How Much Background Do You Need?

One of the Hegel-related blogs I read regularly is The Empyrean Trail, written by Anthony Wolf, who also goes by the pleasingly fanciful moniker of A.W. Hegel.  I like what I've read so far, and a recent piece - An anecdote on the myth that Hegel is impossible without background - has spurred me to do some thinking, and as you can see here, a bit of writing today.

He's raising a very important question, one that does come up from time to time as comments on the Half Hour Hegel videos - just how much preparation does one need in order to be able to successfully read and understand G.W.F. Hegel's works?  Here's how Anthony puts it:

One of the most annoying points I encounter repeatedly when it comes to engaging Hegel for a newcomer is the repetition that Hegel is very, VERY, difficult. So difficult, in fact, that if you have not had at least four years of your life dealing with learning at least the continental movement from Hume to Kant to Fichte to Schelling to… ever increasing background qualifications, you have no hope in properly understanding anything Hegel has to say. That’s not even counting the difficulty of learning Hegel’s terminology itself and the obscure logic of dialectics. So… just hold on until you’ve made it through undergrad, there is no shame in admitting that Hegel is too hard for you.

Actualization of Self-Consciousness Videos

We have now left behind the first - and longest - portion of the Reason section of the Phenomenology, Observing Reason.  The two sections that follow are somewhat shorter, but for me of still more interest, since they have to do particularly with practical rationality.

Why is that?  It isn't because the rational self-consciousness first got its theoretical or speculative (or, if you're of a Kantian bent, "pure") reason side entirely figured out, and then moved on to practical application.

Instead, one of the motifs that you'll find running throughout the Hegelian work as a whole - and I think this may seem a bit counter-intuitive for some people ("isn't Hegel supposed to be an idealist, so everything is speculative, right?") is that the domain of the practical in complex and often implicit ways drives the activity of theoretical or speculative rationality (which, until the very end of the work, isn't a finished product or faculty, but always remains "under development," you might say.

There's quite a bit to say about this section - and I'll do that later this month.  For the time being, here are the five videos comprising the introduction to this new section.

Lecture 136 - paragraphs 347-349
Lecture 137 - paragraphs 350-351
Lecture 138 - paragraphs 352-355
Lecture 139 - paragraphs 356-357
Lecture 140 - paragraphs 358-359

What's coming next?  Three short but rich dialectical developments:  Pleasure and Necessity; The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit; and, Virtue and the Way of the World.  Each of them explores a typical way in which practically rational self-consciousness seeks out its good - and tries to produce it - within the world of experience.

October Half Hour Hegel Q&A Session

The month has just sped past for me - helped by having a LOT of Stoicism-related matters (STOICON, Stoic Week, a number of talks, and a good bit of work over at Stoicism Today) to focus upon!

It is the very day - and almost the hour - for our monthly Public Q&A session.  This is something I engage in each month,  totally free for anybody who wants to come (I also hold another one each month exclusively for my Patreon supporters).

If you'd like to talk, listen, or ask questions about anything Hegel-related, today is the day - 5-6 PM Central (i.e. Chicago) Time, I'll be holding the session via Google Hangouts.

I'll post the link for the Hangout once it's opened in several locations - my Patreon page, my Facebook author page, in Google+, and in Twitter.  So, if you want in, you'll want to check at least one of those around the time the Hangout started.

Finishing The Physiognomy and Phrenology Section!

With these last four video lectures, we reach the end of our commentary of the "Physiognomy and Phrenology" portion of the "Observing Reason" subsection.  This brings to a close a very interesting part of the text, one that is rich in implications for reductivist treatments of human beings, individuality, and agency.

We're already moving into the next section - my Patreon supporters get to view the Half Hour Hegel commentary videos about 1-2 weeks before the general public does - but it's worth also marking this occasion here (if not here, where then, after all?) , and noting that we've made it through over 110 paragraphs of the massive Reason section - more paragraphs than there are in the Preface, the entire Consciousness section, or the entire Self-Consciousness section.  We actually have about 90 paragraphs yet to cover in the two remaining portions of the Reason section.

Here are those final four videos in the Physiognomy and Phrenology portion of the Phenomenology:

• Lecture 132 - paragraphs 336-338
• Lecture 133 - paragraphs 339-341
• Lecture 134 - paragraphs 342-344
• Lecture 135 - paragraphs 345-346

Three New Videos in the Physiognomy and Phrenology Section

We continue along making progress through this "Physiognomy and Phrenology" portion of the Phenomenology.  At this rate, we ought to be moving into the next part of the massive "Reason" section of the work.

I have to admit, as interesting as the"Observing Reason" material is, I'm even more eager to make my way into the next two portions of the "Reason" section, where we'll consider specific types and tendencies of ethical commitments and projects.

Here are the next three videos:

• Lecture 127 - paragraphs 323-325
• Lecture 128 - paragraphs 326-328
• Lecture 129 - paragraphs 329-330