OPENING: Hegel in the 21st Century? w/ Cadell Last

Hegel in the 21st century? Is it possible to think Hegel’s relevance for our century? The idea behind this conference is that Hegel can be used as a starting point to work through phenomena that Hegel could not have been able to anticipate. This starting point attempts to avoid, on the one hand, a type of “dogmatic Hegelianism”, where everything begins and ends with Hegel as if he “knew everything”; and, on the other hand, a type of “anti-Hegelianism”, which attempts to think as if Hegel never existed. The former move fails to understand Hegel’s meaning behind the notion of Absolute Knowing, while the latter move fails to recognize that in failing to repeat Hegel, we will very likely fall underneath him, and make unnecessary mistakes, or mistakes that are easily avoidable.

Meditations on Self-Consciousness in Hegel w/ Chetan Anand

Hegel’s notion of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology can be read as what develops out of its own failures, and also that which must be included within our picture of the world, as the self in relation to the world, rather than disconnected from the world. This notion of self has major implications for theory and practice, specifically the difference between theoretical knowledge and the process through which theoretical knowledge comes-to-be as practice. Here thinking the way subject’s can withstand negativity and the intensive dimension of reality may be crucial to challenge the way we formulate future research projects.

Hegel, Buddhism & The Becoming of Spirit w/ Quinn Whelehan

The logic of Nagarjuna’s ‘middle-way’ and four-fold negation is compared with Hegel’s dialectical process governed by the triadic logic of abstraction, negation, concretion, where Hegel’s notion of negation of negation is specifically highlighted. While both Nagarjuna’s and Hegel’s negation stands unified against fixed form of abstraction, the former’s negation may be understood as becoming fixed to itself, whereas Hegel’s negation negates itself. This Hegelian dimension opens up a forgotten dimension of becoming which has major implications for spiritual development. Whereas a negation which remains fixed to itself tends to a withdrawal from the world, a negation which negates itself, opens back to the restlessness of the world.

Tantric Hegel: The Most Fascinating Phallus w/ Dimitri Crooijmans

The notions of Tantra and Hegel are here put into an oppositional determination, in an attempt to think a “Hegelian Tantra”, and a “Tantric Hegel”. First, the notion of tantra is juxtaposed against the notion of sutra, where sutra is a form of negativity in the the form of renunciation and prohibition dealing with the reality principle; and where tantra is a positivization of negativity in the form of a conscious dealing with the pleasure principle. Sutra’s negativity combined with tantra’s negation of negativity allows for a container to consciously transform our deepest pleasures related to sexuality into a new real. This ultimately allows us to overcome common sexual problems like ego inflation, neediness, greed, shame, guilt, and so forth, in the sexual realm. These practices can be perceived as Hegelian insofar as Hegel emphasizes that the transforming of negativity into positivity is the ultimate power of spirit, a “magical power” that allows new being. A Hegelian Tantra would involve an unleashing of a new power of spirit related to maturing sexuality, and bringing sexuality as pathos, and philosophy as logos, closer together for a new concrete actuality, or grounded mythos.

*Winner of the Philosophy Portal student presentation award (via democratic internal vote by other course participants/presenters)

Hegel’s Critique: Is Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Subjective Idealism? w/ Max Macken

The distinction between an empirical standpoint for knowledge claims is juxtaposed against a transcendental standpoint related to the a priori possibility of knowledge. Here it is emphasized that the relation between these two standpoints can be seen in the philosophical battle between David Hume and Immanuel Kant, with Hume’s skepticism falling on the side of empiricism, and Kant’s idealism falling on the side of transcendentalism. Furthermore, it is argued that Kant’s idealism resolves Hume’s skepticism, but at a cost of separating us from life. This ultimately prevents us from being capable of thinking self-transformation and ontological knowledge. In other words, Kant’s idealism leads us into a form of subjectivism. It is this limitation that provokes and motivates Hegel’s philosophical interventions.

Hegel and the Concept of Realism w/ Jason Bernstein

The concept of realism is explored in ideas derived from the Phenomenology of Spirit. These ideas are specifically related to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s subjective idealism. What is important in Hegel’s critique of Kant can be found in the way Hegel rethinks notions of fixity, universality, knowledge, and ultimately faith experience. Hegel invites us to a “higher” or different kind of subjectivity, which takes into deeper consideration its own development, phenomenal context for understanding truth, the nature of the temporal dimension, multiplicity of self in sociohistorical context, and the way Kant’s noumena is not just an in-itself, but also a for-itself. For Hegel, the world is mind-dependent, subjectivity is fluid, but also finds a fixity in the very disparity between itself and its object. Was Kant’s subjective idealism a philosophical position derived from trauma?

Mutual Recognition: Re-Reading Master-Slave Dialectic, a Psychoanalytic Perspective w/ Baris Ali

The dynamics of mutual recognition is emphasized, especially in the context of our earliest years of maturation. Here it is argued that Hegel’s Phenomenology, and its emphasis on the dynamics of recognition, opened the conditions of possibility for psychoanalysis to apply these ideas to our infant and early childhood development, as it unfolds between babies/infants and parents/care-givers. From these ideas there is an emphasis on the importance of pre-Oedipal development (before the ages of 2-6), where dynamics of recognition can be theorized to occur in the womb, birth and the first years of life. After Oedipal development, following theory derived from the Phenomenology, there is an internalization of a master/slave dynamic of recognition in the mind. This internalization constitutes the drive for self-assertion against psychic dependence on the mother. The co-creation of the self between the baby and the mother, stemming from the womb and continuing into adulthood, is here theorized as a “third” or “trinity” in dyadic dynamics of recognition, and the locus of creative transformation.

Hegel’s Subjectivity as Freedom: Dissolving Knowing the Absolute in the Self w/ Raza Ali

The personal dimension is situated in relation to Hegel’s notion of freedom, where the story of loss of the socially mediated self is understood as the opening and invitation to lose this loss itself. Here we find the “dissolved I”, the universal in the particular, which mirrors the movement through dialectical stages explicated at the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The journey of “losing the self” is narrativized with an emphasis on the traversal of Eastern mystical and spiritual traditions, which help one to be in touch with a “being without language” or a metaphysical emphasis on the “non-dual”, opening a “detox from the world”. However, this mystical or spiritual standpoint itself has its contradictions in relation to the formation of gurus, the establishment of alternative communities with new social power dynamics, presenting themselves as non-contradictory. Here Hegel is perceived as a thinker of contradiction which allows one to bring the self to an even higher standpoint of knowing. From this standpoint of knowing, it is theorized, philosophy can reclaim itself.

A Black Square: Reading the End of Painting Through Hegel & the Negation of Negation w/ James W. Wisdom

How serious are we to take painting? How are we to interpret statements like “Art is Dead” and “History is Over”? It is in this context that Kazimir Malevich famous “Black Square” is analyzed as a piece of religious iconography. The Black Square as an art piece was situated in a location typically reserved for icons or figures of God. However, as a piece of art, the Black Square stands for the opposite of God: obliteration and brutality, the death of all in a total negation. Can we interpret this total negation positively? Can the Black Square be seen as a real objectivity that stands out from the beatific images of the other paintings? The Black Square invites us not to fall victim to fatalism, e.g. to perceive the world as a giant scam, forcing us into endlessly chasing “carrots” dangling on the end of “sticks”. Here it is argued that there is an enjoyment in negating the negation, an ultimate expression, an expression that stands against the inevitable end of time and all things, i.e. our own personal death. The Black Square reminds us that no matter how great you are, no matter how much money you have, or how much success you have experienced, we are all still “less than nothing”. That is our secret power.

The Hegelian Journey: Bildung Within Spirit w/ Isaiah Holland

Bildung as spiritual self-cultivation can be understood as four forms: education, culture, skillfulness and creation. These forms can be cultivated in context of the coming-to-be of spirit, in the mistrust of cognition derived from the intuitive knowing of the thing. This process involves student-teacher relations (eduction), the overcoming of dogma (culture), and the powerful complexification of triadic geometry into as many as 9 different configurations (skillfulness and creation). Here we are left with the idea that there is an ethic for subjectivity which extends beyond the immediate complexities of substance, an ethic that reaches for a beyond, and ultimately an integration of the other into itself.

The Absolute Choice w/ Daniel Garner (O.G. Rose)

The “Absolute Choice” is about the “road to Absolute Knowing”, and can be defined as the choice which values and actualizes otherness. This choice is situated in the dimension between the movement of self-consciousness to Reason, which, it is claimed, is the “hardest step”. Here self-consciousness moves from its “closedness” and takes seriously worldly actuality, a move that necessitates a reconfiguration of rationality for otherness. The otherness of the external world becomes an internal otherness. This transformation of otherness can be described logically with the identity formula A/B (as an openness to other identity) as opposed to A/A (as a closedness within self identity). Alternatively, we could use the logical formulas I = Other to represent the same thing, or simply: Becoming. Finally it is argued that this “Absolute Choice” is one we must make everyday, which leads you into increasingly absurd and strange places, places that are best thought of as “non-rational”. Here we must be able to think of the “Absolute Hegel” over the “Rational Hegel”, so that our rationality can withstand the otherness of the truth, and so that our rationality can withstand a universe that is structured in such a way to allow the non-rational, as well as the impossibility of totalizing rationality.

Hegelian Maths w/ Alex Ebert

Here we are presented with a daring mathematical reading of Hegel. Hegel is perceived as the philosopher that unites the many and the one, and the one with the many. Because there is “no one” there are “many ones”. This logic flies in the face of the metaphysics of the one and the many, introducing irreducible contradiction. In this light Hegel is perceived as anticipating set theory, theorizing the absurdity of spurious infinity in mathematics, and also pointing towards the necessity of the Big Bang as the one that cannot hold itself but rather must multiply. Furthermore, Hegelian maths can be defined towards an emphasis on the unity of quality with quantity, and specifically that quantity without quality is useless for spirit, a form of utilitarianism without insight. When we combine quality with quantity, we recognize that we, as many ones (or “atomic subjectivity”), contain and steward the one as a pure negativity of the universe.

Absolute Knowing as Simplicity in Complexity, Philosophical Science, and the Nature of God w/ Cadell Last

Here we consider the main principles derived from Hegel’s chapter on Absolute Knowing in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and apply them to the problems that dominate contemporary atheistic interpretations of cosmos and society. In contemporary atheistic interpretations, there is an emphasis on the complexity of the world, scientific method, and the necessity of secular society. However, if we read Hegel’s ideas of simple self-knowing, philosophical science, and the nature of God, as presented in the chapter on Absolute Knowing, we can potentially sublate some of the fundamental problems with a focus on the complex world, scientific method, and secular society. First, understandings of the complex world must be complimented with a cultivation of a simple self-knowing; second, scientific method must include within itself the testing of particular singularity of subjectivity over external substance independent of subjectivity; and finally, secular society must not regress from dualism back to monism, but push forward into incompletion, incoherence, and contradiction of identity, which may be the same thing as God as a self-revelatory paradox within-and-as the historical process itself.

Conclusion: Hegel in the 21st Century? w/ Cadell Last

Hegel in the 21st century? We opened with this question, and yet aiming to think today. In this attempt we approached questions of the nature of self-consciousness, and its relation to contemporary theory and practice; the forgotten or missed dimension of becoming in Buddhism via negation of negation; the possible relation between highest logos and the highest pathos in the emergence of "Hegelian Tantra" or "Tantric Hegelianism"; a deep dive in to the philosophical history of transcendental subjectivism and transcendental idealism, with ramifications on how we think realism; an application of the logic of the Phenomenology to the conditions of possibility to think psychoanalytic spiritual development; the reflection on a personal journey from the socially mediated I to the dissolution of the I in absolute knowing as mediated through the exploration of Eastern mystical traditions; a mind-bending reflection on the nature of Malevich's Black Square as icon of total negativity (and also its possible negation); the application of Bildung as spiritual self-cultivation to an ethics of subjectivity beyond complex substance and towards the other of itself; the proposition that the "Absolute Choice" is the hardest step and decision that we must make each day to value and actualize otherness; the idea that mathematics must be understood qualitatively from the perspective of the many ones as containers and stewards of pure negativity; and that contemporary atheism must include within itself a deeper understanding of self-knowing within complexity, the application of the scientific method inclusive of subjectivity; and the affirmation of a paradoxical universality related to the nature of God within or one-and-the-same-as the historical process itself. The pathway is very much still open to reflect on how these Hegelian starting points may inform post-Hegelian phenomena, such as quantum mechanics, Darwinian evolution, cybernetic technological age, universal capitalism and so forth.

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