Hegel IRL
- “What is the Now?”, we answer, for example, “The ‘now’ is the night.” In order 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 which has been written down, we will have to say that it has become rather stale.
Real-life example: Sayings such as “cherish the present moment” “focus on the present” and “stay in the present”. All real-life common phrases directing people to take an action toward the present can be the topic of my analysis. For my purposes, the Present and the Present Moment serve the same purpose in meaning.
These real-life examples are Hegelian not because they contain the word Present which is quite similar to the word Now which Hegel speaks directly about, but because these phrases have the potential to cause the same type of confusion that Hegel claims the Now has built into it. The confusion arises from the fact that Present can be somewhat of an ambiguous term. When Hegel says Now he refers to what seems like all night or all day which could also be understood to contain many Nows themselves. For my purposes, I’ll take Now or the Present to be the thinnest slice of time one can actually conceive of. With this understanding of the Present, it is clear that one cannot manage to do anything aside from observing and being a part of it. This means that cherishing it is not only futile, for enough time doesn’t lapse for one to conjure up a substantial feeling about it, but also unproductive since as soon as you can acknowledge a single moment (slice in time) long enough to act upon it, itself and most likely a couple other moments have past and you are now left to conjure up the mental frame of cherishment about the next present moment you find yourself consciously aware of and the cycle of failure to capture ones aim shall repeat. Without getting into the discussion of what it means to focus, I will take it to be a mental frame as is cherishment, and apply the same reasoning towards it. Any mental action taken toward the present moment will face these issues of futility and unproductivity.
The phrase “stay in the moment” might be the most problematic because one quite literally cannot accomplish the task of the phrase. In one manner of thinking about this phrase, we might say one cannot help but be in the present, for time travel is not real yet so the past and future, which are all the moments aside from the present one, are unavailable to us. Telling me to stay in the present is like telling me to keep being myself. Well, I couldn’t be someone else if I wanted to and if I was being someone else, for example, suppose I am Being Thomas instead of Richie, well, I would Be Thomas, and remaining myself would require me to remain Thomas because, like while I’m Being Thomas I am indeed Thomas. Putting this slight digression aside we can assume that by staying in the present one means something along the lines of keeping your attention or awareness attentive or aware of the present rather than the past or future. This trouble here is still that once one finds themselves aware of a particular moment, they are immediately moved into the preceding one and so on, continuously, forever. These phrases have the best chance to be made sense of if we assume the word Present, as it functions in these phrases, to mean the universal present, which is not any particular Present, but the concept that they all apply to. (The phrase might still be hard or even impossible to make sense of this way, but it’ll be fun to at least ponder this possibility) The Present or the Now is the thing present to our senses and we clearly can’t stay in any one particular slice of time that my senses capture but I can Be in all the presents available to me and all the Presents include many non-Presents relative to each other. By this I mean that when one moment is the true sensuous moment, call this moment Alf, all the others that shall come after it, are not the true Presents while Alf is the Present, but if one ‘stays’, as in remains mindfully aware of each moment one after the other they are closer to staying in the universal Present than they are to any particular Present simply because they stay in contact or application of the universal Present. By doing this they can at least constantly Be ‘Present’. While of course, one cannot actually stay in a concept, it can apply itself to the concept and stay in a mindful mental frame which allows one to do this. If this is how we interpret all three of these phrases then it might be the case that this is a rare instance where we don’t completely fail in saying what we mean. Our language cannot escape referring to the universal and thus not capturing the true sensuous this, however, these phrases aren’t trying to capture the sensuous this they are trying to capture the universal. The phrases might still fail in saying what they mean so far as what they mean is unintelligible but at least here, what they say is also unintelligible.
- “We thereby of course do not represent to ourselves the universal This or being as such, but we express the universal; or, in this sensuous-certainty we do not at all say what we mean. However, as we see, language is the more truthful. In language, we immediately refute what we mean to say, and since the universal is the truth of sensuous-certainty, and language only expresses this truth, it is, in that way, not possible at all that we could say what we mean about sensuous being.”
Hey Richie,
I really liked this post! Hegel’s discussion of the absurdity of pointing out the ‘now’ was one of my favorite parts of the text. You’re absolutely right that phrases like “live in the now” tend to draw people’s attention to a ‘now’ that is already gone by the time they turn their heads. Arguably one would need to anticipate the ‘now’ to catch it by the time it’s the most immediate present, which mightn’t fit that nicely in Hegel’s dialectic.
The point that we don’t really have any choice but to live in the present is also really useful to 1) show the ‘live laugh love’ styled sayings we’re talking about as somewhat idiotic, and 2)draw attention to the physical experience versus the mental experience. Our bodies are confined to living the now by default but our mind might be feverishly preoccupied with the past, as many people are, or indeed the future, which is a more productive but still challenging way to live. It might be interesting to reexamine the consequences of Hegel’s dialectic within this more dualist, mind-body, framework. As an example, perhaps the mind can exist in a concept, or more likely a network of concepts, such that it tints everything that one sees and alters the present within each individual stream of consciousness, thus making the ‘now’ a subjective experience. The body, on the other hand, would have a very difficult time living in the concept of ‘now’ simply because physical beings can’t inhabit a concept—unless you’re of the sort who argues that the whole world is a fabrication, in which case, cool.
Thanks for this comment. That’s an interesting idea you presented about pondering how this dialectic would work within a mind-body framework. My initial intuition is that the body wouldn’t have an issue inhabiting the concept of now any more than the mind would, it’s just that the body obviously wouldn’t know what it’s doing. But then again I’m tempted to say the mind cant know it’s in the now and be in the now at the same time since having the knowledge of what the self is doing seems to require a certain amount of thought that seems unattainable without mentally leaving the present for a moment. Also, I’m now becoming even more skeptical about both the mind’s and body’s ability to embody or inhabit a concept. Maybe we can chat about how you understand it to work. How did you feel about the part of my post that said the sayings might be better understood this way rather than in the particular now? I thought I was taking a leap with that one. Lol.
Thanks for the reply. Arguably the mind, while living in the sensuous moment, might be preoccupied with that moment such that it can’t take that step outside itself to recognize the particular moment.
As for looking at the phrases through a lens of the ‘universal present’, I found this argument quite compelling. If anything, it’s more in keeping with the intended message of said phrases to instill an appreciation for the universal present. It strikes me that staying in touch with this universal present (by mindfully noting the passage of time and events) rather than any particular present is actually a pretty rewarding way to live—something like seeing the big picture.