Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten

I'd put a title here if I could think of one

To coin a phrase, I've not been feeling at all blog.

This is something I'm very happy about. What it means is that I'm getting some real thinking and reading done. I don't find that real thinking and reading translate at all well into the curious kind of publicness proper to the webblog form.

Truth be known, I've been struggling with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (again). The old Prussian hasn't been making things easy; nevertheless, I'm not about to present you with my difficulties. Even assuming that you've read and overcome the passages in question--and it does seem to be a question of overcoming or of being overcome--what could I gain by having the riddles solved for me? Or what, conversely, could you possibly gain from being presented with the few solutions that I have managed to piece together (unless, perhaps, you've attempted solutions and they are significantly different to mine)?

(Still, I have this advice to those beginning to read the Phenomenology--as I do each and every semester break, as it seems: pay very close attention to the finely nuanced distinctions between what at first might appear to be synonomous terms. If you're not careful you could be fooled into thinking that Hegel has the same object in mind each time, when in fact different modes or manifestations of the `same' object, and hence, in a sense, different objects are meant. Reaching for the corresponding passage in the Encyclopaedia or the Logic can sometimes help elucidate the distinctions.)

It occurs to me that--as far as my contributions are concerned--this blog represents a barometer measuring the pressure applied to the objects of my efforts elsewhere. It's an inverse relation: more posts here would equal less real work there. This theorem is borne out by the number of my past posts which, in accordance with the grunge fashion going back to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, whine and agonise in the face of acts that instead they really ought to be carrying out directly. "Dear Blog, I've been neglecting you again. Let me tell you about it..."

posted by mh @ 6:12 PM