The math stuff can be a little bit bizarre ( I think he's chasing after justifications in a correlationist form actually), but I wasn't really concerned with that. I just worried about how you were seemingly equating what is an out and out materialist argument (the possibility of resurrection occurring through states) with speculation and some sort of faith style argument.

He appropriately dismisses Heideggarian concerns. His point, since it is about necessary Being (to contextualise it to Heideggarian), is that Being is not "for us" at all. It's is that which is necessary, that which obtains regardless of the finite. The Heideggarian concern is flawed form the beginning in this context. I think Meillassoux's argument is confusing and misleading in this context because he references two specific qualities, contingency and math, which are of finite beings. He obscures his own point about Being. I think he would have done better just to argue Being was the infinite which was nothing else.

I think the point he is trying to make about Being is Spinozian. What we really wants to say is there is a necessary infinite being which is nothing else, especially any of those finite (contingent states). The God present in non-existence is pretty much identical to Spinoza's God of Substance.

I also think this would save Meillassoux from accusations of faith. In a world in which it is guaranteed anything is possible, then we can hold out that death or injustice might be overcome. Not in the sense it must be, as detailed within what might be ferried as "faith based thinking," but in the sense that finitude doesn't doom us to death or injustice. Just because we die and injustice occurs, we don't have to take them as necessary. Something we can always be certain about, since the non existing God of contingency (death might be overcome, justice might occur) is necessary.

For instance, it is not at all the case that most people know enough calculus to really do science, but we all understand what it is to repeat an experiment. We understand what it is to measure. We understand what it is to predict something definite so that correctness or incorrectness is sufficiently clear. This requires the use of language and a basic knowhow for getting around in the world. Science would not be intelligible without this knowhow. — macrosoft

Understanding what it is to repeat an experiment, to measure and to predict just are instances of understanding science I would say. So it is really not a matter of science being unintelligible without these understandings or abilities, but of there being no science without them.

As to literature being phenomenological I have already stated so myself, so no argument there. But phenomenology is not science, in fact according to Husserl it specifically brackets the concerns of science to focus on the subjective nature of experience; on the "what it is like'. So, I think phenomenology is properly descriptive, and although description is of course part of science it is the mere beginning of it.

Surely "the walk matches the talk" (on a societal scale at least) only when there is settled opinion?

Understanding what it is to repeat an experiment, to measure and to predict just are instances of understanding science I would say. So it is really not a matter of science being unintelligible without these understandings or abilities, but of there being no science without them. — Janus

Honestly I just can't see an important difference. Science is intelligible/understandable as science even for those who don't know math. The get the gist of it without being able to do it. And even getting this gist depends on getting a far more basic gist of moving around in the world and speaking even the simplest kind of language. We might ask about the intersubjectivity involved in these basic skills. Somehow we very comfortably experience our sensations in terms of public objects. I'm not sure that a problem-free explicit account of this worldliness can be given, and really I think that it can't be. Witness the endless debate, each side sniffing out what's fishy in the other's jargon.

But phenomenology is not science, in fact according to Husserl it specifically brackets the concerns of science to focus on the subjective nature of experience; on the "what it is like'. So, I think phenomenology is properly descriptive, and although description is of course part of science it is the mere beginning of it. — Janus

Hmm. Well I'd say of course literature is not lower-case science. Recall the context. If we think of uppercase Science as existence clarifying itself simultaneously in the realm of science proper, literature, and philosophy (in terms of a description of what is) then phenomenology is even Science itself. On the other hand this '-logy' is problematic in its focus on words, concept. The self-clarification of existence is arguably as much a matter of feeling and sensation as it is of concept. 'Science' in this widest sense is....Christ? That's mostly a joke, but I think we start to touch on myths and religious traditions. The left Hegelians (some of them) understand the incarnation in terms of mankind's increased mastery over nature along with his increased consciousness of his own freedom and 'divinity.' -a fairly Satanic rendering of the incarnation. This reminds me of Hegel's notion that his absolute philosophy was absolute religion 'fixed' or 'improve' by a shift from pictoral thinking to 'pure' concept. Personally I think metaphor stays with us and that 'pure' concept might be dependent on impure concept.

*And for all who read this, I consider this a thought experiment. I am just creatively feeling my way along the conversation, exploring possibilities. I mention this because 'Science' is going to push some buttons these days. I'm less interested in various culture wars (in terms of being a participant) than I think some people are --and I think less interested in what things are called, as long as we have a mutual sense that we are talking about the same thing.

Surely "the walk matches the talk" only when there is settled opinion? — Janus

While I understand why you might say that, I don't think it's so simple. I will grant that the walk matching the talk might require some stable sense of what kind of walk is appropriate. I may have a settled opinion that kindness is best whenever possible. I might talk about open-mindedness loudly and proudly (or more consistently quietly and modestly) . And maybe I do indeed act kindly and open-mindedly. Does that count as a settled opinion? Perhaps it does.

But I don't think you're objecting to the possibility of that kind of settled opinion.

His point, since it is about necessary Being (to contextualise it to Heideggarian), is that Being is not "for us" at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But I don't find this necessary being to beyond clarification.

In a world in which it is guaranteed anything is possible, then we can hold out that death or injustice might be overcome. Not in the sense it must be, as detailed within what might be ferried as "faith based thinking," but in the sense that finitude doesn't doom us to death or injustice. Just because we die and injustice occurs, we don't have to take them as necessary. Something we can always be certain about, since the non existing God of contingency (death might be overcome, justice might occur) is necessary. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, I get that, and well said. But there is a practical contradiction here. We don't live this merely theoretical possibility. It's not unlike an agnostic who might indeed admit the possibility of a God and live just like his explicitly atheist neighbor. For me our actions largely reveal what we significantly believe. In theoretical games we adopt 'partial' personalities. We put on a kind of hat that transforms us. We make a big deal out of difference that make no difference (a pragmatic critique.) And this is why many don't find philosophy interesting, because it pretends to wring its hands in many cases.

To be clear, I like After Finitude and his other works. As a matter or personal judgement/taste, I nevertheless find Heidegger far more significant, though with a particular phase of Heidegger's work in mind (the 5 years or so leading up to Being and Time.) I have not yet been able to enjoy his later work and maybe never will, but I continue to tune in to The Concept of Time and find it revolutionary (as you may know, it's the first draft of Being and Time, only 100 pages long so that one can quickly scan the vision as a whole, which I find illuminating with my holist preferences.)

Gotta work for a living, so check in with you lovely people later....

I thought he was talking about the truth. That's why I commented he was arguing a contradiction. If truth is at stake and someone has good reason for holding a position on those grounds, then someone is being refuted.

If truth is our measure of having a good reason to hold a position, then some sort of falsehood or incoherence in the opposing position has been identified. My point was if we have good reasons for holding a position in term of truth, we are committed to the refutation of an opposing position is some shape or from. We have reason to reject to because it is false and known to be false.

For two position to beyond refutation would mean we could not have a good reason for picking either on grounds of its truth.

I'd say that on the individual level there is no "walk matching the talk" without settled opinion. On an individual level settled opinion may be a matter of commitment or faith and not necessarily scientific or empirical understanding. On a societal level, though, there is no universal "walk matching the talk" without settled opinion; and settled opinion that transcends traditional culturally ingrained beliefs (which can never be shared globally) seems to be possible only with the benefit of science.

I just worried about how you were seemingly equating what is an out and out materialist argument (the possibility of resurrection occurring through states) with speculation and some sort of faith style argument. — TheWillowOfDarkness

M is very technical, very precise in his thinking. But so were the theologians, right? A machine-like technique (presumed for that reason trustworthy) is applied to deliver results that violate what one might call the existential aspect of the scientific worldview --nature is a blind machine that doesn't care about us and we actually just die, vanish, fizzle out.

To say that anything can happen at any time can be defended with machine-like logic. Hume's critique of induction is convincing in theory. But just about everyone deeply believes in the uniformity of nature, mostly pre-theoretically. The only issue is sorting out false alarms or getting more accuracy, with an occasional revolution that allows us to predict and manipulate new kinds of things (discovery of radioactivity, for instance.) So M uses machine-like logic to deny that nature is 'truly' machine-like. And yet he needs nature to be mostly machine-like to make the fossil argument. We only trust that the world is older than mankind because we employ models whose trustworthiness is founded on our belief in nature's regularity.

While his machine-like arguments are fascinating, he is ultimately attacking the idea of nature as the familiar kind of machine in order to deny the certainty of death. He uses a different language, but so did apophatic theologians and mystics. I like negative theology and certain mystics, so I don't point out the similarity as I see it as an accusation. Recall that M was invoked against my 'ontological holism,' which prompted me to say: 'Hey, wait a minute, Meillassoux is stranger than that.'

and settled opinion that transcends traditional culturally ingrained beliefs (which can never be shared globally) seems to be possible only with the benefit of science. — Janus

It at least seems possible (if a little scary) that the globe could fall under the control of a specific community which makes its way of being and seeing dominant. Unless one accepts the idea of a trule 'neutral' culture (an idea I can't make sense of), this would just be a traditional culture with a history and a direction in terms of that history.

As far as science goes, I do see your point, but I think it's complex. If the core of science is prediction and control, then these are so valuable to us as embodied beings that most would be tempted on those terms alone perhaps to weave the language that science uses to achieve these things into the rest of their culture. We can also consider war and population. A high-tech culture will at least be capable of sustaining a greater population density, leading to wars that are likely to be won technologically. My question is whether science is essentially deeper than this. It is of course connected to various ideals. We tend to favor the kind of lingo that gets us what we want. If 'electron' talk gives us cell-phones and angels only give a few people nice feelings, then electrons are real and angels are fantasies.

IMV we even see a kind of pre-science in some of the sophists. Talk is cheap --or actually expensive if you hire a pro. Talk itself is instrumentalized. Part of the scientific spirit seems to be instrumental in this sense. It is a 'god' with real power, that reliably answers prayers with pain pills and contact lenses. On the other hand, most people don't defend science in terms of its brute practical relevance. It is not a tool but a window to the universally real. What is our interest in this universally real beyond knowledge as power? I'm not saying that I am a stranger to this interest but only interested in clarifying it.

I don't think so. We have to be careful here. The certainty of death is something people the to approach form a position of actuality. Promises granted in response are never merely possible. When immortality is promised, it's some sort of certainty attached to the actual outcome. You will live some sort of (after)life.

In making his materialist argument, M is outright denying this certainty of an (after)life (and so is Hume). The clearing of the space of the possible doesn't actually give (after)life. It missing the guarantee which of those promises. There is a huge difference between saying; "Well, you might get to keep living..." and "you will keep living by the power of this..."

If I read your use of "machine like" correctly, M is actually giving the apotheosis for nature being machine like. Under radical contingency, there is no idea or rule which can guarantee a life. Life is put beyond any sort of definite promises. We have to always come back to: "Well, only if those states happen to exist..." He is using the machine like order to deny the certainty of death, but that's precisely what the machines entail: for death to occur, it needs the machines to do it. Nobody dies without being an existing dead thing. Not even an omnipotent being can get past this requirement or escape the possibility of its life/death.

M is taking a position directly and violently opposed to those would would claim something there than machine like logic. He's not using machine like logic to deny nature is machine like. Quite the opposite, he's saying it is only/necessarily machine like, so we can never substitute in a rule or idea which would give a definite promised outcome. Since it is necessary the world doesn't care, we cannot ever close possible events off to a particular expectation we have. In this respect, he is the opposite of mystics and theologians who promise (after)life. All we can ever promise is something might happen. With regards to death, we can never have a position of definite certainly with regards to actually. M is denying all those promises of a caring world. We will only ever have an uncaring one of possibility.

In this respect his argument (or a Humean one) isn't trying to secure resurrection at all. That it might happen is not a reason to think it will or does. Possibility is not actuality.

He's not using machine like logic to deny nature is machine like. Quite the opposite, he's saying it is only/necessarily machine like, so we can never substitute in a rule or idea which would give a definite promised outcome. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm not sure we really disagree on this issue, but maybe we aren't using the same terms. I underlined what were two compatible thoughts in terms of my jargon. I'd say that the vision of nature as a machine is precisely a set of rules that describe our expectations ('promised outcomes'). I agree they aren't deductively secured.

Since it is necessary the world doesn't care, we cannot ever close possible events off to a particular expectation we have. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree that it's logically possible that I could walk across Lake Michigan. I think the tension here is between the machine-likeness of the argument for this otherwise counter-intuitive claim and what makes it counter-intuitive, our rough and ready sense of nature's regularity and our learned trust for those with the algorithms and strange lingo who apparently make the jets fly and the cell phones ring. We don't and can't really believe that anything is possible IMV except in some theoretical sense. Or I'm trying to point out the gulf for most of us between our abstraction realization that science isn't deductively grounded and the way we live and talk in every other context.

When immortality is promised, it's some sort of certainty attached to the actual outcome. You will live some sort of (after)life. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'll grant that there's a difference logically between possible and certain resurrection, and it may that M was mostly interested in the possibility as an object of thought to elaborate his notion of justice. He may 'actually' believe in plain old death without resurrection. By 'actually' I just mean to sincerely expect annihilation, head-space possibilities having no place in the guts.

I don't object to defenses of a possible afterlife by the way. I don't find it to be sincerely expect-able, but many seem to.

IMV, if I can be equally honest, this is you reading your concerns into what for me is pretty clear. — macrosoft

From one angle, I appreciate you doing all of that work, but from my perspective, all of that work is only compounding the problems. I could pick all of the problems apart, or even just one at a time, which is what I typically do when I'm trying to encourage focus, and then you'd be an apologist for what I'm picking apart in maybe an even longer post, and then I'd have additional problems with that, and then you'd be an apologist for it in another really long post, and I'd have additional problems with that, and it would just never end.

Rather than engaging in the futility of that, the deal, or the challenge, basically, is this: could you type something about Hegel--if you want to basically try to sell his merits to me--that is is short, clear,to the point, that I'd agree with/that I'd think is not constructed in a way that suggests beliefs that are misconceived if not outright wrong? You're not going to type a big chunk of his ideas obviously, since that wouldn't be short, etc., but just start with the smallest of steps that you'd guess maybe we could agree on.

-if you want to basically try to sell his merits to me- — Terrapin Station

I do indeed, because I both sympathize with the skepticism/resistance and think Hegel is worth with trouble --and because I love the opportunity to paraphrase. Paraphrasing strives for a jargon-independent global comprehension IMV.

. I could pick all of the problems apart, or even just one at a time, which is what I typically do when I'm trying to encourage focus, and then you'd be an apologist for what I'm picking apart in maybe an even longer post, and then I'd have additional problems with that, and then you'd be an apologist for it in another really long post, and I'd have additional problems with that, and it would just never end. — Terrapin Station

You yourself just waxed Hegelian there. This is the 'dialectical' process that Hegel is trying to point out. I start with an assertion that is not quite right. You locate what is not quite right. I try to patch the hole with more detail, more context. Repeat. What is happening as we move through time? We work together to build an account of existence that increases in complexity and becomes more adequate, to some degree by taking account-giving itself into account as an essential part of what is. This would be the dialectical process become 'self-conscious,' or the philosopher grokking that debate is productive. 'Spirit' or 'mind' is dynamic and synthetic. Instead of viewing spirit or mind as a set of truths, we can view spirit or mind (or existence) as a self-elaborating process. Substance is caught up in or as a living subject.

This is already implicit in the 'impossibility' of a summary that precedes dialectical elaboration or development in time (or development as a kind of historical or conceptual time.). The kind of truth that Hegel is concerned with (truths about mankind, history, philosophy, religion) are created in the very pursuit of those truths. The comprehensive or more comprehensive truth is a stairway of 'lies' or 'partial truths' or 'errors.' Today's so-called truth is not the refutation of yesterday's lies but rather their harmonizing synthesis. 'Spirit' assimilates otherness. From this perspective you are doing exactly this as you try to make sense of some of these suspicious ideas and work them into your living system/personality. And we can also think of a larger human who is composed of individual humans who come and go, catching up with the conversation and contributing to it, only to pass away. [What I leave out here is something that Hegel finds important, action, especially war. For Hegel thought is not independent of work and fighting in the real world. Contradictions are not only conceptual but existential. Humans also clarify what they are in terms of what they want (the recognition by others of their freedom and value.) The phenomenology is an idealize history of this evolving self-consciousness. The only way to understand it is to repeat the journey. The 'result' is this journey as it understands itself as the end of the journey (philosophy understands only what has already happened.)]

The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. — Hegel

How about "short, clear,to the point, that I'd agree with/that I'd think is not constructed in a way that suggests beliefs that are misconceived if not outright wrong"?

How about "short, clear,to the point, that I'd agree with/that I'd think is not constructed in a way that suggests beliefs that are misconceived if not outright wrong"? — Terrapin Station

OK, I will try once more, and perhaps what is not there will be illuminating in its conspicuous absence.

It is impossible to be short, clear, and to the point and significantly meaningful. — kinda-sorta-impossibly-short-Hegel

This sort of statement is incoherent. If you don't even know what someone is saying or haven't even looked at it, how can you have any idea whether an idea is wrong or misconceived? The move of decreeing a position wrong because you haven't understood it or done some work to understand it is to abandon honesty and reason. Speech and efforts of others aren't meaningless just because someone doesn't want to take time to understand it.

I am quite shocked people seriously entertain the argument otherwise so frequently.

It is impossible to be short, clear, and to the point and significantly meaningful. — kinda-sorta-impossibly-short-Hegel

Yeah, that's not something I at all agree with. (Which probably should be obvious given what I was asking for.)

If you don't even know what someone is saying or haven't even looked at it, how can you have any idea whether an idea is wrong or misconceived? — TheWillowOfDarkness

First, I didn't say anything in the vein of "I haven't even looked at it."

Aside from that, in my view it's a matter of "the emperor's new clothes" basically.

You outright said you won't read these philosophers because they'll only say something meaningless.

You also said this in response to a Hegel quote earlier in the thread:

Personally I think it's a mess Pretty much every phrase there is problematic. Just for one example, "the "self-consciousness of his essential being"? First off, essentialism is muddle-headed in general. Secondly, what does "self" add there that "consciousness" without the "self" modifier wouldn't do just as well? And what is "consciousness of his being" saying, really, anyway? It seems like a needlessly rococo way of just talking about consciousness or awareness period. — Terrapin Station

None of that addresses the content of the argument. You misread the use of "essential being" as talking about some sort of essentialism. You ignore that self-consciousness is making a particular distinction between different sorts of experiences. None of the objections you gave to the content address what Hegel was talking about. How can you possible assert "the emperor's new clothes" when you don't even know what is being spoken about?

I'm not saying you should or need to know what Hegel is saying either. We all have our particular interests. No-one needs to know everything or a specific philosopher. My point is just that you keep making pronouncements of meaninglessness when you don't even know the potions you are talking about. Why are you moved to dismiss field of study you don't know nothing about? Am I going to go around saying nuclear physics is meaningless just because I don't understand its ins and outs and it's complex to learn? This sort of response doesn't reflect truth context. A combination of "I don't understand it and won't take effort to learn" are not grounds to degree a field of study meaningless or mistaken.

You outright said you won't read these philosophers because they'll only say something meaningless. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'm pretty sure I didn't say that, and I have read them to some extent--I was required to--but if you could quote where I said that, maybe I'm just not recalling what I wrote.

None of that addresses the content of the argument. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Which is relevant to what?

You misread the use of "essential being" as talking about one sort of essential. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Just to use that as an example, what sort of "essential" should I have read it as?

Yeah, that's not something I at all agree with. (Which probably should be obvious given what I was asking for.) — Terrapin Station

I understand that you may be getting tired of my longwinded responses, so I leave this here just in case a part of you is still a little curious. And of course it's your business if you want to write Hegel off as a windbag, and all of us Hegel lovers as confused , pretentious fools.

That said, here goes one pretentious windbag in defense of another pretentious windbag:

For me the whole approach of one looking for something one already agrees with seems questionable. I'd say that we learn to think differently and more comprehensively from philosophers. They aren't sets of propositions to be graded like an algebra quiz, nor should we expect theorems from them in terms of our own axioms. We must learn their language and grasp them as a whole, just as we grasp who our friends our as a whole to make sense of their individual utterances.

Any philosopher able to our expand our thinking significantly would almost have to appear strange to us in proportion to their potency. The more deeply they challenge our basic approach or grasp of the situation, the less initially intelligible they will be, since they are talking to us from outside of what we take for granted, with words that we can only interpret in terms of this same taken-for-granted.

Because they are initially unintelligible and challenging, we are on the lookout to save ourselves the trouble of understanding them. Since humans often do just talk confused nonsense (a nonsense that stems from mental sloth), we are tempted to throw challenging thinkers in the same bin as the mentally slothful. Couple this with the snottiness of youth that takes such difficult thinkers for its hero and condescends to others in a jargon that it itself only half-understands (without the modesty to admit this), and it becomes even easier to call the whole thing a scam.

We can argue to ourselves that anything valuable must also be easily digestible. But I'd say that ideas being easily digestible depends on them already fitting into a fixed paradigm or pre-theoretical grasp of the situation. Extending this, intellectual revolutions would be trivial affairs, and one might wonder why humankind didn't almost instantaneously leap to the educated common sense of 2018. If you answer that it takes time for technology to develop, for languages to evolve, for wars that expand more enlightened political ideas/ideals over the globe, etc., etc., then you are already Hegelian. Asking Hegel to be compressed into a one-liner is the kind of approach that Hegel opens his first book criticizing. Asking for one of his ideas out of context is more reasonable, but expecting a valuable idea to 'live' in one pithy proposition assumes something about meaning and language that thinkers like Hegel challenge.

Aside from that, in my view it's a matter of "the emperor's new clothes" basically. — Terrapin Station

Maybe read a philosopher who isnt just a big mishmash of gobbledygook instead. :joke:

Staying away from the continentalists is a good idea in general. :yum: — Terrapin Station

Then why would you write "quote me"? And why would you assume that I'm making a comment based on textual evidence rather than other possibilities? — Terrapin Station

You even outright denied your comment were based on anything these philosopher had said or writing (i.e. that what you are saying isn't based on what texts say). The content of the argument is relevant because that is what you are attacking. You are saying it is worthless and meaningless. If your claim was accurate, it would be true the claims in the text were incoherent, worthless, meaningless, etc.

"essential being" refers not to any sort of essentialism whereby some particular form is said to necessarily be given with something, such as "humans are necessarily greedy."

It refers to an ontological/metaphysical/logical notion about existence, a fact of belonging to a necessary unity (hence the use "essential").

I don't agree with the notions of progress that you seem to be assuming by the way.

In general, if I don't agree with what someone is saying, and especially if in addition I think that they're saying things that are incoherent, I feel that they don't communicate well, etc. it's not going to work to assume that the fault is mine rather than theirs, especially not over some extended period of time.

That's a different idea than whether I understand or am familiar with everything someone is saying on first blush. There's a way to show that an author is thinking and communicating clearly and coherently even though some material, some vocabulary, some ideas might be unfamiliar.

First off, what are those quotes supposed to be supporting?

That you don't read these philosophers because you think they are just delivering meaningless words.

I'm then extending it into the point your criticism don't actually address their arguments and form a reasoned conclusion they are speaking incoherently.

I certainly didn't write anything like "I haven't read them" in anything you quoted. You're bizarrely interpreting that into what I wrote, indicating that you don't reason very clearly yourself. So let's figure out how in the world you're interpreting "I haven't read them" into what I wrote.

In general, if I don't agree with what someone is saying, and especially if in addition I think that they're saying things that are incoherent, I feel that they don't communicate well, etc. it's not going to work to assume that the fault is mine rather than theirs, especially not over some extended period of time. — Terrapin Station

Sure, I can relate to that. But this prioritization of agreement/disagreement over a sure grasp of what is being said is not my own preference. As Hegel would say, we find nothing quite right. We just assimilate what is good into the rest of what we know. We blend two wrong perspectives together to get a less wrong perspective.

Anecdotally, I've had a love/hate relationship with Heidegger. I would sometimes want to vomit at the way he expressed himself (or was translated in some works.) I'd write him off. I especially hated and still hate 'Being.' But again and again other thinkers who were clear and important to me referred back to Heidegger (like Rorty who writes quite clearly). So again and again I returned. Finally I found my way in, and his work from the mid 1920s is some of my very favorite philosophy. Will it appeal to those with very different initial concerns? Perhaps not. What we expect from philosophy opens or closes the worth of various philosophers for us, it seems to me. On the other hand, some philosophers can persuade us to grasp philosophy itself a new way.

With Hegel it was always the PoS that people praised just as B&T is the Heidegger work most talked about. But I found my way in to both thinkers by starting with briefer, clearer writings. I am not at all done grasping their visions as a whole, but I have grasped them sufficiently to be very glad that I kept wrestling with their strangeness. I'd be surprised if you don't have some favorite thinkers who were difficult at first. Is there not some kind of leap of faith that we take which motivates us to push through? As I said, it was other people who were clearly not fools who kept me from writing off thinkers when I was strongly tempted to. Of course it is ultimately very much your business whether you bother with Hegel. Hell, maybe he will just continue to bore you. I really don't know how it is for other people. I just have a vague sense that we are roughly alike which can sometimes be misleading.

There's a way to show that one is thinking and communicating clearly and coherently even though some material, some vocabulary, some ideas might be unfamiliar. — Terrapin Station

I agree, and sometimes the same philosophers do a better job of this at some times than at others. I still maintain that the most revolutionary thinking must almost by definition look like nonsense at first.

*I promise to stop trying to talk you into liking Hegel. It's been fun trying.