Explicates its moments, which are therefore characterized by this opposition

[koganbot]

Meme from catsgomiaow

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.

• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth line.
• Post that line AS YOUR SUBJECT LINE. AND POST these instructions in a cut-tag to this status....
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book...
[EDIT: I cut and pasted these instructions (obv., since I'd have taken care to tell you not to dig for the most ludicrous title); I have no idea what the phrase "to this status" means.]

It's from Hegel: Texts and Commentary translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. I am also wearing a T-shirt, given to me by my friend John Wójtowicz, that says, "It's a Hegelian thing. You wouldn't understand." (OK, that's a fib, but John did once state his intention of creating such a T-shirt.)

I haven't actually gotten to page 56.

But while we're on the subject (so to speak), you would do me a favor by explaining this passage to me:

The living substance is, further, that being which is in truth subject or - to say the same thing in other words - which is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of positing itself, or the mediation between a self and its development into something different. As subject, it is pure, simple negativity and thus bifurcation of the simple, that which produces its own double and opposition, a process that again negates this indifferent diversity and its opposite: only this sameness which reconstitutes itself, or the reflection into itself in being different - not an original unity as such, or an immediate unity as such - is the true. The true is its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its aim and thus has it for its beginning - that which is actual only through its execution and end.

Comments

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

You do this for fun?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

mere ordinary fun = not reading hegel
reading hegel then STOPPING = a higher fun by far

[koganbot]

It's no harder than figuring out size 10, if by "figuring out size 10" we don't just mean "What Chris actually said to Rihanna about size 10" or something of the sort, but also "understanding the roles that size 10s play in the world, and could play, and how this came to be, and what future worlds could develop from the activity of those people down with shoe and dress sizes and those in opposition to sizes, etc., and what lives we could lead." A lot of it wrestling with Hegel involves trying to understand whom he was arguing with and what he and his disputants thought was at stake and how they were using words. Then it becomes clearer, at least I hope it will.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but at least when I try to figure out size 10, I get to listen to music.

Actually, in all seriousness, the reason I've never understood reading Hegel, etc. is because so much of the conversation seems to revolve around trying to figure out what these terrible writers were saying and why -- the conversation is about the conversation, and it never touches the real world. I remember arguing with a professor about Russell's "the king of France is bald" thing, and saying, "But that's not the way it works in language." And he said, "But that's the way it works in logic," and I said, "But that's not the way it works in language," and he said, "But logic doesn't care." And I thought, well, shouldn't it? If you're having a discussion about the logic of language, then shouldn't you actually care about the actual properties and uses of language? If the only way you can make your argument is by disregarding all the ways the real world doesn't agree with it, then it's not a very strong argument. I mean, is there something I'm missing?

It just seems like all that finance stuff where there's no actual money, or mathematical physics that doesn't take into account the actual world. Yes, the emperor's clothes are very beautiful, etc. Pardon me while I buy a pair of pants that actually exist.

[koganbot]

Well, when the world disagrees with our logic and our math, we have to change our underlying assumptions, which is what e.g. Wittgenstein was willing to do and Russell wasn't. (You would like the later Wittgenstein, and he could write like the dickens.)

[koganbot]

E.g.,here Wittgenstein is demanding that one's assumptions about language match up with how language is really used, for instance where he goes

Consider for example the proceedings we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? - Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games'" - but look and see whether there is anything common to all. - For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look!

[koganbot]

By the way - seriously - Hegel is bathroom reading, i.e., someone I pick up and throw my mind at in brief bursts, between doing other stuff.

Shoes

[koganbot]

I wear size 9½W, by the way. Never have I ever been a size 10 in my whole life.