Nullify That Self-Externalization, Baby

My favourite Hegel quote:

What Mind Is. From our point of view mind has for its presupposition Nature, of which it is the truth, and for that reason its absolute prius. In this its truth Nature is vanished, and mind has resulted as the ‘Idea’ entered on possession of itself. Here the subject and object of the Idea are one – either is the intelligent unity, the notion. This identity is absolute negativity – for whereas in Nature the intelligent unity has its objectivity perfect but externalized, this self-externalization has been nullified and the unity in that way been made one and the same with itself. Thus at the same time it is this identity only so far as it is a return out of nature.
(Philosophy of Mind § 381.)

In your heart you know he’s right ….

10 Responses to Nullify That Self-Externalization, Baby

  1. Black Bloke August 28, 2007 at 12:52 am #

    WTF? Okay, you’re a philosophy guy, can you translate that for me? I’m completely lost…

    How did this stuff ever get a hearing and convince people?

  2. Sergio Méndez August 28, 2007 at 1:00 pm #

    Bloke:

    That confirms the old saying (of mine) “Fear any german philosopher whose second name starts with an H”

  3. Black Bloke August 28, 2007 at 11:21 pm #

    😀 Heidegger… Hegel… watch out!

    Off-topic: What’s going on with the libertariannation site?

  4. Black Bloke August 28, 2007 at 11:25 pm #

    😀 Heidegger… Hegel… watch out!

    Off-topic: What’s going on with the libertariannation site?

    p.s. my post didn’t post the first time, weird.

  5. Andy Stedman August 29, 2007 at 9:00 am #

    I think it’s a variation on the Emperor’s New Clothes phenomenon. If you admit that you can’t understand that nonsense, you must be stoopid.

  6. Administrator August 29, 2007 at 11:09 am #

    Hegel is a horrible, horrible writer. But I don’t think he was deliberately trying to put anything over on people; he was trying to craft a vocabulary to express insights, or what seemed to him insights anyway, that he found existing philosophical vocabulary inadequate for. And I do find a lot that’s valuable and interesting in Hegel. But I don’t claim to understand that particular passage!

  7. Andy Stedman August 29, 2007 at 3:56 pm #

    Maybe you’re stoopid.

    😉

  8. Dano August 30, 2007 at 11:06 am #

    Sergio: Husserl was born in Moravia, part of Czechia.

  9. Gene Callahan September 5, 2007 at 1:17 pm #

    By placing something outside itself but then coming to know that thing as other, the mind actually negates its otherness and re-unites with that externality on a new level.

    So there.

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