Universal, Particular, Individual

These are three important terms that are very important in understanding the evolution of a Notion in Hegel's philosophy. Universal is an abstract that is extracted from experiencing numerous things. For example, fruit is a Universal, an abstraction. Nothing in nature can be found in the nature to be called a fruit; because what we call a fruit may be an apple, an orange, a banana etc. Universal exists as a mere abstraction. However, to speak more concretely, we have certain fruits. An apple is a fruit we define by its shape, color, content and other characteristics. But an apple, if we view more precisely, does not exist objectively because what we have is a red, yellow, green, sour, sweet etc. apple (Particulars), and even each of these classifications and concretization does not help the concept to get rid of universality. Therefore, everything Particular has a tint of abstraction. What is really objective and concrete is the one we immediately work on; the Individual.

Logic and structure of Mind

Hegel says before any endeavor to know the truth of the world we must know whether knowing is possible or not. In other words, does Mind correctly reflect the objective truth? Mind, in finding solutions to questions, wants to prove its conclusions are true, or tries to show nothing other than its conclusion exists, or, let's put the conclusion in words as follows: no other induction is possible because the product of Mind is Necessary. Logical means and is equal to Necessary. But an important question is whether Mind necessarily moves through certain routes - logical modes of thinking - or Mind is free from structures and Logic is the laws adopted by a wise man to shape his thoughts and arrive at reasonable conclusions.

Freedom; identity of subject and object

Deterministic view of man sees him as the slave of the God of History. Constant rules of history determine the way of men's movements. A milder interpretation describes the course of history as a product of unconscious activity of men. If we consider the whole human society as the Subject and the whole external world as his Object then the history will be nothing other than the continuous process of the Subject and Object coming closer and closer. Of course, human society itself may be posited as an element of the Object. In other word, man, along wrestling with Nature, becomes conscious of himself and discovers the characteristics of himself.

Free Will, and Cause-and-Effect Relation

Contrary to old philosophies that consider the Cause-Effect relation like a continuous chain - A is the cause of B, and B the cause of C and so on, a deeper insight shows the Cause-Effect relation weaves a network of relations in all directions so that, as Blunden says, the Cause bends on itself and the Cause becomes its own Effect. An analogy is the Pascal's saying "the universe is a circle with its center everywhere and its periphery nowhere".
Another thing, I think, Cause-Effect relation is only applicable to process not to things as they exist. In other words, we can search for a cause and effect when a phenomenon and process is concerned by not when a thing is studied. For instance, we can question "what is the cause of boiling?" but it is meaningless to ask "what is the cause of water or what is the cause of fire?"
As Will is concerned, Hegel believes that "free choice" is only the form of Will and therefore a mere supposition, and that the content of Will is dependent on outward circumstances. In this view, the form and content of Will stand as opposites.
Free will seems to be completely free from necessity when it comes to collision with rigid outward facts. For instance, a person may try the exercise of his/her free will when he/she feels hunger. Whether he/she eats something or not seems to be completely a choice - something that is not observed in animals, but in higher levels of thinking, thought-objects appear in the form of words and act as causes that stimulate thinking processes and affect man's will. So, the Free Will depends on external objects, in the form of either sensual and material things or thought-objects.

Reference to Nature; Mere Analogy or Full Resemblance?

Hegel likens the movement of Notion to the development of organic things. A seed grows and brings forth its content. He says the seed includes all elements of a mature tree but it we cannot take the two identical. However, various stages of growth of a plant cannot be assigned to various objects but to the given plant, and similarly, constituents of Notion during its development are "identical" with each other and with the whole. The question here is to what sense Hegel tries to employ an analogy between Mind and Nature. Is really Mind the extension of Nature and follows its rules? So, we should scrutinize processes in Nature and try to apply them to mental processes. On the other hand, one may say though Mind chronologically emerges after Nature it functions in a different realm, and therefore, Hegel's analogies are mere illustration to clarify his complicated concepts.

Grammatical Interpretation of Hegel

Discussing the three parts of Hegel's Logic; Being, Essence; Notion. If we try to interpret Hegel's Logic, or at least this triad of his many triads, in a grammatical way, we may see an analogy works. Being, the simplest and the most elementary unit of consciousness, resembles a single word. A word that in the process of knowledge appears from frequent contact of mind with nature. This is also corresponds the stage of sensational knowledge, if we want to keep to the old terminology. Words form without any connection to each other, without any interconnection and interaction. However, mind does not stop in this step. For example, mind creates "Tree" and then "Green", and then connects these to concepts with a verb "Is". This may be analogized with the Essence in Hegel's Logic, which is defined as the process of unfolding a fact, a truth. In fact, this unfolding is impossible without weaving single threads of concepts (Being) into a network of knowledge (Notion).
Surely, these steps cannot be divided sharply. Being is a concept unconscious of itself, but it exits as a concept, as some intellectual entity in our brain. However, it is in its crude shape. On the other hand, Notion is built on these constituents. Here we can extend the discussion to cover the movement of the three parts of Logic. Hegel believes the movement of Being is Seriality. Concepts come and go. A new concept substitutes for the older. If we want to speak precisely, it must be said this is Mind that take a new concept and replaces it with another without connecting the two. In the sphere of Essence, we have Diversity. At least, more than one concept, are interacting in this sphere. The form of movement for Notion is Development. Concepts neither eliminate each other not merely consider each other indifferently but are amalgamated in a new shape of consciousness. Notion is the product of development of simpler concepts, and accordingly new Notion is developed by other Notions.

Form, Matter and Content

The first part of the Hegel's logic is Being, and the second is Essence. Being is being-in-itself, an entity unconscious of itself. Of course, when the existence is devoid of consciousness talking about being-in-itself and thing-for-itself signals Hegel's excessive anthropomorphism. So, we have to reduce these concepts to the human world, where the subject and object meet each other. An individual, a group of men or a not-yet-emergent social development may be considered as a being unconscious of itself.

Anyway, Essence is a process to reveal a new formation of consciousness. Stages or divisions of Essence are Contemplation, Appearance and Actuality. The first stage, contemplation, is the dialectic of Form and Matter. The second stage, Appearance, refers to the interaction of Form and Content. We take Matter as an entity, a substrate, in its most abstract shape. Like the mythical ether that once was thought to be the uniform matter out of which all objects are made, like play-doh used by kids to shape their world. However, in reality, matter is not abstract and has elements with their interactions. Therefore, a shapeless matter turns into a concrete content. An individual living in a society is the same in various times; it has more or less the same organism and physiological matter that appears as a human being. However, his/her content is the product of countless factors. Therefore, in Hegel's logic, the first division of Essence refers to abstract form and matter. This is just the beginning of the process of unfolding the object. The second division, Form-Content, is a step towards concreteness.

In all stages of this process, we should not forget all these concepts don't stand outside of the Subject, the human consciousness, and that all these processes reflect real processes. How Form is connected to Content is an old debate in philosophy and literature and art. I like to discuss it more in the future.

Thing-in-itself

Some questions and points for thinking and discussing:
Thing-in-itself is the thing unconscious of itself! But this is a false idea. Thing-in-itself and thing-for-itself are meaningless without man's mind. It does not stand outside of mind.
Thing-in-itself does not actually exist because any level of knowledge, even vague and superficial, is a knowledge. Even naming a thing brings it to our mind and makes it thing-for-us.
Concerning social and intellectual objects, where the object and subject are the same or interrelated, the thing-in-itself does exist. How do you think about this?

Formal Logic and Dialectic as Logic

Formal Logic looks like a colossal and magnificent building with blocks put one on the other carefully. But Formal Logic that only considers "forms" of consciousness in a standstill world of objects. For this, Identity Principle stands as the pivot of Formal Logic. But, if thought-objects reflect real objects in the objective world logic cannot be satisfied with this picture. Even in daily life, when you probe a worn-out object, for example a pen or a watch or something else, and you cannot easily decide whether it is usable or should be discarded nand your thought sways between calling the object "A" or "B" you have no choice but apply dialectic to the object because the real changing object is in a dialectical process. Doubt, in this sense, is the product of confrontation between dialectically thinking man and moving object. So, Formal Logic may be defined as the logic that deals with end-points when things are at rest. Of course, things at rest are subjective and irrelevant to the real world.

Spirit in the Philosophy of Hegel

Spirit is the keystone of Hegel's philosophy of history, and as Blunden says without considering Spirit understanding the philosophy of Hegel is not possible. Logic, Spirit and Nature are the three components constituting the System of Science in Hegel's philosophy. Though Hegel may be blamed for introducing "spiritual forces" into historical processes it should remembered that Spirit for Hegel is not a supernatural force, a divine will or something so. In Hegel's system, Spirit indeed is the "nature of human beings en masse" rather than a wandering ghost though Hegel really believed the Spirit enters a nation and encourages social-historical movements and leaves another nation and plunges it into stagnation and decline.
Perhaps, discovering true relations between human beings and the nature, which determines the level of social and economic formations and consequently political, legal and intellectual institutions of each society, was required to substantiate Spirit and interpret it in terms of real people's activities.
As Blunden says with a little manipulation we can strip idealist parlance from Hegel's philosophy and reproduce in terms of real life's concepts. Spirit is made by all human beings but act beyond the will of each man. Similar is our understanding of the level of man's struggle with the nature: a product of human beings' needs but independent on individuals, groups, classes, and even all men.

Emerging consciousness

Like water surrounding aquatics, human beings live in a mediating environment. The main element of this environment is language. Of course, there are other elements, norms, practices, etc., that shape the environment that let us to communicate. Development begins when these elements begin to change. But, the change does not appear spontaneously in minds. Our minds find holes in the mediating environment. The holes that must be filled with our material and intellectual objects. These holes are our needs. According to Hegel, the movement of Subject includes there moments: Universal, Particular and Individual. Though our needs for new concepts are widespread (Universal) they appear somewhere definite, like a painful spot on a skin. Movement of Subject and appearance of a new concept is the product of a population but it appears in one or few minds. Particular is the link between Universal and Individual. Particular may be described as the intellectual environment around the nuclei of new concepts.

In this strange world (Majid Mirzaei)

A loose and quick translation of Majid Mirzaei's poem

In This Strange World
In this strange world Oh yea, this is a strange world
The age of technology
You can surveil the four corner of the world!
By just touching a button
You have the universe on the corner of your room
And sitting in front of your computer
You can buy handicrafts of a Mexican woman
Or the artifact of a child in China, India or Vietnam
Or can book a room in the most luxurious hotels of Canary Islands
And even with a woman!
You can lay down on the bed of a clinic close to your house
And your doctor in another continent,
or even in another planet vasectomize you!
In this strange world
Surrounded by one-thousand-eye skyscraping giants
This dusty street-rover, confused and stumbling
Is searching for himself, here and there
Worn out of fruitless search
Tired of faltering along streets
I sit at the table
Press finger on the keyboard
JOB SEARCHING and GO
And soon, Amazed by this high speed
The words NOT FOUND appear
A frozen stream worms its way within remotest rocks of my body
And washes away waves of fear and anxiety
And futile hopes.
I feel the gravity of the whole world on my shoulders.
I feel in the most gallant metropolis in the world
With my ancestors
In deserts burnt of poverty
Like a sweating horse under the yoke
Revolve around the closed circle of straw and sorrow, dizzy and astray
In this strange world
Surrounded by one-thousand-eye skyscraping giants
This dusty street-rover Stumbling and confused
Is stumbling in search for his geography

What is "New"?

Hegel believes many definitions in science, such as the one about Force in Newtonian mechanics, does not present any new relation in the nature but only illustrates existing relations from another standpoint or by using new terms and parlance. "He points out that the discovery of so-called new forces, was nothing more than a reduction of the reality of a thing to that of another thing as if this solved some problem. This is what Hegel calls something ‘having its being in another’. " (Introduction to Hegel's Logic, Andy Blunden, p. 60). So what is important in Hegel's logic is the confrontation of mind with new relations. Unfolding simple concepts, as Hegel believes to be process of consciousness, is an inward process, or in words of Bludnen is the product of mind working on thought objects, however, the important point is to find the interface between mind and fact, or between subjective and objective logic.