Hegel??

"After decades of trying and utterly failing to see what could possibly be worthwhile in Hegel's philosophy, I believe I've had a breakthrough."

That's the first paragraph of an essay I posted here on December 11, 2023. 4 months later, it seems more and more likely that what I understood was a YouTube which purported to be about Hegel. Does that video actually have anything to do with Hegel? I don't know. I don't have any Earthly. I can't even. 

 

What we have here, now as before, is failure to communicate. We're back to where we were before last December. I am not getting the message from Hegel's texts. 

Unless I am. Unless Schopenhauer was right about Hegel's philosophy: that it was pseudo-intellectual gibberish successfully passing itself off as philosophy. But I can't be sure about that anymore. 

It's not that I am afraid to assail the reputation of a celebrated thinker and purported genius. Every word Susan Sontag published or said on a broadcast was pseudo-intellectual garbage, delivered with that smug grin William Gaddis warned us about. Spengler is, im Grunde genommen, pretty silly, and hugely overrated. But at least much more entertaining than Sontag.

It's not that I can't follow philosophers in general. With those up to and including Hegel's most celebrated immediate forerunner Kant, and also with those following him, although I must often read very slowly and repeat certain passages, I don't get this feeling I get with Hegel. Not with Kant himself, not with Heidegger, not with Adorno. Not with the world's most famous Hegelian, Marx. 

Well, as Kierkegaard said -- Kierkegaard, who has often delighted me, often made me shake my head chidingly, but never puzzled me: enten -- eller. Either Hegel has fooled a great number of very smart people, who regard him as a great genius, but not me, or Schopenhauer, or Kierkegaard -- or all of those people have significantly smarter than all three of us, at least in this regard.

I can easily admit it when a single person is clearly more intelligent than I  -- okay, not easily, but I can admit it. When an entire group is outdoing me, it's disturbing. 

It sort of reminds me of the historical Jesus question. I've studied it pretty thoroughly. Most of the people who have studied it pretty thoroughly say that it's pretty obvious that a person named Jesus preached in Galilee and Jerusalem in the 20's, 30's or 40's AD, that he said many of the things in the text we today call the Sermon on the Mount, and that he was crucified on Pilate's orders. 

Well, it's still not obvious at all to me. That light bulb above my head, which is supposed to go on when I see how the evidence all adds up to Jesus having really lived and preached and been crucified by Pilate -- that light bulb is not on, it has not begun to flicker. The Biblical scholars go over the evidence, and to me, they're making the case that it's possible Jesus existed, the case that it's conceivable -- and then they say, so you see, it's really certain that he existed! And I shout wearily: No! I don't see!

I also don't see how I'm not keeping up with what those Biblical scholars are saying. Let's take the example of another famous controversy: were the writers of the New Testament wrong when they said that a virgin birth was prophesied by Isaiah? Yes. They were wrong. Bart Ehrman explained this to me in less than half a minute. To make a short story even shorter: read the entire chapter of Isaiah 7, and as Ehrman said: shame on all of us supposedly brilliant people for not already having read the entire chapter. It's not long. The Hebrew word can mean "virgin," or simply "young women," somewhat like the English term "maiden." Reading Isaiah 7, the entire short chapter, makes it clear that the Greek New Testament authors were mistaking in translating the word as "virgin" instead of simply "young woman."

I had zero trouble keeping up with that. But understanding what is so great about Hegel...

Clubs, By Someone Who Knows Nothing About Clubs

There are two kinds of people: people who seriously say that there are two kinds of people, and those like me, who only say it when we are joking. So imagine my surprise when it occurred to me just now that there ARE two kinds of people: those who don't go to clubs, and those who talk about going to clubs as if it were a necessary part of life.

I don't think I've EVER been to a club. Surely I would have remembered. I remember countless times I've walked past long lines of people hoping to get into a club, feeling sorry for them because I assumed it couldn't be good enough to justify going to so much trouble. Although how would I know, right? Although I've never stood in those lines and never gotten past those bouncers, I've known enough people who have to know they'd feel sorry for me if they knew I'd never been. And some would probably have a very difficult time believing I don't envy them.

I've seen countless fictional depictions of clubs in TV shows and movies, with the pretty young women dancing, the expensively-dressed young men at the bar drinking, and the international crime lords at the dimly-lit large round tables in back or up a flight a stairs. 

I've been in business establishments, called bars or discos, where there was drinking and dancing, but they didn't have those long lines of people trying to get past those huge bouncers, so I don't think you call them clubs. If you do, then I was wrong, and yeah, I've been in clubs. Cause I'm a dancin' machine.

I loved the TV series "Alias,"

but that part where 80% or so of the world's most evil supercriminals seemed to have their offices in clubs, either in the back or up a flight of stairs -- that part never seemed the least bit realistic to me, but how would I know, I've never been there.

Of course, there are at least two kinds of clubs: the dancing, yuppie, crimelord, bouncer type we've been discussing, and then the sort which used to be called gentlemen's clubs, and no, I don't mean strip clubs, which are often these days called "gentlemen's club's," making a running total of at least three kinds of clubs -- I mean the kind of club where, a century ago, only men, and almost only wealthy WASP's, would go and drink, but very quietly, and also smoked cigars and secretly ran the country, and they were all sitting in big leather armchairs. For a description of what "gentlemen's club" used to mean before it meant "strip club" -- and what it may still mean, except that they would have to have another name for it now, and they may be a bit more ethnically- and gender-inclusive these days -- see pp 18-19 of G William Donhoff's Who Rules America, 1st edition, 1967. Are many of these old type of clubs really still men-only? Really, it's so very hard for me to care. I'm certain that Jordan Peterson cares enough for himself and me and many other people, and would never begin to believe, if he knew me, that I don't envy him.

Perhaps the two types of clubs have much more in common than I would have thought at first. Besides the huge obvious differences in decibel levels and aerobic calorie-burning, they both are defined by exclusivity. The one type keeps people out with huge bouncers, the other kept them out with social and ethnic and gender prejudice.

And I'm sure lots of clubbers of both types would never believe how little they impress me. They'd be convinced I just can't bear to admit how much I envy them. Hmm. What do you think?

Message to a Fellow Atheist About Atheism, Veganism and Feminism

Okay. I'm going to try to explain to you -- AGAIN -- why I sometimes get annoyed with you on the subject of religion.

This post may be annoying to you, too -- but suck it up, it'll be good for you, if you let it. If you freaking LISTEN.

It's not because you're an atheist. I'm an atheist too. I hope you realize that. I really hope you do. And I hope you also realize that other atheists probably have the same problem with you. And, for example, with Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher and Sam Harris and Stephen Fry.

 

 

Except that they're not trying so freaking hard to HELP. They won't go to the excruciating effort to try to explain it to you. They'll just stop talking to you.

This time, I will try to explain by comparing atheists, vegans and feminists.

Probably, most people you meet who are vegans will never mention it to you. But there are a few who who are a huge pain in the ass about it. Even if you agree with them that veganism could solve the climate crisis and wipe out human poverty if every human became vegan.

 

You might agree with them about that. You might agree with them about many more benefits of veganism. You could BE a vegan, and still find them to be a huge pain in the ass the same way you and I do, and for the very same reason: over and over again, whether the subject is politics or history or technology or whatever, as soon as they see a connection to veganism, they make the entire conversation about veganism.

The same thing can happen with feminism. You could be a huge, committed feminist. You could believe that feminism is the most important topic that humans could possibly discuss. And I might just completely agree. And still, it could be between extremely difficult and impossible to stand talking to you sometimes, if you made conversations grind to a halt by making them all about feminism. 

Some conversations ARE all about feminism. But some aren't. Some conversations are all about veganism, but others aren't. Until they're highjacked by some pain in the ass who is incapable of discussing anything else. Then the conversations grind to a halt, unless two or more such pains in the ass happen to be present. Everyone else will leave and find something much, much, much more interesting to do.

This brings us back to you, and the subject of religion. Religion, which has permeated human life for most of the time that there have been humans. So that it's fairly hard to discuss history, archaeology, anthropology, politics, economics or sociology while entirely avoiding the subject of religion. But some people will try anyway, if you're around. Because the conversation was interesting and they wanted it to continue.

Okay. I tried. Again. I guess I'll try again. Even though it's exhausting and a huge pain in the ass. Because the odds are very slim that, this, time, you got it.