From 08d7f9c26abacf9dfd7420b59a41cf7543f6e1a6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:13:54 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 01/13] Create The Mechanical Object: Section 1 In this file I continue my analysis of Mechanism. In the previous file I focused on the very first paragraph of Mechanism and elaborated on the nature of the mechanical object. In this file, I continue by examining the 1st section of the mechanical object. --- .../reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5ea9428a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +# The Mechanical Object – Section 1 + + +The first section opens with a paragraph that is a reflection on the “mechanical object” rather than a continuation of the immanent development of what the “mechanical object” is, as was the case in the previous paragraph. This is something that Hegel does often, and without any warning, and it is important to distinguish passages that add to the immanent development of a concept from passages that are reflections on that immanent development. + +With that caveat made, we can now look at what Hegel writes in the first paragraph of Section 1. The paragraph is focused on making one point about the nature of the “mechanical object”: that one should not try to conceive of the “mechanical object” as being made up of two different things. The examples that Hegel gives are, form and matter, whole and parts, and, substance and accidents. In other words, one could try to distinguish the form of a “mechanical object” from its matter. One could say, what it is for that rock to be a mechanical object is for the form of rock-ness to be in unity with the matter of a rock. This unity of form and matter is what constitutes the rock as a mechanical object. Hegel, however, warns us against any such conceptions. When critiquing the form-matter distinction, he writes, “such an abstract difference of individuality and universality is excluded by the Notion of object” (712). The difference between form (universality) and matter (individuality) is a kind of difference that is “excluded” by the very concept of a mechanical object. Why is that? To answer this question we need only to cast our minds back to the first paragraph of “Mechanism”, where the “mechanical object” is explained to be an “immediate identity” such that it is a “universality that pervades the particularity and in it is immediate individuality” (711). In other words, it is incongruent with the concept of the “mechanical object” to conceive of it as having the difference of anything as the foundation for its being. What it is for it to be a “mechanical object” to be is for it to be an immediate identity. What is an immediate identity? The determinations of the “Concept” that constitute the “mechanical object”. One cannot conceptually distinguish the universal moment from the individual moment of the “mechanical object” because they are taken as identical to each other. The first sentence of the second paragraph of Section 1 attests to this clearly: “The object is therefore in the first instance *indeterminate*, in so far as it has no determinate opposition in it; for it is the mediation that has collapsed into immediate identity” (712). The fact that the determinations of the “Concept” are immediately identical to each other and not mediated means that the “mechanical object” is indeterminate. In other words, it lacks determinacy because there is no difference within it for any determinacy to be established. + +A natural question to arise from the above discussion that warns against any notion of difference within the “mechanical object” is the following: is it not a kind of difference if we can distinguish between the various determinations of the “Concept”, even if they are immediately identical? Isn’t the fact that we are to think of the “universal” as a universal that pervades the “particular” and is immediately “individual” a reason to conceive of them as different to each other? Hegel picks up on this point in the second paragraph of Section 1. Hegel writes: “Insofar as the *Notion is essentially determinate*, the object possesses determinateness as a *manifoldness* which though complete is otherwise *indeterminate*, that is, *contains no relationships*, and which constitutes a totality that at first is similarly no further determined; *sides* or *parts* that may be distinguished in it belong to an external reflection” (712). Hegel is trying to square the circle of expressing the “mechanical object” as an indeterminate, immediate identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand, as being essentially a further development of the determinations of the “Concept”, which requires us to think of the “mechanical object” as the unity of the three determinations (“universality”, “particularity”, and “individuality”) of the “Concept”. + +Hegel achieves this geometric feat by grasping the “mechanical object” as an “indeterminate difference” (712). I think that we can treat ‘indeterminate difference’ as equivalent to ‘the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”’. Because it is the three determinations of the “Concept” that express the difference, and their immediate identity that expresses their indeterminacy. The reason why there can be difference and indeterminacy in the same breath is because the difference between the determinations of the “Concept” is a merely formal one. They are different insofar as one is the “universal” and the other is the “particular” but they are not different *in relation to each other*. This is what Hegel means when he refers to the difference as “only that there are a *number* of objects” (412). In other words, they are different insofar as there are three different determinations of the “Concept”. Hegel goes on to write that each object (each of the determinations of the “Concept”) “contains its determinateness reflected into its universality and does not reflect itself *outwards*” (412). This is one of those tricky turns of phrase that Hegel uses, and understanding it is crucial to understanding the logical structure of the “mechanical object”. The first thing to clarify is what Hegel means by ‘its determinateness’. The moment of ‘universality’ is the core of the object’s identity and that is a moment of self-relating negativity. When the determination of “universality” was examined in the beginning of the “Doctrine of the Concept” it was comprehended as being a self-relating negativity . This negativity that remains within the “universal” is the determinateness [*Bestimmtheit*] of the “universal”. Next, we have to clarify what Hegel means by ‘its universality’ because I have already stated that the “mechanical object” is not just a “universal” but is immediately all three determinations of the “Concept”. So what does Hegel mean by ‘its universality’. The ‘universality’ of a determination is its core essence – it is what it is for that determination to be what it is. Just as the universal determination of a chair is that it has ‘the capacity to support someone in a seated position’, for example, so too do abstract determinations also refer to their moment of universality as the source of their identity. Thus, in the case of the “mechanical object”, when Hegel refers to ‘its universality’ he is referring to its basic source of identity. Now that we have clarified what Hegel means by ‘its determinateness’ and ‘its universality’, we are in a good position to understand the rest of that sentence. The determinateness, i.e. the negativity, of the “mechanical object” does not reflect outwards. In other words, it does not relate to anything that is outside of itself. Rather, it is reflected into its “universality”, i.e. it is reflected into its own source of identity. One simplistic way to put this is that mechanical objects are narcissistic – they do not relate to anything outside of themselves and are only self-relating. It is in this sense that the “mechanical object” is both indeterminate and has difference within it. It has difference within it because of its determinateness, because of its negative relation to itself. In this moment of negative self-relation, the “mechanical object” is immediately identical to all three determinations of the “Concept”. It is indeterminate because it does not relate to anything outside of itself, it is only self-relating. In its self-relating it is, effectively, relating to itself as the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”. It is for this reason that Hegel writes the following: “Because this indeterminate determinateness is essential to the object, the latter is within itself a *plurality* of this kind, and must therefore be regarded as a *composite* or *aggregate*” (712). What it is for the “mechanical object” to be is for it to relate to itself as the immediate identity of other objects (the determinations of the “Concept”). In other words, what it is for it to be itself is for it to be itself through other objects that are taken to be identical to itself. + +In a somewhat throwaway remark at the end of this conceptual discussion, Hegel writes that the “mechanical object” “does not consist of *atoms*, for these are not objects because they are not totalities” (712). It is worth musing on this brief remark because it reveals a lot about how Hegel conceptualises the wider significance of his account of the “mechanical object”. Hegel clearly has some mechanistic, in particular atomistic, worldviews in his crosshairs when he goes out of his way to state that the “mechanical object” does not consist of atoms. Hegel’s target is those that theorise that the world is fundamentally made out of atoms and that since the world is made out of atoms that everything is really just atoms. In Hegel’s account of “Mechanism”, he goes out of his way to explicitly state that the “mechanical object”, the simplest kind of mechanical entity, is not reducible to atoms. There is not something more fundamental to the “mechanical object” that is the true reality of things. Moreover, and perhaps a stronger rebuke to the atomists, not only is the “mechanical object” not reducible to atoms, but it is also not the most fundamental thing. Hegel rejects this notion of fundamentality out of hand and it is this rejection that is his strongest argument against atomistic or atomistic-like conceptions of reality. + +What follows from the last quotation is a long remark about how Hegel’s account of the “mechanical object” is akin to Leibniz’s conception of a monad. Hegel writes: + +>“The Leibnizian *monad* would be more of an object since it is a total representation of the world, but confined within its *intensive subjectivity* it is supposed at least to be essentially *one* within itself. Nevertheless, the monad determined as an *exclusive one* is only a principle *that reflection assumes*. Yet the monad is an object, partly in that the ground of its manifold representations-of the developed, that is, the *posited* determinations of its merely *implicit* totality-lies *outside it*, and partly also in that it is indifferent to the monad that it constitutes an object *along with others*; it is thus in fact not *exclusive* or *determined for itself*” (712). + +**Here, I invite a scholar with knowledge of Leibniz and his monads to expound on the above paragraph.** From 565817e690bbb92bc6242f010e35587c1083bc6d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:14:43 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 02/13] Rename mechanical-object.mdx to The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx Altered title to make contents of file clearer. --- ...cal-object.mdx => The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx} | 0 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/{mechanical-object.mdx => The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx} (100%) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object.mdx rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx From f7dc43092afb595f123770a097e072534dc58cd7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 10:59:43 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 03/13] Create mechanical-object-section-1.mdx I give an analysis of Section 1 of the mechanical object. --- .../reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx | 18 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5ea9428a --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +# The Mechanical Object – Section 1 + + +The first section opens with a paragraph that is a reflection on the “mechanical object” rather than a continuation of the immanent development of what the “mechanical object” is, as was the case in the previous paragraph. This is something that Hegel does often, and without any warning, and it is important to distinguish passages that add to the immanent development of a concept from passages that are reflections on that immanent development. + +With that caveat made, we can now look at what Hegel writes in the first paragraph of Section 1. The paragraph is focused on making one point about the nature of the “mechanical object”: that one should not try to conceive of the “mechanical object” as being made up of two different things. The examples that Hegel gives are, form and matter, whole and parts, and, substance and accidents. In other words, one could try to distinguish the form of a “mechanical object” from its matter. One could say, what it is for that rock to be a mechanical object is for the form of rock-ness to be in unity with the matter of a rock. This unity of form and matter is what constitutes the rock as a mechanical object. Hegel, however, warns us against any such conceptions. When critiquing the form-matter distinction, he writes, “such an abstract difference of individuality and universality is excluded by the Notion of object” (712). The difference between form (universality) and matter (individuality) is a kind of difference that is “excluded” by the very concept of a mechanical object. Why is that? To answer this question we need only to cast our minds back to the first paragraph of “Mechanism”, where the “mechanical object” is explained to be an “immediate identity” such that it is a “universality that pervades the particularity and in it is immediate individuality” (711). In other words, it is incongruent with the concept of the “mechanical object” to conceive of it as having the difference of anything as the foundation for its being. What it is for it to be a “mechanical object” to be is for it to be an immediate identity. What is an immediate identity? The determinations of the “Concept” that constitute the “mechanical object”. One cannot conceptually distinguish the universal moment from the individual moment of the “mechanical object” because they are taken as identical to each other. The first sentence of the second paragraph of Section 1 attests to this clearly: “The object is therefore in the first instance *indeterminate*, in so far as it has no determinate opposition in it; for it is the mediation that has collapsed into immediate identity” (712). The fact that the determinations of the “Concept” are immediately identical to each other and not mediated means that the “mechanical object” is indeterminate. In other words, it lacks determinacy because there is no difference within it for any determinacy to be established. + +A natural question to arise from the above discussion that warns against any notion of difference within the “mechanical object” is the following: is it not a kind of difference if we can distinguish between the various determinations of the “Concept”, even if they are immediately identical? Isn’t the fact that we are to think of the “universal” as a universal that pervades the “particular” and is immediately “individual” a reason to conceive of them as different to each other? Hegel picks up on this point in the second paragraph of Section 1. Hegel writes: “Insofar as the *Notion is essentially determinate*, the object possesses determinateness as a *manifoldness* which though complete is otherwise *indeterminate*, that is, *contains no relationships*, and which constitutes a totality that at first is similarly no further determined; *sides* or *parts* that may be distinguished in it belong to an external reflection” (712). Hegel is trying to square the circle of expressing the “mechanical object” as an indeterminate, immediate identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand, as being essentially a further development of the determinations of the “Concept”, which requires us to think of the “mechanical object” as the unity of the three determinations (“universality”, “particularity”, and “individuality”) of the “Concept”. + +Hegel achieves this geometric feat by grasping the “mechanical object” as an “indeterminate difference” (712). I think that we can treat ‘indeterminate difference’ as equivalent to ‘the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”’. Because it is the three determinations of the “Concept” that express the difference, and their immediate identity that expresses their indeterminacy. The reason why there can be difference and indeterminacy in the same breath is because the difference between the determinations of the “Concept” is a merely formal one. They are different insofar as one is the “universal” and the other is the “particular” but they are not different *in relation to each other*. This is what Hegel means when he refers to the difference as “only that there are a *number* of objects” (412). In other words, they are different insofar as there are three different determinations of the “Concept”. Hegel goes on to write that each object (each of the determinations of the “Concept”) “contains its determinateness reflected into its universality and does not reflect itself *outwards*” (412). This is one of those tricky turns of phrase that Hegel uses, and understanding it is crucial to understanding the logical structure of the “mechanical object”. The first thing to clarify is what Hegel means by ‘its determinateness’. The moment of ‘universality’ is the core of the object’s identity and that is a moment of self-relating negativity. When the determination of “universality” was examined in the beginning of the “Doctrine of the Concept” it was comprehended as being a self-relating negativity . This negativity that remains within the “universal” is the determinateness [*Bestimmtheit*] of the “universal”. Next, we have to clarify what Hegel means by ‘its universality’ because I have already stated that the “mechanical object” is not just a “universal” but is immediately all three determinations of the “Concept”. So what does Hegel mean by ‘its universality’. The ‘universality’ of a determination is its core essence – it is what it is for that determination to be what it is. Just as the universal determination of a chair is that it has ‘the capacity to support someone in a seated position’, for example, so too do abstract determinations also refer to their moment of universality as the source of their identity. Thus, in the case of the “mechanical object”, when Hegel refers to ‘its universality’ he is referring to its basic source of identity. Now that we have clarified what Hegel means by ‘its determinateness’ and ‘its universality’, we are in a good position to understand the rest of that sentence. The determinateness, i.e. the negativity, of the “mechanical object” does not reflect outwards. In other words, it does not relate to anything that is outside of itself. Rather, it is reflected into its “universality”, i.e. it is reflected into its own source of identity. One simplistic way to put this is that mechanical objects are narcissistic – they do not relate to anything outside of themselves and are only self-relating. It is in this sense that the “mechanical object” is both indeterminate and has difference within it. It has difference within it because of its determinateness, because of its negative relation to itself. In this moment of negative self-relation, the “mechanical object” is immediately identical to all three determinations of the “Concept”. It is indeterminate because it does not relate to anything outside of itself, it is only self-relating. In its self-relating it is, effectively, relating to itself as the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”. It is for this reason that Hegel writes the following: “Because this indeterminate determinateness is essential to the object, the latter is within itself a *plurality* of this kind, and must therefore be regarded as a *composite* or *aggregate*” (712). What it is for the “mechanical object” to be is for it to relate to itself as the immediate identity of other objects (the determinations of the “Concept”). In other words, what it is for it to be itself is for it to be itself through other objects that are taken to be identical to itself. + +In a somewhat throwaway remark at the end of this conceptual discussion, Hegel writes that the “mechanical object” “does not consist of *atoms*, for these are not objects because they are not totalities” (712). It is worth musing on this brief remark because it reveals a lot about how Hegel conceptualises the wider significance of his account of the “mechanical object”. Hegel clearly has some mechanistic, in particular atomistic, worldviews in his crosshairs when he goes out of his way to state that the “mechanical object” does not consist of atoms. Hegel’s target is those that theorise that the world is fundamentally made out of atoms and that since the world is made out of atoms that everything is really just atoms. In Hegel’s account of “Mechanism”, he goes out of his way to explicitly state that the “mechanical object”, the simplest kind of mechanical entity, is not reducible to atoms. There is not something more fundamental to the “mechanical object” that is the true reality of things. Moreover, and perhaps a stronger rebuke to the atomists, not only is the “mechanical object” not reducible to atoms, but it is also not the most fundamental thing. Hegel rejects this notion of fundamentality out of hand and it is this rejection that is his strongest argument against atomistic or atomistic-like conceptions of reality. + +What follows from the last quotation is a long remark about how Hegel’s account of the “mechanical object” is akin to Leibniz’s conception of a monad. Hegel writes: + +>“The Leibnizian *monad* would be more of an object since it is a total representation of the world, but confined within its *intensive subjectivity* it is supposed at least to be essentially *one* within itself. Nevertheless, the monad determined as an *exclusive one* is only a principle *that reflection assumes*. Yet the monad is an object, partly in that the ground of its manifold representations-of the developed, that is, the *posited* determinations of its merely *implicit* totality-lies *outside it*, and partly also in that it is indifferent to the monad that it constitutes an object *along with others*; it is thus in fact not *exclusive* or *determined for itself*” (712). + +**Here, I invite a scholar with knowledge of Leibniz and his monads to expound on the above paragraph.** From 0ed57d039a308c53960e26f6a11fbbe7c5840c4b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:33:55 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 04/13] Create The Mechanical Object: Second Section --- .../The Mechanical Object: Second Section | 22 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e30d761e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +The Mechanical Object – Section 2 + + +The thread of the logical development of the “mechanical object” is picked up in “section 2”. To briefly recapitulate, the “mechanical object” is the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”; that is to say, what it is for the “mechanical object” to be the mechanical object is for the determinations of “universality”, “particularity”, and “individuality” to be immediately identical to each other. There is no dialectical movement between them, such that one develops into the other, or such that their relation prompts a dialectical development, because there is no difference to be found within or between them. Such is the “mechanical object” that it is the unity of identical moments that bear no difference to each other. The preceding account is to be found in the first paragraph of “A. The Mechanical Object” [hyperlink this sentence]. However, despite the indeterminacy of the “mechanical object”, again, owing to the lack of difference within or between the determinations of the “Concept”, there is the vaguest notion of determinateness. Determinateness remains as a “manifoldness” (712); in other words, there is determinateness simply because there are the three determinations of the “Concept” that are immediately identical to each other. This is a formal, meagre, superficial determinateness. It is the kind of difference that exists between three rocks lying on the ground. They are different from each other insofar as one is “over there” and another is “over there”, but that is all there difference amounts to, there is nothing more refined to say about their difference. In fact, it is such a meagre and superficial difference that one could very well ignore it and continue thinking that they are simply identical, interchangeable, moments. + The first paragraph of “section 2” elaborates on the precise nature of the determinateness of the “mechanical object”. Hegel tackles the tension that has been present ever since we made explicit the essential determinateness of the “mechanical object” that is equally indeterminate. What does it mean for the “mechanical object” to be both essentially determinate and indeterminate? Hegel’s answer is that the “mechanical object” is indifferent [Gleichgültig] to its determinateness. As we said earlier, the “mechanical object” is able to be essentially determinate whilst being indeterminate because its moments of determinateness are immediately identical to each other. What does this tell us about these moments? It tells us that they are indifferent to each other – it is indifference that explains how a moment can be both a determinateness and indeterminate in that determinateness. As Hegel writes, the “mechanical object” is “indifferent to the determinations as individual, as determined in and for themselves, just as the latter are themselves indifferent to one another” (713). As such, since each determination is indifferent to every other determination, no determination can be comprehended from any other determination. The idea being that if a does not actively relate to b (does not posit b) then it would not make sense to try to understand b by understanding a. To use an empirical example, if you have two rocks, Ra and Rb, it would not make sense to seek to understand Rb by trying to understand Ra since what it is for Ra to be is for it to be indifferent to Rb: Ra is perfectly able to be itself without any explicit reference to Rb and any reference that there is to Rb is merely a formal one¸ i.e. merely in virtue of the fact that both rocks happen to be in the same place. This is what Hegel means when he concludes the first paragraph of Section 2 with a clarification of how the “mechanical object” can have both determinateness and be indeterminate: +“The determinatenesses, therefore, that it contains, do indeed belong to it, but the form that constitutes their difference and combines them into a unity is an external, indifferent one; whether it be a mixture, or again an order, a certain arrangement of parts and sides, all these are combinations that are indifferent to what is so related” (713) +The determinateness of the “mechanical object”, then, is not constituted by something ‘inner’. In other words, the “mechanical object” does not posit the other “mechanical object” as being in a relation to it. It’s as if their relation is given by virtue of their of their shared essential determinateness but has nothing to do with what they are in particular. The mere fact that they are mechanical objects is sufficient for them to be in a unity, and it is because there unity is grounded in the fact that they are mechanical objects that it is based on externality and indifference. One way to think about this is as Hegel’s account of the idea of external reality as given. If reality is merely given to us, there is no internal order or reason to the arrangement of objects, and so the relation of objects to each other is an indifferent and merely external one. I think this is what Hegel is getting at when we look at the next paragraph: +“Thus the object, like any determinate being in general, has the determinateness of its totality outside it in other objects, and these in turn have theirs outside them, and so on to infinity. The return into-self of this progression to infinity must indeed likewise be assumed and represented as a totality, a world; but that world is nothing but the universality that is confined within itself by indeterminate individuality, that is, a universe” (713) +Hegel conceptualises this infinite regression of successive external determinateness’s as the “world”, in its universal form, and as the “universe”, in its individual form. We will break down this distinction in a moment, but let’s focus on the infinite regression. Why does the “mechanical object” have its determinateness outside of itself? Simply, because it is indifferent to any determinateness, and so determines neither itself not any other “mechanical object”. There is a “mechanical object” that is external to the first “mechanical object” and the fact that there are mechanical objects that are external to other together, what we identified earlier as their formal unity, means that their determinateness lies external to them. But since no “mechanical object” is capable of positing the determinateness, the external determinateness keeps getting passed around the mechanical objects, without any change in determinateness. This infinite regression, however, is not a line, but a circle because there is a return into-self, because there are not infinite mechanical objects. There are only three mechanical objects, the “universal”, the “particular”, and the “individual”. But because their external determinateness is never posited by any single “mechanical object” it is infinitely being passed through them. + Lets us now consider the above point concerning the world and the universe. What Hegel means is understandable enough, but what is less clear is whether he intends it to form a part of the logical development. First, let’s consider what is meant by it. On the face of it, Hegel is telling us that return-into-self of the infinite progression that we discussed above is the universal moment of the ‘world’. When we think about the world, within a mechanistic worldview, we think of it is as this totality of infinitely regressive external determinacies. In an apocryphal story, after giving a lecture on astronomy, a member of the audience is supposed to have told Bertrand Russel that his assessment of things is wrong and that the Earth is actually supported on the back of a turtle. Russel, being an absolute Wit, asked the member of the audience “and what is the turtle standing on?”, to which the member of the audience retorted, with perhaps even greater wit, “you’re a very clever young man, but it’s turtles all the way down!”. Why is it a universal? I think, because, the determinacies are all identical to each other and do not determine each other. There is an element of unchanging identity within the ‘world’ – it’s just one turtle after another, without any turtle determining any other turtle. + So much for the ‘world’ as a universal. Let us now consider Hegel’s further point. Having stated that the ‘world’ is a moment of universality, he goes on to write that the universality of the ‘world’ is merely confined within itself by the indeterminate individuality of the ‘universe’. To grasp the move that Hegel makes here, from universal ‘world’ to individual ‘universe’, we need to remind ourselves of a feature of ‘Mechanism’. The ‘mechanical object’ is the “universality that pervades the particularity and in it is immediate individuality’ (710); in other words, the universal ‘world’ is immediately the individual ‘universe’, because we are within the sphere of ‘Mechanism’ where ‘universality’ is immediately ‘individuality’. When we conceptualise the ‘universe’, for Hegel, we are folding into itself the ‘world’ as universal and grasping the infinite regress of the return-into-self as a single, indeterminate moment. We are making explicit the fact that since the external determinacies are all identical to each other and since they do not determine each other, that they may as well be grasped as one self-relating, indeterminate, external, determinateness. In other words, a single ‘universe’. + This section concludes with a meditation on the indeterminacy of determinism. I have alluded to this criticism of determinism in the above explanation for why Hegel conceives of the ‘world’ as the universal and the ‘universe’ as the individual. In essence, Hegel’s point is that if one is to take on the thesis of determinism: that a is caused by b, and that b is caused by c, and so on to infinity (or to a supposed beginning), and that this mode of explanation is sufficient to explain why a, b, and c, are as they are. But, if one is to take on this explanation, then one must make explicit the indeterminacy of such external determinateness: +“For this reason determinism itself is also indeterminate in the sense that it involves the progression to infinity; it can halt and be satisfied at any point at will, because the object it has reached in its progress, being a formal totality, is shut up within itself and indifferent to its being determined by another” (SL, 713) + +It is interesting that Hegel connects the indeterminacy of determinism to the infinite regression of determinism because the infinite regress plays no role in explaining the indeterminism of the “mechanical object”. If we cast our mind back, the indeterminacy of the “mechanical object” is due to the immediate identity of the “mechanical object” and that there is no difference within it. It is this lack of difference that leads to infinite regress that is described in the paragraph that treats of the ‘world’ and the ‘universe’. The indeterminacy that was explained by the immediate identity of the “mechanical object” is the indeterminacy that explains why there is external and indifferent determination. As such, it is because of the indeterminacy of the “mechanical object” that the external determinateness of the objects is an infinite progression, and it explains why determinism doesn’t offer a determinate explanation of things. Because what it offers by way of explanation is merely the same explanation for every single moment, which is what prompts Hegel to call it an “empty word” (SL, 714). + Crucially, the above is not a disproof of determinism or a criticism of it. It is Hegel’s account of determinism. Hegel has managed to fit determinism into the unfolding of the determinations of thought and being. Hegel is telling us that there is such a thing as determinism and it works like this. Implicitly, however, there is a criticism of determinism since determinism is supposed to be a foundational theory – it is a theory that explains everything. However, for Hegel, the deterministic logic is a mere moment in the first section of Mechanism, and the “mechanical object” is shown to continue developing beyond determinism. Thus, whilst determinism is a determination of thought and being, it is not the absolute determination that explains everything. + + + + + + From 5882abe63a9b8d02e1b3337f1cbfe74aaf7f8ad4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:37:40 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 05/13] Moving Files --- .../The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx | 0 .../{ => mechanical-object}/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 | 0 2 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/{ => mechanical-object}/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx (100%) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/{ => mechanical-object}/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 (100%) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 From 520a3ca7072a79ae48a6f00ebe9205198c4f23fe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:44:35 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 06/13] Rename and Metadata insert --- ...ical Object - First Paragraph.mdx => first-paragraph.mdx} | 5 ++++- .../{The Mechanical Object: Section 1 => section-1} | 0 .../{The Mechanical Object: Second Section => section-2} | 0 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/{The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx => first-paragraph.mdx} (97%) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/{The Mechanical Object: Section 1 => section-1} (100%) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/{The Mechanical Object: Second Section => section-2} (100%) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx similarity index 97% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx index 74f789da..e2c2aa03 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx @@ -1,4 +1,7 @@ -The Mechanical Object: First Paragraph +--- +title: The Mechanical Object: First Paragraph +description: Learn about the first paragraph of the Mechanical Object +--- Before even thinking about the “mechanical object”, let us just think about the conceptual structure that presents itself at the beginning of “Mechanism”. The first determination is described in the following terms: diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Section 1 rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/The Mechanical Object: Second Section rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 From 6a63a11cc76a18ba1601853d28fa15955dd08fde Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:46:27 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 07/13] Added metadate to files --- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 | 5 ++++- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 | 6 ++++-- 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 index 5ea9428a..f3c10b8b 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 @@ -1,4 +1,7 @@ -# The Mechanical Object – Section 1 +--- +title: The Mechanical Object – Section 1 +description: Learn about Section 1 of the Mechanical Object +--- The first section opens with a paragraph that is a reflection on the “mechanical object” rather than a continuation of the immanent development of what the “mechanical object” is, as was the case in the previous paragraph. This is something that Hegel does often, and without any warning, and it is important to distinguish passages that add to the immanent development of a concept from passages that are reflections on that immanent development. diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 index e30d761e..22d7367e 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 @@ -1,5 +1,7 @@ -The Mechanical Object – Section 2 - +--- +title:The Mechanical Object – Section 2 +description: Learn about the second section of the Mechanical Object +--- The thread of the logical development of the “mechanical object” is picked up in “section 2”. To briefly recapitulate, the “mechanical object” is the immediate identity of the determinations of the “Concept”; that is to say, what it is for the “mechanical object” to be the mechanical object is for the determinations of “universality”, “particularity”, and “individuality” to be immediately identical to each other. There is no dialectical movement between them, such that one develops into the other, or such that their relation prompts a dialectical development, because there is no difference to be found within or between them. Such is the “mechanical object” that it is the unity of identical moments that bear no difference to each other. The preceding account is to be found in the first paragraph of “A. The Mechanical Object” [hyperlink this sentence]. However, despite the indeterminacy of the “mechanical object”, again, owing to the lack of difference within or between the determinations of the “Concept”, there is the vaguest notion of determinateness. Determinateness remains as a “manifoldness” (712); in other words, there is determinateness simply because there are the three determinations of the “Concept” that are immediately identical to each other. This is a formal, meagre, superficial determinateness. It is the kind of difference that exists between three rocks lying on the ground. They are different from each other insofar as one is “over there” and another is “over there”, but that is all there difference amounts to, there is nothing more refined to say about their difference. In fact, it is such a meagre and superficial difference that one could very well ignore it and continue thinking that they are simply identical, interchangeable, moments. The first paragraph of “section 2” elaborates on the precise nature of the determinateness of the “mechanical object”. Hegel tackles the tension that has been present ever since we made explicit the essential determinateness of the “mechanical object” that is equally indeterminate. What does it mean for the “mechanical object” to be both essentially determinate and indeterminate? Hegel’s answer is that the “mechanical object” is indifferent [Gleichgültig] to its determinateness. As we said earlier, the “mechanical object” is able to be essentially determinate whilst being indeterminate because its moments of determinateness are immediately identical to each other. What does this tell us about these moments? It tells us that they are indifferent to each other – it is indifference that explains how a moment can be both a determinateness and indeterminate in that determinateness. As Hegel writes, the “mechanical object” is “indifferent to the determinations as individual, as determined in and for themselves, just as the latter are themselves indifferent to one another” (713). As such, since each determination is indifferent to every other determination, no determination can be comprehended from any other determination. The idea being that if a does not actively relate to b (does not posit b) then it would not make sense to try to understand b by understanding a. To use an empirical example, if you have two rocks, Ra and Rb, it would not make sense to seek to understand Rb by trying to understand Ra since what it is for Ra to be is for it to be indifferent to Rb: Ra is perfectly able to be itself without any explicit reference to Rb and any reference that there is to Rb is merely a formal one¸ i.e. merely in virtue of the fact that both rocks happen to be in the same place. This is what Hegel means when he concludes the first paragraph of Section 2 with a clarification of how the “mechanical object” can have both determinateness and be indeterminate: From 02f723508354a8893e82c25b38ca7fe1a2df66ac Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:49:17 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 08/13] ordered in new way --- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/_meta.json | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/_meta.json diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/_meta.json b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/_meta.json new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3ff60fb8 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/_meta.json @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +{ + "first-paragraph": "", + "section-1": "", + "section-2": "" +} \ No newline at end of file From 2adec985b7e7964740d67282e44a615e2b974057 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:54:37 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 09/13] added mdx --- .../reference/mechanical-object/{section-1 => section-1.mdx} | 0 .../reference/mechanical-object/{section-2 => section-2.mdx} | 0 2 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/{section-1 => section-1.mdx} (100%) rename src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/{section-2 => section-2.mdx} (100%) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1 rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx similarity index 100% rename from src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2 rename to src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx From 875baf1010c3c5c453303cbd1a47bf11495618fb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 19:57:08 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 10/13] fixed errors --- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx | 2 +- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx index e2c2aa03..9a29c13a 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: The Mechanical Object: First Paragraph +title: The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph description: Learn about the first paragraph of the Mechanical Object --- diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx index 22d7367e..396668ee 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title:The Mechanical Object – Section 2 +title: The Mechanical Object – Section 2 description: Learn about the second section of the Mechanical Object --- From cc12e632eed12de974360c4ca34c61242327f1b4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 20:01:47 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 11/13] edits --- src/pages/hegel/reference/_meta.json | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/_meta.json b/src/pages/hegel/reference/_meta.json index 79191c6c..6093727e 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/_meta.json +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/_meta.json @@ -2,5 +2,6 @@ "index": { "title": "Introduction" }, - "being": "Being" + "being": "Being", + "mechanical-object": "Mechanical Object" } \ No newline at end of file From a02a5b38ef4dbfeac6ebb7606064971a6d9f031a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 18 May 2024 20:03:39 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 12/13] edits --- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx | 2 +- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx | 2 +- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx | 2 +- 3 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx index 9a29c13a..967342cc 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: The Mechanical Object - First Paragraph +title: First Paragraph description: Learn about the first paragraph of the Mechanical Object --- diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx index f3c10b8b..6007a84f 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-1.mdx @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: The Mechanical Object – Section 1 +title: Section 1 description: Learn about Section 1 of the Mechanical Object --- diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx index 396668ee..1330b657 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object/section-2.mdx @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: The Mechanical Object – Section 2 +title: Section 2 description: Learn about the second section of the Mechanical Object --- From c8bd4641d92117a301e92c775153d6fa8f86ab93 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ridetoruin <147239524+ridetoruin@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 21:57:40 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 13/13] Update mechanical-object-section-1.mdx Added stub to bottom of page and added link that should take user to the contributing page - did I do it right? --- src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx index 5ea9428a..a9df463d 100644 --- a/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx +++ b/src/pages/hegel/reference/mechanical-object-section-1.mdx @@ -15,4 +15,4 @@ What follows from the last quotation is a long remark about how Hegel’s accoun >“The Leibnizian *monad* would be more of an object since it is a total representation of the world, but confined within its *intensive subjectivity* it is supposed at least to be essentially *one* within itself. Nevertheless, the monad determined as an *exclusive one* is only a principle *that reflection assumes*. Yet the monad is an object, partly in that the ground of its manifold representations-of the developed, that is, the *posited* determinations of its merely *implicit* totality-lies *outside it*, and partly also in that it is indifferent to the monad that it constitutes an object *along with others*; it is thus in fact not *exclusive* or *determined for itself*” (712). -**Here, I invite a scholar with knowledge of Leibniz and his monads to expound on the above paragraph.** +** This page is a stub. Help us to expand it by contributing! Head on over to our [contributing](sphil/src/pages/contributing) to learn more!**