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

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Since he rather notoriously uses words to mean what HE needs them to, here's a link to Hegel Glossary: to give at least some sense of this.

The first sentence I take to be arguing or claiming that to be alive is to possess subjectivity, which is defined as "the mediation between a self and its development into something different": in other words (mine) there's what you feel you are and what you feel you could be, and subjectivity is what goes on to attempt to wrangle one into the other.

The second sentence I see is translated slightly differently elsewhere viz: "This substance is, as subject, pure, simple negativity, and is for this very reason the bifurcation of the ...simple" -- which is therefore (I take it) making a distinction between "living substance" (presumably the whole being including body and whatever) and "substance as subject", which would be the awareness: which Hegel is arguing is "pure, simple negativity"; again, think this is definitional... he's saying (something like) awareness is always the act of making distinctions between what something is and what it's not (the "something" often being the self; the latter sometimes including what it's becoming)... so he's saying that awareness (my word) IS negativity, and vice versa. The capacity to distinguish is a bifurcation; distinguishing as a process encompasses -- by positing a thing and its opposite* as in a significant relationship -- a second act of judgment (which is to say "negation"). This sequence of negations brings us towards a true understanding: the fact of the distinction, combined with an understanding of the importance of linkage between what something is and what it isn't. "The true" -- meaning true understanding -- thus encompasses a grasp of process of judgement, the map of distinctions as it were, as well as the fact of the distinctions: thus all mistakes and false paths along the way -- along with why they happened and how they were overcome and reabsorbed -- also belong to "the true"... In the glossary, you'll see Hegel also insists that "The whole is the true": this (I think) is another way of saying the same thing; that everything -- including all possible errors along the way and how they happened -- must be contained in the True Understanding. Which can only be reached by setting out for it; and only grasped by undertaking the full journey.

*its opposite

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect that Hegel's commitment to thinking in absolutes and opposites will really get your goat: I'm inclined to say you should treat it as a forensic methodology rather than a description of the situation he's faced with at any given time.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

You do this for fun?

not safe for girlboymusic

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

longish crooked timber discussion of whether heidegger is a romantic or not, which -- among other things, inc.wittgenstein and what constitutes rationality -- touches a lot on the issue of "talking past one another" (or perhaps just acts it out): and ends -- currently -- with an invocation of adorno's essay "how to read hegel"