r0b > Recent Status Updates

...much more radical, seeing his own personal religious views fairly completely in terms of his overall philosophical views about "mindedness" and "like-mindedness."

..the view I take is that Hegel's philosophically articulated views on religion (at least from Jena until the end of his life) were outgrowths of his theory of Geist and not vice versa (as so many Hegel interpreters have done and continue to do). In other words, I do not see Hegel as advancing his philosophical views on the basis of previously held religious views; Hegel was, as I understand him, much more radical...

...the usual cognates of either "spirit" or "mind." But, it should be noted, the use of "mindedness" and "like-mindedness" also submerges the possible religious connotations that Geist has in German (and which are obviously better caught by the term "spirit"). The choice of translations thus rests on an interpretive decision about how to treat the importance of religion in Hegel's system; the view I take is that...

... some of his discussion to help to clarify Hegel's conception of Geist. I do not think that this does any violence to the historically situated way in which Hegel in fact understood the concept of Geist. Indeed, I also think that the artificial terms "mindedness" and "like-mindedness" are in fact more helpful in translating the notoriously untranslatable German term "Geist" than the usual cognates of either...

Endnote: The citation on "I" and "We" occurs in Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 177, p. 1 10, PC, p. 140; PhG, p. 127. The terms themselves, "mindedness" and "like­ mindedness," are taken from Jonathan Lear, "The Disappearing 'We'," in Jonathan Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul, pp. 282-300. Lear uses the terms to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of mind, but I have adopted his terminology and...

...later to try to make good in his "philosophy of nature."

Jesus' death was the death of God, the way in which God became human. The divine, Hegel argued, had thereby been made manifest as rational self-conscious Geist itself. This did not imply that man was God; in Christian religion, Hegel argued, we acknowledge that we worship not ourselves, which would be absurd, but the "divine princi­ple" within ourselves, a claim he was...

...a good reader of Scottish political economy, [Hegel] also argued that state intervention in markets should be restrained and unobtrusive and that using taxes to prevent consumption is counterproductive. (His example is that of taxes on wine; presumably, that struck home for him.) 😂

...of law.
The System of Ethical Life remained unpublished and unfinished.

Philosophy speaks from the standpoint of the "absolute" - but from what point of view was the philosopher speaking when he said that? At this point, Hegel did not find even his own answers to that question very convincing; and he had to worry that his own doctrine of the "mores" of a "people" only threatened to be replace cameralism's dog­matics with some more communitarian and equally dogmatic conception of...

His essay on "The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate" thus became one more (in his eyes) failed attempt to come to terms with the complex set of issues about modern life that was troubling him.

...necessarily precedes all our reflection, including even our various skeptical doubts about it. That we have a sense of the "whole" that includes us, even if we cannot at first articulate it (except perhaps poetically), was the implication of Holderlin's reflections.

Holderlin's reflections on Fichte and on the development of idealism in general had no less than an explosive impact on Hegel.

Although Schelling's views obviously had quite an influence on the development of Hegel's own philosophy, the genuine impetus for He­gel's development of his own views was his encounter in Frankfurt with Holderlin's thoughts on Fichtean idealism.

...Neither "subject" nor "object" is primary or originary, and we must accept that we are always in touch with the world in all its general outlines. This acceptance...

...Schelling drew out what he took to be the central principle of Fichte's development of idealism and phrased it in a way that was to appeal to his Romantic admirers: "The beginning and end of all philosophy is -freedom!"

Just as Fichte had radicalized Kant, Schelling radicalized Fichte.

...Fichte's thought in important ways. He then began to see the problems in Fichte's own system, and by 1800 had published his System of Transcendental Idealism in which he articulated his own distinctive Ro­mantic post-Fichtean form of idealism.

In the period from roughly 1794 to 1800, Schelling went through his rapid development. Beginning as a Spinozist, he quickly became a Fichtean; in 1795, he published Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge, in which, although still appearing Fichtean in his overall argumentation (he still spoke of the "I's" positing a "Not-I," and so on), in fact he began to depart...

...who had no claims of his own to raise, whose role was simply to be a good soldier in the newly launched Schellingian move­ ment in philosophy. That Hegel might have had his own views to work out that might not themselves be simple elaborations of the Schellingian point of view seems not to have occurred to Schelling.

...trouble began brewing between Hegel and Schelling. In letters to others, Schelling showed himself to be distancing himself at a fairly early stage from Hegel, even going so far as to attribute gaffes and infelicities in his own essays to failures on Hegel's part to polish them up adequately before publication. In Schelling's mind, no doubt, Hegel was an old friend whom he was helping out but who...

...as for the Ten Stages refutation of any other creator (than the mind), this is stated as evidence for the fact that the “only” in the expression “mind-only” does not exclude external things, and not as evidence showing that the negation of external things is interpretable in meaning.

“Just as a doctor prescribes medicines for the sickness of invalids, so the Buddha teaches even ‘mind-only’ to some living beings.”

...the statements of “mind-only” are not in terms of the Teacher’s own system but in terms of the inclination of the disciples, just as the doctor does not give medicine to particular patients out of his own whim, but in accord with the particular pattern of the patient’s sickness.

...Among types la and 2a, there are four subtypes: i) cause-non-perception, ii) concomitance-non-perception, iii) identity-non-per-ception, and iv) effect-non-perception. For further exemplification he refers us to Drop of “Logic (NB); see Stcherbatski, Buddhist Logic IL

P. 439

Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!!

...some clarifying comments: (in paraphrase) “non-perception” negative reasons are twofold—1) those arising from non-perception of an imperceptible, and 2) those arising from non-perception of a perceptible. Each of these is again twofold: 1a, 2a) non-perception of related fact reasons, and lb, 2b) non-perception through perception of contradictory fact reasons. Among types la and 2a, there are four subtypes: i)...

REASONING NEGATING THE NEGATEE

What is the chief reasoning used to negate the above negatee?
With some exceptions, the reason used to negate the negatee of this system is the reason (called) “non-perception of the related fact.” 64

Note 64:

Tib. ’brel zla ma dmigs pa. In regard to a “non-perception of related fact” (negative) reason, dPal-’byor Lhun-grub has some clarifying comments: (in paraphrase)...

...the profound, terrifying practice of enlightenment, whose essence is emptiness and compassion.

Finally, the Jewel Garland declares:

Just as the grammarians make one read the grammar, the Buddha teaches the Dharma according to the tolerance of the disciple. To some he teaches the Dharma to refrain from sins, to some to accomplish virtue, to some as dependence on dualism, and to some as freedom from dualism; (finally) to some he teaches...

...the “real” relative, the inexpressible processes that we are.

[I have the impression that Thurman unfortunately makes this text, through his translation and his presentation, more difficult than is necessary. It is a bit of a slog at times and I don't think it should be.]

...“The form-aggregate is produced,” “it is ceased,” “it is abandoned,” “it is fully understood,” and so on. Thus, as long as our perceptions are habitually entangled in our conventional, verbalized descriptions of the world, that is, as long as we have not seen the unreality of the “structured, verbally, conceptually, and imaginatively constructed world,” we do not perceive...

“The imagined reality” designates the world of conditional processes, which are its ground as object of conceptual constructions, when this world is verbally and conventionally structured into a world of natural entities, as [evinced in perceptions accompanying such] expressions as “This is the form-aggregate,” and of natural qualities, as [evinced in perceptions accompanying such] expressions as...

...Tsong Khapa has the audacity to argue that the Absolute, the Ultimate Truth, Reality, can be proven, expressed, and experienced, and that human reason can thus serve as the solid ground for ethical, creative, and liberative action in the world.

P. 230
(re-reading some as I had put it down for awhile)

...Nirvana cannot be distinguished from samsara. It is just here now, and the full experiential acceptance of that is liberation, which is not a going elsewhere.