Peak 118 Common Knowledge

Under this premise, we have come to understand Hegel's point about the directness of knowledge itself, which is the commonality, because all knowledge is composed of our universal concepts, that is, it is composed of commonalities.

The most intense debate in the history of philosophy about the concepts of universals and anomalies occurred during the Middle Ages, when there was a specialized debate between universals and anomalies, known as the "nominalism" and "realism" debates.

The debate based solely on name and reality is actually about the nature of commonalities. Because commonality, as a universal concept, whether it has reality or not, has become a focus of discussion between realism and nominalism.

Realism holds that they are universal, and that a concept of commonality has its properties. The concept of commonality has reality, and you cannot deny its reality. This reality is similar to what Hegel called the directness of knowledge, which means that all our knowledge is composed of these concepts.

However, nominalists are wrong in saying that all these similarities are just a generic name used to indicate a certain type of thing. It's just a common name, just a generic name. Commonality is just a common name, as it is only a name and does not refer to any specific object, it does not have reality. So, this corresponds perfectly to realism.

So, the realism we understand today also evolved directly from medieval realism. In fact, in contemporary philosophy, there is also a debate between nominalism and realism, and materialism is essentially a realist. The analytical method advocated in analytic philosophy is a nominalist, which is a completely different way of treating things.

Hegel pointed out here that this kind of reality, also known as materiality, reveals the reality determined by the commonality. So, when we talk about Hegelian philosophy, we must not forget that it is an objective idealism, and objectivity always comes from this side. It emphasizes the universality and objectivity of all our knowledge, and emphasizes the objective content of our concepts themselves.

This objective content does not refer to the objectivity of the external world, nor does it refer to some objectivity that is independent of human will and is detached from subjective consciousness activities. Instead, it only talks about its universal principles and absolute truth, which are the objective concepts discussed by Hegel. So, objective idealism is based on the understanding of the universality and absoluteness of thought, and we must grasp this point.

So, how do mental or conscious activities become an objectivity?

When a spirit becomes an objective thing, it also means that it becomes absolute. Only in an absolute sense can we talk about the concept of spirit. Therefore, in his book, he describes the so-called phenomenology of the mind, which refers to the general process of science or the formation of knowledge.

He said that this book "Phenomenology of Spirit" describes the general process of science or knowledge formation. The initial knowledge or direct spirit is something without spirit, it is sensory consciousness. In order to become true knowledge or to generate scientific factors and pure concepts, the initial knowledge must go through a difficult and long road.

This path, as it manifests itself in terms of content and various forms of expression, will not be the first thing that people think of to guide unscientific ideas into the path of science. It will also not be an explanation of the scientific foundation, nor will it be like a sudden excitement like firing a handgun. Instead, it will be directly dealt with with with absolute knowledge from the beginning, and other viewpoints will be ignored and even cleared up.

So, Hegelian philosophy is an absolute philosophy, but here he doesn't pay much attention to or consider the work done by previous philosophers on this issue in his philosophical system. Because his examination of all previous philosophical works is included in his other work, namely his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy". We read his lectures on the history of philosophy, although it is also its absolute spirit, which has evolved and changed in the development of human philosophical thought. However, in that book, it provides a critique and positioning of all philosophical ideas in the history of philosophy.

However, in his book, he does not talk about others but only about himself. Therefore, from the beginning, he focused on absolute knowledge and the concept of true knowledge. This is also the starting point for Hegel's discussion of absolute spirit, what is spirit?

He said that in order for thought to become fluid, it must be pure thinking. This inner directness requires recognizing oneself as a link or abstracting one's own pure certainty. The self abstraction of 'certainty' is not a self abandonment or abandonment, but a rejection of the fixity contained in its own establishment.

One of its core concepts emerged here - the concept of abandonment, which refers to the inherent fixity of the self that opposes different contents as pure concrete things. It means abandoning things that do not match its own content, and also abandoning them into art that is trapped in pure thinking. Therefore, there is an unconditional fixity of the different contents of the self.

He abandoned two things, both of which are called 'fixedness'. What does fixity refer to?

It refers to a condition that we use to confirm the content of the ideas we are discussing and the pure consciousness that serves as the starting point of our thoughts, which is to ensure that our thoughts and thinking activities conform to the absolute knowledge or pure starting point of our thoughts that we have proposed before. We must ensure this starting point in order to make a kind of abandonment.

The process of abandonment is not abandonment, the purpose of abandonment is to preserve the content of the thought itself, rather than the fixed nature of the retained thought. The fixity of thought is a formal requirement, while the content of thought is a requirement of pure consciousness. Therefore, Hegel needs to use this process of discarding and discarding pure thought in order to truly transform it into a concept.

Pure thought becomes a concept. How did our concept come about? We abandon the conditional things that constrain and restrict the movement of our thoughts through the activity of our thoughts. However, we retain the content formed during the thought process.

Therefore, the result of retention is to form a concept for us. This discourse process is different from the development process we usually talk about from sensibility to reason, from sensibility to intellect. Kant said that all our knowledge comes from a certain innate intellectual ability that we possess, and sensation provides us with the conditions, that is, materials, to form knowledge.

But Hegel is wrong, how is our concept formed?

Our concept is to constantly abandon the external formal requirements that limit the composition of our consciousness through our conscious activities, while retaining the pure intellectual part of our consciousness. At this point, we used to define the concept.

For example, whiteness, also known as whiteness, is a concept that possesses the property of whiteness. How did this concept come about?

This concept is not about seeing something white and then saying it's white, and then sublimating it into a concept, which is white. But rather, we see countless objects with a white color, and then we give up all these specific objects, which is a regulation of our thinking. For example, we cannot just talk about white clothes, white chalk, white paper, and then we can understand white. If we understand white in this way, we can no longer reach the conceptual level, that is, we cannot become what we call pure knowledge.

Pure knowledge must be a pure concept. A pure concept means that it has freed itself from the constraints of the form that the concept itself possesses or is attached to. So, Hegel gave a statement about logic. At the beginning, logic was the starting point of Hegel's philosophical thinking and the foundation of his philosophical discussions.

But this logic is by no means Aristotelian logic. Hegel talked about the method of dialectical movement of thought, which is called logic.

So, here we say that logic is the movement of thought itself. It can abandon the requirement of formal logic for the form itself, in which the concepts used do not have formal regulations. It does not require formal regulations, it only requires pure ideological content to define how every concept we use is expressed in our thoughts.

So, it doesn't require formal regulations. And it was this idea that led to a backlash from later philosophers, especially scientists, because the methods of science, the ways of scientific research, or the ways of scientific expression are mainly expressed not through content, but through form.

All the natural science knowledge we are learning now is about form, and the principles, formulas, and axioms of this form are all formal things.

It is not just a general formalization, it is a form itself, but within this form, the content it reflects is what science wants to explore. However, the way it expresses to us is a purely formal way, because it is difficult for us to grasp the content because without form, we cannot grasp the content, just like we must use some means to achieve a goal. If you don't have the means, you don't know how your goals are achieved. The relationship between the means and the goals should be similar to the relationship between form and content.