Transcript for:
Exploring Kant and German Idealism

immanuel kant is arguably one of the most important philosophers of modernity and one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy his name is familiar to anyone who studies philosophy and his name is probably even familiar to those who haven't studied philosophy but have a general understanding of the importance of the history of ideas to understand the philosophy of kant though we have to take a step back to understand the world of philosophy that he is responding to and that the world of german idealism is responding to the world of philosophy that kant and german idealism is responding and reacting against is the world of the so-called new science the philosophy of the enlightenment which can roughly be said to have begun with the publication of sir francis bacon's novum organum the new science in 1620 tied to the new science is also the great french philosopher rene descartes and his meditations on first philosophy the two together brought the spirit of modernity and the modern project the conquest of nature begun by bacon and the attempt to understand the self begun by descartes even though the quest for self-knowledge really has its antecedent roots as almost everyone in philosophy knows in the existential phenomenology and anthropology of saint augustine modernity is therefore defined by bacon and descartes the world of scientific conquest and the world of subjective understanding and the premises of the self in these two traditions of modern philosophy we find the emergence of emanuel kant and the german idealist and romantic tradition bacon was an english philosopher scientist and statesmen who helped establish the tradition of philosophy now known as empiricism bacon's philosophy was that of reductionist materialism the notion and philosophy that reduced the world to an instrumented object this including subjective beings humans humans were nothing more than a material mass of atoms composed together in motion as everything else in the world was anyone familiar with mid 17th century english philosophy say especially of thomas hobbes should see where they were actually drawing from they were drawing from the philosophy of bacon however man had the unique ability according to bacon to dominate and according to him to advance our knowledge man had to interrogate nature on the rack of investigation empirical science is the outcome of the instrumental exploitation of nature this also brings about the end of the science of vitalism the pre-modern scientific worldview begun by the greeks and inherited by christianity through neoplatonism which argued that the world and all life forms therein had distinct and particular life forces and intelligibility within them vitalism can be summed up as the outlook that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things in essence then baconian science enlightenment science stripped man and the world of his vitalism his life essence and turned life all life into a material object of the world ultimately man though he has the power to dominate is really no different from all the other objects in the world we are familiar with this outlook today reductionist materialism and the notion that all life are objects popular scientific intellectuals and so-called philosophers like sam harris richard dawkins and daniel dennett exhibit these contemporary views critics of this philosophy call reductionist materialism the nothing but outlook which people might be familiar with we're nothing but the movement of atoms we are nothing but this love is nothing but the firing and the wiring of atoms and stimulation etc humans are nothing but atoms composed and hitting each other in a certain manner which give the appearance of humans trees are nothing but atoms composed and hitting each other in a certain manner which give the appearance of a tree a dog and so on and so forth man as we can see from this outlook is ultimately reduced to an object in a world of objects for all objects follow mechanical mathematical and material laws although bacon was properly speaking a monistic materialist all things have their origins in a single monistic material substance his his sidestepping and eradication of human consciousness and subjectivity produced a functional dualism nevertheless a dualism that pitted man against nature as the supreme object of force sort of like how newton's laws of motion are in conflict an equal and opposite reaction in the equal and opposite reaction of different material objects it is the task of mankind and science according to bacon to ultimately triumph and dominate man cannot dwell in nature man must overwhelm and destroy nature to dominate nature and this is what the forces of science technology and industry are all about they unleash man's material movement and potential to become the most dominant object in the world again our entire modern conceptualization of science and technology is ultimately rooted in the philosophy of francis bacon on the opposite end of bacon was the french rationalist philosopher rene descartes descartes is probably best remembered to posterity as the philosopher who proved human existence by saying i think therefore i am the infamous kagito ergo sum the task of descartes philosophy cartesian philosophy was to affirm the subject's own subjectivity to affirm one's own subjective existence in a world of material objects and so here you can see how descartes philosophy is also responding to bacon's philosophy of materialistic and scientific conquest the problem that arises from descartes philosophy is the classical mind body problem are humans a mind inhabiting a body or a body with the mind what is the mind unwittingly descartes dualism so-called ended up advancing the baconian new scientific outlook man was a body and his mind was nothing but matter but this wasn't so much the problem with descartes that the germans idealists took later generations of cartesian rationalists ended up becoming subjective solipsis that is one could only affirm their own existence from cartesian rationalism and dualism german idealism wasn't responding to the dualism of descartes but to the problem of solipsism how can we affirm that we are subjects in a world of other subjects and other objects it doesn't do us any good if we can only affirm our own existence in a world where only the i think could prove its own its own existence the pure self i am forever cut off from others i am isolated alienated and alone the others that i perceive to be existing from a solipsistic perspective may not even exist i can never know because i do not have access to their minds and their subjectivity i can never think as another beside myself therefore i can never affirm and confirm anyone's own existence beside my own you can start to see the problem with solipsism in its reductionist subjectivist sense which is where cartesian dualism eventually led it is this world of philosophy the world of objective materialism and scientific conquest in combination with the struggles of self-identity and subjectivism emerging from cartesian philosophy that german idealism springs from coming into form in its grandest iteration with emmanuel kant and that is the world that kant is also reacting against german idealism and the philosophy of kant is doing two things simultaneously on the one hand it is responding against the philosophies of the new science and subjectivism but it also is inheriting the same tradition it is critiquing this is what makes it modern rather than classical though the german idealists were schooled often in classical greek philosophy as well as christian theology which had which has its intellectual basis more in the classical world than in the modern world german idealism is taking the traditions of modern new science and cartesian rationalism dualism and subjectivism and trying to give them a greater fuller foundation than the supposed weak foundations offered by bacon descartes and their followers the task of kantian idealism or simply the task that kant dwelled upon for nearly a decade before finally publishing the critique of pure reason is a response to how to achieve the so-called appreceptive unity of the i and the not i the i think with other i thinks and with the phenomenal world of space and time without allowing subjects to become purely objectified and materialized into conformity with deterministic laws the goal of kant is to defend the subject offered to us by cartesian philosophy as well as to affirm and prove how i can exist how others can exist and how we are different from all the other objects in the world without reducing ourselves to simply the isolated self of solipsism or reducing humanity to a mass of matter similar and frankly the same as all other masses of matter in the world kant then revises the cartesian and baconian outlook by starting with the mind like descartes but attaching the phenomenal world of objects and matter to the mind something that descartes and his followers did not do mind comes into existence with innate ideas this is kant's inheritance from the platonic tradition of idealism in this way kant is following plato and can be said somewhat rightly to be a revisionist platonist the categories of the mind are also lifted from aristotle another philosopher whom continue fairly well while the mind comes into existence with innate ideas thus denying the blank slate the tabula rasa of john locke space and time the phenomenal realm of experience and sensation are forms of a priori intuitions that the mind projects rather than a posteriori experiences it is the mind and not the body for kant that is the seat of sensation and experience and you can see how kant in asserting the premises of the mind as the seed of sensation and experience is trying to prevent humanity from being reduced to a pure body and a material object like all other objects it is wrong to deduce as the reductionists do that our bodily experiences and sensations are only tied to the body kant argues that they are really tied back to the mind as sensational experiences are ultimately rooted in consciousness in thought in the mind's innate ideas and so on if we do not have a mind kant argues we will not actually experience sensational relationships experiences and rapture if we were just pure bodies without a mind we wouldn't have any sensational experiences whatsoever what we experience comes through mental faculties and mental faculties are not reducible to a bland hunk of meat and atoms as the reductionist materialists claim plants for instance are material bodies with atoms but plants according to kant do not have sensory experiences because they do not have consciousness animals which have material bodies and are also atoms like humans do feel because they have minds but they are not self-conscious in the way humans are animals cannot know the transcendental ideals like humans can that is they are not rational in the classical conception of rationalism in which rational means you are able to know the good the true and the beautiful and live your life by choice of that knowledge in conformity with truth goodness and beauty only humans have that special reasoning ability the mind therefore according to kant cannot exist without this ability to project the phenomenal realm of object objects in which we are in to understand the transcendental reality of the world as well as our unity with the body again this is that a perceptive unity that kant speaks of he doesn't see the mind separate from the body as some people say he doesn't see the body as separate from the mind he sees the mind as primary and out of the premises of the mind flows the experiences of the body and in this there is unity of mind and body and so as you can see kant is also responding to the mind body problem this brings us to the synthetic apriori in kantian philosophy as the mind comes into being with innate ideas and consciousness this means that our innate ideas from kant's perspective can be confirmed in the world of phenomenal objects the world of phenomenon the a priori is that which is known without experience the a priori is that which is true by definition like all bachelors are unmarried by definition bachelors are unmarried therefore to be a bachelor is to be unmarried one does not need to meet a bachelor to confirm this reality we know it by a priori definition it is an apriori logical truth a posteriori is that which is known or confirmed by experience one needs to have a direct experience to validate an a posteriori or experiential claim to knowledge for example john was planting a flower in the afternoon this can only be known from experience that i saw or encountered john planting a flower in the afternoon if i do not have this direct experience i cannot make a valid epistemological claim cons synthetic a priori bridges the ap a priori and the a posteriori together again because the phenomenal realm the world of experience and the a posteriori is a projection ultimately of the mind the world of the apriori and idealism which permits us to confirm our apriori ideas through our experiences in the phenomenal world therefore i can also disprove an apriori statement if it doesn't conform to our lived experience as you can see in kant the synthetic apriori unites the apri with the a posteriori a valid true understanding of innate ideas will always be confirmed in this world of experiences the synthetic apriori then is where the world of phenomenon is linked to the world of thought or vice versa the synthetic apriori is where thought and experience meet together as one in an aperceptive unity that was the world lost by bacon and descartes and that is the world that kant and the entire german idealist and the romantic tradition is trying to recover moreover the synthetic and apriori coming together also enriches knowledge because our experiences which confirm a priori knowledge ensures it confirms and ensures a priori knowledge isn't just dry intellectual thought it has real world reality and consequences but kant's philosophical project begins with the mind it does not begin with the phenomenal world of objects or nature like in bacon instead the phenomenal world is a projection of our mind our thought our consciousness if i exist without thought i am but an object but i would have no knowledge of my existence a rock for instance has no knowledge of its existence because it doesn't have a mind it doesn't have consciousness a rock exists because it exists as a projection of the human mind and its sensory experiences we know that a rock exists therefore we have an idea of what a rock is and then in the world of nature and matter we encounter a rock which confirms our innate idea of a rock ergo for kant existence and knowledge of existence is tied back to the mind which is tied to the self the mind and the self are one and the same besides being concerned with metaphysical epistemological concerns kant was deeply interested in the question of identity and how identity was related to the larger metaphysical epistemic crisis wrought by modern philosophy looking upon the empiricists man was an empty body an empty man as t.s eliot would later go on to explain a hollow man in his poetry looking upon the rationalists especially descartes the kagito ergo sum proved thinking but not that i was actually the one doing the thinking this is what led to the famous questions of whether or not we are living in a simulation i may be able to prove from descartes that thinking is going on but i don't know if i'm the one actually doing thinking for kant the question of identity was necessary for thinking thus the understanding in german idealism of the conception of the human person and the subject as the i think i have an identity because i have consciousness because i have thought the notion of the transcendental self the i think and cons ontological philosophy is the grounding of the self with thought through the apperceptive unity of the synthetic apriori since my mind is the seat of sensation and i think and perceive the self is behind perception and not an object of perception moreover for kant the self is what we do selfhood is the activity of consciousness action and engagement with the phenomenal world of space and time in this way kant to german philosophy the notion of being as action a being in the process of doing or becoming and something that isn't fixed in the classical sense of being the only thing fixed about the being of man is that he is rational i.e he is able to organize ideas yet man being rational and organizing ideas and experiences enhances his rationality through constant engagement with the world activity and organization of ideas and experiences the more experiences we have the more rational we become kant's understanding of the self is therefore twofold there is the empirical ego and the transcendental ego the transcendental ego is the true self the self in itself how we identify ourselves and understand ourselves the empirical ego is how others identify us in other words the empirical ego is the self that others encounter and perceive from their minds but they do not have access to our transcendental interior self in this way kant believes he was able to solve the problem of solipsism although we cannot have access to the transcendental self of others we can have access to the empirical self the empirical ego of others and in so far that we encounter the empirical ego and the empirical self of others this confirms that other people other subjects exist if the phenomenal world is a projection of the mind and there exists other persons other selves who are not me this is the origin of the i not i distinction in kantian philosophy that will be picked up upon principally by the philosophers ficta and hegel the i is the total self empirical and transcendental through the true self though the true self is always the of course by definition transcendental self only i can be the total self because i control how i appear to others and i know myself sticking with how this relates to the synthetic apriori and the pneumonian the transcendental ego projecting into the realm of space and time therefore perceives others the empirical ego there is the unity however the numenol not i is the transcendental ego the true self that i do not have access to with regards to others and that only i have access to for myself therefore i can only ever know another person in the empirical sense in the world of phenomenology khan's philosophy of selfhood is intimately tied with and the outgrowth of his philosophy of the synth of the synthetic a priori and the pneumatic thus in kant as the famous saying goes he had to limit knowledge in order to ensure knowledge i can know about myself and i can know that others exist in the empirical sense i can know the empirical ego i can know the empirical self of others but yet that knowledge is still limited because the transcendental self of others is forever cut off to me only the transcendental self of myself can be known to me thus we can avoid according to kant the problem of solipsism through an encounter of the empirical ego and the empirical other in the world of phenomenology the world of objects we avoid the problem of solipsism but by also affirming the reality that all experiences are ultimately rooted in the mind and consciousness we also avoid the problem of reductionist materialism and this is the heart of kant's philosophy and the entire german idealist tradition however this was deeply unsatisfying to the post-kantians the first of whom was johann ficta who built from the spirit of kantian philosophy but wanted total knowledge because the limited knowledge of kant was insufficient in warding off the skeptics thus from kant's philosophy of the limited self and the limited other we eventually arrive with the philosophy of johann ficta and the attempt to achieve total knowledge of the self and others united in the world but in order to understand the basic of the basic philosophy of kant one must understand that world of the new science and cartesian rationalism that kant inherited and was responding to the crisis of reductionist materialism and the crisis of solipsism moved and motivated kant to present his philosophy of transcendental idealism of the synthetic a priori of the transcendental self and the empirical self and how we can confirm the existence of others even if we will never fully know the other trying to understand the full knowledge of the other becomes the task of post kantian german philosophy johann ficta was a student of kant's philosophy although little known in the english-speaking world today ficto was one of the most important philosophers in the 1790s and the early 1800s until his death in 1814 if english speakers have any awareness of ficta it is likely through his address to the german nation given during the napoleonic wars which was partly a speech on the need for education and education reform as well as a call for german unity against the french occupiers or as one of many names mentioned in leo tolstoy's war and peace ficta apart from being a philosopher a metaphysician and epistemologist was also a political philosopher and civil servant like many of the famous german writers and intellectuals of that time like gerta his work of political economy der gershloch handlesthat led to him to becoming an advisor to the prussian minister of commerce in 1800 despite some of the controversies and philosophy he had experienced at the university of yena in fact ficta's address to the german nation is the logical derivative of his larger philosophical projects ficta considered himself a kantian a kantian in spirit as all the post contin idealists did that is while they agreed with certain elements of kant they also disagreed with the substance of kant's limited metaphysic and epistemology the postcontinence nevertheless took up the project of defending mind consciousness reason subjectivity against its potential enemies the materialists and the solipsists in an episode and lecture where we covered the philosophy of kant's transcendental idealism we ended by noting that kant in order to prevent the backsliding into materialism and solipsism had to limit a form of knowledge in order to protect the assurances of knowledge now ficta and the post-kantians restless as they are are unhappy with this compromise they do not want partial knowledge they want total knowledge and that is the basic foundation of ficta's philosophy finding total knowledge in 1794 ficta entered the world of philosophical dialectic with the writing of his science of knowledge the vision shuffler in his introduction he laid out the two main schools in which all philosophy could be boxed into and again we see the dialectic idealism inherent to german philosophy one school he called the dogmatists the other school he called the idealists which he himself was part of the dogmatists were those scientistic materialists materialists stretching as far back as the pre-socratics to the materialists of today now known as the empiricists the taught the dogmatists were those whom victor opposed for these mechanical materialists were dogmatic in their insistence that all life and laws could be reduced to the determinancy of the laws of motion we are nothing but x y and z according to ficta this reductive materialism moves us to an acceptance of determinism which has sweeping implication all in the negative for ficta as it relates especially to ethical life ficta in this sense also wished to actualize the kantian ethical imperative ficta was in a word a moralist he believed humans had duties and responsibilities to each other to act in the kantian manner in a way in which we would wish our actions to become universalized throughout the world this is the kantian categorical and universal imperative the dogmatists in reducing knowledge to properties of mechanical laws of motion which deny free will and therefore responsibility leave no room for morality or even human consciousness for morality hinges upon responsibility and conscious choice which we cannot have if we are determined by laws of motion for ethics is not a singular solipsistic endeavor either responsibility and therefore morality entails upon others and knowing others and thus we enter the great dilemma that ficta and kant before him as well as the postcontinent german idealist are wrestling with how do we achieve a moral philosophy of responsibility while avoiding reductionist materialism and avoiding the dangers of solipsism if i and i alone am the only thing that exists there can never be ethics and morality ethics involves the famous other the means at this means that ethics involves relationships with others which also means ethics involves how we interact and deal with others and our knowledge of others is going to impact how we relate and interact with others thus it becomes the fiction imperative the whole duty of man to understand others to know others because from this knowing of the other our actual responsibility moral conduct and relationships and love for others hinges all of it hinges on our ability to know the other the idealists whom ficta considered himself part of would have also included the likes of plato platinus augustine and other elements of the christian tradition and of course most importantly kant the man who started the entire idealistic revolution of modern philosophy the ficta claimed we're concerned with conscious perception today we call this phenomenology from perception which is from the mind arises the concern for consciousness from consciousness self-consciousness from self-consciousness the subject from the subject other subjects as we come to recognize that other thinking subjects persons exist and from all of this emerges moral responsibility which is ultimately an outgrowth of perception the movement of perception to consciousness from consciousness to self-consciousness from self-consciousness to understanding the subject from the subject to understanding other subjects and in this progress in this evolution from perception to consciousness to subjectivity arises duties responsibilities in a web of moral relationships which lead to free will moral responsibility which is the primary concern of ficta's philosophy ficta's philosophy as you could probably tell is grounded in the self because it is in the self that perception first emerges this is what he calls the ego and the ego is desire movement energy creativity moving to moral joy which is found in absolute knowledge and absolute freedom which is tied to absolute knowledge and ultimately tied to responsibility you cannot be absolutely free according to ficta unless you have absolute knowledge because it is only in absolute knowledge that we have full absolute responsibility for the actions we undertake fichta's break with kant though again he considered himself a kantian rested with kant's assertion that the human mind was cut off from the thing in itself the nominal realm according to ficta while this does provide a clear foundation for some knowledge it nevertheless is insufficient to achieve what kant had earlier set out to accomplish to ward off the dangers of the mechanical materialist philosophers accordingly if objects the things in themselves remain separate and known and not known to us the mechanical philosophers will seize this opening and maintain that the objects are the cause of our sensation not ourselves and this once again reduces humans to being instruments of pure objects objects of matter in which subjectivity and consciousness is impossible for if the mind cannot perceive or have experience of these things in themselves this means we cannot be sure that everything exists and can be perceived through the mind as khan argued we must have complete and total knowledge to be assured that everything exists and that our percep perceptions in the minds the thing in itself is the origin is the basis from which everything flows thus ficta is in a way a true son of the kantian philosophical tradition he wants to produce a philosophy of mine which is the philosophy of ego which is all-encompassing and all-knowing which will prevent any crack and crevice from the mechanical materialists to exploit like kant victa is concerned with re-establishing a foundational philosophy for the appreceptive unity of the i and the not i the other to exist things as they are must be tied to the self in order to know myself i of course have to be able to understand my own perception and consciousness but for others to also exist i must be able to confirm that they exist therefore the other is not simply contained to the other but an encounter with the other is also an encounter with myself as i try to know the other and thus all things that exist are tied back to myself to my subjectivity my consciousness my interactions with it with others and the world ficta's philosophy is therefore not only grounded in the self or the ego it is grounded in the heroic ego the heroic ego which strives for encounter and conquest to encounter and conquer the numeral world the world of others the world of the not i the world of of objects and other egos different than that of my own in this way too he hopes to resolve the cartesian solipsistic dilemma even though in his own life victor was accused of being a solipsist which is somewhat ironic of course victor was condemned by those who didn't understand him ficta and his heroic self because we can be assured of ourselves this is the great reality of at least the positive elements of cartesian philosophy the heroic self knowing itself must therefore go out and encounter the other the charges that ficta was a solipsist rest on an unfamiliar unfamiliarity with the psychological and ontological tradition which victor belonged to even if he also unknowingly inherited in the christian psychological tradition humans are images of the trinity the trinity is simultaneously pluralistic yet united three in one father memory son intellect and spirit love ficta's movement of ego to absolute ego or the absolute i which is the unity of the i with the not i i.e ego with other egos follows this basic christian psychological framework which all western philosophy is rooted in there must be a unitive link that binds egos together into the absolute just as the three persons of the trinity are bounded together by and through love into the absolute godhead this binding together is what ficta considers to be the project the enterprise and the manifestation of knowledge i come to know you that which i am not the not i through knowledge this knowledge is achieved through encounter an engagement recognition recognition of the other thus we see from ficta's psychological philosophy which draws on the greater tradition of the idea of the trinity in christian theology ficta was also trained in theology his son in fact ended up being a lutheran theologian and pastor who continuously defended his father rightly from the charges of atheism and solipsism that were leveled against him embraces this idea that we can be pluralistic yet also united this too is the great impetus of modern philosophy especially in the german idealist tradition in fighting against solipsism and reductionist materialism how can it be that i exist as myself but that others exist as themselves yet we can be united in the absolute as one thus ficta and his great revolution in epistemology and philosophy is to remove the christian idea of love as that which unites us and to replace it with knowledge thus the science of knowledge knowing knowing is the great impetus the great spirit of fiction philosophy the ego ficta asserts is moved by an insatiable quest an insatiable desire not for love but for knowledge and knowing roland khande and dieter heinrich two contemporary scholars of german idealism have written how ficta moves from augustine's original insight of man they say kogitare and say no say that man thinks and that he loves to how man comes to know knowing and knowledge is the thing in of itself knowledge is the numeral world that ficta's heroic ego is trying to conquer and in that conquest come to understand so ficta embraces the plotinian the platonic the augustinian understanding that creature is desire but he moves beyond just desire because desire aims at something and that something is total knowledge the absolute the ego encounters other egos the not i and in these encounters in the world grows mutual recognition and understanding through these constant encounters and dealings and relationships formed with the other it is in the phenomenal realm of nature that the i not i encounter develops the social ego begins to emerge through these encounters of the eye and the not i to the point of the eye and not i fusing together as one to become one in absolute knowledge of each other in order to form the absolute eye the ego's transformation to absolute ego the eye to the absolute eye is by the eyes conquest of the unknown the other that engagement encounter and recognizing the unknown the numenol or the not i leads to its absorption into the self thus we see again how the self is foundational to fictus philosophy even though we encounter others self-knowledge is only possible through this coming to understanding of the totality of the whole ficta's epistemology of the heroic ego is like the adventurous traveler who is the ego climbing indeed struggling up the mountain to get to the peak to look over the vast horizon of wholeness only in completing this journey this engagement and this encounter does the ego absorb all understand all and becomes one with totality at the mountaintop the ego is transformed into the absolute ego which has broken down the barrier of the unknown and that which was previously unknown has now revealed itself through the completion of this heroic engagement this image is hopefully very helpful for people to understand because for ficta we are very much like the adventurous traveler climbing up the mountain at the base we only know that i exist and through constant encounter and struggling dealing with others engagement and encountering of other forms of life on the journey it is only at the top when we have complete vision of everything around us having complete knowledge of everything that we engaged in as we reached this pinnacle point do we become one with everything this ego to ego to super ego or i not i to absolute i movement is simultaneously the movement to absolute knowledge where the thing in of itself the not i previously unknown and unknowable to me becomes known and the unveiling of oneself to the other and vice versa like two lovers unclothing to share their most intimate secrets with one another becomes united i know you and you know me and this only came about by encounter and recognition not the domination and exploitation of putting the other up on the rack of scientific interrogation as bacon had speculated this is as ficta asserts the very heart and the desire of the ego and of human nature in of itself that multiplicity become one in absolute knowledge this is also a mutual journey it entails the other to participate as much as it does the self anyone familiar with the philosophy of hegel should also see where hegel was deeply influenced by ficta much of the german idealist tradition is building off of one another as they move through the years for those familiar with kant it's very easy to see where ficta is drawing from kant not because he wants to get rid of kant and destroy the limitations of kant's philosophy but because he felt that kant didn't go far enough this i not i to absolute eye movement is only possible it's important to remember in the phenomenal realm of nature in victor's reimagining nature is that barrier that separates the eye and the not i nature is the barrier to the numeral realm that must be slowly broken down and penetrated into through this dialectic of encounter and adventure if you recall from kant the empirical ego the self that exists in the phenomenal realm is all that we know but in kant that encounter of the other in the phenomenal realm is also the barrier that separates myself from the other i need to move beyond the encounter of the empirical ego and kantian idealism in order to understand the self of the other i must understand the subjective self of whatever it is and whoever it is that i am in a relationship with as this barrier is broken down and the ego becomes socialized and loving and knowledgeable the eye and not i grow closer together and will eventually fuse as one becoming the absolute eye my identity myself is now contingent and hinges upon my relationships with others in this sense i am not truly myself until i have relationships with others think of it this way who are you you are more than just your pure self to say who you are entails who your parents are who your siblings might be who your friends are where you live who your significant other is etc etc so the full and total self is you in relationship with others part of who you are includes the many people and as well the many objects that are part of your life this is the restoration of the appreceptive unity of everything in relationship to you that was lost in the philosophies of francis bacon and rene descartes moreover and in agreement with kant the i think knows through consciousness ficta's epistemology is grounded in the self but it is also beyond the self consciousness consciousness is tied to who you are the logical exhaustion of any epistemology grounded in the self is consciousness consciousness of who you are but consciousness of who you are in relationship with everything else in your life and in the world i come to know through coming to know the other not as we've said as an object but as a subject i want to know you more than just as an empirical object i want to know you as a subject i want to know you in the most intimate way possible which is as yourself and i can only come to know this this true essence of who you are the inner self by becoming an intimate participant and participator with you and with your life that participation of course was through the encounter and recognition of the eye and the other as they are bound together in this participation this grand waltz of life love pursuit and knowledge again if this sounds familiar to hegel's dialectic of master slave of i and other in the phenomenology of spirit you would be correct for hegel who is also a contemporary of ficta who taught at the same university for a time was influenced by ficta though hegel subsequently took ficta's i not i encounter and moved it out of the realm of pure subjectivity and historicized it and made it a philosophy of history which ficta's philosophy doesn't include victor's alteration of the kantian imperative gives a mind and a phenomenal realm the space and the time necessary to encounter and to bind together as one and it actually becomes stronger through this sublation of nature through the ego to ego encounter and route to the harmonization of the ego to ego dialectic in which we begin to have mutual recognition nature the empirical ego the space existing as a barrier to the free creativity of the ego must be made in our image much like how freud said where it is ego shall be where nature is i shall be inficta's philosophy because wherever nature is that means i do not yet have complete and total knowledge nature at once is that which allows for the encounter of the eye and not i to move to the absolute eye and nature is that space which ultimately gives way to the moral community to actualize itself in the world thus again we see the moral imperative of ficta's philosophy of encountering and coming to know others and how through that encounter through the knowing of others i become a responsible moral agent in community this is where all of ficta's philosophy is headed it is kant's ethical imperative only manifested and made possible through complete and total knowledge and again this is why fit to spend so much time on this subject kant's categorical imperative and his universal ethics are actually impossible from kant's own philosophy because if we do not have this total knowledge of the other and of the world we can never truly make the right decisions necessary for the benefit of all humanity and that is what ficta's philosophy hopes to achieve the unity which is achieved in the movement of the absolute i or the absolute ego is not merely based on newfound and absolute knowledge we have with each other but also based on the responsibility and duties we now share with each other which come from that knowledge of the other for instance we all know anybody who has dated another or anyone who has married that our decisions our moral responsibilities to another come from the knowledge and the intimacy that we have with our significant other if i want to buy them for instance a wonderful present or show my token of appreciation to them to actually engage in a responsible life with them i must know who they are but in that knowledge of who they are this leads me to take actions based on that knowledge so action and activity given to the other which also makes myself happy flows from that absolute knowledge i have gained and in all of this we see how the unity is preserved and how solipsism is avoided and how reductionist materialism is also buttressed against i you the community others are now all bound up in this relationship of knowledge leading to action all self-consciousness freedom and reason is bound together through this rational engagement and encounter we subsequently become accountable to the other because in being accountable to the other i am also accountable to myself and the knowledge that i have of you it would be irresponsible of me to do something contrary to the knowledge that i have of you for instance let's take a very easy example if i know you do not like a certain food it would be irresponsible of me to cook prepare or take you out to a restaurant that has the food that you do not like we become responsible and uncountable accountable to each other and in this i demonstrate that i have knowledge of who you are i am happy to help you you are happy based on what i have done for you we grow even more united in these accountable actions that flow from our knowledge of one another to shirk responsibility is to become detached it is to remove yourself from that a perceptive unity that all of our engagement and encounter and dealing and wrestling with one another had striven so hard to achieve true freedom according to ficta is the freedom to choose to choose the moral good responsibility that flows from knowledge of the absolute it is the freedom to be dutiful and loving to those who constitute the absolute i and in total knowledge i know i have these responsibility which lead me to action and again so the heroic self never ends in ficta's philosophy even though we had struggled so much and fought so hard to come to know you now having come to know you perpetuating the forever action from that knowledge is the responsibility that upholds the unity of all relationships that had been forged in the i not i ego to ego movement to the absolute the moral relationships manifested here on earth furthermore the synthesis of egos leads to the moral joy consummated in the knowledge of who the other is the i replacing god inficta's temporalization of divinity naturally flows from this because our moral joy is not found in heaven it is found in you this is what caused so much controversy in ficta's day and age for ficta god who is truth and love absolute knowledge is not found in a far off land god is actually found in you i embody and encounter divinity in the absolute eye in coming to know you you coming to know me we become one in the absolute and in a way we become the godhead incarnate in the world the i not i have become absolute i in knowledge total knowledge and again that is what ficta set out to achieve in drawing from kant and the philosophies before him ficta saw the problem of how we can have freedom consciousness and moral responsibility if we do not have complete and total knowledge of the other kant set us on the path to achieving true freedom true rationality true unity with others but his philosophy would never allow us to achieve that which he sought thus it became ficta's task to create the bridge to consciousness freedom rationality and the totality of the other and in that construction of philosophy ficta's aims at how we can become united as one in consciousness in freedom in reason and total knowledge and from this complete unity of everything that comes from the knowledge of engaging and recognizing the other this leads to moral actions and choices flowing from that knowledge which i perpetuate forever and into eternity and it is from those actions from those choices that true joy and happiness can be found however ficta's philosophy posed new problems and these problems were subsequently dealt with by friedrich schelling who was a student of ficta because if you recall from ficta in order to come the in order to come to understand the other i must eventually destroy the barrier of nature and for shelling the eradication of nature which is entailed in fictus philosophy becomes the new crisis that german philosophy and german idealism deals with in the philosophy of shelling while influenced by immanuel kant and johann ficta friedrich schelling deviates from both of them in so far that he does not start with the mine as kant and ficta did but with nature as per girtha this is the culmination of the evolution of german idealism the problems of reductionist materialism and solipsistic subjectivism as you recall from our lecture dealing with the philosophy of ficta ficta supposedly solved the problem of immanuel kant's the thing in itself by arguing that the empirical other could be known subjectively and interpersonally through the eventual overcoming of nature but this leads to shelling's crisis that he deals with in german idealism if the eradication of nature entailed in ficta's philosophy leads to the discovery of the self and the person especially in relationship to the other what does this mean for the realm of nature and if we eradicate nature are we not in some sense eradicating ourselves shelling's asymmatic foundation therefore is not in the mind or consciousness but in the realm of the natural nature the mind for shelling subjectivity and consciousness is an outgrowth of the forces of conflict within nature and organic morphological growth nature and mind according to shelling are in fact one in the same shelling's enemies were two-fold while influenced by ficta especially in his earlier days shaolin came to conclude that the implications of victor's philosophy of the absolute ego and consciousness would lead us back down the path of a dangerous solipsism at the same time as was the case with the whole of german idealism and romanticism he was vehemently opposed to the anti-teleological and reductionist empiricism and materialism of the dominant anglo-french schools of philosophy which eventually produced utilitarianism and the famous english philosophers bentham and mill shelling sought to reconcile the philosophy of consciousness and transcendentalism of earlier german philosophers principally kant and ficta with the form of non-reductionist empiricism that was also teleological thereby allowing humans to have total knowledge through coming to know the t loss the end of the purpose of life the core id the core idea of shelling's natural philosophy is that everything ultimately springs from nature this of course is found in his most famous work ideas concerning a philosophy of nature as well as his other famous work the system of transcendental idealism rejecting the mechanical model of earlier enlightenment science shelling was the forefront of integrating the new biological and organisms models of science with philosophy thus from shelling rather than the cold mechanical and lifeless philosophy of science that dominated the british and french materialist and utilitarian schools of thought shelling embraced an organist rhizomatic and dare we say chaotic understanding of science and philosophy he was embracing gertie gertian science the science that was occurring in the studies of the german universities that he himself was educated in and became an educator within all life organically grows from an early simplicity to greater levels of complicatedness complexity and intricacy over time much like how biological and organised models of science emerging in early 19th century germany understood life through a sort of progressive evolution that was reflective of a almost proto-darwinian model life flows and moves and progresses over time it is moving towards something and this was markedly different from the british and french materialist conceptions of science which began with the whole the cosmos and sought to reduce everything down to simple atoms this was something that shelling rejected the goal of science and philosophy is to is not to reduce the complexity of life to a single beginning but to chart the movement and progression of life from its early simplicity to now its complicated complexity in time this outgrows this outgrowth of course becomes more complex with more roots taking hold as life expands over time from which subjectivity and consciousness and personality emerge shelling re-contextualizes the dialectic of the i not i through the morphological realities of biology and also through an ingenious reimagining of space and time from christian theology nature is internally dialectical one might say even paradoxical and contradictory but because the nature of nature itself is dialectical it cannot be reducible to singularity in the way that the materialist reductionists claim because it is dialectical it has complexity and plurality within it there is on one hand an infinite expansion of nature the thesis which is reacted against the antithesis by an infinite contraction of the natural the forces of nature are simultaneously moved to expansion growth and life and contraction decadence and death this results in a disequilibrium which sets off a generative teleological evolutionary byproduct leading to a new nature the synthesis that grows out of this generative disequilibrium within the very forces of nature itself the movement to self-consciousness and realization within the realm of nature is a byproduct of this generative disequilibrium the first generative principle of nature is space and time the expansive and contractive principles then take place in the realm of space and time and recapitulate a new outgrowth gravity and light with further smaller recapitulations producing chemistry and electricity etc gravity is the new outgrowth of space light is the new outgrowth of time space was the outgrowth of the force of expansion and time the outgrowth of the force of contraction this process of dialectical recapitulation continues to cycle like gertie and plant biology producing newer iterations of the natural through these recapitulations from the gravity and light recapitulation emerges organic bodies first beginning with plants then from organic bodies re their recapitulation produces animals and then the recapitulation of animals produce emergent humans the generative movement of nature culminates in the creation of the human which is the first and only life form that becomes aware of these generative processes of expansion and contraction and as such becomes self-conscious of his place in the natural realm through the emergence of self-conscious thought and reflection rooted ultimately in the generative germ of natural forces acting against one another this plays itself out even in human physiology the growth consummation frailty and death of the body libidinal or biological urges lead to expansion which are eventually curtailed by rational constructs and edifices which order eros that make life ethical life possible that's the contraction this is according to ficta according to shelling what ficta missed because ficta thought that the eradication of nature is necessary for the understanding of the self and subjectivity ficta's philosophy will ultimately produce a new solipsism because the culmination of fictus triumph is actually the victory of contraction and contraction ultimately expires in death and destruction the destruction of nature for shelling we must understand that all philosophy all life all science is in this cycle of expansion and contraction and once you understand that we can develop a philosophy that preserves nature nature itself will always go through expansion and contraction leading to new expansion new contraction which will continue add infinitum forever and ever nature's generative process of coming to self-consciousness culminates in the human being in human consciousness thus shelling is in the most traditional and proper usage of the term a humanist shelling believes the human among all the life forms generated by the natural seed of generative recapitulation is the ultimate expression of the process of nature humans are exceptional because they are we are the exception in coming to self-consciousness and understanding the very laws of nature which produced us shaolin believes that animals feel and have all the basic perceptions which allow basic sensational awareness but animals lack the ability to self-consciously reflect and come to know who they are why they are why they exist and neither can other animals come to understand all the generative laws of nature in which they dwell animals simply have in shelling's christianized language the grace to be what they are and that is it they have the grace to be what they are and nothing more but humans being the culmination of the process and the outgrowth of nature have that special image the imago dei for instance for shelling this is the principle of self-consciousness and subjectivity and personality that was so important in the philosophies of kant and ficta but unlike kant and ficta who saw this subjectivity apart from nature and indeed warring against nature shelling sees it as the ultimate expression and outgrowth of nature the human is therefore the ultimate expression of the consciousness of creation which emanates ultimately from love love according to shelling is the prime generative principle hate or sin in the theological discourse is the contractive principle this was for shelling the internal mythological truth of the christian understanding of original sin and divinization original sin is that aspect of the human which leads us to do evil which is a negation of life and therefore a contraction of the generative principle of love and expansion divinisation is that embodiment of love and the principle of self-giving which brings two self-contracting forces dying humans into propagating further expansion the generative expansive principle which leads to the creation of new life shelling who was also a theologian along with being a scientist and philosopher tied this back to his understanding of the book of genesis in which god implants into creation the generative principles of self-propagation and reproduction after one's kind as well as all of the christian commandments of love love is what brings to dying individuals together in their contraction and in that contraction the love they have for each other results in new life this is what marriage is about this is what relationships is about this is what the formation of life with a partner is about and you can see how shelling very easily utilizes christian mythological and theological ideas to express what you find in philosophical science love generates new life out of dying human beings and this process continually recapitulates itself producing more life which becomes more complex which creates higher consciousness which leads to new relationships which leads to our eventual self-reflection on the meaning of life and the generative principles of nature and where the place of love is within this entire process of self becoming shaolin grounds his philosophy in the natural because love eros is the basic creative force of all nature the spirit shelling follows a contemporary of his friedrich holderlin on this account in the larger contests of philosophy and the world as it relates to civilization sterile rationalism mechanicalism and the material is that which threatens to sever us from the truly rational which is nature which is itself rooted in the erotic and the first generative principle of all natural expansion it is here that shelling considers himself to be the true heir of kant who was much afraid of the same encroachments of the scientific and mathematical world view of anglo-french materialism and utilitarianism on subjectivity and human consciousness however by starting with the mine according to shelling kant started with the teleological end product and was still despite his opposition to the materialist reductionists cut off from the natural which would ultimately not help him to resolve the problem of our alienation and destruction of nature by beginning with nature rather than the mind and tying nature back to the mind which is transcendental self-consciousness shelling hope to show how true self-conscious subjectivity personality and the self which is the manifestation of what the truest expression of transcendental idealism is about must always be and remain grounded in and with nature and can never be understood as something separate from it mind is not the starting point consciousness is not the starting point as it was in kant and ficta the mind and consciousness subjectivity and self-consciousness are all the teleological end products of nature itself where contentficta went wrong was that they started ironically at the end and so they still allowed for the materialist scientists to argue from a beginning shelling who was attuned to this crisis therefore wanted to save subjectivism self-consciousness relational growth and transcendental idealism by not starting where kant and victor started which according to him was at the end of the entire process of philosophy but that we needed to start in the beginning which would allow us to ward off the encroachments and the dangers of scientistic materialism but also allow us to engage in the exciting movement of nature to self-consciousness thus in shelling we can see the essential biological morphological and organic reality of life even though he is concerned with subjectivity his philosophy is really rooted in a form of empiricism but not the empiricism of the french and british mechanical philosophers it is an empiricism which will give birth to subjectivity and consciousness through the expansion and contraction of nature which as it continues to play itself out over the course of space and time leading to greater complexity in life leads to the formation of human consciousness from which we begin to look back upon it all and question how it is that we've come to be the dialectic between expansion and contraction again is not an equal dialectic the disequilibrium of the two in which shelling is actually following the philosophy of science laid out by isaac newton equal and opposite reactions would cancel each other out and not lead to any new creation so here you see shelling who was a reader of newton followed newton laws but actually argued that newton has to be wrong because if equal and opposite reactions cancel each other out we would be living in a static cosmos and universe therefore the dialectic of opposing laws means that one has to be greater than the other a superiority of one needs to win out in order for the continual flow and expansion of new life and higher realities of consciousness to emerge and here shelling argues that the superiority of the expansive rather than the contractive is the reality of nature in shelling's theological imagination he argues that this is what is meant when theology teaches us about the triumph of love over hate divinization over sin because those are the theological rhetoric of the superiority of the expansive instead of the contractive the expansive principle the generative principle of nature and life must be greater than the contractive reality of nature of death and destruction because we still exist the fact that life is still here life is going on that life is getting more complex proves empirically so the triumph of the expansive over the contractive that generation that life itself must have greater weight in this dialectic because if it didn't we would be dead and we wouldn't even be able to consider these questions of life nature and self-consciousness the intelligibility of the natural world reaches fruition in the human and more specifically in the human gift of love which is the prime reality that self-consciousness manifests itself in because in loving in loving others we embody the very principle of the law of nature the law of life the generative principle from which new life can emerge and out of this gift of love to others morality is born the moral community is born relationships with others come about all of this is an outgrowth of the natural principle of generation it is in the biosphere that the generative principle of life love waits to be unleashed the world of edifice construction and industry is really the embodiment of the contractive principle and here is one of the great byproducts of shelling's philosophy the contest between culture and civilization which is also found in the philosophy of herder culture is what gives life art music relationships that is the culture of life and love the creative principle that spurs on further development civilization and its laws of restriction in its industrialization are the embodiment of the contractive principles and now we have the relationship of culture and civilization culture is the generative principle in a dialectic with civilization the contractive principle and out of this dialectic of culture and civilization a new culture will emerge and this is what shelling saw himself and the principles of the movement of german philosophy german art and german culture as being about shelling saw that in a world of civilizational death represented by the british and the french a new culture of generative life had to emerge to defeat the contracting forces of death and destruction to bring new life and new meaning into the world and this would be the task of german culture thus it is from shelling as well as with some of shelling's predecessors like herder that we begin to see the roots of german nationalism the german philosophy of their superiority compared to their european neighbors nevertheless what is most important in shelling's philosophy is that shelling begins with nature and in a very paradoxical sense ends with nature nature's becoming its movement to totality is the process of self-emergence which is culminating in human reality and self-consciousness and this is still a byproduct of nature because the laws of nature are moving nature itself to this reality of complete emergence totality in consciousness consciousness consciousness and consciousness as i develop my consciousness as you develop your consciousness as my significant other develops their consciousness as my children develop their consciousness as my parents develop their consciousness so on and so forth eventually all the consciousness emanating from individuals unites together as one and that is the principle of nature becoming itself and propagating itself nature can then begin to understand itself not through destroying itself like ficta and not through never being able to understand itself as per kant but truly being able to realize that this entire movement of nature is leading to the development of self-consciousness and the supreme mind in starting at the teleological endpoint kant and ficta were unable to truly attain the aperceptive unity cut off by the philosophies of bacon and descartes to which they were responding it is not that the spirit of kant and ficta were wrong one might go as far as even saying that shelling agrees with a certain amount of the substance of the philosophies of kant and ficta after all shelling saw himself as part of the kantian and postcatian idealistic tradition in philosophy but it was in their inability to start with nature the very beginning point of all life and philosophy that proved the emptiness and the failure of their philosophies because they started at the end they would always allow another philosophy principally the philosophy of the materialists and the reductionists to argue that we must have a beginning and thus the philosophies of kant and ficta would ultimately fail to ward off the dangers of mechanical materialistic reductionism shelling by asserting that his philosophy of natural philosophy that idealism springs from nature itself was his answer to the crisis unleashed by kantian and fiction philosophy we must begin with nature because nature truly is the beginning but when we begin to see that within nature the dialectic of the eye and not i are united in one the principle of generation and contraction leading to further complexity and the development of self-consciousness and the mind we can see the truths in kant and ficta's philosophy but we can also see where they went wrong the entire movement of nature the entire movement of space and time the entire movement of life and love itself is leading us to an absolute eye that doesn't destroy the reality of nature but is itself the ultimate expression of nature in the end then knowledge is also tied to nature for the truly self-conscious mind is that which recognizes its outgrowth from and its roots in the natural and nature those minds who cut themselves off from this reality are not truly self-conscious indeed they are the human embodiment of the force of contraction and this was the crisis in philosophical epistemology those who entrench themselves so to speak and reflect back and recognize their deep roots in biological organicism and nature are the people and the minds that are truly self-conscious and knowledgeable they possess a true understanding of how nature moves and operates and leads to self-consciousness those who would argue against this are arguing in favor of the forces of death and contraction again if the disequilibrium principle that shelling sees within the very laws and the embodiment of nature if there is a disequilibrium and the contractive forces went out we would die there would be no more human questioning and all human activity would come to an end thus in order for humanity to continue moving forward in order for consciousness to continue to grow we must come to understand that the generative principle of nature the activity of movement life and love is that which leads to our unity with others our unity with nature our unity with the world the unity of knowledge and understanding the unity of self and the world comes from our unity with nature because we ourselves are the outgrowths of nature mankind and nature nature and humanity are one and the same that is the foundational pillar of shelling's philosophy and from this knowledge of the unity of self and nature the relationships that emerge from this the duties and responsibilities that grow from this unity of self with others in which the fullest expression of myself is also found in the unity of being with another person leads to the development of life and society from its simplicity to its complexity according to shelling all of this is a result of our active participation in the generative principle of life and love and this is what the laws of nature and science the laws of the humanities and the expressions of art mythology and religion are all trying to communicate to us but as shelling saw the outgrowth of moral participation of unity of self and the world as a product of nature another great german philosopher who borrowed significantly from shelling but argued that this is not the process of nature but the process of history would soon emerge on the scene and that figure is georg wilhelm friedrich hegel who takes shelling's philosophy of nature and produces out of it a philosophy of history while johann ficta and friedrich schelling were luminaries of german idealism in their own time the most famous son of german idealism known to posterity is gorg wilhelm friedrich hegel hegel did not share the same early fame as ficta and shelling in fact victor and shelling were more famous than hegel during their lifetimes it was only after ficta and chelling had passed and indeed as hegel aged did he become a major figure and it began in its earliest stages in the middle of his life in 1807 with the publication of his phenomenology of spirit like the rest of the post-kantians hegel took the spirit of kant the battles against reductionist materialism and the problem of solipsism consciousness and subjectivity and drew upon the works of ficta and shelling to try and create an all-encompassing system of philosophy to provide total knowledge and an understanding of the total meaning of life which were denied in kant's philosophy hegel's corpus is extensive and in talking about hegel here i will be drawing and synthesizing the general arc of hegel's systematic philosophy from the phenomenology of spirit lectures on the philosophy of history and his elements of the philosophy of right which contain in their totality hegel's philosophy of history which provide the basis for his all-encompassing philosophy of consciousness subjectivity relationships total knowledge and the total meaning of life which had preoccupied ficta and shelling in many ways hegel therefore inherits the fiction and shalenian of having a moral order of duties and rights that emanate from our knowledge of others which ultimately provide the basis for moral community and the freedom entailed therein hegel goes a step further in his politicization of the movement of philosophy and the formation of law order and political structures as the manifestation of our knowledge of others and the recognition of each other not as mere duty as it is in ficta and not simply as a byproduct of nature as it is enshelling but the manifestation of our recognition of one another the formation of law order political structures and morality is itself the byproduct of history and hegel's historicization of philosophy his creation of a philosophy of history is his everlasting contribution to german idealism thereby marrying philosophy and history with epistemology and morality understanding hegel is difficult due to his verbose style however once you're able to deconstruct hegel's language most of what he actually says is somewhat straightforward and easy to grasp in the second section of his preface of the phenomenology of spirit hegel gives his easiest and most straightforward analogy to his philosophical and historical vision he tells the story of the plant blood of the plant bud blossoming to yield fruit it begins as a seed it becomes roots and stem and eventually emerging with a bud the bud blossoms into a flower and the flower is pollinated and then brings forth fruit it is only at the end of this process as the seed became a plant which eventually bore fruit that we can know what the entire process of necessary growth or unfolding entailed and here you should also be able to see how hegel is drawing on the philosophy of shelling hegel's philosophical system is anti-reductionist and explicitly challenging in nature in fact the phenomenology structure deliberately mirrors that of shelling's system of transcendental idealism it considers the whole picture as it were and understands philosophy as the task of engaging with what hegel calls purposive activity all activity all life has a purpose a telos something that it is moving toward from guiding tendency into activity to aims and results the task of philosophy according to hegel is to penetrate the phenomenon of activity to understand the guiding tendencies unfolding development to results and this is what hegel calls the zakazelpst the real issue that all philosophy is concerned with this means however as hegel said at the end of the preface of the philosophy of right philosophy only comes to know the reality of the world at the close of its unfolding development philosophy in his famous phrase and imagery only takes flight at the coming of the shades of dusk one should immediately see from one of the few analogies that hegel uses which is comprehensible to any reader is how his system of philosophy is therefore very much part of the post cantian tradition of idealism he is dealing with how do we have total knowledge and what is drawn from total knowledge just as ficta and shelling were where kant would have us cut off from the phenomenological and numeral worlds at say the blossoming of the flower in hegel's analogy hegel sees the movement of the phenomenological as revealing the numeral the thing in itself at the very end of the process if we are continuing to keep with the impetus of kantian language dynamics and philosophy the numeral the thing in itself is revealed at the end of the development process through the realization of the transcendental idea that philosophy itself was always moving toward however hegel is anti-reductionist because to reduce the phenomenon back to its origin again to use his imagery and his analogy if we are to go back to the seed and try to reduce everything back to its beginning seed we have clearly misunderstood what we are observing this is the problem of the materialist reductionists they go back to the origin rather than embracing the movement of life to its teleological process for hegel understanding the beginning is only important in order to get to the end point to understand what everything was about you don't say when you picked the fruit that it was all about the seed rather the purpose of the seed was to provide the fruit and understanding that is to focus on the guiding tendency when you decide to reduce all phenomenon to its development is to focus on what hegel calls the lifeless corpse that has left the guiding tendency behind and here for those who might know say the philosophy of marx marxism communism etc you can see why the emphasis is on the guiding laws of history in hegelian philosophy understanding the guiding tendency is what hegelian holism in philosophy is all about this is why hegel asserts the truth is the whole only at the end stage do we understand the truth of the whole by definition the absolute is the result and the realized manifested in the world through the activity of spirit is what we begin to understand hence the rational is real and the real is rational our understanding of rationality emerges at the end of it all and it's only at the end that we can say it is in its most real form hegel may be an idealist but the functional practical manifestation of his philosophy is empirical just like it is with the philosophy of friedrich schelling and to some degree even with ficta this is something that's important to understand about the german idealist tradition that even though they are idealists that they are concerned with subjectivity and consciousness the way in which their philosophy is actually manifested is not in the platonic realm of ideas but here on earth with real world experience it is a philosophy concerned with incarnate or embodied living in the corporeal world in which we exist it is a philosophy of the real of thought and action once again united in that a perceptive unity instead of separated mind and body thought and action are all one in hegel because they are united in their movement toward that guiding tendency to the whole the unfolding of truth and its incarnate manifestation in the world is the purpose of activity that reason is always aiming for hegel maintains a sense of classical ontological teleology but one that is in the process of becoming rather than one that is in a fixed state of nature as a given this is what separates hegelian ontology and teleology from classical ontology and teleology which posits more of a fixed nature for hegel nature is in the process of becoming and once again you should be able to see how he is drawing on the philosophy of shelling he bridges being and non-being becoming and fixity together as one and again this is part of the impetus of the appreceptive unity in german idealist philosophy for in a sense man has a fixed state but that is what he is unfolding to realize man's nature is that which all life and all activity is aiming to realize in that sense man does have an ideal nature in the platonic sense but it is not something that we are inherently born with it is something that we are born to become thus we begin in an imperfect state but we are moving towards some kind of perfection and totality and wholeness in hegel's philosophy let us return to hegel's image of the plant bud becoming flower and producing fruit hegel asserts that primordial man like the seed has a fixed teleological end he has a t-loss he has a destiny primordial man has not yet blossomed or produced that end of being however as such man is in a state of becoming the unfolding movement to his teleological constitution like the seed becoming bud flower and eventually producing fruit man develops to his teleological end just as the seed moves and eventually develops to its teleological end the fruit man has nature but that nature is not yet manifested in its totality in the world hegel's philosophical vision in some sense as so many scholars have always said is a temporalized re-contextual re-contextualization of christian heavenly ideas but it is not a heaven that we are moving toward out of this world it is a heaven that is coming into this world the total vision of man is that which is to come but the becoming is going to occur in this world and this life and that which is to come is ultimately rooted in ethical life and in a community with others because it is through our subjectivity and the rise of our consciousness that we recognize others form relationships with others enter a community with others bound together in and by love this unfolding to rooted ethical life is what hegel calls history history and ethical life in hegel are one and the same hegel's philosophy of history then establishes a comprehensive and political reading of the movement of history which makes him a powerful philosopher relevant to political philosophy as much as to metaphysics and epistemology history for hegel is essentially philosophical but the philosophical is ethical and political history pertains to human to human relationships and human to human relationships are by definition political history also pertains to the face to face encounter subject to subject rather than object to object history is about us it's about humans for only philosophy the queen of the sciences can understand the totality of human history the human condition and human life history is therefore the movement of the spirit and its manifestation in space and time to its purposive end the end being rooted in ethical life through bonds and duties and obligations to one another in a recognized ethical city kite community in history the spirit manifests itself as being in itself being for itself and most importantly for hegel which is usually always lost in the study of hegelian philosophy being for us the history and the movement of spirit is for us while there is an unmistakable collective title wave in hegel's philosophy which threatens to sink and overwhelm the individual who is not that important in the totalizing unfolding of history hegel's philosophy also has an unmistakable individualistic element to it that often gets buried by the critics of hegel i do in fact matter as an individual and spirit manifests itself for me hegel's eye the particular i is connected but it is also individuated there is no contradiction in hegel because hegel doesn't pit the two together but sees connectivity and individuation as existing in the same being of the eye let's use this simple idea and notion that many of us are probably familiar with in order to truly be me myself i am never detached from others to be fully i is to be in a relationship with another to be fully you is to recognize who your parents are who your siblings are who your friends are who your community is the people that you serve the people that you love to be fully you is to never be cut off as an isolated atom that is the lie of the liberal philosophers of the enlightenment hobbes lock spinoza etc who offer a truncated atomized and isolated notion of the self contrary to all of that hegel is asserting you become fully you when you encounter others and you absorb their love within your love and your being your knowledge and the manifestation of knowledge is contingent upon knowing other people to be fully you to be fully yourself is to be connected and individuated at the same time the manifestation of the spirit through determinacy is something concrete and it invites human participation it invites my individual participation it invites your individual participation in invites another person's individual participation but when we all begin to participate as individuals our individual participation unites as a participat as a participation in the collective the collective and the individual are one and the same and again you should see how that spirit of a perceptive unity is contained in this determinancy of the spirit's manifestation in history which invites our participation by participating in the movement of history in the movement of consciousness in the recognition of others we achieve the appreceptive unity spirit's determinacy manifests itself in numerous ways art literature law religion economy social structures states and communities relations with others friends and families etc hegel would not be a proponent for instance of the idea that i am spiritual but not religious because that is to separate yourself and to misunderstand what the spirit is all about because it's all about participating with others coming into a community embracing and enhancing all the manifestations that had previously come before your moment in time you can improve art you can improve on literature you can improve on law you can improve on religion you can improve on economy you can improve your social structures you can improve your states and communities you can improve your relationship with others etc and in doing so you increase consciousness and you also increase your individuality you become more of a human being by what you do and what you engage in in life thus the movement of hegel's understanding of the spirit in history is this purpose of community and purposive participation in that community hegel's philosophical movement is not a single plant blossoming to yield fruit but many plants blossoming to yield fruit like an organic living organism a giant network of interconnected roots and foliage that nourish each other and through this collective organic entity grows into a flourishing organic entity organic wholeness the incarnate determinancy is the temporalization of the beatific vision in this world rather than in some world far beyond this world and our lives within it literally manifests the world to come or as hegel explicitly says himself the divine idea realized on earth the most famous section of the phenomenology the sections on lordship and bondage or master slave is the sketched out playing of the essence of hegel's philosophy the entirety of the lordship bondsmen section can be summed up as the drive for recognition the movement of individual to unite with individual in moral relationship and community and in doing so we increase our consciousness of each other in this meeting of two not yet having become one there is a struggle to the death in which the competing forces try to exercise dominion and domination over the other this ends in several ways either a defeats b or vice versa both a and b defeat each other a subdues b or vice versa or teleologically but very rarely in historical practice a and b mutually recognize each other and come together this mutual recognition of each other is what the spirit is aiming for but history as we know is a messy thing and it often takes a lot of time before this mutual recognition grows mutual recognition however will occur through conflict it is hegel's lordship bondsman dialectic that famous famously influenced karl marx because hegel asserts the increase of consciousness comes from purposive activity it is the bondsman who grows in consciousness through his purpose of work while the lord grows lazy and doesn't increase his consciousness because he is in a place of security he has walled himself off from the outside world he has become comfortable in his isolation rather than engage in the purpose of relationship with others the bondsman might be an extension of the lord's arm so to speak but he is the one who in doing purpose of work in the world and with others comes to have a greater awareness of the world and his relationship with others and with his lord and this begins to lead to an unsettling place the bondsman exists for others he exists for the lord he exists for his fellow bondsmen and he exists for the world of materials he works with in sum the bondsman exists for others while the lord exists for himself and the bondsman eventually recognizes this the bondsman realizes that he exists in relationship with everything else and that he will enhance himself and indeed his power by coming into relationship with others this ensures the bondsman's growth in consciousness and power over time which the lord will eventually recognize as the bondsman grows in power this is the irony of the lord bondsman dialectic it is the lord who recognizes the bondsman and in this recognition loses his grip on power over the bondsmen until over time the lord recognizes the bondsman as an equal thus emerges the spirit of mutual recognition and equality and this is what the spirit aims for and this movement to mutual recognition and equality is ultimately inevitable because this is the full recognition of subject and subject not subject and object in this achievement the transcendental self which was previously unknowable to us in kant's philosophy is now knowable to us in hegel's philosophy just as it was in fictas and shellings and hopefully you can also see how this spirit of consciousness and the dialectic of lordsmen and bondsmen influence mark's understanding of the inevitable triumph of the proletariat in this growth to recognition of each other emerges duties and obligations to each other this is manifested through the determinacy of community and law community in latin means to communicate we often forget this it is in other words understanding a community can only be a community if it has a mutual understanding of itself and everyone who is part of it a community in which people do not trust and understand each other is not an actual community for hegel as with the rest of the germans this means that community is rooted in language culture and traditions those who share a same language the same culture and the same tradition will fuse together as one multiplicity becoming united whereby understanding and the duties and obligations that come with understanding and recognition of one another now manifest themselves the community continues through this recognition and understanding of who we are and the duties and obligations we have to one another the german idealist tradition in this regard is deeply hermetic spiritual and religious because it is all about a dimension of interior character interior personality we must come to recognize who we are why we are here why we have relationships with others and we must persevere and manifest those purposes in life in the philosophy of right hegel's crystal clear portrait of the purposive activity of spirit in the political sphere is through the movement of individuals into families then communities then to a constitutional state which is the ultimate manifestation of the spirit the manifestation of the state is in essence just the enlargement of the family to its ultimate end for civil community and civil society as hegel says is an extension of the original family by which all politia all politics is founded because politics is about having relationships with others and the first manifestation of relationships to others is in a family parents have responsibilities and duties to their children but before that before they have children individuals who are united in love have duties and responsibilities to each other as a significant other or as a spouse and from the duties and obligations that two lovers have to each other the family is born in this unfolding of spirit into manifested community there are four archetypes that hegel outlines that we must know the hero the victim the person and the citizen the hero is the founder of states and is the unwitting embodiment of the spirit's purposive activity the person is the so-called moral individual who seeks to help others but ultimately doesn't have a home the person though moral is unrooted and ultimately detached thus the moral individual in being unrooted and detached the person is inferior to the ultimate culmination of the purposive activity of the spirit which is the citizen to be a citizen is to be the most determinate the most concrete and the most particularly manifested individual in the world because when you're a citizen you're actually more than an individual by being a citizen you belong to others you have responsibilities and duties to the community that you belong that is how you become a citizen the citizen is the byproduct of the purposive activity of the spirit and the citizen realizes this the citizen is the person who lives both for himself but for others in an interconnected web of relationships this is what separates the citizen from the person the citizen recognizes that he has duties and responsibilities to others to propagate the continuation of the community this is why the citizen is willing to lay down his life for others the victim by contrast is the lowest person in history because the victim is someone that history that purposive activity has completely passed over the victim is not the brutalized individual of the lust for domination but the individual who has no reflective and consciousable knowledge of the purposive activity of the spirit of reason of history of the real the victim is basically and we should be able to see this today because many of us are in fact victims the atomized hedonist who lives only for himself and bodily comfort apart from the world of relations and relationships the victim is the person who doesn't recognize that life is about relationships the victim is the person who purely lives for himself and cuts himself off from others even the person though not a citizen though the person doesn't want to embrace all the duties and obligations that the citizen does at least the person still understands that there is a certain moral reality to the world in which they try to help others the victim doesn't even do that the victim lives only for himself or herself and that is why the victim is a victim they are a victim of history they do not even know what the purpose of history is about it is here that there is an enduring paradox of hegel's end of history that famous phrase that we often speak of today in the culmination of citizenship and the nation state we see the end of purposive activity whereby philosophy can now unlock and understand what the whole story was about but rather than something dreary hegel leaves us with something still progressive and optimistic and again here you see the essential individuatedness within the spirit of relationships and the collective it is up to us as individuals to carry on the purpose of activity of the spirit because it has manifested itself for us and in doing so we continually build and grow new relationships with other people this leaves us with the same end as victa and shelling earlier a community of love bound by rights duties and obligations to each other which can only stand if we discharge our duties and obligations to one another in the determinate fashion that the spirit has bequeathed to us and this was the movement of history from the unconscious individual separated and atomized from the world to the conscious eye integrated and networked in a grand web of subject-to-subject relationships in an ethical community of love where we truly live as people with hearts and minds united together as one in this ethical community we find our fulfillment in the rights and duties dedicated to others to spouse to family to friends to civil society and to the state to the spouse i have duties of love and sacrifice thus i have love and sacrifice and duties for another to the family i have duties of love and sacrifice to the town and civil society in which i live and make my home i also have duties of love and sacrifice to the purpose of activity of the town and everything that comprises the life activity of the town and of course this is the same for the state i have duties of love and sacrifice patriotism and nationalism to the whole community that we are all united in as citizens these orders of dutiful love and sacrifice constitute the heart of the highest possible life according to hegel it is sitly kite manifested in its highest consciousable reality the recognition that in order for these relationships of love to perpetuate into eternity forever and ever the end of history i must always be engaged in activity thus again the paradox of hegel's end of history the purpose of activity of spirit may end in its manifestation of determinancy we have entered into family we have entered into friendships we have entered into a community etc but the purpose of activity always remains for we as individuals must always be engaged in the activity of life in carrying out our duties our love our relationships with others we carry forward the goods of the past into tomorrow we never eradicate our duties of love and sacrifice to one another to the people we know to those we love to our family to our community we always engage in activity and when we always engage in activity in relationship with others we show for hegel that we have understood what the whole arc of philosophy and history is about hegel's end of history is a networked community that recognizes each other's rights but a community that also knows that these rights depend on our duties and obligations to each other which can only be sustained through the indwelling of neighborly love which compels us to activity to engage action in life hegel's end of history is then not the end of purpose of activity but the perpetual recapitulation of purposive activity the generative principle in shelling's philosophy that the spirit has given us and depends on us to maintain in our purpose of participation in that community of love bound by rights and duties and obligation history very much continues in the expressions of our love in the communities and the determinate institutions the spirit has bequeathed to us for our moral joy in this life and that according to hegel is what ultimately resolves the problem of reductionism and solipsism by always engaging in a life of relationships based on the knowledge of others we recognize ourselves we recognize others we recognize that our well-being and their well-being are all united together as one that i flourish and have freedom so long as another person has freedom and is also flourishing that we are all in it together that the highest reality of love that the highest reality of joy that the highest reality of freedom is not as an individual but it is through a conscious unity with a significant other as well as many others who make up the larger community and this is what history and philosophy is all about we do not go back and look at the beginning as the reductionists do we embrace a life of activity and spirit and we realize what life is all about for hegel life is all about that philosophy of history in which my individual joy my individual flourishing my individual happiness my individual exceptionalism and understanding of myself is tied to others i flourish best when another person flourishes best i love most when someone else loves me and vice versa thus in hegel his philosophy of history rather than nature or science or a mere relationship with another achieves that a perceptive unity because if we go back to kant that is what german idealism was fundamentally all about we moved from kant to ficta from ficta to shelling and in this movement we have kant dealing with epistemology as the means by which we solve the problem you go to ficta who says epistemology ultimately may not resolve the solipsistic dilemma we have to have a relationship with another person so victor's resolution was understanding relationships but in doing so victor's philosophy portended the possible eradication and destruction of nature to which shelling enters the scene and gives us a philosophy of nature in which subject and object are one because they are the byproduct of nature and hegel stood at the end of it all he brings about the conclusion of the kantian spirit of philosophy by saying that it is not just epistemology and knowledge it is not just about relationships with others it is not just about a science of nature it is in fact the entire movement of history which includes knowledge which includes science which includes nature which includes relationships in which all are united as one through the purposive activity of spirit and when we come to know this when we come to know that our entire well-being and our very nature as a human being is in relationship with others and the world in nature in knowledge we can live a life of true joy happiness and freedom