Category: Hegel IRL

A quote from a book called How to Have a Life written by Seneca and presented by James S Romm states “We speak of “quality time” but time well used actually has greater quantity.” Seneca was a philosopher, statesman, and playwright of Ancient Rome. He was famously known for his moral essays and playwrights of Greek tragedies. I took a liking to this book and that was one of the quotes that I highlighted. This quote explains if we acted on creating quality time instead of only speaking of it, we’d have more quantity in our lives. Hegal speaks about how we can know immediate things because we can sense them with our five senses. Everyone understands we have a certain amount of time on earth. I’m confident we’ve all experienced that same frightening realization around the age of 10 that one day we and everyone we love are going to die. We also know certain moments may seem to move slower, faster, and even extremely fast, and because of this most people’s perception of life is “I don’t have enough time”. Followed by an immediate thought of “I should’ve spent more quality time with the people and things I love”.

This brings me to my next statement from Hegel “Likewise we ourselves have to conduct ourselves immediately, or receptively.” Hegal says along with perceiving we should also be receptive to what we’re perceiving. We tend to waste a lot of time knowing we are given a certain amount of time. If we take a moment to contemplate all the times we decided to idly watch TV, go zombie on phones, or give almost all our time to work or school (Unless that’s what you’ve chosen for yourself and you’re satisfied), that time cannot be given back, however, the reaction is  “there’s not enough time” when that’s simply not true. If we were receptive to having a certain amount of time we would act on it and surely use our time more wisely.

Lastly, Hegel expresses “We, therefore, are to alter nothing in the object as it presents itself,” we should not alter or change what we perceive to fit our own perception. Instead, we should be able to understand what we’re perceiving and accept it as it’s illustrated through our five senses. If we were to follow Hegal’s advice, instead of changing the perception to we don’t have enough time we could understand that we are given a certain amount of time and now it’s on ourselves to be receptive to that knowing and act on it.

Hegel’s Phenomenology, Perception: or the Thing and Deception, illustrates the point in which one’s consciousness perceives reality from a different perspective. Thus, hinders the actuality of reality. This point is shown with optical illusions. Multiple examples could be used with optical illusion. One example could be where an object has an illusion of colors or an image that contains two different perspectives (or two objects). Many different examples can portray variation in human perspective. 

One such illusion that I have experienced personally is jewelry that has properties that exhibit Pleochroism. These stones change color due to how they are viewed in the light and their angular positions. Just recently, I had my iridescent earrings under the light. It would have a pinkish hue, then it would change to a blue hue. This could fit with Hegel’s perspective on perception. The way how another person would view my earrings could be different. They may think it could be x color at first glance. While another person could see another color. According to Hegel, “…the thing thereby is in opposition to others but is supposed to preserve itself for itself in that opposition”(§ 125). Determinateness can be set in opposition in order to maintain its true self. The pair of earrings that I own is a perfect example of this. The true purpose of the earrings, which contain pleochroism, is to project different hues at various lights and angles. It wasn’t meant to have a set color, it was meant to be everchanging. So in terms of perceiving the earrings to have a certain color, would be an inaccurate perception. For the earrings to have their full potential, one will have to accept the fact there is no one color. 

This ties back to the passage, Perception: or the Thing and Deception. Because the earrings have intricate qualities, they can have numerous colors and they vary from many factors. Hegel proved a great point that to accept the true potential of the things that we observe in our everyday lives, we have to learn to accept complexities rather than trying to come up with different perceptions. 

In Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” he mentions the concept of sense-certainty, delving into the depth of the “now” and the “here.” He then explains that it is an inadequate concept in reality because the “now” and the “here” are constantly changing. When one says they are doing something in the immediate “now,” it is already in the past after that individual finishes saying the word “now.” An example illustrating this fallacy is the presence of wet paint signs in our subway system. When personally traveling underground in New York City, and encountering a wet paint sign taped to subway beams, countless individuals would avoid even bracing on the beam in fear that there is wet paint. However, when directly placing a finger on the beam, one hundred percent of the time, the paint would be dry, revealing the limitations of relying solely on sense-certainty. Hegel explains this perfectly by stating, “This itself. To the question: ‘What is the Now?’ we answer, for example, ‘The ‘now’ is the night.’ To put the truth of this sensuous-certainty to the test, a simple experiment will suffice. We write down this truth. A truth cannot be lost by being written down any more than it can be lost by our preserving it, and if now, this midday, we look at this truth that has been written down, we will have to say that it has become rather stale.” In other words, he is explaining that when it is night if it were to be the morning or a different time of day and look back at the phrase “The ‘now’ is the night,” that phrase would be false because it would be a different time of day, which is not the “night.” The same applies to the wet paint scenario. Is the paint really wet when it’s already dry? Hegel does a good job clarifying this fallacy with the now and here.

$187 quote: “The relation of both self-consciousnesses is thus determined in such a way that it is through a life and death struggle that each proves its worth to itself, and that both prove their worth to each other – They must engage in this struggle, for each must elevate its self-certainty of existing for itself to truth, both in the other and in itself” (Hegel Phenomenology pg.111, $187).

In Hegel’s view, the willingness to gamble all that you have—your life—is a necessary step to achieving self-consciousness: a definitive part of freedom. This becomes particularly relevant when one consciousness encounters another as they vie for dominance—as any being driven by desire would.

The world is chock full of such instances, particularly relevant in matters of religion and government, high up on the list of causes for which people would die. The late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is a marquee example of this struggle to prove oneself to his opponent, his audience, and perhaps most of all himself. For those unfamiliar with the circumstances, Navalny was the main opponent of Putin in the pseudo-democratic political sphere before he was poisoned by Russian secret services. He was left in a coma, treated back to health in Germany, returned to Russia to continue the fight, and was rather predictable imprisoned on bogus charges, and died under suspicious circumstances not too long after.

I suppose in this case, Navalny’s rival in this Hegelian showdown would be either Putin or the monolithic Russian government as an extension of Putin.

At any rate, Navalny’s expeditious and mildly foolhardy return after a close call with Novichok speaks to a desire to prove his worth. To prove himself to himself he wanted to be seen fighting Putin from the front lines, not from the insulation of Western political asylum. The question then arises of Putin’s role in this showdown. Of course, there is debate whether Putin was directly responsible, but for those who know Russia, as I do, this is a distinction without a difference.

Within Hegel’s framework, both Navalny and Putin were aiming to establish self-certainty, not only for the sake of recognition by the counterparty but also in the eyes of a disenchanted Russian electorate. Faced with this scenario, Hegel might assert that Navalny had no choice but to go back, lest he fail to be “recognized as a self-sufficient self-consciousness”(pg. 111, $187).

We can apply this test of mettle, if you will, to many other public-facing steps towards mortality. Some examples that may also be interesting to explore: assisted suicide, suicide by cop, and martyrdom (for any cause).