Hey! Go to sleep hoping that someone other than me will write something on the Introduction to Hegel’s Science of Logic, wake up, and find that they have! A body could get used to this…
Mikhail Emelianov from Perverse Egalitarianism has gotten us started with some comments on the distinctions Hegel makes between his own approach, and more typical treatments of logic, draws attention to Hegel’s ever-present sensitivity to the relation of form and content, and raises the difficult question of how to understand theological themes in Hegel’s work, with particular reference to recurrent metaphors of redemption and reviving the dead (a favourite theme of mine from Marx, as well).
I’m off to the library for the day, so no detailed comments from my end yet. Just wanted to post the pointer, and get the discussion under way.
Updated 5 Jan: Updated to add that, as promised, Mikhail has supplemented his original post. I hope to pick up on some of Mikhail’s points soon, but just wanted to point folks to the new post for the moment, and bump this thread back to the top of the blog.
Posts so far in the summer Hegel discussion (even if we can’t get you to Australia, Mikhail, I’m formally inducting you into our season… warm thoughts, at least, headed your way from Melbourne…):
Hegel’s Science of Logic: Introduction, Perverse Egalitarianism, Mikhail Emelianov
Introduction (Some More Random Observations), Perverse Egalitarianism, Mikhail Emelianov
With What Must the New Year Begin? – Rough Theory, N. Pepperell, on “With What Must the Science Begin”
being on different sides of the planet might be good for this reading exercise, i’ll add more on the introduction later tonight (for me) and hopefully i won’t be the only one to point out some interesting issues Hegel deals with – but i hope this gets things going a bit…
I know that locally a number of people are still away on break, and it also can take a bit for people to gear up for discussion – it may be that early posts sit for a little bit, while people lurk and read on for a while. But it’s good to get things simmering… And hopefully others will dive in as they can.
[...] January 4, 2008 by Mikhail Emelianov [The beginning is here and more still here.] [...]
Hey NP
About ten years ago I wrote something in the vicinity of 18,000 words on the intro and the post-intro (”With what must the science begin”) to the science of logic.
I’m guessing that that might be a bit more than you’re after here….
Don’t have a great deal of net access at the moment, but I’ll see what I can do about contributing sometime in the near future.
Cheers
Hey rob – good to hear from you! I’m sure the discussion will continue for a while, and will revisit earlier sections as well – happy to have you contributing when you can.
If you’d like, I can set up a posting account for you (similar to what I’ve done for L Magee), so that you have a bit more control over how your post displays, and don’t have to post in the comments. For longer content, this can work a bit better, as you can save as you go, and edit more easily. You can also “serialise” content over several posts, if you want to say more than seems good for one post (my normal “substantive” blog posts are around 2000-3000 words, with the occasional 5000-word sprawl – much beyond this, and it starts getting past what I feel I can comfortably hold in my head at one time, so I figure it’s also beyond what readers can comfortably digest…).
Let me know – posting accounts are easily done.