Category Archives: Arts

Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770–1831

GEORG HEGEL was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tübingen, and, after graduation, he became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought. His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807. Many of his ideas were developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology. The book and text is far from systematic and is generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars, and scientific discoveries, as an objective and idealistic self-developing Spirit or Mind.  

Hegel is a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand. For a beginner with next to no grounding in the Greek logic of Aristotle and the later works of Descartes, Hume and Locke it is probably a forlorn task best left until the fundamentals of philosophy are mastered. Being able to comprehend what he writes requires a grasp of at least the basics. Hegel still causes frustration among academics and one of the philosophers that give the discipline its forbidding reputation.

For example, in his book Hegel, Edward Caird writes: “But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel… and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.”

To have any chance of understanding Hegel one must first come to terms with the principle of the dialectic method. This is a type of argument or discussion between two or more opposing viewpoints whereupon the outcome or truth can be distilled. As the mechanism for this process Hegel proposed variations on the three “classical laws of thought” – that is, the law of identity (essentially “truths” that are taken to be self-evident), and the laws of [non]contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Paraphrasing these last two suggests respectively that contradictory statements cannot both be true but that either proposition must be true. This is the kind of difficulty that any student of philosophy will be faced with.

Hegelian dialectics is based upon four concepts:

. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

. Everything is composed of contradictions (opposing forces).

. Gradual changes lead to crisis or turning points when one force overcomes its opposing force (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).

. Change is helical (spiral), not circular.

In summary, Hegel believed that when our minds become fully conscious, awakened, or enlightened, we will have a perfect understanding of reality. In short, our thoughts about reality, and reality itself, will be the same. He argues this by showing that the mind goes through an evolution on its way to what he calls “absolute spirit”.

Because Hegel’s philosophy requires a journey it can be seen that it is the process and not just the result that is important. A struggle exists between one viewpoint (or thesis) to which there might exist one or more opposing viewpoints (or antithesis). A process of debate or connected dispute such as revolution or war might lead to a higher level of understanding (or synthesis) to which another antithesis might emerge and thus the process towards truth will continue. This is a Hegelian description of all history as an inevitable progression towards truth. It is complex and a difficult area of study.

Hegel’s mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right-wing political thought. Marx drew influence from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. Yet, this is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in Phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century.

. Hegel on Reason and Experience

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”

Standard
Arts, Books, Psychology

Book Review: ‘The Truth About Lies’

LITERARY REVIEW

“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies,” are lyrics sang by Fleetwood Mac in 1987. And my, have people delivered. Donald Trump is said to have told a staggering 30,573 lies while in office. Boris Johnson, as we know, can be wholly economical with the truth. Being serially lied to can seriously damage relationships and friendships are often irreparable when the truth emerges.

Aja Raden, an American writer, however, sees lies as a completely normal part of life, something to be understood rather than condemned.

She says that human beings have evolved to tell lies, and that our children only start operating in the real world when they have mastered the ability to tell untruths. There’s no one who doesn’t lie occasionally.

The nub of her argument is that for someone to lie successfully, there needs to be someone else who swallows that lie hook, line and sinker. Think of the last piece of really juicy gossip you were told. It is unlikely you checked whether it was true or not before you started disseminating it yourself. You’ll understand the ripple effect this has and the damage that untruths can leave in its wake.

Over nine hugely entertaining chapters, Raden describes in detail outrageous stories of several classic cons, illustrating the mechanisms by which they all work. She uses both contemporary and historical examples.

At its core, is the question, ‘Why do people believe what they believe?’

We blindly trust certain facts: things we’re taught, things we can observe, and those things which we can work out for ourselves. Once we “know” these things, we never really question them again. It’s called an honesty bias.

Raden writes: “Without this tendency to trust, to assume, to simply believe, every human on earth would be born starting from scratch, unable to benefit from the knowledge of the collective.”

Yet it’s the “honesty bias” that allows us to be fooled by conmen, serially lying friends and unscrupulous U.S. presidents. Our strength, as so often is written, is also our weakness.

The author begins with what she calls the Big Lie, in which the untruth is so enormous that to disbelieve it actually threatens our sense of collective reality.

She cites the example of Gregor MacGregor, a broke Scottish aristocrat of the early 19th century who joined the Royal Navy in search of fame and fortune.

He became a mercenary in central America, where he claimed to have chanced upon the magical kingdom of Poyais, a land of plenty brimming with untapped natural resources.

Returning to London he sold shares in Poyais to the great and good, and persuaded seven boatloads of men, women and children to relocate there to make their fortunes.

When they arrived, they soon discovered Poyais did not exist, that there was just the Mosquito Coast of central America, short on untapped resources but swarming with mosquitoes.

Most of them perished through disease, but when a few survivors of the trip returned to tell their stories, MacGregor absconded to Paris, where he told the same Big Lie again – and sold more shares in something that did not exist.

Next up in the narration is the Shell Game, the street hustle whereby you must guess which of three shells on a table has a ball underneath it.

The ball has meanwhile been removed by sleight of hand so the answer is “none of them”, but by then you have already lost your stake you put down on the one you thought it might be. Raden explains that we don’t “see” everything we think we see; our brains will fill in the gaps.

This is how so much stage magic works, persuading you that you are seeing what you haven’t seen, and that you haven’t seen what you might well have seen but not processed.

In later chapters, she looks at the Guru Con, at the way Rasputin befuddled the House of Romanov in pre-revolutionary Russia, the pyramid schemes of Bernie Madoff and bitcoin; and the selling of snake oil as a patent medicine in the Wild West (which went on long after supplies of genuine snake oil had run out).

Standard
Arts, Books, History, Literature

Book Review: The Turning Point

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: A tale of one city . . . and the year that changed not just Charles Dickens but London, too

IN 1851, London was a city of dense and persistent fog, of foul acrid smells and, for a large swathe of the population, of extreme poverty and deprivation.

The capital was also a place of vibrant energy and opportunity and a growing sense of its own importance.

One topic dominated conversation that year: the opening of the Great Exhibition, masterminded by Prince Albert to highlight Britain’s dominant position in the industrial world.

Through this pulsing, crowded and malodorous city strode Charles Dickens, the most famous writer in the English-speaking world. By the age of 38, he had already written eight hugely successful novels including The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, and yet, for all his professional success, his private life was about to enter choppy waters.

This engrossing book subtitled The Year That Changed Dickens And The World, shows how, by 1851, Dickens was more than just a novelist. He was also “one of the busiest men in London… playwright, actor, social campaigner, journalist, editor, philanthropist.”

Much of Dickens’s boundless energy was inspired by the city. Although he called it “vile” and would sometimes go to quieter places like Broadstairs in Kent to write, he couldn’t bear to be away too long either, saying: “A day in London sets me up again and starts me.”

TWO

DICKENS was a father of nine in 1851, apparently a rather semi-detached one. His relationship with his shy and sweet-natured wife, Kate, was increasingly shaky. After giving birth to so many children in the space of 13 years she was, hardly surprisingly, permanently exhausted, and often depressed.

That spring, the family suffered a double blow. Two weeks after the death of Dickens’s father John, their youngest child, eight-month-old Dora, died suddenly after suffering convulsions. Dickens was overwhelmed with grief and deeply anxious about breaking the news to his fragile wife, who was undergoing a rest cure in Malvern.

Whilst he wrote sympathetically and lovingly to Kate, he remarked to a friend that this shock might even do her good: a chilling foreshadowing of his later attempt, when their marriage broke down, to have Kate sent to a mental asylum.

The death of Dora did nothing to slow down Dickens’s prodigious work output and, like most Londoners, he was intrigued by the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations” which opened in May in Hyde Park. The huge glass building itself was a source of wonder, the brainchild of Joseph Paxton.

The atmosphere before the opening of the Great Exhibition sounds like that of London before the 2012 Olympics – intense excitement, and dread that it would go horribly wrong.

When it was finally opened by Queen Victoria, the Crystal Palace was revealed to be crammed with 133,000 exhibits including the enormous Koh-i-Noor diamond, a steam-powered envelope-making machine, collapsible pianos, and a can of boiled mutton, designed to be taken on a polar exhibition.

Dickens’s work was also represented, with statues of two of his most famous characters: Oliver Twist and Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop. However, they couldn’t compete with the popularity of the exciting new flushing toilets in the “retiring rooms”. Eager visitors paid a penny to use them, giving rise to the adage “to spend a penny”.

Not everyone was entranced by it, including Dickens. He grumbled that “I don’t say ‘there’s nothing in it’ – there’s too much.” The future textile designer, 17-year-old William Morris, was so appalled by the vulgarity of it all that he staggered from the building and was sick in the bushes.

But the Great Exhibition was a triumph and crowds poured in from all over Britain. The profits from it went towards the purchase of 87 acres of land in South Kensington. It was here where the Victoria and Albert, the Natural History and Science Museums, Imperial College and the Royal Albert Hall were built. Above all, it was the event that cemented Britain’s position as the world’s leading industrial economy.

THREE

AS IT wound down, Dickens was edging towards writing a new book, Bleak House.

With its twisty plot, pointed social commentary and not one but two unreliable narrators, Bleak House was, says Douglas-Fairhurst, “the greatest fictional experiment of his career.” It was one of the earliest examples of a detective story.

The book is full of nuggets. 1851 was the first-time young women were recorded wearing trousers (or “bloomers”) – in Harrogate of all places. It was also the first-time terms such as “carbohydrate”, “police state” and “science fiction” were widely used.

Although the author focuses on just one year of the writer’s life, Charles Dickens comes over as a deeply complex character: warm, generous, and compassionate yet also overbearing, pompous and selfish. His life was so crammed with incident that you could argue that almost any year was some sort of turning point for him. But that is a very minor quibble about a splendidly enjoyable book.

– The Turning Point by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is published by Cape, 368pp

. Appendage

– Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s title begs several questions, for there were many turning points in Dickens’s life. The first came in 1824 when his father was incarcerated in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison. Dickens’s mother and younger siblings moved in with his father, but Dickens, aged 12, was sent to work among, as he recalled, “common labouring boys” in Warren’s blacking warehouse. It was a humiliation he never forgot or forgave, and the dilapidated, rat-infested warehouse came back to him in nightmares all his life. As a junior clerk in a law firm he was crazy about the theatre and yearned to be an actor.
Standard