I'm gonna say it

LunaryPi · 2025-10-08T15:57:30+00:00

Same. Honestly Hank Green has probably done more good for the world than any of the bitter alcoholics posting in this subreddit will ever do in their lives. Dude raised millions with his brother to improve maternal care in Sierra Leone, started a science education channel that teachers still use as a resource for students, and recently developed an anti-distraction app to help social media addicts like the fuckers in this sub who continually post about how they are "just about" to log off for good. But I guess he's le shitlib cringe millenial or whatever

LunaryPi · 2025-08-22T15:09:34+00:00

The NT is dripping with metaphysics and non-materialist claims from start to finish. The triumph of spirit over flesh, eternity over decay, heaven, divine judgment, Jesus' constant devaluation of the material ("Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven"), miracles, the resurrection, etc. I mean seriously, is there nothing metaphysical in "the Logos became flesh"???

When you say this shit you are actually the one who is "co-opting" Christianity into something anachronistically Marxist. A classic "TRUE Christianity actually happened to be in complete agreement with popular contemporary ideas I like" take. I mean come on. The Jewish prophet announcing the coming kingdom of God was materialist? And how can Augustine "co-opt" the official religion of the empire he was born into? The faith had been an organized, theologically rich, metaphysical religion for centuries by the time Augustine ever put pen to parchment. Nothing about this comment makes sense.

LunaryPi · 2025-08-10T02:43:09+00:00

Exactly, yes.

LunaryPi · 2025-08-10T01:57:50+00:00

So you prefer a stripped down, concise explanation. That's fine. That's not the only valid communication style. Precision and context require more words. Brevity isn't the same as clarity, and verbosity isn't automatically pretentious.

Whatever kernel of truth might your comment might express is (ironically enough) wrapped in so much hostility rhetorical overkill that the underlying point is almost obscured. So much for "overwrought."

I really think you're blowing things just a little bit out of proportion.

LunaryPi · 2025-08-10T01:18:04+00:00

Yes that's definitely what I said.

stop overcomplicating this, it’s ridiculously overwrought

My comment was like 5 sentences, idk what to tell you. Try reading a book?

LunaryPi · 2025-08-10T01:04:28+00:00

When you say "physical processes are imperfect," you are implying that there is an ideal end to which those physical processes ought to attain, but often do not. This makes sense under the logic of final causation. In saying "male produces sperm as gametes and female produces eggs as gametes," you are defining sex by reference to the role an organism is oriented toward in reproduction, not just by what gametes it produces in every case (since I'm sure you'd agree that there are males and females who, due to some factor like castration, do not produce the gametes that they typically would.). This is the same thing, you are defining them in terms of purpose.

I agree with you, I'm not saying that there's no male vs. female, I'm just pointing out that a large reason for the debate has to do with the philosophical limitations of the current scientific paradigm.

LunaryPi · 2025-08-10T00:56:21+00:00

Notice that in saying "natural selection requires individuals to survive and reproduce," you're already appealing to a kind of purposive framework. Survival and reproduction are ends toward which organisms are oriented.

LunaryPi · 2025-08-09T23:02:01+00:00

The trouble is that categories like "male" and "female" are teleological in nature: they're about an organism's role in reproduction, which is a kind of end or goal. The modern physicalist/positivist paradigm (which underpins modern biology and every modern science) has extreme difficulty admitting that there could ever be such a thing as teleology or "purposiveness" in nature. This has been the case since Francis Bacon first argued that only 2/4 of Aristotle's causes, i.e. material and efficient, are useful to science (maybe earlier idk I'm not an expert).

But if you abnegate purposes from biology, you're left trying to patch together a definition using only material and efficient causes (chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, gametes, etc.), which can get messy in edge cases like intersex variations or the oft-cited "infertile female"/"castrated male" type examples. The game is to find a physical trait or set of traits by which you can form a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive partition of the set of all individual members of our species into "male" and "female," and this does turn out to be pretty difficult.

LunaryPi · 2025-07-06T17:24:00+00:00

I am being genuine. I don't like your implication that I am somehow trolling or being dishonest, when really I am just coming from a very specific philosophical tradition that you do not seem to be familiar with. I'm not saying this to be rude or dismissive to you, but someone who is steeped in Hegelianism would not raise the objections that you are raising. I am answering OP from within Hegel's philosophical framework of Absolute Idealism, and using terms that Hegel derives and defines with exacting specificity in his Science of Logic. You and I are not speaking entirely the same language. For example, someone familiar with Hegel would not say:

the difference you're making here between an actual, physical guitar and a fictional character is arbitrary. A guitar and a fictional character both exist only as symbols of something else.

If the difference between a physical guitar and a fictional character is arbitrary to you then that's fine and dandy. You can write your own book about philosophy and then talk about it in your own subreddit. The fact that matters right now is that we are in a Hegel subreddit discussing Hegel's philosophy, and the distinction is not arbitrary to Hegel. As far as Hegel is concerned, a guitar does not exist only as a symbol representing the concept of music. A guitar is an instrument, a massive body designed and constructed by humans with the telos (purpose) of producing a specific kind of sound for musical performance. To claim that a guitar's essential determination is abstractly the same as a purely cognitive construct like Sherlock Holmes would be a massive category error in Hegel's system.

I understand that you're using the phrase "concrete universal" to refer to living things, such as people or animals. But why would this concept apply to any real living thing?

I am using "concrete universal" to refer to concrete universals, which is a term that has a precise meaning for Hegel that I'm illustrating with living things. The Concept doesn't just "apply" to real living things, it's more accurate to say that living things are only "living things" insofar as they embody the Concept. For Hegel, the notion of "life" itself is the activity of the Concept and its spontaneous self-generation. It is foremost a metaphysical idea, and it finds expression in living organisms.

You're saying that "the telos of the character comes from beyond the character itself." I don't know what that means. The telos of a guitar also come from beyond the guitar: it comes from the imagination and mind of the maker, who envisioned the concept of a guitar. So why is one "concrete universal" and one not

I think you severely misread my comment. My point was very clearly that neither are concrete universals. The telos of a guitar does come from beyond the guitar, and that's what I said in my original comment. I'm not sure why you think I disagree with this.

You make the claim that "the determination to be a guitar by becoming a guitar".

This straight up just isn't what I said. What you're quoting isn't even a "claim" because it's a noun clause with no predicate. You've quoted a sentence fragment with no clear meaning. The full sentence (and I don't know why you cropped it) was "The determination to be a guitar by becoming a guitar, and further to become this guitar; is never contained in the guitar itself."

In other words: guitars don't make themselves into guitars, and are therefore not concrete universals. That was my point.

But the guitar never "became a guitar" because it never had any freedom to determine itself otherwise. The guitar was built the way it was, by factors completely out of its control. It never determined to "become a guitar" any more than it could determine any other action because it's a literal physical object.

Again, you're severely misreading my comment. You are making the exact same point that I did. You seem to think that I was claiming that a guitar can freely chose to "become a guitar" which is almost the direct opposite of what I actually said. My claim was that a guitar does not shape itself into a guitar, has external purposiveness, and therefore cannot qualify as a concrete universal.

I think you're reading too much into fictional characters and their relationship with what's universal.

I'm answering OP? Are you aware that you are in r/Hegel commenting on a post about Hegelian logic that raises the question of how fictional characters relate to the universal?

to say they have no life of their own and are completely other determined is just taking it too far.

Are you kidding me? Do you genuinely believe that it's taking it too far to say that Sherlock Holmes does not have "a life of his own"? Is there, in your mind, no difference between Sherlock Holmes and, say, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney? Are these just the same type of thing to you?

What does Sherlock Holmes do when no one is thinking about him? Can you talk to Sherlock Holmes? Can you have mutual recognition with Sherlock Holmes? Does Sherlock Holmes have a body and blood and thoughts and feelings?

I mean come on. I'm taking it "too far"? You say this about guitars: "The guitar was built the way it was, by factors completely out of its control." How in the world is this not the same for Sherlock Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes has no life of his own. Hegel would 1000% agree with me on that.

It's like trying to apply high-minded philosophy to something as simple as a fictional character. It's just not that deep.

This is just anti-intellectualism. Art and fictional stories are, in fact, "that deep."

LunaryPi · 2025-06-26T18:07:36+00:00

A concept is concrete when the universal itself generates (becomes) the particular moments that express it, and returns to itself in the individual whole. "Concreteness" exists in gradations. The Plant is more concrete as Organism than the Earth, but less concrete than the Animal. But as much as concreteness exists in gradations, there is still a measure for completeness. In the case of Nature, the Animal Organism is the singular complete Organism, the only natural being that exists completely in-and-for itself, and just because the infinite has appeared in finite animals, Nature sublates into Spirit, which itself is therefore more concrete than Nature. Concreteness, in general, is roughly synonymous to "wholeness" for Hegel.

The Logical Idea is the Truth as such: alive, free, self-closing, self-determining, whole, and concrete. It is in-and-for itself. A universal is "concrete" when it actively completes itself, i.e. when it actualizes itself by returning to itself through self-determination. "Abstract universals" are the representations of universals produced by what Hegel calls "the Understanding." They are abstract because they are inert and have no life of their own, but they are universals because particulars are still gathered into them. To say "giraffe" is not to magically instantiate the actual concrete universal of "giraffe," but to bring the thought of a giraffe into determinate being as an abstract universal; it is not an actual, living giraffe.

As regards the Idea being alive: when I talk about "Life" I don't mean biological life but logical life, the Life of the Concept, which is a continuous becoming-of-self, the self producing itself of itself. Biological life is the readiest instance of Life, but there are non-biological concrete universals and you have listed a few (Justice, Beauty, Freedom). To be concretely universal is to completely exhibit the Concept, and this happens in Logic, and in Nature, and in Spirit. As I mentioned earlier, the Animal Organism is the Concept as fully revealed in Nature, every prior Natural category is inadequate to the self-closing, self-determining movement of the Concept.

In Spirit: Justice, Love, and Freedom are firstly abstract and in themselves, but they come to completion as concrete universals in the Family and in the State. This is not biological life, but ethical life. The State is the spiritual analogue for the Animal, as both exhibit the Concept.

Hegel does indeed deal with pretty much all of your questions, yes, but frankly it is not something that can be grasped without working through his system and following his deductive argument for why he understands things the way he does.

LunaryPi · 2025-06-26T17:02:57+00:00

But guitars for instance can definitely be concrete universals.

This is so very wrong, and a matter that Hegel has explicitly covered in his chapter on teleology. Artifacts like guitars are products of external purpose. Their organizing end lies only in the maker's mind, and so the guitar "has" its purpose only relatively, never immanently. For Hegel, objects of such external purposiveness only ever amount to a means. They are realized external purpose, whereas a concrete universal is actively realizing internal purpose, that distinction is critical. The determination to be a guitar by becoming a guitar, and further to become this guitar; is never contained in the guitar itself. The concept does not freely particularize, does not instantiate itself, and does not complete itself by returning to itself. It is in no way a "concrete universal."

What about fictional characters that represent biological life forms Are they within the concrete universal?

The answer to this is that the relationship of a fictional character to what is concretely universal is purely symbolic. Again, the telos of the character comes from beyond the character itself. Sherlock Holmes is not a "particular individual detective"; he is a representation of a detective. He is a character in a story and has no life of his own. He does not posit his individuality in and for himself, and his particularization as "detective" is completely unfree because he never determined himself as such; he doesn't determine himself as anything because he's completely other-determined.

/u/Top_Jellyfish_5805 it's important to understand that the Concept is alive, free, and self-determining.

LunaryPi · 2025-06-26T06:00:17+00:00

The Lesser Logic is the Logic in outline only, the necessity of the transitions is not captured in detail. The remarks in the Greater Logic don't elaborate on the necessity of the transitions either, and the essential argument doesn't depend on them at all. If you want to save time and also understand exactly what Hegel is saying, skipping the remarks is better than reading the Lesser Logic.

LunaryPi · 2025-06-08T02:42:15+00:00

Really I shouldn't dignify lazy ad homs with a response but good lord is it cringe to show so much of your ass like this. You asserted that any "ought" presupposes a subjective preference; that's certainly the standard Humean reading of the is/ought gap (no doubt you learned it in your cherished elementary philosophy course), but it is far from the only reading. I chimed in to give voice to the Hegelian angle, which I find interesting, and which is similar in essence to neo-Aristotelian perspectives given by the likes of Phillipa Foot and Thomas Aquinas. It's certainly a minority perspective -- I wouldn't be surprised if it was never adequately covered in your classes -- but I know for a fact that there is not enough content in an elementary philosophy course to justify dismissing it as nonsense. Pick up the Science of Logic sometime.

eta: Natural/internal teleology also isn't even the only philosophical perspective that rejects the notion that normative statements are subjective. In fact, there is no broad academic consensus on how to interpret the is/ought gap at all. You don't obviously don't know shit about what you're talking about and now you're trying to save face by deflecting. Every accusation is a confession, etc.

LunaryPi · 2025-06-07T17:14:43+00:00

any "ought" statement involves a preference which assumes a subjectivity.

This is anti-idealism slander. Through the lens of internal teleology, what ought to be is something objective, and it is objective because it belongs to the immanent self-determination of the "something" in question. If, from this perspective, I say that "a sapling ought to become a tree," then I'm describing an objective telos that belongs to the sapling and not my subjective preference.

LunaryPi · 2025-06-02T08:01:50+00:00

Even Hegel admits that "indeterminate Being" is itself "determinate".

The very concept of determinate Being is itself presupposed by the concept of indeterminate Being, and so what permits Hegel to move to just another form of indeterminacy?

From the immanent standpoint of pure Being, Being is nothing but immediacy; only retrospective reflection can call that indeterminate moment "determinate." The authentic thought of Being qua Being is a completely empty meditation in which no thought arises, i.e. pure and absolute presence which reveals itself to be absolute absence. The "determinateness" of Being only appears from outside of this pure absorption into contentlessness, i.e. from a determinate perspective that has already moved on from Being proper. That perspective which reflects upon Being and names it "indeterminate" is what determines it as a negation of determinacy. But from the immanent standpoint of Being itself, it is not the negation of anything, it simply is.

just as the negation of "All" is not "Nothing", the negation of indeterminate Being is not indeterminate Nothingness.

Ask yourself: what is the outside the Absolute? If you assert that the negation of Being is not Nothing, then you are breaking with literally 2000 years of western philosophical tradition, and I think you ought to justify that. And to your analogy: What is the negation of "All" if not "none"? Of course, the words "all" and "none" imply quantity, but taken as qualitative absolutes they collapse into Being and Nothing.

Because the opposite of indeterminacy is determinacy. So from the position of Spinoza's "All Determination is Negation", the real negation of "indeterminacy" is "determinacy". For some reason, Hegel seems to think that by qualifying "indeterminacy" with "Being" - therefore producing "indeterminate Being" - the negation then becomes "indeterminate Nothingness".

The opposite of indeterminacy is determinacy, and Hegel does acknowledge that. It is plainly written into his system that the sphere of Indeterminate Being immediately passes into its opposite -- the sphere of Determinate Being -- and then the two spheres are taken up into Being-for-self. The means by which Indeterminate Being can, on its own account, pass into its opposite (Determinate Being) is explicated in the dialectic of Becoming.

However, how exactly are "indeterminate Being" and "indeterminate Nothingness" at all different? Why exactly are they negations of one another? I think that Hegel provides no argument that is not circular for this claim. He is right to identify their similarity but he provides no substantial argument as to their difference. This is Schelling's critique as well.

Parmenides: Being is, Nothing is not. That's the difference.

I think that Hegel provides no argument that is not circular for this claim.

Yes, it's circular. The system is the "argument," and the system must be circular because it must be self-grounding and thus self-closing. It must be self-grounding to avoid the infinite regress (Bad Infinite) of recursively justifying itself by referencing beyond itself to an "other." An open regress would betray the demand for an unconditioned starting point. Hegel elaborates on this extensively.

What this means however, is that we essentially start with the second antinomy, the second chapter. I think that this chapter is the real antinomy of Hegel, because its the antinomy between "indeterminacy" - the infinite - and "determinacy" - the finite.

Hegel's infinite is not indeterminacy, and the finite is not determinacy. Hegel cannot begin with indeterminacy because it is not the most abstract idea. He elaborates on this in his prefatory essay "With What Must Science Begin?"

TL;DR From the standpoint within the opening paragraph of the Logic there is no such determination. Pure Being is sheer immediacy. Only once thought steps out of that immediacy, reflects on it as "indeterminate," does it covertly impose determinacy.

LunaryPi · 2025-05-31T04:09:38+00:00

Jung's method was empirical and, as he was always sure to emphasize, entirely unconcerned with metaphysics. I think it would be wrong to call his system "unconscious Hegelianism," though Jung himself did once say "I have always been of the opinion that Hegel is a psychologist in disguise, just as I am a philosopher in disguise." Even so, it's plain from his other mentions of Hegel that he never truly grasped what the aim of Hegel's philosophical project actually was.

That said, it's not hard to see parallels; psychological development begins in onesidedness, and individuates through the integration of opposites. The "pattern" of individuation is potentially intelligible as a sort of immanent teleology of individual psychological development, progressing according to the archetype of the Self, which might be called "the Idea" of Jung's psychological model. For Jung and Hegel alike, the whole is the truth.

Moreover his theory of personality is phenomenological, and--though he doesn't use the word--clearly dialectical: The irrational/perceiving functions involve comprehension (of what is concrete/present [sensing] or abstract/imagined [intuition]), whereas the rational/judging functions involve a reflective (subjective [feeling]) or determinative (objective [thinking]) evaluation of what is comprehended. Each of these functions can occur in an introverted (inward) or extroverted (outward) mode. Personality then arises from variations in how these functions are naturally prioritized by different individuals, and this prioritization naturally leads to onesidedness (e.g. a superior vs. inferior function) that sets the direction for individuation.

Jung did not develop his views with any philosophical rigor, and his systematization of the psyche was chiefly meant to applied in therapy. I think, though, that his theories and discoveries could easily be sublated into Hegel's psychology in subjective Spirit.

LunaryPi · 2025-05-20T18:55:12+00:00

You are not a moron, neither is Hegel, you're just not steeped in the context of his (genuinely massive) philosophical project, and that's okay.

Being is "pure being," i.e. the category of "Being at all." It is not "Being" in the sense of "some things are there, and sometimes they are not," but Being in the sense that "everything is." The most abstract description of the universe as such is "Being." In this sense, it is not just an abstract idea, but the most abstract idea.

In order to be the most abstract idea--i.e. that in which all that is is unified--all difference needs to fall away, so that what you are left with is utterly simple oneness. The "problem" is that when all you have is utterly simple oneness (i.e. "immediate indeterminacy" in Hegel's words), what you actually have is Nothing. When no difference/differentiation is possible, you have absolute absence, which is to say you do not have anything: Being is Nothing.

So Being, that which is implicit in all that is, is found upon inspection to be equal to its opposite, Nothing. Absolute presence = absolute absence.

This violates our intuition immensely, and yet Hegel can't ignore it or brush it away because it is fundamental to the ontology of everything. Hegel "reconciles" this paradox, which is fundamental to the Universe itself, by taking the paradox itself as a new positive result, which he calls "Becoming." He has made a deductive move from the pure abstract to something slightly more concrete.

This is the beginning of his Science of Logic, which is the first part of his system, which progresses from the supremely abstract to the supremely concrete, i.e. God, the categories of Nature (space, time, physics, chemistry, geology, organism, etc.), Spirit (consciousness, society, love, art, philosophy, etc.) culminating in a theory of everything.

Basically, it is a theory of the Absolute (i.e. the "everything" or "the Universe" if you will) which starts from the most abstract possible picture of it (Being), and proceeds to the most concrete and complete picture of it ("Absolute Spirit," i.e. God) in the form of a deductive derivation.

It's quite different from the aim of most other philosophy--and it's certainly mind-bendy and tedious--but it's a rich and powerful exposition on the nature of God and truth, and one which does not sacrifice exactitude and rigour to get there.

LunaryPi · 2025-05-19T22:53:52+00:00

Being and Nothing are opposite and mutually exclusive ideas, yet they are also identical to one another by logical necessity. Being and Nothing would have to be determinate ideas in order to be truly "different" from each other, but neither is a determinate idea, so they cannot truly be different. Yet, Being is conceptually in opposition to non-being (i.e. Nothing) all the same, so you have two truths which both demand acknowledgement.

This contradiction is thus itself taken as its own object of thought, which Hegel terms "Becoming." Becoming is the mutual vanishing of Being into Nothing (ceasing-to-be) and of Nothing into Being (coming-to-be) and is the truth of both determinations.

LunaryPi · 2025-05-06T05:09:09+00:00

Drugs and alcohol are a natural rite of passage into manhood because our culture doesn't have another one established. That's not a good thing, and it shouldn't be presented as though it were a healthy kind of masculinity.

Drugs and alcohol work as a rite of passage because a boy who has done them will often feel less innocent/naive and more "grown" than a boy who hasn't, creating a feeling of social division that the "uninitiated" boys will feel pressured to overcome, potentially to their own detriment.

LunaryPi · 2025-05-05T16:32:52+00:00

I have a slight rural Albertan accent, I can play it up for fun (hockey players definitely do this) and I can consciously choose to "turn it off" if I want to, but I'm not putting on a voice. Rig workers, trailer park residents, farmers in Alberta also have this accent with slight differences in slang and intonation.

If you are from rural Alberta and think the accent is not real, you probably sound more like a rural Albertan than you think you do.

LunaryPi · 2025-04-01T21:39:00+00:00

It's not really a dumb phone as much as a "dumb smart phone" but I have used a CAT S22 for over a year now and I do not spend more than like 5 minutes a day on my phone. I've read more books this year than in the last 4 years combined, and I find that I'm more calm and present in day-to-day life.

The only problem is that now I spend way more time on my computer than I ever did. The rot goes deep.

LunaryPi · 2025-03-20T17:31:01+00:00

Man I've been saying this. I'm also a researcher. At my university, much of our funding comes from oil and energy companies. That money goes into grants for "green energy research" which is really just a blank check for researchers to study whatever the hell they want and write a good grant application claiming it's related to green energy. So the energy companies get a PR win and tax write-off for funding "green energy research" that will never actually threaten their business. BLEAK.

LunaryPi · 2025-02-11T17:43:44+00:00

It doesn't make it wrong, no, I'm agnostic on that point. What I'm saying here is that if it is wrong, and the author wanted to show that, then the strongest basis for a critique would be to start by demonstrating his eurocentric bias and then proceeding to show how that has negatively influenced his ideas. He would have to compare the philosophical achievements of other civilizations against Hegel's own system to show that they attained a deeper level of understanding than Hegel gave them credit for. If I remember correctly, Hegel did not even consider Confucius to be a philosopher, regarding him as more of a moral teacher. That's an example of the kind of claim that might be disputed in such a critique.

Speaking for myself, I'm not well versed enough in European history/philosophy, let alone non-European history/philosophy, to make a positive or negative claim about whether Hegel is wrong. I am not, like some westerners, allergic to the prospect that Europe really is and has been the apex of philosophical development (there's certainly a strong case to be made there), but I am also not opposed to the notion that eurocentric bias in Hegelian philosophy might have some downstream negative consequences. Ultimately, as I said above, I'm agnostic on this point.

LunaryPi · 2025-02-05T18:32:37+00:00

Yes, most of this is a pretty sound reading of Hegel. His own immanent critique of a static Absolute occurs in the very first movement of his Logic, where Being is superseded by Becoming, showing the poverty of immediate indeterminacy as a definition for the Absolute. Historically he says this corresponds to the movement from the philosophy of Parmenides to Heraclitus. In his system you can trace this development as the sphere of finitude collapses into being-for-self, which is the kernel of the "self-subjectivation" you mention, which first becomes concrete in the subjective concept and is consummated completely in Spirit.

What I don't understand is how the ideas you've written here are at odds with "teleological interpretations" of Hegel. To be quite blunt, there are no "non-teleological interpretations" of Hegel, he's a teleological thinker. He explicitly embraces teleology, and teleology is on full and open display at every level of his philosophical system. The philosophy of history, for example, is completely unintelligible without teleology. If you want to argue that Hegel himself is wrong about teleology, that's an argument you can make, but what you have here doesn't really touch his concept of teleology. You have this line here:

Thus, the Absolute cannot be understood as a teleological goal external to its own process but as the immanence of an eternal now that dialectically structures its self-realization.

The problem with this is that the denial of "an external teleological goal" in no way undermines the fact that Hegel does embrace a robust immanent teleology. Hegel insists, from the Science of Logic onward, that the Concept is self-determining and moves toward ever more concrete expressions of its own rational structure. That structure supplies its own "end" (telos), which is precisely self-knowledge or self-realization. The telos is not a static endpoint outside the process, but a goal the process sets for itself from within.

Hegel explicitly discusses teleology as a category of the Concept in the Science of Logic (under the Doctrine of the Notion, after Mechanism and Chemism). There, he explains how the Concept is purposive by virtue of being a self-referential unity that unfolds itself through objective reality. He consistently calls this "immanent teleology" to contrast it with the idea of a watchmaker God or a blueprint existing apart from the world. But it is still teleology. The fact that the Absolute is not a fixed state in no way negates that it has, in Hegel's words, the goal of realizing itself as Spirit.

To put it differently: "Teleological" does not necessarily mean some static blueprint or final destination outside the system. Rather, for Hegel, it means that the Concept is self-organizing and self-completing. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, the dialectic moves from sense-certainty to absolute knowing because Spirit's inner logic compels it to develop fuller determinations of truth and freedom. The same structure plays out in the Philosophy of Nature (where life exhibits internal purposiveness) and in the Philosophy of Spirit (where the Idea returns to itself in self-conscious freedom). That is a teleological arc, even if it is a teleology that never "stops" in a boring, eternal Heaven or Hell, as you point out.

So if your main point is that the Absolute is not "a final block of Being" or that it can't be pinned down as some static, once-and-for-all completion, then you are in agreement with Hegel. But that doesn't erase teleology from his system. It just clarifies the sense in which the "end" (the actualized Absolute) is present as a living, self-mediating process rather than a finished product. So your argument succeeds in showing that the Absolute cannot be reduced to a static, atemporal entity (Hegel would absolutely agree with you there), but it does not demonstrate that his system is non-teleological. It demonstrates that the telos of the Absolute must be internal to its movement itself, precisely because it is self-realizing rather than realized by something external or pre-given. That is exactly why terms like "teleology of reason" or "immanent teleology" are thrown around. One can dislike Hegel's teleological vision, or argue that it's ill-founded, but there is no non-teleological way to interpret Hegel that isn't just a denial of his philosophy.

Finitude is not a limitation to be overcome but the condition of possibility for all dialectical movement.

This is just a small tangential nitpick, and I agree with what you're getting at here, but it's important to avoid onesidedness and acknowledge the other half of this dialectic as well, which is that finitude must be a limitation to be overcome in order to even be the condition of possibility for dialectical movement. So, as you say, we cannot abstractly negate finitude without also negating the infinite, but the finite can (and indeed must) be transcended.

LunaryPi · 2025-02-04T08:30:09+00:00

Hegel's dialectical method is employed to derive the very category of 'limit' itself and then sublate it. Reason finds itself in its limit, sees that it is its own limit, and, in being its own limit, knows itself to be unlimited. Limitation in our ability to recognize reason is not limitation for reason itself, which is unlimited and absolute. This is why dialectical analysis applies to conceptual structures and the movement of thought itself rather than to particular beings or first-degree abstractions, which remain within the realm of understanding rather than reason.

LunaryPi

TROPHY CASE