Awakening From the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Ep. 24 — Hegel (Summary & Notes)

“He’s taking the theological machinery that he sees at work in myth, and integrating it with the philosophical and scientific understanding that is impacting so powerfully on Europe in his time.”

(In case you missed it: Summary & Notes for Ep. 23: https://markmulvey.medium.com/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-by-john-vervaeke-ep-23-romanticism-summary-notes-80719c79ae8a)

Ep. 24 — Awakening from the Meaning Crisis —Hegel [55:57] https://youtu.be/6pwBgL0BbJ0

• “Hegel is a titanic and complex and difficult thinker.”
• Hegel says that Kant’s idea of “thing-in-itself” makes no sense, and reinterprets it as something new altogether. He points out that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, and is therefore indistinguishable from being nonexistent. This leads to the conclusion that reality is found completely within the structure of rational thought. (This is a form of idealism — that reality in some way is made by or constructed by the mind in some way.)
• Hegel says: “the real is the rational.” This is an important derivation of the insight from Parmenides we saw earlier, that there’s a deep connection between our sensing something as real and how knowable it is to us.
• Hegel sees the irrational aspects of the mind as a kind of potential within the mind, a potential for rationality. Patterns of intelligibility + reality is a “mind” in this extended sense. These patterns structure reality, they’re not just an experience of it. Irrational elements are constantly being transformed into more rational elements. (The Germans have a word for all of this: Geist. It combines the English words mind & spirit) So this whole thing becomes known as Absolute Idealism.
• How does one study this way of understanding the world? Through history, looking for patterns, grammars of intelligibility. How have cultures formed worldviews and ways of “making sense”? These are patterns that we “realize.” (the word being used both in the sense of experiencing something and also the sense in which things are being made real.)
• Hegel finds that when you look at history you see a tension between two opposing forces: one of differentiation (grasping the differences between things, distinguishing, clarifying contrasting… articulation) and one of integration (gathering things together to form systematic connections)
• Hegel understands the process of understanding as a systemization. As you progress through developmental stages in life your system gets improved — parts get reintegrated and you get a better systematic understanding of the world. “A living system of patterns of intelligibility.”
• So as you look through history, ideas get introduced and then get contrasted/differentiated by counter-ideas, which are then drawn together into a higher integration. (Thesis, antithesis, & synthesis.) The higher integration then becomes a new idea, which can have a counter-idea, etc. So you have an unfolding, emerging complexification, a process which Hegel calls dialectic. In this sense, reality is pure change. (Very different than the Parmenides/Plato idea of reality being that thing that is unchanging.)
• All of this resembles the scientific way of trying to understand the world, via math + experiment. i.e. the absolute but abstract + the changing and empirical.
• This living system of principles for rationally making sense moves from understanding things to understanding everything systematically… which then becomes self-reflected. It can then “grasp itself.”
• “This process through history by which reality and rationality have realized themselves… is God.” Hegel has secularized and rationalized the Hebraic heritage. “A secularized, non-religious god.”
• The process by which understanding → reason parallels the process by which mythology → philosophy.
• Looking at Myth vs. Philosophy, then: the myth of “The Father” corresponds in philosophy to “understanding as unarticulated , unactualized, undifferentiated.”
• The myth of “the Son” = the philosophical “articulation into particular things”
• The myth of “Son is sacrificed and reconciles with the Father” = the philosophical “realization of the identity in difference of the Father & Son”
• The myth of “The Holy Spirit” where God is agape= the philosophical “self-awareness of Geist”
• Hegel has been called the Thomas Aquinas of Protestantism. “He’s taking the theological machinery that he sees at work in myth, and integrating it with the philosophical and scientific understanding that is impacting so powerfully on Europe in his time.”
• Hegel sets up this pattern of secularizing religion into systems of ideas that attempt to give us a total explanation and guide.” He is the godfather of totalitarian ideologies.
• Schopenhauer has a deep critique of Hegel, since his understanding of reality is based around the will — the will to live — which isn’t really adequately addressed in Hegel.
• Kierkegaard also has a strong critique of Hegel. He said “Hegel made a system and then sat down beside it.” He thought there was an impersonalism to Hegel, a lack of perspectival and participatory knowing. You don’t need to undergo any radical change, have a mystical experience, higher state of consciousness etc. Theology becomes purely conceptual, propositional, rational self-reflect… not projects of transformative experience.
• Marx’s critique of Hegel: History is not driven by reason, it’s driven by the monster. By our socioeconomic activity, to provide for our material existence. (he was influenced by Feuerbach, who made a proposal that religion is a projection — an ideal model of my own humanity, which ultimately deludes us and alienates us.) Marx is actually completing and brings to a logical conclusion the secularization implicit in Hegel, supplying the missing participation. Marx introduces the idea of dialectic + participation coming together in the form of political, socioeconomic revolution. Violent, totalizing ideology with elements of Schopenhauer’s “will” that promise a secular utopia. That one has to be “on the right side” of history to bring about the utopia.
• “All three critiques share a sense that Hegel’s totalizing ideology has not captured the core of human meaning-making.”

Next up: Awakening From the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Ep. 25 — The Clash (Summary & Notes) https://markmulvey.medium.com/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-by-john-vervaeke-ep-25-the-clash-summary-notes-c7bd263979b4

List of Books in the Video:

• Eric Perl — Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition
• Merold Westphal — Transcendence and Self-Transcendence: On God and the Soul