"...by determining the relation which a philosophical work professes to have to other treatises on the same subject, an extraneous interest is introduced, and obscurity is thrown over the point at issue in the knowledge of the truth. The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety."

(Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit)

Hegel: You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?

"...if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge. More especially it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth."

(Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit)

"...the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself."

(Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit)

Notes on the World Historical Individual: Cartesian Subjects / Proletariat / Overmen

"Yet where arises the urgent cry for the overman? Why does prior humanity no longer suffice? Because Nietzsche recognizes the historic moment in which man takes it on himself to assume dominion over the earth as a whole. Nietzsche is the first thinker [ignoring Marx's entire critical project] to pose the decisive question concerning the phase of world history that is emerging only now, the first to think the question through in its metaphysical implications. The question asks: is man in his essence heretofore prepared to assume dominion over the earth? If not, what must happen with prior humanity in order that it may 'subjugate' the earth and thus fulfill the prophecy of an old testament. Must not prior man be conducted beyond himself, over his prior self, in order to meet this challenge? If so, then the 'over-man' properly thought, cannot be the product of an unbridled and degenerate fantasy that is plunging head long into the void. We can just as little uncover the nature of the over-man historically by virtue of the modern age. We do not seek the essential figure of the over-man in those personalities who, as major functionaries of a shallow, misguided will to power are swept to the pinnacles of that will's sundry organizational forms."

(Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: volume 2)

"I teach you the over-man. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?"

"All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the over-man: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame."

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra)

"... Man was born and History began with the first Fight that ended in the appearance of Master and Slave. That is to say that Man -- at his origin -- is always either Master or Slave; and that true Man can only exist where there is Master and Slave."

"...[a] Slave without a Master, [a] Master without a Slave, is what Hegel calls the Bourgeois, the private property-owner."

"...the Bourgeois problem seems insoluble: he must work for another and can work only for himself. Now in fact, Man manages to resolve this problem, and he resolves it once more by the bourgeois principle of private Property. The Bourgeois does not work for another. But he does not work for himself taken as a biological entity either. He works for himself taken as a "legal person," as a private Property-owner: he works for Property taken as such--i.e., Property that has now become money; he works for Capital."

"In other words, the bourgeois Worker presupposes--and conditions--an Enstagung, and Abnegation of human existence. Man transcends himself, surpasses himself, projects himself far away from himself by projecting himself onto the idea of private Property, of Capital, which--while being the Property-owners own product--becomes independent of him and enslaves him just as the Master enslaved the Slave; with this difference however, that enslavement is now conscious and freely accepted by the Worker. (We see, by the way, that for Hegel, as for Marx, the central phenomenon of the bourgeois World is not the enslavement of the working man, of the poor bourgeois, by the rich bourgeois, but the enslavement of both by Capital.)"

(Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel)

"...Capital, though organizing the world can never go beyond its own limit."

(Kojin Karatani, Transcritique)

"The thesis [Man] and antitheses [Capital] and their proofs therefore represent nothing but the opposite assertions, that a limit is, and that the limit is equally only a sublated one; that the limit has a beyond with which however it stands in relation, and beyond which it must pass, but in doing so there arises another limit, which is no limit. The solution of these antinomies ... is transcendental, that is."

(Hegel, Science of Logic)

"This 'alienation' (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an 'intolerable' power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity 'propertyless', and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the 'propertyless' mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a 'world-historical' existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.'

(Karl Marx, The German Ideology)

"Marx’s definition of the proletariat as Subjektivitaet (substanceless subjectivity) recovers, as many present day thinkers do not, the meaning of the subject in the Greek term hypokeimenon. ... Marx doesn’t mean that the subject is ‘substanceless’ in the same way that idealist notions of the ‘self’ are substanceless (i.e. cut off from the original greek meaning of the term and based upon reflection), nor that the subject is foundationless per se (as anti-Aristotelian notions of the subject would have it). It plays instead on a double meaning of the word as not only ‘substanceless’ in the political sense (i.e. the proletariat is united in a set of egalitarian economic aims and not selfish individual ‘interests’) but also in the sense of without (possessing) substance, i.e. without property..."

(Nina Power, Philosophy's Subjects)

"The workers shall live one day as the bourgeoisie do now -- but above them, distinguished by their freedom from wants, the higher caste: thus poorer and simpler but in possession of power."

(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power)

"The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

(Karl Marx & Frederich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party)

Science and Philosophy

"Philosophical communications are altogether different from scholarly publications. We have to make the distinction between these two perfectly clear, because we are all to inclined to measure philosophical communications against the standard of publications in the learned disciplines. In the course of the nineteenth century these disciplines began to operate like industries. The point was to get the product that had been manufactured out onto the market as quickly as possible, so that it could be of use to others, but also so that others could not pinch our discoveries or duplicate our own work. This has especially become the case in the natural sciences, where large-scale, expensive series of experiments have to be conducted. It is therefore altogether appropriate that we at long last have research facilities where we can gain a complete overview of dissertations and reports on experimental results that have already clarified this or that question in this or that direction."

"Today the major branches of industry and our military Chiefs of Staff have a great deal more 'savvy' concerning 'scientific' exigencies than do the 'universities'; they also have at their disposal the larger share of ways and means, the better resources, because they are indeed closer to what is 'actual.'"

"What we call Geisteswissenschaft [the so-called 'human' or 'historical' or 'cultural'sciences, such as economy, law, art, and religion] will not regress, however, into the status of what were formerly called the "fine arts." It will be transmogrified into a pedagogical tool for inculcating a 'political worldview.' Only the blind and hopelessly romantic among us can believe that the erstwhile structure and divisions and of scientific endeavor generally during the decade 1890-1900 can be preserved forever with all the congenial facades. Nor will the technical style of modern science, prefigured in its very beginnings, be altered if we choose new goals for such technology. That style will only be firmly embedded and absolutely validated by such new choices. Without the technology of the huge laboratories, without the technology of vast libraries and archives, and without the technology of a perfected machinery for publication, fruitful scientific work and the impact such work must have are alike inconceivable today. Every attempt to diminish or hamper this state of affairs is nothing short of reactionary."

"In contrast to 'science,' the state of affairs in philosophy is altogether different, When we say 'philosophy' here, we mean only the creative work of the great thinkers. In the very way it is communicated such work arrives in its own time, knows its own laws. The haste to 'get it out' and the anxiety of 'being too late' do not apply here, if only because it belongs to the essence of every genuine philosophy that its contemporaries invariably misunderstand it. It is also the case that the philosopher must cease to be a contemporary to himself. The more essential and revolutionary a philosophical doctrine is, the more it needs to educate those men and women, those generations, who are to adopt it. Thus, for example it still requires a great deal of effort for us to day to grasp Kant's philosophy in its essential import and to liberate it from the misinterpretations of its contemporaries and advocates."

(Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche vol. 2: Eternal Recurrence of the Same)

"Closer to our own time, philosophy has encountered many new rivals. To start with, the human sciences and especially sociology wanted to replace it. But because philosophy, taking refuge in universals, increasingly misunderstood its vocation for creating concepts, it was no longer clear what was at stake. Was it a matter of giving up the creation of concepts in favor of a rigorous human science or, alternatively, of transforming the nature of concepts by turning them into collective representations or world views created by the vital, historical and spiritual forces of different peoples? Then it was the turn of epistemology, of linguistics, or even of psychoanalysis and logical analysis. In successive challenges, philosophy confronted increasingly insolent and calamitous rivals that Plato himself would have never imagined in his most comic moments. Finally the most shameful moment came when computer science, marketing, design, and advertising, all the disciplines of communication, seized hold of the word concept itself and said, "This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends of the concept, we put it in our computers." Information and creativity, concept and enterprise: there is already an abundant bibliography. Marketing has preserved the idea of a certain relationship between the concept and the event. But here the concept has become the set of product displays (historical, scientific, artistic, sexual, pragmatic) and the event has become the exhibition that sets up various displays and the "exchange of ideas" it is supposed to promote. The only events are exhibitions, and the only concepts are products that can be sold. Philosophy has not remained unaffected by the general movement that replaced critique with sales promotion. The simulacrum, the simulation of a packet of noodles, has become the concept; and the one who packages the product, commodity, or work of art has become the philosopher, conceptual persona, or artist. How could philosophy, an old person, compete against young executives in a race of the universals of communication for determining the marketable form of the concept, Merz? Certainly, it is painful to learn that the Concept indicates a society of information services and engineering. But the more philosophy comes up against shameless and inane rivals and encounters them at its very core, the more it feels driven to fulfill the task of creating concepts that are aerolites rather than commercial products. It gets the giggles, which wipe away its tears. So the question of philosophy is the singular point where concepts and creation are related to each other."

(Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy?)

"... the sciences do presuppose determinations such as becoming, space, time, sameness, and recurrence--in fact, must of necessity presuppose them as elements that remain eternally barred from their realm of inquiry and their manner of demonstration."

"True, the sciences must make use of a particular notion of force motion, space, and time; but they cannot ask what such things are as long as they remain sciences, and avoid trespassing into the realm of philosophy. The fact that every science as such, being the specific science it is, gains no access to its fundamental concepts and to what those concepts grasp, goes hand and hand with the fact that no science can assert something about itself with the help of its own scientific resources. What mathematics is can never be determined mathematically; what philology is can never be discussed philologically; what biology is can never be uttered biologically. To ask what a science is, is to ask a question that is no longer a scientific question. The moment he or she poses a question with regard to science in general, and that always means a question concerning specific possible sciences, the inquirer steps into a new realm, a realm with evidentiary claims and forms of proof quite different from those that are customary in the sciences. This is the realm of philosophy. It is not affixed to the sciences or piled on top of them. It lies hidden in the innermost domain of science, so much so that it would be true to say that mere science is only scientific -- that is to say, partaking of genuine knowledge, above and beyond being a repertory of certain techniques -- to the extent that it is philosophical. From this we can gather the alarming proportions of nonsense and absurdity in all ostensible efforts to renew the 'sciences' and abolish philosophy."

(Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche vol. 2: Eternal Recurrence of the Same)

The Challenge of the Next Great Philosophy

"...it is not difficult to see that our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of man has broken with the old order of things hitherto prevailing, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. It is indeed never at rest, but carried along the stream of progress ever onward. But it is here as in the case of the birth of a child; after a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the first breath drawn – there is a break in the process, a qualitative change and the child is born. In like manner the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, disintegrates one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to its fall is indicated only by symptoms here and there. Frivolity and again ennui, which are spreading in the established order of things, the undefined foreboding of something unknown – all these betoken that there is something else approaching. This gradual crumbling to pieces, which did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world."
"But this new world is perfectly realised just as little as the new-born child; and it is essential to bear this in mind. It comes on the stage to begin with in its immediacy, in its bare generality. A building is not finished when its foundation is laid; and just as little, is the attainment of a general notion of a whole the whole itself. When we want to see an oak with all its vigour of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfied to be shown an acorn instead. In the same way science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not found complete in its initial stages. The beginning of the new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution in manifold forms of spiritual culture; it is the reward which comes after a chequered and devious course of development, and after much struggle and effort. It is a whole which, after running its course and laying bare all its content, returns again to itself; it is the resultant abstract notion of the whole. But the actual realisation of this abstract whole is only found when those previous shapes and forms, which are now reduced to ideal moments of the whole, are developed anew again, but developed and shaped within this new medium, and with the meaning they have thereby acquired."

(Hegel, Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit)

"[Philosophical] greatness [lies is in confronting] the image of life as a whole in order to interpret it as a whole, while the subtlest minds cannot be freed from the error that one can come closer to such an interpretation if one examines painstakingly the colours with which this image has been painted and the material underneath. . . . The whole future of all the sciences is staked on an attempt to understand this canvas and these colours, but not the image. It could be said that only a man who has a firm grasp of the over-all picture of life and existence can use the individual science without harming himself; for without such a regulative total image they are strings that reach no end anywhere and merely make our lives still more confused and labyrinthine."

(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Challenge of Every Great Philosophy)

"It is especially difficult for modern man to find his way into the essential, because in another respect he is familiar with too much and indeed believes he is familiar with everything. For him everything earlier is something past by means of which he can illuminate what comes later and what pertains to him according to his needs. Here earlier has no power of decision because it no longer is experience as incipient in history. The inception, however, can only be experienced as an inception when we ourselves think inceptively and essentially. This inception is not the past, but rather because it has decided in advance everything to come, it is constantly the future. We must think about the inception this way...Remembrance of the inception is therefore not a flight into the past but a readiness for what is to come."

(Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts)

"The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of the modern world, in that the former consisted in the cultivation and perfecting of the natural mind. Testing life carefully at all points, philosophizing about everything it came across, the former created an experience permeated through and through by universals. In modern times, however, an individual finds the abstract form ready made. In straining to grasp it and make it his own, he rather strives to bring forward the inner meaning alone, without any process of mediation; the production of the universal is abridged, instead of the universal arising out of the manifold detail of concrete existence. Hence nowadays the task before us consists not so much in getting the individual clear of the stage of sensuous immediacy, and making him a substance that thinks and is grasped in terms of thought, but rather the very opposite: it consists in actualising the universal, and giving it spiritual vitality, by the process of breaking down and superseding fixed and determinate thoughts. But it is much more difficult to make fixed and definite thoughts fuse with one another and form a continuous whole than to bring sensuous existence into this state. The reason lies in what was said before. Thought determinations get their substance and the element of their existence from the ego, the power of the negative, or pure reality; while determinations of sense find this in impotent abstract immediacy, in mere being as such. Thoughts become fluent and interfuse, when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment, when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. It does not “abstract” in the sense of getting away from itself and setting itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quality of its self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete – which is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content – and the fixity of all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the ego. In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions, concepts, and are then what they are in truth, self-moving functions, circles, are what their substance consists in, are spiritual entities."

"Let the other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy – without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor Truth."

(Hegel, Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit)

"If 'the 19th century,' to use Nietzsche's wicked phrasing, was a 'victory of the scientific method over science,' then [the 20th] century will be the one that saw the victory of scientific technology over science."

(Friedrich A. Kittler, On the Implemetation of Knowledge: Toward a Theory of Hardware)

Read "Pop Culture" as Folk Religion

The spirit of a nation is reflected in its history, its religion, and the degree of its political freedom. The improvement of individual morality is a matter involving one’s private religion, one’s parents, one’s personal efforts, and one’s individual situation. The cultivation of the spirit of the people as a whole requires in addition the respective contributions of folk religion and political institutions.

Through the mighty influence it exerts on the imagination and the heart, folk religion imbues the soul with power and enthusiasm, with a spirit indispensable for the noble exercise of virtue.

(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, On the Prospects for a Folk Religion)

Hegel critiques Isaiah Berlin

"We have considered two aspects of Freedom, – the objective [what Berlin calls the positive, but which is the negative for Hegel] and the subjective [what Berlin calls negative, but is positive for Hegel]; if, therefore, Freedom is asserted to consist in the individuals of a State all agreeing in its arrangements it is evident that only the subjective aspect is regarded. The natural inference from this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all. This difficulty is attempted to be obviated by the decision that the minority must yield to the. majority; the majority therefore bear the sway. But long ago J. J. Rousseau remarked, that in that case there would be no longer freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be respected. At the Polish Diet each single member had to give his consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of freedom it was that ruined the State. Besides, it is a dangerous and false prejudice, that the People alone have reason and insight, and know what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the People, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of advanced science, and not of popular decision."

"If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognised as the only basis of political liberty, viz., that nothing should be done by or for the State to which all the members of the body politic have not given their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no Constitution. The only arrangement that would be necessary, would be, first, a centre having no will of its own but which should take into consideration what appeared to be the necessities of the State; and, secondly, a contrivance for calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity. The want of government and political administration in general is felt; this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide, concerning them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution of their plans. If, e.g., even the people in a Democracy resolve on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a Constitution that the abstraction – the State – attains life and reality; but this involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey."

(Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History)

McLuhan/Hegel

Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in a manmade environment that ends "Nature" and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed. Shakespeare at the Globe mentioning "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" (As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7) has been justified by recent events in ways that would have struck him as entirely paradoxical. The resunium arch of satellites is that the young now accept the public spaces of the earth as as role-playing areas. Sensing this, they adopt costumes and roles and are ready to "do their thing" everywhere.

Another theme of [Finnegans] Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "past time are pastimes." The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the 20th century, the number of "past times" that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist's role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of "doubleness" or "interplay" because this type of hendiadys dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.

(Marshall McLuhan, From cliché to archetype)

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The medium is the message - "A formalism which ceases to be external since the form is the innate development of the concrete content itself."

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Now the end of history does not mark the end of all sudden and new appearances. The moment of Absolute Knowledge only causes the dialectical suppression of one certain time, one specific temporality. From this moment on, far from closing all horizons, Absolute Knowledge announces in fact a new temporality, one born from the synthesis of two temporalities, the Greek and the Christian. The moment which dialectically gives rise to the two temporalities marks the emergence of a new era of plasticity in which subjectivity gives itself the form which at the same time it receives.

(Cathrine Malabou, The Future of Hegel)

Schopenhauer on Hegel

"Schopenhauer despised Fichte and Schelling, but he hated Hegel and described him as ‘that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a whole generation.’ On almost any square foot of ground in the landscape of his writings a geyser of wrath may suddenly erupt, spewing out imprecations against the same three men. ‘What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel...’ Hegel, said Schopenhauer, was ‘a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers...’ I do not think anything in the whole history of philosophy compares with this invective by one now world-famous philosopher against another, especially when one considers that they were near-contemporaries and colleagues."

(Bryan Magee from Confessions of a Philosopher, 1997)