Jonathan Brooks8 said:Reading, listening, watching, absorbing a source... it's all just interpretation.
If we can actually grasp that, our level of tolerance naturally rises—because my interpretation doesn't necessarily have to be the absolute truth of the source. Ask Hegel, though I suspect we won't get much of an answer... since even he didn't have one.
Even Christianity is an interpretation. That’s why Christianity emphasizes love as the essential tool for "translation," and tolerance is really just another way of describing love.
It’s the same thing Wallace mentioned in that quote over in the Hegel thread—it's not about blindly accepting everyone and everything, but more about the fact that if we view someone else as our enemy, we aren't actually free because we're letting that negation define us. In the real world, nobody is just a pure mouthpiece for hate and slavery and nothing else; half the time, behind those kinds of nasty statements, there isn't even some grand, evil scheme—it's usually just plain old stupidity.
Gerald Jackson48 said:I read somewhere that before 1796, he was totally hyped about the ideals of the French Revolution. But later on, he got disillusioned and pivoted toward reactionary state absolutism. For instance, when Napoleon marched into Jena, he wrote this about him:
"I saw the Emperor—this world soul; it truly is a magnificent feeling to witness such a person who, concentrated right here in one spot while sitting on his horse, spreads himself across the globe and dominates it."
gentlerider7 As steelridge58 puts it: If my memory serves me right, Hegel actually viewed the Prussian monarchy as the true pinnacle of progress regarding the consciousness of freedom, rather than the radicalism of revolutionary France. He wasn't some anti-revolutionary hack, either; he actually supported the core ideas behind the revolution, he just couldn't stomach the sheer terror that followed.
Honestly, I think you’re overestimating me here—I’m definitely not better than Deleuze.
Hegel didn't actually know what he was doing. If you want to make sense of him, you have to interpret him, and I’ve got a bit of a metaphorical formula for you. You know that term Deleuze uses when talking about how to read a philosopher—anal interpretation? Basically, you’re just screwing them. Deleuze claims that, unlike other readers, he performs an anal penetration of the philosopher because it leads to a kind of sinless conception. It's how you birth a monster. Well, I’m attempting the one thing Deleuze overlooked: I’m trying to screw Hegel with Lacan to produce a monstrous version of Hegel. To me, that's exactly where that radical dimension of subjectivity lies—the part I think Heidegger completely missed.
Žižek (From: Joseph Carew: Ontological Catastrophe: Žižek and the Paradoxical Metaphysics of German Idealism. Copyright held by the author, Ann Arbor, 2014.)
Please. At least I’m out here dropping actual direct quotes or facts that are legit. You can try to spin them however you want—you know, the whole "Oh, Hegel didn't mean that" or "He actually said this instead of that" routine—but the stuff is right there on the page; nobody just made it up out of thin air, you know?
As for Wallace, look, I'm not usually the type to hide behind an authority figure just to win a point, but the guy is a literal philosophy professor who wrote two books on Hegel, so it's a pretty safe bet he actually knows his stuff (and honestly, I'd go a step further and assume he knows way more than anyone else in this thread).
Whenever you run into mentions of "the Absolute" in texts like this, you don't strictly *have* to link it to God, but honestly, why wouldn't you? It’s totally doable. Now, I'm not saying there's some direct mathematical equation where Absolute = God, but let's be real—there's definitely a connection there. Bob did a much better job of breaking down what someone might mean by "Hegel under God," though he wasn't the only one trying, and look, that doesn't mean his take is perfect or without its own messy issues.
Amanda Jackson5 said:You can split the whole thing into what people call metaphysical versus non-metaphysical interpretations, but honestly, the mere fact that you can even draw that line shows just how much Hegel towers over the debate; he’s operating on a level of universality that makes those distinctions feel pretty small by comparison.
It’s always a bit surreal when you run into a conservative who claims that spiritual growth is basically just an ongoing journey toward a deeper awareness of freedom, especially when they insist on celebrating the anniversary of the French Revolution every single year. It’s such a strange contradiction to witness.
If I’m remembering correctly, he also thought the Prussian monarchy was the absolute peak of that whole "freedom consciousness" thing instead of Jacobin France—and look, Hegel actually backed the revolutionary spirit, he just couldn't stomach the terror part.
James Lee77 said:Nah. I’m just saying Hegel definitely knew about the fate of Aristotle from Stagira, whose unpublished lectures basically turned into one of the absolute pillars of philosophy—you know, metaphysics. So, I guess it’s pretty likely he wouldn't be surprised if his own lecture notes—covering everything from his philosophy of religion to his aesthetics, history, and the Encyclopedia—were seen as a core part of his whole philosophical project. Honestly, that’s pretty much how everyone else views Hegel, except maybe you.
Besides, I haven't seen anyone else out there talking about this supposed split between a "real" Hegel and a "fake" one. Most people pretty much agree that when it came down to it, Hegel was a conservative through and through in his personal worldview.
Sandra Murphy33 said:Everything said there is true, but I don't see the issue lying with the "unpleasant" speaker. Instead, the problem seems to be with an overly sensitive listener, 🤷 who identifies far too closely with "their own opinion." Or perhaps they simply lack the capacity to respond just as "unpleasantly"—meaning assertively and with confidence. So, they retreat in a fit of self-pity. And then we're left forced to deal with their ego instead of the actual subject at hand.
You’re just seeing what you want to see because you guys are completely biased.
Gerald Jackson48 said:Don't sweat it too much. The left wing of Hegelianism has its own way of looking at Hegel and God, while the right wing has theirs. They rarely see eye to eye. You've just got your own take based on what you read, and that's perfectly fine.
After Hegel passed away, the focus shifted from political philosophy to intense debates over the philosophy of religion. People were arguing about theistic ideas regarding God, personal immortality, and Christ's divinity, which basically split the school into left and right wings. His direct students, known as the Old Hegelians, wanted to bridge philosophically grounded theology with orthodox religious doctrine. On the other side, you had the younger generation of philosophers who didn't follow Hegel's lead, called the Young Hegelians. d. F. Strauss and B. Bauer pushed a pantheistic view of God, while L. Feuerbach took an atheist turn and developed a critique of religion based on anthropology. These "left" and "right" labels really stem from the political and social stances held back in the 1840s.
You really shouldn't give any weight to those overly biased or totally arbitrary comments floating around out there. Seriously, why bother? Anyway, I actually posted a lecture regarding this whole topic of Hegel and God over here:
Terry Martinez10 said:The core question here is: What actually constitutes truth? It’s one of those philosophical rabbit holes that looks different depending on which angle you take, isn't it? Personally, I find a certain quiet pleasure in digging through various essays and interpretations, just wandering through all the possible answers people have tried to construct over the centuries. That seems to be the aim here too—to pin down what truth really is—so I’m a bit puzzled by this sudden religious fixation that has emerged in the comments, especially since it wasn't even on my mind when I first posted.
You guys already mentioned that truth is about the whole picture, but we really need to go deeper than just "knowing" stuff, right? Truth isn't just some intellectual data point; it’s about how you actually live or exist in the world. It’s more like having this profound realization of the whole, lived reality. A totality that you've actually experienced.
Terry Martinez10 said:Think about it: the Platonic Socrates was firmly convinced that things are good or beautiful only by virtue of being good or beautiful. Hegel leans heavily on this doctrine of "participation"—that idea of *methexis*—when he argues that anything constituting truth is only true through the lens of Truth itself; thus, God, acting as the sole source of absolute Truth, becomes the ultimate, final reality behind all things.
I feel like Hegel laid out his whole deal regarding religion and God pretty clearly enough right here;
"The starting point of religion—or rather, its actual core—is the concept of religion itself, the idea that God is the absolute truth, the truth behind all things, which makes religion the only source of absolutely true knowledge...
The Church has always been consistent and just in refusing to let reason stand in opposition to faith, or worse, to let faith be forced under the thumb of reason. Look, the human spirit isn't some fractured thing where you can just host two contradictory elements at once. If there's a massive rift between what we see intellectually and what we believe religiously, and if our knowledge can't bridge that gap, we don't get harmony—we get despair. And really, isn't despair just a one-sided attempt at reconciliation? It's when you just toss one side away and cling desperately to the other, but how is anyone supposed to find any real peace doing it that way?
One way out is for a divided spirit to just ditch intellectual demands entirely and try to crawl back to a simple, unthinking religious feeling. But let's be real, the mind can only achieve that by basically bullying itself, because you can't just force a conscious mind to ignore what it knows; a healthy mind won't allow it. So, that religious feeling just turns into a hollow kind of hypocrisy, leaving a lingering sense of dissatisfaction underneath. The other option is just falling into this total indifference toward religion—either ignoring it completely or just attacking it blindly. That’s the path taken by shallow minds, anyway.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
So, I was digging through some old book the other day and stumbled upon this wild theory—I’m gonna try to recount it from memory here, so bear with me—that basically claims the whole trajectory of Western philosophy, from Aristotle all the way through the Scholastics straight into the modern era, isn't actually about what we think it is. See, the argument goes that the real common thread connecting all these eras isn't that classic Greek pursuit of "loving wisdom," but rather this obsessive, relentless hunger for categorization. It suggests that Western philosophy isn't actually a quest for truth, but just a massive, ongoing project to put everything into neat little boxes. And honestly? It kind of explains why there’s such a deep-seated hostility toward anything even remotely mystical or spiritual; a Western philosopher looks at a profound, transcendent experience and just freezes up because they can't find a damn category to file it under.
Look, ritual cannibalism isn't actually about being hungry, okay? It’s not like they’re just looking for a snack. For example, if you eat a fallen enemy, it's all about absorbing their strength and taking over their power.
Man, looking back at some of the heavy hitters that actually stuck with me, I gotta say:
1. Spec Ops: The Line (talk about a total gut punch to those mindless shooter tropes) 2. The Civilization series 3. Syberia 4. 3. Syber 4. Knights of the Old Republic one and two 5. Deus Ex 6. Morrowind 7. Far Cry 2 8. World of Warcraft 9. Fallout: New Vegas
"Value" isn't some dusty, passive concept just sitting there waiting for you to crack open a textbook, absorb it, and call it a day; it actually takes some damn work. I mean, if someone doesn't get the basics of philosophy, how are they ever supposed to wrap their head around what Hegel is getting at, let alone see where the actual value lies? It’s not just handed to you on a silver platter. On the flip side, you could take some totally random, tacky piece of junk—like a cheap plastic garden gnome sitting in some suburban backyard—and a kid might find a way to turn it into something awesome during playtime, giving it a sense of value it never had on its own. And so on, and so on...
Look, games actually have some real worth if you use them in moderation and they actually spark your imagination, though I’ve gotta say, I don’t see eye to eye with the crowd on this one—most people, whether they're hanging out here or just walking down the street in Chicago, seem to think that a product, a piece of art, or even a story only works in one direction, like the person is just some passive sponge soaking up whatever value is being pushed at them. But honestly? It’s a two-way street, isn't it? Even something totally mundane and boring that most folks would walk right past, like a random pebble sitting on a sidewalk in New York, can trigger a massive realization or some deep thought for the right person.
Sandra Murphy33 said:By that logic, you can't claim it on an individual level, either. That’s precisely where we run into trouble.
Sure, people find ways to cope—the methods of self-deception are virtually endless—but ultimately, our actions are what define our freedom, or lack thereof. It's a principle held true by both Quincy and the Holy Bible Amen.
But honestly, that's the *only* level where it's possible, because only the individual actually goes through that awakening or transcendence, and without that, you don't have freedom or a community to speak of. And why do we even need transcendence? Well, from what I can see, it's because you can't just find meaning in history or in society—unless, of course, someone could somehow prove that some future utopia is going to make up for all the absolute horrors of history.
Sandra Murphy33 said:"Spiritual liberation" isn't a destination; it's a continuous process. It's never truly finished, at least not as long as we're living here on Earth as flesh-and-blood humans—essentially, spirit trapped in a body.
It feels somewhat fatalistic—perhaps even nihilistic—to suggest we shouldn't fight against our oppressors just because their replacement will inevitably become a new source of oppression.
In my view, this "liberation of the spirit" is the core driver behind all progress, and that liberation has to happen at the level of the community as much as it does individually. In fact, I'd argue the two are inseparable: individual "freedom of spirit" is only half-realized if your entire community remains spiritually shackled, just as collective "freedom" is hollow if the individuals making up that collective remain spiritually bound (or, if you prefer the term "narrow-minded," which is effectively the same thing in my book).
But how the hell are you supposed to have community-level liberation when the community itself is totally fractured—or better yet, when it doesn't even exist anymore?
Philosophy is basically just one long, slow slide into deconstruction if you look at how things have been heading lately. I mean, if you start tracing the whole messy lineage from Hegel and Marx - Nietzsche and Stirner, all the way through to those postmodernists like Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, it’s enough to make your head spin, right? It honestly feels like if we ever want to find any sort of "pure" philosophy again, we’ll have to stop chasing our tails and just go straight back to the roots—back to the Pre-Socratics.
Anyone who’s actually slogged through the philosophy of history knows that Hegel didn't exactly throw roses at India or its culture at first glance, right? But then you look at the authors behind the book "Hegelian India," and get this—he still dropped about 80,000 words on India, which is a hell of a lot for a place he kept calling dreamy, absurd, and just plain nonsensical. The two guys who wrote that book are Indian, and according to them, India was basically Hegel's greatest headache because he couldn't stop seeing his own reflections staring back at him from Indian thought.
"Even Hegel himself points out how much Indian philosophy mirrors his own stuff, like that whole concept of the absolute (brahman). Still, he made sure to draw a line in the sand regarding two main differences between his ideas and theirs: first, there was his obsession with freedom, which is how he distanced himself from the caste system in Indian society while simultaneously trying to find traces or echoes of that same system woven through the entire fabric of Indian history, politics, art, religion, and philosophy. Second, he insisted on the necessity of dialectical, progressive development, which was his way of pushing back against what he saw as the supposed stagnation and lifelessness of Indian philosophy... But did Hegel ever truly manage to shake off this intellectual twin that keeps haunting his work?"