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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:01.231)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Thomas Ray Smith, lecturer in philosophy at the Bard College in Berlin. And we're talking about his book, Hegel and the Problem of the History of Philosophy, the Logical Structure of Exemplarity. Dr. Ray Smith, wonderful to have you on today.
Thomas Raysmith (00:19.377)
Thank you for having me.
PJ Wehry (00:21.617)
So Dr. Ray Smith, why this book? Yeah, mean, Hegel constantly attracts another book like you felt like you had something to add. Why this book on Hegel?
Thomas Raysmith (00:35.522)
Yeah, obviously there is a wealth of books on Hegel out there. I'm particularly interested in methodologies in philosophy. Oftentimes you find in, for instance,
some strains of analytic philosophy, there isn't really a concern with methodology, but rather with making claims, providing arguments for those claims. But not with, for instance, seeing how those claims link together with other more distant claims and whether they also accord with the methodologies that the philosophers in making them are applying. So I'm particularly interested in
methodologies of philosophy, and methodologies of doing history of philosophy. So I'm concerned with questions concerning whether there can indeed be a history of philosophy. So some people have a particular picture of philosophy or a definition of philosophy. Then they might go on to talk about the history of philosophy, the history of ideas. But the definition
seems to exclude the possibility of there being a history of philosophy. Hegel was particularly sensitive to this problem. He wasn't the first by any means, and indeed people around his time in Germany were concerned with the question of whether there can be a history of philosophy and what sort of conception of philosophy you need to have in order for that possibility to be there. And one of those people
is Kant and famously Kant, but also Schelling and Fichte and then some lesser known figures like Reinholdt, popularizer of Kant's philosophy and people like Fuleborn. But Hegel really does concern himself with this question. How can there be a history of philosophy? What sort of conception of philosophy do we need to have such that history is possible? Because he thinks that there is a history.
Thomas Raysmith (02:57.934)
And so he makes this question quite explicit in his lectures on history of philosophy. He brings up the question of the history of philosophy many times in other works as well. And I was just trying to really get clear on what his conception of philosophy is and how it makes a history of philosophy possible because he thinks it does. And they're
They're
The more I read, the more I realized that there hadn't been, I mean, there are some people working on this, but it seems to be a relatively overlooked area of Hegel's philosophy, which is interesting because he lectured on the history of philosophy many, many times. he was particularly concerned with trying to explain what's going on in the history of philosophy.
PJ Wehry (03:46.713)
Yeah. Yeah.
Thomas Raysmith (04:00.28)
There is a lot of focus on his lectures on history philosophy, but not on the question of how there can be a history philosophy.
PJ Wehry (04:06.319)
that not what he was using his work for other than what he was attempting to do. If you don't mind just to kind of set up before we move to talking about Hegel, if we get set this up a little bit, what would be a kind classic example? Because on the face of it, I don't think most people would understand the claim that there couldn't be a history of philosophy. What would be an argument? What's one of the more famous arguments? if you
want to go to two, that's fine. That would exclude the history of philosophy.
Thomas Raysmith (04:41.422)
So perhaps the best one to mention here is Kant's conception of philosophy. I this is the one I talk about in the book. So with an asterisk, because at one point, Kant does countenance the possibility of a history of philosophy. But in his critical works, so the critiques, he
outlines this conception of philosophy according to which philosophy is essentially just a set of ahistorical, a priori principles. And if that is all philosophy is, if it is just a set of a priori principles, then there is no history. It's an a priori structure and that's it.
It's static as well. So it's not developmental. It's just a set of propositions that are static. So while there might be for Kant a history of philosophizing, that is attempts at developing a system of propositions, because those propositions aren't the propositions he comes up with,
they're essentially misguided and they are just ideas. They're not, they're not actually, adding to the system of philosophy. so for Kant, there's a history of philosophizing, but there is no history of philosophy. Philosophy is limited to his critical system. and it's just a set of metaphysical a priori propositions that he hits on, and he thinks he hits on, you know,
PJ Wehry (06:38.693)
So if you don't mind me talking through this a little bit, the so this is where he'll talk about what you're referencing is him kind of talking about like the history of metaphysics and he talks about metaphysics kind of in a derogatory tone, right? People. And with this so for in his mind, it'd be like we have histories of mathematics, but you don't have to study the history of mathematics. Like it's more like a
It's a special interest, know, it's kind of like a niche interest, but it has nothing to do with the actual practice of mathematics. that cut? Would that be a way of thinking about it?
Thomas Raysmith (07:18.092)
To begin with, could be, yeah. So there's a difference here though, in that we would often talk about, mean, mathematics is a good example, but maybe the history of science will make things a little clearer. Oftentimes we can talk about, I mean, I teach the history of science and we can talk about the history of science. And often it's when we teach that or think about that, we're thinking about the history of a practice.
PJ Wehry (07:33.786)
Yeah.
Thomas Raysmith (07:47.246)
or something. And it clearly has a history there, right? People engaged in one common project, perhaps. mean, there are varying projects, there seems to be, because it can be accounted for in terms of a practice or a project, there's a history to that project. And of course, you don't need to study the history of science.
it might help, but you could just dive right in, right, and study contemporary science. But philosophy, but Kant just is this static set of principles. That's all philosophy is. And he thinks that these principles are derived from human reason, which has certain fundamental principles. And he thinks that there's only one human reason. It's all
It's always the same. So then the propositions that you derive from it, if you give a proper analysis of human reason will always be the same propositions and they'll, they'll be this set of a priori, a historical propositions. And there is no, because philosophy in that respect is not regarded as a project, but as a, but as a system, a static system, it has no history.
But philosophizing or the project of coming up with a philosophy or trying to hit on these principles of reason, that has a history. But Kant thinks that's not a history of philosophy. That's just a history of philosophizing. It's a history of a project. But the project is distinct. The project that aims at developing a philosophy, that is distinct from philosophy itself.
And he is derogatory about the history of metaphysics, you're right. he, I think, explaining why that's the case also helps explain why there's no history of philosophy. He thinks basically that the history of metaphysics is a history of failed attempts, right? He calls them like ruined edifices or something, you know, that that history is made up of ruined edifices. so it's, it's,
PJ Wehry (09:44.907)
Yeah
Thomas Raysmith (10:12.566)
It's more like a history of ideas, but they're not hitting on any truths. They're not getting at the truth. And philosophy is supposed to get at the truth, whatever that truth is. But because they don't get that truth, they're not really philosophy. It's just a history of failed ideas. And that's distinct from philosophy itself.
PJ Wehry (10:34.863)
Because philosophy isn't a failure, it's a complete system. Yeah, that makes total sense. So one, thank you. Very gracious setting that up. You're obviously here to talk about Hegel. let me ask you now that we've kind of set the stage for what Hegel is working against, what is he attempting to do in his lectures and his works on the history of philosophy?
Thomas Raysmith (10:37.518)
Exactly.
Thomas Raysmith (10:47.374)
Yeah.
Thomas Raysmith (11:04.334)
Good question. What is he attempting to do? I think he's...
Thomas Raysmith (11:12.268)
Maybe the best way of setting this up is to point out the reason that Hegel thinks philosophy has a history. So for Hegel, philosophy is the expression of something, which I will no doubt get into as we go along. But this thing is the idea, what he calls the idea.
but philosophy is the expression of the idea in the element of human conceptual thought, particularly, more specifically, human thought that is about human thought. So it's reflexive and self-reflexive. and Hegel thinks that human conceptual thought is always,
It's always historically determined and situated, culturally and historically determined and situated. We build our concepts from previous concepts. We critique previous concepts and come up with new ones. We refine them, know, basic refinement. can note in the sciences or in biology in particular, you know, what certain species are, the definitions get refined over time.
So for Hegel, human conceptual thought is always historically determined and situated. And that means because philosophy is always in the element of human conceptual thought, it is always historically determined and situated, culturally and historically determined and situated. And I think what he's trying to do in the lectures on history of philosophy is give an account of the process of determination of
human conceptual thought. There's a bit more to it than that. You know, what he's trying to, once you look at the logic and you see what philosophy is for Hegel, what's supposed to be expressed, I think he's trying to then also show that it is in all cases, an expression of the idea that we can get into that.
PJ Wehry (13:33.478)
Sure. So I think for some people who are not familiar with Hegel's thought, I know that this is what I was originally taught when I first heard about Hegel. The first thing everyone brings up, and I've heard is a classic misconception, is the thesis, antithesis, synthesis process. And they're like, that's Hegel's main thing. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that is actually the foundation of Hegel's thought.
How does that, how did that misconception kind of start? did the, can you talk us through why that might not be the case?
Thomas Raysmith (14:03.502)
It's not the case. Yeah. How it began, was a derogatory depiction of Hegel's philosophy. It was an oversimplified
picture of Hegel's philosophy. I'm sure there'll be some Hegelians who, if I get this wrong, will correct me. But I think it may have been Schopenhauer, not a fan of Hegel. And it was essentially supposed to sort of point out the ridiculousness of Hegel's philosophy. But it is highly inaccurate. I mean, it's just not the case that
as you progress through Hegel's work, always find thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Sometimes you find, I mean, particularly in the logic, first of all, I don't think the logic is really putting forward thesis. It's just a logical structure showing itself. So it's inaccurate for that reason. But also what you often find is that
you get some determination, some bestimmung in the logic. And then it's not even the case that it's antithesis or it's the directly opposed determination arises from it, but more like a contrary determination or something. then while
It is true that in the logic, the later determinations always sort of sublate the former determinations, take up negates preserve in some fashion. It's not always the case that it's a synthesis of so called thesis and antithesis.
Thomas Raysmith (16:21.646)
Yeah, it's often a new determination. It doesn't come from nothing, but it's sort of a new determination altogether. It's not simply just a combination or a synthesis of previous determinations.
PJ Wehry (16:23.173)
You
PJ Wehry (16:36.321)
And I might be barking up the wrong tree entirely. Feel free to ignore this question. Would it be helpful to talk about the distinction between sublation and synthesis?
Thomas Raysmith (16:49.452)
We can if you like, yeah sure.
PJ Wehry (16:51.577)
Yeah, that might, cause I think, cause when you talk about it, it's sublating it. It's like, they go into it, isn't that synthesizing? But I feel like there is, there is a difference there. Would defining those two be helpful?
Thomas Raysmith (17:04.781)
Sure, yeah. So sublation, to sublate, it's to take something up. So it's got a dual sense. It's sort of to take something up and cancel it, but also to take something up and preserve it. And so what happens in the logic is that
you find that
early determinations get cancelled in that they seemed to be something often, particularly in the early parts of the logic, seemed to be sort of standalone notions. They seemed to be independent in some fashion. And then it turns out that they're not. They can only
they're only maintained in relation to some other determination. And so in that way, those early determinations as independent determinations are canceled. They're no longer seen as independent. They're preserved in that they now appear in relation to some other determination or as part of some other determination.
the different ways in which they are preserved change. But so they're preserved, but they're also can't they no longer what they once were. And then they're also made as they're sort of redetermined as moments, sort of incomplete specifications or something of some larger determination.
Thomas Raysmith (19:05.774)
So they're no longer independent, cancelled as independent, cancelled as standalone. They then appear as sort of one part of something larger or in relation to something else. And then they are determined as that, as a moment of something more. And in that sense,
It's similar to it might be it might sound similar to to to a synthesis what you get at the end But with a synthesis you could say To use again can't as an example here When we're coming up with empirical concepts when we're creating empirical concepts, we can take certain conceptual marks So my mug which I'm drinking some tea out of here at the moment one mark is I chose the wrong mug because the colors a bit odd, but
It's like a bluey gray or a grayish blue. So one mark of my mug is that it's that color. Another is that it has a certain shape, that it's a receptacle. We combine all of those and get the concept of this particular type of mug, right? What happens there though is that those conceptual marks just remain as they were. They're just combined with something else.
The grayish blue remains the same notion that it was before. The shape or the form remains the same as it was before. The notion of the receptacle remains the same. But with Hegel, the early determinations do not remain as they once were. They are altered in some way.
PJ Wehry (20:53.425)
So my background, for those who have listened to the podcast, you're tired of me saying this, but for each guest, it's new. My background's in hermeneutic philosophy. And of course, Godmer, very familiar with Hegel, he talks about the work of art as this historical object and that it changes over time. So for instance, you have a painting that is done for...
for a nobleman, and then it gets stolen in wartime. And now it's it's loot, right? So it starts out as decoration, starts out as wealth and prestige, it becomes plunder, and then it ends up in a museum and ends up being like a national relic, right? And so in each case, it is preserved, but it's becoming something totally different. It's not getting synthesized, it's getting, is that a version of sublation?
Thomas Raysmith (21:52.088)
That's a nice example, yeah.
PJ Wehry (21:54.894)
Okay. Which I was reading and I did this backwards. I was reading Godmer before I Hegel. So I did not think about it until you were describing. I was like, he's just you. OK, it's just using Hegel. That makes total sense.
Thomas Raysmith (22:08.63)
He is using Hegel. so, so he is definitely using Hegel here. Hegel, this is, this is directly related to Hegel's account of action. So Hegel, for Hegel, the, when we talk about a person's action, what they've done, it would be incorrect to think of
an action as completely defined by some sort of atomic description of it at the time that it occurs. For Hegel, an action gets redetermined as time goes on and interpretations change, but also as its effects play out. the, mean, one, one, one example that's thrown around a lot here is the French Revolution. mean,
what the French Revolution is, is still being determined. We're yet to see, right? That's one of the claims. So, for Hegel, there are some, and this also plays a role in determining what somebody is responsible for. So, there are certain effects that a person either can or should
be able to see as what will result from their action and then they should be held accountable for those perhaps. But then there are some that they can't see and they can't be expected to have seen. you know, you could, I don't know,
PJ Wehry (24:07.405)
Well,
Thomas Raysmith (24:07.534)
Throw a ball and you know you're trying to throw it to your friend and your friend doesn't catch it and it goes behind them, somebody trips and then breaks their ankle on it, right? Probably couldn't have foreseen that, shouldn't be expected to have foreseen that, nonetheless it's an effect. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (24:28.613)
Yeah, yeah. And I think there's something to be said to... And maybe, you know, I'm groping blindly here, right? But there's also this idea of like, can't... This is a common thing as you grow older to look back. And with the wisdom that you have won, reinterpret and that, man, I should have done that. But that's only possible because you went through the thing.
And so it's not so there's that there's not only that responsibility piece, there's that understanding piece, that historical. And I know that we've kind of taken in some ways a detour here, but this feels like it's really central to discussing like why is Hegel obsessed with history? This seems to make sense.
Thomas Raysmith (25:15.632)
Yeah, yeah. And he goes back and rewrites his histories many times over, because, you know, as he gets older, there's there's more to add. And there's there are new interpretations to be had. so, yeah. And often with certain philosophers, right, rewriting, rewriting part of your system.
might lead to inconsistencies and that would be a problem. But I think that with Hegel, the rewriting is part of the account. So as the, I mean, this is the point about, this is why he's studying history philosophy to look at the ways in which human conceptual thought is determined over time. And so, yeah.
the history of philosophy needs to be retold all the time because the concepts that you use to tell it get redetermined or refined or new ones are created or whatever. for him, there are certainly some inconsistencies, but the fact that he rewrites and the fact that
that history is rewritable is not a problem for Hegel. That is precisely the point.
PJ Wehry (26:45.797)
So how does that, to bring it full, like we're 25 minutes in, you've been very patient. How does that relate to the logical structure of exemplarity? Did I say it right? I'm still working on that.
Thomas Raysmith (26:58.272)
Right. Okay. Yeah. No, you've said it right. So this is the name that I give it. It's, and I give it that name. So first of all, Karen Ng, great Hegel scholar, she wrote a book, Hegel's Concept of Life. Brilliant. Everybody should read that. In that
work, she points out that with Hegel's discussion of judgment at the end of the logic, there's a form of judgment in which singular things and with their particular constitutions are exemplars of some concept. so partially, it's, it's my, the name
the structure of exemplary that I've given to what Hegel calls the idea, comes from reading Karen Ung, but it's also, it comes from my work on Wittgenstein and his notion of samples or exemplars, Muster in German. Essentially a sample for Wittgenstein, I the famous one is the meter rod in Paris, which was the standard, right, for a meter at his time.
He, for Wittgenstein, you can't say of the meter rod that have either is or is not one meter long, because for something to be one meter long is for it to be like the meter rod with respect to length. And it can't be like itself because you can't compare it to itself. So a sample or an exemplar is this thing for Wittgenstein. And I think that the structure of the idea, the logical structure of the idea,
is exhibited in a Wittgensteinian sample. I don't know if we want to discuss that, or if I talk more about what the logic is first and why I think... Which would be more helpful, do you think, for your listeners? Do I talk about what the logic's role is and then go into this structure or...
PJ Wehry (29:03.587)
Yo yeah, look, coo-
PJ Wehry (29:14.275)
I...
PJ Wehry (29:21.573)
do feel like this is a question of method, Like, are we going to start from the end and work backwards? Or are we going to tell it like a narrative? Please, whichever you prefer.
Thomas Raysmith (29:31.726)
OK, I'll start with what the logic is and what its role is in Hegel's system. And then I'll be able to say, think, more about why it has this role by referring to the structure of exemplarity or the idea. what the logic is, as I read it, is this expression.
of a purely logical structure. It's a very complex logical structure. mean, it stretches over hundreds of pages. The exhibition of it stretches over hundreds of pages. So it's obviously complex, but it is a unified logical structure that unfolds. It's developmental. And there are a couple of things to say about it that
before I can say why it has this particular role in Hegel's system. So this logical structure for Hegel, it develops itself to completion solely from its own resources. So it has a beginning, which is a big problem for Hegel scholars, what that beginning is, how we make sense of it. But it has a beginning. You get
You get an initial determination, pure being, which turns into nothingness. Well, you know, it not turns into, but a new determination, nothingness arises from it in some fashion. And then determinations unfold, arise from one another and until the point at which this structure exhausts itself and comprehends itself in its totality. And because it does all of this,
solely from its own resources and independently of anything else. So there are some readings of the logic that suggest that the logic is motivated by our attempts to apply the determinations, or as some people call them, the categories in thought or in judgment. So Robert Pippen is an example of a person who thinks this, he thinks that basically we attempt to apply the
Thomas Raysmith (31:59.458)
the determination of pure being in thought, we realize it's basically empty. And so then we end up with this notion of nothingness and then we go on from there. don't think, mean, Hegel's pretty clear that the logic can't be motivated like that. So I don't think that's the right way to read this. I think that the logic has to be read so that we see this logical structure.
as developing without any influence from anything else, without any motivation from anything else. It's just this logical structure unfolding itself by itself solely from its own resources. And because it brings itself to completion or exhausts itself without any need of anything else, it is then unlimited. It's not limited by anything else. And because it's not limited by anything else,
it then also must express itself in everything. Were there to be something in nature or in culture or in history that did not express some part of this logical structure, then that thing would limit the logical structure and that would determine the logical structure and that's exactly what the logic is supposed to show isn't the case. So this logical structure exhibits moments of itself
in everything. So it's the fundamental structure of everything, the fundamental logical structure of everything. It's incredibly skeletal or, it's not, doesn't, we can't, for instance, derive anything from it really. We can't say what the future is going to hold or, you know, to use the famous example, you can't derive a pen in my room from it, right?
all, all it, all it allows for is that once something happens, once, once history plays out, once a natural event occurs or whatever, we can know having studied the logic that what has occurred will be an expression of this logical structure or some moment of this logical structure because it's the fundamental structure of everything. so for Hegel, the logic is the.
Thomas Raysmith (34:21.454)
the foundation of his entire system. because once he's shown that this is the fundamental structure of everything, what he can then do is show, how it gets expressed. So what, what, what its expressions look like in history. so when he's going through the history of philosophy, what he's showing is that
moments of this structure have been expressed in the element of human conceptual thought that is self-reflexive. And then, you know, this is what this is what it looks like. and because everything is an expression of this logical structure, including our thought, everything is intelligible, there is no limit to what we can know, there is nothing that's out of bounds to knowledge.
And also, we can say that philosophy, the history of philosophy is in some sense unified, because it's all an expression of the same thing, which is for Hegel, that one truth, know, the big truth that philosophy is supposed to be getting at. So for Hegel, the history of philosophy just is this unified expression, or it's unified
It is unified expressions of the idea or moments of the idea in the element of human thought that's reflected on itself. And then he talks about philosophy of nature and philosophy of geist, spirit, and all of these are just different expressions of the same thing, of the idea. They are expressions in different elements.
Because they're all expressions of the same thing, and they must be, given what the logic is supposed to show, Hegel thinks that he's got a system, a unified system of knowledge, basically.
PJ Wehry (36:31.505)
When you're talking about the fundamental structure of everything, that this is the logical structure, the structure of the logic, is that the working out of the idea then? is that kind of, so for him, everything is summed up in the idea, which I think we're now going to talk about. it's that he's basically unpacking that.
Okay, so the end goal of all this is the idea.
Thomas Raysmith (37:02.484)
Yeah, you can only say this, but yeah, which is everything.
PJ Wehry (37:05.049)
Which is everything.
Thomas Raysmith (37:11.542)
You can only say this once you get to the end of the logic. So you can only say this once you've gone through the logic, then you can say, well, that was an unpacking of the idea. Because the idea, of course, doesn't arise until the end of the logic. And because we can't motivate the logic, we can't say from the start, the point is to get to the idea. Let's try to get there. What determination should we posit next? We just sort of have to look on as this idea unfolds itself.
And then when we get to the end, we say, that was the idea. if we look back now, we see that it was just the unfolding of this thing all along.
PJ Wehry (37:51.718)
Which as we said before is the great synthesis, right? That's the... No, sorry, that was a joke. I could resist, I apologize. So, so apologies for the distraction. When you're talking about the idea, this is the culmination that unfolds after...
Thomas Raysmith (37:55.534)
Yeah, I mean, it's not really a synthesis, but yes. Yeah.
Thomas Raysmith (38:08.654)
It's so good.
PJ Wehry (38:19.627)
Is it possible to understand what Hegel's saying without reading the several hundred pages that unpack the logic?
Thomas Raysmith (38:26.582)
No. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (38:29.797)
this explains why this is explains why people prefer the thesis antithesis synthesis
Thomas Raysmith (38:35.382)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's much easier. Yeah, I mean, I so I had an interesting experience when I was trying to write this, this book, which started off as my PhD dissertation. Although it was basically completely rewritten by the time it got to the publication phase. But you find a lot of Hegel scholars just beginning their
their discussions of the logic with the subjective logic, which is the end part, Whereas Hegel's talking about judgments and syllogisms and the idea. And so you find a lot of people starting there and I really tried. I thought if I can just start there, that would be great. But I kept coming across this problem where I realized that, well,
I'm going to mention this determination, but then there's no way of talking about what that determination is or unpacking that determination without going back because it's a redetermination of an earlier determination. That's the, and that's the case with the logic. Every, every later determination is a redetermination of some earlier determination. so the, the, logical structure that unfolds is, is a structure of determinations that are
codetermining and so, but yeah, every single later determination, all the ones you find in the later parts of the work, they're all redeterminations of something that comes earlier. So I just kept finding myself being pushed further and further back. And then I went, well, okay, why not just start at the start? Yeah.
PJ Wehry (40:23.929)
Just start from the beginning. Forgive me. And so I'm just trying to understand this, though, are the determinations and the way that this unfolds, this plan that he has, this path, excuse me, this path of this unfolding, is this it's working out in a historical way. And so you could have an alternative path or is it universal, kind of transcendent, like it always has to work out.
according to these terminations.
Thomas Raysmith (40:55.864)
So the exhibition of the determinations, that's historically situated and determined. It requires conceptual thought. So the form of the expression of the idea can change over time.
The logical
PJ Wehry (41:26.889)
For instance, I mean, that's why otherwise you couldn't translate it. It'd be almost like holy writ, right? like obviously historic. Okay. So like it's written in German. It would show up in English. Okay. Would that be sorry.
Thomas Raysmith (41:33.09)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Thomas Raysmith (41:39.8)
Yep, so the same thing is expressing or showing itself in German and English and every other language.
So the expression of the thing, of the idea, can change over time. And in fact, has to change over time. But the logical structure itself, which is a developmental processual structure, that is atemporal. That's outside of space and time. Atemporal, non-spatial. Indeed, it's the fundamental.
logical structure of everything that is spatiotemporal. Everything that is spatiotemporal is an expression of this logical structure. And so then it's logically prior to all of them. It exists in a purely logical realm, so to speak, but it expresses itself in the spatiotemporal realm.
PJ Wehry (42:45.785)
Did you call it the processive structure? What was that P word that you said?
Thomas Raysmith (42:49.71)
It's processual. Yeah, yeah. So it's a process. And it's developmental. Unlike, for instance, Kant's static propositions or principles, they're not developmental, they just are. But the whole idea for Hegel just sort of is, it's outside of space and time, but it is developmental. And that means that its expressions will also be
PJ Wehry (42:52.207)
Processional. Thank you.
Thomas Raysmith (43:19.788)
developmental.
PJ Wehry (43:22.841)
And this is it. So if I understand why you're bringing in Wittgenstein and the meter rod, you can't jump to the end. You can't skip the process because the process is the is the thing. Is that kind of the idea that you're getting at?
Thomas Raysmith (43:39.02)
Yep. Yep. That's the thing. Yep. That's what I'm trying to get at. So that doesn't have so much to do with Wittgenstein, but you can't jump to the end precisely because the end is a re-determination of everything that came before it. So you don't get a lot of information if you just jump to the end. If I just tell you what those determinations are.
PJ Wehry (43:42.762)
hahahaha
Thomas Raysmith (44:04.768)
You can say, well, okay, but what's that determination? Like, well, go one back and then it's this. Okay. But then what's that one? You go one back again. Right. it's a redetermination of this thing. That's a redetermination of this thing. Eventually you get to the beginning and yeah. So, a lot of Hegel scholars do try to just jump forward to the, to the end. that's fine. but I think it also, is one of the reasons that there are some confusing.
and I think incorrect statements about what's going on in the end of the logic. Sometimes they sort of resort to explaining what's going on in terms of spatiotemporal expressions of the thing, the idea. So judgment is just something we express in language, but that's not precisely, I mean, that's not correct.
when we're talking about the logic, the judgment is a particular logical structure. gets expressed in language and thought, but it would be incorrect to say that Hegel is concerned with the expressions in the logic. What he's concerned with is this logical structure of judgment and not its expression. And sometimes there's people make an equation and it's, think that's false equivalence,
PJ Wehry (45:32.997)
But as you're talking though, I can see why the beginning is such a problem and why that's so. so, and again, not trying to create like some kind of gotcha moment or, you know, like, oh, I want you to want to have beef with Robert Pippen, right? I've had him on the show, enjoyed talking to him. So that's not my goal, but you're.
Thomas Raysmith (45:53.326)
He's great. I've met him. I've been to many of his talks. He's brilliant. And if it weren't for Pippin, I wouldn't have written a book on Hegel.
PJ Wehry (45:57.444)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (46:03.075)
that's awesome. So, but I'm reading through, I think it's Hans Dieter. And, you know, he's talking about, I'm reading about Fichte, I'm probably saying that wrong. The, that he, that for him, the beginning is the I, not I. Is that kind of what is being traced for as, as the beginning when Pippin's talking about Hegel?
Thomas Raysmith (46:13.923)
Yep.
Thomas Raysmith (46:37.57)
For Pippin, what is going on in the logic is that we're attempting to apply categories. And we do that in judgment. So there's an eye that is thinking, applying categories. And for Pippin, the sort of basic move
so to speak, of this I is to apply something in judgment. And then it finds out that applying the category of pure being is essentially to apply the category of pure nothingness because it has no content. We try to think pure being and it's just empty. So then we've got nothingness. And then, you know, that gives us becoming in some way. But
It's a little different to what's going on in Fishto. We can perhaps talk about that. But maybe I should explain the idea first.
PJ Wehry (47:44.793)
No, it's.
No, no, no. It's yeah, yeah, absolutely. I apologize. I, I, as we're talking about historical particularity, I realized why the beginning was it was an issue. So I, I realized we've kind of gone down a rabbit trail.
Thomas Raysmith (47:57.197)
Yep. Yep.
I can talk about the beginning. Yeah, I mean, I...
PJ Wehry (48:04.001)
You seem more interested in talking about the idea. Let's talk about the idea. I I want to be respectful of your time. So we can go ahead.
Thomas Raysmith (48:07.618)
Okay. No, I mean, I'm also very interested in the beginning because I give an account of the beginning in this book that is novel and I think it makes sense at the beginning. Other people I'm sure will disagree. Yeah, we can do that and then we can go into the idea and the Wittgenstein samples and all that. So the beginning has a
PJ Wehry (48:21.967)
Well, let's do that then.
Thomas Raysmith (48:35.502)
there's a problem that Hegel notes and that is that while other sciences, so this is the science of logic, Wissenschaft der Logik, while other sciences can begin with certain presuppositions, certain axioms from, you know, you can derive lemurs, but immediately, so to speak, and then, you know, we can begin with definitions or something. And then from those, you just accept all those things as presuppositions and then you get
underway with science. Because the science of logic is supposed to be the science of thought, you can't begin with anything like that. All determinations of thought and axioms, lemmas, definitions, they would all be determinations of thought. Because they determine how the thought of that science functions gets along.
The science of logic as the science of thought itself cannot begin with any determinations, all determinations must arise within it. But this is a problem because the question is then, well, how do we begin? Can't begin with any presuppositions. So what exactly, right? And Hegel
puts this in the language of mediation and immediacy. must be immediate. The beginning must be immediate in that, you know, it can't presuppose anything. It can't be sort of predetermined in any way. But of course, it's got to be mediated in some fashion. It's got to come, the science has to begin, begin from somewhere. And
Hegel suggests that the science of logic just begins with immediacy itself. There's a big question mark over that. have tried to figure out what this immediacy is. I think that there's this Hegel scholar called William Maker. Not all that well known, but I think should be more widely read. He wrote a lot on the beginning of the logic.
Thomas Raysmith (50:57.632)
And he argues that the immediacy that the logic begins with is essentially a cancellation of all structures of reflection. And by that he means all structures within which thought would be predetermined or determined.
from the outside or something, from something that's not it. So.
Thomas Raysmith (51:38.602)
He thinks also that Hegel does say that the science of logic does have one presupposition and that is the phenomenology of spirit. Maker makes sense of this by stating that the logic presupposes the phenomenology of spirit as the work in which all structures of reflection, all structures within which thought might
end up as predetermined get cancelled.
Um, so in that sense, it's a presupposition, it doesn't, it's not, it doesn't have any co it doesn't give us any content or anything. All we get, all we get from this is thought is, is not predetermined. Um, and that's the immediacy that the logic supposedly begins with according to make. And I think that's, I think that is the most, um, uh, promising way of trying to understand what Hegel means by immediacy. It's the sort of negation of all structures of reflection. So basically.
Thought is not predetermined. That's the immediacy. And then Hegel says that that immediacy has one determination and that's that it is the beginning of the science of logic if such a science is possible. So I think that what you have at the beginning of the logic is essentially thought
PJ Wehry (53:09.797)
you
Thomas Raysmith (53:12.084)
as not predetermined. That's extremely vague. doesn't really give you anything. But it has this determination that if a science of logic is, so it is that thing, a science of logic being possible, it would be that it would be the beginning of that science because that science must begin with thought being not predetermined, right? It's the only thing it can begin with.
if it's predetermined in the science of logic as the science of thought itself, it wouldn't be possible because it wouldn't account for the initial determination of thought. So it must be the beginning of the science of logic, if such a science is possible. What happens though, and that's the determination of pure being, or is it? Yeah. You'd like to jump in? Yeah.
PJ Wehry (54:02.401)
Forgive me. Yes. So when we talk about the negation of structures of representation, I'm saying that... Reflection, excuse me.
Thomas Raysmith (54:09.958)
of reflection
PJ Wehry (54:18.271)
And I'm perfectly happy for both these examples to be wrong. think what I'm doing is I'm just getting these out of my head so I can, we can make, like we're not talking about like a baby, right? That doesn't ha- hasn't have any, and we're not, are we talking in any Buddhist sense? Like the emptying of the mind?
Thomas Raysmith (54:40.078)
There's something, I mean, there's something there.
PJ Wehry (54:46.937)
but it's not exactly like that.
Thomas Raysmith (54:47.63)
It's not exactly like that. I mean, what's interesting in Buddhism is that there's a kind of process of unselfing, to use Iris Murdoch's term, but the notion of like a self that is in some sense predetermined, know, the Cartesian self, the thinking thing that is distinct from
Extended things and all that, you know, in that sense, it's predetermined. It's not the extended stuff, right? That all disappears in Buddhism, right? But there's but the process for getting there with Hegel is a little different you kind of Hegel in the phenomenology according to makers telling and I think this is correct is essentially It goes through all of the possible
accounts you could give according to which thought would be predetermined. It tries to make sense of the idea of thought being predetermined in some at least minimal sense in which there's an object out there, thought needs to match that object in some way, so it must be predetermined in such ways that it can match the thing. I need to make a basic list, but at the point at which it's supposed to prove that this is the case that
thought is predetermined such that it can match the thing, the notion of thought as distinct from the object or subjectivity as distinct from objectivity falls apart. So the notion of predetermination falls apart. So that's where we get the negation of structures of reflection. And of course, that's not what happens in Buddhism on the path to...
nirvana and enlightenment stuff. So you don't sort of work through in a philosophical fashion, all of these accounts of the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity.
PJ Wehry (56:51.053)
So, yeah, not the same at all, because they're both emptying, but one ends with a thinking subject and one is trying to get rid of the thinking subject.
Thomas Raysmith (57:03.054)
I mean, the thinking subject also disappears for Hegel. Well, just thought, just not predetermined thought is all that remains, not a subject. We don't get subjective thought until much later in the logic.
PJ Wehry (57:05.721)
Sorry, thinking. But thinking still remains.
PJ Wehry (57:19.171)
Yes, understood. So the subject disappears in both. Okay. Sorry. Thank you.
Thomas Raysmith (57:26.626)
Yeah, mean, one of the other one other no, no, it was good. It's a good it was a good question. And one other disconnect, I think, is that for Hegel, this point, the end of the phenomenology is the beginning of something else that you get a lot of content from, namely, the logic, we end up sort of building back up to an account of thought, and in all of its determinations. And that's not the case in Buddhism either. So we don't
PJ Wehry (57:55.779)
Right.
Thomas Raysmith (57:55.938)
get we don't then try to develop something from there. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (58:01.221)
So in one you're trying to obviously kind of end being and the other one you're trying to return to being? Is that like, I mean, I don't...
Thomas Raysmith (58:10.422)
I mean, I don't want to give a reductive account of Buddhism and I am. Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (58:12.965)
Ha!
I just, yeah, I'm not trying to get anyone in hot water. Yeah, though I'm just, yeah, that was helpful. Thank you.
Thomas Raysmith (58:23.982)
But certainly for Hegel, trying to, he's not even trying, he just thinks this is how it occurs. If you get to this point of thought being, if we get an expression of thought as undetermined or this completely abstract notion of thought as undetermined, what then just happens is that it unfolds, these logical determinations unfold from one another such that we get the logical structure.
of everything and by the end of the logic, it then exits and expresses itself in everything. So we get the world and we get human subjects and all this stuff at the end. I think that's different. Yeah, I don't want to, I'm not an expert in Buddhism, I'm that. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (59:11.299)
Yeah, right. I'm not asking you to be a Buddhist expert too. But that's helpful for me to see. That's helpful because I think the negation of the structure of reflection is one of those phrases that it's helpful to unpack. yeah, OK. So now that we've basically cleared the slate, that we've negated the structure of reflection, the structures of reflection.
Thomas Raysmith (59:27.2)
Yeah, definitely helpful to unpack. Yeah. But so what happens? Yeah.
PJ Wehry (59:39.973)
Where do we proceed from there?
Thomas Raysmith (59:42.156)
Yeah, so because the logic is supposed to be the science of all thought determinations, if there's going to if that logic is going to be possible, if that science is going to be possible, then it should begin with this precisely this thing, which isn't a thing, this thought as not predetermined. And so the logic, if it's possible, should just start. And because of that, this
this determination, this thought as not predetermined, or what Hegel otherwise calls pure being, does have, evil logic is possible, evil logic starts, then it has the determination that it is the beginning of the science.
PJ Wehry (01:00:27.141)
I'm sorry, can you repeat that?
Thomas Raysmith (01:00:28.75)
So if the science of logic turns out to be possible, then that determination, pure being thought as not predetermined, turns out to have the determination that it is the science of logic's beginning. If nothing comes from it, then it's not that science's beginning, so it doesn't have that determination. It's just the end of the phenomenology, perhaps. But...
Yeah, so what we have at the beginning is pure being is this thought as not predetermined, has this determination that a science of logic being possible is this science's beginning. And then what happens is that that determination just doesn't do anything, doesn't go anywhere. so science of logic, and this is my reading of the beginning, it turns out straight away that a science of logic is not possible.
because that determination just didn't lead anywhere. So it loses the determination, namely the determination, a science of logic being possible, it is the science of beginning. But so what happens now is that it turns out that something happened. Namely, there was a loss of that determination. So
PJ Wehry (01:01:40.559)
that gets sublated.
Thomas Raysmith (01:01:55.126)
This is, I call this in the book Hegel's Master Trick, the science of logic in failing to begin, in being impossible, is then possible. It does begin precisely because it can't. So this determination of thought as not determined is lost because it can't go anywhere. But then that loss is something happening. And that's what gives us
pure nothingness. It's the thought is not predetermined, but without the determination because it doesn't go anywhere. But then what we find is that there has been a movement. Pure being has turned into pure nothingness by the loss of the determination. And that's when things kick off. Then suddenly the whole of the science of logic begins to unfold. But what's unique to this account is that we're not doing anything. We're not applying the category of
pure being in judgment. We're not pushing it along. We're not, you know, using the meanings of our terms, our language to say something about what is implied by a term or, you know, in pure being we're implying pure nothingness because it's empty and nothing like that. We've just seen, we've just watched, we've looked on as
pure being has lost the determination. And we just saw a movement unfold and then we continue to just sort of watch on, to look on as the rest of it unfolds. And that's how the science of logic, according to my account, begins. And that means that it can develop itself to exhaustion, to completion solely from its own resources and without motivation from anything else. It's just doing it itself. Of course.
expressing itself in our words, our thought, but nonetheless our thought is just in a sense us watching on as it does this.
PJ Wehry (01:04:05.689)
I think I'm following you. I think that makes sense. Obviously, I'm not a Hegel scholar and I'm not, you where angels fear to tread, right? Like, this obviously a controversial issue, so I let it stand. So that's how that's the beginning. And then this works and this works itself out in several determinations, which eventually ends in the idea.
Thomas Raysmith (01:04:18.657)
Very controversial.
Thomas Raysmith (01:04:26.766)
It's the beginning.
Thomas Raysmith (01:04:33.582)
Yeah. And so with the idea, I think the best way of talking about it is with reference to Vicodinian samples and what Hegel calls the concept, der Begriff. And the idea is just a redetermination of the concept. You might have heard mention of the concept when Hegelians
having a conversation with one another, the concept with a capital C, it's sort of, you know, the big concept. So, often in the history of philosophy, concepts have been taken to be sort of abstract things, either thought, abstract thought entities or platonic forms or something like that, right? But they are
they are these abstract general representations, for want of a better term. we in thought, in judgment, what we do is we take a concept like the concept of mug, right, which can apply to many, many things. And we apply it to some singular thing, or some particular thing often in history of philosophy, particularly in analytic philosophy, the notions of singularity and particularity aren't distinguished, Hegel does.
I'll say why in a moment, but often we think of concepts as just these abstract things that we then apply to, to more concrete things. Hegel doesn't think of concepts that way. He thinks of, he thinks that abstract concepts are in sense, just an abstraction from something else, from something that is more concrete. And so the best way of explaining what, what the concept is for Hegel and what
a universal concept or a general concept is by talking about this, this, we're talking about, I think a Wittgensteinian sample. and so, I'll do that now, but, so if we, if we take the meter rod, for Wittgenstein, we can say that, that rod determines the universal concept one meter, one meter long, because
Thomas Raysmith (01:07:00.11)
we're only able to say that something is one meter long or represents something as one meter long by comparing it with this rod, at least implicitly. So for something to be a meter long is just, and of course our standard for a meter has now changed, let's look back into Künstein's time. For something to be one meter long and then to be represented with the concept one meter,
the universal concept is just for it to be like the rod with respect to length. But this rod, so it determines a universal concept and the universal concept is not really, you can't disentangle the concept from the rod. It doesn't have a meaning independently of the rod. And so Wittgenstein, if someone asks for the meaning of the concept of one meter, you'd point to the rod and you'd say,
this thing, the length of this thing. And so it's it's a concretely existing thing. It's a singular thing in that it's distinct from all other rods and all other things in the universe. But we can talk about the way in which it's distinct by pointing out its role for us. So for us, it's the singular thing that we use when we want to say something is one meter long.
It's the means of representation, Wittgenstein would say. And it's unique in playing that role. Other rods don't. And yeah.
PJ Wehry (01:08:36.034)
So is this where we talk about, so everything is particular, but not everything is singular.
PJ Wehry (01:08:47.439)
So because the rod is both singular and particular, the meter rod, but just any stick is particular, but it's not necessarily singular because it's not this concept.
Thomas Raysmith (01:08:50.712)
Yes.
Thomas Raysmith (01:08:57.358)
Every stick will be singular because there'll be some distinguishing features, right? It'll be unique. won't be like, um, there are, mean, two rods might be alike in being rods, but they, uh, but they won't be exactly the same rod. They'll have some distinguishing features. Um, one might have a, a nick in it or yeah. But, but what's, but what's, um, yeah. So, so, so, um,
PJ Wehry (01:09:16.493)
Okay, I jumped ahead. Continue the explanation. Sorry.
Thomas Raysmith (01:09:26.646)
Yeah, so for the meter rod, it's singular in that we can highlight its singularity by pointing out the unique role it plays for us. Namely, it's the thing with which we must compare other things to say whether they are a meter long or not. And it can only play this role because it has a particular feature. And by particular, mean, it's not like, you know,
He's a particular person in the sort of saying there's something off something odd particular in the sense that it has a feature that Can be a feature shared by other things and in this case, it's a length so Things being particular for for hagel would be Explainable in terms of their sharing some common feature
That's the way I'm saying it. A particular one meter rod and then another particular one meter rod. They're different rods. They're both different, singular things, but they share the same feature, which is their length. And in that sense, they're particular one meter rods. But the sample, the exemplar, which is the meter rod in Paris for Wittgenstein,
That is sort of unique again amongst all rods in that it's being singular. It's being treated as the very rod that we use to represent other things as one meter long and only representing by way of that rod. Its singularity is related to its particularity because it's only treated as that thing because it has a feature of length that other things
can share. So its feature, its particular feature is what allows us to treat it as a singular thing that is unique. But it also is the only rod, the only thing that determines the universal concept of one meter. So this sample has universality because you can't disentangle the universal concept one meter from it. So it has universality.
Thomas Raysmith (01:11:53.548)
It has particularity, it has a feature that can be shared by other things, and it has singularity. It's distinct from all other things. And in that sense, it's sort of extra unique in that it's the one rod that determines our universal concept one meter. But it contains these determinations, universality, particularity, and singularity. And it contains them, or it expresses them, I should say. It expresses universality, particularity, and singularity.
PJ Wehry (01:12:22.873)
Cough
Thomas Raysmith (01:12:23.662)
Um, but it also, it expresses them in mutually determining relations. So the, the singularity, um, determines, uh, the, universal because it's the one thing that we treat as that thing with which we must compare other things to determine whether they are a meter long or not. So it determines the universal. The universal also determines
singularity. It's because this thing is the meaning of the concept one meter long, that it is the thing that is singular, the one thing we treat in this way. And of course, both of those two determinations determine each other through the determination of particularity, through the particular feature of the length that the rod has. So that's one instance
of structure of the concept for Hegel. And Hegel would call this a concrete concept. And by that, it just means it's a concept that contains different determinations unified in one, basically. It's concrete in that sense, not abstract. But we can abstract from that and just talk about the concept one meter long now. But that's an abstraction from this thing. And so, exactly. And so for Hegel, all abstract concepts
PJ Wehry (01:13:43.407)
from this concrete concept.
Thomas Raysmith (01:13:49.654)
are just abstracted from concrete concepts. And I argued that the world for Hegel is structured, the world and thought is both structured by essentially Wittgenstein samples, or just concrete concepts to use Hegel's terms. And what those samples are, those exemplars are, is determined by our practices.
human culture, what we decide should play the role of this thing, right? And for Hegel, the concept, the big concept is just the, the determinations, all the determinations of singularity, because of course, each singular thing expresses a single the determination of a singular, but all singularity is part of the concept.
all determinations of things that are distinct from one another, all particularity, all determinations that can be in a sense, that are the determinations that are expressed by all, all features that can be shared by objects or yeah, objects. That's particularity. then universality is essentially, universality is the process, the universal process
that determines itself through particularity and singularity. It's the determination you find expressed in one meter long, or sepia to use another example of Wittgenstein's.
PJ Wehry (01:15:33.413)
Would you?
So all concepts start out as concrete concepts? So does that make the dialectic, would that be a material dialectic?
Thomas Raysmith (01:15:40.568)
Yeah.
Thomas Raysmith (01:15:48.11)
I mean, it's also ideal, but... It's not quite Marx.
PJ Wehry (01:15:50.638)
Sorry, no, I can't resist the, it's a joke. So I actually have a real question. Not quite there. Yeah, once you work through Hegel and you're like, I can see how you made that jump though. the, if you don't mind, I'd like to work through an example of my own just to see if I've got this.
Thomas Raysmith (01:16:15.726)
Mm-hmm.
PJ Wehry (01:16:19.582)
I think the meter rod is a good example. In Lord of the Flies...
the boys are arguing and they're talking over each other and they find this beautiful shell and they say, whoever holds the shell gets to speak and the shell becomes a symbol of order for them. But it's also literally the thing that is order because whoever holds it. And so when you can tell when the order is broken because someone steps up and literally breaks the conch shell with the conch shell be
Thomas Raysmith (01:16:41.486)
Yep. Yep.
Thomas Raysmith (01:16:51.886)
Mm-hmm.
PJ Wehry (01:16:57.711)
both the universal, singular, and particular, would it be an example of the concrete concept?
Thomas Raysmith (01:17:04.002)
Yeah, I think it would be. mean, it'd be the concrete concept of order, to use your words. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (01:17:11.363)
Okay. So, cause that one to me, know, meter, has, some connotations where people are like, well, that's a science thing. But like, when you talk about order, that's super abstract, but it's, it's buried in like, it's literally, it is that that is the order for them.
Thomas Raysmith (01:17:28.194)
Yep. And of course, in that example, order must be exhibited in the practices of who gets to speak. So it's also, it's a good example here, because you don't just get one concrete concept, you get a network of concrete concepts that structure our world and our thinking. And in that case, you've got this sort of key
concrete concept, but of course it then relates to other things like speech and behavior and it structures a network of practices and then and now thinking about those practices under different concepts like what it is to talk and what it is to speak and what it is to have your turn and all that kind of stuff. yeah.
PJ Wehry (01:18:21.725)
And it's not exactly the same thing, but I think there's some correlation between like you have habits, or you have a habit, you have habits, you have habitus. And when you're talking about this network, you have concrete concept, concrete concepts, then kind of like conceptus, you know, like this, this whole network of things that all work together that when you add enough of that together, you end up with an entire culture. Okay.
Thomas Raysmith (01:18:31.694)
Mm-hmm.
Thomas Raysmith (01:18:48.647)
Yeah. And that's, I think that's the idea for Hegel. think that,
the way the world is and the way our thought is, our conceptual thought is, structured, they're both structured by concrete concepts that exist within networks and are decided upon in practice. And also their use is decided in practice. the meter rod again, you know,
Do we count something as a meter long only when it's exactly, I mean, down to the atom the same length? No, not always. But I have a paper on this. But as I point out in paper, when you're just constructing the Large Hadron Collider, measurements need to be far more precise than if I'm just going around measuring branches on a tree or something. I can say a branch on a tree is a meter long. But I need to be a bit more precise when I'm talking about sections of the Large Hadron Collider.
Again, what the sample is, how it is used, and thus what a meter is, is determined by and in the practices. so, yeah. the point of the logic, and so basically what the idea is, to get back to that initial question, the idea is the structure of the concept that is all held together, all comprehended,
in its moment of universality and it can only be comprehended as such in the element of human conceptual thought and that is us basically thinking all these different determinations together as a unified whole, right? And so once the logic brings itself to completion and shows that it's unlimited, it's not limited or it's infinite, it's not limited by anything external to itself and then must express itself in everything,
Thomas Raysmith (01:20:51.666)
I think that is precisely why Hegel said, I think that that is why Hegel sees the world and thought as both structured by samples, because the logical idea and moments of the logical idea just do express themselves in everything. the determinations, the thought determinations and the determinations in the world are all just sort of
Thomas Raysmith (01:21:26.39)
workings out of the uses and the repercussions of concrete concepts.
PJ Wehry (01:21:39.378)
One, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been an absolute joy. I've read a lot of Kierkegaard and I feel like his critique of Hegel is that Hegel doesn't do anything. So I don't want this to come across as a critique. but as for my final question, for someone who's listened to this whole podcast, what would you recommend that they think about or do for the next week?
Thomas Raysmith (01:21:43.778)
Thank you for having me. It's been brilliant.
Thomas Raysmith (01:22:09.282)
You
PJ Wehry (01:22:10.425)
What should be the response to this?
Thomas Raysmith (01:22:12.974)
What should they do for the next week?
think one thing that comes out of this is that
Thomas Raysmith (01:22:29.994)
There is for Hegel, no single way the world is. And also there's no way of predicting what will happen next. As I said earlier on, the point of the logic is that it expresses itself in everything, but it's so poor that it doesn't give us anything that we can use for prediction purposes. All we can say is that once something happens, we will be able to know it. It's all intelligible.
But then we sort of need to wait for it to happen and then we can reflect on it and see which moments were expressed and all this kind of stuff. But it does mean that there is no, because of the possibility of and the necessity in fact of sort of giving new accounts of the world, it means that there's no single way the world is. Some accounts will be better than others, I think in the sense that some
Samples just don't function very well as samples. If I choose as a sample of a chair, a gigantic art piece or something, it's not really viable as a sample. I mean, I can't really sit on it. That seems to be important. So it's just not going to be very usable. So there are some better and worse accounts of the way things are, but they get to be redetermined over time. And so I think
One thing you can take away from Hegel is that you can always suggest new samples, new concrete concepts, new accounts, and you can challenge the status quo. can challenge what people habitually accept. so, yeah.
particularly in today's political environment. mean, and Hegel's not great on world history and things. I he's racist and Eurocentric, and I talk about this in the book. But it does mean that the space for debate is always open and the space for challenging accounts of things is always open.
Thomas Raysmith (01:24:57.612)
Yeah, Israel and Palestine, there is space to challenge the, I mean, I hope it's not the dominant narrative, but there seems to be a dominant narrative that, I think call the thing what it is, call the genocide what it is. But you can challenge this, you can open this space.
for discussion. It's always possible to give a new account.
PJ Wehry (01:25:33.497)
Yeah, great ending. Thank you for sharing that. It's been a joy having you on Dr. Raisman.
Thomas Raysmith (01:25:40.27)
Thank you.
PJ Wehry (01:25:45.615)
Can't get, can't find my mouse, of course, that's hilarious.
I don't know what's happening there. That was fun.