logicp_writings/collectivist_theology/Hegel_OS.md

Requires Praxis

Praxis is what you have when you combine theory, Hegelian Reason as we're going to see, critical theory, postmodern theory, woke theory, Theory Put into practice combined with being put into rpactice activism on behalf of theoretical or ideological model

negative thinking and do activism on behlaf of it. ngeative thinking becomes positive, because it prevents us from going into calamities that are contained within a seed of the future that can possibly be blossomed

Perfected society - we have the seeds of it and wej ust have to peel away the problems and the other society emerges

Communism doesn't know how -> alchemical

We see that to understand both leftism and also Hegel's relevance to that, we have to grapple with the dialectic. This

Operating System

the operating system behind leftism at least since hegel's time leftism from the progressive school of thought that followed him young hegelianism Young Hegelianism distinguished from old hegelianism it's difficult to decipher Hegel radically different interpretations of him exist, erupting in the later years of and death

Differences Between Young and Old Hegelianism

• young = progressive
• old = ultra conservative

briefly: philosophy describing emergence of a perfected state through perfection of ideas young hegelians looked at worl dthey lived in and said we're no tthere yet Prussians all sorts of contradictiosn in our experience old hegelians, conservatives, looked at state they live in and said aha we're already there dialectic had already achieved what it aimed to be

Prussia

already had realized itself and emerged in prussia at the time, which demanded that history had ended.. History. No change is needed from this historical high-point. Mid 19th century Prussia

• Young Hegelians are distinguished because they looked at this old hegelian idea and said NO there's too many problems there
• Karl Marx was a Young Hegelian, and influenced by other thinkers too

Dialectic Origins

Kant develops the Dialectic, Ficta developed it further, then Shelling and Hegel, etc.. Nevertheless, Marx was a young Hegelian, and we can understand the centrality of the dialectical application to Marx by going to the Marxist.org glossary. (Great resource to see how the Marxists themselves want their own people to think about their own terms)see how the marxists ddefine their own terms. The woke are different from the Marxists, but this gives us historical insight

Marxist description of Hegel

• MOST Important representative of classical german philosophy
• represented an objective idealism and a brilliant investigator of the laws of dialectic, and he was the first to apply
• Dialectical application is what Marx turned into Dialectical materialism
• the mode by which Marxism progressed and though their article of faith (dialectical materialism)

Kant established the structure of the dialectic, developed further by Ficta, and then through both hegel and shelling, Marx was able to take these ideas and put his own spin on it

• Hegel took the theoretical Dialectic and made it practical: the first to consciously apply, and he did this ironically or not ironically
• abstract - negative - concrete
• Take the abstract, challenge it against its negative, to arrive at a concrete applicable form - apply it to the changing of society

Philosophical

Kant performed a philosophical endeavour - something going on like how Socrates would have engaged Kant and Ficta who really initiated the philosophical idea compare the ideas against one another and find the flaws to find what we're missing and achieve a better understanding philosophers use this approach - a dialectical approach that's abstract on the other hand, hegel had this idea that we'd use this to create a better society

Applicable

change society using the dialectic and studying the ideas and the shape of the state and the spirit that it generates he figured out how to apply it so he brings the laws of dialectic into application - Praxist begins with Hegel Marx renames it after having adopted it and doing a number of things to it CENTRAL TO MARXISM - this dialectic central to all of the left, since marx, is Marxism so the dialectic is the underriding operating system for the past 200 years

Engels/Marx according to Marxist.org

taking fom Marxist.org - > they quote Engels and Marx on this idea Engels wrote in his review of Marx's critique of poltiical economy - "The Hegelian method, on the other hand, was in its existing form quite inapplicable." "it wasn't good enough - even the now applied form of the dialectic is still too unapplicable it was essentially idealist - the elaboration of a world outlook that was more materialist than any previous one"

hegels method took as its point of departure pure thought built here the starting point should be inexorable facts Marxist Communism vs Hegelian dialectic we're not engaging at the realm of pure thought, but at inexorable facts came from nothing through nothing to nothing this was by no means appropriate here in this form (the here and now the political eceonomy0 nevertheless all of the available material - it was the only piece that could be used as a starting point (for what Marx wantaed to do). It had not been criticized or overcome. Fell into oblivian because Hegelian school hadn't the slightest idea of what to do with it. We had to subject the method to growing criticism. What distinguished Hegel's thought from that of all other Philosophers was the tremendous sense of the historical upon which it was based. Abstract and idealist as it was in form, yet the development of his thoughts always proceed parallel with the development of world history. The latter is the test of the former."

Historicist

Dialectic is the thing that is moving history.

"If by the real relation it was inverted and stood on its head, nevertheless, the real content entered everywhere into the philosophy, all the more so since Hegel, in contrast to his disciples, did not parade ignorance, and was one of the finest intellectuals of all time. He was the first to show development and inner coherence in history, and while today much in his philosphy of history might seem peculiar to us, the grandeur of his fundamental outlook is admirable even today."

"regardless of who you compare him with, his phenomenology, aesthetics, history of philosophy - magnificent conception of history prevails and everywhere the material is treated historically in a definite, even in if abstracted interconnection with history."

Theories concentrate themselves - what we need to do is to take Hegel and concentrate him through critique. (Apply the dialectic to the dialectic). Critical Theory was to come later.

"This epic making conception of history was the direct theoretical premise for the new materialist outlook, and this alone provides a connecting point for the logical method too. Since this forgotten dialectic has lead to such results, even from the standpoint of pure thinking, and had in addition so easily settled accounts with all preceding logic and metaphysics, there must be at any rate have been more to it than sophistry and hair-splitting." Schopenhaur woudl have criticized it as sophistry.

"But the criticism of his method, with all of its official philsophy, had fought shy of and was no trifle".

Big fan of historicism and that Hegel brought forward very important ideas, such as the Dialectic, but it wasn't correct in its formulation. If it's standing on its head it has to be righted. (Marx wrote that).

Marx critiques Hegel's dialectic

"My dialectic is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, ie the process of thinking (which under the name of the idea), he even transforms into an independent subject. The demi-urgos of teh real world, and the real world is only the external phenomenal form of the idea. "

For Hegel, there's the idea, which is what's going on for rea, and then the world becomes an image of the idea."

Marx says "That's upset down". We ahve to look at the real world and go from there.

The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. (Marx might be right about this)

"The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hand by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of workign in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him, it is standing on its head. It must be turned right-side up again if you are to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell."

• Dialectic central, but Marx and Engels not happy with how it's been formulated (focusing on the ideal instead of the material).
• The structure of Hegel's dialectic applied to Hegel's dialectic. Framed as the abstract, as Hegel did to Kant's formjulation of dialectic.
• Has to be made more material

Dialectical materialism for Marx, through dialectic of the dialectic. A new view, which is the progression of history (according to Marxist.org)

Dialectic Focus

Central to Engel, Hegel and Marx. Feuerbach tutored Marx on Dialectics. Operating system of the left operates on itself to evolve itself.

Hegel to Kant Marx and Engels to Hegel => receive dialectical materialism -> the essence of Marxism

Dialectic (on Marxist.org)

"It was hegel, who was able to sum up this picture of universal connection and mutability of things in a system of logic which was the foundation of what we today call. As Engels put it "The whole world, natnural historical intellectual, is represented as a process - that is, as in constant motion, change, transformation, development - and the attempt is made to trace-out the internal connection, that makes a continuous whole of all of this movement and development."

It was in the decade after Hegel's death in the 1840s, when Hegel's popularity was at its peak in Germany, that Marx and Engels met and worked out the foundations of their critique of bourgeoious society. Hegel's radical young followers had in their hands a powerful critical tool, the dialectic, with which they ruthlessly criticized Christianity, the dominant doctrine of the day (something Hegel's was interested in as well, wanted to establish a folk-based German religion which escaped the Orientalism of Christianity which he felt had been foisted upon Germany inappropriately. The young hegelians really felt this way and ruthlessly criticized Christianity using the dialectic).

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.

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 aban

Somethign is wrong and the Neo-Marxists invented a new theory. They are very interested in the dialectic and they, in fact,

make it central to the project. The talk about it all the tim and make it the titles of their books, like "The Dialectic of Enlightenment".

Critical theory is, in fact, the application of the precise dialectic that's now been dialectically moved again from where Marx was. It's been said that the Critical Theorists, where Marx said that Hegel was standing on his head, they put Hegel back upright. Marx wanted to turn him upside down by making it too materialist and not realistic enough to help people actuall yoperate. They didn't take it back to the idea, as Hegel did, they took it into the realm of culture. That' swhy they're often called Cultural Marxists, but it's actually more accurate to call them Cultural Hegelians. Cultural Dialecticists?

They're not applying it in the Kantian sense, they're not applying it in the strict Hegelian sense (dialecticized into dialectical materialism). They're now criticizing that and bringing the critique to Marx himself and putting it in the realm of culture, and in doing so they're doing it in this new way where the dialectic has been applied to itself repeately to come up with something new. They're also becoming more politically activated again, like the young Hegelians were. They're dipping back to when Marx was his most "Young Hegelian" - some Marx critiques suggest Marx lost his way when he came to Das Kapital - Communist Manifesto was better. When he started getting int oreading Kapital, he was already 'off his rocker' smelling his own farts etc and got it wrong. They wanted to put Hegel back into Marx, but without making the same mistakes that Marx criticized of Hegel.

They also wanted to work Freud in, social science, and some other things. But they wanted to figure out how to attack culture, having decided, following people like Gramsci/Lukach, that culture upholds society and prevents these revolutiosn to the end of history (to communism). It's a very politically activated sense for the Neo-Marxists.

The case, here, is that this is the fundamental operating system of Leftism. It drives their vehicle. It's how the left thinks, moves and achieves its goals.

The most recent manifestation are also of this operating system, as it's come down for the last 200 years (from the metaphysics of Hegel).

Horkheimer

The first chair of the frankfurt school institute for Social Research - wrote on traditional and critical theory (defining it for the first time).

"This activity (Critical Theory) is called Critical Activity (Ruthless Criticism of everything that exists, to realize his own vision being imagined into the world). Less in the sense, it has, in the idealist critiques of pure reason (not Kant) than in the sense that it has in the dialectical critique of political economy (Hegel)."

In particular, though, Political Economy was that phrase we saw from Marx, describing political economy that Engels was commenting on. Hegel through Marx.

"It points to an essential aspect of the dialectical theory of society, Horkheimer concludes".

Horkheimer, first leader of the Frankfurt school, is really where Critical Theory comes from. The seat of Neo-Marxism. This arose when he, in conversation with some others, envisioned the idea of creating, for the critical left, a great analysis and, eventually, book on the dialectic that would restore something of Hegel from Marx. Marx's failures were critical to understanding that task - we had to criticize him through dialectics (his materialism). He produces, in 1944-47, a book with another Neo-Marxist called the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Considered to be the real comprehensive treatment of Critical Theory - the first real statement of Neo-marxism and what NeoMarxism is about. The Dialectic of the Enlightenment - explaining that the enlightenment unleashes its own dialectic which turns reason into unreason and rationality into irrationality.

From the book

"In the book of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimr and Adourno make the case, in the words of an editor from one of its editions, philosophical fragments edition", it's an afterward where he describes what's going on with the dialectic of enlightenment.Self-destruction of western reason is seen to be seen in a historical and fateful dialectic. Domination of external nature, internal nature and society. Enlightenment, which split these these fears apart, is traced back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth are not seen, therefore, as irreconilable opposites, but as dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life.

Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology. This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. Reason appears as inextricably entangled with domination. Since the beginnings of history, liberation from the compulsions of external nature has been achieved only by introducing a power relationship of second degree. Both the repression of the internal nature of human drives (Marcuse likes this), and social domination are already at work in myth. Finally, Fascism, and the modern culture industry, are the forms taken by a return of repressed nature. (Freudian aspects as well).

In the service of an advancing rationalization of instrumental thought modeled on the domination of nature and serving its purposes, enligthened reason is progressively hollowed out until it reverts to the new mythology of a resurrected relationship to nature. To violence."

This is what the dialectic of enlightenment is arguing, according to this editor.

Enlightenment to Marcuse

"Enlightenment understood in the widest sense is the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear, and installing them as natures, yet the whole enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity."

Enlightenment has devolved into domination, reason has become a tool of domination (precursors of post-modernism here in 1944-47).

This book culminates at the end with a cheerless proclamation with a thesis in the progress of industrial society, which is supposed to have conjured away the law of increasing misery - it had itself brought into being "the concept would justify the whole". The human being, as a person, as a bearer of reason, is going under. The Dialectic of Enlightenment is culminating objectively in madness.

Rationality becomes irrationality by the dialecticic of enlightenment. The thesis meets its antithesis - ratioanlity is becoming irrationality, so a synthesis which escapes this is going to be needed. This is what tehy call for, and Critical Theory is the tool to do it. The Neo-Marxists are completely on board with the concept of Dialectic. The Neo-Marxists are going to become the things which lead up to Herbert Marcuse, the father of the new left, which takes over where the old left (the marxists). We already see this trajectory of relying, still, on the operating system of the dialectic. Marcuse talk sabout the dialectic all the time.

One dimensional man (most famous book - 300,000+ copies in the first year): "Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between is and ought. First, as an ontological condition pertaining to the structure of being itself, however the recognition of this state of being, its theory, intends from the beginning a concrete practice."

We have to understand, through the analysis of critical tension (of what is and ought) - normative vision of a perfected society. This is something very important. Dialectical thought takes this an ontological condition that pertains tot he structure of being itself.

Language of Hegel - abstract meeting its negative and resulting in a concrete practice. Activism. Which will lead us to the new multidimensional analysis which uses Critical Theory to achieve what it's trying to do - have both is and ought, not just is as its analytical mode (two dimensional).

This dialectical thing is the essence of Critical Theory. Up to Marx, this was called Dialectical Materialism. The Dialectic of Hegel (derived from Hegel) is the operating system of the Old Left. With Marcuse we have the birth of the New Left, also relying on this dialectic. It's no longer central tot he old left, and whatever remnant goes forward out of the death of communist regimes (horrors of communism, crisis of faith in communism), and the old left leading back to the Old Marxists, but also to the new left which arose in its wake, largely starting in the years leading up to and launching off the Vietnam War.

What does this look like in practice?

Marcuse's Dialectic of the New Left

A few examples from his writing, but here's one in One Dimensional Man.

"The laws of thought are laws of reality, or rather, become laws of reality if thought understands the truth of immediate experience as the appearance of another truth, which is that of the true forms of reality - of the ideas. Thus, there is contradiction rather than correspondence between the dialectical thought and the reality. The true judgement judges this reality not on its own terms, but in terms which envision its subversion, and in the subversion reality comes into its own truth."

Marcuse is recommending a very subversive approach in application. The dialectic becomes a subversive activity, in the sense that it's something where we get in and undermine that which exists by confronting that which is with its negations. Thesis will meet antithesis in a subversive way, and this will force us to look for some synthesis, or force us to start tearing away the constructs of current society so the seed of the perfect society can blossom (Marcusian thought). Multidimensional or two dimensional thought at least.

Marcuse's ideas were paradigmatic of the post-war (WW2) Critical Theory school that inspired the Black Feminists. It's the second generation Critical Theory that then becomes the roadmap to developing the woke that we live in today.

Peeling Away Contradictions

Repressive Tolerance: "According to a dialectical proposition, it is the whole which determines the truth." Hegelian idea that you need to understand the whole to understand the particulars - metaphysical axiom. The dialectic is how you approach doing this.

"This is not in the sense that the whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation".

This is pure Hegelianism. You are trying to extract the whole from the particulars. Similar to peeling away the problems of society so that the Utopian society can emerge. So that the seed can blossom or bloom.

"This, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree that they are willing to accept the rules of the game. Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on the equality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practice. Tolerance stands subject to overriding criteria, its range and its limits cannot be defined in terms of their respective society."

Dialecticism of Tolerance

She is demanding the dialectical treatment of tolerance, where tolerance is going to meet intolerance, thesis meets antithesis, and the synthesis is going to be a repressive tolerance, or a liberating tolerance, that's going to be tolerance that's not actually tolerant, but that's going to lead us toward a new and better-liberated future. Tolerance gets the dialectic applied to it, and you get this totally tilted playing field , which is the logic of the world today. Conservatives must be censored, in fact they must be PRE-censored - not enough that they lose freedom of speech, they have to lose the freedom to even think the thought - stop the idea from even entering their mind. Cognitive liberty put under threat by repressive tolerance. In the Neo-marxist era, we are now talking about the dialectic being still central - the operating system continues - the dialectic on tolerance.

Essay on Liberation:

"The Dialectics of Democracy If democracy means self-government of free people with justice for all, then the realization of democracy would presuppose abolition of the existing pseudodemocracy."

Thesis, democracy, antithesis, pseudodemocracy because there are actually systems of power. Justice for all? well, not everyone gets justice, so we don't live in a democracy, we live in a pseudodemocracy (antithesis), so we need a synthesis of this.

In the dynamic of corporatism, the fight for democracy thus tends to assume anti-democratic forms, and to the extent to which the democratic decisions are made in parliaments on all levels, the opposition will tend to become extra-parliamentary. The movement to extend constitutionally professed rights and liberties, the daily life of the oppressed minorities, even the movement to preserve existing rights and liberties will become subversive to the degree to which it will meet a stiffening resistance of the majority against an exaggerated interpretation and application of equality and justice."

This logic is playing exactly right now under these so-called equity and racial and other social justice movements. So what do we have?

Thesis: democracy antithesis: pseudodemocracy (because of power dynamics). Synthesis: Ideal Democracy (Marcuse wrote about this elsewhere. Communists also refer to this - position themselves as ideal democracy because, for them, if everybody's not perfectly equal (same money and opportunity) you can't have true democracy, because certain people can't speak up as much, they aren't going to be able to get the polls as readily, won't have the same ability to participate or the same access. Not a true democracy until there's perfect equity).

They subvert language -> democracy meets this argument (its antithesis), so we have a synthesis of an "ideal" democracy, but the adjective gets dropped so that when these people speak of democracy, or tolerance, they mean not regular tolerance, but discriminating tolerance. Democracy presupposing that we're in a communist-like situation before it counts. This is how their language games are constructed. This is why they have so much double-speak.

The neo-Marxists are certainly going to have been tied up with this idea of the dialectic, regardless of how much they associate with Marx. The dialectic is applied to the dialectic in a reflexive pattern which concentrates it.

Recap

Hegel -> Young Hegelians -> Marx -> Marxists -> Neo-Marxists Constant thread, throughout this dialectical engine, applied to itself to create its new iteration. Overarching project, or underlying operating system of leftism has been the Dialectic.

Theodore Adourno

1966 - Post modernism emerging in France. Adourno writes a book called "Negative Dialectics". It seems to be the case that these guys have gone Post-Hegelian. The Critical Theorists are normally called Neo-Marxists, the post-modernists describe themselves as Post-Marxist -> they've given up on a Marxism. They retain much of the same underlying ethos, but they don't believe it works and they become negative and disparing and create an upsidedown world version of it that just is cynical.

Publishing of Negative Dialectics, extraordinarily critical of Hegel, Foucault is Critical of Hegel, but Derrida is VERY critical of Hegel. Leotard a bit in the Post-modern condition. We see this shift with some thinkers. Post-modernists and Adourno undergo a shift to a post-Hegelian structure. To go Post means to have retained the essential core of the approach, while deciding that the specific projects that had been launched on that core must have been done incorrectly and have failed. So you abandon the specifics while retaining the essential core.

In a sense, in later writings by Adourno the Post-Modernists seem anti-Hegel, but they're not really - they're post Hegelian. Disparing of the idea of the synthetic project, but not disparing of the idea of colliding thesis and antithesis. If you read Derrida's Deconstruction, or Foucault's ideas where you expose the contradictions and the progress of history. The contradictions of progress. The contradictions of calling anything knowledge at all. These are still Thesis / antithesis colliding projects. But these guys aren't looking for a Synthesis. They don't want that final 3rd step. They're post-Hegelian where hey've adopted the dialectical core, but abandonned the idea that a synthesis is necessary. Adourno - Negative Dialectics Derrida - deconstruction

PostModernists

Get to particulars, rather than come to some new synthetic whole Synthesis for post-hegelian thought is a fool's errand. That's why the Marxist projects failed. Adourno: Instead we need a negative dialectic Derrida: Deconstruct everything Another example might be with a living room table:

Kitchen table

• 4 legs
• wood
• round

Coffee table

• 3 legs
• metal
• curvy triangle

Kitchen island

• Wood
• no legs
• Block with wheels under it

Flat surfaces = tables The couch can be a table!

We can attack the idea of tables because they are different from one another, but we call them table. Let's leave it them at their particulars.

General thrust of the dialectic remains. We still collide ideas with their opposites, their antithesese, their contradictions, their negatives (Hegelian frame). But we don't need to put the broken pieces back together, because we're extra cynical. Adourno thinks he has the ticket for a good future, but the post-modernists tend to be more cynical.

Negative Dialectic doesn't have any clear examples of what the solutions are.

Foucault

Gives his critiques that the Hegelian approach might be good or bad, the dialectic might be good or bad. The underlying of the project is still Hegelian in that it attempts to reveal the internal contradictions in ideas like: Progress, Category, Science, Knowledge, Truth.

Break down restrictions and expand potentialities. Similar to Marcuse: expand the range of being human into achieving liberation.

Postmodern - disparing. Let's not even try to do anything positive

Positive projects which came out of the dialectic project are in the synthetic aspect of the project. This is being abandonned, whereas Marcuse is still into it. All of the leftists are still operating very strongly in this Hegelian Dialectical frame.

Woke/CRT Uses it too

Patricia Hill Collins gets into this in "Black Feminist Thought". Proto-critical race theory. Black feminism, and there's a link with Marcuse who inspired much of the black liberationist movements to think in Critical Theoretical ways, but it was picked up by the black feminists (Angela Davis, his PhD student).

At the birth of woke, in 1990, in the pinnacle book of Black Feminist Thought with the same title, we read: "Black Feminism remains important because US Black Women constitute an oppressed group. As a collectivity, US Black women participate in a dialectical relationship, linking African American Women's oppression in activism (oppression and activism have to be related dialectically). Dialectical relationships of this sort mean that two parties are opposed and opposite. As long as black womens' subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class,gender, sexuality and nation persist, Black Feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed. In similar fashion, the overarching purpose of US Black Feminist thought is to resist oppression. Both its practices and the ideas that justify it. If intersecting oppressions did not exist, Black Feminist thought and similar oppositional knowledges would not be necessary. As a critical social theory, black feminist thought aims to empower Black African American women in the context of Social Injustice, sustained by intersecting oppressions. Since black women cannot be fully empowered unless intersecting opprressions themselves are eliminated, Black Feminst thought supports broad principles of social justice that transcend US Black womens' particular needs."

Dialectical Relationships. Dialectical thinking. already core to understanding how Black Women as a collectivity (political group) are related to all the other axes of oppression and how they are to understand their own oppression, and how these oppressions bang up against each other and compete against ecah other and clamor for attention. The goal is to create solidarity ( to be affected through Intersectionality). The next book after this one is "Intersectionality" (1993?).

Dialectic of Activism

"This dialectic of oppression and activism, the tension between the suppression of African American Womens' ideas an d our intellectual activism in the face of that suppressison constitutes the politics of US Black feminist thought."

The DIALECTICS of oppression and activism constitute US Black feminist thought. More important, understanding this dialectical relationship is critical in assessing US Black Feminist thought, its core themes, epistemological significance in connections to domestic and trans-national black feminist practice, is fundametnally embedded in a political context that has challenged its very right to exist.

Historically, while they often disagreed on its expressions, some US Black women were profoundly reformist, while more radical theinkers bordered on the revolutionary. African American women intellectuals who were nurtured in social conditions of racial segregation, strove to develop Black Feminist as Critical Social Theory. Regardless of class, all were somehow affected by Intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class. The economic political and ideological dimensions of US black women's oppressions suppressed the intellectual production of individual black feminist thinkers. At the same time, these same social conditions simultaneously stimulated distinctive pattern of US black women's activism, but was influenced by individual black women thinkers. Thus, the dialectic of oppression and activism, characterizing US black womens' experience, with intersecting oppressions, also influenced the ideas and actions of black women intellectuals."

A twisting and concentrating line from Hegel to Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought. The dialectic being applied to itself as it goes.

"As long as social justice remains elusive for African American women, it is likely to evade US society overall. Therefore, the need for Black Women's activism mos tlikely will persist, but while the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism remains, the changing organization of intersecting oppressions, as well as the contours for activism requiring resistance demand a dynamic black women's activism and an equally vigorous US black feminism."

Theory and practice have to both be put into play. Marx derived the idea of praxis, theory put into practice, from these same ideas.

"Thus far, this volume has synthesized two main approaches to power.One way of approaching power concerns the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism, where groups with greater power oppress those with lesser amounts. Rather than seeing social change or lack of it as preordained and outside the realm of human action, the notion of a dialectical relationship suggests that change results from human agency. Because aAfrican american women remain relegated to the bottom fo the social hierarchy from one generation to the next, US Black women have a vested interest in opposing oppression. This is not an intellectual issue for most American women, it is a lived reality. As long as black womens' oppression persists, so long will the need for black feminist activism. Moreover, dialectical analyses of power poitn out that when it comes to social injustice, groups have competing interests that often generate conflict."

Black feminism - one of the key intellectual roots/pillras/theories within Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice theory. Its engine is dialectical. Hegel - Feurbach - Marx - NeoMarxists - Marcuse - Black Feminism.

The operating system of leftism - old and new.

Belle Hooks

The same reliance on dialecticism can be seen in Belle Hooks.

Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center: "Women need to know that ideas and theories are important. Absolutely essential for envisioning and making a successful feminist movement. One which will mobilize groups of people to transform this society. Ironically, lack of knowledge about revolutionary politics leads women to see ideas and theories as unimportant."

"Revolutionists seek to change reality to make it better. Therefore revolutionists need not only the revolutionary philosophy of dialectics, but they need a revolutionary ideology, body of ideas, based on analyzing the main contradictions of the particular society they are trying to change, envisioning a higher form of reality in which this contradiction would be resolved, and relating this resolution to a social force or forces responsible for and capagble of achieving it." (A Critical Theory)"

"It is only after oyu've arrived at the correct ideology that it makes sense to develop your revolutionary politics." That is, the programs necessary to mobilizing and organizing the necessary revolutionary social forces.

If your ideology is wrong, misdirected or limited, then all the best programs from militant activity msut be absolutely clear about this sequence - from revolutionary philosophy to revolutionary ideology to revolutionary politics."

The dialectic is at the heart of this. Belle hooks in 1984 about the centrality of the dialectic. What is described here is literally the Hegelian dialectic. "Revolutionary ideology - body of ideas based on analyzing the main contradictions of the society (Geist), projecting a vision of a higher form of reality (idealism) in which this contradiction would be resolved, and relating this resolution to a social force or forces responsible for and capable of achieving it."

A revolutionary politic requires a perfect ideology.

Kimberle Crenshaw

Obvious in Unmasking Colourblindness in the Law: lessons from the formation of critical race theory (3rd chapter in 2019 "Seeing Race Again"). Becoming racists.

"This essay revisits the history of how CRT emerged as an intellectual respones to colour-blindness. In the context of institutional struggles over the scope of equality and the content of legal education. It exemplifies how in the aftermath of a groundbreaking challenge to the social order, institutional actors from across the political study embraced a gradual strategy of integration premised on the assumption that the colourblind meritocracy stood outside of the economic and racial power. Emergence and continued significance of CRT in relation to colourblind ideology is the reflection of the cross-international traveling of resistance. The conditions of possibility that seed insurgent knowledge nad the continuity of these dialectics in the contemporary era."

The line

Hegel - young hegelians - marxists - neo-marxists - black feminism. Their goal is to get children to think dialectically. Heart of the critical pedagogy project, which is Critical Theory applied to the Theory of Education and the Contents of Education. Hegelian dialectical mode. Totally dominated the institution of education, following gramsci's indication that education is one of the 5 pillars of culture that must be infiltrated and overturned from within.

Critical Education

"Students argued Giroux "need to learn to be able to move outside of their own frame of reference, so they can question the legitimacy of a given fact, concept or issue". Furthermore, he contended marshalling the support of MArxist literary theorist Frederic Jameson students "have to learn how to perceive the very essence of what they are examining by placing it critically within a sysstem of relationships that give it meaning". For Giroux it was important that contextualization of information be embedded in a pedagogy that takes seriously the social relationships of the classroom."

John Dewey

"The state is then the completed objective spirit. The externalized reason of man, it reconciles the principles of laws and liberty, not by bringing some truce or external harmony between them, but by making the law the whole of the prevailing interest in controlling motive of the individual"

We haven't touched on Hegel's statism yet, but it's relevant and tied to Critical Education. This stuff was written before 1900 where an idea of the Hegelian view of the state - the completed objective spirit - was something that you get to it is via the externalized reason of man through the dialectic. The whole dialectical project is here.

Also, before Giroux, was Michael Apple. Repeatedly talked about the need for dialectic in education.

More recently: Neo-Marxism and Allison Bailey.

Allison Bailey

Hypatia 2017 Tracking Privilege: Preserving Epistemic Pushback 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.

"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."

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."

You're caught up in his heteronomous interests. Critical thinking isn't really critical thinking.

"In this tradition, sloppy claims can be identified and fixed by learning to apply the tools of formal and informal logic correctly. Critical pedagogy begins from a different set of assumptions, rooted in the Neo-Marxian literature on Critical Theory commonly associated with the Frankfurt School. Here, the Critical Learner is someone who is empowered and motivated to seek justice and emancipation. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in regards to social justice issues not as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but expressions of power that function to reinscribe and perpetuate social inequalities. Its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step towards resisting and transforming social injustices."

The dialectic, where the theory has to be wedded to practice to generate praxis.

"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."

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.

Implications for Pedagogy

Critical Pedagogy for her is based in Neo-Marxism. Echoes Marcuse virtually perfectly, and talks about teaching people to think in ways that are emancipatory and empowering, in perfect line with the dialectic process as outlined by Marcuse.

In education we see this again under Critical Pedagogy. The woke doesn't find it enough to use the dialectical method as its operating system, it must install that OS in children. They don't use education to indoctrinate, they use education to program and reprogram. They're not teaching you to accept a particular doctrine uncritically (though it happens), they are teaching you to think in a particular way (Dialectically). Explicitly stated by Henri Giroux - father of Critical Pedagogy: "In other words, students must be taught to think Dialectically".

This is the heart of the interrelated worldviews seeking to "liberate" the world. It comes from Hegel. The first to consciously apply it (in the words of the Maxists on Marxists.org).

Quick recap

Critical Race Theory - An Introduction: "And so the dialectic progresses" This piece was framed out in essentialism vs anti-essentialism (philosophical program). The section in which this phrase appears is in a section in the book analyzing how Critical Race theory interacts with the ideas of essentialism and anti-essentialisms. Obvious thesis / Antithesis. Its thesis antithetical in its construction. Essentialism vs its negation.

So what is the woke synthesis, as forwarded by Critical Race Theory? Structural determinism. Structure of society. Hypothesis of structural determinism is the doctrine that the structure of society determines an essential lived experience, that's not essentialist because it nevertheless hides in a social constructed mode of thought.

Race, under CRT, is a social construct. It can't be essential to the person, dodging essentialism, but it's articulated by Crenshaw that race is sociopolitically imposed by white supremacist society so that the lived experience of being a particular race in that system becomes essential. Race is not essential, in the sense that we believe in social constructivism, but the experience of being a race in a particular power structure where that race is imposed by that power structure, does define what it means to be a person in that identity category. Patrician Collins said thte same thing about Black Women. Your lived experience becomes essential.

Via the dialectic, CRT gets to be race essentialist while claiming it's race antiessentialist. Very hard to pin down if it's race essetnialist or not, because it's taken essentialism/anti-essentialism, collided them in the dialectic, producing a new thing that's hard to fight called Structural Determinism.

Structural Determinism

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.

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.

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.

Solidarity becomes the synthesis of these competing forms, or in this case, it becomes intersectionality.

Marcuse said we need to biologically change mankind to want and need liberation, and that this would be done by changing them biologically to get a new type of man, liberated man, who can tolerate and usher-in liberation.

His eugenics is another topic, but the point is that the dialectical critique is: Aufheben der kulture. To create solidarity, allegedly, by evoking the guilt of the so-called marginalized identities in that they are ignoring the oppression of other people.

Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, etc as means to tear everything down, Intersectionality is the means to synthesize and put it all back together. The dialectical synthesis of the competing forms of systemic oppression. And it gives an analytical framework, allegedly, for working that out and establishing a hierarchy which is an inversion fo what Patricia Collins called the Matrix of Domination.

Inception outside of Europe

The core of the progressive thought for 200 years has been this dialectic. That's the point to drive home with all of this: Hegel unleashed it in an applicable form and this became the main OS of teh "left" since.

The dialectic is the OS of leftism, has been since the young Hegelians took it up in the 1820s/30s right up until today.

The concept of Manifest Destiny, often charged by the Left as being catastrophe which destroyed native americans - it wasn't exactly a conservative metanarrative. It was championed by the Young Democracts. Parallel to the Young Hegelians, adopted their philosophy etc. They used these ideas, including manifest destiny in the 1830s/40s in the US to what a lot of people see as calamity. As a final capstone to that line, Steven Douglas who lost a debate to Abraham Lincoln, was an avowed hegelian and young hegelian as well. This was happening in the US, not just Europe, in terms of thought and activism.

How it works Aufheben

To keep and to destroy.

Hegel was fascinated by this idea of keeping and destroying. He writes in the "Science of Logic":

"Aufheben constitutes one of the most important concepts in philosphy. It has a 2-fold meaning in the language. It means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it means to decease and put an end to. It is a delight to speculative thought, to find in the language words which have in themselves a speculative meaning."

This was Hegel talking about his fascination with the term Aufheben. I'm going to make the contention that Aufheben is the negation process. When HEgel lays out abstract, negative, concrete - it is the negative process. The Antithesis process.

I derived an example from a friend Emmy on Twitter who pointed out:

1. I might say that the Sky is blue
2. A straight negation might be to say "no it's not blue", or you could negate by implication by saying "it's green, it's red, it's grey"
3. Aufheben would say: "Not at night". "Not when it's raining".

It has a feeling of deliberately missing the point. You didn't tear down the blue, you can keep it, but you have torn down the concrete sense that the idea was right in the first place. Instead you reach a synthetic view of the sky that's more complicated. It's only blue during daylight hours, etc.

This is an annoying tool that the dialectic proceeds upon. Since he uses this word speculative over and over, it's important to point out that he was a "Speculative idealist" as a philosopher. Speculative means looking into a mirror. Speculum is a mirror in latin (sort of). Hegel meant: the way to understand ideas is to reflect upon them, and the purpose of reflecting upon the ideas is to recollect what is known about them in an abstract sense.

It's also to divide the concrete from facing its idea and the negation at the same time. Aufheben is speculative in that it contains a place where you have the thing and its opposite reflecting back on one another at the same time. Aufheben is, in a sense, an autological word that is aufhebening itself. (Germenglish. Aufhebening).

This is going to be key to moving into the trajectory of Hegel's metaphysics. He has a metaphysical assumption that the particular can only be understood through the whole, and speculation is how you accomplish that. The recovery of teh whole through a speculative thought process of recollection and remembering is going to be able to be achieved through exAMINING the particular and their antitheses through the dialectic. This is the objective of philosphy, or reason (vernoomft). This makes Hegel hermetic, and hermetic means an alchemist. This is his philosophical orientation, because the alchemy is achieved through the dialectic, which is the fire which heats the contents of ideas in its alembic and gives rise to their refined or synthetic understanding. It's the process in which ideas are to be refined alchemically - kept and destroyed. Marcuse refers to this as peeling off the power of the current era so that the seed within can sprout. Heremtists believe, for example, that seeds of gold exist in all the base metals. So if you just get the base parts to peel away, then the seed of gold will sprout and blossom nad the base metal will turn into gold.

This is the underlying idea of Hegelian thought. So when we say it's a hermetic or alchemical faith, this is what we're talking about.

Important to realize that what HEgel actually means by speculative is having Mystical Content. It's Mystical, mysticism. It's going to open the door to a lto of things for Hegel that he already was: Heremticism, alchemy, gnosticism.

This is why all these ideologies can be thought of as gnosticism. Race gnosticism, for example, in CRT. Structurally-determined lived experiences have special insight under standpoint epistemology that gives them to ability to undesrtand things and have racial knowledge. That's gnosticism, that's racial or ethnic gnostisticism, and this is because the Hegelian faith is itself gnostic. They're open to being gnostic because it's speculative, which means mystical. The people who know the secret are the gnostics, tehy understand the mysticism, they have the special knowledge, and for Hegel he defines this as having reason, or vernoomft.

We will see this develop as we go on into metaphysics. Hegel is already thinking metaphysically and he's thinking alchemically about the progression of society. The catechism of his religion is the dialectic through keeping and destroying, aufheben.

Features

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.

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.

Communists did this with Freedom, Democracy and Tolerance. They made Communism a precondition for all of these things.

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.

Lenin

Sublation (vulgar translation of Aufheben). Supercede, put an end to, but simultaneously maintain and preserve.

Marcuse

Talks about it in Essay on the Affirmative Character of Culture.

"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."

Aufhebung der kulture.

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.

Genesis Point

Horkheimer and Lukach, Gramsci going to prison and writing the prison notebooks, Frankfurt school. 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.

Lukach: "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."

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).

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.

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.

Things to Destroy

Culture Statues - cultural icons that represent someting about the icon Men and women - Heterosexuality - Mothers Dr. Zeus - pieces of the culture that people can use to relate to one another Cultural touchpoints that let us relate to one another Decolonizing the curriculum Ghostbusters or Star Wars woke remake. Impossible to have cultural references that are solid and universal.

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.

Metaphysics

Faith-based tradition

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.

Marx had this as well, but his was a scientistic materialism which he called Dialectic Materialism. WissgenshaftlichtureSocialismus.

With Hegel, the dialectic is standing on its head, 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.

Supreme Court rejected the claim that Communism or Marxism constitutes a religion, because it's materialist and doesn't have a God.

Gramsci: "Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity."

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"

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."

Hegel is intoxicating

From Marxists.org on Introduction to Hegel "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)."

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.

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.

Hegel's Goals

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.

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."

Hitler was a Hegelian, though his trajectory was a bit different - more through the thoughts of Heidegger.

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.

Speculative Idealism is Mysticism

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.

Lectures in 1827: "As a whole, the mystical is everything speculative, or whatever is concealed from the understanding". Philosophy of religion 1824: "The mystical is the speculative - what lies within".

When he says speculative, he means mystical.

Encyclopaediologic: The meaning of the speculative is to be understood as being the same as what is used in earlier times, the mystical.

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.

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.

Marxists.org: Absolute Idea

"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."

"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 unattainable 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."

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.

Theoretical and Practical Idea

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.

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.

Trinity

Letter written by Hegel in 1816 "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."

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.

We will hit the escaton - the end of the world. It's important to realize that Hegel's thinking endlessly in triad::

• Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
• Abstract, Negative, Concrete
• Objective, Subjective, Absolute
• Theory, practice, praxis
• Being, Nothing, Becoming
• Ideas, Nature, Geist

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.

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.

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).

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 vernunft.

Metaphysical

Hegel has put in his lectures on the philosophy of religion: "Philosophy is only explicating itself when it explicates religion, and when it explicates itself it is explicating religion"

Reason is religious.

"The trinity is called the mystery of God. Its content is mystical IE speculative."

Let's look at how Hegel would conceive of the trinity.

Being, Nothing, Becoming

Being -> God -> I am the I am Why is there something rather than nothing. Becoming is the resolution, the synthesis of understanding this mystery

Idea, Nature, Geist

• Idealist - centered on the ideas of society
• Reason is how you engage with them, or is the expression of the ideas
• Idea - God
• Natural World - The manifestation on earth, the son, Jesus

"The state is the divine idea as it is expressed on earth."

Trinity: The ideas are the father. The state is the son. Geist or culture are the holy spirit. The ideas, the state, the spirit of the world as they are developing. He does not have a Christian understanding of this, however. Christians hold the elements of the triad to be co-eternal as three aspects of one eternal and perfect God-head. God, which manifests in the word as the logos of John and becomes flesh in the world and Christ and the Holy Spirit is that which is God moving within and through the world. These things are co-eternal, one thing as three things, and this is how the Christian Metaphysic understands it. This isn't how Hegel sees it because Hegel sees everything in a process-oriented or evolutionary-oriented fashion.

Specifically, Hegel believes that when you talk about God or the absolute, that's referring to God merely in himself. God in potentia as an abstract, as a logos, or as reason. And that is insufficient to be truly a Deity, because they absolute, in order to be complete, would have to not just be abstract but be concrete. So God cannot merely be Abstract, he has to be Concrete. He meets to meet his negative and then come to synthesis in order to be completed. This creates a fundamental contradiction.

Abstract vs Concrete

A God that is abstract is not concrete. A God that is concrete is not abstract. There is our contradiction, so we need a synthesis to reconcile these. That synthesis is the recognized absolute.

Being, Nothing and Becoming. The Absolute becomes Absolute only by his realization of himself as a synthetic to both the abstraction and worldly concreteness. Concreteness is expressed in nature and nature is regulated by the state, which is the divine idea expressed on earth.

God: imminent in the world (panentheist view). God is not transcendent to the world, for Hegel. Hegel's view is that these three things (idea, nature/state, geist) are so-called moments of the concept. Moments are things that can't be reduced

If I have a puzzle I can take it apart into pieces. But if I have a colour, I can't take the brightness or the hue and separate it from the colour without losing the colour. I can't take those things apart and still have the colour. I can't take a colour apart, but it has these different components.

A moment is something which has components that can't be taken apart. These things are moments of the concept (the concept is a key thing at the centre of his metaphysic) - and he compares this to the alchemical elements of mercury, sulphur and salt, and he does this while outlining a systematic philosophy that uses the dialectic to negate each of these moments and allow for it to give rise to the next, so that the spirit as absolute might actually bloom.

The absolute is a seed contained within all of this and if we could just peel away all of the bad idea, all the bad parts and imperfected parts of the idea, then the ideal or perfected spirit (the absolute vert-geist) will bloom. This is just as how alchemists hold that Gold is believed to bloom from its seeds that are contained in every base metal and other materials. Just like Marcuse believed that liberation exists like a seed inside of a corrupted society - if we could just figure out how to do aufheben to it correctly so that we could keep that seed while tearing away the rest of the junk. It would blossom and take off.

For Hegel, the ideas take earthly form in nature and in the world and they're managed under the concept of the state. The divine idea expresses itself through the state (inclination towards Statism in Hegelian philosophy as a metaphysical imperative). The state, in turn, then sets the material conditions for society which gives rise for how people live (the spirit that they live under, or the culture) of that nation, society, or world, when it's all perfected and is the world. It will be the Vertgeist, and the goal is to head towards that.

The geist, in turn, is going to be able to refine how the prevailing ideas, using the dialectic and aufheben, by finding the contradictions in that new structure by having the state implement the ideas causes a culture to arise where things are still not perfect, and people discover the problems, so the geist then takes the next level of refining: the more conscious they are and the more consciousness they have, the more ability they'll have to refine these areas. The process repeats.

No longer have an eternal God that is, but ideas as God, State as Son and Geist/culture as spirit. Rather than just being 3 in 1, we now have a spiraling process where one gives rise to an improved version of the previous. Spiraling through history where a new improved state follows from the new improved ideas, usually through the activity of a "Man of Action" that is being used by history. Spiraling through history of ideas -> state -> spirit. Improving as they go along the trajectory of history. That's Hegelian metaphysics.

Trinity

Not transcendent and eternal, but imminent and a process. It isn't - It's becoming. It isn't perfect - It's perfectable and perfecting through the process of history (heading towards the emergence or recollection ) of that philosophia perennis by speculation - mystically trying to recollect the prisca theologia. This is an alchemical approach to Trinity.

Philosophy is how this is going to be for Hegel (Reason/Vernunft), because that's how the geist informs the philosophers to improve the ideas, and the process through which Hegel recommends to do this is the Dialectic. Which is through seeking those contradictions but while keeping the essential core (Aufheben). The reason for this is the alchemy that he based his thought on. It's also because he was a gnostic and he believed his ideas of reason were higher and understood things better. So, for Hegel, the God-Head isn't a thing that is in the world or is transcendent to the world, it's a process that spirals through and creates history as it goes.

Ideas give rise to a State, father begets son, this creates conditions for a spirit which then flows back into the father that was more self-aware than it was before. This unfolding of history and refinement of ideas are one and the same.

For Hegel this deity is absolute spirit, or the absolute or the absolute idea. It is the ultimate synthesis of all the subjective and objective spirit through the dialectical process. It's the synthesis of the theoretical and the practical. It is what happens when the abstract God meets his negation in worldly squaller and is synthesized into something that is becoming the absolute. Being, Nothing and Becoming.

So, while the absolute is always the absolute in the Hegelian metaphysic, the deal is that the absolute doesn't know that it's absolute until its ideas are perfected. God isn't God if he's just an idea or transcended. God has to be in the world and also transcended - and that has to be synthesized. That's what the absolute is. It has to be a God that is out of the world and in the world and also aware of itself as such. That synthesis has to arrive, and the name for that synthesis is the absolute. When that occurs, the ideas of the society (the state and the spirit which flows from the people) are all going to be perfected.

Perfected Synthesis

• Marx: Communist State
• Marcuse: Liberation
• Black Liberation
• Racial Justice
• Racial Liberation

God doesn't become God until God realizes that he's God, which occurs only after God makes creation as a dialectical other to himself to compare himself against and the process unfolds itself all the way until the perennial philosophy is remembered as a result.

Christians

• God Is
• I am the I am. I am the alpha the omega. I am the thing that is before, beginning and after the end. Eternal perfect. God creates the world because it is his will as the creator to do so.

Hegelian metaphysics

• Having the world and reflecting himself against the world, and refining the ideas of the world
• Absolute becomes truly absolute only when it is both abstract and concrete
• The absolute actualizes and realizes itself
• The absolute is the last idea to be perfected; the God realizing itself is the last idea to be perfected
• The ideas become perfect and the state becomes perfect. The spirit and culture become perfect.
• History reaches its end and Utopia begins: Historicist arc
• All the imperfections are resolved God creating the world as some other to itself as an abstract idea. The abstract God creates a negation the negative (other => the world) by which he will be able to know himself. That is, through hermetic theosophy (God requires the world to realize he is God). This is the heart of the Hegelian thought. The deity represents a perfect being that doesn't know he is perfect. He creates his imperfect world (Prisca Theologia would understand this God) as an antithesis to his own perfection. Through the process of dialectical synthesis, carried out by philosophers, politicians, men of action, who are summonned by history for the purpose of driving the telos of history, he will eventually be made to be aware of himself as absolute. The philosophers etc drive this because they are the ones who work with the ideas and exist within the spirit, geist, culture, national or world level (National Geist, World Geist). This is ultimately alchemy. God requires creation to be God. He learns that he is God through his creation. Rejection of the Christian metaphysic where God is and is transcendent. He didn't need creation, he created it because it was his will.

Hegel the alchemist applies his alchemical thoughts to metaphysics and what arises is his view of phenomenology and the dialectic which drives this. This is why what we're dealing with with the woke, the neo-marxists, with the marxists, with the young hegelians, is a 200 year long religion manifesting in different ways is the Hegelian metaphysic applied to create the perfected society by a bunch of megalomaniacs who think they understand what society is like.

Marx and Neo-Narxists are not as up on the mysticism in a specific sense, and seem to get rid of the mystical shell to get to the kernel (as Marx had said), none of the dialectical engine ever goes away. The alchemical belief is still present. But he still has his triad: ideology, super structure, society. Ideas, State and Spirit. Echoes persisting all the way down. In CRT it's white supremacy Ideology, systemic racism superstructure of society which thus creates an inequitable society and an imperfect spirit. A critical race consciousness, like Marx's class consciousness, is to be awakened by the Critical Race Theorist. This will lead people to challenge this existing status quo through a dialectical processs, as we heard from black feminists and CRTheorists already - that will result in a revolution at the level of culture (Cultural Revolution) that eventually brings equity and racial justice. It will refine the ideology out of White Supremacy, and the ideology will therefore give rise to a not-systematically-racist superstructure, and we'll enter into a post-racial utopia (goal of CRT). No clear objective to get there, but these are all the same idea whether Hegel, Marx, Marcuse, etc... All Alchemical and metaphysical and it's clear that it's stayed alchemical. Marx believed that the awakening of class consciousness would move the proletariat to advance history to its communistic end. Liberal capitalism would therefore give way to statist socialism and eventually resolve in, as Marcuse had it many years later, society that presently exists nowhere on earth (something that isn't derived from that which is, in that case, perfected communism).

In other words, communism is the endpoint here. No surprise that the Neo-Marxists adopted this alchemical form as well.

Horkheimer and Adorno

The dialectic of enlightenment - Dialectical Thinking "In which each thing is what it is only by becoming what it is not". Another example of this alchemical thinking appears in Marcuse's repressive tolerance.

• Tolerance is only truly tolerance by becoming intolerant.
• Freedom is only truly free if you limit freedom for certain people.
• Democracy is only truly democratic when the people with the wrong ideas are disenfranchised
• Critical thinking is only truly critical thinking when it adopts a critical consciousness
• A space is only desegregated when it is segerated, so it can get away from the structurally determined force of racism
• A space can only be deracialized by intentionally racializing it (There's a fundamental difference between saying I am Black and I am a person who happens to be Black. We have to racialize specifically to fight against the imposition of race that's already present.)
• Each thing is what it is only by becoming what it is not

Theodore Adorno criticized this exact idea, 20 years later in 1966. He wants to recover the dialectic in a new way which merely negates what is, and thus opens possibilities for new ideas to bloom from the particulars, with nothing in the way. No synthetic structure and maybe then the perennial philosophy can emerge.

Foucault: Through criticism we can expose all the absurdities and thus expand the potentialities of being.

Marcuse in Metaphysical lense

Marcuse: Beyond these limits, there is also the space both physical and mental for building a realm of freedom, which is not that of the present. Liberation, also from the liberties of the exploitative order, a liberation which must proceed the construction of a free society - one which necessitates a historical break with the past and the present.

The alchemy is different, but worded differently and much less mystically.

The alchemist must purify himself appropriately or the alchemical magic won't work. A key hermetic belief.

Marcuse: "What is now at stake are the needs themselves. At this stage the question is no longer how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself. Without reproducing through his aspirations and satisfactions his dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude. The advent of a free society would be characterized by the fact that the growth of wellbeing turns into an essentially new quality of life. This qualitative change must occur in the needs - in the infrastructure of man, itself a different dimension of the infrastructure of society. The new direction, the new institutions in relation must express the ascent of needs and satisfactions very different, and even antagonistic to those prevalent in the exploitative societies. Such a change would constitute the extinctual basis for freedom - which the long history of class society has blocked. Freedom would become the environment of an organism which is no longer capable of adapting to the competitive performances required for wellbeing under domination. No longer capable of tolerating the aggressiveness, brutality and ugliness of the established way of life, the rebellion would then have taken root in the very nature - the biology of the individual - and on these grounds, the rebels would redefine the objectives and the strategy of the political struggle in which, alone, the concrete goals of liberation can be determined."

Claims in a footnote that he's not talking about the normal conception of biology, but rather making people in tolerant to the idea of intolerance and oppression. Look at what we're doing to our children with their hypersensitivity to microaggressions.

"Political radicalism thus employs moral radicalism. The emergence of a morality, which might precondition man for freedom. This radicalism activates the elementary organic foundation of morality in the human being. Prior to all ethical behaviour in accordance with specific social standards, prior to all ideological standards morality is a disposition of the organism, perhaps rooted in the erotic drive to counter aggressiveness - to create and preserve ever-greater unities of life. We would then have, this side of all values, an instinctual foundation for solidarity among human beings. A solidarity which has been effectively repressed in line with the requirements of class society but which now appears as a precondition for liberty. To the degree to which this foundation is itself historical in the malleability of human nature reaches into the depth of man's instinctual structure, changes in morality may sink down into the biological dimension and modify organic behaviour. Once a specific morality is firmly established as a norm of social behaviour, it is not only interjected, it operates as a norm of organic behaviour. The organism receives and reaacts to certain stimulii and ignores and repels others in accord with the interjected morality, which is thus promoting or impeding the function of the organism as a living cell in the respective society. In this way,a society constantly recreates, this side of consciousness and ideology, patterns of behaviour and aspiration, as part of the nature of is people, and unless the revolt reaches into this second nature, into these ingrown patterns, social change will remain incomplete and even self-defeating."

Scary project, but let's finalize with the Essay on Liberation:

"In the advance capitalist countries, the radicalization of the working classes is counteracted by a socially-engineered arrest of consciousness. And by the development and satisfaction of needs which perpetuate the servitude of the exploited, a vested interest in the existing system is thus fostered in the instinctual structure of the exploited and the rupture with the continuum of repression is a necessary pre-condition of liberation, and it does not occur. It follows that the radical change which is to transform the exsting society into a free society must reach into a dimension of the human existence hardly considered in marxian theory - the biological dimension - in which the vital imperative and satisfactions of man assert themselves. In as much as these needs and satisfaction reproduce a life in servitude, liberation presupposes change in this biological dimension. That is to say, different instinctual needs, different reactions of the body, as well as of the mind."

Marcusian Alchemy

Purify oneself sufficiently and engage in the dialectic by adopting the critical consciousness. What will happen is a liberated utopia will emerge on the other side of everyone doing this. By blooming out of the ashes of the existing society once all of its limitations and oppressions are burned away by aufheben der kulture. This is alchemy driven by the dialectic in order to achieve the utopia. A golden society, a golden age sprouted from an oppressive leaden age. It requires, at the biological level, just like the Soviets requested a new Soviet-man - the purification of the self in order for it to wkr. The adoption of a pure consciousness - whether it's critical consciousness, class consciousness, racial consciousness, climate consciousness. So, in essence, this is the Hegelian idea that people cannot be free so long as they are other to the absolute. In the instance that they generally become aware of their role in manufacturing the absolute, and how the absolute understands itself, the absolute will realize itself, history will end, and liberation or communism or true freedom will emerge in this perfected society which comes out at the end of history. Hegel's historicism, upon which all these stupid ideas are based. It's a religion.

Juxtapose to Contemporary

We can put this all much more simply, the purification etc, by talking about a contemporay voice. Robin d'Angelo puts it from her narrower perch in critical whiteness studies, White Fragility: "You have to try to be less white". That's the solution. Coca Cola attempted this as a diversity imperative, and it resulted in massive blowback. But for d'Angelo, this is the same as Marcuse. If we were to just purify ourselves of the white supremacist superstructure, a racially-liberated world might bloom. To do that, we have to apply the dialectic, but we can only do that if we've adopted Racial Humility, Racial Stamina, Critical Race Consciousness, awareness of our whiteness.

"We have to recognize that there is no such thing as a positive white identity."

Summary

In the process of creating The Other (World - God, present in everything, existing in fragmented form trapped within all the imperfections of the world), the alchemical process will treat the fragments by spiritually pure alchemists who are in parallel with critically conscious philosophers (Gnostic), and they will free the seed of Gold and change base metal into Gold, or a society into a perfected absolute. The end of history will arrive. Trinity spiral.

Marcuse once more

Introduction to the 2nd edition of One-Dimensional Man: "Marcuse thought the dialectical philosophy could promote critical thinking. One-dimensional man is Marcuse's most sustained attempt to present and develop the categories of the dialectic philosophy developed by Hegel and Marx. For Marcuse, dialectical thinking involved the ability to abstract one's perceptions and thought from existing forms in order to form more general concepts. Uncritical thinking derives its beliefs, norms and values from existing thought and social practices, while critical thought seeks alternative modes of thought and behaviour from which it creates a standpoint of critique. Such a critical standpoint requires developing what Marcuse calls negative thinking, which negates existing forms of thought and reality from the perspective of higher possibilities (spiritually-pure alchemy). This practice presupposes the ability to make a distinction between existence and essence, fact and potentiality, and appearance and reality. Mere existence would be negated in favour of realizing higher potentialities while norms discovered by reason would be used to criticize and overcome lower forms of thought in social organization. Thus, grasping potentialities for freedom and happiness would make possible the negation of conditions that inhibited individuals full development and realization. In other words, perceiving the possibility of self-determination in constructing one's own needs and values could enable individuals to break with the existing world of thought and behaviour. Philosophy was, thus, to supply the norms for social criticism and the ideal of liberation which would guide social change and individual self-transformation."

"Critical and dialectical thinking, by contrast, postulates norms of criticism based on rational potentials for human happiness and freedom, which are used to negate existing states of affairs that oppress individuals and restrict human freedoms and well-being. Dialectical thought thus posits the existence of other realms of ideas, imgaes and imagination that serve as a potential guide for social transformation that would realize the unrealized potentialities for a better life. Marcuse believes that great philosophy and art are the locus of these potentialities and critical norms and he decodes the best products of western culture in this light." F Performing alchemy on them in order to reach these higher, unrealized potentialities for a better life.

Men of Action

So, for Hegel, where this all comes from, the divine expresses itself in nature, so the seeds of the divine exist in everything (the pefected ideas). Yet everything is imperfect and must contain its own contradictions. The philosopher, when sufficiently gnostic, will then be able to apply reason (vernunft) via the dialectic to expose the conradictions and, in synthesis, get the seeds of the divine to blossom into the world. This gives rise to more perfected ideas and the process repeats itself, with history acting as the alembic, the dialectic acting as the fire, and aufheben acting as the reducing process.

Occasionally, for Hegel, great men of action (Napolean) are brought to the fore by history to move this process along in lurches. Warlords killing people (Napolean, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, Alexander, Ghenghis Khan) and they are used by history to move the process of history along because history has a purpose to it which is to ultimately realize the absolute. Sometimes it takes good roads and sometimes it takes bad roads.

Philosophers primarily, for Hegel, are meant to move this along in particular. The tool is "reason" which, when perfected, is the absolute.

Everyday folks who live within the geist are also helping to move it along, because they help to expose the contradictions of the state of affairs, which the philosophers will identify and resolve through proper application of dialectical synthesis. Revolving door between activists and scholars.

The faster in the Hegelian thought process, the more the existing society is torn down, the faster the absolute will be able to realize itself through engagement with its other, and thus the faster that everything is perfected and turned to Utopia. Being that Hegel is a speculative philosopher, who uncovers in the mirror to remember and recollect the absolute idea (mysticism), he aims to come to the perennial philosophy. The one true philosophy that all theologies, philosophies, religions etc are all revealing a part of, but are not properly doing because they're not all convergent into one idea. The alchemical process takes the fragments and reduce it in the alembic of speculative philosophy down to its essential core, and the tool for doing this is the dialectic, specifically aufheben.

One Philosophy to Rule Them All

The philosphia perennis characterizes the absolute and indicates when, realized, the absolute has actualized as the absolute dialectical synthesis. Hegel's speculative idealism is trying to remember the prisca theologia (concept introduced from Marcilio Fissino in the 15th century - a central concept in Hermetic faith). Fasino was a priest, but sufficiently hermetic to where he was nearly excommunicated (and for astrology). Parallels between these two becomes obvious as Hegel commented on Fasino:

Standard Encyclopedia: "Fasino saw himself as one member of a venerable sequence of interpreters who added to a store of wisdom that God allowed progressively to unfold. Each of these prisci theologi had his part to play in discovering, documenting and elaborating the truth contained within the writings of Plato and other agent sages, a truth to which these sages may have not been fully privy, acting as they were as vessels of divine truth.

Fasino, who was an inspiration in some ways to Hegel, was an astrologer/alchemist responsible for the translation of Hermetic text (Hermes texts),along with various Neoplatinists into Latin. Hegel, writing in the history of philosophy, is aware of him - tecnically critizied Fasino's neoplatinism, but also adopts his neoplatinum, but also adopts his Hermetic view and something of his prisca theologia - in particular the view that all faiths and philosophies are manifestations of the one and the same ultimate faith, which is being expressed inadequately and incompletely in the world.

Hegel believes in his systematic philosophy/reason when it's perfected. It will become absolute and, at that point, it definitely becomes the one true philosophy or faith. This is done for Hegel, however, because he sees the absolute as existing throughout time, even though it's becoming absolute throughout time. Freeing up the philophosia perennis from the confines of cloudy nature, which has fragmented it and locke dit away in various worldy forms. Reconstructed by people only know the part, but forget the whole, which isn't good enough for Hegel who believes that once you know the whole, the parts all make sense.

This gets us to "verstand" and "vernunft". Science and Reason. Under the broader heading of knowledge "wiesschenschaft" (Science, but not really).

Verstand: Understanding Vernunft: Reason

Verstand - lower level, just understanding things, traditional theory, understanding how they work, physics, science, philosophy. Limited to observational rigor. Vernunft - reason, higher than understanding. In laying out a logic of science, system of science, he describes this as a higher level, critical, dialectical analysis. Systematic philosophy. When reason this is perfected, we will finally have the absolute - a re-emerged philosophia perennis which reflects the prisca theologia.

An arrogant way of viewing his own philosophy as a perfect, but also a gnostic way of thinking.

Verstand - trying to understasnd the world empirically. Vernunft - higher level of understanding available to people who have true reason which is freed up and has a consciousness behind it - the consciosuness of the absolute.

In a different way

One of Hegel's tenets under the purpose of reason is that the particular cannot be understood except in relationship to the whole. This is out of his focus on contradictions which help you to understand that you don't know the whole, otherwise you wouldn't have missed something. This means that Hegel's philosophy is ultimately Wholistic, rather than Reductionist.

Verstand is reductionist. Vernunft is wholistic. The wholistic science.

It also means that what he calls "reason" is actually Ideology. As a consequence, all the way down the line (Young Hegelians, Marxists, Neo-Marxists, Cultural Marxists, The Woke), everyone seems to think that they have a better, wholistic, superior understanding of the world compared to everyone else and that it's very gnostic in nature.

Confirmation from Marxists

From Marxists.org "Formal thinking often has trouble understanding the causes of events. Something has to be a cause and something else the effect."

People are surprised when they irrigate land and salination and silting of the waterways leads to transforming the landscape into a desert. Dialectics, on the other hand, understand that cause and effect are just one and another side of a whole network of relations, such as in an ecosystem, and one thing cannot be changed without changing the whole system.

"Dialectic has its origins in ancient society, both among the Chinese and the Greeks, where thinkers sought to understand nature as a whole, and saw that everything is fluid, constantly changing, coming into being and passing away. It was only in the piecemeal of observing nature and bits and pieces practiced in western thinking in the 17th-18th century had accumulated enough positive knowledge for the interconnections, transitions and genesis of things to become comprehensible that the conditions became ripe for modern dialectics to make its apperance. It was Hegel who was able to sum up this picture of universal interconnection and mutability of all things in a system of logic which is a foundation of what we call, today, dialectics".

In other words, scientific understanding of things can be considered stupid. Formal thinking and traditional theory is "verstand" and people make stupid mistakes like turning their farmland into desert because of a lack of understanding from the higher level. But we have vernunft, the dialectic, Hegel's systematic philosophy. So he names his philosophy "Logic", and "Reason" as a systematic philosophy that is the higher way of thinking.

This is his metaphysic and it ties into the thread that the operating system is the Dialectic. You can follow Marx who said Hegel had this thing right, but that it was standing on its head, so he turned it back upright. Then the Neo-Marxists said Marx had it backwards and had to turn Hegel back upright again. It might be more accurate to analyze these three groups in a different, more dialectical frame.

More accurate to say:

• Hegel focused on the Ideas (God, the Absolute)
• Marx focused on the State, and thus the Materialist world (the Son)
• The Neo-Maxists focused on the Culture (Spirit, Geist)

That makes a solid through-line that these people - the woke inheritors - are all talking about the same thing, with different aspects being what they believe as the relevant part where you do the alchemical process.

For Hegel, if you want to change the world, you focus on the ideas. For Marx, if you want to change the world, you focus on the state and the material conditions. For the Neo-Marxists, if you want to change the world, you focus on the culture (this translates into the woke as well).

Recoil in horror that it implies under Marxism that the philosophy treats the state like it's Jesus, and provides salvation and life, but also an ideal model for how to live an ethical life. The truth and the life become the state - this is how Hegel thought about the state.

Summing up Metaphysics

Hegel remains speculative (Mystical) trying to apply the dialectic to ideas. Marx frees him from his mystical shell, makes the dialectic into dialectical materialism and seeks to exploit the contradictions of material life by raising class consciousness in the people who experience it. And the Neo-Marxists shift that whole project to Aufheben der Kultur - the dialectic abolishment or transfer of culture.

The current woke project is primarily an effort of constant, multidimensional aufheben der kultur - cultural warfare of the dialectical, leftist motif. Thus it is no surprise that we are currently embroiled in a totalizing, international culture war, and it's easy to see who the antagonists are, and how they proceed (through the culture war - tear down the existing culture and cause problems). It's also easy to see this project, and all of its forms, as 3-4 denominations of a religion.

The Judeo-Christian model is not a terrible metaphor, but don't take it literally. It's just a good comparison to get people to think. We are not comparing the ethics of each of these.

In this sense, you can also think of Hegel as being Judaic - establishing and making convenant with or documenting this Absolute Deity.

Marx falls into the role of the early pre-Pauline Christians who have brought this faith into a new era of practicality, but whose reach is relatively limited.

And then the Neo-Marxists, by turning to Aufheben der kultur, are like the Pauline Evangelists whose reach is virtually unlimited. That's sort of the structure of this religion in terms of how it comes out "practically".

The Judaic faith is very exclusive, the pre-Pauline Christian approach is also quite limited in terms of its reach, but Evanglistic Christianity is billions, global and rapidly expansive. This demand to evangelize is indicative of what you see in the Neo-Marxists and the Evanglists by moving the whole project into the site of Geist. So rather than working within the idea, as the deity, or working within the material world, as the son, they instead turn to the Geist. They are working through what Hegel would conceive of as the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is what moves the world. And goodness are they ever succeeding at moving the world with it.

In all three cases, the basic underlying faith is identical, present, largely constant, and based on Hegel's metaphysics which is ultimately a metaphysic based on societal alchemy - meant to create some new world that's Perfected and Utopian. This leaves it open to megalomaniacs who, throughout history, have come up and picked up these ideas, whether Hitler / Stalin / Lenin / Mao - who pick up these ideas and think that their vision of the right side of history can be implemented under their rule. The woke, even though they don't have this charismatic man-of-action behind them right now, as it's phrased in Hegel, are doing the same thing - Leninism 4.0?

Wrap-Up

Consequences

Necessity and urgency to the dialectic. If you believe that the Utopia is brought about faster by the process of the dialectic, you have to do this as hard and fast as possible. The more vigorously it is applied, the faster we get to the Utopia at the end of history, therefore anyone who resists must be evil, because they resist the idea of utopia, and they drag history's feet whil emaintaining the oppressions of the imperfected society.

Demand for conformity and collectivism which causes, in terms, demands for statism. Hegel was a statist, so it's no surprise that Marxism is statist and that Neo-marxism is totalitarian. The wokeism inherits both statism and totalitarianism. Hegel's philosophy is profoundly statist - the state is the divine idea as expressed on earth.

Hegel writes:

"The state is absolutely rational in as much as it is the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular subconsciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality." Once consciousness becomes critically aware, then you have the state being absolutely rational as a perfected state.

"This substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in itself in which freedom comes into its supreme rite. On the other hand, this final end has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of this state"

Philosophy of Right:

"The state is the actuality of the ethical idea. It is the ethical mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to itself knowing and thinking itself accomplishing what it knows and insofar that it knows it."

"For truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will, and the universal is to be found in the state - in its laws, its universal and rational arguments. The state is the divine idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before, and in which freedom obtains objectively and lives in the enjoyment of the subjectivity".

This is why they think freedom comes from the state in Hegelian Leftism. The state has th supreme right against the individual whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.

All of his theosophy and metaphysic aside, all of this has political consequences. In free societies like the States which proceeds from a Lachian or Jeffersonian framework, we believe that rights precede the states. Endowed by a creator. Inalienable. In a Hegelian framework, this is not how it works. The individual has a complete duty to the state - total statism and collectivism.

Rights are replaced by prpvileges to be granted by the state. A different political model. Rights endowed by the creator meets the antithesis of privileges granted from the state.

The connection to what's going on in the woke ideology cannot be missed, especially in the declaration in Critical Race an Introduction Page 23:

"Critical Theorists are highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely: rights."

They are simultaneously obsessed with privilege and how the system, which is a manifestation of the idea state in the culture or geist, creates and thus bestows privilege. Privilege is granted by the state. They are obsessed with who has privilege nad how that's unfair, ebcaues the state itself is unfair because the entire structure of the idea, state nad culture are incorrect, and so they agitate culture knowing that that's where you have the most drive to change the entire thing and reorganize who has privilege. That's why they're so obsesse dwith privilege, want people to check privilege, because privlege comes down from the state and they want to reorganize everything so that everything operates according to their ideology.

Another consequence of the Hegelian thought is collectivism because when the ideas are perfected, everybody must have the same ideas, because they are perfect. All the different ideas which lead to contradictions must have been synthesized. If anyone has different ideas, that's a site of contradictions - if your idea and my idea are different, we now have a dialectic between us. It has to be synthesized.

We don't have the perfect idea, therefore the absolute has not recognized itself unless we all have the same idea. There can be no cognitive liberty in the perfected state. We have to have total collectivism and all think the same - and this will happen by all subsuming our will to the state - giving over our will and duty to the state entirely. Hegelian thought is a massive amplification to a dramatic degree of the powerful collectivist metaphysic underneath it. Collectivism leads people who take it up to try and force a situation because they believe that when there's total conformity to their totalizing ideology, collectively maintained, then we are now near or at the point of the absolute realizing itself. The perfected point where Utopia is imminent. We are all part of the dialectical process moving history forward and we are all in it together.

Anybody who has a different idea is both a problem and proof that the absolute hasn't realized itself. So that person becomes a site where the dialectic continues to play out. That means it's nt done playing out, thust he Utopia isn't here. Somebody with different thoughts is preventing the emergence of the Utopia, and they're probably just being stubborn.

People who don't want to get on board with this, especially when a megalomaniacal man of action have taken control and power - which is totally a weakness of this ideology, because this man of action is always being looked for. That's going to be perceived from within this logic as being against the realization of Utopia, problematic, and in need of elimination/excommunication/marginalization. That's what we see in Cancel Culture, and what we saw under horrific manifestations under people like Stalin and Mao.

This is another thing: this kind of a mentality (Hegelian magic) is wide open to psychopaths and megalomaniacs who think that they have vision, the ruthlessness, and the capacity to decide what the right side of history actually is (it will conform to their pathologies), and the will install a pathocracy (pathological government). They have the ability to usher this in at any cost. This happens again and again under Hegelian frameworks, and it has lead to a catastrophic movement.

Hegel's man of action is meant to come in, in the attempt to fulfill history. History is using him (he doesn't even have his own agency), the man of action, to progress the dialectic and progress history. CRT: "And so the dialectic progresses".

If he fails in his mission to fulfill history, it still fits into the same mold. History still progresess. He doesn't fulfillhistory, but it progresses. So it's easy to get support from the dialectical left who believe in this faith, but it leads into mentalities and tropes such as: Real Communism has never been tried. Because every attempt so far was just a case that wasn't real communism - people forwarded some new synthesis tha wasn't the perfectly synthesized idea, and the contradictions in their attempt were revealed to the unfolding process of history - 10s or millions of dead people? Hitler was a result of this. Communism and its failures. Hitler is a rsult of a Hegelian dialectic being taken up as a faith.

So they say real Communism has not been tried because it will only have occurred after the absolute realizes itself, not before. Everything up until that point, whether good or bad, was just the part of the process of making our way there.

Furthermore, all of the mass deaths through these Hegelian projects - these people are just martyrs of history. They aren't a tragedy, they're a victory. 100 million dead? History used them to reveal the contradictions and the ideas that were being ported in that age, so they're not really a loss. History used and discarded them, just as it does to Men of Action. The dead are a benefit under this world view. History, under Hegel's historcism, uses people for its purpose and then discards them. It's just a part of the process. The ends justify the means.

As Hegel had it then, the spirit of the time commanded movement, the absolute marches through history by good roads and bad ones. It's all progress, no matter how bad it is.

Last Example

People wouldn't expect another consequence of the Hegelian faith is the Interfaith movement. Another aspect of Hegel's philosophy. The prisca theologia and the philosophia perennis that's after - Interfaith is the attempt to bring all the various faiths and philosophies together and extract from them that which was originally there - that Prisca Theologia, before it became corrupted and worldly. Or to identify within them, the different aspects reflected of the philosophia perennis - the perennial philosophy that all of them are just badly simulating in the simulacran sense of Jean Beaudriard. So for Marx, state atheism and his view of materialism would do, and our present incarnation of this nonsense, which is woke (as with the others before it) a highly refined, mostly non-sensical vision of social justice is something to do with the philosophia perennis. Equity becomes the updated vision of communism under this social justice model. Public-private partnerships become the vehicle, a super-national super-state that replaces the state as nation state.

So we have our Equity Geist, our supernational state in public-private partnerships, and the faith traditions of the world all cheer this on by subverting their own beliefs to the synthetic idea of social justice. The Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists - and everyone's not preaching their own or talking about their own faith, philosophy or tradition. They're just being used parasitically to forward one faith which is social justice. A socially-just word is the new name for the project that will lead the absolute to realize itself and actualize. This is all still Hegelian metaphysical faith.

I hope I've now established my two big takeaways and we can turn to what we might do with this information.

1. We should understand that the Operating System of the left is, in fact, the Hegelian Dialectic. It comes in different forms and with different focuses largely because the Dialectic applies to itself to concentrate and change it. Hegel's idealism -> Marx's materialism -> Neo Marxists culturalism -> Woke identity politics. In that that sense, what we see is an underlying metaphysics and tool that's ultimately religious and is being driven by this dialectical process which is ultimately alchemical in nature.

Understanding this thing is crucial to understanding what's going on no win the currents of leftist thought. It should be seen as a religious movement.

I've also mentioned the Dialectic with the tool of Aufheben at its core is ultimately what drives this whole thing. Dialectic driven by aufheben - absolish, destroy, undermine. While trying to pull out and let blossom the seed of gold within it.

1. Another thing we can take away from this mentality is that liberals and conservatives in our societies form a natural and sensible allyship for maintaining friendship than do leftists and liberals. Liberals should be allying with conservatives on the maintenance of a World order that is not this insane Hegelian leftism. Alchemy is not real and you can't build a positive thing out of constant negation.

The west could be said to have 3 Gods, in some broad sense these would be the JudeoChristian God for the Conservatives, a Secularized Spinozan Lachian God for the Liberals, The Hegelian Absolute for the Leftists.

Liberals and Conservatives, in that sense, have something deeply in common whereas the Hegelian leftists deeply different. There is a natural allyship between the liberals and conservatives.

Theologically: The 3 Gods of the west. the JudeoChristian God and Jeffersonian Liberal God have a God that is - alpha omega I am the I am. Whereas Leftists have a God that becomes through their activism.

Summarizing that idea again, Liberals and Conservatives with their 2 deities approach the divine with humility - Humble before something bigger than we are which is incomprehensible to us. Leftists don't have this with their Hegelian Deity - the faith is fueled up in praxis, thus they approach the divine with arrogance, as their goal is to brign their own vision into being and make it Lord through their machinations and activism. It's for this reason that a lot of far-right conservatives identify it with Luciferianism or Satanism. It's a very arrogant belief to bring about actualization of God through your activism and, compared to the humility of God the Father, or the World as it is beyond and bigger than us, with all that humanity, it's a complete departure.

That's one thing to understand. Ultimately my goal has been to make clear what's been going on with the Left for the past 200 years - Old Left, New left, Woke Left - which exists in a single current in which Marx is just one species.

Lenin, Stalin, Mao - these are woke precursors. Wokeness is Leninism 4.0. Bio-Leninism - taking a page out of Foucault by saying that when you have scientific technocracy involved where it's bio-something and it's Leninism in being driven through technocratic means - so BioLeninism. These are all threads on the same line of thought. All one religion and it's a religion that is comprehensible, and it's defeasible when it's understood because it's intrinsically weak - it consistently fails to have the evidence, it doesn't have the argument, and it completely lacks the moral highground once yoyu understand what it is. This faith is ultimately the Hegelian Dialectical Faith - which is ultimately alchemical in nature.

What We Can Do

To beat the dialectical left requires understanding that it is dialectical and not getting dragged into the dialectic. It seeks to make something out of nothing, so you don't play along with it. You don't go along and believe that you can make something out of nothing or that you can create positive or success out of negation (ridiculous where you have Marcuse arguing that the negative thinking leads to positive). They literally think that the golden era is inside a shell of oppression if we just rip off all the oppression, the golden era will blossom out. So what you have to do as an individual or institution - you have to avoid the dialectic. I did a whole podcast on my other podcast - private contributors only - where I compared it to alligators or crocodiles that drag you into the water and roll you. They throw out a dialectical bid - you need to learn to recognize these and learn to not participate. If you cave in, bend the knee, given in, grant their presuppositions, you try to argue back - they drag you into the mud. Your options, then, are to mock it, if that's appropriate, and to get funny about it. Or to engage their mott and bailey rhetorical strategy - you steal their mott - make the core of their argument, the kernel/truth of their argument better than they can - and then bomb the bailey, which is to say "destroy their activist agenda". You're going to go in and say "ok you're right it turned out there really is a little nugget of Gold, and Im going i'm going to take out the gold for you - that'll be mine - and I'll point out why everything else you have is lead.

Steal the mott, bomb the bailey. Those are the only things you can do. You have to find other modes of engagement, like mockery or this very savvy steal mott bomb bailey, or you have to stand on your principles - a little chauvinism won't hurt too much. Refusing to bend the knee, refusing to participate. Forcing them to play on neutral terms - make them define their terms, etc, so you can stay out of their dialectic word games. Also, you have to learn to start seeing and anticipating their moves and manipulations, which you can do once you understand that they are operating frmom a Dialectical frame and under the belief that they're saving the world by bringing about a Utopia through their actions.

Their negative, aufheben, demolish, deconstruct, disrupt dismantle process cannot create. It can only destroy or spend. Harvard U provides a great example. 40% of its professors are worried that their brand is losing status. 400 year old University has burned through 380 years of excellent, top-grade branding in just a few years by taking all this woke crap on. It really took the last year, where a few people were allowed to grift and a few ideas to get pushed out that will cause it to collapse under its own weight. Communists, NeoMarxists, infiltrate an institution, spend as much as possible, and then burn it to the ground because they don't produce anything. You can't create through a negation process. Aufheben doesn't make. Critical Theory doesn't build. Critical Theory doesn't even understand. It doesn't have to understand, it just has an obligation to aufheben der kulture (tear down).

If you are thinking about participating in an institution that goes woke, don't bet on it. Don't consider taking it up in an effort to maintain career viability or in order to keep up with the trends of the workplace environment. Advancing its interests to grift a little bit and end up burning all your hard-earned credibility. Cocoa Cola had to back off after saying "be less white". The Fed government of the US is a laughing stock for trying to force CRT and Trans stuff. It will burn you to the ground so fast and use you to advance its interests and grift.

Constant negativity in pursuit of the magical emergence of the good or great after all the negative is "destroyed" doesn't create good. Building hte good takes actual work. You have to know what you're doing and be willing to take risks. Good must be built up and then it must be maintained and defended, and the dialectic cannot do this -> it is a process of negating, not building. It can only destroy and spend. Its central article of faith that things will purify.

Its objective is not understanding, it's operational success. Its goal is not to create or build, it is to win to seize power and to foist as much of its agenda on the world before it burns out.

Closing

Quote from George Soros in "The Alchemy of Success":

"The scientific method seeks to understand things as they are while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, to primary objective of science is truth, that of alchemy operational success."

A book about finance where he explains how he was able to crash and short the British Pound Sterling. Alchemy is the process. His tool is called reflexivity.

This is the fundamental difference between Hegelian alchemy and liberalism or even conservativsm. The same difference that you see in the Neo-Marxists with Critical Theory vs Traditional Theory.

Traditional Theory seeks to understand things as they are, whereas the Critical Theory seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. The primary objective of Traditional Theory is truth and that of Critical Theory is Operational Success.

Verstand seeks to understand things as they are, Vernunft seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. Truth vs Operational Success.

This is the same thing that Marx dragged up in the difference between Vischenschaft and Socialismus. Critical Philosophy - Science seeks to understand things as they are, while Critical Philosophy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs.

Verstand and Vernunft. Understanding and Reason. The application of a systematic philosophy to perfect the ideas of the world according to his own program and thought.

The Claim

The Woke is ultimately a hermetic (Alchemical) religion based in Hegelian philosophy, rooted in the dialectical process, proceeding by the Neo-Marxist objective of aufheben der kultur. We have a 200 year long trajectory of this line of thought stretching back to the Young Hegelians or Hegel. It has caused nothing but calamity everywhere it attempts to obtain power. It's attempting to obtain power through wokeness in the USA today, we should not let that happen. People who identify themselves as Liberal or Conservative should form an alliance to push out these people from positions of power which they abuse and waste.

The roots of a huge reilgious movement that has been going for 200 years. The woke are the most evangelist and puritannical eruption. Many of them are, in fact, coming from a tradition of lapsed calvinism, where puritanism comes out of, with this woke ideology - the new operating system of a Hegelian faith. If you are a Christian, this line of thought is heretical to the Christian faith. You do not believe in a God that is becoming and actualized through the activities of human beings. You believe in a God that is and is transcendant. You don't believe in a Trinity where one part feeds into another and creates a spiral to the Utopia at the end of the world. In a God that created the world, 3 pieces are co-eternal and perfect. Only he knows the hour of the escaton. It's a heresy to believe that you can combine these, but it's a dialectical process to come to believe that it's possible:

Christian faith as it is - bring in CRT as an anthithesis - find a Synthesis. Anything with a Hegelian aspect becomes Hegelian. Heretical frame of Christianity on the basis of CRT or Queer Theory leads to a Hegelian hijacking of the religion.

Society was premised on the fact that rights are granted by the creator - endowed by the creator with inalienable rights, not privileges to be granted by a state to which we are completely subverted. Reject statism and collectivism and defend the values that have made everything work in the west for longer than these centuries of Hegelian religion.