Kierkegaard on Knowledge (Part Two)

Introduction to Kierkegaard

0:00The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire, the lone wolf, who you thought was a good collaborator because you didn't have the right candidate insights. But once you hired them, it was all hoarding info, declining meetings, and howling at the full moon?

0:15But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can go deeper than just the resume to find you a perfect fit by using insights from the LinkedIn network to give you a short list of best fit candidates. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at linkedin.com If we knew more about our sleep, what would we do differently? Would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep? With Sleep Score, Apple Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions, and sleep duration. Then, every morning it combines these

0:46factors into an easy-to-understand score from 1 to 100. So you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from okay to very high. Know your sleep score with Apple Watch, iPhone 11, or later required.

Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript

1:01This is Close Reads, a philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. I'm Wes Alwyn. And I'm Mark Linsenmeyer.

1:09Let us continue in Kierkegaard's concluding unscientific postscript. We're up to a section called Subjective Truth, Inwardness, Truth is Subjectivity. That's on page 198, or PDF page 3 of the PDF that I will link folks to. Please proceed, Wes. Whether truth is defined more empirically as the agreement of thinking with being, or more idealistically as the agreement of being with thinking. Interesting. The point in each case

1:46is to pay scrupulous attention to what is understood by being, and also to pay attention to whether the knowing human spirit might not be lured out into the indefinite and fantastically become something such as no existing human being has ever been, or can be, a phantom with which the individual busies himself on occasion, yet without ever making it explicit to himself by means of dialectical middle terms, how he gets out into this fantastical realm, what meaning it has

The Limits of Human Knowledge

2:21for him to be there, whether the entire endeavor out there might not dissolve into a tautology with a rash fantastical venture. Within a rash. I don't know he's within a rash. Not quite sure what he's talking about. Should we remind ourselves? He's talking about the, you know, what he's getting at in the previous sections. Right. Is a logical system in the way Hegel thought it was possible, where being and thinking are essentially combined, equated? Is there actually a directionality in such

3:02a system, even if it could be possible in the way that Hegel thinks there is? When the existence of a thing of the past is indeed finished, is indeed concluded, to that extent is turned over to the systematic view, right? So he was talking about that you can't know when you're in a situation,

Truth as a Process

3:20you can't know it in a systematic, complete way, right? Because it's not complete.

3:26I, you know, and I don't know the difference between these two ways of defining truth, you know, except that one idea is that being conforms to thinking, the other is that the thinking conforms to being, I suppose, is the more ordinary idea. And the idealistic idea is that being conforms to thinking. Perhaps that's what he's saying. Yes. I mean, I think he's being a little glib about it. I don't know that he's making a particularly profound statement of, because I wouldn't characterize idealism that way, but okay. Yeah. He's, it's, sounds a bit tongue in cheek.

4:01And then this whole bit about being lured out into something indefinite and fantastical. Right. Are we in some God-like position when we say we have knowledge of something? Right. Actuality, I'm still sort of skimming the previous paragraphs. Actuality should be an existing spirit. All understanding comes afterward, whereas an individual existing now undeniably comes afterward in relation to the 6,000 years that proceeded. The curiously, ironic consequence would emerge that he would not come to understand himself as an existing being

4:36because he himself would acquire no existence, because he himself would have nothing that should be understood afterwards. Right. So a thinker must either be the good Lord or a fantastic, you know, anything you please. Certainly everyone will perceive the immorality of this.

4:54Yeah. So we can't get at this view from nowhere without being God. And I think that's what he's talking about here with this becoming something fantastical that no existing human being can, has ever been, or can be. Okay.

The Abstract Concept of Being

5:08If in the two definitions given being, that is veren, I'm not going to try to, to give the Danish, I don't know how to pronounce these words. V, V, O, E, R, E, N. V being. Being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into, into a desideratum, something wanted. And everything is placed in the process of becoming because the empirical object is not finished. And the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming.

5:41Thus truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power. On the other hand, every beginning, when it is made, if it is not arbitrariness by not being conscious of this, does not occur by virtue of immanental thinking, but is made by virtue of a resolution, essentially by virtue of faith. Okay. That's interesting. Every, every beginning is made by virtue of faith. That the knowing spirit is an existing

6:12spirit and that every human being is such a spirit existing for himself. I cannot repeat often enough because the fantastical disregard of this has been the cause of much confusion. I mean, no one misunderstand me. Oh, no, no one will misunderstand him. I am indeed a poor existing spirit like all other human beings. But if in a legitimate and honest way, I could be assisted in becoming something extraordinary, the pure eye to eye, I would always be willing to give thanks for the gift and the good

6:44deed. If however, it can be occur only in the way mentioned earlier by saying, eins, zwei, drei, koklorum, or by tying a ribbon around the little finger and throwing it away in some remote place when the moon is full, then I would rather remain what I am, a poor existing individual human being. I don't know what eins, zwei, drei, koklorum. I mean, it's counting. It's one, two, three, one, two, three, what? A quick Google will say it is referring only to Kierkegaard, a nonsensical magical phrase used to

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy

7:23represent a fantastical, easy, or absurd solution to profound existential philosophical problems. So basically abracadabra. Okay. So it begins, yeah, the paragraph begins with an interesting idea that if we're thinking of being in terms of empirical objects, objects of the senses, then truth becomes a desideratum, something desired, because I guess we have a desiring relationship to the sensual and whether it's

8:00the desire to satisfy physical needs or the desire to satisfy curiosity. And that realm is a realm of becoming. And then we have this comment about the beginning cannot, right? So then the subject is in the state of becoming, just like the object. And then the consequence for truth is that its beginning cannot be established. Absolutely. So what does that mean? It's a process, right? I guess

8:31truth, is it truth seeking that is the process here with no, no beginning? And how, what does it mean to say no conclusion has a retroactive power? Yeah, I thought only conclusions. I thought for anything to be a conclusion, it has to have retroactive power, according to what he said before, right? You don't know somebody's life is happy until it is over. You, you, you write as that, I'm just using that phrase as a parallel for the general point about epistemic method that you can only from a God's eye view, seeing the whole thing as

9:09it is in completion, actually say something systematic and logical in the, in Hegel sense about

The Relationship Between Mind and World

9:19it. Every beginning is a matter of faith. So I don't know if he's saying, right, we have to have faith and reason, right? Ultimately we're, we're stuck with some sort of assumption or other. And maybe the conclusion has no retro retroactive power just means that we can't, you know, by proving the conclusions, it doesn't reinforce the premises maybe. So we're, we're stuck with some sort of beginning that we have to assume.

9:50Right. Well, I, yeah. Is there something parallel, right? When Sartre says everything that you are is a matter of your free choice, free development, but, but then it becomes clear even before you are explicitly making choices before you are, you know, doing the Aristotelian thing and, and exerting yourself, right? Just your very first spontaneous motion. Sartre wants to consider to be free. So we could say that first movement toward becoming the West that you are was a matter of arbitrariness,

10:27spontaneity. Faith is a good, as, as good a term as any. And so likewise, if knowledge is something that is always happening because the knower is in a process of becoming and the known is in the process of becoming, then is there a moment in which you say, okay, it's time to know things. No, you've already been already, you're always already been in the knowledge process. So your first leap into that was a matter of spontaneity, your faith. It's a guess.

11:02The knowing spirit is an existing spirit. And then he seems to contrast that with the kind of pure self or the I equals I of the German idealists, like the something extraordinary. Yes. So that would be the God's eye view. And so what's the alternative to the God's eye view is the, in the thick of it, subjective knowing, which is, cannot be systematic in Hegel's sense. Okay. But does that work for all these senses at the end here? I'm indeed a poor existing spirit,

11:34like all other human beings, but if in a legitimate and honest way, I could be assisted in becoming something extraordinary, that pure I equals I. I was saying I to I, I dash I is what it says. Did we say what that, why, why there's two I's there as opposed to the pure I? I think it's the whole Fichtian identity that he begins with. So you think it is I equals I rather than, or it's just self-consciousness. So self-relation. Yeah.

12:06I related to I. I to I, I think works well then. Although it sounds like EYE. These are all capital lies. If I could do that, I would always be willing to give thanks for the good, the gift and the good deed. If however, can only occur in a way mentioned earlier by saying ta-da or by tying a ribbon around the little finger and throwing it away in some remote place, then I'd rather remain what I am, a poor existing individual human being. Okay. Yeah. He's just, yeah, being clever and sarcastic about it. All right. The term being in those definitions

12:37must then be understood much more abstractly as the abstract rendition or the abstract prototype of what being in concreto is as empirical being. If it is understood in this way, nothing stands in the way of abstractly defining truth as something finished. Because viewed abstractly, the agreement between thinking and being is always finished. Inasmuch as beginning, the beginning of the process of becoming lies precisely in the concretion that abstraction abstractly disregards.

13:09Yeah. So, it's only when we talk abstractly. Yeah. What is those definitions? Is that the Hegelian definitions? I assume. I think that the definitions he began the section with of the agreement between being and thinking. Okay. Sure.

Objective and Subjective Reflection

13:28Must, so that we must understand being as something abstract, you know, in contrast to the more concrete being of empirical objects. So, in other words, the whole correspondence theory works only if we're talking abstractly. And then if we do that, we can say, we can think of truth as something finished. But in the real world, in the physical world, it's a process that's never

13:58completed. It's a process of becoming, and that's what the abstraction disregards. And I, you know, when he says it's, right, truth is a process of becoming, I have to translate that into truth seeking to make sense of that. It seems to conflate the ontological and the epistemological. We can say, yeah, truth is what it is, no matter what. And we in our, you know, this is what I would want to say, we in our particular position are always at some sort of distance from it. And our truth seeking is

14:30a becoming. And it takes place in the context of the fact that we're embodied, we're physical beings, all of that stuff. But I wouldn't take that and say, well, truth itself must be thought of as a process or a becoming. I'm not sure if he's doing that here. Yeah, I like, I like that move, but I think it is probably more than just the seeking part of it. I think it is that the whole truth obtaining process. So not just the seeking, because the,

15:03if he's talking about a relation between a knower and a known, and both of these are evolving, then you could, as a pragmatist might say that, I mean, you could just refer to truth as that process of, of the reaching out in the relation, right? So it's, it's, it's reaching out, but it's actually reaching. So the truth is the ideal limit of inquiry for the pragmatist, where the ideal limit is not something reached, right? It's more like an asymptote. That's why it's ideal.

15:36I mean, for, for, for, for purse, it's the ideal limit for James. It might be the thing that you actually connect with. So for the purposes, you know, is there a snake in my boot? Let's go through the process for the purposes of determining whether I'm going to put my foot in my boot. No, it's fine. There's no snake in my boot. I could discover that there are snake-like viruses or something that would, if I had all the information and, uh, you know, could see into the future, then I could say

16:09actually these, uh, they're, oh, well, there's sort of a snake in my boot. If anyway, we, we, we understand truth is what works well enough. Yes. For James truth is what works, but yeah, it, anyway, we don't know exactly where, where Kierkegaard is going to land here. I mean, if he's going to say subjective truth, truth is subjectivity, it does sound like he's going to say, well, you know, whatever you think is truth is ends up being true. There's something like that. Let's, let's hope not go, go ahead.

16:42But if being is understood in this way, the formula is a tautology understood in this way. Uh, the, the beginning of the process of becoming lies precisely in the concretion that abstraction abstractly disregards. Yeah. So being is understood in this abstract way, abstractly. Yeah. Yes. Okay. But being is understood in that abstract way. The formula is a tautology that is thinking and being signify one in the same. And the agreement spoken of is only an abstract identity with itself. Therefore, none of the formulas says more than that. Truth is, if this is understood in

17:17such a way that the copula is accentuated truth is, that is truth is a redoubling. Truth is the first, but truth's other that it, that it is, is the same as the first. This it's being is the abstract form of truth. In this way is expressed that truth is not something simple, but in an entirely abstract sense, a redoubling, which is nevertheless canceled at the very same moment. Yeah. So the definition he keeps referring to at the beginning was, which is, you know, this agreement between

17:51being and thinking or thinking and being, um, it turns out to be, uh, tautology when it's understood abstractly because thinking and being signify one and the same. Certainly for Hegel. Yeah. And the agreement spoken of is only an abstract identity with itself. Yeah. So for Hegelian and we think, I mean, what's the, what's the less tendentious way to put this, that mind and world have the same

18:24logical structure or something like that. And that when we know things in a sense, we're knowing ourselves, we're, or when we know ourselves, we're knowing the world. When we know our own mental structure, our categories, we're drilling down to the things themselves at the same, same time. So this kind of shared structure of mind and world, this ontology that kind of, kind of crosses the gap between subjects and objects suggests that to talk about truth is to talk about, yeah. In tautological

18:58terms about these two sides of the equation that have the, that are essentially the same thing,

The Concept of Redoubling

19:06which he's calling a redoubling. Yeah. Why, why say that? Why use that? Truth is truth. Other that it is, is the same as the first. I mean, I, I, I'm almost thinking of the, uh, the point in analytic philosophy that to say it is raining and it is true that is raining are the same thing. Well, it's not that the same, it's the same to say it's true. It's raining than, that it is, it's just that the deflationary. Yeah. Yeah. If we take a Tarski's, Tarski's

19:39minimalist deflationary definition of truth, which is just the starting point, then it's disquotation. It's just that it, to say it is true that quote, it is raining is the same thing as, as so, so you're right. It's true that it is raining if, and only if it is raining, something like that. I think that's the formula. So is that the same at all related to, okay, we got truth and then we have truth is. And so if you want to say the truth is,

20:14it is raining. And then you want to say the truth is that it is raining. I mean, that is the, that's, that's a translation of what you were just saying. I'm not, I'm still not sure that that's exactly what he's talking about. Yeah. And I think we have to make this distinction again between contingency and, and form, right? So it's, it's one thing to say the cat is on the mat and another to say that our, the form of our experience always involves causality and

20:45all these other categories. So that, right. If I say that logical structure is something shared by mind and world, that's one thing, but that doesn't mean that when I assert some contingent truth, that was, that that's equally part of the mind. You know what I'm saying? Um, if I say that the cat is a spatiotemporal being, maybe I'm saying something that is for Kant more about the mind,

21:18right. It is just only about the mind for Hegel. I might be saying something that's about mind and world, which is where we get the, the redoubling, but, but it, it gets, it's different. If we start talking about contingency, this is where I'm, is also going to be a source of confusion for me as we go forward when he's talking about truth. Um, sure. Yeah. Sure. What kinds of truth? So, so this is making me look back at the very first line that we read today, right. For, uh, empirical thinkers,

21:51the point is to get your thinking aligned with being, uh, who there's a, a mind world relation. I can't remember which philosopher, if this was Searle versus a world mind relation. So the, the, uh, the idealist would say, no, no, you have thinking first and you want your sitting, you're thinking of a fit maybe, but yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Uh, and you want your being to agree with thinking. So if you are, you know, the thinking is the, these, the ultimate structure

22:23of the, you is the logos. And then if you encounter some contingent being that doesn't seem to be in accord with that, well, then you have to somehow explain that as something that is, uh, righted in the, uh, the world of God's thought, right. So we're reading Hegel right now and society is supposed to be at a certain early stage such that the different layers of law and behavior are harmonious. Consciousness sees itself as a member organically of this community. Well, what happens when one

22:58consciousness strays will justice. So there's, there's a, an, an error in being the thought, the thinking is like, this is the way that society should be. It should be this coherent whole, but being with all its contingency has some accidents. And so in a typical, uh, theodicy sort of way, you say, Oh no, no, no, let's, you know, we punish the person who is strayed and thereby we, we make that straying a deed done by the, we make it part of the harmonious whole. Of course,

23:30we expect particles to fall off the whole and then fly back. Uh, but you know, that doesn't say anything about, so that's, that's a way, but that's to say that that's, there's something that the thinking is the necessary there and the being is the merely contingent. So related to what you were saying. Hmm. Yeah. All right. Give it, yeah. Give it a try. We're top of page 200 now. Abstraction may go on by paraphrasing this as much as it pleases. It will never come any further.

24:02As soon as the being of truth becomes empirically concrete, truth itself is in the process of becoming and is indeed in turn by intimation, the agreement between thinking and being, and is indeed actually that way for God, but it is not that way for any existing spirit because this spirit itself existing is in the process of becoming. So this is an epistemological point, right? To me, we, we can't know as concrete beings. We can't know the world fully.

24:35The truth seeking or the inquiry is always incomplete. If we are God, we could see it for what it is. You know, it's another way of saying that we can't see the things in themselves from the standpoint of being a becoming concrete, a physical being in a, in the position of becoming. And maybe, then maybe this isn't, it's not just a circumstantial point that the, that the inquiries aren't complete. It's that there's no way to complete the inquiries from our particular position. Yeah. For some reason I had, I had not had on my mind that the past many times we brought up

25:09the distinction between phenomena and noumena and Kant as being the same as a distinction between becoming and being, but of course that's the way Plato saw it, right? The things in themselves are necessarily static being there complete. Um, I don't know how relevant that is to Kierkegaard here, um, or even to Hegel because for Hegel being, well, I was saying that it is, is static at a stage, but even that is something that is, you know, we're moving through stages. So being,

25:42being is the becoming, right? But it is only, uh, the becoming after you've finished the entirety of the phenomenology. So it is being is the entire process of becoming, which is being, yes. Which is static from the outside. It's, it's all the becoming in a little bottle. We should maybe, yeah, maybe it helps to think of Plato as you just did here because it, right. Part of the point of introducing the forms as complete and not moving is that he didn't think the world of becoming was

26:19knowable. We couldn't know truths in the full sense about the world of becoming. We need the, the forms to, you know, to have knowledge. So it seems to be a similar sort of point. And do we think that Kierkegaard is going to end up as an empiricist? So he's going to deny Plato's claim, right? Only God could know being as it is. And the way that we know is to sort of catch something in the act of moving. And sort of, as soon as you've nailed down something about it,

26:53actually it's changed, right? So it's exactly the same, the thing that Plato claimed was impossible. That we have to be, we have to be satisfied with our, right? We're, we're in Plato's cave and we have to be satisfied with our, our shadows on the wall. That is, that's all we can describe. Yeah. It's also, it's a, it's a claim as well about natural kinds, right? Because it, the boundaries of phenomena are, are fuzzy, not just over time, but between each other, right? So the, the macroscopic

27:25phenomenal world has fuzzy boundaries and, you know, you can say, well, it's a rabbit, but, but it's also changing. So you want an essence, you want a stable essence that makes it what it is. And it's the essence that's the unchanging thing, or it's the platonic form that's the unchanging thing, because the actual concrete physical rabbit can't do that job for itself. It's just flux. And if we want to say that there are hard and fast distinctions between different species of animals, we need some sort

27:56of natural kind idea, even if that means drilling down to more fundamental natural kinds, we could say, okay, we could admit species are fuzzy, but then drill down to, to atoms or to whatever point in reality we want to microstructure, right? And so to locking in real essences. And do we know what Hegel's take on this is, or because we skipped the chapter on knowledge between self-consciousness and spirit? Oh, we skipped the chapter on knowledge? That's too bad.

28:27I mean, it's a very long chapter. Maybe that's the only chapter we should have done. Or the, the chapter on science, I should say. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Forces, you know, the concept of force that we covered is in a way Hegel's way of covering this idea of microstructure and, and science, you know, the, um, because we get to the point, right, we move beyond substance, substance property, ontology, and,

28:57and platonic forms and, and Aristotelian types of essences. We move beyond that to a scientific explanation, whether there's, there's, there's hidden something hidden behind the, the phenomena, but that can still be explicated in scientific terms. It's hidden behind, but it's not, it's not on high. So we describe things in terms of scientific forces, right? And microstructure and then the four, the forces involved. Yeah. So given all that, it would be very surprising if Hegel did not admit the use of

29:33natural kinds and species, but he would perhaps deny, deny their eternity or just deny their centrality in all forms of knowledge. I mean, that they have, they have their day, they have their, their place in how we explain things. And it's not going to be that if you make a taxonomy of all the animals or something that a century later, that's going to be obsolete, like, no, you, you know, we just, we've moved on to new forms of knowledge, but the,

30:04the old forms of knowledge persist. They just need to, you know, you need to understand their place in this, the schema. It's not that they are constantly in flux. That was the question I was trying to ask is if, if Hegel is a philosopher of flux, is there room for something like natural kinds? And I think that there is because the type of flux is not, is not that extreme. Okay. For the existing spirit exist, qua existing spirit, the question about truth persists because

30:37the abstract answer is only for that abstractum, which an existing spirit becomes by abstracting from himself qua existing, which he can do only momentarily. Although at such moments, he still pay his debt, he still pays his debt to existence by existing nevertheless.

30:56Consequently, it is an existing spirit who asks about truth, presumably because he wants to exist in it. But in any case, the questioner is conscious of being an existing individual human being. In this way, I believe I'm able to make myself understandable to every Greek and to every rational human being. If a German philosopher follows his inclination to put on an act and first transforms himself into a super rational something, just as alchemists and sorcerers bedizzen themselves fantastically. I mean, I assume that means dress yourself up, but I don't know,

31:33bedizzen. In order to answer the question about truth in an extremely satisfying way, this is of no more concern to me than his satisfying answer, which no doubt is extremely satisfying if one is fantastically dressed up. But whether a German philosopher is or is not doing this can easily be ascertained by anyone who with enthusiasm concentrates his soul on willing to allow himself to be guided by a sage of that kind and uncritically just uses his guidance compliantly

32:03by willing to form his existence according to it. When a person as a learner enthusiastically relates in this way to such a German professor, he accomplishes the most superb epigram upon him, because a speculator of that sort is anything but served by a learner's honest and enthusiastic zeal for expressing and accomplishing, for existentially appropriating his wisdom, since this wisdom is something that the hair professor himself has imagined and has written books about, but has never attempted

32:34himself. It has not even occurred to him that it should be done. Like the customs clerk, who in the belief that his business was merely to write, wrote what he himself could not read, so there are speculative thinkers who merely write and write that which, if it is to be read with the aid of action, if I may put it that way, proves to be nonsense, unless it is perhaps intended only for fantastical beings. Man, that's not a charitable reading of Hegel. No. It does sound a bit pragmatist, right? There's nothing actionable that comes out of it,

33:10at least in that final bit. I feel like we're discovering in Hegel's phenomenology that there's lots that's actionable about any given section. You know, if you are in this situation, then, you know, so you could make ethical arguments, for instance, about you think that you're such an individual, but actually everything you're doing assumes your society and your upbringing and things. That's pretty actionable.

33:41I mean, it's not specifically actionable. Like, well, how do I get in harmony with my society, especially if we are at a stage of society where alienation is inevitable? So it can be problematic. But I thought that was sort of what Kierkegaard's about too, right? I'm just asking questions. I'm just giving you problematic. I don't, how do you become the knight of faith? I don't know. Just wonder about it. Wonder about how crazy Abraham was. And, you know, so it seems like

34:18not actionable in the same way that Kierkegaard is. Hegel does.

34:23All right. So that paragraph was mainly just a sarcastic send up of the German philosophy. Yeah. There's nothing we have to look at too closely there. All right. When for the existing spirit, qua existing, there is a question about truth, that abstract reduplication, which by the way, the Danish word is reduplication. Just want everyone to know that. It's just with a K. It's there in brackets, which I just think is very funny that

34:55they would feel the need to put the Danish in. No one is the exact same. All right. That abstract reduplication of truth recurs, but existence itself, existence itself in the questioner who does indeed exist, holds the two factors apart. The two factors.

35:16Yeah. Truth and the existence of truth, truth and truth is, those are the two factors. How does the existing person hold those two apart? Is it because truth is a deseratum? The deseratum? So the desire for truth and actually having the truth, that we hold those apart. Whereas for God, as soon as you want the truth, you got the truth. I mean, is that what's being said here? The existing spirit, qua existing, there is a question about truth. The abstract reduplication of truth recurs, which is, yeah, it's really about subject and object.

35:52Thought and being, but existence itself in the questioner. Okay. So the questioner holds the two factors apart, which I would prefer to call, yeah, thought and being, but okay. Or truth seeking and truth catching. Truth, truth. Yeah. Holds the two factors apart, one from the other, and reflection shows two relations. To objective reflection, truth becomes something objective, an object. And the point is to disregard the

36:29subject. This is why I prefer thought, right? Or subject, object, or thought being here. It's just more clear than this whole talk of truth. But it's to disregard the subject. To subjective reflection, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness, subjectivity. And the point is to immerse oneself existing in subjectivity. Okay. So this is interesting. Well, yeah. What does that mean? I mean, what is immersing oneself in subjectivity? All right. Well, the first part is simpler. Objective reflection, it's the object, right? We're

37:07going to lose ourselves in the object. Disregard the subject. We just want immediate contact with the object. And that's what he calls objective reflection. And it's going to contrast with subjective reflection. Yeah. So what is subjective reflection? I'm not sure. Well, yeah. We know that in it, truth becomes appropriation. So inwardness and subjectivity, the other two words, I don't know what those mean. I mean, it's just inwardness sounds like subjectivity. But appropriation, that does sound like the truth-seeking process or the truth-gaining,

37:44the truth-catching process. It is making a concrete connection. Well, hopefully we'll learn more about what the subjective reflection is. But yeah. Yeah. So is looking in your boot for the snake with your physical eyes and reflecting on your standards for how well can snakes hide in boots and what do I have to do to make sure this boot is empty of snakes? That is a concrete connection between me and a thing that I wanted known.

38:18I think that's what he's talking about here. But that doesn't amount to inwardness, really. Yeah. It seems more like the former, more like the objective reflection where we're interested in the object and the subject is not the point. Yeah. But this other subjective reflection, the point is to immerse ourselves not in the object, but in our own subjectivity. So I think we're going to have to read more to find out. But what then? Are we to remain in this disjunction? What is the disjunction?

38:53Between objective and subjective reflection. Are we to remain in this disjunction or does mediation offer its kind assistance here so that truth becomes a subject object? Why not? But can mediation then help the existing person so that he himself, as long as he's existing, becomes mediation, which is after all subspecie eternae, right from the point of view of eternity, whereas the poor existing one is existing. It certainly does not help to make the fool of a person to entice him with the subject object

39:28when he himself is prevented from entering into the state in which he can relate himself to it. Prevented because he himself, by virtue of existing, is in the process of becoming. Of what help is it to explain how the eternal truth is to be understood eternally when the one to use the explanation is prevented from understanding it in this way because he is existing and is merely a phantast if he fancies himself to be subspecie eternae? Consequently, when he must avail himself precisely of the explanation of how the eternal truth

39:59is to be understood in the category of time by someone who, by existing, is himself in time, something the honored professor himself admits, if not always, that every three months when he draws his salary. So, I mean, it's just, it's a repetition of this idea that as temporal, physical beings in a state of becoming, we can't know truths or objects because they are not in that state.

40:32They're being rather than becoming. I think this is clearly, as we know, as we read from the intro or the whatever we were talking about last time, my Googling, that this is about Hegel's logic more than about his phenomenology because it just, this doesn't seem to apply to his phenomenology. And whether that is because he changed his mind as he went to the logic or that you have to understand each of the books through the other and maybe Kierkegaard is missing something that if he had just read what we've been reading

41:10that he would not be making exactly these critiques. With the subject-object of mediation, we have merely reverted to abstraction.

Kierkegaard's Critique of German Philosophy

41:17And as much as the definition of truth as subject-object is exactly the same as the truth is, that is, the truth is a redoubling. And we're redoubling in the sense of repeating ourselves here. Consequently, the exalted wisdom has again been absent-minded enough to forget that it was an existing spirit who asked about truth. Or is perhaps the existing spirit himself the subject-object? In that case, I'm obliged to ask, where is such an existing human being who is also a subject-object?

41:49Or shall we perhaps here first transmute the existing spirit into a something in general, and then explain everything except what was asked about? How an existing subject in concreto relates himself to the truth? Or what then must be asked about? How the individual existing subject then relates himself to this something that seems to have not a little in common with a paper kite or with the lump of sugar that the Dutch used to hang from the ceiling and everyone would lick? That's a thing?

42:18Disgusting. How low were their ceilings? How long? I need to look up this custom. I guess what he's objecting here is to the idea that we can explain, you know, even though we are temporal, physical beings, beings in the concrete and the comings, really, we can know the truth with a capital T, and we can know being by virtue of either saying,

42:50well, it's the abstract me in general. You know, the part of, you know, I'm a creature of becoming, but there is a kind of being to me in so far as I belong to some essence human or however you want to think about this. And therefore, my essential nature can commune with the essential nature of the world or my, how does he put it here? Well, the subject object thing is a bit more confusing,

43:21but transmute the existing spirit into a something in general, right? So insofar as I am a something in general, a mind, for instance, or the world mind or the great big mind, right, then I can, by participating in that, I can know the world of being. And then, you know, the other idea is that we could call ourselves a subject object as if we were already entities in which the boundary has been crossed.

43:51I mean, I really like that as a reflection on Hegel because we know Hegel just thinks that a lot of times when you think you're doing something as an individual, you're in fact doing it qua universal. And certainly in the area of values, you're only valuing as a universal. But is that the case with every bit of knowledge, right? If you're knowing something, I think it's a stronger,

44:22easier case to make that when you know essential things, then you're somehow entering the universal, right? So it does seem, right, insofar as what you're saying, I'm seeing something that anybody else would be seeing in this situation, right? So when I make a knowledge claim, I'm claiming objectivity, which is to say, I'm adopting the point of view of somebody in this point of view.

44:49And so you're going to have, if you're looking at, if we're both looking at a physical object, say, you're going to have your own point of view on it. But if you were to move around to where I was, or maybe put on my glasses, you know, adjust your vision so it's the same as mine, if that were even possible, then you would see it the same way. So that any, yeah. But clearly if you say, this pain, can we make a claim like that about my pain?

45:18I mean, not normally. Well, I think, yeah. Think about the case of scientific knowledge, right? If I know that water is H2O, or do we even need to get that fancy? Can't we just think about the forms again? Anyway, let's start with water. You know, if I know that water is H2O, you know, if I know an essence like that, water's essence, is it me knowing that? Or is it my cognitive faculties taken abstractly as a certain kind of thing?

45:51My essence knowing the essence of the other, for instance. In which case, right, the reason to call me a subject object is to say, well, I can know the other thing because I share structure, I share logical structure with it. I am part of the world and my cognitive categories are the same things as the world's ontology. I would want maybe to discuss a little further than that, right? Spinoza's claim that insofar as I know mathematical objects, I am participating in immortality, right?

46:26I am becoming, in order to know mathematical objects at all, I have to basically become that divine intellect that knows things outside of space and time. And so I think knowing water is H2O is one of those halfway in between knowing that the cat is on the mat and knowing that the Pythagorean theorem is true. Yeah. Well, let's just say knowing the cat is a cat and assume that there aren't any problems with the form there. Sure. It's an eternal form of cat.

46:57The particular cat has it. It's catness. I, you know, I noetically or I am through intellectual intuition. I grasp the form of catness. Yeah. Who's doing the grasping? Is it westness or humanness or is it this particular west? Is it this particular being, the becoming that I am, right? So the idea, at least for a German idealist, seems to be that it's the ego in general and maybe something like the shared ego, right?

47:29The world mind or God. So God is really the one doing the grasping and I grasp it as a part of, you know, being a part of God or something like that. I borrow a little bit of God's grasping from the point of view of eternity or from a view from nowhere. I can kind of borrow that from myself. Okay. Well, we'll see if there's anything to the idea that this kind of participating universality goes for all kinds of knowledge, right? I was taking it to apply to the cat on the mat.

48:01The cat is on the mat. Or even, I am having a pain now. That seems like just obviously completely subjective, but I could at least see Hegel making some sort of private language kind of argument about that. Yeah, that leads to some complications. Well, that's the subject object stuff. So clearly that is an abstraction and one that the phenomenologist of the future, you

48:32know, from Kierkegaard's perspective would perhaps would deny, right? That at the very least it is an abstraction, right? For Husserl, the knowing act is just one thing. And well, okay, we can identify the poles of Noesis and Noema between them, you know, within that act. But that is very much like the thing that is grasped is the full act that has both of these things. And it is definitely an abstraction to talk about the subject or the object.

49:06And I think further than that, if you go to Heidegger and Sartre, they might just deny altogether that there is a distinction between the subject and the object. In this strong sense, right? Shall I continue? Oh, sure. We return then to the two ways of reflection and have not forgotten that it is an existing spirit who is asking, simply an individual human being, and are not able to forget either that his existing is precisely what will prevent him from going both ways at once.

49:40And his concerned questions will prevent him from light-mindedly and fantastically becoming a subject-object. Now then, which of the ways is the way of truth for the existing spirit? Only the fantastical eye-to-eye is simultaneously finished with both ways or advances methodologically along both ways simultaneously, which for an existing human being is such an inhuman way

50:11of walking that I dare not recommend it. Is both ways, what is both ways? Is it the two-way fit thing, the thought conforming to being, being conforming to thought? That sounds right. That's a good guess. I guess I'm still stuck on this idea of me being the subject-object. I mean, his whole point is that there is no such human being who is also a subject-object. But why would he even think that that is Hegel's view?

50:46I know. I mean, it's a jab at Hegel, obviously. But I don't fully understand it, yeah. I mean, is the subject, if saying you're a subject-object mean that you are not distinguishing the two in the way that I was just describing of Heidegger and Sartre, such that certainly at some stages, right, the whole, any part of Hegel's phenomenology that's before when actual human beings come on the scene, which as we learned is in the spirit chapter, and they have to be parts of societies.

51:16But anything before that is, what is the thing that is being described that this phenomenology of, right? It is spirit in the abstract. It is a subject-object. It is something that can be taken and look at either side of this. And yes, it's true that no human being is that thing. Hegel says that, that he's doing something. It's like he's stripping the parts of a, of a motorcycle apart so that you, you know, and laying them on the ground in order.

51:47And like, this whole thing is not a motorcycle, obviously, until you put it together, but we can describe, you know, maybe, maybe let's, let's put it together. First, let's put the engine together and then let's connect it to this thing. And so we're describing sort of different layers that are within the human being. So the subject-object is an abstraction within, within a person. And we should remind ourselves the two ways of reflection, he's talking about subjective and objective reflection. And we didn't really figure out exactly what subjective reflection is.

52:17Right. But that's the two, right. That's the both ways that he's talking about. Hmm. And that we can't advance on, advance along simultaneously.

52:31So I don't, yeah, because I don't fully understand subjective reflection, I don't understand what's going on in this paragraph. So there's going to be, I see, uh, on the next three pages, we're going to have a couple of, uh, paragraphs, long paragraphs, but objective reflection, and then we're going to turn towards subjective reflection. Let me just read the top of 202 since the questioner specifically emphasizes that he is an existing person. The way to be commended is naturally the one that especially accentuates what it means

53:03to exist. Okay. Which is probably going to be the subjective subjective reflection will, will probably be the one that accentuates what it means to exist. So, yeah, I really don't need to hear any more about the existing person. I get it. Yeah. And on the one cans, this seems like so obvious.

53:24And the part that we're really having trouble with is why is he giving this weird interpretation of Hegel, which we don't know exactly what part of Hegel's logic he has in front of him. I'm sure it's not something that we read at all, or insofar as we had the beginning of that book, we're not remembering it very clearly, but it still seems crazily unfair. Yeah. And he's being literary and funny and clever about it, which just leads to a different kind of obscurity than that of Hegel.

53:57Yeah. So I'm curious enough about it that I wouldn't mind doing a third session with you on this. All right. Yep. Uh, I, that's not going to be enough to finish it. We'll have to decide. If I figure out what subjective reflection is that that's enough for me. Yes. If it continues to be this unrewarding, then certainly I don't want to do five parts to it, but let's at least uncover that mystery. Thanks everybody. Bye. Thank you.

54:42Close Reads is a Partially Examined Life podcast. See partiallyexaminedlife.com. We're distributed through the Evergreen Podcast Network. See evergreenpodcast.com slash closereadsphilosophy. And you can also find us at closereadsphilosophy.com or just look up Close Reads on your favorite podcast listening platform.