Disclaimer: English Kinda Thing

The sole purpose of the "English Kinda Thing" is to document my attempts to correct my own mistakes in standard English usage and to share the resources I find. In no way do I attempt to teach nobody English through these blurbs--just as I intend not to teach nobody to be a neurotic and psychotic handicap in Ratology Reloaded or Down with Meds! :-)

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Hegel (1998). Preface (A. V. Miller, Trans.) Phenomenology of Spirit

Following are some quotes that resonate with me in the Preface of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Please note that these are only quotes that resonate with me during the reading process and doesn't represent the author's concluding thesis.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1998). Preface (A. V. Miller, Trans.) Phenomenology of Spirit (pp. 1-45): Motilal Banarsidass.


"To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all." (p. 3)

"The power of Spirit is only as great as its expression, its depth only as deep as it dares to spread out and lose itself in its exposition." (p. 6)
So established the notion of limited my words.

"When we wish to see an oak with its massive trunk and spreading branches and foliage, we are not content to be shown an acorn instead." (p. 7)
Guess there is an legit reason why I went all the way into the psychiatric ward on Valentine's Day, 2008.

"As for content ... [they] appropriate a lot of already familiar and well-ordered material; by focusing on rare and exotic instance they gave the impression that they have hold of everything else which scientific knowledge had already embraced in its scope, and that they are also in command of such material as is as yet unordered.   It thus appears that everything has been subjected to the absolute Idea, which therefore seems to be cognized in everything and to have matured into an expanded science." (P. 8)

"The Idea, which is of course true enough on its own account, remains in effect always in its primitive condition, if its development involves nothing more than this sort of repetition of the same formula .... [This] is no more than the fulfillment of what is needed, i.e. a self-originating, self differentiating wealth of shapes, than any arbitrary insights into the content. Rather it is a monochromatic formalism which only arrives at the differentiation of its material since this has been already provided and is by now familiar." (P. 8-9)
This this why it's the high time for my book to stop since I am simply reading things the same way.

"[This] formalism maintains that such monotorny and abstract universality are the Absolute, and we are assured that dissatisfaction with it indicates the inability to master the absolute standpoint and to keep hold of it." (p. 9)
For me, it's simply, given the nature of redundant notions, what's the point of seeing more of my own viewpoint. Over-saturated already.

"Dealing with something from the perspective of the Absolute consists merely in declaring that, although one has been speaking of it just now as something definite, yet in the Absolute, the A=A, there is nothing of the kind, for there all is one. To pit this single insight, that in the Absolute everything is the same, against the full body of articulated cognition, which at least seeks and demands such fulfillment, to palm off its Absolute as the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black--this is cognition naively reduced to vacuity." (P. 9)
With all due respect, Mr. Hegel, this is why I am reading this preface of yours in this book, where you stated "the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black."
Absolutely or not... over-saturated still. Make no mistake--it's a good thing I have over-saturated what I can afford though it's the reality that I have over-saturated what I can afford.

"[a] so-called basic proposition or principle of philosophy, if true, is also false, just because it is only a principle. It is, therefore, easy to refute it. The refutation consists in pointing out its defect; and it is defective because it is only the universal or principle, is only the beginning. If the refutation is thorough, it is derived and developed from the principle itself .... The refutation would, therefore, properly consist in the further development of the principle, and in thus remedying the defectiveness...." (p. 13)
Thanks, Mr. Hegel. Albeit with the defective nature of the model in my 11-copy book and although nothing universal since applicable to me's, myselves, and I's, my crazy talk does seem to serve some purpose.

"Consciousness knows and comprehends only what falls within its experience; for what is contained in this is nothing but spiritual substance and this, too, as object of the self." (p. 21)
More argument to support my argument that the tactics and model is for me's, myselves, and I's only.

"Truth is its own self-movement, whereas the method just described is the mode of cognition that remains external to its material." (p. 28)
Good point to justify why after all these years, I still don't know Jack about psychosis--since the truth, as per my understanding so far, is but hanging out there. A good excuse, blame it on the (scientific) method Mr. Hegel had described? 8-O

"It is for this reason unnecessary to clothe the content in an external [logical] formalism; the content is in its very nature the transition into such formalism, but a formalism which ceases to be external, since the form is the innate development of the concrete content itself." (p. 34-35)
This is why I have such difficulties editing my own writing in the Ratology domain. To be honest, I think all texts should simply be unedited... like if anyone wants to read DWM, he or she should simply go to the original source-unabridged and unedited.


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