Ancient Philosophy in Hegel

a few times in class we have brought up the the parallel between the way that Hegel posits his idea of the spirit and how it relates to the All Soul. They have many similarities in them, the main one being that the I or Soul in the case of the Neo-Platonist's must look at itself in order to reach Unity. Hegel's Spirit is a lot like this but in many ways it is different. The most obvious difference between the two is Hegel's focus on perception that is not present in the Neo-Platonist thought. Being that the I cannot directly look back at itself but must rather look at itself contemplating itself. Not: I->I ; but I->(I->object). Upon contemplating the two of them, I came to the realization that in many ways it has a connection to skepticism as well. Though it does claim that the spirit is something that one can know (which goes against skeptical thought) it does get to its conclusion in a very skeptical way. Unlike the Soul which reaches its logical end because being perfect it has no need of looking further. Hegel in a very skeptical manner reaches the spirit by way of negation. I fail to grasp all of it myself but from what I understand the spirit is infinite by negation. Hegel claims that it is the negation of its self and therefore if you use skeptical philosophy it will still be the same. kind of like this. Hegel uses the term the Infinate interchangeably with spirit, because it is its negation. I just thought it was interesting to see Ancient Philosophy in Hegel, especially one that I wasn't expecting to see.

Class Synopsis Friday April 8

We began class on Friday by reviewing Platinus, being sure to cover the major parts of Platinus’ theories that will be built upon by the later Neo-Platonists. The ones that seemed to stick out the most were Platinus’ monism (his belief that all is in all) and his theory about the One, Intellect, and the Soul. For this, we spent more time going over the distinctions between the three main parts and how they relate to each other. Specifically: the One being pure unity that looks at the Intellect, the Intellect is being that looks at the Soul, and the Soul being all. It is important to note that the reason why the soul cannot go beyond itself is because it is already all so there is no further for it to look. If it needed to look any further it would mean that the Soul is imperfect rather than perfect unity. From there we made a transition to other Neo-Platonists by way of how each philosopher posited that one could come upon unity.

Platinus believed that there were two paths to unity. One could get to unity by either faith or by way of knowledge. The next philosophers that we covered split greatly upon those lines. Porphry (232 AD in Athens) believed strongly that knowledge was the only way to get to the one. He rejected the allegorical truths and theurgies and instead believed that contemplation was the only way to get to the One. Conversely, Iamblicus (250-326 AD) believed the exact opposite. This was because he posited that the Soul was so descended that it knows the external world to much. He thought that religious rights are necessary for a person to turn inward and thus find unity. Additionally, he came up with the idea that aside from the monads (One, Intellect, and Soul) he thought there were more increments between the three which he called henads. A good example of this being the parts to the intellect: the intelligible- the objects of thought, the intelligible intellect- the thinking process, and the intellect- which had the ability to contemplate all these things. The henads would be very important to Proclus.

Proclus would take the henads along with Syrianus’ ideas of the participated and unanticipated and further the relationship of the One, Intellect, and Soul. Stating that in each part of the All Soul there is a division of participated and unanticipated, and within the participated there were further divisions in the Intellect just like in Iamblicus’ model. Additionally he came up with an analogy: the being- is intelligible or thing, life- being spirit, and the Soul- being creation (ie. what creates all of these). Damascius was written on the board but we did not cover him much, if at all.

On the Stoic Opposition that Pleasure is what Humans Seek

I have been thinking a lot about the last slide that we had in class on Wednesday. Especially the Stoic point that infants did not seek what was pleasurable in foods when they were young, meaning that pleasure is not what we seek but rather we seek what keeps us alive. Though this makes sense, I do not believe that it is true. I remember watching an episode of "I Shouldn't be Alive," which is a show about people who have survived dangerous situations, and in this episode a man was adrift at sea on a raft. He was able to catch fish, but oddly he found himself not craving the meat of the fish but the fish eyes. This is because fish eyes have a very high fat content which he needed to survive. This suggests that our bodies in some cases will change what we find pleasurable in order to keep us alive. If this same concept is applied to the infant example provided by the Stoics it does not seem as damaging to the Epicurean point. Rather it might suggest that both the Stoics and Epicureans were partially right, but failed to grasp the whole concept.