Reading Notes: October 16th, 2024

“Reason is to be examined, but how? It is to be rationally examined, to be known; this is, however, only possible by means of rational thought; it is impossible in any other way, and consequently a demand is made which cancels itself. If we are not to begin philosophical speculation without having attained rationally to a knowledge of reason, no beginning can be made at all, for in getting to know anything in the philosophical sense, we comprehend it rationally; we are, it seems, to give up attempting this, since the very thing we have to do is first of all to know reason. This is just the demand which was made by that Gascon who would not go into the water until he could swim. It is impossible to make any preliminary examination of rational activity without being rational.” (Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 53)

“I form ideas, I have perceptions, and here there is a certain definite content, as, for instance, this house, and so on. They are my perceptions, they present themselves to me. I could not, however, present them to myself if I did not grasp this particular content in myself, and if I had not posited it in a simple, ideal manner in myself. Ideality means that this definite external existence, these conditions of space, of time, and matter, this separateness of parts, is done away with in something higher; in that I know this external existence, these forms of it are not ideas which are mutually exclusive, but are comprehended, grasped together in me in a simple manner.” (Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 84)

“What was there before this time?—[in] the other of time (not another time, but eternity, the thought of time)? In this, the question [itself] is suspended (aufgehoben), since it refers to another time. But in this way, eternity itself is in time, it is a “before” of time. Thus it is itself a past, it was, was absolutely, is no longer. Time is the pure concept—the intuited (angeschaute) empty self in its movement, like space in its rest. Before there is a filled time, time is nothing. Its fulfilment is that which is actual, returned into itself out of empty time. Its view of itself is what time is—the nonobjective. But if we speak of [a time] “before” the world, of time without something to fill it, [we already have] the thought of time, thinking itself, reflected in itself. It is necessary to go beyond this time, every period – but into the thought of time. The former [i.e., speaking about what was “before” the world] is the bad infinity, that never arrives at the thought from which it goes forward.” (Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit, Pt. III, C.)

“Earlier, Hegel establishes that a being is determinate in not being another. Thus, it appears to have its being for another. But Hegel goes on to contrast this sort of finite being, which is merely the negation of another, to one which possesses its determinate character in virtue of its internal self-differentiation. In other words, rather than being what it is merely in contrast to others, it is what it is in virtue of contrasts (or distinctions) within itself. Being-for-self is ‘the infinite determinacy that contains distinction within itself as sublated’….In being-for-self, Hegel is anticipating…the Concept, or concrete universal—or, more simply, the whole: a being which is absolute because it subsumes all finite determinations within itself, and thus does not derive its being from its opposition to anything outside itself.” (Magee, The Hegel Dictionary, 46-47)