Why Hegel Is So Hard to Read
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
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Schopenhauer’s work is notoriously for constantly and repeatedly dunking on Hegel.
He said Hegel’s philosophy stupefied an entire generation, maintained that posterity would look down on Hegel as a “monument to German stupidity”, providing later generations with endless laughter. His “school of dulness”, “center of ignorance” was the greatest example of the corruption of academic philosophy.
Where does this hatred come from? Generally, it’s agreed that Schopenhauer hates Hegel for personal reasons, but also for philosophical reasons.
The two men had a bit of an altercation when Schopenhauer had to pass an exam in order to teach at the University of Berlin. Hegel asked him a question on “animal functions” but used the term wrongly. Schopenhauer corrected him, and the professor of medicine and biology concurred. This little incident proved to Schopenhauer that Hegel was a charlatan, unable to use a philosophical term in the correct manner.
Another possible source of hatred was Schopenhauer’s envy: we know he deeply desired fame but was largely ignored up until the very end of his life. Contrast this with Hegel, who was a philosophical superstar and world-famous almost immediately.
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“I REALIZED THAT THE PURPOSE OF WRITING IS TO INFLATE WEAK IDEAS, OBSCURE POOR REASONING, AND INHIBIT CLARITY. WITH A LITTLE PRACTICE WRITING CAN BE AN INTIMIDATING AND IMPENETRABLE FOG!”
Bill Watterson on Hegel’s contribution to academic writing.
I dont understand Hegel but with more words
"bill watterson" who?
A Hegel Bagel would be stale in texture but still tasty in spirit
all these polemics against hegel are just adoptions of schopenhauer's insecurity. he isnt incomprehensible. difficult, absolutely; not a terribly clear writer, for sure; but he is a brilliant thinker with ideas that i reference most days and in most contexts i find myself utilizing his insights. he wasnt just writing to be obscure for obscurity's sake or to seem intellectual where there was none. and theres several good reasons why his thought is so difficult that arent necessarily a character flaw.
All this channel does is echo Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, meanwhile shit on Hegel
Aufheben.
What's a good resource for understanding him then?
@@Nick-qf7vtthere isn't a single perfect one, especially considering there's still so much debate between hegelians on what he actually meant. if you want the true hegel experience and actually understand him, you should read and interpret him yourself. with practice, reading other philosophers first might be your best bet
He isn't incomprehensible. once you cut through all the nonsense you comprehend that he was just an idiot.
About to read The Phenomonology of Spirit, I already have a basic grasp of his ideas, so hopefully the ideas in the text won't be too elusive. I don't expect to fully understand it but that is how a first reading of any philosophy text should be.
Don't agree entirely with this. I have re read Hegel a number of times, and he does seek to tackle issues that are (deliberately) passed over by others. E.g. the idea of freedom is tough to tackle, so when it's done by Kant, yes it's much more simpler to understand, yet in his clarity, his account is plagued with contradictions. What we learn from Hegel is that there are some things that are incomprehensible and, therefore, not readily captured in words
A little reductive, Hegel was so tedious for the sake of clarity and exactitude, rather than superfluity. There's a reason he prevailed in the German Intelligentsia.
LOLLL Hahahahaha 😭😭
Sure but translated Hegel is hard ash to read if you’re just jumping into the Idealists
@@Black_pearl_adrift he has to be joking by the way he writes lol or else he is the most annoying redditor
@@MEGAsporg12 And you're an annoying megasperg
@@MEGAsporg12 I think that's why Schopenhauer was so critical and Mocking of Hegel. He probably shared a similar sentiment to you but probably with a greater depth of understanding than you me and everyone else lol
It's ok to think things should be said in a clear, concise and simple way. But you should also understand that simplification is not always good and almost always supposes a loss of meaning and precision. Some ideas are just hard to understand and in order to describe them with accuracy equally hard language is required.
I firmly disagree with the idea that he uses difficult words when more simply one’s would “perfectly suffice”. As others have said, he was expressing profound ideas that require technical and profound language. Much like Heidegger, he makes the reader aware, sometimes explicitly stating, that his project necessitates very precise language with terms that aren’t often used that way. With Notion, Idea, Spirit, Force, Absolute, and other commonplace words given very specific meanings that often take hundreds of pages to narrow down the meaning very precisely, reading Hegel is like reading an older dialect of English, or just an entirely new language altogether: at first it’s disorienting, and it seems hopeless, but you quickly become familiar with the ways in which this new language may be superior to the old one.
Someone mentioned how you need to understand Heraclitus to understand Hegel. I think this is partially true, but also, Heraclitus says everything straight up to the point where it’s so easy to read it as an analogy without realizing he genuinely is saying “ALL IS ONE”. Reading Hegel can often use logic and more specific and technical language to philosophically flesh out Heraclitus’ ideas in ways that make a previously mysterious philosophy that one may not have been able to pick up on its hints at all into something that now opens one’s eyes.
To be clear about the Russell quote, Russell didn't understand Hegel.
Pretty sure German Philosophers weren't becoming famous for being famous like people do today, there was a bit more to it. It is more like people were swept up with what was contained within the best writing Hegel could (or was willing to) manage, which was very difficult to read. It's a struggle because he was struggling and put down the only paths to where he was going that he could see, but DID get there in logical fashion. As a result readers inevitably struggle when they read him also.
If you did not understand Heraclitus, Hegel will never become clear for you!
Parmenides Vs Heraclitus ? Who wins?
The two together is Aristotle, Plato... All the way to Hegel, also in the way is the forgeting the hidden meaning of the underlying problem all... Thinking is a circle into itself, to go beyond is silence... Hegel deducted the categories from themselves, and completed the circle. What remains is not philosophy...
@@emilromanoagramonte9190 I love Heraclitus but haven't read Hegel yet. What's the connection?
EDIT: I should say I support the interpretation of Heraclitus that everything is not *constantly* changing: "Through the *same* river, different and again different waters flow." I think the quote about stepping in the same river twice might just be a Platonic misunderstanding, an exaggeration, or intended in a different sense.
@@CatholicismRulesyou have understood Heraclitus right. The connection between him and Hegel is mainly their focus on the term "changing"...but they don't think about it the same
When you don’t know how to attack the Philosophy, so you attack the philosopher
Most of those philosophers are difficult to read
Exactly. It's so a notification reading philosophy..you won't believe I found it a bit difficult to read Nietzsche. I'm getting a hang of him now.
@@preciousamaechi5887Nietzsche is easy to understand in the FIRST term, and that's why he is so often misunderstood...
@@preciousamaechi5887read twilight of the idols, it’s Nietzsches more mature writings.
I had to write a research paper on him and I quickly grew to understand him from reading that book firstly
As a writer I don't want to alienate my audience. I want to get my message across as clearly and to the point as possible. So I follow the rules of George Orwell. One of them is: Never use a long word where a short one will do. I also remember reading somewhere that he states using everyday language is better than using academic jargon because it comes across pretentious, rude, and inaccessible. Most people don't have time to dissect long text when they can be simplified.
This goes with the idea of using "strong" comparisons to present your ideas in a more evocative way. Like maybe someone isn't just tall, they tower over everyone, or they're like a mountain, or your neck hurts just by having eye contact with them.
The textbook example is when Cyrano de Bergerac gives 100 different ways of insulting his nose instead of saying "your nose is very big"
I recently started to study a little bit of philosophy on my own, going more or less in order from the Greeks onwards. I haven’t yet gotten to Hegel.. but boy does this guy’s reputation scare me😂
If you write code like that as a software developer, you get fired.
hegel's writing is pretty bad, but that doesn't mean he had nothing to say. it just takes a little work to understand him. all these amateur philosophers with their "yays" and "nays"
My take on it is simply that Hegel is read incorrectly because he writes as a poet, not a philosopher.
Philosophy students and related fields of study seek to understand Hegel without being well versed in stories, prose, and poetry, they have not read or done analysis on art works from movies, to fiction books, to even comics and video games. I instantly understood what he meant with each sentence.
Hegel's writing style is repetitive with run on sentences yes, but almost always doing so to re explain what he's trying to say with a different simile, metaphor, etc, or similar literary device, he is trying to elaborate things for you, it is the readers fault for being unable to understand, he is not trying to hold back knowledge from you or be pretentious.
If you do not understand art, you will not understand Hegel without forcing yourself to work thrice as hard as a art student would have understood immediately, it is no different than trying to understand Marx or Cockshott without knowing basic math or economics, you will probably get lost, and be incapable of understanding the ideas presented.
Hmmm, now that you say that, how much chance do I, as an art student, could understand Hegel?
Hegel is great but god damn did he need an editor. 😂
I feel like we're forgetting the amazing contributions of Hegel here though. Like sure the writing was hard to understand, but the insane praise her shop and how are right after this sidelining of Hegel Just makes me wonder if you share If you share in Schopenhauer's distaste & envy of Hegel.
Short answer, he does
I'll take it from James Lindsay, Hegel was more of a Gnostic, so he was writing in a way as in, if you did not understand him, you do not have Gnosis. I think many philosophers around that time were Gnostic-influenced, and that their job was to be the keepers of gnosis (which was the philosophies they churned out).
Was very much into alchemy, right? Hegel’s was rooted in ideas, and then Marx took this concept and rooted it in his own materialism with economic theory, then the Woke stuff is applying it to all society, especially with all the ‘critical theory’ ridiculousness influenced a bit by Foucault but mainly Derrida.
Very good point.
I think that's wrong..
@@wlrlel Yep, it's definitely wrong. Hegel abhorred intuition and enthusiasm, secret knowledge, and otherwordliness. He wanted to lay bare the essential structure of history, achieve absolute knowledge through rational philosophy, and justify his own times as the realizaton of heaven on earth. There are so many respects in which this flies in the face of "gnosticism," whatever the superficial similarities.
@@PierreRousselot exactly. Of course, we still have to acknowledge the fact that Hegels philosophy is more than just rationalistic/logizistic. His "Geist" is logic, but also nature...in its widest definition
Schoppenhauer propaganda
That’s why Schopenhauer was a great philosopher and Hegel was a pretentious hack 😂
But He's "So Deep!"
Good guy schopenhauer... Do you guys think that it was easier to be friends with schopenhauer than with hegel, vielleicht schopenhauer was more reachable, more open than hegel (which is saying to much for schopee haha).
I like Kierkegaard. Who doesn’t like a guy called ‘Churchgarden’. Isn’t that a graveyard? Creepy, but interesting.
Its still a problem.
Hegel’s philosophy is the inspiration and responsible for every bad idea and dictator both Right and Left of the last 100+ years.
It`s hard to read because it doesn`t make any sense. It`s written to appear as a writing of a very smart man, who observes world from the top of human knowledge. It`s a bs.
That's because he sees philosophy as a history of philosophy. If you try to summarize every great philosopher so as to make all of them fit together into one system, you'll be an obscure writer as well. One should appreciate the effort.
Hegel's not even that bad in contrast to Fichte
oh, is Fichte worse...? was planning to read him someday. where would you say Kant stands in comparison to both? Kant I did actually read and was pleasantly surprise to find him way more readable than some colleagues would have me believe
@@vitormelomedeiros I loved reading Kant as well, I think those who deem him difficult to read have a problem with the content rather than his style, it’s very clear although sometimes a little excessive. I’d say Fichte writes the most difficult (if you look up the preface to his wissenschaftlehre you’ll find even the translators say “he was one of those philosophers who never quite learned how to write well”) then Hegel and then Kant.
Schopenheur's Will and Representation is a bastardisation of Kant.
U just dont understand it. It's flawed in the metaphysical aspect however its the greatest and first work of truly understanding human nature. Schopenhauer is the true father of psychology.
This was the last vertical video from you. UNSUBSCRIBED
Ur just mad about the Hagel criticism.
Unsubscribing too, yes, because of gross and flat anti-Hegelianism. This is not critique. Enough is enough.
Why
@@lawxs9114 Because...
@@NickDaskalopoulos To be fair, the full video is in the description.
And coincidentally Schopenhauer produced the most abhorrent work of bourgeois bootlicking ever produced since the times of Plato.
Wait, you mean as in you have the same opinion on Plato? Or just on someone else from Plato’s time? I haven’t read Schopenhauer yet, but I’m surprised if it’s the former! I found Plato’s writings to be quite interesting and instructive.
Genuine curiosity here, I’m not provoking or anything.
not much is mentioned for the connection between hegel and the german operatic aesthetic, including wagner
Most of those philosophers are difficult to read