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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Boundary Stones of Thought' and 'Phenomenology of Spirit'

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6 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
Medieval logicians said understanding A also involved understanding not-A [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: Mediaeval logicians had a principle, 'Eadem est scientia oppositorum': in order to attain a clear conception of what it is for A to be the case, one needs to attain a conception of what it is for A not to be the case.
     From: Ian Rumfitt (The Boundary Stones of Thought [2015], 7.2)
     A reaction: Presumably 'understanding' has to be a fairly comprehensive grasp of the matter, so understanding the negation sounds like a reasonable requirement for the real thing.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito
I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel, by Hegel]
     Full Idea: In my 'Phenomenology of Spirit' the procedure adopted was to begin from the first and simplest appearance of the spirit, from immediate consciousness, and to develop the dialectic right up to the standpoint of philosophical science.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Logic (Encyclopedia I) §25 Rem
     A reaction: I take metaphysics to be either Parmenidean (starting from Being) or Cartesian (starting from mind), and this (surprisingly, given his lengthy talk of Being) shows Hegel to be a quintessentially Cartesian philosopher. Aristotle is the great Parmenidean.
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism
The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, it is to be felt and intuited.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 06)
     A reaction: Hegel was a rather romantic philosopher. Where does the 'supposed' come from? If the Absolute is only felt and intuited, can the resulting apprehensions be reported to others? Is this, in fact, mysticism?
In the Absolute everything is the same [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the Absolute everything is the same.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 16)
     A reaction: This is indistinguishable from the great spherical reality of Parmenides. It is not unreasonable to enquire about the epistemology of this claim. Is Hegel a seer, or can we all intuit this insight into reality?
Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Genuine (as opposed to subjective) idealism, for Hegel, is the point of view that knows the world to have a rational, and therefore 'ideal', structure.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 04 'The Unhappy'
     A reaction: Compare Leibniz, whose monad theory is said to be a sort of idealism, because it places ideas at the heart of reality. Is Plato also this sort of 'genuine' idealism? Do we need different terms for 'genuine' and 'subjective' idealism? And 'transcendental'?
Being is Thought [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Being is Thought.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 54)
     A reaction: You won't find a more succinct slogan for idealism than that. Speaking as what Tim Williamson (referring to himself) calls a 'rottweiler realist', I can't quite get the hang of Hegel's claim. What does he think thought is, if it isn't about the world?