Ep. 388: Hegel on Culture (Part Two)

0:07 Mark: You are listening to the Partially Examined Life, episode 388, part 2. Talking about culture in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. We had gotten up to section 490, so we are into talking about actuality. We had talked about how you might think you're such a special, unique individual, but actually, at least at this stage, you're only. Your individuality is only defined by your kind. Right. Which is something that is a creation over culture. You are a doctor, you are a peasant, whatever it is that you are. For it to have content, the content has to come from culture.

0:47 Wes: Yeah, it's a really interesting subject in. In psychology as well. So, for instance, I'm just going to do this little aside here for people interested in psychoanalysis, but Winnicott, the famous right for transitional object and all, all that stuff, has a lot to say about adolescence where people are in the position of trying to assert their individuality. Right. They're trying to leave the realm of the family. Right. The realm of the divine law, so to speak. And how do they do it? How do you become a particular. How do you become an individual? Well, you just identify with new groups, right. You get. You start wearing a leather jacket like millions of other people, or you become a mod or, you know, or this or that.

1:27 Mark: A mod or a rocker. Those are the. Those are the current.

1:30 Wes: A rocker or a mod. Yeah. If you're thinking about quadrophenia, great. But anyway, yeah, so it's this weird thing where the. Our assertions of individuality and our assertions of individual power really depend on identification with others and identification with cultural values or with Right. Subcultures or values of peer groups or, you know, maybe I think I become an individual by becoming a philosopher. And that's a sufficiently boutique and narrow sliver of society that there's some. You know, I feel like it might accord me some individuality, but of course, all I'm doing is becoming like others.

2:08 Seth: It's an interesting. He's describing an interesting dynamic here in a section 490.

2:12 Wes: Yeah, I was hoping to give an example of that. Yeah. We actualize substance by conforming to it

2:18 Seth: by enculturing ourselves by the single individual molding themselves to some aspect of culture. They're giving substance or something that's implicit in the substance, and he says, an acknowledged real existence. So the process in which the individuality molds itself by culture is therefore, at the same time the development of it is a universal, objective essence, I. E. The development of the actual world. So it sounds very strange. Culture is unreal, not actual. And yet somehow it has enough content, it has enough substance. It is a thing against which a substance against which individuals can be alienated, react, and then the individual is the articulation of culture. So it's like culture doesn't exist. It's just an idea in someone's head, and then somebody acts in accordance with what they interpret culture to be. Then it becomes real. It's just an interesting dynamo, I think.

3:21 Wes: He does. Culture does exist, and it's actualized by our work. Right. So we create culture, but we don't

3:27 Seth: create it out of nothing, out of ourselves.

3:30 Wes: Well, it's a. It's this back and forth. That's why I called it metabolic. Right. So it's the circular process where we create culture and then culture creates us. And of course, this happens over, really in reality, over many, many generations.

3:43 Seth: Sure.

3:43 Wes: And in the very process of enculturing ourselves, right, by conforming ourselves to culture, we continue to create culture. Because my conformity might involve me writing a book and being someone who's read, you know, a lot of other books in order to write that book, I've encultured myself. I've taken in from culture, and then I add a new product to it, which I could not do except by internalizing a lot. Right. By educating myself up to a certain point. So you have this circular process.

4:14 Mark: Well, you don't have to write a book, just being an exemplar yourself. You are part of the culture.

4:18 Wes: Right. So it's a very. We don't have to think about high cultural achievements. You know, we could think about more ordinary examples, but with every tweet, you

4:26 Mark: make the culture the shit pile that it is.

4:28 Wes: We're doing it right now, man. We're. We're making culture right now. Every podcast episode. But part of the interesting thing here is that we come to see culture as this we alienated out of ourselves, right? We create this alien world that stands over and against us and with which we have this dynamic back and forth. And it seems to be. It does have this appearance of having a fixed and solid reality, but also just being there, pre existing in a way, I think many of us, right, when we're younger, there's a special aura to the culture. There's a special authority to it where it's almost as if it isn't human made.

It just pre exists. And then we go out about this process of, as he puts it, it's not just conforming to it. But of mastering it. Where does he say that? Or gaining power through culture is the way he puts it. Okay, so he says, but at the same time certain that this world is its substance. It sets about making it its own. It gains this power over it through culture, which looked at it from this aspect as the appearance of self consciousness, making itself conform to reality and doing so to the extent that the energy of its original character and talent permits.

So in other words, what looks like conformity is also mastery. That's why I kind of mentioned writing a book or something like doing something that involves ambition and talent. So our individual authority, our individual power, as he says at the end of this section, our individual actualization is at the same time an actualization of the substance. Right. Which is just mean the collective and in this case the culture.

5:57 Seth: Well, what I was trying to say earlier was the substance of culture is not actualized until an individual conforms themselves to the substance of culture. In other words, individuals are the mechanism by which culture gets actualized, but it has some form of existence prior to that that individuals can. It's a universal in a way, in a form that individuals can access and form opinions about it and say, I want to do this because that. Or they're looking at other individuals. But he doesn't say that. It doesn't matter. We don't have to argue about it. It's just. Remember we did an episode, I can't even remember talking about how individuals contribute to the building of culture. You know this. I don't know if it was a pragmatist or if it was Social Construction

6:45 Wes: of Reality is the book that you're thinking of. And it mentions the same dynamic, this back and forth, because it's making a similar point about that you get into a chicken in the egg and an egg problem, which I don't think we should belabor here. Where. Well, where does culture come from? If you need culture to get coal. Right. If you need culture to pre exist in order for individuals to become cultured, in order for them to produce culture, then where does culture come? Culture somehow comes out of nature. And talking about how it comes to be is like talking about the origin of life or the beginnings of language. Right. It's a very thorny subject. But the ultimate answer is that it comes out of nature, it comes out of evolution, it comes out of biology, and then it reaches this point where it can do this bootstrapping process where it's self amplifying into what we get now.

7:28 Seth: Yeah, I wasn't looking at it. As a. Like a criticism, like chicken and egg thing? More like. This is a dynamic. It's a way in which the individual and the universal in this particular context are interacting. And so it might be useful to at least clarify because I'm sure this mechanism plays itself out in other examples that Hegel is going to use. Or at least it also highlights the critical role. He talks so abstractly about spirit and self consciousness and all this kind of thing, but ultimately it's the actions of specific individuals that make everything happen for him. Right, and that's an important part.

8:12 Wes: Yeah, this ongoing dynamic between the universal and the individual is the really the theme of the whole book. Right. An individual can't be the individual without the universal. And the. For there to be the universal requires individuals that instantiate it. So and that's in the realm of epistemology and it's in the. In the social realm as. As well. And the whole dialectic involves a lot of this back and forth and then reflection of the contrast back into the individual and all that beautiful, beautiful jargon. Speaking of which, in 491.

8:45 Mark: Yeah, well, I. I really like 491 that it has jargon, but it elaborates. What you were saying is this metabolism that I put myself in opposition to the rest of culture. I think that I'm actually only defined by being a point where culture seems like this solid edifice that I'm reflecting off of that I'm maybe even rebelling against. And he introduces this thing that's going to be important for the rest of what we're talking about today. Thinking fixes this difference in the most general way by the absolute antithesis of good and bad. However, the soul of this fixed being is the immediate transition into its opposite. Existence is really the perversion of every determination, determinateness into its opposite. I think that as a quote, by itself, existence is really the perversion of every determinateness into its opposite.

9:34 Wes: That's how growth works. That's how becoming works.

9:37 Mark: There's only this alienation that is the central nature in support of the whole. So. Yeah, but just putting it in different way, like metabolism sounds like. Well, it's just, you know, the culture feeds the individual, the individual feeds the culture. But it does so in this oppositional way that by defining, you know, just like throughout this, I was defining the self in the Our Master and Slave chapter, I was, you know, I'm only think that I'm a self at all by saying what I'm not. I'm not you. This force that is Acting against me. Well, we get the same thing with culture.

10:07 Wes: From the standpoint of thought, this contrast between self and universal or culture becomes a contrast between good and bad. And it, it's. The dynamic is going to shift, but it's going to start out with the idea, right, that my being for self is a kind of badness, it's self interest, it's selfishness or including an interest in wealth. And my identification with the whole, with the substance. Right. In this case, it's going to become, it's going to be state power as it will turn out is going to start out as being what we think of as good. So to the extent that we're identified with the collective, we have a basis of goodness.

To the extent that we or self interested, you have a basis of badness. So that's how this previous distinction between alienated self and culture now become a new distinction in forethought, as he puts it, between the good and the bad. And ultimately, right, this is temporary because we're going to find out that state authority, state power can be cast as bad. Right. And oppressive. And then wealth can be something that's good. And the Adam Smithian invisible hand sense where we, hey, we just, you know, by working on becoming rich, we improve the standard of living of everyone.

11:22 Seth: So.

11:23 Wes: Yeah, so 492.

11:25 Mark: Yeah. I don't even think it helps to talk about. No, let's not talk about air, water and fire. But the thing that he's using this to supposedly clarify is he wants to talk about three spheres that express moments of self consciousness.

11:39 Wes: Yeah.

11:40 Seth: Yes.

11:40 Mark: So the first one is. It's an implicitly universal self identical spiritual being. It's an.

11:46 Seth: Is the.

11:47 Wes: The in itself. Yep.

11:48 Mark: And then the second is explicitly for itself because it's become inwardly divided against itself. It sacrifices and abandons itself. Right. Develops explicit being by sacrificing. I put by sacrificing the universal. I'm not sure I understand that. That's right.

12:05 Wes: I have it as sacrificing to the universal.

12:07 Mark: To the universal.

12:08 Wes: Exactly the exact same question. Because it. Yeah, but we'll have to address it as we move forward. But it's confusing. Yeah.

12:15 Mark: And then the third sort of the, you know, it was like we have thesis, antithesis. The third sphere is self consciousness as subject, possessing directly in its own self. Well, in its own self, the force of, of fire. This is just the comparison he was trying to make, which doesn't work at all because. Because the comparison that he makes is to air, water, fire and earth.

12:36 Wes: Earth.

12:37 Mark: Well, you, you're comparing four things to three things and just, just stop. Just don't do that. It's easier to talk about.

12:46 Wes: The earth is more like the whole or something, I don't know. But it. Fire here, there's an interesting comparison between fire and force, as in force and the understanding. Right. He's making a backwards reference here. But yeah, there's something about. I think the idea of fire here is that we consume substance to fuel individuality. We consume the universal or consume the culture. It's almost like burning it. And that's where metabolism again comes in handy as an idea. It's like we're eating culture and burning it as, as fuel. And in doing so, oddly enough sustaining both culture and individuality as nice little earthy clods.

13:27 Mark: Yeah. And he makes this comparison to the previous section that these first two stages, self identical spiritual being and then divided against itself, are kind of like the two parts of the ethical world, community and family. But I think as you had said earlier, Seth, since there was no outside to culture at that point, it's just, we're just harmonious in culture, then it has no, when, when there's a problem that comes up, it has nothing to sort of just escape to. It just has to be break apart. It just has to destroy itself. And the way that he puts it here is that destiny, right, the thing that ultimately was, you know, why the, something like the story of Antigone, the conflict between the divine and the human law had to rip society apart, rip community apart.

Destiny was foreign, was alien to the spirit. But here self consciousness knows itself to be the power of these spheres. So, you know, even though you are, you know, an individual within culture, and on the one hand you are a self contained individual, on the other hand you are sacrificing yourself to become part of culture, to, you know, attain. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be whatever the thing is you're aiming at, you know, that you're making those decisions. So like there can be a more productive ripping apart of this kind of thing in a way that there, there was not in the previous section.

14:54 Wes: Yeah, I think the role of destiny in Greek ethical life, right, has something to do with character. Where our fate depends on, is intimately tied to, to who we are. And we just act out that essence without being conscious of it, as Antigone does, for instance.

15:11 Mark: I guess that's what the alien means, is that the spirit doesn't know its destiny, right? The individual, even though you know it's destined to break apart, it doesn't have.

15:21 Wes: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And self.

15:23 Mark: Yeah.

15:24 Wes: With self consciousness, I think part of it is we don't think of ourselves at, you know, within. From the standpoint of culture, we're not. Well, I think we, we think of ourselves as free actors in some sense, but also. Right. There's this aspect of self consciousness in our opposition to culture when it, when it happens. Right. So when Antigone acts against Creon and Creon against Antigone. Right. Remember, they have no conception of any possibility of right on the side of the other. It's purely immediate, as if they have the absolute truth on their side.

And there's no self conscious split. There's no reflection. Oh, you know, does she have a point or does he have a point or something like that. It hasn't risen the level of self consciousness. They just act out their respective roles, their respective characters, their respective fates in their representation of the divine law and the human law, respectively. But here it's. That's not the thing that's going on.

16:18 Mark: All right, so we have to consider for 493 in the first instance, how these two members are represented within pure consciousness as thoughts or having only implicit being, and also how they are represented in actual consciousness as having an objective existence. So in thought, it's the good and the bad. And then we're going to talk about how. Wes, you already sort of pointed at where going forward for some reason, you know, this seems very strange, but the good and the bad, we're going to consider those that dichotomy against the dichotomy between state power and wealth ultimately is going to be the two ways.

And you sort of, you pick a side because wealth is like distributed power. State power is all, you know, honor. Getting honors from the state, for instance, wealth, you don't need honors. So those at least are two things within culture that are both goods but that present themselves as different strategies to success.

17:17 Seth: So the whole good, bad thing here, you can, I think you can kind of cast in terms of me, not me. Right. So there's what I identify with or what I think I am, and then what's not me, what's alienated from me? So what's me is good and what's not me is bad. And the structure, the way he's talking about it here sounds much more like we're back in perception, sense of certainty, like that way, as opposed to. But as Wes said earlier, the state power represents that alienated other thing that's not me. And wealth represents, in this case, you can think of it as this is what is me, what I have, what I control. And he actually later on talks a lot more about uses the term insolence.

18:04 Wes: It's actually the opposite, strangely enough, at this point. And as we begin this, it's the good which will be state power is me in the sense of. It's my. The soil of the external authority is the authority is the soil in which I grow. It's the foundation, it's the in itself. And so state power is initially the thing that's associated with the good and the wealth with the bad. And then we'll get that flip later on. But you're jumping to a different point where there's this reversal where we can conceive of wealth as the good and the state power is the bad.

18:36 Mark: Well, and I agree also with you with Seth that at this point that he's introducing the good as self and bad as. As not self. But the way that Wes had introduced it before is through this self alienation that the parallel he makes throughout here is to the unhappy consciousness section. I'll just refer folks to the lengthy close reads Wes and I did on that. You have to become a close read supporter to hear all of that. But the first two hours of it are publicly available. So that good actually be is defined as the other. Right. I, oh, poor me, I'm subjecting myself. Right. He's described as earlier in the section that we've discussed today that you immediately you put all value in the other into culture and you say I in myself am a mere nothing until I become part of culture. So in that sense, the good is the object, the bad is the subject.

19:31 Wes: Yeah, so let's just read the text here. The first is the good, the self accordant, immediate and unchangeable essence of every consciousness, the independent spiritual power of the in itself, alongside which the activity of actual consciousness is something merely incidental. Right. So actual consciousness, meaning our in particular individual consciousness, is individual, is incidental and in comparison to the unchangeable essence that the universal, its other, on the contrary, is the passive spiritual essence or the universal insofar as it surrenders itself and allows individuals to get in it the consciousness of their separate existence.

This idea of the universal surrendering itself and letting itself fall out into the particulars. But in other words, the bad is associated with the separate existence of individuals in this first instance. And we can see why, right in the end, because the good is more about our altruistic relationship to society as a whole and the bad is about self interest. In the beginning.

20:26 Mark: But once you surrender yourself to culture and you say, you know, I'm past that shallow individuality, I'm now part of the culture, then within that you take a side. Am I going to take the side of the state power, which is like all the work that I'm doing that is feeding the community and, you know, central, or am I going to take the side of not the work that I do, but the reward that I get for my work that makes me as an individual apart from the state, have, have power? So am I going to be on the side? You know, am I going to call alignment with state power good and wealth bad?

You know, it's as if it's individuals trying to arrogate things for themselves against the state. Or am I going to, on the contrary, define myself? I'm going to define myself ignobly, as he's going to say against the state and say, no, actually it's whatever independent scraps I can get. That's the good. And the state is the oppressive bad thing. So whichever side I think I'm on right then that is what I call good. So in that sense, Seth, you are absolutely right.

21:28 Wes: Yeah. So it's, you know, Seth is pointing out, yeah, it's going to shift. But in 494, this is where we get the breakout into of good and bad, into state power and wealth.

21:37 Seth: Yeah. The point I was going to try to make, the reason why I mentioned that structurally, it sounds like we're thrown back to the early chapters on perception and sense certainty and so forth, is that what's critical here is that you have will, you have an individual. Like there's no will involved in the process of carving up the world into me and not me. For much of the previous, you know, the earlier parts of the book, it requires an act of will to invert the values and I'll ultimately invert them back. So my point was just that naturally good would be me, not good would be not me.

But in the case of state power here, this is not as there is self consciousness here, not just consciousness. There's this awareness of how state power constitutes me or how I can align or how it makes up what other individuals like me act like. And so that was what I was trying to point out is that there's this, the necessity of how the mechanism works differently here than in the previous, you know, that it would work otherwise precisely because there's an element of will and self consciousness here. That's what I was trying to say.

22:50 Mark: Yeah. And I think that's what is required for aligning yourself with state power or wealth, that you are making a choice. You're using your self consciousness, using your will. Yep.

23:01 Wes: So 494, good and bad get self alienated, externalized into state power and wealth. State power is like right, the in itself. Wealth is the for itself or right, the in itself. The simple substance, the universal work of individuals. Again, we think about it in collective terms as opposed to the wealth and for itself as being associated with the individual. And he also speaks of it here as, you know, it's a kind of individuality as well. But individuality is consciousness of universality and consciousness of the substance. Right. The collective substance as the foundation of our individual action.

And he mentions here in the section too, this is, you know, we lose sight of this. We lose sight of the fact that we've created it, the fact that the work of culture is communal. Right. I don't, you know that I'm just kind of thrown into it hides the fact that it's. That it's a human work. But yeah, I think we ought to associate state power here with general will in contrast to the particular will of individuals associated with wealth.

24:11 Mark: All right, 495. So this is all I know this that you were saying Kalkavage identified, the part that we're going to read next time is actually the beginning of the discussion of state power versus wealth. So if that's not coming for 15 more sections and what the hell are we doing now? I guess we're talking about the psychological attitudes that we have, the ontological identifications we have between state power and wealth as sort of a way of talking about a bifurcation within the psyche. And so that's what we have at the beginning of 495. In these two spiritual powers, then self consciousness recognizes its substance, content in person and purpose in them.

It beholds its dual nature. In one, it sees what it implicitly is, in the other, what it is explicitly for itself. So implicitly, I am culture. I am identified with state power. The other one is explicitly for itself. Well, how much. What is your particular role in the state? Well, how much wealth do you have Is at the same time qua spirit, the negative unity of their substance and the separation of individuality from the universal or of actuality and the self. What do you make of that little bit? Or does it matter?

25:33 Wes: Yeah, this seems to. I mean, he ends this section with a sort of, you know, one of these are the confusing discussions of dialectic. Right. Where we're going to have to combine in order to get spiritual essence. Right. We can't just be settled one sidedly on the in itself or the for itself, state power or wealth, that they have to be combined in some sense. So we're getting a setup for this reversal and which he continues in 496 and then in 497 he's gonna give us this reversal in the sense that consciousness, while it finds its essence and state power, doesn't get any individuality out of that.

So that in other words, you can come to see the general will or state power as oppressive and therefore bad. And then wealth because it enhances individuality. And I think we should think of wealth in a very broad sense here. But that becomes the good, which is what I took to Seth to be emphasizing earlier. But that's 497.

26:35 Mark: Just to clarify the terminological point in 495 here then the negative unity is anytime where two things only exist by being opposed. So you know, we were just describing that before in the distinction between me as an individual and me and the rest of culture.

26:51 Seth: Yeah, I read through the Routledge support of the section's commentary on this too. And he says it's not trivial that Hegel talks about that consciousness believes it can choose. It says dominion and wealth, therefore. Right. It believes it can choose or choose neither. And I'd have to go back and kind of check the full analysis. But the idea is that somehow that helps kind of ultimately bankrupt. It helps destabilize the valuation which allows for the return. Like it's not trivial that we think we can choose because remember we're defined against the culture. And where there's state, power and wealth or universal and self interest. Right versus dominion. And then to believe that we can think we can choose neither.

27:40 Wes: Yeah, really, I mean the general will and wealth, the individual will, these are both essential moments in spirit. And we can't simply choose one or

27:50 Seth: the other or we think we can choose neither.

27:53 Wes: I mean we could literally we could focus our lives on one or the the other. But. But as a spiritual matter, we just be not denying one aspect of our nature.

28:02 Seth: Right. And to say like oh, we think we can not choose either would be like saying I'm just going to completely ignore what I used to constitute myself. Be like turning your back on your own self manufacturing of your individuality.

28:16 Wes: Yeah. If we think of people who are just devote their lives to nothing but money. Right. They're very divorced from what Hegel would call spirit. But likewise, if a person has no sense of Individuality. Right. If they're just totalitarian society and fully embrace their submersion in an authoritarian collective with the rationale that they're. They care only about the common good, let's say of the general will and then not about their own individual selfish will. Think of something like North Korea, maybe currently. Then of course that also, that's just as bad. That's just a denial of a very. Another important part of our nature, the individual will.

28:54 Seth: Yeah.

28:54 Wes: So we want both moments.

28:56 Mark: So I wonder if, you know, on the one hand, if you say I'm going to choose neither, does that mean you're just not. You haven't made the initial step to put yourself into that dilemma that you're retaining. Instead of giving your self creation to culture, you retain it. So this seems like it's the side of faith. It's the side of, I don't think state power or wealth, you know, those are bowing to mammon. I want to bow to God. So that's going to be this initial thing that he set up is that you've got the actual, which includes both state power and wealth, and you've got pure consciousness, which is faith on the other side.

So you're not even entering into the actual. But once you're in the actual, it seems like it is not just two choices, it is four choices. It's A, B, both A and B, or neither A nor B. And these can all still be within the paradigm, within the logic of the worldly. So I'm going to both, you know, I'm going to just work on behalf of the collective. That means I'm identifying with myself as state power. I'm just going to work for my own private ends. That means I'm identifying with wealth. It means, you know, I want to be a high point in the state and do that by being wealthy.

You know, ultimately that seems like what we want to shoot for or I think what Wes was just describing or something. Yeah. What is neither when you stay in the worldly?

30:17 Wes: Neither might be a movement to the world of faith.

30:19 Mark: But Seth, that's what I was wondering. Is it. Does it mean you're extracting yourself or can you still be there? It is. So let me say I have no self definition.

30:29 Seth: No, no, no. I think it's this way. Let me say. I think it's this way. Let me see if I can get there. It's in the next two or three sentences in that paragraph or section. But he says, okay, when the individual says dominion and wealth are things between which I Can choose or choose neither. Now, in reality, you cannot choose to be or not be under the dominion of state power. It has a sway on you. What he says is, when I think of it that way, state power and wealth, or dominion and wealth are objects for me, kind of in my consciousness that I'm like, I'm making a choice.

I'm not making a choice like I'm going to choose for this to exist or to manifest this or choose it. The choice I'm making is identifying, so to speak, with one or the other, which is to say, saying that one is good and saying that one is bad. Or in the case of neither. Right. Saying that this judgment about this worldly thing or this. I'm not going to assign a value judgment to either of these things or to both of them. I will sign the same one. And maybe that's how you get elevated to pure consciousness in the realm of faith, as you're just abstaining or making a unified judgment about the things in the world.

But he says a couple sentences down there. What this means is that this is a judgment. So he says, okay, look, in this pure consciousness, the moments of substance are for him not state power and wealth, but the thoughts of good and bad. Bad. But further, self consciousness is the relation of its pure consciousness to its actual consciousness of what is in the form of thought to what exists objectively. So thought versus what exists objectively. It is essentially judgment.

32:17 Mark: Sure. Applying a thought to what exists objectively. That is for Kant, you got your. Your practical world of action. You got your theoretical world and you got your judgment which cuts across. Yeah.

32:29 Wes: So in pure, impure consciousness, these. These are good and bad. But in actuality, as judgment makes them out to be, we get state power and wealth. We get these actual empirical manifestations rather than these abstractions, good and bad. But he'll say, this is not a spiritual judgment, which is to say one side is being in itself and the other is being for itself. Right. What? Positive and negative, respectively. Whereas spiritual essences or interfusions of both moments. So we need. Right. These are two aspects of our nature. And we can't just reject one as bad and treat the other as good.

And the whole point of this little dialectical excursion here is he's just. He's setting us up for a reversal where we say, oh, no, it's actually wealth that's good and state power that's bad. And we can say, why? Because wealth highlights another important aspect of our nature and individuality, something we can't deny. And so they're both good and they're both bad in different respects. So.

33:31 Seth: Or you could say we have the ability to see either as good or either as bad or. Or both because that capability has been freed up, so to speak, by this development of self consciousness.

33:47 Wes: Yeah, he'll tell us in 497 that these two wealth and state power, but just they perform these two different functions for us and that reflect two different aspects of human nature. So the same 497. Right. Consciousness finds state power as its essence. It's in its right. That's the in itself aspect of ourselves. But we don't get the 4 itself out of that. We don't get individuality out of that. Although, as we've mentioned before, there's an important relationship between the universal and the individual. Our individuality is predicated on universality.

But in any case, here we get the reversal state power, right? Something to which we must be obedient, the general will. And therefore it's oppressive and bad in a sense. And then wealth enhances consciousness of individuality, right? It creates the grounds for the possibility of enjoyment and therefore becomes good. There's another aspect of enjoyment and wealth which is just that it implies universal beneficence. And he's made the case above a universal hand. I think he is thinking of. Of Adam Smith, but he's made the case before that our pursuit of self interest is actually an important mechanism for the improvement of society as a whole and therefore the improvement of other individual lives.

35:02 Seth: So you're right that this is all just. This is to set up the reversal. But as part of the reversal our notions of good and bad are enriched in a way. So that in 499 he says by forming diverse relationships consciousness itself comes to be determined as diverse as being good or bad. Not because it had for its principle either. Okay, I just. I fall off. Things seem to make sense when I'm studying and then when I'm reading them out loud here just.

35:32 Wes: Well, he's. I think what he's saying here is that we can treat one or the other as good or bad depending on whether they seem to be. Are reflect our own nature to be like us. He's using this idea of likeness and disparity. And we can, depending on how we look at it, we can see state power as it's our very essence. It's the very grounds of our individuality. It's the soil out of which we grow. It's the in itself. Or we can see it as something over and against us. That dominates us, that oppresses us. That's the disparity, you know, so that's likeness versus disparity. And we can do the same thing with wealth.

36:11 Seth: Right.

36:11 Mark: It's selfish or transitory. Not even.

36:16 Wes: And transitory. Yep. Even when we enjoy it. It's just. It's. It's not really anything substantial, all that stuff. Or we can see the other side of wealth, which is the enhancement of individuality and also the enhancement of material conditions for actual individuals in general.

36:34 Seth: Yeah. So I think what strikes me here is that I was trying to say that this kind of enrichment of the concept of good and bad, it's really that initially the assignment, so to speak, of good and bad seems to us. Seems to consciousness to be related to the object insofar as it helps us constitute ourselves. And then we go through this process and we realize that the valuation, the value judgment of good and bad is not just related to some superficial way in which we think we're related to the thing, but it gets this richer concept of likeness. Or maybe we started off saying what is me or what's like me is good and what's not like me is bad or what have you.

And then when we see that you cross over the border and it's like, well, everything is like you in some respect and everything is unlike you in some respect. So then it's just that it enriches. It amplifies and enriches this notion of judgment. Because instead of just a simple label of good or bad about these objects in the world, we've come to a realization that our judgment has to do with us and our relationship to these things and how there's a unity around it as opposed to just a superficial alienation or separation.

38:01 Wes: So we have both sides in our nature. And then in section 500, I think what he's saying here is. So he's going to define the ignoble, the noble versus the ignoble, or the base 500 on the noble 501 on the base or the ignoble. And the noble finds goodness in both sides and likeness. It can liken itself to both sides and therefore finds goodness in it. So it likes obedience to authority and it likes wealth. Who doesn't? It's both. Wealth are essential to it and obedience are essential to it.

38:35 Mark: Well, the jealous slave morality doesn't like either of those things. That's. That's the ignoble.

38:40 Wes: That's the base. Yeah. So the state power is oppressive and wealth is just for capitalist billionaires. They're Terrible. Wealth is evanescent, as Mark you already pointed out, and it's atomizing. It isolates individuals from each other and it's self centered.

38:58 Mark: Yeah. So this noble and ignoble I see as not just a restatement of good and bad, although it is related to that because, you know, as we were saying, to call something good is to say I am on its side. But it is more like Nietzsche's use of this that the noble is this the simple essence. It used to be that those with the master morality, the nobles just identified themselves as the good. Anything that's like me is the good. Whereas the ignoble, the slave morality, defines itself in opposition, you know, tries to reverse the values. To say that this, these things that you found to be forming of yourself and that you are aligned with actually are, you know, the sovereign power is a suppression of my individual being for self.

Wealth is a mere temptation and a transitory thing that did not provide a stable way of setting the meaning for your life. So those are. We need to find something deeper against those things.

39:56 Wes: Yeah. Which is to say, you know, we can recast this as a relationship to power where the noble is pro power and the ignoble's anti power and where wealth and state power are actually two forms of power, you know, individual power and then collective power. And yeah, we can now kind of instead of our, our division between embracing one or the other, embracing wealth or state power as if they were opposites, now we get a new division, we take them together and we either embrace them as forms of power or reject them both as forms of power. So I like this. Yeah. Mark the connection you're making to Nietzsche, Mark and resentment.

40:37 Mark: So as with when Antigone the clad, the clash of Antigone, since it was only on the side of one of the two types of law, ends up discrediting both of them on 502. He says these judgments express what state power and wealth are as objects for consciousness, not what they are in and for themselves. Right. So we obviously the fact that you can switch and you can say state power is good or state power is bad, obviously badness or goodness don't define those things. He says since this affirmation is only partial, it's just an equal annulling of both. Right. They are not self consciousness, they are not subjects, they're just predicates. Right. Do you have wealth? Do you have state power? So the two consciousnesses are each subject to the advocate of wealth versus the advocation of state power are each subject to a One sided determination.

41:29 Wes: So we need a syllogism. He says we need a mediation. We're going to have to do another unification. We're not going to just let these things fall out, remain eternally fallen out from each other as, as opposites. The, the noble and the ignoble.

41:44 Mark: And he says that middle term is the judgment, as we were saying before. But that, I mean what do we think? So where we. We see necessity of both sides and we see the middle term, the judgment is the mediating process. So in other words, just calling one good and calling one bad, that itself relates the two.

42:01 Wes: I don't think we. Yeah.

42:02 Mark: Does this make sense?

42:03 Wes: I think the mediation is what's coming.

42:06 Mark: Okay.

42:06 Wes: I think we have to go through more sections before we reconcile these two things.

42:11 Mark: All right, so at 503 we want state power to become a self, but it's only universal substance. The noble sees himself as the essence of that substance. It's end in absolute content.

42:23 Wes: So yeah, so 503 is where you're at. And I think when we say we want it to be a self, we want it to have something like an individual will, a general will. Right. Is this can understand it's. It's unsatisfying. And as we'll find out in these sections, the satisfaction involves the fact that an individual can just think of something and then do it and act. But a government is. You've got counselors, you've got the leader, you've got all these mechanisms that gum up the works and that don't. That. That aren't. Don't as immediately connect thought and action or willing and action. I think like that's the idea. We wish that government and state power would act more as if it were an individual person, more as if it were an individual individuality that might be part of it.

43:09 Seth: I think I've got a separate feeling here. So if you tie kind of connect 503 and 504, he says, he talks about service, heroism, right, virtue, sacrifice. And in the same way that we were talking before about culture kind of having not a form of actual culture, not being actual, but then the actions of the individual in conforming to culture, actualized culture, service to the state, particularly in battle, right. Death and battle kind of thing. A service to the state he's talking about here, he says the state power, however, which was at first only the universal in thought, the in itself comes through this very process.

The universal in existence, actual power. This actually is only in the actual obedience which it gets through self conscious Judging of the state power to be the essence, blah blah. And through the free sacrifice of self consciousness to it. So I'm not sure why we had to go through the whole thing about judgment and good and bad to get here. But individual makes the self conscious determination to sacrifice themselves to the state is what gives the state state power. You know, moves as he says, from being like a substance. Right. It's not so much.

It's not becoming a self west necessarily but it's. This is how it becomes actual.

44:33 Wes: Yeah. The self stuff is in 505. We're going to get to that. But.

44:36 Seth: Yeah, but only if people believe in. Only if people sacrifice themselves for the state does the state have any existence?

44:45 Mark: Yes. Does the state have a will?

44:47 Seth: Well, existence. Sorry, I'm. Reality is what I meant to say.

44:51 Mark: I mean that's. Those amount to the same thing.

44:53 Seth: Yeah.

44:54 Wes: Yeah. So let's move to 505. Right. Here's where he emphasizes that state power is not actually a particular will because

45:01 Mark: the individuals have only sacrificed their outer existence to the state. Right. They obey. So only my body is doing what the state requires, but not their intrinsic being. So that seemed to be the difference between you said. I don't know why we went through this whole intermediate stage because it seemed like he was just recapitulating what we said at the beginning of this discussion today. But I think there is a difference between. I'm an inchoate self. I need to embrace culture and give myself to culture in order to become self versus hey, now that I'm a self, I need to sacrifice my personal wealth and enjoyment to the state, my bodily autonomy to the state to make the state something real. In that case. Right. I'm still not giving my complete inner being here.

45:44 Wes: I mean he mentions two things here. One is that the haughty. What he calls the haughty vassal. Right. It sounds like their activity is predicated on honor from people in general. Less than an in a relationship with the individual Lord. One of gratitude. Right. I'm doing things not because the I'm inserting lord, by the way. So just you could call it state power but not out of gratitude, but out of honor to people in general. And the other, the other thing he mentions is that right. The haughty vassal wills on behalf of state power. But that doesn't mean state power has its own will.

So there's nothing here we have not yet helped an individuality into being for self. It seems to me this is a way of saying that state power is not a subjectivity. It's not an individuality. It doesn't have its own individual will. And maybe, maybe we're on the path to setting up here an actual monarch or someone who can perform that function. And that's kind of my impression from the secondary literature.

46:44 Seth: So at the beginning of 506, it says, state power, therefore still lacks a will with which to oppose counsel. Which is the haughty vassal, is this right?

46:55 Wes: The haughty vassal is an advisor.

46:57 Seth: Advisor. Somebody who acts on behalf of state power and the power to decide which of the different opinions is best for the general good. This is something it lacks. It is not yet a good government, and yet therefore not yet, in truth, an actual state power.

47:11 Mark: Yeah, the actual state power has to mediate between all these different counselors who are invariably advising something that is in their interest.

47:19 Seth: All right, so this is what I

47:21 Wes: love about Hegel, by the way, the thing I've been calling state power for pages is not actually state power.

47:26 Seth: No, it's not yet where I get. It's not yet state power, Wes.

47:30 Wes: It's only implicitly state power. And soon it's going to be explicitly state anyway. Go ahead.

47:36 Seth: Yeah, no, but that was exactly. I was just like, why have we gone through all of this nonsense up to here? And it's like, oh, okay, so the focus of this section, the thing that we're trying to bring to consciousness and be in reality and existence, so to speak, is state power. And so all this stuff we've been talking about is, like, necessary for state power to get to the point that it needs to get to. So he can use it to launch to whatever the next phase of. Of things is. So I thought we were talking about individual consciousness, but really the focus here is on this universal substance, this collective.

48:17 Wes: Well, we might be talking about both. I mean, I was thinking of ways in which we could think of this as an internal psychology and relationship between, like, superego and. Not that we need to go into that, but it's worth reflection. But yeah, explicitly, it's about. Yeah, the government and state power.

48:34 Seth: You think he's setting up the use of state power to let you know, for the individual to take the next step. But at least right now, it looks like the individual is helping the state power, the universal, take the next step. Anyway, let's get him there.

48:50 Wes: You know, by the time we get to the end of this at 510, I think the idea is right. State power is not yet a self with a will or power of decision. And the obedience is getting. Is not yet something that is more than simply a matter of honor. I. So I think we got to move beyond honor. It is in order to solidify state power. And I think state power will become a self.

49:14 Seth: Right, that's what I was going to ask. Does state power? Is the state power, when it becomes a self, is it a government?

49:20 Mark: Is that. Yes.

49:21 Seth: Okay.

49:22 Wes: And particular monarch. Right.

49:25 Mark: I mean, we can talk about whether it has to be, but typically, yes, it's going to be one person who's making a decision between the various interest groups and type of counsel. So the final point to just hint at, and then maybe we can start with this in earnest with our next full discussion is in 508. This language is what's required for all this. So this was already implicit in saying we call something good, we call something bad. But he is explicit here that language alone expresses the I the self. So all this stuff back in lordship and bondage, even in the emergence of spirit proper, in this, this Garden of Eden type of thing, none of that had explicit discussion.

Of course, you know, Antigone, they're using language to talk to each other, but here we, we get the first, you know, actual emergence, I think, in this book of you have to talk to do this stuff. I guess you could have all this sort of sense of self and a sense of science, solidarity and living in harmony and even getting alienated from your culture. But until you have language, then you don't have. You're not at this stage yet where you're working out the difference between state power and wealth.

50:41 Wes: We can't truly be for others without language. Right. We can't, as we'll say, disclose our inner existence to others. We're just a black box. And he even rules out, you know, he acknowledges things like facial expressions and body language, but he's specifically. Specifically means spoken language. So there's no master slave dialectic. There's no rec. Such thing as recognition, in other words, because all this is happening through honor. This is why languages and very. And recognition are important anyway.

51:11 Mark: The.

51:11 Wes: The medium of recognition and honor is language. Without it, you know, we don't get this.

51:16 Seth: It's also the actualization of the abstract that is you. It's the concretization in the same way that human action turns culture, like, into reality. Your use of words is what creates your identity in some respect.

51:34 Mark: Yeah, and this goes back to when we first considered that first sense, certainty becoming perception. And he said, well, once you call, you know, you refer to something as that, and you're trying to just point out. It is an individual thing. Well, you're using at least the way we are describing, you're using the word that you're using a universal. And I said, well, wait a second. Language doesn't come this early. Well, okay, here's where language actually comes. And when you refer to the I, you are trying to refer to the you that is uniquely you. But the I is a universal. So you're referring to yourself universally as a person in very exactly the same way.

52:16 Wes: But we wouldn't be perceivable to others except as universal.

52:19 Seth: Yes.

52:20 Wes: All right.

52:20 Mark: All right. Let's call it a day. Thanks, everybody. So, yes, we have one more full discussion. So two. Another two hours, but one more full discussion and then Dylan will rejoin us. We would Love your support. PartiallyExaminedLife.com support is the way to do that. You can email us pelshleyexaminedlife.com or communicate with us through Patreon through our website, partiallydevinlife. Com by commenting on the blog post associated with this episode, say, or through Facebook or Twitter, et cetera. Thanks, everybody, and good night.

52:52 Seth: Thanks. Good night.