Saturday 27 November 2021

Bringing Hegel Back

This is a superb discussion of Hegel from the Acid Horizon comrades. Well worth a listen.

4 comments:

Blissex said...

I quite like this site and here is its collection of Hegel-based cartoons:

https://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/georg_wilhelm_friedrich_hegel

In particular:

https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/hegel2.png
https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/WeilConvincingArgument.png

Richard said...

Thank you Blissex. I smiled today.

Dialectician1 said...

I'm always happy to listen to anything about Hegel. I also enjoyed Blissex's cartoons. Under the historical and material conditions of capitalism, where the global ruling classes understand that rhetoric rather than coercion is more efficient to ensure compliance and continuous profit (ie. wage slavery works much better than slavery), it is important to understand the nature of rhetoric. However, unlike the poststructuralists, who think that: all there is, is rhetoric & story telling (Fish et al) those of a dialectical persuasion, seek to understand the historical conditions and the specificity of the social context. Whereas rhetoric is persuasion by any available means, dialectics is persuasion to the power of argument. But as Marx pointed out, seeing everything through the lens of capitalism (ideology) makes it difficult to see outside of it. We can only do this by identifying and understanding current contradictions together with past ruptures that brought about historical change: to comprehend the world in order to change it.

BCFG said...

I am always happy to hear anything from Hegel, which is why I was left disappointed.

Bring back hegel, more like justify woke hysteria. Dreadful discussion.

I know they are cartoons Blissex linked to, but they annoyed the hell out of me. I mean the woman holding the gun saying force decides force and not production etc, well where did the effing gun come from, the gun fairy!

It is illogical to say that Hegel destroys fascist thought through otherness being involved with us.

Firstly, thought doesn’t proceed from ‘logical/rational’ and idealistic notions but from ‘events’, ‘conditions’ and ‘circumstances’.

Secondly, there is no evidence to suggest that people who think from a Hegelian perspective are somehow immune to fascist ideologies. No one has collected the data on whether supporters of fascist parties or fascist ideas reject Hegelian ideas. It is not even clear if such evidence can even be gathered, which probably means this is a pseudo scientific statement.

Thirdly, no one has agreed on any single definition of what a fascist is, or even how to fully categorise it (the same goes for definitions of Hegel). This relates to point one, for example, if fascism springs from the foundations of bourgeois rule then the definition of fascism can be found in the particularities of this foundation, and cannot be determined by its negation to Hegelianism (this is an idealistic way of thinking).

This third point illustrates a point about the liberal way of thinking; it places the emphasis on the individual, the individual as a logical, free thinking being, in a marketplace of ideas. So those that chose the Hegelian way are not fascists and those that took the other path are potential fascists. This explains many a liberal illusion, such as woke hysteria as a vehicle for ‘progressive’ change, even as biological annihilation continues on its merry way.

The latest hysteria mentioned in this discussion, is that a defence of free speech is a defence of nationalism and fascism, therefore we should clamp down on free speech. Go figure!