Summary
In everyday life we are shown one thing or concept and in tangent told another opposite a thing or concept, that when thought about in a directed sense such as Hagel, makes us all seem slightly mad. For example, anyone that has flown on a commercial airliner could tell you a few of the many directives given to you before your flight takes off such as “pre boarding”. Of course, we understand this to be a privilege given to certain passengers such as the disabled, people with young children, and VIP passengers being allowed onto the plane to situate themselves before anyone else gets on the plain. But when thinking about the true nature of what it means to “pre board” is displayed best in this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46fOtLfYC4Q&t=861s&pp=ygUWZ29yZ2UgY2FybGluIGFpcnBsYW5lcw%3D%3D) by Gorge Carlin.
“What does pre boarding mean anyway? To get on before you get on?” in this line we can see more Hegelian terminology and, in the Phenomenology, concerning “dialectical movements” (p.57, §86), ideally if we were to pre board the plane we would get on the plane, situate ourselves, and then get off the plane and wait for the present and final boarding process to begin. In the same stand-up routine, we see that the flight attendants ask passengers to get on the plane, in which case the comic says that they won’t get on the plane but instead will in fact get in the plane; after all the police might be called if someone were to get on top of the plane before the flight is to take off. But if we take this case further and in fact did get on the plane, we would be right in the sense that we followed the directives given to us, but in the same way we would be wrong given our intuition that the flight attendants most definitely want us to get in the plane. But again, if we take this a step further what do they mean by getting in the plane? Would I be wrong by opening the luggage racks and taking a nap in the overhead luggage bins? Or maybe I should get into the fuel tanks and go for a swim during my flight? Surely this is not what’s meant either, instead if we were to follow the directions given and be in the right sense while doing the right thing, the directive must be corrected. A new corrected directive would be something along the lines of “please enter into the plane, situate your luggage into the overhead bins, and then sit in your assigned seat until crewmen instruct otherwise”, of course this doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it would allow us to hear what to do, do what our intuition tells us, and be right in the mind and in reality.
In everyday life we are shown one thing or concept and in tangent told another opposite a thing or concept, that when thought about in a directed sense such as Hagel, makes us all seem slightly mad. For example, anyone that has flown on a commercial airliner could tell you a few of the many directives given to you before your flight takes off such as “pre boarding”. Of course, we understand this to be a privilege given to certain passengers such as the disabled, people with young children, and VIP passengers being allowed onto the plane to situate themselves before anyone else gets on the plain. But when thinking about the true nature of what it means to “pre board” is displayed best in this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46fOtLfYC4Q&t=861s&pp=ygUWZ29yZ2UgY2FybGluIGFpcnBsYW5lcw%3D%3D) by Gorge Carlin.
“What does pre boarding mean anyway? To get on before you get on?” in this line we can see more Hegelian terminology and, in the Phenomenology, concerning “dialectical movements” (p.57, §86), ideally if we were to pre board the plane we would get on the plane, situate ourselves, and then get off the plane and wait for the present and final boarding process to begin. In the same stand-up routine, we see that the flight attendants ask passengers to get on the plane, in which case the comic says that they won’t get on the plane but instead will in fact get in the plane; after all the police might be called if someone were to get on top of the plane before the flight is to take off. But if we take this case further and in fact did get on the plane, we would be right in the sense that we followed the directives given to us, but in the same way we would be wrong given our intuition that the flight attendants most definitely want us to get in the plane. But again, if we take this a step further what do they mean by getting in the plane? Would I be wrong by opening the luggage racks and taking a nap in the overhead luggage bins? Or maybe I should get into the fuel tanks and go for a swim during my flight? Surely this is not what’s meant either, instead if we were to follow the directions given and be in the right sense while doing the right thing, the directive must be corrected. A new corrected directive would be something along the lines of “please enter into the plane, situate your luggage into the overhead bins, and then sit in your assigned seat until crewmen instruct otherwise”, of course this doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it would allow us to hear what to do, do what our intuition tells us, and be right in the mind and in reality.
I find this a quality analysis you gave here Alessandro. I just want to play around a little bit and claim that an airplane is something made of metal, so the only way to be inside this metal object is to infuse yourself into pieces of metal that make up the airplane. If you just walk through the door of the plane then you’ll be standing on the plane floor and thus still ‘on’ the plane. If you were to float around ‘inside’ the plane (meaning under the plane ceiling and above the plane floor) then I’d argue that you aren’t really in the plane, you are in air space that happens to be surrounded by parts of the plane. I’d continue to argue that to be in something without being literally inside the pieces of material in this thing, one must be in a room, which is defined as the space inside of the material. In the case of an airplane, I’d argue that it’s a machine rather than a room. If anything, it seems appropriate for one to say they are in the seating room of the airplane rather than the airplane itself.
After making this argument I’m not quite sure I’m convinced by it, but hey, I’m adding to the dialectic. Great idea to go for a George Carlin bit by the way. All the standup he’s done touching on linguistics should be a gold mine for Hegelian insights.
I think pre-boarding is an excellent illustration of Hegel’s idea about the internal contradictions within concepts. The term “pre-boarding” implies boarding before boarding, which is paradoxical and unattainable. The moment we attempt to “pre-board,” the boarding process itself has started, so we are not actually boarding before boarding. Attempting to pre-board creates a paradoxical cycle in which we always achieve the opposite of what we set out to achieve. This paradoxical cycle illustrates Hegel’s idea concerning the mismatch between the presentation of a concept and how that concept is realized in reality.