Hegel et al. Discussion split from Ask a Red III

[Traitorfish]

If we're going to rail against nonsense-mongers, a man who tried to argue that Plato was personally responsible for the Holocaust probably isn't the best authority to be quoting.

 

[luiz]

Luiz, you insist that Hegel can be dismissed because his philosophy is non-empirical. But empiricism is itself a specific epistemological position, entailing specific philosophical assumptions. So rejecting Hegel out of hand because he non-empirical amounts to rejecting him out of hand because he doesn't share your assumptions. Does that not seem a little unsound to you?

It doesn't, because I am not arguing for pure empiricism, I am arguing for intellectual honesty.

If you read Hegel's definition of sound, which I will repeat here for emphasis:

"Sound is the change in the specific condition of seggregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition;- merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion -i.e., -heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearence of heat, originating conceptually together with sound".

you'll note several things:

-He is making stuff up from thin air;
-He is hiding the aburdity and childish ignorance of his actual content behind a thick wall of verbiage;
-He is not discussing an hypothesis, he is plainly declaring how the world is.

All of the above constitute intellectual dishonesty, and one can't be a philosopher and intellectually dishonest at the same time.

The man was a fraud, a charlatain never taken seriously by any scientist and who indeed ought only to be the subject of ridicule.

 

[luiz]

If we're going to rail against nonsense-mongers, a man who tried to argue that Plato was personally responsible for the Holocaust probably isn't the best authority to be quoting.

Popper never claimed that, in fact he went out of his way to say that Plato on a personal level probably meant well.

Popper was very hard on some of the folks he criticized (like Hegel), but on others like Plato and Marx he was in fact very sympathetic (eg, while he claimed that Platonism was a reactionary and totalitarian philosophy, he goes on to praise Plato's keen insights and in fact name him probably the greatest philosopher of all time. While he says that Marxim has largely degenerated to a pseudo-science, he states Marx made a honest and competent effort at actually developing a scientific method for the social sciences, etc.)

 

[Traitorfish]

It doesn't, because I am not arguing for pure empiricism, I am arguing for intellectual honesty.

Then why do you keep bringing it up?

Popper never claimed that, in fact he went out of his way to say that Plato on a personal level probably meant well.

Good intentions hardly absolve responsibility. As Popper attributes the rise of "totalitarian" regimes to "totalitarian" ideas- as opposed to any concrete social forces, because wouldn't that be silly?- and traces those ideas through Marx and Hegel to Aristotle and thence Plato, it's hard to see how he concluded otherwise than by saying that the Holocaust was in a certain but none the less real sense Plato's fault. Which is. on the face of it, pretty mental.

 

[luiz]

Then why do you keep bringing it up?

Again, my point is that Hegel was a fraud who:
-Made stuff up from thin air;
-Hid the aburdity and childish ignorance of his actual content behind a thick wall of verbiage;
-Did not discuss hypothesis, but rather plainly declared how the world is.

That makes him intellectually dishonest, and a pseudo-philosopher.

Good intentions hardly absolve responsibility. As Popper attributes the rise of "totalitarian" regimes to "totalitarian" ideas- as opposed to any concrete social forces, because wouldn't that be silly?- and traces those ideas through Marx and Hegel to Aristotle and thence Plato, it's hard to see how he concluded otherwise than by saying that the Holocaust was in a certain but none the less real sense Plato's fault. Which is. on the face of it, pretty mental.

Hum, he rather analyses the rise of totalitarian ideas who originated far before any totalitarian regime. He never claimed any of those ideas were directly responsible for anything, but rather just constitute a large body anti-humanitarian theories.

I don't see how you infer from that that he blamed the Holocaust on Plato.

I've read "Open Society and Its Enemies" as well as "The Poverty of Historicism", and I can say your interpretation is not really authorised by any passage in there.

Surely we can debate the evolution anti-humanitarian ideas without laying the blame of everything that anti-humanitarian regimes did on the thinkers who came up with them?

And as I said, Popper believed Plato was generally concerned with making people happy. It's just that he believed the best way to make people happy is to keep most of them in servitude. That makes him anti-humanitarian, but not to blame for the Holocaust (though we could indeed lay a small part of the blame on the largely Hegelian "racial philosophers" who abounded in late 19th and early 20th Century Germany).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Hegel didn't understand math at all.

Well that should be a mark in his favor in your book, given your opposition to idealist concepts.

You actually don't have to read Russel to know he was neither.

So you're going to go ahead and stake your credibility that there are no fallacies, idiocies, misrepresentations, or things that are just made up in Russel's "History of Western Philosophy?"

As I said, even people who spoke Hegel's dialect couldn't understand him. So it's not a language barrier, it's a façade of obfuscation and verbiage.

Irrelevant. Being understood is the sum total of good philosophers. So for example, if Schoppenhauer was any good as a philosopher, I wouldn't need a translator to decipher him.

He understood Hegel's motives, not his incromprehensible gibberish.

A, so now Schoppenhauer is a genius because of his a priori soul gazing. You'd think Hegel's biographers, or maybe his wife, or his close friends would be the ones who understood him best.

You definetly need to try to to understand them.

No, it's much easier to label them gibberish.

I don't doubt Schopenhauer lost years of his life trying to decipher that huge load of garbage that Fichte, Hegel and co. produced.

So Schopenhauer is, by his own definition, a mental deficient by this point. I think that can her

How is a dwarf planet not a planet in the sense that Hegel meant?

Because the followers of Bode claimed there has to be a full, complete planet located exactly equidistant between Mars and Jupiter. For there not to be one would represent cosmological chaos. In other words, exactly the thing you are accusing Hegel of.

Hegel merely demonstrated that Bode's law represented nothing unique, and that a mathematically orderly pattern could be established without such a planet between Mars and Jupiter, and therefor Bode's insistence that the existence of god necessitated a planet between Mars and Jupiter was not only in contradiction of empirical evidence, but was mathematically unsound.

He got his math all wrong, as in the quotes I provided where he pretty much rapes physics and maths and logic.

I'm asking for the math in this case in particular. Can you prove that Bode's Law is the only possible numerological sequence for the first seven planets?

Because that is what you are saying if you say Hegel's math was wrong: That in order for there to be mathematical order to the Solar System, there MUST be a full fledged planet between Mars and Jupiter. Do you disagree with this statement?


It actually takes a lot of effort to decipher what he's saying, and then we find out it's all garbage.

I am not versed on Chesterton, and I don't see what he has to do with anything. Does the existence of another charlatain absolves all charlatains?

"I am not familiar with philosophy, but if it's inconvenient to me, it must be lies."

I notice you didn't address his definition of sound, BTW. Do you agree with it?

I'll be honest, I didn't understand it. I never denied Hegel is incredibly difficult to read, and a really bad writer. And honestly, I'm not all that interested in Hegel's philosophy of science anyway.

Ha. Good one.

There was hardly anything original in Hegel (of what can be understood anyway). The only accurate description of his "Philosophy of Nature" is fraud.

This is a falsifiable statement. Since you're the expert on Hegel, where did he crib his understanding of freedom from?
If it was not original, as you claim, surely you can point to me who he stole it from. Surely you can actually address his political thought, rather then scavenging about his putterings with Astronomy, occasionally misrepresenting this because it's not problematic enough, and then labeling his entire thought useless.

As Popper attributes the rise of "totalitarian" regimes to "totalitarian" ideas- as opposed to any concrete social forces, because wouldn't that be silly?

I suppose that's better then Russel, who claims Plato was exactly the same as a Nazi.

 

[Traitorfish]

Again, my point is that Hegel was a fraud who:
-Made stuff up from thin air;
-Hid the aburdity and childish ignorance of his actual content behind a thick wall of verbiage;
-Did not discuss hypothesis, but rather plainly declared how the world is.

That makes him intellectually dishonest, and a pseudo-philosopher.

Well, again, the first one is just rationalism, even if you choose to describe it in dismissive terms. You may not like it, but dismissing simply because you don't like it isn't particularly valid. The rest may be fair enough, I can't say- as I said, I know very little about Hegel- but that's really the only aspect that permeates Hegel's thought, and you haven't really made any argument against it other than "it doesn't satisfy my assumptions".

Hum, he rather analyses the rise of totalitarian ideas who originated far before any totalitarian regime. He never claimed any of those ideas were directly responsible for anything, but rather just constitute a large body anti-humanitarian theories.

I don't see how you infer from that that he blamed the Holocaust on Plato.

I've read "Open Society and Its Enemies" as well as "The Poverty of Historicism", and I can say your interpretation is not really authorised by any passage in there.

Hm, now, about which philosopher have I head that accusation before?

(Anyhoo,)

Surely we can debate the evolution anti-humanitarian ideas without laying the blame of everything that anti-humanitarian regimes did on the thinkers who came up with them?

And as I said, Popper believed Plato was generally concerned with making people happy. It's just that he believed the best way to make people happy is to keep most of them in servitude. That makes him anti-humanitarian, but not to blame for the Holocaust (though we could indeed lay a small part of the blame on the largely Hegelian "racial philosophers" who abounded in late 19th and early 20th Century Germany).

I agree that it's an extremely tenuous connection, but that's because I think it's nonsense. Popper evidently thinks that the connection is not only substantial, but of great contemporary concern- neither of the texts you mention were written as academic musing, but as engaged political texts, even polemics, so it's hard for him to turn around say "yes, but not really". If "totalitarian" ideas do produce "totalitarian" regimes (a strange position for an anti-idealist to take, but whatever), then intellectual responsibility clearly lies at least in some measure with the instigator of those ideas, however distantly, and however unintentionally.

edit: Here's a thought- Russell, who Luiz has referenced approvingly, was a Hegelian for a spell during his student years. So does that mean that Russell was insane, that he was temporarily insane but recovered, or that he was never a Hegelian at all, and just thought that he was?

 

[ParkCungHee]

edit: Here's a thought- Russell, who Luiz has referenced approvingly, was a Hegelian for a spell during his student years. So does that mean that Russell was insane, that he was temporarily insane but recovered, or that he was never a Hegelian at all, and just thought that he was?

And furthermore, did he suffer brain damage from it, as Schopenhauer claimed?
It would certainly explain a lot of his History of Western Philosophy.

 

[luiz]

Well that should be a mark in his favor in your book, given your opposition to idealist concepts.

You'd think the best known of idealists would be good at maths, but evidently this was not the case with Hegel, as per his "brilliant" deduction on eliptical orbits.

So you're going to go ahead and stake your credibility that there are no fallacies, idiocies, misrepresentations, or things that are just made up in Russel's "History of Western Philosophy?"

Never read the whole book, merely some essays, so can't comment. I do know that it was written in great haste, probably to make money, and it has been criticized by some historians because of alleged inacuracies. Never heard anyone claim there is made up crap in there like there is in Hegel's work, though.

What I will state is that the works I've read by Russell (such as a good part of the Principia Mathematica) and severall essays were of the utmost intellectual honesty and scientific rigidity - which doesn't mean he was right about everything (as I said to Traitorfish, nobody is right about everything and true pursuers of the truth - unlike Hegel - don't claim to have come up with a theory of everything).

I will also state that Russell's work is viewed as sound tremendously influential by not only modern philosophers but also mathematicians, linguists and even software designers. Hegel is dismissed by natural scientists, Russell isn't.

Irrelevant. Being understood is the sum total of good philosophers. So for example, if Schoppenhauer was any good as a philosopher, I wouldn't need a translator to decipher him.

Being understandable is a requirement for all good philosophers, yes. The language in which they write is irrelevant.

Hegel isn't understandable. Many philosophers wrote in languages I can't speak and yet they're understandable because their clear writing makes for good and accurate translations.

A, so now Schoppenhauer is a genius because of his a priori soul gazing. You'd think Hegel's biographers, or maybe his wife, or his close friends would be the ones who understood him best.

What's a priori about Schopenhauer's extensive attempts to understand those quacks?

No, it's much easier to label them gibberish.

It's easy enough to read stuff like his definition of sound before labeling it gibberish!
After that you're good on dismissing the rest of his crap.

So Schopenhauer is, by his own definition, a mental deficient by this point. I think that can her

He probably wouldn't deny having his intellect impaired by attempting to decipher Fichte, Hegel and co. He certainly believed a whole generation of German philosophers were impaired by that;

Because the followers of Bode claimed there has to be a full, complete planet located exactly equidistant between Mars and Jupiter. For there not to be one would represent cosmological chaos. In other words, exactly the thing you are accusing Hegel of.

Hegel merely demonstrated that Bode's law represented nothing unique, and that a mathematically orderly pattern could be established without such a planet between Mars and Jupiter, and therefor Bode's insistence that the existence of god necessitated a planet between Mars and Jupiter was not only in contradiction of empirical evidence, but was mathematically unsound.

Again, Hegel did nothing of the sort. He attempted to prove by a priori philosophical methods how there could not be a planet between Mars and Jupiter (a planet in the broad sense, there was no official definition of a planet before the 20th Century -and Ceres was considered a planet on Hegel's time!). In fact, Hegel's followers were embarassed by his "demonstration" of lack of planet between Jupiter and Mars

I'm asking for the math in this case in particular. Can you prove that Bode's Law is the only possible numerological sequence for the first seven planets?

Because that is what you are saying if you say Hegel's math was wrong: That in order for there to be mathematical order to the Solar System, there MUST be a full fledged planet between Mars and Jupiter. Do you disagree with this statement?

Eh?
I'm not defending Bode's Law, which is merely an object of chance. It's not a law in any scientifically acceptable way.

My point was rather that Hegel attempted to prove philosophically that there could be no "eighth" planet between Mars and Jupiter, which is complete BS.

"I am not familiar with philosophy, but if it's inconvenient to me, it must be lies."

I have posted quite a few examples of lies (in the sense of made-up nonsense) in Hegel's works, haven't I?

I'll be honest, I didn't understand it. I never denied Hegel is incredibly difficult to read, and a really bad writer. And honestly, I'm not all that interested in Hegel's philosophy of science anyway.

You didn't understand because it is not meant to be understood!
It's the writing of a charlatain who has no idea what he is writing about! Ask any scientist, ask any philosopher to decipher that passage - it's impossible! That is the definition of gibberish!

And I'll paraphrase Dawkins (who wrote this about Foucault): if Hegel plainly makes up stuff and is completely wrong on the fields I know about, why should I trust him on the fields I don't know about? How can a philosopher who writes that garbage about sound, or about magnetism, or about gravity, expect to retain even an inch of credibility?

This is a falsifiable statement.

I try to always keep them that way!

Since you're the expert on Hegel,

I am not. This is the story of my involvement with Hegel: I once picked up a Portuguese translation of his Phenomenology. I couldn't understand the vasy majority of it; and what I little I thought to understand seemed wrong. Well, I thought, it might simply be a case of a very very poor translation (some Portuguese translations are notoriously bad). So I started reading direct English translations of his works, particularly from the Philosophy of Nature and, there it was, more gibberish. It was quite some time until I met Hegel again, this time by reading Russell's essay on him, who pretty much destroyed Hegel's mathematical writings. Then I read a lot of Popper, and later some Ortega y Gasset, and now I feel quite comfortable in dismissing him.

where did he crib his understanding of freedom from?
If it was not original, as you claim, surely you can point to me who he stole it from. Surely you can actually address his political thought, rather then scavenging about his putterings with Astronomy, occasionally misrepresenting this because it's not problematic enough, and then labeling his entire thought useless.

"Stole" is a strong word.
But his historicism is essentially identical to Aristotle's; his notion of a historical flux towards the Idea was borrowed from Speusippus. His "Spirit of the Nation" has an uncanny dependence on Rousseau's "general will". His notion of "historical justice" comes from Heraclitus (see his justification of wars). In fact, the Heraclietan ideas of war of the opposites and their unity or identity are pretty much the main ideas behind Hegel's dialectics, no?

So the parts of Hegel's philosophy that are at least "honest" don't seem very original to me. Those which are more original start to dwell deep into dishonest territory;

You mentioned his understanding of freedom... lets analyse his "dialectical twist" on freedom.

In "Philosophy of Law", paragraph 270, Hegel writes: "the state has thought as its essential principle. Thus freedom of thought, and science, can originate only in the state; it was the Church that burnt Bruno and foreced Galileo to recant... Science, therefore, must seek protection from the state, since the aim of science is knowledge of objective truth. But such knowledge does, of course, not always conform with the standards of science, it may degenerate into mere opinion and for these opinions it may raise the same pretentious demand as the church - the demand to be free in its opinions and convictions".

So we start with what seems a defense of freedom of thought, and end up with a statement that there should be no freedom of opinions and convictions...

Next we read that "the state must protect objective truth" and, in case you're wondering who determined objective truth: "the state has, in general, ... to make up it own mind concerning what is to be considered objective truth."

Well, is it any surprise he was so popular with Frederick William III's regime??

I suppose that's better then Russel, who claims Plato was exactly the same as a Nazi.

I'd have not know the context to judge.
Is he referring to specific passage such as the Myth of the Earthborne, and linking it with Nazi concepts of Blood and Soil? Because Russell would hardly be the first philospher to make this link.

 

[luiz]

Well, again, the first one is just rationalism, even if you choose to describe it in dismissive terms. You may not like it, but dismissing simply because you don't like it isn't particularly valid. The rest may be fair enough, I can't say- as I said, I know very little about Hegel- but that's really the only aspect that permeates Hegel's thought, and you haven't really made any argument against it other than "it doesn't satisfy my assumptions".

Well can you agree there is honest rationalism and dishonet rationalism, and that Hegel's ventures on describing nature certainly fits the "dishonest" kind?

I don't see how one can use the "rationalist" label as a shield against making absurd and demonstrably wrong stuff up.

I agree that it's an extremely tenuous connection, but that's because I think it's nonsense. Popper evidently thinks that the connection is not only substantial, but of great contemporary concern- neither of the texts you mention were written as academic musing, but as engaged political texts, even polemics, so it's hard for him to turn around say "yes, but not really". If "totalitarian" ideas do produce "totalitarian" regimes (a strange position for an anti-idealist to take, but whatever), then intellectual responsibility clearly lies at least in some measure with the instigator of those ideas, however distantly, and however unintentionally.

But if you read those essays, you'll note Popper was keenly interested on the historical context in which the theories were written. He goes through great trouble to describe the social transformations going on in Plato's Greece, or how Hegel's writings on the state had an "odd" correspondece with what Frederick William III wanted to hear. He certainly didn't believe that totalitarian ideas are born outside of specific contexts and would result in totalitarian regimes also outside of specific concepts.

But it's a fact that totalitarian regimes were fueled by some ideas, and it is of great validity IMO to trace the history of those ideas.

 

[ParkCungHee]

What I will state is that the works I've read by Russell (such as a good part of the Principia Mathematica) and severall essays were of the utmost intellectual honesty and scientific rigidity

So you'll vouch for Russel's claims to be scientifically rigid?
Would you be willing to complete some tests on some falsifiable claims he makes?

Being understandable is a requirement for all good philosophers, yes. The language in which they write is irrelevant.

Of course it's relevant. If a philosopher writes in Chinese, neither of us can understand him any better.

Hegel isn't understandable. Many philosophers wrote in languages I can't speak and yet they're understandable because their clear writing makes for good and accurate translations.

So if they wrote in Pictish, it'd be bad philosophy then?

What's a priori about Schopenhauer's extensive attempts to understand those quacks?

He doesn't need to make an appeal to evidence, according to you, but by directly understanding the mind of Hegel. He understands the nature of Hegel's writing not by looking at it, but by intuiting the idea of Hegel.

It's easy enough to read stuff like his definition of sound before labeling it gibberish!
After that you're good on dismissing the rest of his crap.

So we're agreed. True intellectuals like us dismiss stuff without reading it.

He probably wouldn't deny having his intellect impaired by attempting to decipher Fichte, Hegel and co. He certainly believed a whole generation of German philosophers were impaired by that;

So what good is his claim that Hegel is unintelligible? I have a mental deficient in the next room, would you like his opinion on Schopenhauer or Russel, or Plato?

Again, Hegel did nothing of the sort. He attempted to prove by a priori philosophical methods how there could not be a planet between Mars and Jupiter (a planet in the broad sense, there was no official definition of a planet before the 20th Century -and Ceres was considered a planet on Hegel's time!). In fact, Hegel's followers were embarassed by his "demonstration" of lack of planet between Jupiter and Mars

If you're so confident that Hegel made such a claim, can you demonstrate or quote his argumentation for this position?

Eh?
I'm not defending Bode's Law, which is merely an object of chance. It's not a law in any scientifically acceptable way.

And do you take this to be proof that the universe is Mathematically unsound?

My point was rather that Hegel attempted to prove philosophically that there could be no "eighth" planet between Mars and Jupiter, which is complete BS.

Your lie is that Hegel attempted such a thing. You cannot demonstrate it.

I have posted quite a few examples of lies (in the sense of made-up nonsense) in Hegel's works, haven't I?

But you haven't of Chesterton. Of course, again, real intellectuals don't do reading.

And I'll paraphrase Dawkins (who wrote this about Foucault): if Hegel plainly makes up stuff and is completely wrong on the fields I know about, why should I trust him on the fields I don't know about? How can a philosopher who writes that garbage about sound, or about magnetism, or about gravity, expect to retain even an inch of credibility?

If Dawkins is plainly and completely wrong about Modern African Politics, how can I trust that he knows anything about science?

I am not. This is the story of my involvement with Hegel: I once picked up a Portuguese translation of his Phenomenology. I couldn't understand the vasy majority of it; and what I little I thought to understand seemed wrong. Well, I thought, it might simply be a case of a very very poor translation (some Portuguese translations are notoriously bad). So I started reading direct English translations of his works, particularly from the Philosophy of Nature and, there it was, more gibberish. It was quite some time until I met Hegel again, this time by reading Russell's essay on him, who pretty much destroyed Hegel's mathematical writings. Then I read a lot of Popper, and later some Ortega y Gasset, and now I feel quite comfortable in dismissing him.

No, no, this can't be. You know the ins and outs of Hegel. For god sakes, you understand his motivations, his very soul! After all, how else could you come to the conclusion that Schoppenhauer has such an intimate bond with him, if you don't share it.

So the parts of Hegel's philosophy that are at least "honest" don't seem very original to me. Those which are more original start to dwell deep into dishonest territory;

You mentioned his understanding of freedom... lets analyse his "dialectical twist" on freedom.

In "Philosophy of Law", paragraph 270, Hegel writes: "the state has thought as its essential principle. Thus freedom of thought, and science, can originate only in the state; it was the Church that burnt Bruno and foreced Galileo to recant... Science, therefore, must seek protection from the state, since the aim of science is knowledge of objective truth. But such knowledge does, of course, not always conform with the standards of science, it may degenerate into mere opinion and for these opinions it may raise the same pretentious demand as the church - the demand to be free in its opinions and convictions".

So we start with what seems a defense of freedom of thought, and end up with a statement that there should be no freedom of opinions and convictions...

Yes. I'm familiar with it, and that is a quite abbreviated (and simplistically interpreted) form.You have claimed his argument is unoriginal. I'm asking therefor, for you to uphold this claim by showing where Hegel took his notion of Freedom from?

I'd have not know the context to judge.

When has that ever been an issue for you?

In fact, just on the topic of Totalitarianism, Russel's work is filled with ridiculous errors.

Cromwell we are told had a "Totalitarian State." On the other hand "In totalitarian states, economic power has been absorbed by political power." Yeah, land settlement patterns in Ulster hold that claim about Cromwell real well.

Which again leads me to ask, as you did, if Russel is demonstratably wrong about Irish History (and Hunting, and Plato, and any number of other things) why should I accept any of his writings on Mathematics, or Logic, or Philosophy?

Because that's how this works, right?

 

[luiz]

So you'll vouch for Russel's claims to be scientifically rigid?
Would you be willing to complete some tests on some falsifiable claims he makes?

No, I can only vouch for what I read.

Look, it's simple. Everything I read by Russell, and everything I read on Russell, point to a very gifted, competent and thoroughly honest philosopher. He was not right on everything, he was subject to criticism on several grounds, but I never saw any charge of plain charlatanism directed against him as is directed against Hegel by some of the most prominent philosophers in history.

But if you can prove that Russell engaged in the same sort of dishonesty and fabrication as Hegel, I'll change my opinion on him. Show me a pice he wrote like the crap Hegel wrote on sound or gravity and I'll be the first one to denounce him as a fraud. It's as simple as that.

I am not a fanatic. I do not feel any obligation to defend anyone who can be demonstrated to be wrong, and I would not feel embarassed to change my opinion on someone if I learn something new. Your insistence on defending a charlatain who has been demonstrated to make up false theories from this air is puzzling to me.

Of course it's relevant. If a philosopher writes in Chinese, neither of us can understand him any better.


So if they wrote in Pictish, it'd be bad philosophy then?

If the Chinese or Pictish philosopher can be understood by the Chinese and Pictish speakers, respectively, then there's nothing wrong.

I have made it very clear that language has nothing to with it, it's about writing in a way that people who share your language can understand, as opposed to hiding your ignorance behind uncomprehensible verbiage.

He doesn't need to make an appeal to evidence, according to you, but by directly understanding the mind of Hegel. He understands the nature of Hegel's writing not by looking at it, but by intuiting the idea of Hegel.

So we're agreed. True intellectuals like us dismiss stuff without reading it.

So what good is his claim that Hegel is unintelligible? I have a mental deficient in the next room, would you like his opinion on Schopenhauer or Russel, or Plato?

Look, Schopenhauer spent a lot of time reading Hegel, and found no real substance. He then came up with that quip of Hegelianism "paralyzing all mental powers", and the fact you're so hung up on this quip seems to indicate he was right...

If you're so confident that Hegel made such a claim, can you demonstrate or quote his argumentation for this position?

Yes. But some background before, to further illustrate the absurdity of Hegel's position. His point when writing on astronomy was to argue for the superiority of "philosophical physics" over "mechanics and mathematics". In other words, he believed he could derive the law that rule the universe by philosophical method, which is patently absurd.

Now, about Hegel's proof. The final section of the paper in question was attempting to justify the large gap between Jupiter and Mars, so we can only conclude (though concluding anything is always complicated when reading Hegel) that he really wanted to show that there shouldn't be a planet there. Hegel did this by drawing a series of 7 numbers out of Plato's Timaeus, fiddling one of its members (Jupiter), taking each number to the 4/3 power, then fiddling another planet's number (Mercury) - which resulted in a very poor fit, even by the standards of the time, in fact considerably worse than Titus-Bode. Hegel's row of numbers did not leave room for any planet between Mars and Jupiter, and somewhy he thought this was some sort of proof against Bode's Law - it wasn't, it was just nonsense.

Now, as I said, Bode's "Law" is also unscientific, but was actually a better description of our planetary system than the one Hegel came up with.

Hegel's apologists defend him by saying that his conclusion was qualified on the hypothesis that Timaeus was correct - but if that's the case I wonder what sort of absurd logic he was employing if he thought he was making any point.

And do you take this to be proof that the universe is Mathematically unsound?

Eh, no? The universe is as it is, it can't be deduced by "philosophical method". We have had to adapt our theories many times to conform with reality.

Your lie is that Hegel attempted such a thing. You cannot demonstrate it.

Well that's an awful common "lie". I like how you claim I am making something up when that very something can be found thrown around by multiple sources.

But you haven't of Chesterton. Of course, again, real intellectuals don't do reading.

What has Chesterton to do with anything?

If he is a fraud as you say, does that make Hegel less of a fraud?

If Dawkins is plainly and completely wrong about Modern African Politics, how can I trust that he knows anything about science?

You can't prove that he is wrong on african politics, can you? Who says you're not the wrong one?

You can't compare someone holding a political opinion you disagree with with someone making stuff up about the nature of sound or gravity.

No, no, this can't be. You know the ins and outs of Hegel. For god sakes, you understand his motivations, his very soul! After all, how else could you come to the conclusion that Schoppenhauer has such an intimate bond with him, if you don't share it.

Eh, by reading Schopenhauer and reading what others have to say on Schopenhauer?

Yes. I'm familiar with it, and that is a quite abbreviated (and simplistically interpreted) form.You have claimed his argument is unoriginal. I'm asking therefor, for you to uphold this claim by showing where Hegel took his notion of Freedom from?

You tell me. I already told you where he got his historicism from, his "flux towards the idea" from, his dialectics from, his "spirit of the nation" from. As I said there was not that much original stuff, especially on the more "honest" part of his philosophy. I never said nothing was original.

Also, please share your non-simplistic interpretation of that pretty straight-forward quote.

When has that ever been an issue for you?

Always?
Unfortunately for Hegel, though, context doesn't save him from the accusation that he plainly made up laughable stuff.

In fact, just on the topic of Totalitarianism, Russel's work is filled with ridiculous errors.

Cromwell we are told had a "Totalitarian State." On the other hand "In totalitarian states, economic power has been absorbed by political power." Yeah, land settlement patterns in Ulster hold that claim about Cromwell real well.

Which again leads me to ask, as you did, if Russel is demonstratably wrong about Irish History (and Hunting, and Plato, and any number of other things) why should I accept any of his writings on Mathematics, or Logic, or Philosophy?

Because that's how this works, right?

If you can really demonstrate that he made ridiculous stuff up as I demonstrated that Hegel made ridiculous stuff up, then indeed you shouldn't take him seriously.

But so far you haven't.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Surely you're not saying that Bertrand Russell was either an idiot or a liar?

I'm assuming that the text you're referencing about Hegel is Russel's History of Western Philosophy. I read it a few years ago, and consulted our resident philosophers on the subject. Plotinus explained to me that Russel's book is basically a pseudo-serious philosophical survey, and that when given the choice between being factual and being snarky, Russel almost invariably chose to be snarky. I don't remember his bit on Hegel, to be honest, but if it was snarky about his difficulty in being understood, then it was probably also false.

However, let me remind everyone that this is a Communist Q&A thread. Interesting as this Hegel discussion is, it's not really the place for it. If you want to continue it, please ask a mod to split it from this main thread. I will be happy to join the new thread's discussion at that time.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Russel claims that hunting "does not require forward planning."

Really? Then homeboy never went after deer. It's all planning. Do your deer hunting right and you shouldn't spend an hour in the woods. But that's neither here nor there....

 

[ori]

Moderator Action: Hegel et al. discussion split to its own thread - not yet sure if the chamber is the place it belongs judging from the quality of some of the posts - so please improve on those (I am sure you all know which posts are meant).

 

[Global Skeptic]

A technical note about propositions of the form of X is Y. While it is true that IFF "the cat is black", then the cat is black, it appears that is not true for any usage of X is not Y. And as so totally irrelevant for this thread - "he is not thinking right" is not a statement of fact, because as empiricism goes there is no observable reference to be made for "not thinking right". Rather it appears to a fallacy of reification.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Moderator Action: Hegel et al. discussion split to its own thread - not yet sure if the chamber is the place it belongs judging from the quality of some of the posts - so please improve on those (I am sure you all know which posts are meant).

Honestly, you should just go ahead and lock the thread. This was never a serious discussion about Hegel's philosophy, but Luiz's usual complaints that the universe refuses to conform to what he wants it to be.

 

[Traitorfish]

Really? Then homeboy never went after deer. It's all planning. Do your deer hunting right and you shouldn't spend an hour in the woods. But that's neither here nor there....

Possibly it has something to do with the fact that Russell was from a social background in which "hunting" involved being lead around by a team of attendants who actually did know what they were doing.

 

[luiz]

I'm assuming that the text you're referencing about Hegel is Russel's History of Western Philosophy. I read it a few years ago, and consulted our resident philosophers on the subject. Plotinus explained to me that Russel's book is basically a pseudo-serious philosophical survey, and that when given the choice between being factual and being snarky, Russel almost invariably chose to be snarky. I don't remember his bit on Hegel, to be honest, but if it was snarky about his difficulty in being understood, then it was probably also false.

From my understanding of Russell's History of Western Philosophy (which I didn't read entirely, just some selected essays), critics contend that problems are mostly on Russell's historical narratives of the Middle Ages, and to a lesser degree Antiquity. His treatment of modern philosophers is supposed be pretty good, even if the book does indeed look like a polemic on more than one passage.

 

[Vertinari118]

Okay you have been misinformed or, rather, you have literally got it backwards. Russell is regarded as having ridden roughshod over a lot of modern (post-Descartes) philosophers, particularly Continental philosophers. He over-generalised, misrepresented, though not necessarily maliciously, and omitted too much for it to be regarded as an authoritative work on this period. This is why it is regarded as a good introduction for laymen and students but not regarded as a basis for a proper academic work or discussion. His work pre-Descartes is not perfect but generally regarded as being of a better general standard.

EDIT: On Hegel I will say that perhaps the mere fact he is the origin point of so much modern Continental philosophy based on both advancing and completely rejecting (and every position in between)vhim makes him important as a philosopher even if his actual philosophy is 'nonsense', though that is unlikely given the sheer amount of work about it. If it were so obviously nonsense, it would have been summarily dismissed at the time and would not have had and still have the enormous influence it does. Like Plato and Descartes and many other greats, his arguments may be wrong, they may even seem patently absurd after several centuries of further work, but what's interesting is why and how he is wrong as well as how his thought, erroneous or not, influenced others.