On Wednesday, November 24, 2004 at 8:14:52 AM UTC-8, Jeff Rubard wrote:
> ernobe wrote:
> > On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:02:38 +0000, Jeff Rubard wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Precisely because existence is defined as Species, it is a simple
> >>thought: *Nous*, simplicity, is substance. On account of its simplicity
> >>or self-identity it appears fixed and enduring. But this self-identity
> >>is no less negativity; therefore its fixed existence passes over into
> >>its dissolution. The determinateness seems at first to be due entirely
> >>to the fact that it is related to an other, and its movement seems
> >>imposed on it by an alien power; but having its otherness within itself,
> >>and being self-moving, is just what is involved in the *simplicity* of
> >>thinking itself; for this simple thinking is the self-moving and
> >>self-differentiating thought, it is its own inwardness, it is the pure
> >>Notion. Thus common understanding, too, is a becoming, and as this
> >>becoming, is *reasonableness*.
> >
> >
> > He implies here that the definition of existence as Species then becomes
> > its definition as Generality, on account of an "other". And since the
> > "other" is fully entitled to his existence as a Species of your same kind,
> > it is possible to conceive of a confrontation between common morality and
> > dialectical uncertainty. But nothing impedes the concession that
> > the determinateness of our relationship was due to the "other", and that
> > therefore he had realized his own inwardness without manifesting a
> > confrontation. In other words, our own determinateness is not due to any
> > previous confrontations, since there is determinateness in the very nature
> > of our physical existence. Even the notion of general determinate
> > physical existence is not necessary; the idea that notions can be shrouded
> > in a fog is nothing but this confusion of the levels of existence.
> >
> >
> Hegel's language can be tricky, and I am pretty sure that in this
> section he does not mean another person by "other". However, we have
> some of the same responsibilities to this general other as we would to
> another person: considering how the given quantity of commonsense
> reasoning manages to manifest some of the labor of the concept, the
> happenstances through which we reason to things as they are. (If Kant's
> principle of the transcendental unity of apperception could be rendered
> as "thoughts are thinkable", Hegel goes one further and declares that
> thinking is the thinking of thoughts; the subject-matter of a particular
> cognition, idealizations and all, is not beneath reason as regards its
> ability to dialectically right a one-sided conception.)
> --
> Jeff Rubard
> http://opensentence.tripod.com/
> Essays on theory, culture, and politics

2022 Updates: This is okay. (I wrote actual books under Hegel under a nom de plume, so it's not my "final word" on the topic.)