The negation of a truncated negation? questions, aporias

A corridor on campus, AUD, 2014.

One of the last propositions professor Anup Dhar, from Ambedkar University Delhi, offered me in my questioning him regarding Hegel's thought was that it may be categorized as an aspect or expression of the Christian religion. I had till then not read his texts on Christianity, but did read the Phenomenology in full, and with patience. Though admittedly, it was a broken affair with many interruptions. These often took the form of me trying to clarify concepts or relations as I understood them from the text, in the classroom. Bear in mind that I am referring to at least two classrooms here. My unsuccessful attempt at completing a masters in philosophy at Manipal University, and my successful (to some extent) effort at receiving the degree of a masters in sociology from Ambedkar University Delhi.

These efforts were often attritional yet briefly elucidating. In being able to point out commonalities in the conception of relations, between people and their objects, I derived great satisfaction. 

There are many academic literatures, yet there is a tendency among the slightly more straight-jacketed ones to domesticate their claims and arguments to a register approaching greater resemblance, like the instinct of a pack achieving herd immunity or safety in numbers, etc. 

I suppose it is not surprising then that literatures of exile, imprisonment, and insurrection appealed to me for they were not guided by an in-house writing style, and hence confronted often novel problems, on terrains which were still new in the societal spectrum, which I might add were far more conducive to an Althusserian such as myself, who traces encounters between contesting interests, representing heterogeneous bodies of thought.   

Yet, as instructive and engaging such exercises may be, occasionally it helps a mind to explore minor relations of differences, and so, I would like to return to the proposition we began with. Is Hegel a Christian thinker? Here, I would like to interject, merely to point out the degree of circumspection required in understanding what it is that we are asking in such a question. Does it entail for instance an admittance that how we read Hegel; the splitting of his thought via the self differentiation of concepts seeking to grasp and present moments such as perception, consciousness, self-consciousness, etc., are these, is this a specifically Christian phenomena? This indeed would be a bold claim.

Whatever the answer to the first question however, we can state that Hegel himself, explicitly refers to 'Christendom', which may even include Jews in its ambit. 

At this stage itself, which some may find premature, the inquiry, this question - seems to have exhausted its productive potential. For what use is a denomination, religious or otherwise, if we already know that our subject lies in it? Does this question sound absurd? Well, to explain why it may not be so we may have to retrace some of our footsteps. 

Thought, which is the object that philosophy studies, begins with perception. An empiricist beginning for certain, yet one which is completely uncertain of that which it is a thought of, in other words - indeterminate. The example presented in the Phenomenology is that of 'this'. The word refers to a self evident immediacy which is apparently transparent to perception, yet inasmuch as it remains at that, it tells us nothing of what 'this' may be. It's taste, texture, sound, smell, meaning, relation to other objects (conceptual or otherwise) remain a mystery. At most, depending on our encounter with it, we merely have an apprehension of its spatio-temporal location.

So there is a sense in which 'this' denotes something, yet inasmuch as it remains the same, it amounts to and denotes maybe the most sublime ignorance of all. The sustenance of thought requires it  to tarry with that which it does not understand, unless of course it's non-understanding itself is apparent to it, in which case it can no longer be thought which is willing to take up its object. 

To begin with, perhaps the most primary differentiation that is to be made is between the 'I' which perceives, and that which is perceived - a sense of oneself, and the self in the world. Here, we already have two moments whose cognition itself requires the positing of a vantage or perspective, point of view, etc. which can perceive both of these instances. Without any other medications at all, we can already see how the self differentiation of concepts, elementary ones such as 'I', the self, the world, etc. demonstrate a trajectory which perhaps isn't merely inward looking, a refrain, often made of philosophy and its expression. So, allow me to return to the proposition we were considering which provoked this detour - what use is a denomination, a denotation, any act of naming, if we already know what is in it? Mere signposts for posterity? Here, I would like to posit a preliminary hypothesis - that the prompt to name arises in the face of an unknown. Yet, and I believe this in more important, every name, by the token of its very origin carries with it an incomplete index of how it is cognized - this is what permits for predication. So, inasmuch as a subject of thought is worth raising, an aspect of that which is not known in the subject in question, which may be the object of our thought - is apprehended, even if we do not as of yet comprehend it. 

To those interested in a topography of the subject, a question which may be of interest is whether this unknown, as it is constructed above, does it reside inside or outside the subject? Perhaps here, we have once again reached a point, where it is necessary to reassess our inquiry, and maybe education will remain nothing other than the art of asking better questions, and on this slightly bitter note, I will end this piece. 

Tuesday, 27th July, 2021.