A few clips of Bertrand Russell discussing Hegel and his journey away from the Hegelian commitments of his early years. #Philosophy #BertrandRussell #Hegel
It should be noted that Russell wasn't trying to explain Hegel or Hegelianism here or anything. This is just his response to having been asked what, if anything, he thought he had gotten wrong in philosophy in the past, and that's when he begins to say that he used to be a Hegelian but that he now thinks it is rubbish (nearly every professional philosopher thought that Hegel was rubbish at this time, so that should hardly be surprising). But putting all that aside, he still doesn't, as far as I can tell, say anything false about Hegel or Hegelianism...
Hegel isn’t a monist like Russell portrays him here, in fact Hegel’s famous “Night when all cows are black” remark is making fun of monism. Nor does Hegel think things are exhaustively determined by their relations. The second two books of his Logic - ‘Essence’ and ‘Concept’ - cover principles of self-determination. Hegel’s metaphysics were far closer to Aristotle than Spinoza, which also why Russell’s statement about only the truth of whole world being true is seriously misleading at best. Russell’s views reflect those of his teachers, the so-called British Hegelians like Bradley and McTaggart, who did hold to a monism similar to the one Russell describes here. But British Hegelian has been thoroughly discredited as a felicitous interpretation of Hegel. I also don’t know where you’re getting the idea that everyone thought Hegel was rubbish at this time. That’s certainly not true of Lukacs, Royce, Peirce, Husserl, or Cassirer.
That is not all he is doing, he's very clearly trying to explain things Hegel says. I don't see any reason to deny that fact. At 2:37, Russell says that Hegel is condemned to deny the existence of finite things like chairs and tables. Given that Hegel describes nature as itself a realm of externality and finitude, this seems like he's responding to someone other than Hegel. Russell also speaks on space and time being illusory for Hegel near the end. This is a great example of where people go wrong. If one reads the first sections of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel does say that space and time are ideal while matter is real. But a brief look into his Science of Logic will show that all Hegel means by "ideal" is momentary. Space and time are aspects of matter and have no concrete existence beyond it, but they do have concrete existence *in* material things. Nor does Hegel deny the existence of individual truths like facts. They are simply finite and don't reach the unconditioned universality he thinks philosophical truth requires. This does not render them illusory either. So yeah, I'd call this interpretation a blunder by Russell big time; one which, I think, drove (and still drives) a lot of folks away from meaningfully engaging with Hegel.
@@samcopeland3155 Yeah, you have a good point about Russell's views reflecting those of the British idealists and Hegelians. That's certainly right. In some ways, Russell's characterization of Hegel and of idealism in general tends to be much more apt as a characterization of the views of F. H. Bradley than anyone else. And while I certainly wouldn't deny that Russell's description of Hegel was a bit crude, I nevertheless still think his description isn't wrong here. Hegel himself certainly does make it clear, for example, that the truth is the whole, and thus that nothing can be wholly true or wholly real except for the whole. Granted, his monism isn't the monism of Spinoza, but it would still mean that things are indeed determined by their relations. The examples of Royce, Peirce, Husserl, and Cassirer are all from earlier generations. But I guess I mainly had in mind analytic philosophers of that time anyway. They were the ones who had been quite dismissive of Hegel. And this was in part due to his obscurity, but also due to what had been wrongly taken to be his connection with and influence on the Nazis. But yeah, it was a pretty widespread attitude at that time, at least in the Anglophone world, beginning with the logical positivists and going through to the mid century with the linguistic analysts.
@@thall77795 Indeed it sounds like quite a blunder. Russel above seems to speak from the academic philosophical perspective of his own time. Thankfully, trends come and go and we should be grateful for having the opportunity to see the developments of our understanding as it is progressing ad infinitum.
Hegel gets fashionable, unfashionable, right, then wrong again, clear then obscure, profound and then trivial: all in a constant cycle every 30 or 40 years. The peaks and troughs of Hegelianism are pretty regular. I’ve always wondered about this.
@@jacobgiolas7314 That’s an interesting premise. I haven’t studied Hegel too much. I’ve read the majority of his works but never in any great detail or analysis. I do know that many people have your view and equally many would refute it absolutely. He certainly is a divisive thinker. And that, in itself, has great power and long-standing. Personally I don’t see it. But that is mainly due to my training, my education, my culture and my background. Coming from the Anglo-American school of thought I have found it immensely difficult to put aside my pre-existing beliefs, ideas, intentions, methods and come to Hegel in a clear way. My mind often automatically rejects many of his premises and, try as I might, it takes real effort to cut through. But it is rewarding. I understand , that on first instance, the very fact my pre-existing beliefs refute Hegel, is part of what he predicts and counsels, but it isn’t easy. But Hegel’s dialectical method is a very satisfying and intuitive process. I’m not sure it goes as far as he wants it, as a methodology, but it is all the same a brilliant bit of work. It’s been many years since I spent any appreciable time with Hegel; I think I need to revisit.
@@thomasweir2834 Yeah! Hegel is my favorite philosopher, BUT I never would have understood Hegel if it weren't for Hegel commentators. I completely understand the barrier that he presents in terms of readability. Lots of it is still pretty unapproachable to me, but once you get it broken down by the commentators, it becomes a lot more intuitive. Slavoj Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology has a good section on Hegel. But, if you're looking for just a book on Hegel I'd recommend "Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Religion" by Raymond Keith Williamson. I think that Bertrand Russel's reading of Hegel is actually pretty accurate, even though he disagrees with him. Specifically, the emphasis on relation. For Hegel, the idea that anything exists in itself is nonsense. Existence is being-in-the-other. If it doesn't make a mark, it doesn't exist. Lots of modern quantum physics validates this position, specifically with the two slit experiment in which its shown that the way an object exists and manifests is determined by the apparatus that it's appearing in. The other key idea in Hegel comes from the logic of the incarnation in Christianity. For Hegel, the Absolute or Truth is not something seperate from people, but must appear and manifest in order to be what it is. So Hegel isn't concerned with the truth about objects, but is concerned with the Truth as object. For Hegel, the Truth marches (like in the battle hymn of the republic).
Id recommended everyone reading this to Emil Fackenheim’s ‘The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought.’ The first chapter after the intro contains a much better characterization of Hegel’s philosophy (especially related to the ‘unity of things’) and more importantly, a criticism of F.H. Bradley, Russell’s teacher at Cambridge! The former’s idea of Hegel is shown to be really unhegelian!
Can you recommend any resource for studying Hegel's philosophy of religion and his conception of god for a beginner in philosophy. I read an article and it completely went over my head.
@@Aman-qr6wi ive heard his essay ‘The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate’ is pretty readable. Fackenheims book is pretty good as well. Theres a commentary on the Phenomenology by Peter Kalkavage which is really accessible (but ofc Christianity only comes in at the very end). And todd McGowans book on hegel has some amazing christological arguments.
Russell is giving a very odd reading of Hegel here, but maybe that is because the question he was looking at was very narrow, something to do with Hegel's metaphysics/ontology. It would be very hard to get on top of the scope of what Russell means here without reading his actual analysis. I am never really sure if this sort of metaphysics has much relevance to modern philosophy, the whole project seems to have largely collapsed, first with the analytical movement and then its self-immolation, and been eclipsed by scientific observations that were not available at the time. But if we step out of metaphysics and compare it to current theories about the actual empirical universe and the current theories of quantum physics, string theory, theory of relativity etc, then Hegel is looking a lot more correct than Russell on this particular point.
I lacked the intellectual temerity to read enough Hegel to actually understand anything worth repeating, but this very terse assessment by one of the heros of my youth, of which I was until now unaware of, has me regretting that I had not made myself more familiar with H's writings. Ontologically speaking, I think we can say that we know that there exists both "that which I am" (or "all that I am", i.e. the extension of self) as well as "all that exists which is other than that which I am", or "(all) that which I am not". And finally, of course, there is the synthesis of "all that is, was and will be", which includes and subsumes both. What is most clear, is the "all that is". The boundaries between "that which I am" and the complimentary "that which I am not" are somewhat unclear, but as regards consciousness, or the awareness of mind, both entities ought to be recognized to exist, although obviously not necessarily independent of one another. Indeed, it seems relatively to imagine "all that I am not" to exist even in the absense of "all that I am", although "all that is" seems to necessarily include the "all that I am". Religiously speaking, one should love the "all that I am not" as much as one loves the "all that I am", and one should love the "all that is" fully and completely.
Russell was certainly entitled to say that Hegel was mistaken, but it just sounds silly saying that his work was rubbish. Many very great philosophers go against common sense (e.g. Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Heraclitus, Leibniz, Hume, Kant) without being 'rubbish'. If anyone thinks that Hume, for instance, is some paragon of common sense, as The Economist seemed to think a few years back, he or she hasn't paid much attention to what the Treatise of Human Nature actually says. Moreover, Russell's initial attraction to Hegel surely helped him towards his logical atomism through reaction. Hegel expresses something perennial in the human mind, which is why he still lives and has had such influence on later thinkers. What's more, might Hegel not have a point in thinking all truth is partial short of the Absolute? I have no idea, but the thought is fascinating.
Calling Hegel rubbish is being polite. Hegel is absolute pseudo-mystic Gnostic garbage. Beyond useless, actually. If one cannot see through this, they're worse off by taking Hegel seriously.
@@richardli8278 This isn't correct. Hume grounded his philosophy in a theory of pure empirical experience, which took him far away from common sense (as represented by, say, Aristotle or John Locke). Hume's philosophy, in its rejection of a material world independent of experience, a substantial self that grounds identity over time, real relations of cause and effect, and objective ethical and aesthetic standards, is, as Isaiah Berlin saw, one of the most outlandish, extreme and disturbing philosophies ever devised. It is a philosophy of genius, otherwise it couldn't have awoken Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber' and thus stimulated, in reaction, The Critique of Pure Reason, but taken to its logical conclusion it showed that 'empiricism as a total theory of knowledge is untenable', as Russell reluctantly recognised (History of Western Philosophy). Hume is, of course, one of the most fascinating thinkers ever, but certainly not because he represents common sense.
@@julianwynne8705 Mainly marxists (hegelian marxists) who think the world through historical and dialectical materialism. Being anhistorical is one of the reasons why they can't agree with analytics or positivists in general. For instance, what Russell is saying in this recording is quite revealing of this anhistorical stance of his : "a thing can be just what it is and could be exactly what it is even if it had no relations at all !" => You can't think history with such a postulate, because historical objects (mainly facts, moments, periods, political systems, modes of production, etc.) cant be taken isolated from the rest. Maybe when analytics like Russell use the word "thing", they refer to physical things, whereas Hegel's set of things is wider and include cultural, historical, social (human) things. That said, this matter is more profound and complicated that it seems, and can lead to deadly moral and political contradictions. This is a part of the fact that analytical philosophers are mostly liberals (european meaning) from a marxist point of view.
I plan on reading Hegel as a prerequisite to Marx's Capital. To this end does anyone have any recommendations for reading selections? [Edit: Specifically I mean selections from Hegel's work itself] On this topic I would also be interested in possible prerequisites to Hegel's thought in general, for example I'm currently under the impression that one should first grapple with Aristotle's Metaphysics and the western metaphysical tradition more broadly.
There is a great talk from Peter Singer (when he was still young) about Hegel and Marx. If you haven't seen that, I would recommend doing so. It gives a great overview over Hegel and his Influence towards Marx.
By the time Marx got to Capital he moved very far from Hegel. The "Hegalian Marx" was the Marx of the Paris manuscript, the German ideology e.t.c. Capital is Marx the social scientist, positivist
William Rose Benet said it well: 'Those who know the secrets of Hegel have managed to keep them.' Hegel clearly denied the unity and integrity of Dasein (Being There), but I am surprised that Russell here affirms a kind of substantial thisness. I would add that British idealists like Bradley and Bosanquet were not aware of or simply ignored the role of #fate in Hegel. So it makes sense that logical positivism could posit a clear demarcation between an object and a relation. #philosophy
Well, Hegel is right. The soziocentric system of homo "sapiens sapiens" was colliding for too long with the logic of the cosmos, e.g. astrophysix, physix, quantumphysix, chemistry, biology etc. Russell always searched for a truth, like Einstein. Hegel can be seen as a quantummetaphysicist, bc he already tried to argue for a multiprobability in a time science was still thinking on an atomar and electromagnetic level. Big fan of Russell, because his work "The problems of philosophie" was my hook-up to the world of dialectic thinking
Mathematicians cannot endure Hegelian logic. Nor can anyone who has to deal with actual physics in the real world. Every man should be required to turn a wrench somewhere before ever engaging in philosophy. Because a great mental illness arises from detaching yourself from all reality to live in a world of pure thought.
Hegel's real strength is his walk, his pacing, he was a peripatetic, today he would be an outstanding power-walker, his thinking wasn't really his strong suit tho, tbh Senator Kennedy and even his dog Rodger are better philosophers , لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله
0:40 "it all turns on whether a thing is constituted by its relations". Sounds like "dependent origination" of Buddhist philosophy. Check it out. Pratītyasamutpāda
This notion that Hegel was a thinker of unity is misleading, it paints Hegel as almost a Spinozian thinker, which is anti-Hegelian. Hegel was first and foremost a thinker of contradiction, and if you read Russells work you can tell that he more or less understands this fact, though he doesnt articulate it here, he implies Hegel was a thinker of difference or multiplicity. Hegels argument is that all things that seem to have an identity necessitate some contradiction to that identity in order for the thing to have any meaning. Being necessitates the existance of nothing because if being were purely identical to itself it would have no distinction within itself, it would be so totalizing that it would have the same essance as a self-identical nothing, both must exist in contradiction with one another in order for either to exist, and to Hegel this can be proven through thought because "substance is subject." Many misinterpret this (modified) statement by Hegel as Hegel claiming that the external world is the product of mind, which is ridiculous. Hegel believed the opposite, because the subject is in fact made up of substance, and because the subject can comprehend contradiction, contradiction must exist in substance in order for the the constantly changing and contradictory nature of the subject to exist. "If the individual human being does something, achieves something, attains a goal, this fact must be grounded in the way the thing itself, in its concept, acts and behaves. If I eat an apple, I destroy its organic self-identity and assimilate it to myself. That I can do this entails that the apple in itself, already, in advance, before I take hold of it, has in its nature the determination of being subject to destruction, having in itself a homogeneity with my digestive organs such that I can make it homogeneous with myself." Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion III, p. 127. This is Hegels ontological philosophy, and this is how he moves past Kants critique of pure reason. We can see here that Hegel and Russell are most definitely at odds, since Russells philosophy relies on the notion of non-contradictory identity, and I won't pretend that I know who is correct here, I just want to illustrate that Hegels philosophy is almost 180 degrees opposed to the picture Russell presents here, he is a philosopher of contradiction and is constantly trying to show that what we think is in unity with itself, identity, is inherently formed by contradiction. I also want to say that while Hegel was an ontological thinker, it is very possible to concieve of Hegels philosophy on an epistemological basis, this is essentially the project of Robert Pippen, a smart guy who's made very good defences for Hegel from Russell, Popper, and the like.
Dear commentators, can you provide a good and most importantly comprehensive interpretation/explanation of Hegel philosophy? Almost every extracts I've read are incomprehensible and unreadable, and the ones I can grasp, like Russel's, are always treated as wrong and misinterpreted
Bruh you're asking for a comprehensive explanation of Hegel from a RUclips comment... If there are specific questions or points of confusion, somebody might be able to help you out, but you're not gonna get a satisfactory answer to that question even if every person responding to you was a scholar of Hegel and took hours crafting their response. Not just because Hegel can be counter-intuitive, but because the responder has to have some sense of what background you're approaching Hegel from. Like, if you've never heard of Kant and you're unfamiliar with what philosophical problems he's seeking to solve, then a lot of Hegel will seem pointless and incoherent. He has to be understood in his context. I like recommending Dr. Gregory Sadler's RUclips channel. He has a comprehensive series on the Phenomenology of Spirit (and a lot of lectures on Kant), which I found quite accessible. If you want something less comprehensive and more casual, the podcasts Philosophize This and The Partially Examined Life have a lot of good episodes on Hegel. Just don't go straight to Phenomenology of Spirit or The Science of Logic because those require a lot of background (eg familiarity with Kant and the German idealists) imho. Plus Hegel's a bad writer.
I'll have a go. My reading of him is very shaped by Todd McGowan. He is very readable and I would recommend his book on Hegel, not only as an intro but also as a response to all the abuse which has been heaped on him throughout the years, these assertions from Russell included. He's an Ontologist. And in the analytic context this means the sort of conversations revolving around 'ordinary objects', properties, mereology, subjects and predicates, etc. And that is right where Russell is: what is stuff, what are the true ontological terms? What are things? One of the debates here concerns the possibility that there is no underlying substance, and that an object is simply a *bundle* of properties or universals. *A multitude* or a many (a color, a smell, a texture, etc.) are simply compresent, without the real existence of any primary substance, any *ONE* which unifies them, or 'holds them together.' And others think of course that there is a One, a substance. (c.f. philosopher Max Black: if things are just bundles of qualities, how are two things with EXACTLY the same qualities, TWO things?) Hegel takes on all these questions in the second chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter is called perception. The point here is that the question does not have an answer, the problem no solution. On each side there are problems. The one and the many simply cannot be held together in thought. We can know what is true if our thinking matches the objective world. Since we cannot hold the one and the many together no matter how hard we try, since thinking about the world as THINGS WITH PROPERTIES fails, we need to think about the world differently. Maybe what is real is rather FORCES and a their soliciting each other unendingly. The next chapter in the phenomenology takes the kind of knowing not reminiscent of Locke, et al, but Newton. But the process is repeated; with the idea of force there are again insoluble problems. And so on and so forth, the perspective keeps on switching, we proceed from one mode of knowing to the other, and each time the trajectory is unavoidably antimonial: nowhere are we safe from contradiction. (And in the text we fare far from ordinary objects and their properties: 'I am incessantly changing, how do I find MY identity, a oneness to hold together my manifold experiences? Maybe God, is the one and I can make myself united with him?) The process repeats itself again and again until Absolute Knowing. What is it? Does Hegel have the answer? Does he know where we are safe from contradiction? Russell thinks Hegel thought he did for sure. But he does not: the lesson is rather that nowhere are we safe from contradiction. The contradictoriness we experience in ontological debates (are things bundles or substances? Both sides have equally convincing arguments, it's an antinomy of pure reason! one might say) cannot be overcome by thinking differently or changing perspective. The reason is that contradiction inheres in being itself, it's not the incompleteness of our knowledge, being itself in incomplete.
That said, I think Russell was obviously an immense genius. I've been made to read his On Denoting a few times and while his jab at Hegel in there is out of pocket, it is a magnificent essay I'd recommend to everyone! The famous 'Grey's Elegy' argument in it has always stuck out to me. It reminded me of the phenomenology in the way it proceeded through various alternatives until it is manifest that the problem's are not with the our understanding of 'sense' but with sense itself! At least that is how I read the notoriously difficult passage a long time ago.
(1) Forgive me, but (since I infer from your name that you are Russian) may I ask whether you really mean 'comprehensive', not rather compreHENSIBLE? If it's really comprehensive you're after, I doubt if there's any more comprehensive account than Hegel himself, who alas provided (as far as I am aware) no concise account of his philosophical positions - he may himself have thought such a thing was impossible, and may in this have been right - though it's not clear exactly why HIS philosophy should be (?uniquely?) unsusceptible of being presented briefly, without deformation or misrepresentation . If comprehensible, well, some readers of H would say you cannot make comprehensible what is not ITSELF entirely lucid - but since that view is itself far from being uncontentious, it's hard to know how the international philosophical community might advance towards some collective view of H's significance. For what it's worth, I think that if Russell himself was (even if only when very young) himself ready to spend such a lot of time reading H, then H must have been on to something... - after all, R was JUST AS CLEVER at 20 as he was at 90, and couldn't know that he would live to 97 or whatever he was when he died.
"a thing can be exactly what it is, even if it had no relations at all." This just seems incoherent to me. Is Russell advocating for some kind of Platonic idealism? I'm surprised to hear him say that. Overall, this was way worse than I thought it was gonna be. Super uncharitable reading of Hegel.
exactly, what the fuck even is a thing that has no relations? If it were comprehensible at all, it would at least be related to the cognitive act that makes it so. So that's at least one relation, which ties it back to a language, and therefore to a particular national history, etc. Which is the starting-point of Hegel's philosophy--not this mystical-theological nonsense the analytics thought they were revolting against. If anything, all these anti-Hegelians in the Anglo-American tradition only showed the folly of immediacy more clearly
Speaking of Hegel(ians) and Russell. Man, what I would give to see a long form debate between Slavoj Zizek and Bertrand Russell. I mean, it would hardly be a meeting of minds, but it would be something to witness.
it would turns out that russel didnt made his homework, as you can see in the hegel question. russel absolutely dont get the point what hegel means with thinking the truths is only the whole.
Was amazed that Hegel was saturated in occultism - but shouldn't have been the dialectic is irrational no two things are the same - this isn't philosophy - it's mysticism and the turn to it amongst many other spiritual occult religious influences is with all that Jungian archetype and shadow influence - the sign of the times - when the irrational actually manifests it's self - philosophy -which is no longer a real subject - fades .
Russell never read a single book directly written by Hegel. He just read comments on Hegel made by others. If he actually read the Phenomenology of Spirit himself , he would have found a brutal criticism against this same opinion already in the first pages.
For having read and re-read our dear Georg Wilhelm, i confirm first commentator's statement that everything russell says here is completely out of subject, and based on a ridiculously partial ( when not wrong ) reading of hegel's system of thought. Shame because there are such good criticisms to make. But perhaps it's easier to just dismiss Hegel's whole works as rubbish in order to make yourself appear as intellectually superior, thus conforming to the lofty ethos of oxford academia
@@Rudi361 I'm completely with Schopenhauer (and I believe Hegel) on this that relativity is a precondition for existence in the first place and that no thing can exist "independently" as he puts it ... every one needs another
@@alexanderfuchs8742 How is Schopenhauer related to that? You mean how he deems the Will and the representation to be inseparable from each other, or did you mean something else? (Also I had a brief heart attack when I've read the first few words of your comment - namely that you're completely with Schopenhauer - under a video about a famous philosopher not getting Hegel at all haha)
@@szilveszterforgo8776 thanks for asking ... A) no i dont mean that at all. the world as will and the world as representation are not bound together by the sentence of sufficient reason! schopenhauer at one point says their connection is rhizomatic (but thats just a fun fact for all my deleuzians out there) B) the principle of sufficient reason is the principle of everything going on in the phaenomenal world (representation) as seen under the auspices of science and knowledge as such. the essence of this world is will. this means the essence of (inter-)dependency (which cannot be directly observed but only infered) is experienced by us as Will. -- with dependency and its experience as will (a torture, really, and often spiritually crippeling to the point of inhumanity) we can think of addiction, economic extraction, international relations ... C) im mentioning schopenhauer only because of his treatise on the principle of sufficient reason which might be the most important work on the subject. but really (as in many cases!!!) hegel and schopenhauer are completely in alignment here. indeed it is the foundatiom for both of their philosophies [comp. encyclopedia 121]. my point is mainly that russells claim about a thing being the same if it were "independent of everything else" is completely nonsensical. D) there indeed is a way of seeing things independently of our prejudices and -conceptions, which is by way of giving ourselves over to our experience, unwillingly letting ourselves and our experience in turn be determined, letting the will of the other come to light and painting a picture of that in ways that dont ask for reasons why. but that, in turn, is exactly preconditioned on the holistic notion of truth that undergirds the way in which both schopi and hegel interpret the principle of sufficient reason in its conditionality, mediation and reciprocity. i hope this calms your racing heart :)
To harbour an overly cynical or misanthropic view of one's fellow human beings and the course of history reveals only a cheap quest for superiority. Schopenhauer considered Hegel's dialectic, with its admittedly unwieldy language, to be charlatanry. And he was fundamentally right in criticising this philosophy. However, he was unable to distinguish the true from the untrue parts, to locate the core of the dialectic and to separate it from the contemporary nonsense that constituted German Idealism. Schopenhauer did address crucial points of criticism, but in the end he himself created an even more hair-raising metaphysics than Hegel. Feuerbach and later Marx also criticised Hegel for similar tendencies, but unlike Schopenhauer, they recognised what was genius and what was nonsense about Hegel. So they took the dialectic and applied it to Hegel's own philosophy. Something that the "charlatan" had failed to do at decisive moments in his philosophy. Feuerbach did it instinctively, Marx then quite consciously: they turned Hegel's philosophy upside down and thus destroyed Hegel's and with it German Idealism as a whole, preserving the valuable condensate of the dialectic and making it useful for the future.
@@derantiobskurantI appreciate your insightful comment (I was joking a bit, but I do appreciate Schopenhauer). In truth, I need to read much more Hegel, Marx, etc. than I have, and you make a good case for doing so. I’m not sure I agree with your first point, that philosophical pessimism is really a form of domination or egoism (if I understand you correctly). Schopenhauer seemed to argue the opposite, denial of self being an antidote to suffering. In any case, I tend to think of pessimism more as a counterbalance to overly “optimistic” philosophical system-building, but, as you point out, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is fairly involuted itself-and he wasn’t exactly a humanitarian, either.
@@zachsharp4564 By striving for superiority I was alluding to Adlerian theory, which was idiotic of me - because no one studies Adler's teachings any more, I have to concede. I think Schopenhauer offered an alternative idealistic solution to an actual problem than Hegel. Both had in common that their solutions to the same problems remained idealistic, even if here and there they showed tendencies not to take their idealism too seriously when it came to natural sciences. For simplified understanding i quote some Lenin: "In his "Ludwig Feuerbach", Engels declares materialism and idealism to be the fundamental philosophical directions. Materialism sees nature as the primary, the spirit as the secondary; it places being in the first place, thinking in the second. For idealism, the reverse is true. Engels takes this fundamental difference of the "two great camps" into which the philosophers of the various schools of idealism and materialism divide themselves as the starting point of his reflections, directly accusing those of "confusion" who use the two expressions materialism and idealism in a different sense. The "highest question of all philosophy", "the great fundamental question of all, especially recent philosophy" - says Engels - is "the question of the relation of thought to being, of mind to nature". By dividing the philosophers into "two great camps" on this basic question, Engels points out that this basic philosophical question has "yet another side", namely: "How do our thoughts about the world surrounding us relate to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of recognising the real world, are we able to produce a correct reflection of reality in our ideas and concepts of the real world? "A "This question ... is answered in the affirmative by by far the greatest number of philosophers" - says Engels, counting among this number not only all materialists, but also the most consistent idealists, e.g. the absolute idealist Hegel, for whom the real world is the realisation of the "absolute idea" which exists from eternity, whereby the human mind recognises the "absolute idea" in the correct cognition of the real world in it and by means of it. "Besides these (i.e., besides the materialists and the consistent idealists. L.) there are, however, a number of other philosophers who deny the possibility of a cognition of the world, or at least of an exhaustive cognition. Among the more recent of these are Hume and Kant, and they have played a very important role in philosophical development..." from Lenins materialism and empirioctriticism.
Que se puede esperar de alguien con esa caripela papa. Típico tontito de sistemas o exactas, más cuadrado imposible. Menos mal que en esto al menos la historia hará justicia y seguirá habiendo hegelianos durante siglos, "russelianos" no hubo ni en su propia época.
But he loves Leibniz, even if his reading is logic focused and unorthodox. He says he is one of the greatest thinkers ever. He just thinks he was cowardly about giving his opinions. Now Russell has been jailed and fired in his life for his views so it makes sense that he would think that way even if it is rather harsh.
@@Evilanious Russell's Leibniz is not considered accurate by historians of Western philosophy. His character, as described by Russell, was not very flattering, which you alluded to: somewhere between a pusillanimous lickspittle and a socially striving worm. That, too, probably isn't accurate. But Russell's abuse of his corpus is the most serious offense to Leibniz scholarship. Short of reading Leibniz (always the best option), a much more esoteric reading than Russell's is found in Robert Merrihew Adams's "Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist".
Dude people get so offended when you say anything negative in the general direction of Hegel. Russell is more critiquing his own undergrad understanding than anything else here.
I absolutely agree with Russell, but I think that Hegel's importance is great nonetheless You see, everybody needs a punching bag. And Hegel is a perfect punching bag, because his infuriatingly obviously wrong "philosophy", contradictory statements and obnoxious personality really made any philosophy student with a functioning brain and an indipendent thought want to punch the shit out of him. This is the way that great thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and apparently Russell, among others, first began the development of their own philosophy, to counter his hideous, filthy, verminous "philosophy".
It is sad and boring at one, to see how Russel has not the slightest idea of what to do with Hegel's concepts. We have to conclude that Russell has not done his homework and even if he has probably read and studied Hegel, but has not understood him at all. When he talks about the fact that for Hegel: "only the whole is also the true", Russell understands this in his own limited i.e. metaphysical view, whereas a Hegelian proposition, insofar as it is correct (he was definitely hugely wrong about some, and hugely right about others), can logically only be understood dialectically. Russel thinks in terms of irreconcilable contradictions - or so-called antinomies. Accordingly, there is only liquid or solid, dead or alive, etc. "The dialectical method opposes the metaphysical one. The latter (which is rooted in religious views based on dogmatic revelation and is a tenacious inheritor of the old way of formulating thought) presents the concepts of things as immutable, absolute, eternal and traceable to some first principles, the concepts being alien to each other and leading a kind of autonomous existence. For the dialectical method, all things are in motion; and not only that: in their motion they mutually affect each other, so that their concepts, i.e. the reflections of things in our thinking, are also linked and connected. Metaphysics proceeds according to antinomies, i.e. absolute, mutually exclusive concepts. Such concepts can never combine; neither do they come into contact, nor can anything new arise from their combination, which would not be limited to the simple assertion of the presence of one and the absence of the other, and vice versa. To give a few examples: in the metaphysical sciences, rest is opposed to motion; there is no coherence between the two things; by virtue of the formal principle of contradiction, that which rests does not move, and that which moves does not rest. But already the Eleatic school, with Zeno, proved the fallacy of such a seemingly certain distinction: the flying arrow, which passes a point during its trajectory, rests at that point, so it does not move. Seen from the shore, the ship moves; the passenger moves in the opposite direction on the bridge: seen from the shore, he stands still, so he does not move. The so-called sophisms showed the possibility of uniting opposites: for example, stillness and movement. Only by breaking down motion into so and so many point-like, spatial and temporal moments did it become possible for the infinitesimal calculus, which was unacceptable to the metaphysical method, and for modern physics to solve questions of non-linear and non-uniform motion. Today, rest and motion are considered relative terms: neither absolute rest nor absolute motion make sense. Another example: for the astronomy of the metaphysicians, all heavenly bodies are unchanging and imperishable, their shape and orbits remain the same for all eternity. Earthly bodies, on the other hand, are changeable and transient in a thousand ways: there is no connection between the two opposite parts of the universe. Today, however, we know that the same laws of evolution apply to the stars as to the earth (which is a "piece of heaven" without therefore being given a title of nobility shrouded in mystery). For Dante, the influence of the imperishable planets on the events of transient humanity was a major problem, while for modern science the reciprocal influence between the Earth and the other parts of the universe is a matter of daily observation - which is why it still does not believe that the stars determine our destiny. Finally, in the human and social sphere, metaphysics introduces two absolute supreme principles: good and evil, which are rather mysteriously anchored in the consciousness of all human beings or personified in extraterrestrial beings. We have already indicated the relativism of moral concepts, their mutability and changeability - depending on place, time and class situation." - libcom.org/article/dialectical-method-amadeo-bordiga
@@OngoGablogian185 No it's just wrong because literally anyone who's ever read Hegel knows that what Russell is saying here is out of pocket. Read a book.
@@Tofu_va_Bien You might want to take your own advice and start with reading a dictionary to understand the meaning of the word 'literally'. Clearly, Russell spent years reading Hegel while studying at Cambridge, but I'm sure you're much better informed. Now, if either of you would actually like to provide some reasoning in order to support your conclusions, that would be great.
Whatever you think about Hegel, dismissing a philosopher that has been so influential to so many great thinkers in this demeaning and derogatory way is against the principles of philosophy and of unbiased thought. Pathetic attempts at defense like "Oh, but many others thought this too" don't have any relevance. Does something wrong which is done by a majority cease to be wrong? I'd respect him more if he straight-up said "I dislike anything continental (i.e. not Anglo-Saxon)" maintaining this attitude of cultural and intellectual superiority. At least he wouldn't then project his opinion as an objective philosophical truth. If indeed his objective was not to explain Hegel here (or if he couldn't due to time constraints), that's acceptable. But in that case, he should have restricted himself to "I used to like Hegel's philosophy but now I don't." No actual need for all the snide snobbish rhetoric.
Here's the whole video is summation: "Hegel thought x, y, and z, but that's rubbish because *I* don't think that" I happen to think Bertrand Russell is right here, but he's also just flatly arrogant. From the portions I've read of his History of Philosophy, it seems Russell measures the worth of every other philosopher insofar as they share his own way of thinking.
dialectics = doublethink We monarchy communists love its potential of proving everything our authority says right. The practice of irrationalism will always be a disaster.
Russell to some extent is a reductionist and pundit, naturally he will disagree with Hegel. Similar to Russel with Hegel, I was once impressed with Russell's thinking however that was a long time ago.
![My Grandfather Met Napoleon: Bertrand Russell Interview 1952 - Enhanced Video & Audio [60 fps]](/img/1.gif)
It should be noted that Russell wasn't trying to explain Hegel or Hegelianism here or anything. This is just his response to having been asked what, if anything, he thought he had gotten wrong in philosophy in the past, and that's when he begins to say that he used to be a Hegelian but that he now thinks it is rubbish (nearly every professional philosopher thought that Hegel was rubbish at this time, so that should hardly be surprising). But putting all that aside, he still doesn't, as far as I can tell, say anything false about Hegel or Hegelianism...
Hegel isn’t a monist like Russell portrays him here, in fact Hegel’s famous “Night when all cows are black” remark is making fun of monism. Nor does Hegel think things are exhaustively determined by their relations. The second two books of his Logic - ‘Essence’ and ‘Concept’ - cover principles of self-determination. Hegel’s metaphysics were far closer to Aristotle than Spinoza, which also why Russell’s statement about only the truth of whole world being true is seriously misleading at best.
Russell’s views reflect those of his teachers, the so-called British Hegelians like Bradley and McTaggart, who did hold to a monism similar to the one Russell describes here. But British Hegelian has been thoroughly discredited as a felicitous interpretation of Hegel.
I also don’t know where you’re getting the idea that everyone thought Hegel was rubbish at this time. That’s certainly not true of Lukacs, Royce, Peirce, Husserl, or Cassirer.
That is not all he is doing, he's very clearly trying to explain things Hegel says. I don't see any reason to deny that fact.
At 2:37, Russell says that Hegel is condemned to deny the existence of finite things like chairs and tables. Given that Hegel describes nature as itself a realm of externality and finitude, this seems like he's responding to someone other than Hegel.
Russell also speaks on space and time being illusory for Hegel near the end. This is a great example of where people go wrong. If one reads the first sections of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel does say that space and time are ideal while matter is real. But a brief look into his Science of Logic will show that all Hegel means by "ideal" is momentary. Space and time are aspects of matter and have no concrete existence beyond it, but they do have concrete existence *in* material things.
Nor does Hegel deny the existence of individual truths like facts. They are simply finite and don't reach the unconditioned universality he thinks philosophical truth requires. This does not render them illusory either.
So yeah, I'd call this interpretation a blunder by Russell big time; one which, I think, drove (and still drives) a lot of folks away from meaningfully engaging with Hegel.
@@samcopeland3155 Yeah, you have a good point about Russell's views reflecting those of the British idealists and Hegelians. That's certainly right. In some ways, Russell's characterization of Hegel and of idealism in general tends to be much more apt as a characterization of the views of F. H. Bradley than anyone else. And while I certainly wouldn't deny that Russell's description of Hegel was a bit crude, I nevertheless still think his description isn't wrong here. Hegel himself certainly does make it clear, for example, that the truth is the whole, and thus that nothing can be wholly true or wholly real except for the whole. Granted, his monism isn't the monism of Spinoza, but it would still mean that things are indeed determined by their relations.
The examples of Royce, Peirce, Husserl, and Cassirer are all from earlier generations. But I guess I mainly had in mind analytic philosophers of that time anyway. They were the ones who had been quite dismissive of Hegel. And this was in part due to his obscurity, but also due to what had been wrongly taken to be his connection with and influence on the Nazis. But yeah, it was a pretty widespread attitude at that time, at least in the Anglophone world, beginning with the logical positivists and going through to the mid century with the linguistic analysts.
@@thall77795 Indeed it sounds like quite a blunder. Russel above seems to speak from the academic philosophical perspective of his own time. Thankfully, trends come and go and we should be grateful for having the opportunity to see the developments of our understanding as it is progressing ad infinitum.
Hegel stresses contradiction, not unity.
Hegel gets fashionable, unfashionable, right, then wrong again, clear then obscure, profound and then trivial: all in a constant cycle every 30 or 40 years. The peaks and troughs of Hegelianism are pretty regular. I’ve always wondered about this.
He's the only guy that's true for. All modern philosophers are defined by Hegel whether they like or not.
@@jacobgiolas7314 That’s an interesting premise. I haven’t studied Hegel too much. I’ve read the majority of his works but never in any great detail or analysis. I do know that many people have your view and equally many would refute it absolutely. He certainly is a divisive thinker. And that, in itself, has great power and long-standing. Personally I don’t see it. But that is mainly due to my training, my education, my culture and my background. Coming from the Anglo-American school of thought I have found it immensely difficult to put aside my pre-existing beliefs, ideas, intentions, methods and come to Hegel in a clear way. My mind often automatically rejects many of his premises and, try as I might, it takes real effort to cut through. But it is rewarding. I understand , that on first instance, the very fact my pre-existing beliefs refute Hegel, is part of what he predicts and counsels, but it isn’t easy. But Hegel’s dialectical method is a very satisfying and intuitive process. I’m not sure it goes as far as he wants it, as a methodology, but it is all the same a brilliant bit of work. It’s been many years since I spent any appreciable time with Hegel; I think I need to revisit.
@@thomasweir2834 Yeah! Hegel is my favorite philosopher, BUT I never would have understood Hegel if it weren't for Hegel commentators. I completely understand the barrier that he presents in terms of readability. Lots of it is still pretty unapproachable to me, but once you get it broken down by the commentators, it becomes a lot more intuitive. Slavoj Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology has a good section on Hegel. But, if you're looking for just a book on Hegel I'd recommend "Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Religion" by Raymond Keith Williamson.
I think that Bertrand Russel's reading of Hegel is actually pretty accurate, even though he disagrees with him. Specifically, the emphasis on relation. For Hegel, the idea that anything exists in itself is nonsense. Existence is being-in-the-other. If it doesn't make a mark, it doesn't exist. Lots of modern quantum physics validates this position, specifically with the two slit experiment in which its shown that the way an object exists and manifests is determined by the apparatus that it's appearing in.
The other key idea in Hegel comes from the logic of the incarnation in Christianity. For Hegel, the Absolute or Truth is not something seperate from people, but must appear and manifest in order to be what it is. So Hegel isn't concerned with the truth about objects, but is concerned with the Truth as object. For Hegel, the Truth marches (like in the battle hymn of the republic).
I guess that just means Hegelianism is rubbish 😉
This is the dialectic of his appreciation
Russell sounds like somebody doing an impression of Russell
that's the russell brand
sounds like a Paul Whitehouse character
Id recommended everyone reading this to Emil Fackenheim’s ‘The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought.’ The first chapter after the intro contains a much better characterization of Hegel’s philosophy (especially related to the ‘unity of things’) and more importantly, a criticism of F.H. Bradley, Russell’s teacher at Cambridge! The former’s idea of Hegel is shown to be really unhegelian!
Can you recommend any resource for studying Hegel's philosophy of religion and his conception of god for a beginner in philosophy. I read an article and it completely went over my head.
@@Aman-qr6wi ive heard his essay ‘The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate’ is pretty readable. Fackenheims book is pretty good as well. Theres a commentary on the Phenomenology by Peter Kalkavage which is really accessible (but ofc Christianity only comes in at the very end). And todd McGowans book on hegel has some amazing christological arguments.
@@edwardbackman744 thank you, Edward.
One man's Hegel is another man's Hegel.
we have to do HEGEL again soon, P.O... you know THIS!!!
Russell is giving a very odd reading of Hegel here, but maybe that is because the question he was looking at was very narrow, something to do with Hegel's metaphysics/ontology. It would be very hard to get on top of the scope of what Russell means here without reading his actual analysis. I am never really sure if this sort of metaphysics has much relevance to modern philosophy, the whole project seems to have largely collapsed, first with the analytical movement and then its self-immolation, and been eclipsed by scientific observations that were not available at the time. But if we step out of metaphysics and compare it to current theories about the actual empirical universe and the current theories of quantum physics, string theory, theory of relativity etc, then Hegel is looking a lot more correct than Russell on this particular point.
I think string-theory would not be Hegelian because of the multi-verse, maybe Newtonianism could be considered Hegelian.
I lacked the intellectual temerity to read enough Hegel to actually understand anything worth repeating, but this very terse assessment by one of the heros of my youth, of which I was until now unaware of, has me regretting that I had not made myself more familiar with H's writings.
Ontologically speaking, I think we can say that we know that there exists both "that which I am" (or "all that I am", i.e. the extension of self) as well as "all that exists which is other than that which I am", or "(all) that which I am not". And finally, of course, there is the synthesis of "all that is, was and will be", which includes and subsumes both. What is most clear, is the "all that is".
The boundaries between "that which I am" and the complimentary "that which I am not" are somewhat unclear, but as regards consciousness, or the awareness of mind, both entities ought to be recognized to exist, although obviously not necessarily independent of one another. Indeed, it seems relatively to imagine "all that I am not" to exist even in the absense of "all that I am", although "all that is" seems to necessarily include the "all that I am". Religiously speaking, one should love the "all that I am not" as much as one loves the "all that I am", and one should love the "all that is" fully and completely.
Russell was certainly entitled to say that Hegel was mistaken, but it just sounds silly saying that his work was rubbish. Many very great philosophers go against common sense (e.g. Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Heraclitus, Leibniz, Hume, Kant) without being 'rubbish'. If anyone thinks that Hume, for instance, is some paragon of common sense, as The Economist seemed to think a few years back, he or she hasn't paid much attention to what the Treatise of Human Nature actually says. Moreover, Russell's initial attraction to Hegel surely helped him towards his logical atomism through reaction. Hegel expresses something perennial in the human mind, which is why he still lives and has had such influence on later thinkers. What's more, might Hegel not have a point in thinking all truth is partial short of the Absolute? I have no idea, but the thought is fascinating.
Calling Hegel rubbish is being polite. Hegel is absolute pseudo-mystic Gnostic garbage. Beyond useless, actually. If one cannot see through this, they're worse off by taking Hegel seriously.
Maybe you need to read Hume again. He spent a huge effort grounding his philosophy on common sense. This is the definition of empiricism.
@@richardli8278 This isn't correct. Hume grounded his philosophy in a theory of pure empirical experience, which took him far away from common sense (as represented by, say, Aristotle or John Locke). Hume's philosophy, in its rejection of a material world independent of experience, a substantial self that grounds identity over time, real relations of cause and effect, and objective ethical and aesthetic standards, is, as Isaiah Berlin saw, one of the most outlandish, extreme and disturbing philosophies ever devised. It is a philosophy of genius, otherwise it couldn't have awoken Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber' and thus stimulated, in reaction, The Critique of Pure Reason, but taken to its logical conclusion it showed that 'empiricism as a total theory of knowledge is untenable', as Russell reluctantly recognised (History of Western Philosophy). Hume is, of course, one of the most fascinating thinkers ever, but certainly not because he represents common sense.
Oof, this is why folks call analytics ahistorical. The entire tradition has its roots in the bad readings of those they reacted against.
If, by 'analytics', you mean British c20 analytical philosophy? If so, I am interested to know WHO, in your view, calls it ahistorical?
@@julianwynne8705 Mainly marxists (hegelian marxists) who think the world through historical and dialectical materialism. Being anhistorical is one of the reasons why they can't agree with analytics or positivists in general. For instance, what Russell is saying in this recording is quite revealing of this anhistorical stance of his : "a thing can be just what it is and could be exactly what it is even if it had no relations at all !" => You can't think history with such a postulate, because historical objects (mainly facts, moments, periods, political systems, modes of production, etc.) cant be taken isolated from the rest. Maybe when analytics like Russell use the word "thing", they refer to physical things, whereas Hegel's set of things is wider and include cultural, historical, social (human) things.
That said, this matter is more profound and complicated that it seems, and can lead to deadly moral and political contradictions. This is a part of the fact that analytical philosophers are mostly liberals (european meaning) from a marxist point of view.
Russell is coming from a neohegelian english tradition with Bradley and Bosanquet heading the movement. Russell simply was reacting to it.
I plan on reading Hegel as a prerequisite to Marx's Capital. To this end does anyone have any recommendations for reading selections? [Edit: Specifically I mean selections from Hegel's work itself] On this topic I would also be interested in possible prerequisites to Hegel's thought in general, for example I'm currently under the impression that one should first grapple with Aristotle's Metaphysics and the western metaphysical tradition more broadly.
There is a great talk from Peter Singer (when he was still young) about Hegel and Marx. If you haven't seen that, I would recommend doing so. It gives a great overview over Hegel and his Influence towards Marx.
I would recommend W. Stace's book on Hegel's philosophy.
Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit will get you a long way
By the time Marx got to Capital he moved very far from Hegel. The "Hegalian Marx" was the Marx of the Paris manuscript, the German ideology e.t.c. Capital is Marx the social scientist, positivist
Btw, one doesn't just read hegel lol. He's one of if not the most obtuse writers ever.
Life sure is an existential deal, man
William Rose Benet said it well: 'Those who know the secrets of Hegel have managed to keep them.' Hegel clearly denied the unity and integrity of Dasein (Being There), but I am surprised that Russell here affirms a kind of substantial thisness. I would add that British idealists like Bradley and Bosanquet were not aware of or simply ignored the role of #fate in Hegel. So it makes sense that logical positivism could posit a clear demarcation between an object and a relation. #philosophy
Well, Hegel is right. The soziocentric system of homo "sapiens sapiens" was colliding for too long with the logic of the cosmos, e.g. astrophysix, physix, quantumphysix, chemistry, biology etc. Russell always searched for a truth, like Einstein. Hegel can be seen as a quantummetaphysicist, bc he already tried to argue for a multiprobability in a time science was still thinking on an atomar and electromagnetic level. Big fan of Russell, because his work "The problems of philosophie" was my hook-up to the world of dialectic thinking
Mathematicians cannot endure Hegelian logic. Nor can anyone who has to deal with actual physics in the real world. Every man should be required to turn a wrench somewhere before ever engaging in philosophy. Because a great mental illness arises from detaching yourself from all reality to live in a world of pure thought.
Hegel's real strength is his walk, his pacing, he was a peripatetic, today he would be an outstanding power-walker, his thinking wasn't really his strong suit tho, tbh Senator Kennedy and even his dog Rodger are better philosophers , لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله
@@abubatatu3241 What on earth have you been smoking? And please leave it to rot or dissolve it yourself.
0:40 "it all turns on whether a thing is constituted by its relations". Sounds like "dependent origination" of Buddhist philosophy. Check it out. Pratītyasamutpāda
Hegel sounds spot on to me.
Interestingly enough, quantum theory tells us that everything is entangled, and that there are no purely independent objects
if we're gonna bash HEGEL... then we have to do SCHOPENHAUER!!!
Anyone trying to major in philosophy?
This notion that Hegel was a thinker of unity is misleading, it paints Hegel as almost a Spinozian thinker, which is anti-Hegelian. Hegel was first and foremost a thinker of contradiction, and if you read Russells work you can tell that he more or less understands this fact, though he doesnt articulate it here, he implies Hegel was a thinker of difference or multiplicity. Hegels argument is that all things that seem to have an identity necessitate some contradiction to that identity in order for the thing to have any meaning. Being necessitates the existance of nothing because if being were purely identical to itself it would have no distinction within itself, it would be so totalizing that it would have the same essance as a self-identical nothing, both must exist in contradiction with one another in order for either to exist, and to Hegel this can be proven through thought because "substance is subject." Many misinterpret this (modified) statement by Hegel as Hegel claiming that the external world is the product of mind, which is ridiculous. Hegel believed the opposite, because the subject is in fact made up of substance, and because the subject can comprehend contradiction, contradiction must exist in substance in order for the the constantly changing and contradictory nature of the subject to exist. "If the individual human being does something, achieves something, attains a goal, this fact must be grounded in the way the thing itself, in its concept, acts and behaves. If I eat an apple, I destroy its organic self-identity and assimilate it to myself. That I can do this entails that the apple in itself, already, in advance, before I take hold of it, has in its nature the determination of being subject to destruction, having
in itself a homogeneity with my digestive organs such that I can make it homogeneous with myself." Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion III, p. 127. This is Hegels ontological philosophy, and this is how he moves past Kants critique of pure reason. We can see here that Hegel and Russell are most definitely at odds, since Russells philosophy relies on the notion of non-contradictory identity, and I won't pretend that I know who is correct here, I just want to illustrate that Hegels philosophy is almost 180 degrees opposed to the picture Russell presents here, he is a philosopher of contradiction and is constantly trying to show that what we think is in unity with itself, identity, is inherently formed by contradiction. I also want to say that while Hegel was an ontological thinker, it is very possible to concieve of Hegels philosophy on an epistemological basis, this is essentially the project of Robert Pippen, a smart guy who's made very good defences for Hegel from Russell, Popper, and the like.
The mistake is taking Hegel as a thinker at all
This is on point
Dear commentators, can you provide a good and most importantly comprehensive interpretation/explanation of Hegel philosophy? Almost every extracts I've read are incomprehensible and unreadable, and the ones I can grasp, like Russel's, are always treated as wrong and misinterpreted
Bruh you're asking for a comprehensive explanation of Hegel from a RUclips comment...
If there are specific questions or points of confusion, somebody might be able to help you out, but you're not gonna get a satisfactory answer to that question even if every person responding to you was a scholar of Hegel and took hours crafting their response. Not just because Hegel can be counter-intuitive, but because the responder has to have some sense of what background you're approaching Hegel from. Like, if you've never heard of Kant and you're unfamiliar with what philosophical problems he's seeking to solve, then a lot of Hegel will seem pointless and incoherent. He has to be understood in his context.
I like recommending Dr. Gregory Sadler's RUclips channel. He has a comprehensive series on the Phenomenology of Spirit (and a lot of lectures on Kant), which I found quite accessible. If you want something less comprehensive and more casual, the podcasts Philosophize This and The Partially Examined Life have a lot of good episodes on Hegel.
Just don't go straight to Phenomenology of Spirit or The Science of Logic because those require a lot of background (eg familiarity with Kant and the German idealists) imho. Plus Hegel's a bad writer.
I'll have a go. My reading of him is very shaped by Todd McGowan. He is very readable and I would recommend his book on Hegel, not only as an intro but also as a response to all the abuse which has been heaped on him throughout the years, these assertions from Russell included.
He's an Ontologist. And in the analytic context this means the sort of conversations revolving around 'ordinary objects', properties, mereology, subjects and predicates, etc. And that is right where Russell is: what is stuff, what are the true ontological terms? What are things? One of the debates here concerns the possibility that there is no underlying substance, and that an object is simply a *bundle* of properties or universals. *A multitude* or a many (a color, a smell, a texture, etc.) are simply compresent, without the real existence of any primary substance, any *ONE* which unifies them, or 'holds them together.' And others think of course that there is a One, a substance. (c.f. philosopher Max Black: if things are just bundles of qualities, how are two things with EXACTLY the same qualities, TWO things?)
Hegel takes on all these questions in the second chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter is called perception. The point here is that the question does not have an answer, the problem no solution. On each side there are problems. The one and the many simply cannot be held together in thought.
We can know what is true if our thinking matches the objective world. Since we cannot hold the one and the many together no matter how hard we try, since thinking about the world as THINGS WITH PROPERTIES fails, we need to think about the world differently. Maybe what is real is rather FORCES and a their soliciting each other unendingly. The next chapter in the phenomenology takes the kind of knowing not reminiscent of Locke, et al, but Newton. But the process is repeated; with the idea of force there are again insoluble problems.
And so on and so forth, the perspective keeps on switching, we proceed from one mode of knowing to the other, and each time the trajectory is unavoidably antimonial: nowhere are we safe from contradiction. (And in the text we fare far from ordinary objects and their properties: 'I am incessantly changing, how do I find MY identity, a oneness to hold together my manifold experiences? Maybe God, is the one and I can make myself united with him?) The process repeats itself again and again until Absolute Knowing. What is it? Does Hegel have the answer? Does he know where we are safe from contradiction? Russell thinks Hegel thought he did for sure. But he does not: the lesson is rather that nowhere are we safe from contradiction.
The contradictoriness we experience in ontological debates (are things bundles or substances? Both sides have equally convincing arguments, it's an antinomy of pure reason! one might say) cannot be overcome by thinking differently or changing perspective. The reason is that contradiction inheres in being itself, it's not the incompleteness of our knowledge, being itself in incomplete.
That said, I think Russell was obviously an immense genius. I've been made to read his On Denoting a few times and while his jab at Hegel in there is out of pocket, it is a magnificent essay I'd recommend to everyone! The famous 'Grey's Elegy' argument in it has always stuck out to me. It reminded me of the phenomenology in the way it proceeded through various alternatives until it is manifest that the problem's are not with the our understanding of 'sense' but with sense itself! At least that is how I read the notoriously difficult passage a long time ago.
i commented somewhere in the replies just a little bit more in depth if you care to look for it.
(1) Forgive me, but (since I infer from your name that you are Russian) may I ask whether you really mean 'comprehensive', not rather compreHENSIBLE? If it's really comprehensive you're after, I doubt if there's any more comprehensive account than Hegel himself, who alas provided (as far as I am aware) no concise account of his philosophical positions - he may himself have thought such a thing was impossible, and may in this have been right - though it's not clear exactly why HIS philosophy should be (?uniquely?) unsusceptible of being presented briefly, without deformation or misrepresentation . If comprehensible, well, some readers of H would say you cannot make comprehensible what is not ITSELF entirely lucid - but since that view is itself far from being uncontentious, it's hard to know how the international philosophical community might advance towards some collective view of H's significance. For what it's worth, I think that if Russell himself was (even if only when very young) himself ready to spend such a lot of time reading H, then H must have been on to something... - after all, R was JUST AS CLEVER at 20 as he was at 90, and couldn't know that he would live to 97 or whatever he was when he died.
"a thing can be exactly what it is, even if it had no relations at all."
This just seems incoherent to me. Is Russell advocating for some kind of Platonic idealism? I'm surprised to hear him say that.
Overall, this was way worse than I thought it was gonna be. Super uncharitable reading of Hegel.
exactly, what the fuck even is a thing that has no relations? If it were comprehensible at all, it would at least be related to the cognitive act that makes it so. So that's at least one relation, which ties it back to a language, and therefore to a particular national history, etc. Which is the starting-point of Hegel's philosophy--not this mystical-theological nonsense the analytics thought they were revolting against. If anything, all these anti-Hegelians in the Anglo-American tradition only showed the folly of immediacy more clearly
Russell: "The world is a heap of shot"
Oooh, so close!
You have to wonder what Russell would have said if he knew about quantum field theory.
Well, Russell certainly knew about quantum theory, and even wrote quite a bit on it.
Speaking of Hegel(ians) and Russell. Man, what I would give to see a long form debate between Slavoj Zizek and Bertrand Russell. I mean, it would hardly be a meeting of minds, but it would be something to witness.
Why wouldn't it be a meeting of minds? Not clear, this.
@@julianwynne8705 Neither of them would take the other seriously.
@@luszczi the egos would prevent them from engaging in good faith
it would turns out that russel didnt made his homework, as you can see in the hegel question. russel absolutely dont get the point what hegel means with thinking the truths is only the whole.
Turtle-man
take me by the hand
take me to the land
THAT YOU UNDERSTAND
Was amazed that Hegel was saturated in occultism - but shouldn't have been the dialectic is irrational no two things are the same - this isn't philosophy - it's mysticism and the turn to it amongst many other spiritual occult religious influences is with all that Jungian archetype and shadow influence - the sign of the times - when the irrational actually manifests it's self - philosophy -which is no longer a real subject - fades .
Russell never read a single book directly written by Hegel. He just read comments on Hegel made by others. If he actually read the Phenomenology of Spirit himself , he would have found a brutal criticism against this same opinion already in the first pages.
But then you go and read the rest of the book...
For having read and re-read our dear Georg Wilhelm, i confirm first commentator's statement that everything russell says here is completely out of subject, and based on a ridiculously partial ( when not wrong ) reading of hegel's system of thought.
Shame because there are such good criticisms to make. But perhaps it's easier to just dismiss Hegel's whole works as rubbish in order to make yourself appear as intellectually superior, thus conforming to the lofty ethos of oxford academia
fuckin anglos eh? pooping on the continent once again
Do you think his talk of "unity of the universe" or that "evereything is related to everything" is also wrong?
@@Rudi361 I'm completely with Schopenhauer (and I believe Hegel) on this that relativity is a precondition for existence in the first place and that no thing can exist "independently" as he puts it ... every one needs another
@@alexanderfuchs8742 How is Schopenhauer related to that? You mean how he deems the Will and the representation to be inseparable from each other, or did you mean something else?
(Also I had a brief heart attack when I've read the first few words of your comment - namely that you're completely with Schopenhauer - under a video about a famous philosopher not getting Hegel at all haha)
@@szilveszterforgo8776 thanks for asking ...
A) no i dont mean that at all. the world as will and the world as representation are not bound together by the sentence of sufficient reason! schopenhauer at one point says their connection is rhizomatic (but thats just a fun fact for all my deleuzians out there)
B) the principle of sufficient reason is the principle of everything going on in the phaenomenal world (representation) as seen under the auspices of science and knowledge as such. the essence of this world is will. this means the essence of (inter-)dependency (which cannot be directly observed but only infered) is experienced by us as Will.
-- with dependency and its experience as will (a torture, really, and often spiritually crippeling to the point of inhumanity) we can think of addiction, economic extraction, international relations ...
C) im mentioning schopenhauer only because of his treatise on the principle of sufficient reason which might be the most important work on the subject. but really (as in many cases!!!) hegel and schopenhauer are completely in alignment here. indeed it is the foundatiom for both of their philosophies [comp. encyclopedia 121]. my point is mainly that russells claim about a thing being the same if it were "independent of everything else" is completely nonsensical.
D) there indeed is a way of seeing things independently of our prejudices and -conceptions, which is by way of giving ourselves over to our experience, unwillingly letting ourselves and our experience in turn be determined, letting the will of the other come to light and painting a picture of that in ways that dont ask for reasons why. but that, in turn, is exactly preconditioned on the holistic notion of truth that undergirds the way in which both schopi and hegel interpret the principle of sufficient reason in its conditionality, mediation and reciprocity.
i hope this calms your racing heart :)
I prefer my philosophers mean and misanthropic like Schopenhauer.
kidz tend to do
@@Salonsozi the kidz know where it’s at
To harbour an overly cynical or misanthropic view of one's fellow human beings and the course of history reveals only a cheap quest for superiority. Schopenhauer considered Hegel's dialectic, with its admittedly unwieldy language, to be charlatanry. And he was fundamentally right in criticising this philosophy. However, he was unable to distinguish the true from the untrue parts, to locate the core of the dialectic and to separate it from the contemporary nonsense that constituted German Idealism. Schopenhauer did address crucial points of criticism, but in the end he himself created an even more hair-raising metaphysics than Hegel. Feuerbach and later Marx also criticised Hegel for similar tendencies, but unlike Schopenhauer, they recognised what was genius and what was nonsense about Hegel. So they took the dialectic and applied it to Hegel's own philosophy. Something that the "charlatan" had failed to do at decisive moments in his philosophy. Feuerbach did it instinctively, Marx then quite consciously: they turned Hegel's philosophy upside down and thus destroyed Hegel's and with it German Idealism as a whole, preserving the valuable condensate of the dialectic and making it useful for the future.
@@derantiobskurantI appreciate your insightful comment (I was joking a bit, but I do appreciate Schopenhauer). In truth, I need to read much more Hegel, Marx, etc. than I have, and you make a good case for doing so. I’m not sure I agree with your first point, that philosophical pessimism is really a form of domination or egoism (if I understand you correctly). Schopenhauer seemed to argue the opposite, denial of self being an antidote to suffering. In any case, I tend to think of pessimism more as a counterbalance to overly “optimistic” philosophical system-building, but, as you point out, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is fairly involuted itself-and he wasn’t exactly a humanitarian, either.
@@zachsharp4564 By striving for superiority I was alluding to Adlerian theory, which was idiotic of me - because no one studies Adler's teachings any more, I have to concede. I think Schopenhauer offered an alternative idealistic solution to an actual problem than Hegel. Both had in common that their solutions to the same problems remained idealistic, even if here and there they showed tendencies not to take their idealism too seriously when it came to natural sciences. For simplified understanding i quote some Lenin:
"In his "Ludwig Feuerbach", Engels declares materialism and idealism to be the fundamental philosophical directions. Materialism sees nature as the primary, the spirit as the secondary; it places being in the first place, thinking in the second. For idealism, the reverse is true. Engels takes this fundamental difference of the "two great camps" into which the philosophers of the various schools of idealism and materialism divide themselves as the starting point of his reflections, directly accusing those of "confusion" who use the two expressions materialism and idealism in a different sense.
The "highest question of all philosophy", "the great fundamental question of all, especially recent philosophy" - says Engels - is "the question of the relation of thought to being, of mind to nature". By dividing the philosophers into "two great camps" on this basic question, Engels points out that this basic philosophical question has "yet another side", namely:
"How do our thoughts about the world surrounding us relate to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of recognising the real world, are we able to produce a correct reflection of reality in our ideas and concepts of the real world? "A
"This question ... is answered in the affirmative by by far the greatest number of philosophers" - says Engels, counting among this number not only all materialists, but also the most consistent idealists, e.g. the absolute idealist Hegel, for whom the real world is the realisation of the "absolute idea" which exists from eternity, whereby the human mind recognises the "absolute idea" in the correct cognition of the real world in it and by means of it.
"Besides these (i.e., besides the materialists and the consistent idealists. L.) there are, however, a number of other philosophers who deny the possibility of a cognition of the world, or at least of an exhaustive cognition. Among the more recent of these are Hume and Kant, and they have played a very important role in philosophical development..." from Lenins materialism and empirioctriticism.
But isnt it just factual Today that Everything is related? Se are Close to One theory of Everything.
As long as everything is a "thing", or simply "is", everything is related. Pretty simple.
Russell and Popper are the GOATS
And thus Continental and Analytic philosophy was divided forever.
He seems to know virtually nothing about Hegel.
That's all there is to know about Hegel at all.
Que se puede esperar de alguien con esa caripela papa. Típico tontito de sistemas o exactas, más cuadrado imposible. Menos mal que en esto al menos la historia hará justicia y seguirá habiendo hegelianos durante siglos, "russelianos" no hubo ni en su propia época.
Hegel 🔻👁🔺️
No hate greater than that of the apostate! His treatment of Leibniz wasn't very charitable, either.
But he loves Leibniz, even if his reading is logic focused and unorthodox. He says he is one of the greatest thinkers ever. He just thinks he was cowardly about giving his opinions. Now Russell has been jailed and fired in his life for his views so it makes sense that he would think that way even if it is rather harsh.
@@Evilanious Russell's Leibniz is not considered accurate by historians of Western philosophy. His character, as described by Russell, was not very flattering, which you alluded to: somewhere between a pusillanimous lickspittle and a socially striving worm. That, too, probably isn't accurate. But Russell's abuse of his corpus is the most serious offense to Leibniz scholarship. Short of reading Leibniz (always the best option), a much more esoteric reading than Russell's is found in Robert Merrihew Adams's "Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist".
You can not oversimplifying Hegel more wrong than he did.
Oversimplification may be a mistake, yet the much bigger mistake it would be to waste any more time on Hegel.
@@legn7324 why not
Dude people get so offended when you say anything negative in the general direction of Hegel. Russell is more critiquing his own undergrad understanding than anything else here.
Ohh so hagel was smarter.
I absolutely agree with Russell, but I think that Hegel's importance is great nonetheless
You see, everybody needs a punching bag. And Hegel is a perfect punching bag, because his infuriatingly obviously wrong "philosophy", contradictory statements and obnoxious personality really made any philosophy student with a functioning brain and an indipendent thought want to punch the shit out of him.
This is the way that great thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and apparently Russell, among others, first began the development of their own philosophy, to counter his hideous, filthy, verminous "philosophy".
russell isn't right unless hegel is wrong.
It is sad and boring at one, to see how Russel has not the slightest idea of what to do with Hegel's concepts. We have to conclude that Russell has not done his homework and even if he has probably read and studied Hegel, but has not understood him at all.
When he talks about the fact that for Hegel: "only the whole is also the true", Russell understands this in his own limited i.e. metaphysical view, whereas a Hegelian proposition, insofar as it is correct (he was definitely hugely wrong about some, and hugely right about others), can logically only be understood dialectically. Russel thinks in terms of irreconcilable contradictions - or so-called antinomies. Accordingly, there is only liquid or solid, dead or alive, etc.
"The dialectical method opposes the metaphysical one. The latter (which is rooted in religious views based on dogmatic revelation and is a tenacious inheritor of the old way of formulating thought) presents the concepts of things as immutable, absolute, eternal and traceable to some first principles, the concepts being alien to each other and leading a kind of autonomous existence. For the dialectical method, all things are in motion; and not only that: in their motion they mutually affect each other, so that their concepts, i.e. the reflections of things in our thinking, are also linked and connected. Metaphysics proceeds according to antinomies, i.e. absolute, mutually exclusive concepts. Such concepts can never combine; neither do they come into contact, nor can anything new arise from their combination, which would not be limited to the simple assertion of the presence of one and the absence of the other, and vice versa.
To give a few examples: in the metaphysical sciences, rest is opposed to motion; there is no coherence between the two things; by virtue of the formal principle of contradiction, that which rests does not move, and that which moves does not rest. But already the Eleatic school, with Zeno, proved the fallacy of such a seemingly certain distinction: the flying arrow, which passes a point during its trajectory, rests at that point, so it does not move. Seen from the shore, the ship moves; the passenger moves in the opposite direction on the bridge: seen from the shore, he stands still, so he does not move. The so-called sophisms showed the possibility of uniting opposites: for example, stillness and movement. Only by breaking down motion into so and so many point-like, spatial and temporal moments did it become possible for the infinitesimal calculus, which was unacceptable to the metaphysical method, and for modern physics to solve questions of non-linear and non-uniform motion. Today, rest and motion are considered relative terms: neither absolute rest nor absolute motion make sense.
Another example: for the astronomy of the metaphysicians, all heavenly bodies are unchanging and imperishable, their shape and orbits remain the same for all eternity. Earthly bodies, on the other hand, are changeable and transient in a thousand ways: there is no connection between the two opposite parts of the universe. Today, however, we know that the same laws of evolution apply to the stars as to the earth (which is a "piece of heaven" without therefore being given a title of nobility shrouded in mystery). For Dante, the influence of the imperishable planets on the events of transient humanity was a major problem, while for modern science the reciprocal influence between the Earth and the other parts of the universe is a matter of daily observation - which is why it still does not believe that the stars determine our destiny.
Finally, in the human and social sphere, metaphysics introduces two absolute supreme principles: good and evil, which are rather mysteriously anchored in the consciousness of all human beings or personified in extraterrestrial beings. We have already indicated the relativism of moral concepts, their mutability and changeability - depending on place, time and class situation." - libcom.org/article/dialectical-method-amadeo-bordiga
psyop
Please, dear comment reader, know that everything Russell says here is wrong.
And it's wrong, dear readers, because Sam 'The Intellectual Giant' Copeland says so!
@@OngoGablogian185 No it's just wrong because literally anyone who's ever read Hegel knows that what Russell is saying here is out of pocket. Read a book.
@@OngoGablogian185 In fairness Russell is widely regarded to be VERY wrong on Hegel
@@Tofu_va_Bien You might want to take your own advice and start with reading a dictionary to understand the meaning of the word 'literally'. Clearly, Russell spent years reading Hegel while studying at Cambridge, but I'm sure you're much better informed. Now, if either of you would actually like to provide some reasoning in order to support your conclusions, that would be great.
@@OngoGablogian185 'literally' is used as an intensifier
For once, Hegel got the best of Russell...
Sounds like Hegel was a Buddhist lol
“I now think Hegelian philosophy is rubbish.” 😅💭
Russel is amusing enough here. Wish he'd said that of Marx, where it applies.
What?
Whatever you think about Hegel, dismissing a philosopher that has been so influential to so many great thinkers in this demeaning and derogatory way is against the principles of philosophy and of unbiased thought. Pathetic attempts at defense like "Oh, but many others thought this too" don't have any relevance. Does something wrong which is done by a majority cease to be wrong? I'd respect him more if he straight-up said "I dislike anything continental (i.e. not Anglo-Saxon)" maintaining this attitude of cultural and intellectual superiority. At least he wouldn't then project his opinion as an objective philosophical truth. If indeed his objective was not to explain Hegel here (or if he couldn't due to time constraints), that's acceptable. But in that case, he should have restricted himself to "I used to like Hegel's philosophy but now I don't." No actual need for all the snide snobbish rhetoric.
No.
Here's the whole video is summation: "Hegel thought x, y, and z, but that's rubbish because *I* don't think that"
I happen to think Bertrand Russell is right here, but he's also just flatly arrogant. From the portions I've read of his History of Philosophy, it seems Russell measures the worth of every other philosopher insofar as they share his own way of thinking.
Who cares if he's being arrogant or not, what is that got to do with anything? Arthur Schopenhauer and Soren Kirkegaard kicked Hegel's ass.
Absolute worst take on hegel lmao
Why? Why dont you adress the points he made?
dialectics = doublethink
We monarchy communists love its potential of proving everything our authority says right.
The practice of irrationalism will always be a disaster.
What do you propose instead of dialectics?
Russell to some extent is a reductionist and pundit, naturally he will disagree with Hegel. Similar to Russel with Hegel, I was once impressed with Russell's thinking however that was a long time ago.
so after Russell , whom are you interested in now?
Russell was the Joe Biden of philosophy. I’d rather read food labels than his works.
^^ "You are what you eat." Ludwig Feuerbach
You'd rather read food labels than The History of Western Philosophy? That says more about you than it does of Russell.
Russel misinterpreted philosophy a lot.
A very pathetic critique of Hegel. I would expect better from Bertrand Russell.
Create a common language and Economy the whole world will be one culture. Pure zero thinking in this man
Bertrand Russell is an true philosophier in human brain; while Hegel and Hegelian are in the opposite with mud stuffs in brain.
Bertrand Russel mid af
Terrible
You can literally still hear the traumata reading Hegel induced to poor youngster Russell ages ago.
There is nothing Hegelian in this man all he promoted was mere speculations and foolishness