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@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Communims doesn't know how -> alchemical
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We see that to understand both leftism and also Hegel's relevance to that, we have to grapple with the dialectic. This
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-# OPerating System
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+# Operating System
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the operating system behind leftism at least since hegel's time
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leftism from the progressive school of thought that followed him
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young hegelianism
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@@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ It was in the decade after Hegel's death in the 1840s, when Hegel's popularity w
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However, one of these young Hegelians, ludwig feurbach, pointed out that holy family was after all only a heavenly image of the earthly family, and that by criticizing theology with philosophy, the younger hegelians were only doing the same thing as the Christians. Hegel's absolute idea was just another name for God. For Feurbach, ideas were a reflection of the material world and he held it to be ridiculous that an idea could determine the world. Feurbach had declared himself a Materialist.
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-Marx and Engels began as supporters of Feurbach. However, very soon, they took up an opposition to Feurbach, to restore the HEgelian Dialectic that had been abandonned by Feurbach. To free it from the rigidity of the idealistic Hegelian system and place the method upon a materialist basis."
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+Marx and Engels began as supporters of Feurbach. However, very soon, they took up an opposition to Feurbach, to restore the Hegelian Dialectic that had been abandonned by Feurbach. To free it from the rigidity of the idealistic Hegelian system and place the method upon a materialist basis."
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The dialectic applied to the dialectic itself - amazing.
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@@ -360,7 +360,7 @@ Hypatia 2017
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*Tracking Privilege: Preserving Epistemic Pushback*
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Brings to the front that Critical Pedagogy is based not just in Giroux's belief of the dialectic, but the belief that Neo-Marxism should be brought into the classroom.
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-"The Critical Thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment and recognizing when arguments are faulty. Assertions like evidence, truth claims, appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied. For critical thinkers, the problem is that people fail to examine the assumptions, commitments and logic of daily life. The basi c problem is irrational, illogical and unexamined living."
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+"The Critical Thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment and recognizing when arguments are faulty. Assertions like evidence, truth claims, appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied. For critical thinkers, the problem is that people fail to examine the assumptions, commitments and logic of daily life. The basic problem is irrational, illogical and unexamined living."
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Marcuse says you're not living that unless you're a Critical Theorist. Unless you're approaching the world from Critical Theory, you're stuck in irrational, illogical, unexamined living that fails to examine the assumptions, com/mitments and logic of daily life."
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@@ -370,8 +370,7 @@ You're caught up in his heteronomous interests. Critical thinking isn't really c
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The dialectic, where the theory has to be wedded to practice to generate praxis.
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-"By interrogating the politics of knowledge production, this traditional also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical thinking toolkit
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-to determine epistemic adequacy."
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+"By interrogating the politics of knowledge production, this traditional also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical thinking toolkit to determine epistemic adequacy."
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Audrey Lords classic metaphor: *The tools of the critical thinking tradition, for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity, cannot dismantle the master's house, they can temporarily beat the master at his own game, but they can never bring about any enduring structural change. They fail because the critical thinker's toolkit is commmonly invoked in particular setttings at particular times to reassert power. Those adept with the tools often use them to restore an order that assures their comfort. They can be habitually invoked to defend our epistemic home terrains.*
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@@ -397,7 +396,7 @@ Via the dialectic, CRT gets to be race essentialist while claiming it's race ant
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#### Structural Determinism
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Structural Determinism is the logic behind how they organize society. When they say things like positionality must be consciously engaged, or intentionally engaged (Robin D'Angelo), that's what they're talking about. Taking structural determinism into account.
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-It allows them to be essentialist while claiming anti-essentialism, and it keeps people from seeing what they're doing and identifying how they're actually racist. By claimining an imposed lived experience that people aren't allowed to buck. So they hit a dialectical synthesis of these two ideas. This is what's going on whent he dialectic progresses until another deeper intersectional group is found. The dialectic is constantly progressing through an arc of history.
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+It allows them to be essentialist while claiming anti-essentialism, and it keeps people from seeing what they're doing and identifying how they're actually racist. By claimining an imposed lived experience that people aren't allowed to buck. So they hit a dialectical synthesis of these two ideas. This is what's going on when the dialectic progresses until another deeper intersectional group is found. The dialectic is constantly progressing through an arc of history.
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The entire concept of intersectionality is also a huge dialectical machine. Turns critique into itself by taking already so-called marginalized activist groups and dialectically attacks them. Feminists have to confront their racism. Black liberationists have to confront their sexism and misogyny. Everyone has to confront their homophobia or transphobia. Intersectionality becomes the synthesis of the otherwise competing forms of systemic oppression.
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@@ -449,19 +448,164 @@ We will see this develop as we go on into metaphysics. Hegel is already thinking
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### Features
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Words are given more than one meaning (democracy, tolerance). Alchemically developing separate meanings to words so you can talk in two ways at once. The ones who understand the language are the gnostics. In modern parlance, the systemic way of thinking and understanding the world, as opposed to understanding the words or the concepts in a more simple way.
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-Marx did this with the term "science". Science was used to mean scientific socialism (espoused that socialism scientific). Marxism and his communism which he labelled as scientific.
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+Marx did this with the term "science". Science was used to mean scientific socialism (espoused that socialism scientific). Marxism and his communism which he labelled as scientific. Scientistic but presented as scientific.
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Communists did this with Freedom, Democracy and Tolerance. They made Communism a precondition for all of these things.
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-We see this also with speculative meanings - invite gnosticism into the understanding of words. You can do this with Diversity, Racism, Segregation, Decolonialization - sophist's double speak characteristic of Hegelian ideologies.
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+We see this also with speculative meanings - invite gnosticism into the understanding of words. You can do this with Diversity, Racism, Segregation, Decolonialization - sophist's double speak characteristic of Hegelian ideologies. Gnostic abuses.
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-#### Lennon
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-Sublation (vulgar translation of Aufheben). Supercede, put an end to but simultaneously maintain and preserve.
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+#### Lenin
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+Sublation (vulgar translation of Aufheben). Supercede, put an end to, but simultaneously maintain and preserve.
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#### Marcuse
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-Talks about it in Essy on the Affirmative Character of culture.
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+Talks about it in Essay on the Affirmative Character of Culture.
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+
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+"It is the real miracle of the affirmative culture: people can feel happy even if they are not. If the culture has entered a western thought only as an affirmative culture, the abolition of its affirmative character will act as an abolition of culture as such."
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+
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+Aufhebung der kulture.
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+
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+A phrase which arose 2 decades earlier with George Lukach. Necessary goal, dstruction of culture, to achieve revolution (which failed for him in Hungary). Western culture was a problem that had to be torn down in order to have our revolution. Aufhebung der kultur. Who will say us from western society.
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+
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+#### Genesis Point
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+Horkheimer and Lukach, Gramsci going to prison and writing the prison notebooks, Frankfurt school.
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+Redirected goal of Hegelian and Marxism thought toward attacking culture, rather than attacking ideas or material. As can be identified in the earlier examples, this has been core to the leftist program more or less ever since. Tear down popular culture which makes people happy, because you can be miserable and think you're happy.
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+
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+Lukach:
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+"In the last analysis, the communist social order means the aufhebung of the economy as an end in itself. This is all the more true because this side of the transformation, the aufhebung of the economy as an end in itself, cannot express itself in the surface appearances of life after the seizure of power. Domination over the economy."
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+
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+That is what the Socialist economy is. The aufhebung of the autonomy of the economy. That is the socialist end itself. It enables the seizure of power and thus the domination of the economy and society; this is what the socialist economy actually is. He advocates that all of this abolishment be turned towards culture rather than the economy so that the seizure of the culture of western civilization can then be accomplished and western culture can be destroyed. That would be an end in itself such that it will affect the seizure of power to affect domination. That is the cultural marxist project. This is the same project today in many serious ways (Hegel's idea weaponized).
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+
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+Marcuse echoed the sentiment in an interview on tv 1969 "Only wants to designate what has to be overcome, without entering the speculation about the end result". If we could just tear away the problems, powers, injustices etc of society the seed of a better future will bloom and blossom and come out. Concurs with marxist critical society, which didn't seek to install its own ideology at all, but just tear down the existing capitalist society and go from there.
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+
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+Communism doesn't know how because it believes the perfected society lives under the flaws in culture. If you can tear own the bad aspects, the perfected society grows out of it.
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+
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+#### Things to Destroy
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+Culture
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+Statues - cultural icons that represent someting about the icon
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+Men and women -
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+Heterosexuality -
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+Mothers
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+Dr. Zeus - pieces of the culture that people can use to relate to one another
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+Cultural touchpoints that let us relate to one another
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+Decolonizing the curriculum
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+Ghostbusters or Star Wars woke remake. Impossible to have cultural references that are solid and universal.
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+
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+
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+Aufheben is the heat in the fire. The dialectic is the fire boiling the alembic to purify society and take away all the negative pieces, so that the seed of society can grow out.
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+
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+
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+# Metaphysics
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+## Faith-based tradition
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+Hegel had a metaphysics underneath what he was doing, and that metaphysics, even through Marx in his dialectical materialism, has survived. He is a theosophist (speculation about the nature of reality and the soul based on mystical insights into the nature of God). For Hegel, the idea of God was the he called the "absolute" or the "absolute idea". The ideas of the world become perfected and aware of their own perfection, and this is achieved through the process of the dialectic progressing history. The historicism that Engels praised even when complaining about the dialectic and its inapplicability.
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+
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+Marx had this as well, but his was a scientistic materialism which he called Dialectic Materialism. WissgenshaftlichtureSocialismus.
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+
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+With Hegel, the dialectic is standing on its head and has to be stand, and must be turned right-side up again if you are to discover the rational kernel within the shell. Essence of Hegel's speculative idealism is a mystical shell - hermetic alchemical metaphysic based in mysticism and gnosticism. Knowing the secrets of reality/God. Rejected by Marx in favour of materialism, but since they don't know how and retained the Hegelian Drive, they didn't get away from it. Still trying to drive the progress of history.
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+
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+Supreme Court rejected the claim that Communism or Marxism constitutes a religion, because it's materialist and doesn't have a God.
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+
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+Gramsci: "Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity."
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+
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+Bella Dodd: "Communism is like a religion. President Eisenhower said the other day "but it is religion without a God". If you believe strongly in Communism, it is your duty to bring it into every phase of your life. Communism is a way of life, and it is almost like a religion, it becomes a part of you. It affects your entire thinking, your attitude towards your students, your government, and towards things that are happening day by day. Most Communist college professors begin by being very much interested in their students, and if they have a Communist philosophy they pass it on"
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+
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+Marx rejected hegel's Mysticism, but had such unrealistic an Hegelian beliefs about how history would progress and the material world would evolve, that he could be considered msyticism in his own rite. The consciousness would awaken, a revolution would come, a managed state economy would emerge and take over in a state of Socialism and would eventually, through the dialectical materialist process realize its own redundancy, and a Communist utopia would emerge from this as the dialectical materialism purified all the bad ideas out of the state. Marx was an applied Young Hegelian by dropping the overt mysticism and keeping all the social alchemy. Alchemical core is still present in Marx, derived from Hegel in his metaphysics. Kept alive the religious furor not just for Communism but all of its Hegelian roots."
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+
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+### Hegel is intoxicating
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+*From Marxists.org on Introduction to Hegel*
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+"Reading Hegel gives one a sense that the movement of thought will coincide with a vision of harmony that awaits us at the end of the whole process. Every serious reader of Hegel can bear witness to the intoxication of such moments. (Communism doesn't know how)."
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+
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+The neomarxists, the woke, have retained this thought by bringing it back into a more mystical frame. They abandonned the material side of this and focused, instead, on culture. In Geist. This religious zeal is palpable when you read Marcuse talking about liberation, or Allison Bailey talking about abusing her students.
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+
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+It's obvious in all major works from teh 1960s of Marcuse, Eros in Civilization, where he talks about a certain sexual liberation, freeing the eros (subordinated by demands of capitalist culture to do productive work) would cause you to be free in the world. His goal was to marry Marx and Fraud, philosophically.
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+
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+## Hegel's Goals
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+Was driven religiously to try to create a metaphysical faith system for Germany which wasn't going to rely on the orientalism, Christianity, which was a middle-eastern religion unbecoming of Germany peoples and pride. Believed he could develop a new Metaphysic and religion in the new German Folk identity. He wanted to reinstate this identity in his religion.
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+
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+He was very Pro-Germany, as analyzed by Benedict Viviano. "In its classic form, Hegel's philosophy concludes that Prussia is the present and permanent incarnation of the holy spirit, and that it is God's will that Prussia should conquer and govern the world, or so was understood. Such an understanding led to the first world war."
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+
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+Hitler was a Hegelian, though his trajectory was a bit different - more through the thoughts of Heidegger.
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+
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+Hegel wanted to retain his metaphysics. He wanted the metaphysics to give the Germans back a sense of national identity and pride, and to perfect the German State. This turned out to be expressed wrong at least twice in the 20th century. People who picked up Hegel lead to the first adn second world wars in their German Pride.
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+
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+### Speculative Idealism is Mysticism
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+Centered on the ways in which ideas shape society and thus he defined a systematic philosophy, or systematic theosophy, that approaches how ideas are supposed to be formed, refined, understood and incorporated into society. Wanted to analyze how this is supposd to occur: speculation and mysticism.
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+
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+Lectures in 1827: "As a whole, the mystical is everything speculative, or whatever is concealed from the understanding".
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+Philosophy of religion 1824: "The mystical is the speculative - what lies within".
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+
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+When he says speculative, he means mystical.
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+
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+Encyclopaediologic: The meaning of the speculative is to be understood as being the same as what is used in earlier times, the mystical.
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+
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+The trinity is called the mystery of God, its content is Mystical, that is, speculative. This bit about the Trinity is important for understanding his metaphysics as a speculative idealist who was grappling with the ideas of his time and challenging the idea of Christianity which he saw as an orientalist intrusion.
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+
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+At the centre of his metaphysics, as a speculative idealist are the ideas of society - in particular, the absolute idea which represents the culmination and actualization of all ideas in a perfected form.
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+
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+
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+#### Marxists.org: Absolute Idea
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+"The absolute idea is both the apex and foundation of the philosophical system of Hegel. It includes all the stages of logic leading up to it, it is the process of development with all of its stages and transitions. The absolute idea, or "world spirit", plays the same kind of role for Hegel as a Deity. "History is the idea clothing itself with the form of events."
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+
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+"And Marx rejects the needs for any such concepts as history is a product of people, not the other way around. Like absolute truth, knowledge of the absolute idea is an attainable ideal. Representing the whole of nature which has developed to the point where it is conscious of itself. For the concept of nature to be developed to such a degree of concreteness that it has returned to itself, recollected itself if you will. An absolutely comprehensive, practical and concrete concept of the world. Hegel defines the absolute idea as the "unity of the theoretical idea and the practical idea". The theoretical idea is the completed notion or concrete concept of the world or action. The practical idea is the activity expressing this concept, practice. The unity of the two means fully conscious practice; people acting in true accord with own nature."
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+
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+For whatever rejecting of Hegel's mysticism that Marx did, you can see that his instruction to wed theory to praxis, we just ran into conscious practice - praxis. His Instruction to wed theory to practice, which is maintained today in both Marxism and Neo-Marxism (as well as it appearing in woke literature and activism, especially in critical pedagogy in education and Critical Theory) - these all demand that this element of social activism is present to qualify as a Critical Theory. And all of this is readily derived from Hegel's idea of the theoretical idea and the practical idea.
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+
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+#### Theoretical and Practical Idea
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+The theoretical (your thesis) meeting the practical, where it runs into the world (antithesis). He sees the absolute as the final synthesis of the theoretical and the practical within his dialectical framework. For Marx, Praxis is the materialist manifestation where this is occurring. It is the vehicle of the dialectic.
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+
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+The metaphysical point for Hegel is unavoidable. The absolute plays the role of deity (according to Marxists): "The whole of nature when it has developed to a point that it's conscious of itself and has so become concrete". In other words, synthetic in the Dialectical language. "And it has returned to or recollected itself in speculative or mystical philosophy.
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+
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+#### Trinity
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+*Letter written by Hegel in 1816*
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+"I stick to this idea that the spirit of time has given the order to move forward. This order has been obeyed. This being is moving forward irresistably like an armoured and comptact phalynx, and with a movement as imperceptible as the sun's. Through good and bad roads. Countless like troops against him and for him flank him everywhere."
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+
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+The spirit of time, or history, is moving forward irresistably and it's actually invincible. You can't change the course of history, it's going to do what it's going to do. It's moving slowly and steadily, but like the sun there's undeniable movement. It has clearly moved, but you never see it moving at any moment. It moves through both good and bad words; it does things that seem like progress and other things that don't seem like progress, but they still count as progress because it's the progress of history. It's going to be carried along by countless light troops, some of which for and some of which against. People arguing on both sides about what they believe is the right side of history. You could have a great leader that people support, but he's not actually doing a good job. Or you can have a horrific dictatory who is opposed be everyone, but this is just the march of history. This is how the absolute, the perfected thing, moves along through an arc of time called History. The goal is that the absolute is going to use the unfolding of history to come to understand itself. The moment the absolute understands itself, as the absolute, history will end.
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+
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+We will hit the escaton - the end of the world. It's important to realize that Hegel's thinking endlessly in triad::
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+- Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
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+- Abstract, Negative, Concrete
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+- Objective, Subjective, Absolute
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+- Theory, practice, praxis
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+- Being, Nothing, Becoming
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+- Ideas, Nature, Geist
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+
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+These last two become crucial to understanding Hegelian metaphysics. He had these because he had to grapple with, because he wanted to create a new metaphysic and systematic theosophy for the German folk religion that he hoped for. He wanted to understand, in particular, how Christianity was just one narrow manifstation of a more complete picture. What would have been called, in the heremtic tradition, a 'Prisca Theologica' -> a Pristine Theology or primordial theology.
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+
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+He was also interested in the development that the absolute would actually be representative of the philosophia perennis. The perennial philosophy -> the perfect expession of philosophy that exists in the absolute.
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+
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+Summary: Prisca theologia is a hermetic concept that there is some primordial or pristine original theology that all the world's faiths and philosophies lend partial insight to. There is one true faith and it's a mirror that's been smashed. All the pieces are on the ground reflecting different parts (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc) and they're all lending partial insight into the real thing. If they could be made to converge, then you would get to that original one true theology. Alchemy is how that's done. If you could just purify, you could get the seeds of the true philosophy to sprout out of those and then you could get back to the Prisca theologia (through alchemical convergence of the various different faiths).
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+
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+Prisca theologia has an ancient aspect to it. Philosophia Perennis has a different type of eternal aspect to it. Prisca Theologia is a model to get toward the perennial philosopha, which is what the absolute actually is. It will be able to be recovered and recollected alchemically from the various faiths and philosophies of the world by means of his speculative approach and systematic philosophy which is translated into reason, but which he calls vernoomft.
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+
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+#### Metaphysical
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+Hegel has put in his lectures on the philosophy of religion:
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+"Philosophy is only explicating itself when it explicates religion, and when it explicates itself it is explicating religion"
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+
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+Reason is religious.
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+
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+"The trinity is called the mystery of God. Its content is mystical IE speculative."
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+
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+Let's look at how Hegel would conceive of the trinity.
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+
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+##### Being, Nothing, Becoming
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+Being -> God -> I am the I am
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+Why is there something rather than nothing.
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+Becoming is the resolution, the synthesis of understanding this mystery
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+
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+##### Idea, Nature, Geist
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+Idealist -> centered on the ideas of society
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+Reason is how you engage with them, or is the expression of the ideas
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+
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+Idea => God
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+Natural World => Jesus
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+
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+"The state is the divine idea as it is expressed on earth."
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+
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+The state becomes the son. The ideas are the father. THe state is the son. Geist or culture are the holy spirit.
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+
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+He does not have a Christian understanding of this, however. Christians hold the elements of the triad to be co-eternal
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+
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+
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-"It is the real miracle of the affirmative culture: people can feel happy even if they are not. If the culture has entered a western thought only as an affirmative thought the abolition of its affirmative character will act as an
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..........
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logicp