It's occurred to me that I ought to start writing down the responses that I give, for two main reasons. First, they're not being recorded in these sessions, and every once in a while, I surprise myself by coming up with an interesting response or explanation. Second, and more importantly, with quite a few of the questions, if one person is asking them, they're likely to bear upon issues that many other people wonder about as well.
This first one was asked by Thao Nguyen -- and it's a question I've addressed before in a different setting (in one of my 10 Short Clips videos) -- about the relation between Jean-Paul Sartre's and G.W.F. Hegel's use of the same terminology, specifically the "in-itself" and "for-itself". Are both philosophers in effect meaning the same thing when they use these terms in the course of their magna opera, Being and Nothingness and the Phenomenology of Spirit?
