Three Videos on the Law Of The Heart

After that short section on Pleasure and Necessity (and I do have another post coming soon, discussing Hegel's treatment of hedonism in that portion of the text), we now have a longer and more complex section - The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit.

What Hegel is exploring and examining is a new shape of consciousness, one that he views as particular to modern times in the West.  In the earlier portions of this "Actualization of Self-Consciousness" part of the Reason section, Hegel narrated for us how rational self-consciousness extricated itself from what he had called the "ethical substance" - the culture and community to which the individual belongs, seemingly complete with its laws, mores, and customs, its Sitte.

Self-consciousness tried out an individualism of pleasure-seeking and found it empty.  Now it is going to look within, to its own sentiments, and find a "law of the heart", a law that calls for being externalized, actualized, in and against the social space in which that individual - and all the other ones as well - lives out its existence.  How well will that new project go?  Well, you'll have to see. . .

Here are the first three videos for this section:

• Lecture 144 - paragraphs 367-369
• Lecture 145 - paragraphs 370-371
• Lecture 146 - paragraphs 372-373