Mid-Semester Notes and Questions

Haniel Barazarte
Hegel

● Note: I'm a compulsive note-taker, so my notes are disorganized and scattered

throughout a notebook. Given this, it's not feasible to share the full 50 to 60 pages of
notes. However, I can show you my notebook if you want to verify this. What you'll
see here are just brief summaries (plus questions, that are also reflections) of the
points that interest me most, typically a paragraph or two. If you're not satisfied with
this approach, I can certainly adjust it for our final evaluation.

First Week

Readings: Pinkard, Hegel. A Biography et Hegel, “Who thinks abstractly?”

In the essay “Who Thinks Abstractly?”, Hegel seems to satirize those who break apart
what initially grew together, which he views as indicative of incomplete knowledge. For
Hegel, this is to “think abstractly,” embedding a negative valence in the term. Yet, Hegel
does not dismiss abstraction entirely, perhaps seeing it as an initial stage of thought. For
instance, the champion of the essay is the Old Lady, who begins with abstraction (the
beheaded man), representing the destruction of the whole, and then achieves a
reconciliation between the skull and the spirit, thereby perceiving the whole within the
part.

Question: What is the relationship between Hegel and Jacobinism? What was German
Jacobinism at the time? Pinkard mentions that Hegel was part of a pro-French,
revolutionary group during his youth, and references the story of the “freedom tree.” Was
Hegel a Jacobin in his youth, perhaps influenced by the pietist tradition of transforming
the world, as Pinkard suggests? Did he change later on?
Second Week

Readings: Karl Popper, What is Dialectics? et Hegel, Minor Logic (Preface) et

McGowan “Emancipation after Hegel” (ch1) et Maybee “Hegel's Dialectics”

It seems that Hegel, alongside Plato (and in contrast to both Aristotle and Kant),
conceives of dialectics within the realm of being, not exclusively within that of thought.
Of course, in Hegel, there is no strict distinction between thought and the world: the
exterior is interior, and vice versa. For Hegel, dialectics deals with contradictions. Here,
the German philosopher follows the traditional notion of dialectics—let’s recall that for
Plato, the inventor of dialectics was Zeno, with his (sophistic) demonstration of the
contradictions of movement. Later, in the Sophist, Plato uses dialectics to differentiate
genus from species: contradiction is differentiation (negative determination, i.e.,
mediation). Hegel thus incorporates both of these conceptions of
dialectics—contradiction and differentiation—into his definition of dialectics, which, in
Part I of the Encyclopedia, corresponds to "negative reason": the negativity
(contradiction) that disrupts the fixity of understanding.

Question: Some authors seem intent on promoting a "postmodern" interpretation of

Hegel—a Hegelianism without progress, teleology, or the suspension and elevation of
contradictions. They aim to strip Hegel of all traces of bourgeois optimism, while
paradoxically attributing this to Hegel himself! I find this interpretation both annoying
and distasteful—not because I have anything against postmodernism, but because it feels
like a misreading of Hegel. It’s clear that dialectics, for Hegel, involves a progression that
both negates and incorporates previous contradictions. So, why do some authors insist on
making Hegel a non-bourgeois thinker?
Third Week

Readings: Hegel's Phenomenology: Sensuous Certitude, Understanding, Dissemblance,

and The Beautiful Soul

These chapters describe the movements of consciousness when it is not yet able to
recognize itself as its own object (i.e., self-consciousness). Each stage entails a certain
duplication (and thus a contradiction) in which consciousness finds the “true” in anything
that is not itself. First, in Sensuous Certainty, the duplication occurs in the distinction
between "you" and "this." Then, in Perception, it arises between "you" and the thing (its
qualities). In Understanding, the distinction takes place between "you" and the inner
world of phenomena (laws). Only when consciousness sees itself, internally—when it
sees itself in the mirror—can it achieve the separation of the contradiction inherent in
Understanding. This contradiction is ultimately overcome by self-consciousness.

My question concerns the relationship between the immediate and the mediated. I'm
particularly curious about this because, in Hegel, the immediate initially appears as a pure
yet impoverished truth. The lowest stage of truth manifests in the immediacy of sensuous
certitude: we recognize the book as a "this" that exists in a "hic et nunc," and that’s it.
However, through the processes of mediation—from certitude to perception to
understanding and culminating in self-consciousness—there seems to be a return to the
immediate, but now as an immediate that has been mediated. This is exemplified in the
certainty of self-consciousness, where consciousness becomes certain of itself. The
immediate mediated thus emerges as a third term that explains the movements of
concepts and their actualization. This is particularly evident in the Beautiful Soul, whose
primary problem is an incapacity for ethical action, which leads them towards evil,
hypocrisy, and accusations; they are unable to engage with the world in an immediate
way. Do you think this idea is plausible, Professor Magno?
Fourth Week

Readings: Phenomenology: Self-Consciousness et Kojéve “Commentary to Reading

Hegel”

As mentioned earlier, self-consciousness arises from the contradiction that occurs in

understanding, the third stage of consciousness before it becomes self-consciousness.
This contradiction emerges because, in understanding, there is a rupture between
consciousness and the inner world of phenomena, where consciousness posits truth. For
Hegel, this creates a subject-object division—another moment in which consciousness
places truth outside of itself. Self-consciousness then occurs when consciousness finds
truth within itself, realizing that consciousness is its own object, i.e., self-consciousness.

The movements do not end here; in fact, I would argue that at this point, there is a
transition from epistemology to history/anthropology. The realization of consciousness as
both object and subject leads to a new development: that of desire and recognition. Once
self-consciousness realizes that truth lies within itself, it begins to see the external world
as void. In response, self-consciousness seeks to fill this void by positing life—this is
where desire comes into play. Self-consciousness now becomes a consumer, a consumer
of life, but this presents a problem: desire cannot fulfill itself in isolation. It needs
something else to consume, and to truly fulfill itself, it must encounter another
self-consciousness—another desire (since desire is self-consciousness). This is where
recognition enters the picture. To satisfy its never-ending desire, self-consciousness must
begin to desire the desire of the other. Recognition, then, is essentially the desire of
desire.

Question: There is a significant shift in the Phenomenology when Hegel moves from
Consciousness to Self-Consciousness. In my view, this shift marks a transition from
questions of epistemology/gnoseology (the object-subject relation) to questions of history
and, if you will, anthropology. My question concerns this abrupt and forceful shift: what
is the reason, within the text, for this jump from knowledge to history and human
society? My answer is that it is tied to the concept of recognition.
Fifth Week

Readings: Phenomenology: Preface et Science of Logic: 1.1.1 et Book 1, ch2

The Phenomenology serves as a propaedeutic to the Science of Logic, positioning Hegel’s

Logic as his "first philosophy," or what can be considered his "ontology." It begins with
pure being—indeterminate being—which, for Hegel, is identical to pure nothing, as it
represents the simplest and most unmediated concept. Being is the true starting point of
Hegel's philosophy, and the presupposition of self-consciousness is not an effective one,
since being, in its purest form, exists by itself.

Inherently, being presupposes nothing, its negation. The third term that mediates these
two contradictory terms is becoming, which encompasses both being and nothing without
being reducible to either. This is a quintessential example of sublation. This is essentially
what I have gathered from the first chapter of the Logic.

Question: I want to raise a question regarding Hegel's system as a whole: what exactly is
the relationship between the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic? Hegel claims that
the Science of Logic presupposes the Phenomenology, as Self-consciousness in the
Science of Logic is already a given. However, Being—the first concept Hegel analyzes in
the Science—is the most purely immediate, presupposing absolutely nothing. My
interpretation is that the Phenomenology serves merely as a propaedeutic for the
"ontology" of the Science, and the continuity between the two works should be seen as
relatively weak.
Sixth Week

In my view, a useful lens through which to interpret the tribulations of 19th-century

German philosophy is the relationship between theory and action (praxis). Arguably, the
central conflict that Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte had with Kant was based on this very
issue: the purported Kantian failure to unite his “metaphysics,” so to speak, with his
practical philosophy. Hegel’s criticism of Kant in the Phenomenology hinges on this
point, particularly that the “Kantian subject” reaches an impasse in terms of action by
separating duty from the self.

However, this critique extends further. The opposition posed by the Young Hegelians to
Hegel can also be understood through this framework. For the Young Hegelians,
self-consciousness is seen as already absolute—a creative-critical force in conflict with
the world. Such a stance would be inadmissible for Hegel, as failing to reconcile
philosophy with the socio-political world, or with the self, would indicate an incomplete
and underdeveloped self-consciousness. To Hegel, this would diminish the notion of
absolute spirit. For the Young Hegelians, however, this was an admission of Hegel’s
conservatism, seen as a defense of an established order or a suspension of critique.

Later, Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach is directly tied to the question of theory and praxis. I
believe Löwith highlights this connection, which accounts for the explanatory power of
his text.

Question: Did Hegel ever respond to the criticisms of his students? It seems Kant did, at
least in reference to Fichte, through letters. I’m curious about this. Furthermore, what
were the effects of the Hegelian Right? It seems this topic remains under-discussed
compared to the "Left Hegelians."