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:

1. A.V. Miller's Translation of the Phenomenology
2. J.N. Findlay's commentary on the text
3. The Half Hour Hegel Lecture series by Gregory B Sadler
4. The Internet and My own intution wherever these are insufficient.

I've already completed about 5 passages (which is admittedly not much), so I'll post my notes uptill this point. 

Preface- on Scientific Cognition

1. The universal requires the particulars to establish its universality. So stating aims before isn’t the correct way to expound the truth. For Hegel a science is a way of knowing an object as it is determined by its concept. But anatomy is just trying to understand the particulars.

2. How contingents become necessary- contradictions in old philosophical systems are just continuing movements of unfolding of the truth. Should not become muddled with accepting and rejecting.

3. Criticizing the problems present in philosophical systems instead of considering them as progressive unfolding of the truth is just the beginning of cognition. Judging philosophy isn’t doing philosophy, merely to differentiate a system from others is to remain resolutely on its fringes. Result has left the process of creation behind; process is something which hasn’t been actualized yet. Judgement and comprehension (of the whole process, and that of ‘what is’) need to be blended together to actually ‘do philosophy’. By always grasping for new knowledge without losing yourself in it, the ego is occupied with itself instead of surrendering itself to the real issue.

4. Substantial life- kinda slumber of daily life which is not mediated (mediation-word root is thinking and middle). Hegel again considers culture as the whole process of becoming cultured and also the end result that is left. To break free from that slumber requires conscious effort, first by learning basic principles or developing own system to judge things etc. and then judging societally prevalent things from within that system, not arbitrarily. Culturation must leave room for richness of everyday life because even after the process is complete, there is a lot of things to appreciate even about daily life through differential classification. (Whole process very similar to destiny’s journey).

5. Why is the true shape of the truth necessarily scientific in the sense of an exposition of its whole process in how it flows through it’s particulars? Let’s suppose it is not. If that statement is not a superficial judgement it must inquire into the richness of its own understanding and in that it becomes scientific. Is this because of being caught in a hegelian mode of thinking that any judgement necessarily leads to such a process, or is it fundamental to the process of operation of thought?