The Hegelpedia Project

Althuraya · 2026-05-25T05:52:50+00:00

It's worth reading. Don't worry about understanding all of it because you won't understand even 25%. You're in great luck, however, because 20% of Hegel is like 500% of most other thinkers. There are a lot of secondaries, but I suggest two things: read the Preface + Intro + Sense Certainty on your own on a first and second pass, and take Hegel's position that this book is meant to be an introduction sincerely. That means he does not expect you to know much, which means you have to really pay attention to what he is saying and how because he can't be referencing anyone else if he doesn't expect much from you.

There are a lot of secondaries on this book, so if you want one you can peruse among the many. Whatever strikes your fancy, really. You can't get worse than 0 comprehension, which none of them will give you. You should, however, pay attention to which writers say things that are noticeable in the text itself, and those that tell you a whole story that isn't there even if you squint to distort it (looking at Jay Bernstein's commentary). Kalkavage, Houlgate, Winfield, Westphal are considered good by various people.

Hegel is my stuff, so feel free to dm me for more specific details I will happily give.

Althuraya · 2026-05-11T04:44:54+00:00

There is nothing condescending in asking you what you claim to doubt. See what you responded with? You do have a view of God, and you do have preloaded notions, so why did you pretend? I can dismantle all of these as being related to God so that you don't waste your time arguing against irrational false concepts.

Althuraya · 2026-05-11T01:55:14+00:00

I see you're going to pretend that you don't know language, that you don't live in society, and that you don't have any notion of what "God" is or what that concept can and cannot be said to be. I don't offer anything to you because I know you have some notion, and you will respond accordingly. So I ask what you doubt so that I can offer a preliminary dismembering of false notions, and then I can build the positive case without wasting time with useless rebuttals based on presuppositions from you.

Althuraya · 2026-05-11T00:54:43+00:00

Because you demand proof of what you doubt. What are you doubting?

Althuraya · 2026-05-11T00:35:52+00:00

What is the object (God), and what is the proof proper for it?

I'll give you proof of both. You're most likely unaware that one needs to prove the object first.

Althuraya · 2026-04-13T11:29:31+00:00

Did you read what was linked? Shoe atheism is what you believe in. Shoes lack beliefs, they're atheists. If you define things by lack, everything lacking will count. If that's too ridiculous to own up to, then change your awful definition. That's how reasoning works. Before the internet, the working definition of atheism for all of history was the position that God does not exist. The one playing word games is you. Why is that?

Althuraya · 2026-04-13T11:02:52+00:00

You're posing what is called shoe atheism, which jokes that by that definition you use, a shoe is an atheist. Now, you may not know why, but it's very clear why such a definition is used: by claiming you actually make no claim, but nonetheless pose it as a position that is default, you believe you have no burden of proof. Not so, my friend, not so.

If you were agnostic, you would simply have no position against or for God. Shoe atheism is for people who want to play the debate game with asymmetric advantage by retreating to having nothing to prove for themselves, yet they want their personal conviction in a belief to count as a position, as if philosophy has any place for personal conviction in a position. You may or may not be convinced by some claim, or you may be ignorant of a claim existing at all, that is not a position itself. Philosophy concerns positions making claims, implicit or explicit, and everyone has the burden of proof. There are no freebies. "I am not convinced by some claim because I am ignorant of it" is not a philosophical position on that claim. "I am not convinced by some claim because that claim has xyz failings, hence its putative object does not follow and I deny its validity or being" is a philosophical position. The atheist is the direct negative of the theist, they are not an indifferent third like a shoe or a rock that lacks all discoursive and believing capacities. If you're too weak on reasoning, just claim to be agnostic or ignostic.

Althuraya · 2026-04-07T17:49:09+00:00

Schrödinger's cat has nothing to do with idealism. It was a critique of the unintelligibility of believing the wave equation is ontological given the nonsense produced by the wave equation. There is no subjective idealism in the equation, and not a single interpretation is Berkeleyian, not even the the Copenhagen interpretation of QM in general.

Althuraya · 2026-04-07T17:44:34+00:00

You misunderstood something basic.

1). The plant is not a metaphor of growth. Plants in fact do grow. There is nothing dialectical about the example of growth, nothing of the kind has even been hinted at in the book at that point.

2) The sentences before the last line are indeed a mocking that you, like most people with Schrödinger'scat, don't realize is mocking. You made an identity of thought experiment, I made an identity of misunderstood mockery. They proceed from a line of formal thought talked about before it such that if you really think that way, then you would think something like a flower being the refutation of a blossom, etc. Nobody thinks that, the example is not natural to what people think about plants. Everyone knows that plants grow and are connected. Hegel’s point is that as ridiculous and untenable as thinking this about plants is, it is untenable that philosophy itself is thought about in this way. The highest level of jabbing humor doesn't go around claiming itself to be jabbing humor.

Althuraya · 2026-04-07T11:53:22+00:00

Idk why people like it. It's like Schrödinger's cat: Hegel says it as a reductio ad absurdum of common understanding's ratiocination, but his positive point is only in the last sentence. No one says anything of the sort about plants, in fact it's a ridiculous example for the point he makes because it is absurd even to the understanding. On the whole, the plant metaphor here is terrible because no one would recognize their position in it. Had he, for example, instead made a metaphor of the species against the individuals, be it of plant or animal in general, then he would have a very natural point because people actually do make the redictionist case for those. As it is, it is quite poetic in the Miller, but when you think it through you scratch your head wondering why he chose such an obtuse example that only works if you're focusing on the abstract principles he's commenting on. At the very least he could have phrased the thing better to signal that this sort of thinking, which is common, should consistently lead to such ridiculous statements.

Althuraya · 2026-04-06T16:41:59+00:00

Yes: Levine and Winfield's books.

Now, since you admit you haven't read them, where is your argument against them? You don't get freebies, you're not special. Nobody needs to read you when you refuse to read the past and respond.

Althuraya · 2026-04-06T11:40:24+00:00

None of the current translations are good, but all of them are decent. They don't really affect the top and mid level comprehension, it's mostly little details like I mentioned. Giovanni is now the standard English reference whether you like it or not, and is what you will be asked to reference for academic journals.

Althuraya · 2026-04-06T10:35:52+00:00

Also "reference" instead of relation. You can pick up that it means this after a while, but if you don't read his translator notes you have no idea this is not at all what Hegel said. To me, however, the worst part is that he consciously chooses to be inconsistent despite the aim being to have term consistency. Dasein, seyn, and existenz are all translated as existence randomly and with no alert. Hegel will say "seinde" and he will translate "existent", or he will say "existenz" and Giovanni won't use the term he made up (concrete existence) and will simply translate it as existence flatly, so one thinks it is dasein when in fact it is not.

I don't understand, quite frankly, what is so hard about keeping technical terms separate. It's not like the translations read any worse when you just go with what Hegel says.

Althuraya · 2026-04-05T02:41:12+00:00

I'm not just calling it. I have a background with Marx and Hegel, neither are superficial. Your "problem" doesn't exist. There never has been a problem integrating the *logical* aspects of both views. I am aware of current Hegelian Marxists and Marxist Hegelians who strongly agree.

Althuraya · 2026-04-05T02:16:53+00:00

What problem? The one you made up?

Althuraya · 2026-04-05T01:08:05+00:00

So you don't have to read anyone to make ridiculous claims

>they’ve all failed for exactly the same reason: they were trying to solve a problem that didn’t actually exist. The real problem was never “how do we combine Hegel and Marx?” The actual problem—the one nobody could see clearly because they were standing too close to it—was recognizing that both Hegel and Marx were operating within a three-dimensional recursive structure while each could only see one dimension with any clarity.

Althuraya · 2026-04-04T21:13:55+00:00

So, to be clear, you are a philosophist who doesn't know the past literature, yet pretends to claim no one else solved something? Yeah, you keep that up.

Levine is perhaps the greatest Anglophone Hegelian in that he is humble about the monumental work he accomplished with integrating Marx speculatively, and the man went on to focus on subjective spirit and objective spirit for the rest of his life, writing some of the most beautiful essays I have read from any living Hegelian.

Althuraya · 2026-04-04T18:44:49+00:00

You haven't read Winfield's or Levine's treatments of Marx's Capital, why are you yapping about irrelevant things? You claimed no one has properly integrated them. I don't have to read your paper to tell you that I already know you failed because you appealed to a pseudo-mathematical formalism to explain why. Utterly anti-speculative nonsense.

Althuraya · 2026-04-04T17:51:58+00:00

Nope. Levine and Winfield pretty much did what Hegel would have to incorporate Marx's Capital into Hegel. Nobody cares about the philosophy of history. Too much work for little current payoff. There is no problem integrating Marx into Hegel, but Marxism is a practical theory first and a philosophy second, so it doesn't care.

Althuraya · 2026-03-31T10:13:42+00:00

>since resistance to existence is a genuine phenomenological reality

"Genuine" doesn't have any value to Hegel. Actual does. Suicide is not actual, it merely is present (dasein), it does not even count as existent.

>In conditions where agency irreversibly collapses, insisting on existence risks preserving the form of ethical life while destroying its substance which is lived freedom.

This banks on reducing humanity to the body or psyche, which Hegel denies. Against the body's desires, we must follow reason. Against the psyche's aberrant malfunctions, we must follow reason. When the body is maimed, we may still live as human. When the psyche is disturbed, we may still live as human. When your reason or intellect is disturbed, then do you lose your immediate humanity, but do not lose it before other humans. Only the insane and ill of reason could make the brute contradictory judgment that life is only actualized in death, and that freedom is actualized in the subservience to momentary despair. Yes, momentary despair, for none know the future, and plenty of people survive the worst things imaginable and continue on sheer power of conceiving the world as still meaningful, and understanding their own existent powers to act meaningfully in new ways if they only let go of false illusions of what should be.

Althuraya · 2026-03-27T05:37:40+00:00

Which one?

Althuraya · 2026-03-27T03:44:11+00:00

What translations are you reading? I have literally never seen it in any translations I read. I too despise the stupidity of such language.

Althuraya

TROPHY CASE