HCJ - Notes on Hegel and Schopenhauer

HEGEL

• Logic and Metaphysics are the same
• Reality is self-contradicting
• Parimenides - The One is spherical
• Sphere suggests boundaries and that more exists beyond them
• To suppose that the universe is spherical is to say that there's more beyond it, although the universe is all encompassing. Contradictory.
• Mr. A is an uncle is reality. Can't say that Universe is an uncle as an uncle is someone with a nephew. Can't say that Mr. A being an uncle is all of reality as the universe is not an uncle.
• 'The Absolute is pure being' - we assume that it just is without any qualities being given to it
• 'The Absolute is nothing' - The union of being and not being...'The Absolute is Becoming' - There has to be something that it becomes. Views of reality develop to correct everything that we assumed was right from undue abstraction, by taking something finite and limited as if it were a hole. Like saying that a polo is a full mint, even though it has a hole.
• Self-Knowledge
• Starts with sense perception - Awareness of the object
• Through criticism of the senses it becomes subjective.
• Sub-conscious - Subject and object are no longer distinct.
• 'Reason is the conscious certainty of being all reality.'
• The separate person may not be real but his participation in reality makes him so.
• More rational - Participation increased
• The Absolute Idea
• Similar to Aristotle's god
• Thought thinking about itself - Absolute cannot think of anything but itself as it is everything
• Pur thought thinking about pure thought - All god does all day anyway.
• 'The unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself.'
• Time process
• Less to more perfect - Getting better with time (Logical & Ethical)
• Historical development of The Spirit
• The Orientals - 'One' is free
• Greeks and Romans - 'Some' are free
• Germans - 'All' are free
• Shows development of freedom
• Freedom
• Democracy - Some are free
• Despotism - One is free
• Monarchy - All are free
• Definition of freedom according to Hegel - No freedom without law, freedom means to obey the law
• America is the land of the future
• Anything important needs a war
• No state in America at this point as there's no divide between rich and poor.
• Political philosophy
• Glorification of the State
• Reformation
• 'The state is actually existing realised moral life.'
• Possess spirituality through the state
• Philosophy of Law
• State is the reality of moral idea
• The state is rational in and for itself
• Individual wouldn't be a member of the state if it's laws existed just for him
• As it is the objective spirit, individuals have objectivity, truth and morality in so far as they are members of the state
• Each state is an individual and individual
• War is good as we take seriously the vanity of temporal goods and things

SCHOPENHAUER

• Will is wicked and has no fixed end
• Suffering is essential to all life and increased by knowledge
• Pursue futile ends - Soap bubble, blow it nice and big yet we know it'll burst
• No such thing as happiness
• Unfulfilled wishes only bring pain
• Less we exercise will the less we suffer
• Good man will go against nature and will
• Practise chastity
• Voluntary poverty
• Fasting
• Self-torture
• Satan drives will, NOT God
• Will is superior to knowledge