Learn From It

Excellent post! So many miss that about Hegel and the tragedy of two rights. Those are the fundamental moments in our lives that cause memeory to be exacting years later from the experience, and sometimes the redemption inherent in very difficult, and singular decisions.

You have a high quality, but most importantly, an insightful blog. Thanks.

Steve

I've commented on how keen your insight is before. What I perhaps have not told you is that your writing never fails to spur my interest or thought. Your thoughts on free will and entropy made me seek out one of my favorite Hegel observations:

'Further, as to rights, ethical life, and the state, the truth is as old as that in which it is openly displayed and recognised, namely, the law, morality, and religion. But as the thinking spirit is not satisfied with possessing the truth in this simple way, it must conceive it, and thus acquire a rational form for a content which is already rational implicitly. In this way the substance is justified before the bar of free thought. Free thought cannot be satisfied with what is given to it, whether by the external positive authority of the state or human agreement, or by the authority of internal feelings, the heart, and the witness of the spirit, which coincides unquestioningly with the heart. It is the nature of free thought rather to proceed out of its own self, and hence to demand that it should know itself as thoroughly one with truth.'

Re: Peirce: "Peirce insists that faith in God comes first, not from ethical considerations, the way it did with Kant, but from the sheer beauty that opens out to the believer in the act of faith: "A man looks upon nature, sees its sublimity and beauty, and his spirit gradually rises to the idea of God. He does not see the Divinity, nor does nature prove to him the existence of that Being, but it does excite his mind and imagination until the idea becomes rooted in his heart."

and: “Lately, when I (Peirce) was suffering at every mouth through which a man can drink suffering, I tried to beguile it by reading three books that I hadn’t read for a long time, three religious books: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy, and Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The last one did one most good owing to the utter blindness of the man. Man can naturally get but a vague idea of the all of things; and a vague idea is always open to being driven into contradictions. But man will never find a doctrine of the all nearer than theism.”

Finally: “The idea of God’s reality will be sure sooner or later to be found an attractive fancy, which the Muser will develop in various ways. The more he ponders it, the more it will find repose in every part of his mind, for its beauty, for its supplying an ideal of life, and for its thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole . . . environment. . . . [In time he] will come to be stirred to the depths of his nature by the beauty of the idea and its august practicality, even to the point of earnestly loving and adoring his strictly hypothetical God, and to that of desiring above all things to shape the whole conduct of life and all the springs of action into conformity with that hypothesis.”

Oopsie. I guess it's back to the drawing board for philosophical assistance.

And to think I'd never even heard of Peirce in August. Anyhoo, what's great about Peirce is that he believes in absolutes but doesn't believe we can ever attain them because of the way we perceive the world, through the imperfect interpretations of signs. Oh, he's good. And kinda confusing. Enjoy!

Awww, look everyone! hoody DOES know how to use google!

How many quotable quotes did you find that disagreed with your prejudice before landing on those?

So are you saying you buy everything Peirce says? Yes? Then you're in for a bad time. No? Then why are you assuming I should?

Nah. not google. I'm better read than that.

Sadly for you, these are quotes from towards the end of his life, at the summit of his ponderings.

Sadly? Why sadly?

Again, I have not read much at all of Peirce, but it appears that he and Kurt Gödel are making runs at the same pattern.

If Peirce accepts absolutes but also believes they are unattainable, so Gödel 'believes' in closed systems ("closed" implies "limits", and limits imply absolutes) which contain unprovable truth-statements and irrefutable falsehoods.

Eco took a shot at the same pattern with the pendulum as a model.

Never having read Godel, I cannot comment.
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I stumbled across Godel, Escher and Bach; An Eternal Golden Braid many moons ago (like, 20 years). It appeared intriguing, but I never took the opportunity to read it when I came across it.

Does it represent any of Godel's thought accurately?

As for Eco, do you mean Umberto? If so, which book?

Nevermind that last sentence. You are talking about Foucault's Pendulum.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is a brilliant work and, in my opinion, the first, best introduction to what Gödel was talking about.

And, how that overlaps with Bach's and Escher's respective approaches to their arts, the limits thereof, and the escape from them.

Every high-schooler in the world should be required to read that book. that goes triple for the home-schooled.

Gödel, Escher, Bach is a brilliant work and, in my opinion, the first, best introduction to what Gödel was talking about.

And, how that overlaps with Bach's and Escher's respective approaches to their arts, the limits thereof, and the escape from them.

Every high-schooler in the world should be required to read that book. that goes triple for the home-schooled.