Partially Examined Life: Hegel

http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/04/02/episode-35-hegel-on-self-consciousness-2/
and
http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/04/10/episode-36-more-hegel-on-self-consciousness/

• hegel writes badly because he's trying to say something that has never been said before, which is a problem which all revolutionary philosophers have
• he is also referring to a lot of specific schools and philosophers but never by using any names, beginning with the theatetus
• Hegel sent a copy to Goethe and Goethe sent it back saying he couldn't make sense of it 
• you cannot specify goals / method in advance for philosophy if you do so you're already lost
• hence the necessity for "speculative" philosophy 
• immediacy of sense certain is reflected back in you, as when you say "now is night" 
• "here" which seems to be a particular is in fact a universal, same with "now"  
• Alexander Koveje is an important interpreter 
• "there is no way that the universal makes sense unless there's language and language is a social dimension" 
• pragmatic theory
• what do we mean by forces?
• heraclitus 
• everything is flux
• parmenides
• everything is static
• hegel
• everything is a particular pattern of flux
• schopenhauer goes on to point out that the relative concepts in each world need to be clearly distinguished
• logical necessity is DIFFERENT from physical causality 
• frege's distinction between the tautological identity vs. the informative identity
• A = A
• vs
• Morningstar is the Eveningstar 
• Hegel wants to say that the former is empty and the immediate access of oneself is uninteresting 
• criticizes descartes. you can't just say "I am I." We can't give that significance to I 
• even when the slave has given up enough to the master and tries to assert "your will is my will master" he can't, humans can't give up self-consciousness without dying
• when self-consciousness comes across another SC, it cannot return back to itself without a struggle
• there are two ways to approach the need to cope with this other
• this thing is my object, and it shall do my will
• aka, like a hammer or an object which it is eating
• the bondsman "sacrifices" its will for the sake of the other 
• the master is wholly dependent on the slave because the slave is the only one in the position to gain consciousness
• the master can't live without the slave but the slave can live without the master 
• the master is the one who is not afraid to die but the slave is afraid to die so he is willing to put himself into bondage 
• the lord desires the other and tries to negate and own in but that desire is never going to be fulfilled
• the lord supplies desire
• the slave supplies actual active work 
• paradoxical: the master gains the sense that what is really important is to be recognized
• but insofar as the slave is subservient, the instrument of his will
• then it's not a legitimate recognition 
• existential connections to negativity and authentic self-hood
• where all that is fixed is shaken loose: the slave learns that the world can be transformed
• the master, by contrast, is highly conservative
• Sc encounters another SC
• sees something that is "like me" or is challenging dominion
• each feels the other as a threat
• they try to negate each other as an object
• one or another succeeds 
• hence, master slave relationship
• master treats the slave like the object
• slave, by encountering resistances (which is how they build up a sense of self) gains a sense of independence)
• master or not, it seems like it begins to be a general matter of "me against the world." 
• lordship and bondage are covered in