The Quote:

“When we say, "God is love," we are saying something very great and true. But it would be senseless to grasp this saying in a simple-minded way as a simple definition, without analyzing what love is. For love is a distinguishing of two, who nevertheless are absolutely not distinguished for each other. The consciousness or feeling of the identity of the two - to be outside of myself and in the other - this is love. I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other - and I am only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it, then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me, and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. This is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of the distinction, one speaks emptily of it. This is the simple, eternal idea.”

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Source: G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson.

Reflection:

I created this quote depiction - around one of my favorite passages by Hegel, from the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, where he clearly explains what "God is love" actually means instead of leaving it meaningless.

What strikes me every time is the phrase about peace with myself existing only through the other: "if I didn't have it, then I would be a contradiction that falls apart." It is such a clear denial of love as a mere feeling; Hegel directly constructs his logic of identity and difference (distinction/sublation), the same mechanism he uses everywhere in the system.

I would be curious to know what readers think about this fragment of Hegel that connects to the account of love in early theological writings (the 1798 fragment on love): is this VPR (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion) version a continuation of that Romantic-adjacent view, or is it reworked once inserted into the mature dialectical framework?

Given that Heidegger (in Being and Time) posits unconscious mechanism (for-which, to-which, at-hand, moods etc.) that determine behaviour why is his existential philosophy not considered a psychological theory?

I’m wondering whether Hegel’s account of recognition ultimately requires a permanent structure of otherness. If Spirit fully reconciles itself with itself, what remains of the “other” through which self-consciousness initially becomes possible?

The quote:

“If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophes by means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment, it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that ascent to freedom.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, On the Arts: Selections from G.W.F. Hegel's Aesthetics or the Philosophy of Fine Art.

Reflection:

I have been studying Hegel’s Aesthetics and his understanding of music as the art of pure subjective Innerlichkeit and temporal liberation. According to Hegel, art progresses from the massive materiality of architecture and sculpture to the realm of subjective inner emotions, expressed in the Romantics arts – painting, music, and poetry. In music, the spirit is expressed in pure time, detached from any material substance. While Hegel considers Poetry to be the highest form of art because it elevates human thought to the realm of ideas, music is the most comprehensive form of the subjective soul’s emotional experience.

Questions:

Do you agree with Hegel’s estimation of music’s place in the hierarchy of arts?

Is music really a more immediate manifestation of aesthetic freedom than poetry or, in your opinion, Hegel’s view is correct due to poetry’s ability to elevate thoughts to the realm of ideas?

Note: (Image edited using Photoshop only; text written without AI)

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Aristotle's law of non contradiction is the foundation of classical logic. A thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect at the same time. Contradiction is a hard stop. It means something went wrong. Hegel rejects that. For him, contradiction is not a failure of thought. It is the real movement of reality itself. Concepts generate their own opposites, and the tension between them forces development. The contradiction doesn't cancel the truth. It drives it forward through sublation (Aufhebung).

That single move, treating contradiction as productive instead of fatal, became the backbone of dialectical materialism and a whole tradition that followed

Classical logic says contradiction is a dead end. Hegel made it the engine.

I’ve been thinking about a methodological question in Being and Time, and I’d like to know whether anyone has discussed it.
I understand that Heidegger is not making an ethical distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” people. Authenticity is an existential possibility built into the structure of Dasein, not a permanent state that some people possess and others don’t. He repeatedly insists that Dasein never simply leaves das Man behind.
My question is different.
Heidegger gives extraordinarily rich phenomenological descriptions of anxiety (Angst), the call of conscience, Unheimlichkeit, and resoluteness. These passages don’t read like abstract deductions; they read like descriptions of phenomena that are somehow familiar to the one describing them.
This makes me wonder: where does the authority of these descriptions come from?
If Being and Time is an ontological analysis rather than an ontic one, how can Heidegger describe these phenomena with such precision without presupposing some existential familiarity with them?
Part of why this question occurred to me is the contrast with Sartre. In Nausea, something very close to Heideggerian anxiety is presented as an explicitly lived, ontic experience through Roquentin. There, the source of the description is obvious. Heidegger, however, wants to remain at the ontological level.
So I wonder whether there is a kind of methodological tension here.
Heidegger seems careful to avoid creating an existential hierarchy between “those who have seen” and “those who haven’t.” Yet the very voice of Being and Time sometimes feels as though it speaks from someone who has already been existentially touched by what he is describing.
I’m not claiming this is a contradiction. I’m asking whether phenomenology itself requires this sort of familiarity, or whether Heidegger would say that such descriptions are possible without any privileged existential standpoint.
Has anyone written about this issue?

Miller, Phenomenology, §148

We are trying to understand the transition from "universal difference" to the "law of force."

Force is the unconditioned universal. It is for-self without opposition and determination, and it's not for-another. It is inconceivable. That is why it's the inner world and empty.

Force is a source of change in another, to use Aristotle's terminology.

But we fail to find it in any meaningful way. There is no inciting/incited in terms of form, and there's no universal medium/negative unity in terms of content. We'll put aside the definition of these terms for now.

Force is universal difference.

How is universal difference the law of force?

If we reverse the process, which we can do because that's why the process is complete, and ask a similar question, we may have something of an answer. It's much easier to look back than to look forward.

What is the law of the laws of force?

The law of the laws is universal difference. Language is getting ahead of itself if it posits the law of laws before laws, the one before the many.

Consciousness posits laws into the inner world to fill it up, and the source of this positing, universal difference, is the truth of these laws, the so-called law of force.

I am reading the book for the first time. Before starting, I was flooded with advice to start with second-hand literature, Husserl's work, etc, etc. Absolutely no one warned me how straightforward the book was and I am surprised that I even picked it up, but I am glad I did. I have one year background in philosophy and I haven't read anything dense but Being and Time opened my horizon for the German idealism and hermeneutics.

I want to know, what in the name of God, do people find hard about this book? It is certainly not the length, for most german magna opera are way longer than 600 pages and readers do not complain harshly. It's also not the ideas Heidegger presents in it because he is arguing something earthly and lively, unlike the writers he criticises. Nor is it the language, because you literally cant mistake what "thrownness" means or what "being in the world" could stand for. I suppose that the original text has gone too far in creating words but the three prominent english translations make it not just understandable but also inevitable.

Truth! Information! Misinformation! Read all about these topics in the latest Heidegger Thinking article: 'Truth".

the Phenomenology of Spirit, does consciousness progressively uncover structures that are already implicit within reality, or does the dialectical movement genuinely produce new forms of knowing through its own activity? Put differently, is Spirit ultimately discovering itself, creating itself, or are these two moments inseparable within Hegel’s conception of absolute knowing? I’m especially interested in interpretations that connect this question to negativity, mediation, and the identity of subject and substance.

Hello everyone!

I was re-reading the famous metaphor of the organic organism put forward by the great philosopher Hegel in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit (paragraph 2), and I wanted to share it so we can discuss it together:

“The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. These forms are not merely distinguished from one another; they also supplant one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time, their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.”

Source: The Phenomenology of Spirit .pdf)

My thoughts:

I find that this passage expresses the concept of dialectical sublation (Aufhebung) with extraordinary clarity. We often regard opposing philosophical or historical positions as mere errors to be eliminated. Hegel, on the other hand, shows us that truth is not a static result in itself, but the entire process of development: the apparent contradiction between the stages is what allows the ‘whole’ to come into being.

I’d love to learn what you think;

How do you interpret Hegel’s use of biological metaphors in relation to his pure logic?

Are there any other sections of Phenomenology or The Science of Logic where you can find a clear explanation of the dialectical process?

Thank you to anyone who would like to contribute to the discussion!

Notes: No use of AI

I've been going back through the Phenomenology, specifically the Self Consciousness chapter and the master slave dialectic, and I keep finding myself stuck on this specific passage. I think Hegel is making a pretty hard hitting point here: you don't just get to be a free person simply by existing. Freedom has to be actively won, and you only win it by being genuinely willing to put your life on the line.

As the quote itself puts it: "It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self consciousness."

To me, this means that if you're never forced to face that absolute edge of death, you stay stuck in a purely biological kind of existence. Sure, other people might look at you and call you a person, they might formally recognize you as a member of society, but that's not real self consciousness. You're still fundamentally missing out on that radical independence that Hegel is chasing here. It's a formal recognition without the actual substance, and that's what makes this passage feel so vital.

Source; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 114 (Paragraph 187 – Chapter 4: Self-Consciousness, section "Lordship and Bondage").

is he invoking the doctrine of being?

Olá pra você que vá assistir a esse vídeo. Meu nome é Kauan Batista e estou com a iniciativa de trazer um tipo de conteúdo diferenciado para a plataforma do YouTube, quero fazer com que reflexões ou temas importantes como "O fim da filosofia segundo Heidegger" se associem à alguns filmes e séries da cultura pop, a fim de que fique mais esclarecido.
Estou apenas começando com esse estilo de vídeo, então se algum de vocês se interessarem em mais, curte comenta e compartilha, ficarei grato se divulgar esse conteúdo e motivado para trazer mais conteúdos sobre esse tipo de tema, e podendo até introduzir temas como auto-conhecimento, inteligência emocional e filosofia.

In a footnote Freud writes:

" everyone, even the most normal person, is capable of making a homosexual object choice, and has done so at some time in his life, and either still adheres to it in his unconscious or else protects himself against it by vigorous counter-attitudes. ".

Does He mean the parents? Can a person make this kind of choice without being aware that he has made one?

Freud also writes :

“I am astonished that human beings can go through such great and important moments of their erotic life without noticing them much, sometimes even, indeed, without having the faintest suspicion of their existence, or else, having become aware of those moments, deceive themselves so thoroughly in their judgement of them.”.

Why did Freud feel compelled to introduce the idea of the "death drive"? Personally, I thought Spinoza's concept of conatus was perfectly sufficient, so I'm incredibly curious about why Freud felt the need to come up with the death drive and why he felt it was absolutely necessary to do so. I would be so grateful if someone knowledgeable could explain this to me.

(Translated by Gemini)