as "pointuality." Hegel's dialectical approach leads him to view space as the abstract multiplicity of points, each point representing a negation of space yet remaining within it. This conceptual framework allows Hegel to assert that space, when thought dialectically, reveals itself as time, which is quite advanced for his day and proceeds the Space-Time understanding of 20th century Physics. Immanual Kant was the first intellectual to predict Quantum Entanglement in his early works on Newtonian physics, as well as correctly describing planet-formation before anyone else. Here Hegel likewise makes philosophized predictions about Physical laws, several of which have proven to be mostly true. He argues that space is time's "truth," and through the negation of negation - where points set themselves apart within the spatial continuum - time emerges. This dialectical process culminates in the concept of "becoming looked at," where time is perceived as the continuous transition from being to non-being, represented by the ever-changing 'now.' Hegel's analysis aligns with the traditional, or "vulgar," understanding of time, emphasizing the primacy of the 'now' and its role in the perception and experience of time.
Hegel's perspective is grounded in the concept of the spirit as the self-conceiving conceptuality of the self. He views the spirit as absolute negativity, a process of constant self-overcoming and progression. This dynamic process is what Hegel identifies as the essence of the spirit, characterizing its development as a negation of negation. In this framework, time becomes the immediate manifestation of this negation, making the spirit's appearance in time an essential aspect of its realization. Hegel equates the progression of the spirit with historical development, viewing world history as the spirit interpreting itself in time. However, the exact ontological nature of the spirit's "falling into time" and its realization remains somewhat obscure in Hegel's analysis. Despite this, Hegel's work represents an effort to grasp the concretion of the spirit, positing that the spirit doesn't fall into time but exists as the original temporalization of temporality, giving rise to world time and allowing history to emerge as an intra-temporal event. Hegel, then, despite understanding Aion as an Archetype and that God resides in the "Archetype of Time", still doesn't fully understand Time of Being according to Heidegger:
From the primacy of the leveled now, it becomes clear that Hegel's definition of time also follows the course of the vulgar understanding of time and, at the same time, the traditional concept of time. It can be shown that Hegel's concept of time is even drawn directly from Aristotle's "Physics". In the "Jenenser Logik" (cf. the edition by G. Lasson 1923), which was drafted at the time of Hegel's habilitation, the time analysis of the "Encyclopaedia" is already developed in all essential pieces. The section on time (p. 202 ff.) reveals itself, even under the roughest scrutiny, as a paraphrase of Aristotle's treatise on time. Hegel already develops his conception of time within the framework of natural philosophy in the "Jenenser Logik" (p. 186), the first part of which is entitled "System of the Sun" (p. 195). Following the definition of ether and motion, Hegel discusses the concept of time. The analysis of space is still subordinate here. Although the dialectic is already breaking through, it does not yet have the later rigid, schematic form, but still enables a loosened understanding of the phenomena. On the path from Kant to Hegel's fully developed system, Aristotelian ontology and logic once again make a decisive incursion. This has long been known as a fact. But the path, nature and limits of the influence are just as obscure. A concrete comparative philosophical interpretation of Hegel's "Jenensian Logic" and Aristotle's "Physics" and "Metaphysics" will shed new light on the subject.
The Aristotelian categories which Heidegger begins his academic career analyzing in his thesis on Duns Scotus he maintains in opposition to the Platonic forms. Medieval Scholasticism utilizes the concept of transcendence to apply these Aristotelian categories. These categories are seen as forms of order within a delimited area, peculiarly incorporated into the metaphysical worldview of the time. This forms a metaphysical foundation with the modern scientific approach, which seeks to homogenize empirical reality for theoretical analysis. Duns Scotus' approach, and most of Western philosophy including Catholicism and Protestantism, is characterized by an empirical orientation, understanding that forms of meaning originate from empirical reality. This relationship between forms of meaning and categories of natural reality, Heidegger realizes, collapses reality in on itself, as it did in Nietzsche's rejection of Plato. Aristotle's four causes (αἰτία), especially on the material and formal causes naturally lead to the Aristotelian view that the essence of a being, especially a natural being, is intimately linked to its inherent principles of motion and rest, underscoring the idea that the nature of a thing is not an external attribute but an intrinsic quality that defines its very being.
Hegel in his youthful 1793 university thesis defense "On the Calamities of the renaissance of the Wurttemberg Church" writes about this influence of Naturalism in the West:
In short, Aristotle was only the leader of Morals, Physics, Metaphysics, Logic, and all philosophizing of the time, and not really Aristotle, who at least we know was a very great genius both in the science of nature and in that of spirit and customs, but his translators and commentators, whom we have already seen, have corrupted him so shamelessly.
In his 1918 "The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism”, Heidegger writes about the replacement of Platonic Ontology with Aristotle's naturalism in the medieval and scholastic ages as a critical shift which led to both Catholicism and Protestantism becoming fundamentally Materialistic and laying the foundation of Atheism. The scholastic-aristotelian view held by the Augustinian-medievel monk Luther became purified in the new dichotomies of faith verses works and scripture verses tradition- dichotomies which were foreign to the early christian Judeo-Platonic mindset. Heidegger writes in his 1921 "Augustine and Neoplatonism "Luther was strongly influenced by Augustine during his decisive years of development. Within Protestantism, Augustine has remained the most highly esteemed church father." Augustine's reading of Plato is nothing new, Heidegger mentions "Christianity at Augustine's time was already strongly permeated by Greek and Neoplatonism" as even Paul's metaphysics are fundamentally rooted in the Platonic interpretation of Heraclitus' Logos. Rather, Augustine represents a shift in the understanding of Sin and Grace in relation to the existing Neoplatonism of early Christianity, leading eventually to Luther’s new dichotomies. This shift represents the beginning of the metaphysical schism between East, which kept the Biblical iteration of Platonism intact, and the West, which made significant revisions first with Augustine, then in the Scholastics, and then finally perfected in Protestantism's full adoption of Subjective Materialism still under the guise of absolutism. This metaphysical Atheism is shown in Anselm of Canterbury's proofs for the existence of God, starting a tradition in Western Christianity of trying to prove with medieval-Aristotelian logic the existence of God, which has had the opposite intended effect. This desire to prove the existence of God puts on display the deeply Materialistic, Naturalistic and ultimately Atheistic foundations of European Christianity after the Great Schism of 1054:
The predominance of the theoretical is already inherent in Aristotle's strongly scientific, naturalistically theoretical metaphysics of being and his radical elimination and misjudgment of the problem of value in Plato, which was renewed in medieval scholasticism, so that scholasticism, within the totality of the medieval Christian world of experience, strongly endangered the immediacy of religious life and forgot religion through theology and dogma.
As Plato notes in his discussions on the divide the line, Being is like light in that it discloses the world to us but it is not known to us through externality. And this is the militantly introspective nature of Heideggerian ontology, it nearly sees Newton and scientific developments as harmful to humanity. Technological progress merely obscures the critical question of Being and knowing one's Being. Ontology is a nebulous and enigmatic undertaking, like trying to bite one's own teeth, and Heidegger in particular is even more dramatic than any given historical ontologist.
Heidegger sees Platonism as critical to preserving even the possibility of metaphysics and a super-rational realm of being, in opposition to Nietzsche, who, as a passionate self-described Anti-Christian, hated Platonic Ontology. Plato's conception of truth (άλή&εια) keeps the importance of Being intact, unlike Aristotelianism. Heidegger discusses how Plato's allegory goes beyond a simple narrative to serve as a metaphor for the transformative power of education and the pursuit of truth. The process of enlightenment, as represented by the ascent from the cave, is not merely about the acquisition of factual knowledge, but involves a fundamental change in the way one perceives and understands the world. This transformation is central to Plato's concept of education, which is not merely the transmission of knowledge but the cultivation of the capacity for critical thinking and philosophical inquiry. The purpose of the allegory is to highlight the limits of sensory experience, and thus, the invalidity of the Empirical view of meaning. Duns Scotus' approach is characterized by an empirical orientation just like the rest of Scholasticism, including Luther and his Claritas Scripturae, recognizing that forms of meaning originate from empirical reality. This de-mythologization of reality forced the creation of a Mysticism in externality, establishing the foundation of Atheism that we see in Protestant communities which inevitably secularize due to this medieval inheritance where subjectivity is misunderstood as Absolutism. Heidegger borrows heavily from Platonism, but still wants to eradicate the idea of "absolute" truth found in the Platonic-Judeo continuum.
The Absolute Spirit of Hegel in Heidegger: The Owl of Minerva Sets Flight at Dusk
Nietzsche once wrote "The whole of Hegel is a misunderstanding, but an interesting misunderstanding”. Likewise Heidegger was enamored by Hegel, although he spent significant time writing against him. Heidegger wrote to Jaspers on June 25, 1929 about his main lecture in the summer semester of 1929:
At the moment I am reading about Fichte, Hegel, Schelling for the first time - and a world opens up to me again; the old experience that the others cannot read for you.
Carl Schmitt, a philosopher and prominent intellectual in the Nazi party, wrote that "Hegel died" in 1933 when Hitler took power. Schmitt, who had renounced Catholicism and joined the Atheist-Nazi religion, saw Naziism as a repudiation of Hegelian Theism. Heidegger disagreed and wrote here
It has been said that Hegel died in 1933; on the contrary: he has only just begun to live.
For the Anti-Metaphysicians, even Heidegger observed, religion simply takes on a new and self-deceptive face, as Hegel explicitly warned. Heidegger in his early years strove to prove that the National-Socialist party was the manifestation of the perfect state in a Hegelian sense, despite Hegel arguing that a monarchy, not a führer, was the ideal form of government. He criticized liberal democracy and communism because they did not stay true to the depth of a people's “shared heritage”, which he saw as critical for the world-historicity of the individual and culture, but rather were abstract concepts existing above the particulars of a society. After the fall of the Third Reich (he didn't die until 1974), he placed his hope in Communism and Socialism, as these intertwined religions maintain the basic philosophic Hegelian-Feuerbachian Marxist dialectal patterns of Nazism. In other words, they are religious Eschatologies.
Heidegger engages Hegelianism many times throughout his career. His Ph.D Thesis is headlined with a motto from Hegel and in of his last works is a tome titled “Hegel and the Greeks”. Hegel's specific readings of key Greek philosophical concepts such as Εν (the One), Λόγος (reason), Ίδέα (idea), and Ένέργεια (reality or actus). These terms, central to the philosophies of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, respectively, are reinterpreted through Hegel's dialectical-phenomenological lens as he attempts to integrate them into his speculative system. Heidegger challenges the notion that Hegel's speculative dialectic can fully capture the essence of these Greek philosophical concepts, suggesting instead that Hegel's approach may oversimplify or misrepresent the nuanced and sometimes incommensurable nature of ancient Greek thought. This critique extends to a broader interrogation of Hegel's philosophical project, considering the extent to which his system truly captures the spirit and depth of Greek philosophy, or whether it imposes a teleological narrative that distorts the original intent and richness of these ancient philosophical systems. In his 1951 Hegel and the Greeks, Heidegger muses on the inescapable pull of the Hegelian answer to the antinomies of reality:
One is offended by Hegel's sentence of the completion of philosophy. It is considered presumptuous and is characterized as an error that has long since been refuted by history. Because after the time of Hegel there was and there is still philosophy. The sentence of completion alone does not say that philosophy has come to an end in the sense of a cessation and a termination. Rather, the completion just gives the possibility of manifold forms down to their simplest shapes: the brutal inversion and the massive opposition. Marx and Kierkegaard are the greatest of the Hegelians. They are it against their will.
The completion of philosophy is neither its end, nor does it consist in the separate system of speculative idealism. The completion is only as the whole course of the history of philosophy, in which course the beginning remains as essential as the completion.
Heidegger believes that Philosophic questions are inherently unsolveable, and any hope of even finding the right question to ask is found not in history, but in the individual's experience of Being. He sees this pursuit of the absolute in Hegel as admirable, but like all Western philosophy, obscuring the true question of Being. To paraphrase Heidegger’s approach to Hegel:
'he who does not know these Antinomies is a little philosopher; he who thinks he has the key is not modest; he who thinks that, in the absence of philosophy, the dogmas of this or that sect will make them disappear is under an illusion. Hegel, for trying to resolve the antinomies of reason; that was his right as a great metaphysician. I only say that he did not resolve them, and that even in his error he was much less original than he thought.'
The motto of his early Ph.D. Thesis on Duns Scotus is from Hegel:
„ ... in Rücksicht aufs innere Wesen der Philosophie gibt es weder Vorgänger noch Nachgänger"
" ... with regard to the inner essence of philosophy there is neither predecessor nor successor"
September 6, 2022
Hegel's system claims to be complete, self-sufficient, and with nothing outside it. As such and in order to confront it, Heidegger starts with negativity – as something already belonging to the Hegelian system, but approached in a more fundamental way. For Hegel - negation is part of his dialectic, is related to the difference of conscience, to being-other, and so on. For Heidegger – negation is related to nothing, and this in turn means to think the truth of Being and to experience the distress of the totality of beings. For Hegel, Being is just the “nothing” as the mere indeterminacy and unmediatedness. Following this thought, Nietzsche stated that “Being is the last fumes of the evaporation reality". If this is so, then according to Heidegger nihilism inevitably ensues.
Central to Hegel - but eventually removed from the title of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Hegel himself - is the concept of “experience of consciousnesses”. For Heidegger, this “experience of the consciousnesses” is: a unique and historical path, an engaged path, a path that appears itself into the light, a path that turns around and examines itself, a path full of decisions that at its end presents and lets arise a new object, a venture and an experiment that we humans take, a “labor of the concept” where the wealth of experience is proportional with the strength of suffering, and fundamentally and finally a dis-illusionment.
Heidegger wrote this book during the period that started with the “Contributions to Philosophy” and “Ponderings”. What happened during this period was a complete meltdown of the entire metaphysics, German Idealism, beings, language, reason, logic, argumentation, philosophy, gods, humans, and so on – all for the sake of Being. Most of the people – including fans of “Being and Time” - take this experiment as some poetic nonsense, a failed project, or even pure madness. However, if taken seriously and comprehended, this change provides a perspective deep enough to meaningfully engage someone as abstruse as Hegel.
Central to Hegel - but eventually removed from the title of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Hegel himself - is the concept of “experience of consciousnesses”. For Heidegger, this “experience of the consciousnesses” is: a unique and historical path, an engaged path, a path that appears itself into the light, a path that turns around and examines itself, a path full of decisions that at its end presents and lets arise a new object, a venture and an experiment that we humans take, a “labor of the concept” where the wealth of experience is proportional with the strength of suffering, and fundamentally and finally a dis-illusionment.
Heidegger wrote this book during the period that started with the “Contributions to Philosophy” and “Ponderings”. What happened during this period was a complete meltdown of the entire metaphysics, German Idealism, beings, language, reason, logic, argumentation, philosophy, gods, humans, and so on – all for the sake of Being. Most of the people – including fans of “Being and Time” - take this experiment as some poetic nonsense, a failed project, or even pure madness. However, if taken seriously and comprehended, this change provides a perspective deep enough to meaningfully engage someone as abstruse as Hegel.
Read
July 24, 2022This book is out of print. However, the essay it contains has been retranslated in the '02 collection _Off the Beaten Track_. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
August 31, 2011
This is an intense work. Hegel's famous Phenomenology of Spirit has an Introduction written after the book was completed that Heidegger claims summarizes the substance of the work. So this is MH's careful elucidation of that Introduction. Yes, MH does employ some of his own unique vocabulary to explain what he believes Hegel intends. However, Hegel does not write for the novice. Consequently, the combination of both of their explanations adds up to a mouthful.
At the same time, should you be interested in the best available (IMHO) philosophical analysis of "consciousness," you will find it here. Compared to the 600 pages of the Hegel and the 600 pages of MH's Being and Time, the 125 pages of this MH commentary on Hegel is a breeze. And while it will not replace reading those two masterworks, if you plod through the intense, yet lucid, arguments offered by these two in this single volume, the result can well prove the effort worthwhile.
Hegel writes, "The experience which consciousness makes of itself can, according to the Concept of experience, comprehend in itself nothing less than the whole system of consciousness or the whole realm of the truth of Spirit." If you ever wanted to know the relationship of consciousness to Spirit, you will find it here.
MH writes that Hegel's analysis of consciousness depends on a necessary ambiguity. Three statements by Hegel: "But consciousness is its own concept," "Consciousness provides itself with its own standard," and "Consciousness examines itself," are interpreted by Hegel as the need for consciousness "to go behind its back." It cannot be expressed any simpler than that.
Most folks speak or write of consciousness as if we all know what that means. The fact that we both do and do not know what that means is not easy to explain. It's just necessary.
At the same time, should you be interested in the best available (IMHO) philosophical analysis of "consciousness," you will find it here. Compared to the 600 pages of the Hegel and the 600 pages of MH's Being and Time, the 125 pages of this MH commentary on Hegel is a breeze. And while it will not replace reading those two masterworks, if you plod through the intense, yet lucid, arguments offered by these two in this single volume, the result can well prove the effort worthwhile.
Hegel writes, "The experience which consciousness makes of itself can, according to the Concept of experience, comprehend in itself nothing less than the whole system of consciousness or the whole realm of the truth of Spirit." If you ever wanted to know the relationship of consciousness to Spirit, you will find it here.
MH writes that Hegel's analysis of consciousness depends on a necessary ambiguity. Three statements by Hegel: "But consciousness is its own concept," "Consciousness provides itself with its own standard," and "Consciousness examines itself," are interpreted by Hegel as the need for consciousness "to go behind its back." It cannot be expressed any simpler than that.
Most folks speak or write of consciousness as if we all know what that means. The fact that we both do and do not know what that means is not easy to explain. It's just necessary.
July 27, 2014
Leaving aside both the author and the topic, this was a helpful book. It is Heidegger's running commentary on key passages in the Phenomenology of Spirit. It illuminates Hegel and provides a entry point to Heidegger's larger work.
In this post I will briefly give an overview of the book and then show how Hegel (and Heidegger) are fully within the Greek, Hellenic position and those who hate Hegel yet prize the Greeks--especially Christians today--are inconsistent.
Heidegger reads Hegel as arguing that being is being-present. It is the manifestation of a thing. Being is always being Par-Ousia--manifestation. From there we see an interplay between Being as the real and the Absolute as the real. If the Absolute is the real, and our knowledge is not yet at the absolute, it is then relative to the absolute.
Knowledge is relative to a thing.
Like a good Greek Hegel/Heidegger privileges sight over hearing as sees knowledge as manifestation (Heidegger 57). The ultimate goal, though Heidegger never clearly states it as such, is unmediated knowledge--the Absolute which has fully come into being [arrival?] as Absolute.
The book contains some useful observations on reflection and the subject-object distinction. What I found helpful is how the book easily lends itself as a foil to Revelational thought. Revelational thought (what I have elsewhere called Hebraic Christianity) is verbal. Reality is verbal. God speaks and a thing is. For onto-theo-logy, reality is manifestation and appearance. It seeks to transcend mediation.
**For a useful introduction to Heidegger and modern Continental Philosophy, see Gayatri Spivak's preface to Derrida's of Grammatology.
In this post I will briefly give an overview of the book and then show how Hegel (and Heidegger) are fully within the Greek, Hellenic position and those who hate Hegel yet prize the Greeks--especially Christians today--are inconsistent.
Heidegger reads Hegel as arguing that being is being-present. It is the manifestation of a thing. Being is always being Par-Ousia--manifestation. From there we see an interplay between Being as the real and the Absolute as the real. If the Absolute is the real, and our knowledge is not yet at the absolute, it is then relative to the absolute.
Knowledge is relative to a thing.
Like a good Greek Hegel/Heidegger privileges sight over hearing as sees knowledge as manifestation (Heidegger 57). The ultimate goal, though Heidegger never clearly states it as such, is unmediated knowledge--the Absolute which has fully come into being [arrival?] as Absolute.
The book contains some useful observations on reflection and the subject-object distinction. What I found helpful is how the book easily lends itself as a foil to Revelational thought. Revelational thought (what I have elsewhere called Hebraic Christianity) is verbal. Reality is verbal. God speaks and a thing is. For onto-theo-logy, reality is manifestation and appearance. It seeks to transcend mediation.
**For a useful introduction to Heidegger and modern Continental Philosophy, see Gayatri Spivak's preface to Derrida's of Grammatology.
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