… this quote … was used by Scott Alexander in his Nonfiction Writing Advice as an example of entirely unreadable abstract paragraph.
It isn’t unreadable. Hegel is arguing with concepts from previous philosophies which he presumes the reader already knows and understands well. If one begins reading him possessing the prerequisite knowledge one can understand him just fine. Besides, this is a point in the middle of a long discussion, so he already presumes the reader understood the previous points and is connecting the dots.
Great philosophers are great because they notice something no one has noticed before and are thus the very first person in History to try and express that. They have no tool for doing so other than everything that was said before, which, by definition, doesn’t include what they’re trying to say. So, on top of trying to say something utterly, absolutely novel, they must invent the language and semantics with which to say it by repurposing words and concepts that aren’t appropriate for the task. Eventually (measured in decades to centuries) students of that philosopher figure out better ways to express the same novel notions he pioneered, and cause the learning curve to become less and less steep. In the extreme this is so well done, and that philosopher’s ideas and terminology gain such widespread adoption, that language itself adapts to the way the philosopher used it. And then everyone is talking from within that philosopher’s terminology, and wondering, when they read the original work, what was the big deal with someone who was all about stating, and badly at that, mere truisms.
If philosophers wrote presuming their readers have no philosophical knowledge at all, and under the requirement that all words they use must retain their current, commonsensical meaning, every sentence of theirs would balloon into an entire book. The philosopher would die of old age before having presented 1% of what they wanted to say.
It isn’t unreadable. Hegel is arguing with concepts from previous philosophies which he presumes the reader already knows and understands well. If one begins reading him possessing the prerequisite knowledge one can understand him just fine.
Did you actually try reading Hegel in the German orignal or spoke with someone who tried that instead of reading an English interpretation that’s more like an interpretation of Hegel by doing things like splitting one sentence into multiple one’s as in the opening quote?
Which texts is Hegel responding too? Is it ultimately rooted in Aristotle/Plato/Socretes? How much work does one have to do to get up to speed?
I can see the argument for the language style as being fundamentally rooted in the difficultly of trying to say something fundamentally new, but being oracular can also give something memetic fitness—perhaps at some point philosophers realized they could get status by moving more towards poetry or riddles? I’ve also read some contemporary philosophers who seem to take pains to write in extremely clear ways—when I read Bostrom, Parfait, or Focault or listen to Amanda Askill or Agnes Callard or Amia Srinivasan I don’t get the sense that they’re necessarily trying to bring fundamentally new objects into our ontology or metaphysics, but rather that they’re trying to clarify and tease apart distinctions and think through implications; if so, is that a project that tends to lend itself to a really different, “clearer” way of using language?
Which texts is Hegel responding too? Is it ultimately rooted in Aristotle/Plato/Socretes? How much work does one have to do to get up to speed?
I’m not well versed in Hegel’s philosophy, but I know he does three things (and probably more).
First, he builds upon Kant, who himself is moving against all philosophy that came before him and refunding the entire thing so as to be compatible with modern scientific inquiry.
Second, he changes the concept of truth, from static to dynamic, not in the sense that what we think is true may be wrong and so we fix our knowledge until it becomes actually true, but in the sense that the very notion of “truth” itself changes over time, and hence a knowledge that was true once becomes false not because it was incorrect, but because it’s aligned with a notion of truth that isn’t valid anymore. This comes on the heels of a new analysis methodology he invented for this purpose, and that you need to master before seeing it in use.
Third, he tries to integrate notions of justice, rights etc. that are still grounded on pre-Kantian notion with all the above.
That paragraph quoted touches on all of the above, so it takes a knowledge of classic metaphysics, plus Kantian anti-metaphysics, plus classic political philosophy, plus Hegel’s own take on words such as “truth”, “rights” etc. actually refer to.
It’s an extremely ambitious project, and on top of that he has to deal with the potential censorship of rulers and church, so even in parts in which he could be clearer he has to deliberately obfuscate things so that censors don’t catch up with what he’s actually trying to say (this was a usual procedure for many philosophers, and continues being among some).
(...) when I read Bostrom, Parfait, or Focault or listen to Amanda Askill or Agnes Callard or Amia Srinivasan I don’t get the sense that they’re necessarily trying to bring fundamentally new objects into our ontology or metaphysics, but rather that they’re trying to clarify and tease apart distinctions and think through implications;
I don’t know the last three, but the first two basically go in the opposite direction. They take all these complex novel notions of the genius philosophers and distillate them down into useable bits by applying them to specific problems, with some small insights of theirs sprinkled here and there. Foucault in particular also did some of the “big insight” thing, but on a more limited fashion and with a narrower focus, so it isn’t as earth-shattering as what the major philosophers did.
Besides, there are movements among professional academic philosophers that propose developing philosophy in small bits, one tiny problem at a time worked to exhaustion. Much of what they do is in fact this. But how that’s seen varies. When I was majoring in Philosophy in the 2000′s, for example, there was an opinion shared by all professors and teachers in the Philosophy Department that from all of them who worked there since it was founded in the 1930′s until that date, only one single professor has been seen as a real philosopher. Everyone else were historians of philosophy, which indeed was how they described what we were learning how to do. :-)
is that a project that tends to lend itself to a really different, “clearer” way of using language?
Yes, undoubtedly. On the flip side, it doesn’t lend itself to noticing large scale structural issues. For instance, from working tiny problem by tiny problem, one after the other, one would never do as Hegel did, stop, look at things from a distance, and perceive the very concept of truth everyone was using is itself full of assumptions that need unpacking and criticizing, in particular the assumption of the atemporality of truth. Rather, they will all tend to keep working from within that very concept of truth, assumed wholesale, doing their 9-to-5 job, accumulating their quotations so as to get a higher pay, and not really looking outside any of it.
A rule of thumb is that major philosophers make you feel ill. They destroy your certainties by showing what you used to consider solid ground were mirages. Minor philosophers and professional philosophers, in contrast, feel safe. At most a little inconvenient here and there, but still safe, since with them the ground is still the same, and still mostly as firm as before.
“Second, he changes the concept of truth, from static to dynamic, not in the sense that what we think is true may be wrong and so we fix our knowledge until it becomes actually true, but in the sense that the very notion of “truth” itself changes over time, and hence a knowledge that was true once becomes false not because it was incorrect, but because it’s aligned with a notion of truth that isn’t valid anymore.”
I don’t suppose you could give a rough idea of why he sees the notion of truth as changing?
I have an impression that Hegel was the first who predicted that humanity will eventually evolve in what we now call “superintelligence”. He suggested that human evolution represents stages of the evolution of the spirit, which eventually will become God.
He also described something which reminds me Big Bang in the beginning of his “Science of logic”, where “being” and “nothingness” are combined into evolving becoming.
It isn’t unreadable. Hegel is arguing with concepts from previous philosophies which he presumes the reader already knows and understands well. If one begins reading him possessing the prerequisite knowledge one can understand him just fine. Besides, this is a point in the middle of a long discussion, so he already presumes the reader understood the previous points and is connecting the dots.
Great philosophers are great because they notice something no one has noticed before and are thus the very first person in History to try and express that. They have no tool for doing so other than everything that was said before, which, by definition, doesn’t include what they’re trying to say. So, on top of trying to say something utterly, absolutely novel, they must invent the language and semantics with which to say it by repurposing words and concepts that aren’t appropriate for the task. Eventually (measured in decades to centuries) students of that philosopher figure out better ways to express the same novel notions he pioneered, and cause the learning curve to become less and less steep. In the extreme this is so well done, and that philosopher’s ideas and terminology gain such widespread adoption, that language itself adapts to the way the philosopher used it. And then everyone is talking from within that philosopher’s terminology, and wondering, when they read the original work, what was the big deal with someone who was all about stating, and badly at that, mere truisms.
If philosophers wrote presuming their readers have no philosophical knowledge at all, and under the requirement that all words they use must retain their current, commonsensical meaning, every sentence of theirs would balloon into an entire book. The philosopher would die of old age before having presented 1% of what they wanted to say.
Did you actually try reading Hegel in the German orignal or spoke with someone who tried that instead of reading an English interpretation that’s more like an interpretation of Hegel by doing things like splitting one sentence into multiple one’s as in the opening quote?
Which texts is Hegel responding too? Is it ultimately rooted in Aristotle/Plato/Socretes? How much work does one have to do to get up to speed?
I can see the argument for the language style as being fundamentally rooted in the difficultly of trying to say something fundamentally new, but being oracular can also give something memetic fitness—perhaps at some point philosophers realized they could get status by moving more towards poetry or riddles? I’ve also read some contemporary philosophers who seem to take pains to write in extremely clear ways—when I read Bostrom, Parfait, or Focault or listen to Amanda Askill or Agnes Callard or Amia Srinivasan I don’t get the sense that they’re necessarily trying to bring fundamentally new objects into our ontology or metaphysics, but rather that they’re trying to clarify and tease apart distinctions and think through implications; if so, is that a project that tends to lend itself to a really different, “clearer” way of using language?
I’m not well versed in Hegel’s philosophy, but I know he does three things (and probably more).
First, he builds upon Kant, who himself is moving against all philosophy that came before him and refunding the entire thing so as to be compatible with modern scientific inquiry.
Second, he changes the concept of truth, from static to dynamic, not in the sense that what we think is true may be wrong and so we fix our knowledge until it becomes actually true, but in the sense that the very notion of “truth” itself changes over time, and hence a knowledge that was true once becomes false not because it was incorrect, but because it’s aligned with a notion of truth that isn’t valid anymore. This comes on the heels of a new analysis methodology he invented for this purpose, and that you need to master before seeing it in use.
Third, he tries to integrate notions of justice, rights etc. that are still grounded on pre-Kantian notion with all the above.
That paragraph quoted touches on all of the above, so it takes a knowledge of classic metaphysics, plus Kantian anti-metaphysics, plus classic political philosophy, plus Hegel’s own take on words such as “truth”, “rights” etc. actually refer to.
It’s an extremely ambitious project, and on top of that he has to deal with the potential censorship of rulers and church, so even in parts in which he could be clearer he has to deliberately obfuscate things so that censors don’t catch up with what he’s actually trying to say (this was a usual procedure for many philosophers, and continues being among some).
I don’t know the last three, but the first two basically go in the opposite direction. They take all these complex novel notions of the genius philosophers and distillate them down into useable bits by applying them to specific problems, with some small insights of theirs sprinkled here and there. Foucault in particular also did some of the “big insight” thing, but on a more limited fashion and with a narrower focus, so it isn’t as earth-shattering as what the major philosophers did.
Besides, there are movements among professional academic philosophers that propose developing philosophy in small bits, one tiny problem at a time worked to exhaustion. Much of what they do is in fact this. But how that’s seen varies. When I was majoring in Philosophy in the 2000′s, for example, there was an opinion shared by all professors and teachers in the Philosophy Department that from all of them who worked there since it was founded in the 1930′s until that date, only one single professor has been seen as a real philosopher. Everyone else were historians of philosophy, which indeed was how they described what we were learning how to do. :-)
Yes, undoubtedly. On the flip side, it doesn’t lend itself to noticing large scale structural issues. For instance, from working tiny problem by tiny problem, one after the other, one would never do as Hegel did, stop, look at things from a distance, and perceive the very concept of truth everyone was using is itself full of assumptions that need unpacking and criticizing, in particular the assumption of the atemporality of truth. Rather, they will all tend to keep working from within that very concept of truth, assumed wholesale, doing their 9-to-5 job, accumulating their quotations so as to get a higher pay, and not really looking outside any of it.
A rule of thumb is that major philosophers make you feel ill. They destroy your certainties by showing what you used to consider solid ground were mirages. Minor philosophers and professional philosophers, in contrast, feel safe. At most a little inconvenient here and there, but still safe, since with them the ground is still the same, and still mostly as firm as before.
“Second, he changes the concept of truth, from static to dynamic, not in the sense that what we think is true may be wrong and so we fix our knowledge until it becomes actually true, but in the sense that the very notion of “truth” itself changes over time, and hence a knowledge that was true once becomes false not because it was incorrect, but because it’s aligned with a notion of truth that isn’t valid anymore.”
I don’t suppose you could give a rough idea of why he sees the notion of truth as changing?
I have an impression that Hegel was the first who predicted that humanity will eventually evolve in what we now call “superintelligence”. He suggested that human evolution represents stages of the evolution of the spirit, which eventually will become God.
He also described something which reminds me Big Bang in the beginning of his “Science of logic”, where “being” and “nothingness” are combined into evolving becoming.
Thanks!
Do you have any recommendations for how to start with Kant?
Read Descartes’s Meditations (representative of Enlightenment rationalism).
Read Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature (representative of Enlightenment empiricism, responded to directly by Kant).
Read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (synthesizing rationalism and empiricism).
Here’s a comment I wrote relating some of Kant’s basic arguments to Solomonoff induction, it might help as a starting point.