Houlgate on Kantian and Hegelian approaches to logical thought...

Unlike Kant, says Houlgate, who attempted to show that through the use of analytic judgments we "do not proceed to a new and different determination, we simply gain greater clarity about what we began with" (whereas with synthetic judgments we really do discover new determinations), Hegel seems to think that new determinations CAN be found analytically -- that is, "the concepts of becoming and determinate being are derived by Hegel simply by considering what is involved in thinking pure being... by 'analysing' that initial determinate concept." (p. 37)

So, in contrast to Kantian thinking, which concerns itself with developing the relations of identity or equivalence between things and/or ideas, Houlgate explains that "Hegelian logic is 'analytic' to the extent that it merely renders explicit what is implicit or unthought in an initial category. However, by explicating the indeterminate category of being, we do not merely restate in different words what is obviously 'contained' in it; we watch a new category emerge." (p. 38, emphasis in original) Thus, "we are required by Hegel's method of 'analysis' to undertake constant and subtle revisions of the way we think." (p. 38) It is this approach, I think, which is a great strength of Hegelian logic. But it also contains an inherent weakness since, to the extent that it is wedded to an historical or material ontology, it results in an inevitable incompleteness that can never be resolved. (I think this is something of what Derrida tries to say vis-a-vis Hegelian thought.)

Houlgate explains that "The dialectical principle, for Hegel, is the principle whereby apparently stable thoughts reveal their inherent instability by turning into their opposites and then into new, more complex thoughts." (p. 38) Hegel believes that a system built upon this principle creates freedom for thought, as thought is no longer forced into the mold cast for it by certain logical necessities that have been dictated by various philosophers. Rather, the only 'necessity' is the logic of thought itself, which is such that there is vast dialectical space for freedom. The question, however, is whether such 'freedom' will truly make one free. It is perhaps instead the case that such openness will leave one actually trapped by the very dialectic that promised to make one free; after all, to have endless possibility for development and the inability to achieve it can very easily become a kind of existential bondage.

Hegel... Arrghh...

In case any of you are wondering what I'm working on these days, well, I've been reading a lot of Hegel, and trying to figure out what he's saying... This is not easy. Here's a sample of what I'm looking at (from Hegel's Science of Logic). I am developing my own interpretation of what he means, but if anyone wants to chime in with their own take on it, go ahead! :-)  (There are, of course, already many commentaries on Hegel and a plethora of varying opinions...)

"Being, pure being – without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. – There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.

Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within. – In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being. – Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is.

Pure being and pure nothing are therefore the same. The truth is neither being nor nothing, but rather that being has passed over into nothing and nothing into being – 'has passed over', not passes over. But the truth is just as much that they are not without distinction; it is rather that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct yet equally unseparated and inseparable, and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which the two are distinguished, but by a distinction which has just as immediately dissolved itself."

And now for an abstract philosophical question...

Is there such a thing as 'post-metaphysical' thought?  Here is William Desmond's view, and I have to say, I think he's probably right:

"It might be that certain forms of metaphysics are behind us but there is no post–metaphysical thinking, since all thinking is informed by fundamental senses of being which are at work whether we think about them or not. Being post-metaphysical without attention to these is being a poor metaphysician, not a post- metaphysician."

Jacques Ellul on our conceptions of reality...

"Truth is the absolute or eternal. We are not able even to approach its outskirts. We do not construct truth out of bits and pieces added to one another, so as to enable us to remove them and dismantle the construction. By means of language we transmit and understand this truth that is as tightly closed and solid as a dot, reliable as a map, translucent as a crystal, but hard as a diamond. We transmit it and even discern it only through language. Truth is connected to the word and communicated by it. That is, truth is communicated by the most uncertain means, the one most prone to variations and doubt, as we have seen -- by the word, that fragile thing that does not last, evaporating as soon as it has been said. Thus what we are surest of is connected with the most uncertain thing in existence; our most changeable means has to do with what is most certain.

Now here is the amazing thing: this is a godsend for us. How could we live if our senses advised us that the reality in which we live does not really exist in the final analysis, that it is only a tangle of whirlwinds and illusions? How could I walk if my senses showed me nothing but emptiness in front of me? How could I eat if my senses showed me the utter unreality of what I am eating? Not that everything can be reduced to the impressions of my senses. That is not what I mean. My point is that sight and touch, the senses of certainty, give me the guarantee indispensable for living, concerning a milieu that is strange and foreign to me. My certainty is false as far as exact reality is concerned, but this certainty allows me to live."

Well, it's a new year...

...and I've gotten off to a slow start blogging. I won't bore anyone with the details, but part of it involved a defective laptop. Anyway, the new term at Oxford is underway, and I don't have anything too exciting to mention (but everything's going well!). So, here's a little food for thought from the man himself, S.K. (from Concluding Unscientific Postscript)

"The object of faith is the actuality of another person; its relation is an infinite interestedness. The object of faith is not a doctrine, for then the relation is intellectual, and the point is not to bungle it but to reach the maximum of the intellectual relation. The object of faith is not a teacher who has a doctrine, for when a teacher has a doctrine, then the doctrine is eo ipso more important than the teacher, and the relation is intellectual... But the object of faith is the actuality of the teacher, that the teacher actually exists. Therefore faith’s answer is... not in relation to a doctrine, whether it is true or not, not in relation to a teacher, whether his doctrine is true or not, but is the answer to the question about a fact: Do you accept as fact that he actually has existed? Please note that the answer is with infinite passion."

The Laughter of Sarah...

from Tomas Halik's Night of the Confessor:

"The underlying mode of our faith, hope, and love is patience.  Only when we truly fall silent will we be able to hear once more the voice that says to us: Fear not.  I have conquered the world.  I am the resurrection and the life.  I am with you always, until the end of the age.

Fine words, but empty promises?  From behind the tent awning--and from deep within ourselves--comes Sarah's skeptical laugh.  How could that be possible, seeing that we are not only adult already, but also too old for great expectations?

'Why did Sarah laugh?'  Doesn't she realize that there is 'nothing too marvelous' for the Lord to accomplish?  And Sarah lies, because she is afraid.  Her laughter was also an expression of her fear of trusting.  'Yes, you did laugh,' the Lord insisted.

You did laugh, the Lord tells us.  But maybe He'll treat us the way He did our mother Sarah.  Maybe our nervous laughter of skepticism and mistrust will be transformed into the happy laughter of those who have lived to see the fulfillment of His promises."

The Season of Advent...

It's been said many times over the past several days, but there is a very difficult tension at work in the recognition that we, as Christians, celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, as the ultimate gift of grace, while also recognizing the immense suffering and evil that exists in our world, most recently made manifest in the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT.

I'll try not to repeat what others have said, and I don't want to offer any platitudes or easy answers.  But I do think that it is precisely this tension between grace and suffering (and let's be honest, people all over the world feel this, often much more often than we do in America, where we have so many material blessings and a great deal of security) which ought to remind us of the inextricable link between Christmas and Easter.

I don't just mean that they are both ancient pagan holidays that Christians co-opted for their own religious calendar.  I mean that you can't really understand the beauty of Christmas without Easter, and vice versa.  Which means that we can't really see the fullness of the gift of joy that God provides without also recognizing the extent of the suffering and evil that we face in the world.  Easter, after all, is a celebration of resurrection.  But it is preceded by two days in which we acknowledge death and its inevitability in the world of all created things.  It's a tension that apparently God Himself couldn't avoid, in that sense.

I don't know exactly what it means for God's essence and character that both Christmas and Easter must take place.  I don't know why we have to have birth, suffering, joy, death, and resurrection all together in the package of our existence.  But I have to believe in the hope that God's final word is resurrection.  Otherwise we are simply resigned to death.  And that doesn't seem to be a situation that leads to hope at all.  What's worth hoping for if death always has the last word?  I hope for resurrection!  If we're gonna be accused of 'wish fulfillment', let's at least wish big! ;-)

That said, I hope we all take time to remember the pain that is all around us during this Advent season, and that we step out and into the lives of others as agents of joy and resurrection, never forgetting the tension that we face in so doing, but trusting in the hope of Christ's incarnation.