Transcription
[Music] Hello, I'm Gregory Sadler, and this is the beginning of a new series of videos which I'm going to be shooting. Each of which should be about 25 to 35 minutes long, that are going to be focused on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. We're going to go through the entirety of this work, passage by passage by passage. Um, I'm trying to, to not skip any of the portions of it, even the portions that seem almost indecipherable. We're going to dig into them and make sense of them.
This is for me a, a sort of new experiment. I've done a lot of video lectures, as some of you may know. Um, I've put together a number of courses ranging from essentialism to intro to philosophy to ethics to religion in America, and I'm constantly bringing out new material. But I've been asked for a long time, "When are you going to do Hegel?" And that may sound like a strange thing, but I suppose YouTube viewers of, of philosophical videos are, are an unusual bunch. And so people have been asking for this for quite a while. I've shot a few videos on Hegel in, in my intro classes, strange enough place to do that. I think some people would see that as a, a recipe for disaster, given how, how dense and difficult Hegel is. But, um, nonetheless, that's, that's what I did. He is one of my, my favorite philosophers, and this is really one of my favorite books of all time of philosophy. I rate him up there with Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, and Descartes. We could go down the list of, of top-notch philosophers, and Hegel is among them.
So, what I'm going to be doing with this is, is rather experimental. Um, I'm not sure how long it's going to take me, how many videos it will require. But what I'm going to do is go through each one of the, the sections. And there are total, when we get to the very end, there are 88 sections. So, each of them is, you know, a paragraph or sometimes a page worth of, of writing. We're going to go through each one of those. Uh, I'm going to read it, and then I'm going to comment on it. And the commentary may be explaining what's going on in the passage. It may be making sure that we, we don't miss the references from that passage to earlier passages that we've already covered. It may be talking about the historical context, because Hegel doesn't do a lot of naming of names in, in this book, um, which is different than some of his other works. Uh, so, so there's, there's a lot of different possibilities.
I'm going to be switching back and forth. You're going to see me sitting here reading the passage to you. Uh, hopefully I'll have text up on the screen along with me. And then I'll be shooting in front of a chalkboard for the, the what would be the lecture portion of this. And I've been thinking about this for, for quite a while, what exactly I wanted to do, and what would be the best format, uh, for, for doing something like this on, on Hegel specifically, because he is such a complex thinker, not only by temperament, but by design. He thinks that that is integral to, to the practice of philosophy, at least as he understands it.
So, what I'm doing here is not really teaching a class, per se, uh, because we don't have the, the back and forth student interaction. Of course, we do have the comment section, which people are welcome to, to leave comments. And, uh, when people ask questions, I'll try to respond as best as I can to them. Sometimes they may be actually directing people, well, go back and, and take a look at this this section or this video. Um, I think you could look at this as something like the core for a self-directed study. If Hegel is somebody who you've always wanted to understand, and he is well worth understanding, because he really does, in many respects, um, set the agenda, or at least part of the agenda, for the whole of 19th century and a lot of 20th century philosophy. He is somebody who, if you want to get a good education in philosophy, or even in the humanities, or the history of ideas in general, you need to grapple with at one point or another. So, if you're, if you're interested in doing a kind of self-directed study, this could be the core for that. Um, perhaps by the time that we're finished with this, this will have generated some sort of community of inquiry around which we can design some other projects. I'm, I'm not sure. This is all very, like I said, experimental. We're going to see what happens with this, and I'm just going to keep producing them. Uh, and what happens with them, I suppose, depends in part on the viewership.
So, like I said, what we're going to do is, it's going to go back and forth from text to commentary. I'm going to be providing the commentary. I do have some, some secondary sources who I particularly like, but I'm going to try to minimize my references to them. But I, I thought it'd be good to mention them right off the bat. Two of them are the, these, these classic French commentators on Hegel, Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite. Um, Kojève influenced a lot of the French thought on Hegel. Hyppolite did as well. Um, but Hyppolite is, Kojève, you could think of as, as a lot of fireworks and, and very interesting, uh, play of ideas. Hyppolite is a bit more of a careful scholarly attitude and approach towards it. There are other thinkers who I, I particularly enjoy reading on, on Hegel, and they would include, you know, Stanley Rosen, for example, uh, Adrian Peppersack, who also writes a lot on, on Levinas, on Christian philosophy. Uh, Heidegger. Martin Heidegger has a, unfortunately, only discusses, uh, certain parts of the Phenomenology. But I'm, I'm going to bring these things in very infrequently, because I don't want this to try to turn into a, you know, web of erudition. I really want to focus on Hegel's own text as, as such.
And I think it's, it's important to point out, this is one of several different translations that are available in English. There's another one that you'll see translated as The Phenomenology of Mind. Um, I may, on occasion, if, if I think that the translation in some of the passages of this, bring up them, if I think that the translation is a little bit more felicitous, you know, a little bit closer to what we want, I may bring them up. But, but I'm not going to, to guarantee that we're going to be using this, in part because this is a decent translation and it's readily available. So, if you want to get yourself a copy of this, if you're going to follow, follow along with this entire course, I, I think that's a good idea. Um, so, without any further ado, we're going to start moving now into the very first part of the Phenomenology, the preface, and we'll start with the very first section.
It is customary to preface a work with an explanation of the author's aim, why he wrote the book, and the relationship in which he believes it to stand to other earlier or contemporary treatises on the same subject. In the case of a philosophical work, however, such an explanation seems not only superfluous but, in view of the nature of the subject matter, even inappropriate and misleading. For whatever might appropriately be said about philosophy in a preface—say, a historical statement of the main drift and point of view, the general content and results, a string of random assertions and assurances about truth—none of this can be accepted as the way in which to expound philosophical truth. Also, since philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality, which includes within itself the particular, it might seem that here, more than in any of the other sciences, the subject matter itself and even its complete nature were expressed in the aim and the final results, the execution being by contrast really the unessential factor. On the other hand, in the ordinary view of anatomy, for instance, say, the knowledge of the parts of the body regarded as inanimate, we are quite sure that we do not as yet possess the subject matter itself, the content of this science, but must in addition exert ourselves to know the particulars. Further, in the case of such an aggregate of information which has no right to bear the name of science, an opening talk about aim and other such generalities is usually conducted in the same historical and uncomprehending way in which the content itself—these nerves, muscles, etc.—is spoken of. In the case of philosophy, on the other hand, this would give rise to the incongruity that, along with the employment of such a method, its inability to grasp the truth would also be demonstrated.
This first paragraph in the Phenomenology is quite famous for Hegel's insistence that really you can't write a preface as the first thing that he's saying writing his preface. So, a lot of people have played around with this and, and, uh, you know, Dared, for example, um, made a lot of hay out of this and talking about the, the impossibility of Hegel's own position. Um, but Hegel really is earnest about this. What you're going to find is that he, he can be quite sardonic, he can be quite ironic. Um, he can, he can make a lot of very biting comments, um, withering sometimes, throughout this preface, because he's, he's looking at other philosophical approaches of, of his own time and showing where they're wanting, showing where they've fallen short, showing where they thought they got it right, but actually only partly got it right, and, and thinking that they got the hold of it right, got it wrong. And this is something that, actually, if you take away Hegel from it and take away his own particular way of doing philosophy, I think that quite a bit in this very first part of the preface would actually still make quite a good bit of sense when we're thinking about how philosophy differs from other disciplines, let alone differs from other genres of literature.
So, he starts out, you know, wondering, can you actually write a preface to a philosophical work? Now, what does that mean? We're talking about a work that, in some way, is beyond the sorts of things that we're normally looking at. You know, a work of philosophy, for example, cannot be what we used to call a coffee table book. You know, those, those nicely illustrated large books that you set on the coffee table. Why would we call them a coffee table book? Because they're the kind of books that somebody would sit at a coffee table and, while they're sipping some coffee, maybe, you know, killing some time, they could page through. Philosophical works are not like that. You have to apply yourself to them, because somebody else, in writing them, applied themselves. They work in the medium of complex and articulate thought, at least that's if they're good philosophy. If they're just, you know, regurgitated, uh, dogmatic statements, that's not really philosophy in the sense that, that Hegel is talking about.
So, can a, a, a, a preface, can some sort of, "here's what what is going on, here's what to expect," can that sort of thing, that sort of warning, that sort of advertisement, be, be effectively written for philosophy? Hegel says no. It's actually inappropriate and misleading. And, you know, this should give us some pause, because he, like I said, he himself is writing a preface. And philosophical works generally have a preface, a foreword, an introduction. Often times they're not even by the person who wrote them, they're by somebody else who's connected with them or famous, and you get them to write the, uh, the piece. So, what is Hegel actually driving at? Why does he say this?
He says, whatever we might appropriately say about philosophy in a preface is not going to work. What are the sorts of things that we usually say in a preface? Hegel uses this term, um, "historical," and he doesn't just mean in the sense of, of history books or history courses or history as a discipline. He's using this in a broader sense to mean something like a narrative. You know, if you look at a lot of books' prefaces, you see things like, "I never would have written this book except for having gone to this conference and then having got a grant from this, this, uh, institution or agency, and then this person got me thinking about that." And all of those things are, are rather contingent. Um, they're, they're accidental. They could be fatefully accidental, to use the great, uh, uh, skeptic and, and hermeneutic scholar, OD Mard's phrase, but they're contingent. There's no internal necessity in them. If you were to ask somebody, "Well, why did you write this book?" they could say, "Well, let me tell you this story about how the book got written." And that's, that's all fine for radio interviews and for "meet the author" sorts of things. But when we want to know, "Why did you write this book of philosophy?" we don't want to hear Hegel's things. We don't want to hear, "Well, you know, I had, I think I had a book in me that needed to get out," or "I had these experiences and it kept me reflecting." We want to hear something more general, something that's not so contingent, something that is, in certain respects, more universal.
So, um, what else do we often find in prefaces? Let's call them generalities and watered-down bits. You know, platitudes, the good words to use, a certain, uh, way of, of parodying this. Often times you'll, you'll see them, you know, engaging. They'll say, "In this book, you know, I'm, I'm really concerned with the development of, of, of religion in the last two centuries in America, and here's the things I was really interested in. Obviously, I'm going to do more of this in the work itself, but really big picture, here's what I'm about." Well, that's pretty general. Notice that's not universal in any sort of philosophical sense. It's just kind of general, and it doesn't tell you much of anything. So, for a philosophical work, what would you say? You know, think about Plato's dialogues. If they had a preface to them, let's say he had a preface to The Republic, it would run something like this: "Well, you know, these people got together. Socrates was going down to the Piraeus, there's, so there's the historical part. And then he got roped into a conversation that they wouldn't let him out of, and fortunately, there happened to be this, this firebrand. Thus, there's some more contingent stuff. And then they started talking about justice, and justice is a topic that's very important to all of us, and we should all be highly concerned with it. Now, there are different theories of justice available, and this book will discuss some of them. We might summarize them: might makes right, or egoism, or virtue ethics." And you notice they're throwing around terms and they're saying, "Here's what we're going to do in this book," but they're not actually doing it. They're just referencing it. They're just generalizing about what's going on. They're not actually giving you any of the meat. And you might say, "Well, it's a preface, what do you expect?" But Hegel is saying, "Look, a work that's going to be philosophical has to have a philosophical preface as well." That's why it's so hard.
So, then he says, um, you know, "Philosophy, it moves essentially in the, in the, the element of universality." And he says, "Universality includes within itself the particular." Now, this is something that's, that's very important in terms of Hegel's own, uh, philosophical approach, and I, I want to stress this at the beginning, because this is going to come up over and over again. So, philosophy, so really what we need to do is not just, um, contrast the universality with the particular, but I'll put two particulars down here. And why am I putting two particulars down here? To signify that what we're dealing with is, is a whole range of particulars that are supposed to somehow come under the rubric of the universal. This, this is what allows us, this provides us with intelligibility. This is what we actually experience. And there's, I'm going to use this word an awful lot because it's, it's a central part of Hegel's idea, there's a dialectic. There is a back and forth relationship between the universal that allows us to understand things and the particulars which is what we actually experience. Both of them require each other. No, no particulars, no universal. No universal, no particulars, as such, just, you know, amorphous mass of, as James called it, "booming, buzzing confusion." You need both of these. Philosophy is particularly connected with universality. It's aimed at trying to figure out, well, what are the universals, and what can we know about them, and how are they connected to them, and, and are there, you know, are they connected to each other in such a way that perhaps one is a universal of universals? These are the sorts of things that philosophy has to be concerned with, according to Hegel.
So, he says, um, "it might seem that that here more than in the other sciences." And when we see this word "science," this is another thing I should probably say. Philosophy is one of the sciences. It is also science as such, the science of sciences, for, for Hegel. And the German word for this is *Wissenschaft*. And when you think about science in an American or Anglo-American setting, the word is a bit deceptive for us when we're reading Hegel, because we tend to associate science with what are properly called the natural sciences, as opposed to the social or human sciences, the *Geisteswissenschaften* in German, or the *sciences humaines* in French. Um, so, there's this tendency to pull up "science" a little bit short. The other thing that you've got to remember about this, and this is a historical point, something from the history of ideas, is that the term "science" and its narrowing occurred in late modernity. So, much of what, um, they were willing to call science at the time, people would talk about history as being a science, they would talk about not just economics, the dismal science, but, but, um, psychology, and even philosophical psychology, as being a science. So, all of that fits under this. So, philosophy is supposed to be scientific.
And he says, um, "even its complete nature, uh, were expressed in the aim and final results, the execution would be the, the unessential factor." So, if a preface is supposed to, again, be, be truly philosophical, and philosophy is a matter of science, then it should be just sort of reporting, "Here's what I actually found out. Here's what I'm proving. Here's what I'm, here's the case I'm making. Here's what, uh, we've attained." Those are the results. And then he says, "Now, wait a second." If we were to look at another science, one of the ones that was growing, by the way, at that time, anatomy, says the ordinary view of anatomy, parts of the body, body, are looked at as things that we have knowledge of. And if we only know the universal, but we don't know the particulars, then we don't say that we've actually got the science. We know some of the general principles. You know, here'd be a great example: why isn't Wikipedia a substitute, or any other encyclopedia for that matter, why isn't that a substitute for actually taking classes on a subject? Because in the classes, you don't just learn information about particulars, you actually grapple with particulars and thereby see how the universal plays out in relation to particulars. It's one thing to have a book sense of, of, you know, universals. It's another thing to actually apply it in real concrete cases and see how messy it gets, and see how you have to sort of re-understand the, the universal, uh, principles or, or approach. In this case, you have to acquire, you know, some, some judgment about it, and that's part of acquiring knowledge. So, we wouldn't think that somebody who just knew the, the general principles of anatomy actually understood anatomy. They, we would say that they possess the subject matter itself. They have to get to know the particulars. Further, in the case of anatomy, um, probably you need to do some dissections, or at least, you know, trace out where the muscles and bones lie.
So, if philosophy is like that, what does that mean for philosophy? Here's a, a good question to ask yourself: Could you read just the Phenomenology and not have to engage the rest of the great works in philosophy? I think Hegel would actually say no. Why? Because if you actually want to grasp what he's talking about in all these dialectical shifts and changes, you would want to know something at least about some of the works that he's, he's grappling with and the developments that are taking place in them.
So, he says, "in the case of an aggregate of information which has no right to bear the name science, an opening talk about aim and other generalities is usually, is usually carried out in this sort of historical way." "Here's what we've usually been up to, and here's the contingent things that we're, we're interested in." Um, "in the case of philosophy, this would mean that there would be an incongruity, there would be a disconnect." And what that would produce is a, a non-philosophical, and what that would amount to is an anti-philosophical way of approaching philosophy itself. I see this happen quite often in the way that, that philosophy gets taught. I, I've been guilty of that myself at times. Sometimes, in trying to oversimplify, we, we lose the spirit of, of what it is that we're doing in philosophy. If philosophy really is the sort of thing that Hegel makes it out to be, where it's this totalizing discipline that really makes sense out of everything, could we really have an intro to philosophy text that would be adequate to that, that aim, to that scope? Probably not. It would be very difficult to design it. So, uh, that's why Hegel can't write the preface, which he's about to write.