A Cool Hegel Triptych

One of the fans of the Half Hour Hegel series, (who goes by what I'm guessing are pseudonyms) Milliardo Peacecraft and Budimen Budimen, created this interesting triptych, taking Hegel's iconic portrait as a starting point.

It might well be titled "Hegel and Melancholia," and read visually and expressively from right to left.  We start with a recognizable representation of the great German philosopher, but with almost a hint of a smile, and eyes a bit softer and forgiving than those in his usual depictions.  Then, we shift to a blued, Jekyll-Hyde-suggestive distortion, still recognizably the iconic work, but dour or even soured in expression.  In the third, an externalization has taken place, a hazy net providing the latticework through which Hegel gazes out at the world, and at the viewer.

It's a suggestive piece of work, which I'm quite grateful to have been provided with.  I'm by no means a good guy for commenting upon artwork -- so I'd welcome any comments by those who want to contribute a bit more by way of discussion or analysis.

Starting The Section: Force and the Understanding!

We've been making fairly consistent progress -- supported, encouraged, and also (important for me) held to promised deadlines by Patreon supporters of the project -- and we now are moving into the third and final section of the first part of the Phenomenology -- "Consciousness".  This is the first lecture in the new -- and difficult -- section "Force and the Understanding."

Hegel's not yet introducing one of the key new terms -- Force (Kraft) -- that will occur in the next paragraph (136), which might require an entire video devoted specifically to it in its own right, but he is bringing attention to something that has been implicit all along, as we explored the dialectics of the object of sense and perception -- the Unconditioned Universal.  He also adds a distinction -- a new way of looking at multiple sides or aspects, which then will undergo their own interplay -- between Content and Form.

As I remarked early on in the lecture video, we're now going to be engaging in some pretty heavy duty metaphysics.  But, as we'll see, as we proceed through the section over the next two months or so, there are also some important developments and implications for our understanding of matters of ethics, identity, and interpersonal relations -- it's not for nothing that this section immediately precedes the next main division of the work:  "Self-Consciousness."

We're Finished With The Section "Perception"!

Early in May, we're finished  with working our winding way through the section "Perception", the second in the first main division "Consciousness"!  That puts both Sense Certainty and Perception behind us -- and now a new horizon opens.  The road ahead leads us into what might be described as a "dense, dark forest", worthy of a Brother Grimm's fairy-tale:  Force and the Unconsciousness.

Before we head into that new section -- the last of the part "Consciousness" -- we should stop to take stock of how far we've come so far (but don't look too much yet at how much lies ahead, lest you get dissuaded of continuing our long march!).  We've made it through the difficult introductory material -- the Preface and the Introduction -- and we worked through some specific and preliminary dialectical maneuvers with the last two sections.  We've realized, first, that there's strictly speaking no such thing as "sense certainty" -- the object or experience that was supposed to be immediate showed itself, at least for Consciousness (where the whole game plays itself out for Hegel) to be an intersection of Universals -- sensuous universals, as we realized as we moved into Perception (the "truth-taking," Wahr-nehmung, by the conscious subject).

Now we've seen that even Perception itself could not be a secure resting-place (and because of that, no foundational starting-point) for Philosophy.  The Thing -- the object with its properties -- turned out to suffer a kind of pulsational diffusion and reintegration as we explored various perspectives upon it, ultimately displaying itself as unable to unite all of these aspects within itself.  Upon retrospect, that should be so surprise, since after all, this is the section devoted to consciousness. . .

For those who haven't yet watched them, here's the full set of videos of commentary on this section:

• Lecture 45 - sec. 111-113 
• Lecture 46 - sec. 114-116 
• Lecture 47 - sec. 117-118    
• Lecture 48 - sec. 119-121  
• Lecture 49 - sec. 122-124
• Lecture 50 - sec. 125-128
• Lecture 51 - sec. 129-131

More than Halfway Through "Perception"

We're making good progress through the section "Perception" -- the second section in the first main part, "Consciousness".  I think we'll actually be ready to finish up with Perception and embark upon the next, and more difficult section, "Force and the Understanding" by the second week of May!

We've covered quite a bit of ground in "Perception," seemingly retracing some of the material in "Sense- Certainty" -- but you can also see Hegel's account becoming progressively more complex as we head deeper into the work -- more complex, and also more concrete, that's the general movement of the dialectic.

In any case, if you've missed them so far, here's the set of video lectures from this section -- the ones produced and published so far.

• Lecture 45 - sec. 111-113 
• Lecture 46 - sec. 114-116 
• Lecture 47 - sec. 117-118    
• Lecture 48 - sec. 119-121  
• Lecture 49 - sec. 122-124

Second Patreon Milestone Reached!

I'm very happy to be able to report that we've crossed the second milestone in the Patreon campaign devoted to the Half Hour Hegel project!  (Patreon allows those who want to support content producers to do so - and to get a few perks and rewards in the process.)  At this level of support, I've pledged that I'll step up the rate of producing these videos -- from the initial leisurely 4 per month to a somewhat more intense 6 videos per month.

At that rate, if I can effectively do that this month -- which is, as I write, more than half over -- we could be through the section "Perception" by the end of the month, or at least by the end of the first week of May!  And then, we proceed into one of the admittedly more difficult and murky portions of the text - "Force and the Understanding,"  which at the rate of 6 videos per month, might be finished by the end of June.  And that means, at this stepped-up speed, we get into the section that everybody asks about, the famous dialectic of Master and Slave, early on in July (moving into the whole portion of the text "Self-Consciousness")

I've got to say that I'm very happy and grateful to see such support early on in this Patreon campaign.  I frankly thought that it would take a bit longer to arrive at this point, but I'm glad that it didn't!  Now, though, it's up to me to make good -- and keep on making good -- on my own commitment to step up the production of high-quality Hegel videos.