Latest news with #Hegel
Time of India
15-05-2025
- General
- Time of India
Upanishadic neti neti and hegelian dialectic
By Sumit Paul Upanishadic neti, neti, not this, not that, and Hegel's dialectic, while distinct, share a common thread: the use of negation and movement to arrive at a deeper understanding of reality. Though Hegel's dialectic focuses on developing concepts through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, neti, neti is a process that enables an inquirer to arrive at the ineffable nature of Brahmn, Ultimate Reality. Hegel's dialectic is a method of philosophical inquiry positing that reality progresses through a dynamic interplay of opposing forces: a thesis, a proposition or idea; its antithesis, a counterproposition; synthesis, a new proposition that reconciles the two. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad employs neti, neti to describe the nature of Brahmn, the ultimate reality. While there are dissimilarities between Hegelian dialectic and Upanishadic neti, neti , both systems are unanimous on one count: rejection of absolutist ideas. Nothing can be called the ultimate truth because even the socalled truth is never the universal truth – neti, neti. What perpetually eludes us is the Ultimate Truth. According to Nyaya Shastra, there are only subjective truths and relative realities. Spiritual quest must never stop. It should go on and on. 'Tujhe paa lene mein woh betaab kaifiyat kahan/Zindagi woh hai jo teri justajoo mein kat gayee.' In other words, it's always better to travel than to arrive. Hegel believed that to negate is a man's intellectual fate. Both Hegel and Upanishads must be understood and appreciated in today's context of obstinacy, to use Foucault's phrase, when every religion insists that it's the only chosen path and every belief system calls itself the best and flawless. Both Hegel and Upanishads believe in transcendence of ideas and existing truths. Marcel Proust believed there was no end to spiralling ascendancy of quality. It's like perfection. You can only strive for it, but you can never become perfect. One, therefore, needs to keep improving and evolving till the last breath. To be an absolutist is to close all doors to Truth. Religions and their moral codes are periodic and relative truths. So, when we insist that what we know is the absolute truth, it blocks further inquiry and exploration into the nature of reality and different ways people experience Ultimate Reality. As veils lift, more profound mysteries, echoing ongoing nature of spiritual and intellectual exploration, are revealed to those who continue to inquire. As we peel away layers of ignorance or illusion, we will find that journey of understanding and knowledge is an ongoing process. Hegelian dialectics and Upanishadic wisdom emphasise that true understanding is not a destination but a continuous journey. Once we understand Hegelian dialectic and imbibe the spirit of Upanishads , we can expand the scope of our knowledge and understanding. It'll also mellow us, inculcate universal empathy and enhance our ability to engage in dialogue. For some, it may facilitate satori. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
CBC
14-04-2025
- CBC
Centretown break-ins spark calls for co-ordinated downtown strategy
Social Sharing At least two small business owners in Ottawa's Centretown neighbourhood say their stores were broken into and vandalized overnight Saturday. "It's never nice to wake up to a phone call from the police," said Jennifer Hegel, co-owner of The Red Apron, a prepared meal shop that's been operating on Gladstone Avenue for nearly 20 years. Hegel said police called her early Sunday after the shop's alarm was triggered. She was told someone had smashed a window to get in and was asked to come secure the site. "Our cash drawers had been dumped out onto the floor. They had been smashed open. Stuff had been rummaged through," Hegel said. "They made a tour through the kitchen and smashed another computer." 'Definitely not the first time' Just days before, Hegel said she noticed growing disturbances in the area. She and Jessie Duffy, owner of nearby café Arlington Five, met with Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster to raise concerns. Duffy's shop, just a few blocks away, was also broken into over the weekend. "It's definitely not the first time," Duffy said. "Whenever there's a window or door smashed, it's coming out of our small business budgets." Duffy said she feels unprepared to deal with what she sees as worsening social issues in the area. "I feel like we need all hands on deck," she said. "It'd be great to see Ottawa Public Health involved, more community health centres, more businesses, more city councillors. Everyone needs to be part of this... before our businesses start closing — because we're at risk of that." Policing effort has 'knock-on effect,' says councillor Troster believes efforts to reduce crime in the ByWard Market have pushed more vulnerable people into Centretown. Last June, Ottawa police launched the CORE (Community Outreach, Response, and Engagement) strategy in a bid to target eight crime "hot spots" in the ByWard Market and surrounding areas. "The targeted policing in the ByWard Market has had a knock-on effect," Troster said. "We saw a migration of even more troubled people [to Centretown] to access services or just to have a place to hang out. "We are one downtown ecosystem, and you can't just chase people from one side of the neighbourhood to the other," she added. Hegel said while she loves the community, it's become increasingly hard to run a business in the area. "We are really seeing a lot more activity since both the crackdown in the market [and also] the closure of the safe consumption site," Hegel said, referring to the transition of the Somerset West Community Health Centre's site into a homelessness and addiction treatment hub. "That is driving people onto the streets and into the community to consume and it's definitely not been good for business or for our community." City-wide approach needed Troster is calling for a city-wide approach to downtown safety, with services integrated across neighbourhoods. While the city has secured millions in provincial and federal funding for mental health and addiction services, Troster said demand is still outpacing resources. "I'm very happy we were able to secure that funding. Now we're doing that scale-up, but it never feels enough or fast enough." Troster said Centre 507, a 24-hour low-barrier drop-in centre at Bank and Argyle streets, is "completely overwhelmed" and she's advocating for another such facility. The rise in break-ins, she added, coincides with growing demand for food banks and housing — trends she sees as deeply interconnected. While there needs to be more visible support on the streets — including outreach workers and community police officers — long-term solutions are important, Troster said, to keep people from turning to theft out of desperation. "We know it's not enough," she added. "I'm listening to the community to fight for more, and I'm just really sorry this happened to those two wonderful businesses."
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Ultimate German Philosophy for a Happier Life
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. In his day, the 18th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was what we would call a 'celebrity academic,' enjoying top university posts and a wide readership for his books. This might explain some of the hostility that Hegel faced from his contemporaries. Arthur Schopenhauer called his writing the work of a 'clumsy charlatan,' which rendered readers 'incapable of reflection, coarse and bewildered.' His compatriot Friedrich Nietzsche snorted that an education based on 'Hegelian craniums' is 'terrible and destructive.' Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were largely overlooked during their lifetimes, so professional jealousy no doubt accounted for some of this. But deep intellectual differences also underpinned their animus. Whereas Hegel's critics largely promoted individualism, the famous author of The Phenomenology of the Spirit taught that fitting into society is generally the best path to a good life. For an individualist like me—a bit Nietzschean in worldview—Hegel's approach might appear unsympathetic. But I have been reconsidering Hegel, and now I think that understanding his arguments for a more communitarian attitude might offer us a nudge toward greater happiness—one we didn't even know we needed. [Bertrand Russell: Philosophy's ulterior motives] Hegel is probably best known today for his teleological belief that human history tends toward progress and is guided rationally by Geist, or 'spirit,' a quasi-supernatural force for good. He taught that this progress is slowly achieved through the operation of the 'dialectic.' According to this concept, a grand conversation occurs in three parts—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—in which one side presents an argument (thesis), another side gives an opposing viewpoint (antithesis), and all of this results in a resolution (synthesis) that involves more nuanced understanding of the issues. This rational reconciliation of differences thus leads to advances—in other words, progress. For Hegel, the Geist just needs time to work out its logic. Whereas today's political arguments in America might look chaotic and terrible, Hegel might say that we're too close to them. Take the longer perspective and you will see that spirit is placing the hard-edged progressive activism of the past decade in dialogue with the new electoral turn toward Trumpism, and that the synthesis of that dissension will be a more balanced moderation in the years ahead. Despite ups and downs, Hegelian progress generally grants people greater happiness over time. Yet Hegel also made a startling assertion about when that happiness would be most abundant. 'Periods of happiness are empty pages in history,' he wrote in his Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 'for they are the periods of harmony, times when the antithesis is missing.' In other words, we remember when life is a boiling cauldron of emotions and experiences, but these are not the really happy moments. Happiness comes in the peaceful, unmemorable parts of life. So how do we get more of this unremarkable bliss? For the answer, in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel gives a practical tutorial in dialectics—first offering two common but wrong answers, then the right one. One typical wrong way we search for happiness is what he calls Recht (literally, 'right'), which involves maximizing individual satisfaction or, more colloquially, 'If it feels good, do it.' Hegel argues that Recht leads us to chase one pleasure after another, 'ad infinitum, never [enabling] it to get beyond its own finitude.' In other words, the goal of individual satisfaction is like filling a hole that can't be filled. The other wrong way that people pursue happiness is through Moralität ('morality'), by exercising their own personal sense of right and wrong. This approach is more in line with the individualism of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer—to quote Polonius in Hamlet: 'To thine own self be true.' Hegel never says that a person's conscience is bad; he simply observes that relying solely on one's own conscience can lead to problems such as loneliness and depression. (If you happen to be someone who insists on speaking up for what you believe is right and have suffered social rejection as a result, you might relate to this.) For Hegel, the correct answer for peaceful happiness is Sittlichkeit, or 'ethical order,' by which he means prosocial behavior grounded in tradition and custom learned from one's community. As he explains in Philosophy of Right, this ethical order involves striving 'to make oneself a member of … civil society by one's own act, through one's energy, industry, and skill,' thus 'gaining recognition both in one's own eyes and in the eyes of others.' This is where true happiness occurs, Hegel believed, because we succeed in realizing ourselves both as individuals and as members of the community. For Hegel, then, we will find happiness by participating in the ordinary ways of well-ordered civil society. That means not dashing from excitement to excitement, pursuing your own goals to the exclusion of others' well-being, or expressing yourself in a way that offends people. It means fitting in, conducting yourself ethically, with your family, community, and country. [Arthur C. Brooks: How my struggle with Wittgenstein can make you happier] Modern social scientists have shown that this argument about Sittlichkeit is sound. The social capital one has as an active member of the community strongly predicts one's happiness. Even so, to some people's ear, Hegel's conception of the good life may sound very conservative or reactionary. Just fit in! he seems to be saying. As an Emersonian individualist myself, I recoil from such a command. How many times in history have people just gone along with what civil society deemed right and proper, not consulting their own consciences, in order to maintain a private happiness at the expense of what is just? The result can be dangerous, even barbaric, and sometimes, you have to sacrifice your personal happiness for what is right. But I also see how this misses the way that Hegel's philosophy can help a natural individualist like me. His injunction about synthesis and ethical orderliness can be a valuable corrective for a tendency to seek big experiences at the expense of the moments of peace, and an egotistical tendency to disregard the wisdom and desires of the community in favor of my own opinions. I like to use Hegel's ideas in the form of a simple set of questions to help temper my nature. Perhaps this checklist can be useful to you as well. 1. Where can I find happiness in the ordinary, unremarkable points in my life? What gifts am I overlooking because they are not bright and shiny, although they are beautiful in their smallness? Perhaps this is a peaceful evening at home, a quiet walk before dawn, or a little contemplation over a delicious cup of coffee. 2. Am I looking for a lift in my mood today from my personal ambitions and primal drives? This is Mother Nature with her false promise that satisfying this or that urge will give me the satisfaction I seek. Instead, what individual desire can I shed today? 3. Am I asserting my views in a way that ignores others or is disrespectful to their dignity? Am I attached to my opinions as if they were precious jewels? How can I let go of my own rightness today and listen with love more to others? 4. How might I balance my own needs and desires with those of my family and community today? How can I be a better spouse, a better parent, a better colleague and friend, and a better citizen? If you're anything like me, there's little danger that the fire of your individualistic nature will be extinguished by this interrogation. Instead, it should just sand down your edges a bit, make you more cognizant of your strong self-focus. With that awareness to keep you in check, you might just find yourself happier as a result. [Ralph Waldo Emerson: American civilization] The work of any philosopher is subject to many possible interpretations. This is especially true of Hegel, whose prose is famously dense and elliptical—just ask Nietzsche or Schopenhauer—and no doubt, my brief account of his thought will earn plenty of disagreement. After all, Hegel himself is said to have remarked: 'Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.' But even on this point—about his resistance to intelligibility—I discern a useful Hegelian lesson for a better life. The goal is not to be understood by the world but to understand the world as best we can and participate in our human community with a spirit of love. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Hegel's Rules for a Happier Life
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. In his day, the 18th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was what we would call a 'celebrity academic,' enjoying top university posts and a wide readership for his books. This might explain some of the hostility that Hegel faced from his contemporaries. Arthur Schopenhauer called his writing the work of a 'clumsy charlatan,' which rendered readers 'incapable of reflection, coarse and bewildered.' His compatriot Friedrich Nietzsche snorted that an education based on 'Hegelian craniums' is 'terrible and destructive.' Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were largely overlooked during their lifetimes, so professional jealousy no doubt accounted for some of this. But deep intellectual differences also underpinned their animus. Whereas Hegel's critics largely promoted individualism, the famous author of The Phenomenology of the Spirit taught that fitting into society is generally the best path to a good life. For an individualist like me—a bit Nietzschean in worldview—Hegel's approach might appear unsympathetic. But I have been reconsidering Hegel, and now I think that understanding his arguments for a more communitarian attitude might offer us a nudge toward greater happiness—one we didn't even know we needed. Bertrand Russell: Philosophy's ulterior motives Hegel is probably best known today for his teleological belief that human history tends toward progress and is guided rationally by Geist, or 'spirit,' a quasi-supernatural force for good. He taught that this progress is slowly achieved through the operation of the 'dialectic.' According to this concept, a grand conversation occurs in three parts—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—in which one side presents an argument (thesis), another side gives an opposing viewpoint (antithesis), and all of this results in a resolution (synthesis) that involves more nuanced understanding of the issues. This rational reconciliation of differences thus leads to advances—in other words, progress. For Hegel, the Geist just needs time to work out its logic. Whereas today's political arguments in America might look chaotic and terrible, Hegel might say that we're too close to them. Take the longer perspective and you will see that spirit is placing the hard-edged progressive activism of the past decade in dialogue with the new electoral turn toward Trumpism, and that the synthesis of that dissension will be a more balanced moderation in the years ahead. Despite ups and downs, Hegelian progress generally grants people greater happiness over time. Yet Hegel also made a startling assertion about when that happiness would be most abundant. 'Periods of happiness are empty pages in history,' he wrote in his Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 'for they are the periods of harmony, times when the antithesis is missing.' In other words, we remember when life is a boiling cauldron of emotions and experiences, but these are not the really happy moments. Happiness comes in the peaceful, unmemorable parts of life. So how do we get more of this unremarkable bliss? For the answer, in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel gives a practical tutorial in dialectics—first offering two common but wrong answers, then the right one. One typical wrong way we search for happiness is what he calls Recht (literally, 'right'), which involves maximizing individual satisfaction or, more colloquially, 'If it feels good, do it.' Hegel argues that Recht leads us to chase one pleasure after another, ' ad infinitum, never [enabling] it to get beyond its own finitude.' In other words, the goal of individual satisfaction is like filling a hole that can't be filled. The other wrong way that people pursue happiness is through Moralität ('morality'), by exercising their own personal sense of right and wrong. This approach is more in line with the individualism of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer—to quote Polonius in Hamlet: 'To thine own self be true.' Hegel never says that a person's conscience is bad; he simply observes that relying solely on one's own conscience can lead to problems such as loneliness and depression. (If you happen to be someone who insists on speaking up for what you believe is right and have suffered social rejection as a result, you might relate to this.) For Hegel, the correct answer for peaceful happiness is Sittlichkeit, or 'ethical order,' by which he means prosocial behavior grounded in tradition and custom learned from one's community. As he explains in Philosophy of Right, this ethical order involves striving 'to make oneself a member of … civil society by one's own act, through one's energy, industry, and skill,' thus 'gaining recognition both in one's own eyes and in the eyes of others.' This is where true happiness occurs, Hegel believed, because we succeed in realizing ourselves both as individuals and as members of the community. For Hegel, then, we will find happiness by participating in the ordinary ways of well-ordered civil society. That means not dashing from excitement to excitement, pursuing your own goals to the exclusion of others' well-being, or expressing yourself in a way that offends people. It means fitting in, conducting yourself ethically, with your family, community, and country. Arthur C. Brooks: How my struggle with Wittgenstein can make you happier Modern social scientists have shown that this argument about Sittlichkeit is sound. The social capital one has as an active member of the community strongly predicts one's happiness. Even so, to some people's ear, Hegel's conception of the good life may sound very conservative or reactionary. Just fit in! he seems to be saying. As an Emersonian individualist myself, I recoil from such a command. How many times in history have people just gone along with what civil society deemed right and proper, not consulting their own consciences, in order to maintain a private happiness at the expense of what is just? The result can be dangerous, even barbaric, and sometimes, you have to sacrifice your personal happiness for what is right. But I also see how this misses the way that Hegel's philosophy can help a natural individualist like me. His injunction about synthesis and ethical orderliness can be a valuable corrective for a tendency to seek big experiences at the expense of the moments of peace, and an egotistical tendency to disregard the wisdom and desires of the community in favor of my own opinions. I like to use Hegel's ideas in the form of a simple set of questions to help temper my nature. Perhaps this checklist can be useful to you as well. 1. Where can I find happiness in the ordinary, unremarkable points in my life? What gifts am I overlooking because they are not bright and shiny, although they are beautiful in their smallness? Perhaps this is a peaceful evening at home, a quiet walk before dawn, or a little contemplation over a delicious cup of coffee. 2. Am I looking for a lift in my mood today from my personal ambitions and primal drives? This is Mother Nature with her false promise that satisfying this or that urge will give me the satisfaction I seek. Instead, what individual desire can I shed today? 3. Am I asserting my views in a way that ignores others or is disrespectful to their dignity? Am I attached to my opinions as if they were precious jewels? How can I let go of my own rightness today and listen with love more to others? 4. How might I balance my own needs and desires with those of my family and community today? How can I be a better spouse, a better parent, a better colleague and friend, and a better citizen? If you're anything like me, there's little danger that the fire of your individualistic nature will be extinguished by this interrogation. Instead, it should just sand down your edges a bit, make you more cognizant of your strong self-focus. With that awareness to keep you in check, you might just find yourself happier as a result. Ralph Waldo Emerson: American civilization The work of any philosopher is subject to many possible interpretations. This is especially true of Hegel, whose prose is famously dense and elliptical—just ask Nietzsche or Schopenhauer—and no doubt, my brief account of his thought will earn plenty of disagreement. After all, Hegel himself is said to have remarked: 'Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.' But even on this point—about his resistance to intelligibility—I discern a useful Hegelian lesson for a better life. The goal is not to be understood by the world but to understand the world as best we can and participate in our human community with a spirit of love.
Express Tribune
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
The way forward
Listen to article Every politician in Pakistan wants to be referred to as a socialist regardless of what he or she understands about socialism as a concept. The problem with politics in Pakistan is that it is discussing personalities more than society. Ours is the age of acceleration, living in which the most important commodity is the value of time and what we must do with it. Politicians that waste time by not visiting and revisiting order must know that disorder will eventually visit them. Today, three big ideas dominate global politics - peace is the preferred form of interaction between states; democracy is the preferred form of political system to organise political life; and, free markets are the vehicles of growth and development. All politicians need to be socialists not only in theory but in practice to realise the magnificence of these ideas and the capacities of these ideas to create domestic, regional and global homogeneity. Why almost all our politicians want to pretend to act as socialists is because deep down inside their conscience they are reminded of their social responsibilities. These responsibilities are not met by living and serving only the world of capitalism but the world of democracy in which they live and through which they are supposed to serve the needs of the people. The negative consequences of capitalism - such as unequal opportunities, unequal growth, income inequalities and periods of economic slowdown - have adverse social consequences. In the US alone, one per cent of elite holds as much wealth as the combined middle class of that entire country. I have no data to represent the wealth distribution between the elite and the middle class of our country, but my wild guess is that it is quite similar to what we have in the US, if not worse. So, this forces me to ask: can democracy and socialism in countries like Pakistan ever reconcile? To answer this question, I take the lead from history and would like to present four ideas that if realised and worked upon can create meaningful difference in how socialism can be understood and democracy can be used as the essential platform to unleash its benefits. The first is about human freedom in how it can be utilised to shape knowledge as well as all the activities that we surround ourselves with. The ability to reason and resist natural desires is a concept driven from Kant's critical philosophy of idealism. Reasonable societies don't block information; they rather create opportunities to access information from all possible means. Information should not be denied or blocked as it helps us to create our realities. Anything is information that we use to discover truth, and a truthful society is based on access to all platforms of information. The second idea is related to Hegel, the most influential figure of German idealism. Rationalism in Hegel's era was considered as a great threat to societal reforms. His teachings stood out as great contribution to the battle of ideas to formulate either the Christian state or the rational state. Hegel was a great friend of the Greek religion, because the Greeks had no religion at all. Greek religion was the religion of intellect, beauty, art, freedom and humanity. Greek religion was actually the religion of humanity. Hegel addressed the ideas of freedom, state and society and propagated the formulation of a rational state. He was more a pioneer of socialist thought than a socialist himself. Since Hegel propagated man as a creature of needs, he insisted that the goal of socialism was not the achievement of equality but advent of harmony. The society that he imagined was to be built on egalitarianism, association and cooperation rather than egoism, unfair competition and availability of unequal opportunities. The third idea is related to the American declaration of Independence, arguably the most beautifully written document of English text which mentions 'pursuit of happiness' as a societal goal. In 1884, almost hundred years after this declaration, Karl Marx started a journal titled 'The Alliance of Those Who Think and Those Who Suffer'. Marx considered man as a natural being whose actions were motivated by the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain. The concept was simple - improve the societal environment with better education with the goal of transforming the human nature. Our societal behaviour is in a state of mess and the more we delay our emphasis on introducing quality education the bigger this mess will become. The fourth idea is about how in this age of acceleration, more and more of our political questions are turning into social questions. The old Poland, old Germany, old England and old France were all lost in the political revolutions of the past. Even the old world was lost after the great industrial revolution but countries like Pakistan are still finding it difficult to let go - of the idea of dominating and controlling society and free will of the people to be able to express themselves. That's a very old school of thought. The best form of the state is a state that is reached after it allows the societal contradictions to become an open struggle. That is the only way that societal contradictions are resolved. The state has no business to support one form of the contradiction and not another. In this age of information, to consider that communal, group or state objectives cannot be maximised unless coercion forces them to do so is a ridiculous idea. State coercion is colonialism's modern dress; and whatever political, economic, intellectual, social and physical control this coercion exercises is a short-term answer to very deep-rooted and contradictory societal problems. It is for me to say this but it is for those who are keeping the leading roles in our politics to decide how they can rectify their positions. History is not only about the past but also about the change. How come the world changed and transformed almost over a hundred years ago by virtue of learning from the ideas of some of the great scholars and thinkers, but we are still stuck in the medieval world that offers no incentives for change? That is a question that I will leave for the readers to think about.
