Hangovers with Hegel

I woke up this morning with a hangover, and decided to continue reading my book on the philosopher, Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831)

Hegel definitely put together a voluminous master system. And of course, there is danger behind such attempts at being all-encompassing. Marx picked up and used his philosophy.

Hegel was a German philosopher in the tradition of Idealism. The mind is the only reality. It's opposite would be materialism, matter is the only reality. I don't quite understand how Marxism involves materialism when Hegel is an idealist.

I am generally against anything that further divorces the unity of mind and body, even against dualism. Hegel is definitely of value and interesting, however, and probably serves to counterbalance materialism.

My favorite parts are from the Phenomenology of mind (or spirit depending on translation). There are references to the "universal mind," reminiscent of the lyrics of the doors song, which makes me think Morrison read Hegel. During Hegel's journey tracing the history of consciousness, he finds that individual minds must realize they are part of the universal mind, and are not free insofar as they are dominated by desire and other coercion. This was reminiscent of William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) and the doors of perception. "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

My reading and commenting on Hegel is not to say that I am particularly aligned with his beliefs or ideas. In fact, the only reason I am even reading Hegel is to understand Kierkegaard's frequent references to him.

One potentially positive product of Hegel's thought would be the idea that people, or at least minds, are intimately connected. Which reminds me of Heidegger's being-with-others, and would seem to lead to corollaries with modern new age ideas of intention and visualization. But far from being mystical, Hegel is touting the virtues of reason.

On an interesting and related note, through watching Ken Burn's PBS special on the Brooklyn Bridge (completed in 1883 can you believe it?) I learned that Roebling, the German born designer of the bridge, "...studied under famous German philosopher George Hegel. Roebling became Hegel's protege, and completed a 2000 page treatise on his concept of the universe."
quote from Wikipedia entry on John Roebling.

Profluence, Synchronicity

Two words I'm hard pressed to find exact definitions for. Profluence, I've lifted from the novelist and teacher John Gardner, used to describe the unfolding-in-time, causal chain of events that needs to be demonstrated in good fiction.

Synchronicity, I've lifted from Carl Jung. It ties in with Wayne Dyer's philosophy as well.
And, I assume it is fairly self-evident what it means, so I won't even attempt to define it.

I had just completed reading the first novel I've read by John Gardner, Nickel Mountain, after having completed Gardner's Becoming a Novelist, and being halfway-through his The Art of Fiction. All of these comments by Gardner regarding fiction, and what makes for interesting fiction (maintaining the "vivid and continuous dream" in the reader's mind), had got me thinking about fiction and life.

So many things, big and small, in my life have made their appearance at the exact right time. As if we are prepared for things to come. Probably everyone has had the experience of learning something new, and then days, or seconds later, coming across an example of what they just learned about. Part of this, no doubt, can be explained by the fact that we do not notice what we do not know.

But then again, there is a deeper sense of strangeness, that often attends these events. Perhaps a Heideggerian spirit of the times moves over a period, or a place and things congregate. At any rate, here is one of the small Synchronous stories that happened to me this afternoon.


Having taken pictures of an old Mission in San Diego, I had decided to send them via US mail to my Aunt. After digging around
for a proper envelope to send the CD and some papers in, I resigned myself to not having what I needed. Then, going into my room, on the top of my trash can, was an shipping envelope, of just the right size. It was padded like I needed, and then I noticed that it had two uncancelled stamps on it. Lo and behold, the postage scale in my house confirmed it had the exact postage. Synchronicity.

...but back to the idea of profluence in fiction. Is this a case of life imitating fiction, or fiction imitating life? Often the events in my life are lived out like a novel. We are prepared beforehand for events later to come, as if the author was preparing the reader for events in a later chapter.

And a vague, dreamlike idea on this note as well - if life is novel-like, I had the distinct sense that life is like free-falling from a great height - in the sense that you probably do not know the answers, cannot fully plumb the depths of meaning - until the last few moments before impacting the ground. Like reviewing one's life upon a deathbed, looking back, weighing it in the scales. You cannot judge a book by its cover, but you have to read clear through the last chapter before closing the cover and contemplating the meaning.

Even though witnessing strange events like I describe can make one see that things are meaningful - that is - not by chance, they cannot reveal what their meaning is at this point in time.

(For anyone interested in for more explanation of profluence in fiction, read more here. A webpage from some unknown (to me), fellow blogger.

In the World with Others

The following is a quote that a friend gave me:


"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music--the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."

~Henry Miller

One of the things I admire the most about the philosophy of Heidegger, is the notion of this Being or Dasein, the idea that we are always and from the start already with the people, places, times and objects of our shared world. This is Mitsein, Being-with.

There is no Cartesian impasse; we are not ghosts in the machines of a body, we are not prisoners to our subjective (and rational) consciousness. Res Cogitans and Res Extensa, Descartes Ontological categories are mistaken.
(see http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/r9.htm)

There is no need to create an intellectual, rational bridge from us to the world, to others. We don't need to kick and worry how to escape from a cocoon.

Although I admire them, psychologists and authors such as Rollo May, Carl Rogers, and Binswanger are simply on the way towards Being. Binswanger felt he needed to supplement Heidegger's notion of Care with one of love. Medard Boss understood Heidegger perfectly.

Attunement

One of the more important ideas I discovered from the existential philosopher Heidegger, an idea more fully flushed out in its significance by the Psychologist Medard Boss, who used Heidegger's philosophy, is that of Attunement.

For example:
A man who is starving can only see in the world all those things which correspond to his hunger, to the extent that the things in his environment reveal themselves to him, they are likely to reveal only their edible qualities, for instance. For his existence is attuned to hunger, and this is the way his Da-sein (Being) is open to the world.

Medard Boss puts these ideas to excellent use to explain the meaning of dreams, in contrast to Freudian theory which involves completely hypothetical and unrealistic assumptions - such as creating a dream censor that decides what content to "filter out." (so is there a little man in our heads, then, deciding for us? The paradox of an "unaware awareness.")

I will leave you with a few of my own reflections along this line of thought, which has been fruitful to me: It is impossible to remain in a state (attunement) of anxiety when you make efforts to be in a state of love, or Care (another fundamental concept itself for Heidegger).

If I have found anything to be the polar opposite of anxiety, it is Care and Love.

It is along the lines of this notion of "Attunement," that I relate Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention to Heidegger's existential philosophy. From Dyer;
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

Dyer immediately makes the leap to suggest that our attunement (he does not use the term himself) has an effect of drawing certain things closer or farther from us, and therefore advises things such as remaining in a state of constant gratitude. I see the reasoning behind his thinking, and in a sense it is well-known and common; ie "What you fear finds you." However, I have not quite yet arrived at the conclusion myself from the standpoint of Understanding, e.g. the process by which our existence can repel or attract things that are usually viewed as being quite separate from our "thoughts," such as money, being in a certain place etc.

If we can bring what we desire into our lives simply by the way we exist, more specifically by paying attention to the way we exist, the way we choose to live in and see the world, the potential is unlimited for attracting all the good things we want into our lives.