Just finished, Oct. 25th, 2009.
A friend of mine asked me to put together an essay aimed at capturing the main energy, focus, and driving force of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy.
This, I have aimed to do in other introductory essays in the past, coming at the 'wholistic' issue from different angles, but given the fact that it has been a while now, I do believe, since I have written an 'all-encompassing' essay of this sort that aims to link everything I have written, and want to write, about together in one clear, readable package, and due to the fact that my writing has been more sporadic and without much seeming direction and/or overall vision lately -- I would agree that such an essay is once again in order. Even my Table of Contents is outdated and again needs a 'renewal' that reflects the clarity of vision of Hegel's Hotel.
So let me start by stating as clearly as possible what Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy has aimed to do in the essays that I have written, and is still aiming to do, in the remaining essays I would like to write:
1. Firstly, Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics... is an 'open philosophical system or treatise or forum' that continues to change and evolve from day to day, as its author changes and evolves -- that's me -- and it will continue to change and evolve until the day I die. Nothing is written in stone here. As life changes, and particularly as life changes for the main author who is writing Hegel's Hotel (again, that's me), I will continue to have something to write about as I continue to process other books and authors who I have read, and/or will continue to read, and as I continue to process my own life experiences in the context of those who I will continue to come into contact with, both good and bad, and as I continue to play 'the fitting game' as Fritz Perls used to call it, which can be both good in bad as we try to 'classify' and 'label' the life structures and processes we see around us, and in my case here, aim to compare and contrast the good with the bad, the right from the wrong, and the real with the ideal...
2. Secondly, Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...looks upon its main mentor, G.W. Hegel, and his main philosophical work, 'The Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit', 1807, as the centrepiece -- as the philosophical 'Bible' if you will -- upon which everything I write gravitates from like the planets around the sun, or like ripples or waves of water that spread outward from a rock or stone that has just landed at some point and time in the middle of a large body of water -- call this, if you will, the main centrepoint, mind-body and 'multiple-bipolarity' of 'life', 'death', 'structure', 'process', 'evolution', 'non-evolution', and everything that runs in between....
3. Just because I call Hegel's classic philosophical work my 'philosophical Bible', does not mean that I treat it as a 'perfect philosophical work' nor do I view it as being like the closest thing to 'God' that any philosopher has ever written, and/or will ever write. I do not even view the Bible this way. I view the Bible in the same manner that Spinoza did, as something that was written by humans, as a philosophical/mythological treatise that has some messages that are important to read about life, man, and how we should behave, but not something that should be treated as a 'perfect treatise from God'. Both The Bible -- and Hegel's classic philosophical work, 'The Phenomenology of Mind/Spirit' -- are worthy of great respect in certain areas of endeavor, but this does not mean that either of them is beyond human criticism in those areas that these human works could/can be better...Even the Bible is nnot always 'humanistic'. Just read the story of God, Abraham, and Isaac meeting on the mountain in an intended or 'pseudo-intended' human sacrifice. Just because God 'called off Abraham at the last minute' doesn't make the story any less 'barbaric'. Nor does Abraham sacrificing a ggoat instead of his son Isaac alleviate the story in any less sadistic manner. If I was Isaac, I would be wanting to 'sacrifice' both Abraham (i.e., his father) -- and God who played the ultimate 'sadist' in this twisted series of events. Perhaps, if anything, the ultimate 'humanistic-existential' message here was for Abraham and for all of us to know when and where to separate from authoritarian orders regardless of when and where they come from -- in the name of 'humanism' when humanism separates itself from God, or God's purported 'message of authority'. This is the humanistic-existential message that DGB Philosophy takes from the story of God, Abraham, and Isaac...
4. One of the most important words in the title of Hegel's most famous philosophical work is the word 'Geist' which in German can be -- and has been -- translated into English as either 'Mind' or 'Spirit'. I usually translate the German word 'Geist' (not that I know any German) as meaning both -- i.e., like this -- 'Mind/Spirit'. To leave out the word 'Spirit' -- and its intended meaning -- in my opinion, is a grave mistake. Hegel's own high degree of both 'Abstractionism' and 'Rationalism' partly contradicts the intent of his own philosophy which I believe is to blend 'Humanistic Enlightenment' Philosophy and 'Humanistic Romantic' Philosophy in the same philosophical work -- in his classic 'dialectic triadic style': 1. thesis: Enlightenment Philosophy in the context of German Idealism'; 2. anti-thesis: Romantic Philosophy in the context of German Idealism; 3. synthesis: Classic Hegelian Philosophy in the context of German Idealism.
Now, personally, I think that Schelling did a better job of handling 'the romantic-idealistic side' of 'dialectic idealism' than Hegel did. Hegel, as a whole, functioned more from 'the neck up' in his 'rational' dialectic philosophy whereas Schelling came closer to the 'romantic idealism and wholism' of Spinoza in the direction that Schelling took 'dialectic idealism'. The primary difference between Spinoza and Schelling is Schelling's 'dialectic romanticism and pantheism' vs. Spinoza's 'monistic' version of romanticism and pantheism. I prefer Schelling's dialectic-romantic-pantheistic philosophy over Spinoza's monistic version. I have not read much of Schelling's work -- from what I have read, it lacks the comprehensive, organizational structure of Hegel's more 'rational' dialectic philosophy. But it seems that Schelling was much clearer on the full extent of his dialectic-romantic-pantheistic-spiritual vision. On this level, I give Schelling full credit and perhaps even influencing Hegel more than Hegel influenced Schelling.
In this same respect, I am critically hardest on Hegel because Hegel's dialectic romanticism and pantheism, for the most part, gets buried beneath his high degree of abstractionism and rationalism -- even to the point where his so-called 'rationalism' is not rational -- or even humanistic -- in any sense that I believe in the word 'rational' or 'humanistic' should mean. Something like God on the mountain with Abraham and Isaac. From Hegel's 'deterministic-historical-rational' point of view, the so-called rational can be 'barbaric' and visa versa (following a very controversial and much contested Hegelian quote: 'The rational is real and the real is rational.') -- the idea here being that even when the 'rational' is seemingly 'irrational', the dialectic always leads to a 'rational self-correction' that could not and/or would not have happened without the historical context of the preceding 'irrational event' that made the following 'rational-dialectic-self-correction' possible based on historical 'hindsight'.
This is the alleged 'underlying rationality' of the dialectic engagement between human irrationality and rationality eventually correcting itself in human rationality. I can partly see Hegel's 'brand of dialectic logic' at work here but still, this point of view, I strongly take issue with as I aim to see such 'impending irrationalities 'ahead of time' -- or as they are happening -- in Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy.
Likewise, with Hegel's concept of 'The Absolute'. Absolute barbarism -- in any historical context of the dialectic in evolutionary process -- still does not constitute any form of either 'rationalism' or 'humanism' in Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy. Nor does DGB Philosophy, in any way, support -- as Hegel did -- the barbaric 'will to power' of Napoleon (especially against his own Prussian-pre-German State').
Actually, I should modify that last statement. None of us is either totally good or totally bad. And likewise with Napoleon. Napoleon stabilized France from/after 'The Reign of Terror'. Napoleon also abolished serfdom and emancipated the Jews when he conquered Prussia. (Introducing Hegel, Lloyd Spencer, 1996, 2006, p. 10. Napoleon then, can fit under one of those: 'Does the end justify the means?' questions. And Napoleon might be one of those examples that Hegel was referring to where 'Napoleon's brutal behavior actually led to some 'rationality' after he was finished 'conquering' different countries. I don't support Hegel's support of Napoleon's barbaric war actions anymore than I support the overcompensatory measures taken afterwards by Prussia, pre-Germany, and Germany towards 'German Nationalism, Arrogance, Superiority -- and its own evolutionary 'National Will to Power' over 'non-German States and ethnic groups. Germany, in essence, became worse than its main pre-German national victimizer (i.e., Napoleon) who seems to have been used as a 'Subconscious, National Idealistic Role Model'. This is an example of what I call 'National Transference and Identification With The Aggressor'...
...........................................................................From the internet...
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where this is not to be expected. Thus, some philosophers may hold that the Universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances and diversities; or theology may support the view that there is one God, with many manifestations in different religions.
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Let me use the rest of this essay -- as I have also done in other essays but new material keeps coming into the forefront of my consciousness faster than I can process it all -- to compare and contrast some of the main similarities and differences between DGB (Post-Hegelian) Philosophy with Classic Hegelian Philosophy.
Put most simply, DGB Philosophy does not share Hegel's (or Fichte's, or Schelling's) enthrallment with the idea of 'The Absolute'. As much as I don't like Schopenhauer -- neither the person nor the one-sidedness of his overall 'cosmic, pessimistic, narcissistic' philosophy -- still, Schopenhauer's narcissisticly based philosophy cannot be overlooked, because everywhere we look around, we can see it exemplified in the many injustices, corruption, and wars that we see in the world today, and indeed, throughout most, if not all, of human history.
Man's perpetual greed, selfishness, and one-sided righteousness cannot be overlooked, no matter how much we indulge in the idea of 'The Absolute' or 'Absolute Knowledge' or 'Absolute Being'. Maybe these ideas are useful human ideals, maybe the dialectic -- and 'dialectic logic' -- can at different points, move us closer to these absolute ideals, but still, the dialectic just as often moves us away from these ideals as it moves us closer because the human dialectic process is fraught with individual and group 'power pushes' or 'wills to power' that are just as often, if not more often, aimed at one-sided outcomes of selfishness, greed, money, property, power, revenge, sex, and righteousness -- all of which I capture under the term 'human narcissism' than it is aimed at anything we might call 'human balance, harmony, unity, justice, democracy, equality, freedom, integrity, character, fairness, wholeness...
In short, there will always be a perpetual ongoing conflict between man's striving for balance, justice, equality, and democracy on the one hand vs. his more one-sided striving for all of the things that I have labelled above as human narcissism on the other side. This perpetual ongoing conflict -- and the dialectic process that continues to negotiate these two different sides of human nature and behavior -- will never take us to anything that we can remotely call 'The Absolute' -- unless, along Schopenhauer's line of thinking -- we call this 'Absolute Narcissism, Chaos, Corruption, and Self-Destruction'.
I am sorry to say this but 50 plus years of living on this earth have dulled my 'Enlightenment and Classic Hegelian Idealism' to the point where it is at least equally countered -- probably greater countered - by my perception of the realism of Schopenhaurian pessimism, whether we call that 'cosmic' or 'the darker side of being human'. (I remember reading Freud when he said very much the same thing.)
Thus, probably the main difference between Classic Hegelian Philosophy and Classic Hegelian Idealism is my basic, overall rejection of his concept of 'The Absolute'.
Now, this does not mean that we need to start jumping out of windows or take on an attitude of 'perpetual despair' -- a type of Schopenhaurian philosophical bleakness, and/or 'Lord of The Flies' mentality.
I read in a quote the other day -- and I am paraphrasing -- that no monument has every been erected of a 'pessimist'. I wonder if this is true. Are there no statues of 'The Sceptics', 'The Cynics', Thomas Hobbes, and/or Arthur Schopenhauer out there? Most certainly, there are monuments or statues or paintings of Sigmund Freud -- and by the end of his career at least -- Sigmund Freud was very much a 'pessimist' in terms of his not having much faith in the future of mankind. Freud had seen and experienced two World Wars.
I am looking around me in the world today at Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan...I think of AIG and a collapsing Wall Street. I think of CEO's abandoning their bankrupt companies -- or managing government-funded bankrupt companies -- and either running away with Golden Parachute Contracts, or continuing to manage a government funded bankrupt company like they should be paid like the wealthiest man on earth, I think of government and corporate lobbyism, and the human narcissism and corruption behind all levels of corporate and government politics -- and it is hard not to be pessimistic, even cynical.
Hegel's Hotel is still being built to foster and worship a particular type of human 'spirit' -- call this Hegel's 'Phenomenology of The Human Spirit' if you wish -- a particular type of Enlightenment integrity and idealism built around the ideals of reason, rationality, justice, fairness, equality, democracy, truth...in combination with a particular type of Romantic Human Idealism that can be captured in art, mythology, music, and even a Religious-Spiritual-Pantheist Idealism that embraces Humanism -- not the type of institutionalized and/or extremist-righteous religion that seeks to eliminate and destroy all of those people who are 'non-believers'...
Hegel's Hotel trumpets Hegel's main driving spirit of 'Enlightenment-Romanticism' and/or 'Humanistic-Existentialism' as developed before Hegel by such noted Enlightenment philosophers as John Locke, Adam Smith, Diderot, Montesquieu, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Rousseau, and after Hegel by the likes of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre and complemented by 'Constructive Deconstructionists' like Socrates, Sir Francis Bacon, David Hume, Voltaire, Nietzsche at his best when he wasn't going off the deep end, Foucault, and significant elements of Derrida....
Hegel's Hotel trumpets the 'Dialectic Pantheism' of philosophers and/or philosophies like Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Daoism, Schelling, even the 'Mono-Wholistic-Pantheism' of Spinoza....
Hegel's Hotel trumpets the 'pessimistic' evolutionary wisdom and understanding of the significance of 'human narcissism', 'freedom', 'alienation', and 'the will to power' as passed through the many years to us by such noted ancient and more recent philosophers as Anaxamander, Diogenes, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida...
And throughout all of this Hegel's Hotel strives for its own 'idealistic-realistic', 'Enlightenment-Romantic', 'Humanistic-Existential balance....
DGB Philosophy, in the spirit of Hegel and his masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' views the dialectic as the ultimate, central, driving, both uniting and separating, force of nature and evolution.
The dialectic is a self-correcting mechanism. But it is also a self-destructing mechanism. It is both a life and a death force at the same time. It is like the contradiction of oxygen -- which acts as both the breath of life on the one hand, and the ultimate destruction of life on the other hand (through the side-effect of oxidation.)
Indeed, at least in part, the dialectic might be viewed as the ultimate contradiction, the ultimate paradox of life. Hegel has stated that any theory, any perspective, any characteristic, taken to the limit -- will ultimately self-destruct in its own self-contradiction. We use the term 'bipolarity disorder' to describe a certain biochemical and psychological illness that we used to call 'manic-depression'. And yet everything we do in life is connected to the idea of 'bipolarity'. Indeed, 'health' and 'illness' is a bipolarity. And every bipolarity is connected by a dialectic process and/or alienated by the absence of a dialectic process.
Indeed, the dialectic might be viewed as being even more fundamental to life and evolution than oxygen (air) as well as water, earth, and fire. This argument goes back to some of the earliest arguments of the Pre-Socratic, Greek philosophers (and hundreds or thousands of miles away -- I don't know my geographical distance here too well -- to philosophers like Lao Tsu and Confucius in ancient China. They were working on the same types of philosophical problems -- i.e., the origin and dynamics of the world -- and coming up with similar answers.)
While monistic philosophers like Thales, Anaxamenes, and Heralclitus each trumpeted what they believed to be the original essence of life -- i.e., water, air, or fire respectively, Anaxamander -- in a much more metaphysical but more philosophically important manner -- trumpeted the beginning of 'dialectic philosophy' -- talking about 'The Apeiron' which might be translated as either 'Chaos' or 'The Wholistic, Preorganized Universe', before 'life is split into polar opposites which compete with each other for their very existence, or at least their primary, dominant existence (for the winner) and a return to 'The Shadows' of The Apeiron (for the loser to re-group, re-energize, and re-fight another war for supremacy with its more dominant polar opposite. In such a fashion, in Anaxamander's ancient Greek thinking, day dominates while night recedes back into the Apeiron. Then night overtakes and dominates day, and day retreats back into the Shadows of the Apeiron.
As primitive as Anaxamander's argument may seem, given the example cited above, this line of thinking became the essence of Hegelian thinking which still has a dominant place in philosophy, psychology, politics, biology and evolution theory today, and indeed can be incorporated into every aspect of human thinking, behavior, and culture. This continuation of Anaxamander's thinking -- through Heraclitus, through Lao Tse (in the start of Daoism), through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, through Schopenhauer, Marx, and Kierkegaard, through, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida, through Freud, Adler, Jung, and Fritz Perls -- is the direction of philosophical movement -- the evolution of the dialectic phenomenon and concept in both Western and Eastern Philosophy -- that Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy is both striving to historically trace and to continue to advance along its more idealistic 'Enlightenment-Romantic', 'Humanistic-Existential' path
In this last context, I will return to the German word 'Geist' which I will translate here as 'Spirit'.
Without the best of the human spirit implicit its every evolutionary development, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit -- becomes Spiritless. Lifeless. Dead. It becomes just another form of the type of 'alienation' that Hegel introduced to the many profound philosophers who he most influenced -- even as many rebelled against him, and more specifically, his 'over-abstractionism' and 'over-rationalism'.
And similarly too this is probably the most important area where I do indeed follow -- and elaborate on -- Hegel's intended German 'Dialectical-Enlightenment-Romantic-Humanistic-Existential' Idealism.
Because the same thing can be said for Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...
Without the best of the intended human spirit implicit in its every driving force, its every driving essay, Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy becomes just another philosophical treatise. Indeed, worse than just another philosophical treatise. It becomes spiritless, lifeless, alienated, humanistically and existentially -- dead.
In most of my philosophical essays I write about the need for 'homeostatic' or 'dialectic-democratic' balance between opposite, bi-polar forces and perspectives. I write about the potential and real scourge of unbridled human narcissism -- gone mad and out of control.
But in this essay, I am writing about the need to choose one human bi-polarity over another.
I am writing about the need for the soaring of the human essence and spirit -- in dialectic contact and embracement with our and each and every day existence -- over the alternative: a lifeless, spiritless, humanistic-existential death.
As I just heard coming fresh out of the mouth of another limousine driver who I work with each and every day, we chase the supposed idealism of Capitalism as we are taught it in Western Society: more individualism, more freedom, more money, more time, more commodities, more human spirit...
And paradoxically, again coming out of the mouth of the fellow driver I was talking to just yesterday, we see all around us people chasing a dream that doesn't seem to have either a happy process and/or a happy ending -- we see an American-Canadian dream that, for many or most of us, is definitely heading down the wrong life path.
We see people working more hours, some putting in 50, 60, and 70 hour work weeks, spending less time with their families, spending less time with their loved ones, we see less human spirit, we see more and more human alienation, less freedom, less time, less energy, less money, less commodities, less individualism -- except in the most alienated and negative respect of individuals being more and more lonely even in the throngs of more and more people that they connect -- but don't really connect with -- in their day to day existence.
And this is where our so-called American-Canadian Dream seems to stand right now.
Hegel's Hotel wants to take this dream down a different path.
Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy wants to help re-create 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' -- with an elaborated Enlightenment-Romantic-Humanistic-Existential component -- in man.
That is where Hegel's Hotel stands today as it moves forward in its both its construction and its evolution...
-- dgb, Oct. 25th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
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