Self-Consciousness

After his phenomenological exposition of the consciousness of a pre-culture man, Hegel opens his next section, “THE TRUTH OF SELF-CERTAINTY” with an explanation of what he finds existence to be. The Essence of existence is “infinity as the supersession of all distinctions [...] The splitting up od itself into shapes and at the same time the dissoultion of these existent differences; and the dissolution of the splitting up is just as much a splitting up as a forming of its members.” This twisting and turning of effects upon effects eventually creates something very special; self-consciousness. Self-consciousness emerges from the inversion of the world as a conception for the human, a pure “I”. This pure “I” is the supersession of the inverted world (diffrences for it, are not differences, it is aware of, without (obviously) being self-conscious of, the absolute flux of the force. It is aware of it because it is the negative essense of the moments that are at first posited as independent).

Self-consciousness is completely assured of its existence because it supercedes what it sees as other than itself, what seems at first to be and independent existence. It shows to itself that the other actually had a blob of nothingness as its substance and thinks that this nothingness is the most that I can discover about the other. It surpasses the notion of a completely independent object and turns in on itself, giving itself this certainty of itself and thinking it nessesarily as objective certainty. Even though it posits nothingness as the truth of the object for consciousness it is aware of this nothingness as something independent, something unreachable for consciousness, and the philosopher can look back and say this is precisely why it must be posited as a nothingness. But the object is an integral part of consciousness and consciousness will continually come up with new objects to be destroyed and regenerated. Because it has surpassed the object, self-consciousness desires an object that will carry out the movement of negation in itself. I wants to find an object that has undergone what it has undergone. self-consciousness desires another self-consciousness. A self-conscious being is a double reflection, It has its unity, “I” as an object for it, as an other than itself, though not in the same sense, obviously, as external objects are. This is Spirit, the standpoint that cannot be reflected on, that does the reflecting.

Force and The Understanding

At first, a law comprehended by the understanding is posited in the understanding and not in the object, it is called an explanation. The Explanation is then understood in its essence as Force. Force is the same thing in the understanding as it is in reality, I’m not sure if this is because as force is expressed it has two movements it differentiates and then re-unifies in both the understand and the external universe OR if it is just something Hegel is unclear about. In the initial tautological movement of the understanding that precedes the movement into the second, inverse, super-sensible world, consciousness has for its sole object a unity. This object is merely the echo of an appearance, the repetition of the same. This movement creates a distinct object for consciousness that arises in direct relation to appearances and is then sucked down into a massive and more general unity. In this way appearances make an appearance (haha) in the understanding. This change and flux that the Understanding is now in tune to now replaces the static object as truth, and indeed is more truthful to appearance. This new truth is still a law that is self-identical BUT it is a low that expresses permanence of impermanence, an self-identical unity between unlikes. It is a law that is transition an “pure change”.  Hegel claims that force appears to be different, to be an antithesis (due to the specific difference of the thing of appearance itself) to consciousness for an insubstantial moment but then is brought back into a grand unity, so that the antithesis posited disappears and is unessential. This grand unity is constantly positing its antithesis however so this unessential moment will continue to express itself, and be corrected. This is the process by which the understanding, which initially only raised appearances to the pure universal incorporates the flux of appearances into itself, and comprehends force as it is expressed in reality.

Spinoza

pinoza-paper

each and every attribute exists through itself. The modes have reasons for existing; I am here for a large number of reasons, not the least a which being the fact that i was born. But the attributes have absolutely no reason as to why they exist, they just do. God is the indwelling cause of all things. While modes are determined in their existence by other modes, it is through God that they exist at all. God is utterly and completely incomprehensible to humans (a human being one of his ideas). He is infinite in so far as he is constituted by infinite attributes. This is a strange idea, and literally impossible to conceptualize adequately. He does have a certain nature, There is an idea for every mode of extension and corresponding to each of these things is an infinite amount of attributes. Everything follows the same form ,the physical laws of our extended universe and universe of thought= nature of God. We only see two layers of it.

Spinoza’s passive intellect =Nietzsche’s reactive forces?

Spinoza uses the word imagination in a different way than we do in modern culture. It seems like he believes that there is no distinction between “imagining” something as present to myself, in the acknowledgment of it’s affect on my body, and imagining some future or past affect on my body (as present to myself). This is especially clear in the proof of proposition 18, part three; Nature and Origin of the Emotions.

In the note on proposition 44, part two, Spinoza writes something very strange, and really seems only to flesh it out the further I read (a kind of recurring pattern in his work). He writes of how we come to view things as contingent rather than necessary. What he seems to be proposing in the note though is an idea about how we form patterns and beliefs in the world. He says once a body has been affected by two things at once they are forever associated and the mind will imagine both as present to self when only one is. So a thing can cause emotions to be sparked that are only the affect of some thing that is associated with the original thing. This is why we have such complex emotions and feelings, they are really many emotions contradicting one another. This also implies that we grow more and more complex as we experience things, we don’t just grow more aware of these complexities.

We are Nothing but a small part of something bigger, more fantastic. The Human body is nothing more than a self-regenerating modification of the attribute of Extension and the human mind is simply one of god’s many (adequate) ideas, specifically, the idea of the body (a modification of the attribute of thought). The idea of the body is affected by the body and is not static, the idea will morph with the body as the body is affected by it’s environment,  the idea will make the same connections that the body makes while going about it’s world, or rather will be the idea of these connections. These connections, or ideas, are almost all inadequate, except the one’s derived from the nature of the attribute (or those properties that all modes of the same attribute have in common, the laws of the universe). I like Spinoza because he is a determinist,  determinism is one of my favorite philosophical ideas for some reason.