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Showing posts from May, 2024

Hegel Everyday #3

 Preface (Continued) 10. Intuition places itself “above” determinate = extensional  = phenomenal = computationally reliable    knowledge. E.g. creative people saying they’re ‘not linear thinkers'', can’t think with their left brain etc but real creativity is only in determinate forms (content is consciousness). in such a situation spirit pours “forth as finite multiplicity without force”. intution without expression thinks it has acquired depth even though it hasn’t, it is just hazy - the power of spirit is only as great as its expression. Spirit has to take determinate forms otherwise dialectic stops and “hides the truth from itself” Introduction          73. Talks about cognition. Is cognition an instrument or a medium to know the absolute??                      Instrument -> Problems: Its possible that we can choose the wrong category of thought to examine the absolute  The instrument modifies what it works upon. Medium ->Seeing through a window e.g. we again see only

Hegel Everyday #2

Preface continued  31/05/2024 8. Modernity has a romanticized conception of the mystics and occult of medieval times e.g. Augustine. They talk of the saints and gnostics of previous times as having some otherworldly knowledge, having to be turned to the practical and empirical from their gaze set on heaven. After Kant’s project, a divide has been created between that which is empirical, and knowable in everyday life( from phenomena) as opposed to the noumenal. Because of this, the secularized, modernized spirit is so thirsty for any sense of “spirituality” that it will take without critically grasping anything that reveals itself as spiritual knowledge. 9. Edification can be thought of as ‘upbuilding’. If philosophizing more does not create a system that accounts for more generality, there is no cognitive discomfort or effort extended there y our thought isn’t a creative activity in a Deleuzian sense . People who are okay with mere edification want beliefs to be intentionally a bit neb

Hegel Everyday #1

  30/5/24 6. Hegel is criticizing philosophers like Spinoza and Schlegal here who think that Intuition - direct, unmediated experience is central to experiencing god and truth.Hegel on the other hand thinks that the german word Begriff = Grasping translated as ‘The Notion’ or ‘The Concept’ is the essential nature of the truth. The other philosophers are in some sense afraid of the labour of the whole emergence of truth and pessimistic about Humans’ capability to get there which is why they place direct unmediated experience at a higher level than discursive knowledge. This is a problem because with unmediated knowledge you cannot know whether it is a hallucination e.g 7. Continuing the criticism, Hegel mentions a movement of thought where not only has spirit been displaced from substantial life = NPC lifestyle unaware of finitude, but it has also become aware of its finitude, abusing itself for living in this wickidness. (Kinda like this family guy clip ). Instead of going through the

Hegel Everyday #0

 Hello everyone. I've always been meaning to read Hegel and have read a decent bit about him and also read through some of his work randomly from the middle. However, given the density of writing, all these unsystematic readings do not do his work justice and I haven't been able to grasp enough of his work to integrate it into my thinking as I was able to do with Nietzsche.  Since this is something I really want to do, because I think he has some interesting things to say and an interesting way to think, I am starting this new series. The aim is to read and comprehend atleast 1 passage of the phenomenology everyday until I finish the book. at worst this may take me around 800 days, which is around 2 years of my life spending ~15 minutes a day.  The resources I'll be using are as follows: A.V. Miller's Translation of the Phenomenology J.N. Findlay's commentary on the text The Half Hour Hegel Lecture series by Gregory B Sadler The Internet and My own intution wherever

The Nietzschean Yogi

 This post is about frames.   A frame is a self-consistent representation that accounts for all the observations you have made about life.  We love frames because it allows us to coherently ground our action in the world. We expend a lot of cognitive (in lack of a better word "vital") energy in trying to create and update our frames in a bayesian-like process of updation. We want frames at all levels. You want a frame for your own actions, a story. You want a frame for your relationships, a dynamic. You want a frame for your company, a vision. You want a frame for the world, a utopia.  When we don't have frames, we don't have meaning. We end up confronting life in all its absurdity and unexplainability.  A plausible definition of creativity is an extension of the current frame to account for such observations; it is at the edge of chaos and logos that it plays.  All frames are at their base delusions. The map is not the reality. The more closely you observe life, stra