>> Welcome back to Intro to Philosophy
1010, the summer session for 2019.
In this video, we are going
over Hegel and comparing him
to the Daoist philosophy of Zhuangzi.
So the question is for exam three, part A,
number four, how is Hegel's philosophy similar
to Zhuangzi's Daoist philosophy
in chapter 13 of our book.
All right, so, Hegel follows Kant,
and Kant followed David Hume.
So, Hume said we can't have knowledge,
we can't have absolutely certain
necessary universally true knowledge
of the so-called physical world.
That at best, we can have probable knowledge.
There are no laws of physics that are
necessarily true everywhere in the universe.
Because he's an empiricist.
He says knowledge comes from your sense organs,
and I can't perceive any
necessary laws of cause and effect.
Those are relations of ideas in your mid.
They're not matters of fact in
the world that you perceive.
He doesn't even believe in actual
enduring unified material objects
like George Berkeley before him.
He says all we experience was sense perceptions.
And then we have a propensity to
create the fiction of enduring objects,
just like we have a propensity to
believe we are a unified enduring self
that stays the same from one moment to the next.
Kant said okay, I see your point, and yet Isaac
Newton did discover these laws of physics.
They do seem to be necessarily
true everywhere in the universe.
The law of mathematics do
seem to be universal truths.
And so what he said is, we can't
have absolute certain knowledge
of the way the world appears to us.
The objects that we perceive, we can know
exactly how they'll interact with each other
in nature because what we're
perceiving is only our perceptions.
The appearances of the natural world in our
mind follow the laws of our own thinking.
Categories of thought.
A priori categories of thought.
But, says Kant, we cannot
know the thing in itself.
Whatever an object is outside of our
perception of it is impossible for us to know.
Because how would we know what
it is if we don't perceive it.
And if we perceive it, we're automatically
categorizing the information according
to these a priori categories of thought
like space, time and cause and effect.
We don't see our touch or
smell or hear space or time,
and yet every object we perceive is
presented in a context of space and time.
And it's interrelated through
a chain of causes and effects.
None of those are empirically observable.
Kant says, no they're not.
But we can know they're real through what
he called transcendental apperception, okay.
So that was the previous video.
Hegel says we can have knowledge of the thing
in itself because there is no separation
between our knowledge and
the thing and of itself.
If it's knowledge, which means it's
true, then it has to be absolutely true.
And if it's absolutely true, it
must be one with the absolute.
All right so I'm just going to say that
is similar to the Daoist philosophy
that is saying you can gain knowledge through
becoming a subjective unity with the objective,
putting yourself in a subjective
relation with all things.
That's what Zhuangzi's ultimate
recommendation is.
Don't see yourself as outside
the world and observing it.
Put yourself inside everything, see the
world from the perspective of everything
that you think is outside of you.
That's having this obliterating unity of the
Dao that can give you absolute knowledge.
So, Zhuangzi is a skeptic, and at the same time,
he believes there is absolute
knowledge to be had.
Because you can become one with the Dao.
So, that kind of is, it's similar to Hegel.
It's not exactly identical, but
first, let me go over Hegel,
and then we'll compare that to Zhuangzi.
So if you look at the introductory
notes, Hegel's historicism page 485.
So the introductory notes say his distinctively
dynamic form of idealism set the stage
for other 19th century Western philosophers.
All right, so dynamic means movement,
change, that's what he's interested in.
The laws of history.
How things unfold through history
reveals absolute knowledge.
It's not the individual realizations
of science but the progress of science.
Each stage in the evolution of science
taken together reveals the object
of knowledge that it's perceiving.
So, but the difference between subject
and object disintegrates along the way.
That's what we see in the
Daoist philosophy also.
So, Hegel rejects that we
can't know the thing in itself
because he says we are the thing in itself.
And the thing in itself is us.
So, it's, all right, so on page 486, at the
top is, the introductory notes say this is not
to say that philosophy cannot express
any universal or necessary truths,
but they are not the kinds of truths sought
by Kant or other previous rationalists
which stays constant across historical
circumstances are not a priori propositions
or innate concepts but the set of dynamic
principles governing the development
of our ways of constructing the world.
All right so the evolution of our understanding
of the world follows a very
definite pattern of stages.
That's what's for Hegel the unchanging
absolute truths, these categories of thought
that Kant talked about, space,
time and causality.
For Hegel, the way we perceive
space, time and causality can change,
but each phase of the way
it changes doesn't change.
There's a set series of steps, and that is what
is the structuring principle to be understood.
So, continuing in the introductory notes.
Second, then Hegel finds some
universal and necessary truths,
but they are high-level dynamic principles
governing the development of thought.
The best known as the thesis,
antithesis, synthesis pattern.
So, in our excerpt from Hegel's phenomenology
of mind, he doesn't get into the whole thesis,
antithesis, synthesis, dialectical pattern.
But in a nutshell, what Hegel says
is here's the process of nature.
Here's the unchanging pattern of
development as applied to human thoughts.
Someone puts forward a theory, a thesis.
And someone else says oh, look
what you forgot to mention.
The exact opposite of what you say is true.
That's called the antithesis, the anti-thesis.
And then someone else says oh,
if you put those two together,
you have a more complete truth,
and that's called a synthesis.
But then a synthesis is seen as a new thesis.
Someone else says look, there's an
antithesis, and then someone synthesizes them.
And so it's the zigzagging pattern,
thesis, antithesis, synthesis,
which becomes the new thesis,
antithesis, synthesis, like that.
And it's heading, however, according to
Hegel, toward definite point in history
where absolute knowledge will be had.
And similarly, for Zhuangzi, you can
achieve this unity with Dao and become one
with the universe and have all knowledge.
So Zhuangzi's a skeptic, but he's only skeptical
about a certain way of having knowledge.
If you're trying to compare things not
realizing that you are one with them,
then you'll never get knowledge of them.
That's his skepticism of that kind of
pursuit of knowledge, but he's not skeptical
about the ability to know the thing in itself
because he's assuming we are one with the thing
in itself which he calls the Dao.
All right so that's a basic overview.
Now let me get into some of the actual
text from Hegel's phenomenology of mind.
So, in the left-hand column of page 487, so he's
talking here about what Kant said before Hume
about their afraid that we'll
never have knowledge of the thing
in itself, or Hume is just a total skeptic.
We can't have knowledge.
It's impossible to have.
So, we can't have certain knowledge
of necessary universal truths
about the objective world says Hume.
And Kant says the same thing.
Although we can have knowledge
of the appearances.
So here is what Hegel says.
He goes, this apprehensiveness is
sure to pass even into the conviction
that the whole enterprise which sets
out to secure for consciousness by means
of knowledge would exit per se
is in its very nature absurd.
So, I want to know what exists.
I want to know what existence is.
And Hegel is saying, you look at
the world like people like Hume
and Kant then you'll think
that it's an absurd attempt.
He goes, and that between knowledge and
the absolute, there lies a boundary.
This is not what Hegel believed.
He's putting forth what others,
like Kant, believe.
So and that in between knowledge and
the absolute there lies a boundary
which completely cuts off
the one from the other.
For if knowledge is the instrument by which
to get possession of absolute reality,
the suggestion immediately occurs
that the application of an instrument
to anything does not leave it as it is for
itself but rather entails in the process
and has in view a molding and alteration of it.
That's Kant.
You can't know the thing in itself because once
you perceive it, it's digested, it's broken down
and reorganized according to the categories
of thought, space, time and causality.
So you can't know it, and this is what Hegel
is explaining some people's opinions are.
He says or again, if knowledge is not an
instrument which we actively employ but a kind
of passive medium through which
the light of the truth reaches us,
then hereto we do not receive it as it is in
itself but as it is through and in this medium.
In either case, we employ a means which
immediately brings about the very opposite
of its own end or rather the absurdity
lies in making use of any means at all.
So if you use means to gain absolute
knowledge, the very attempt is absurd
because you're putting a boundary in
between you and the absolute knowledge,
thereby making it impossible
to have absolute knowledge.
But what Hegel says is the absurdity
lies in making use of any means at all.
So he's saying we're not
different from knowledge.
We can know the thing in itself.
We are the thing in itself.
So if you go to page 488, paragraph
76 in the left-hand column,
so he's numbered these paragraphs.
So he says, with such like useless ideas and
expressions about knowledge as an instrument
to take hold of the absolute or as a medium
through which we have a glimpse of truth
and so on, relations to which all these ideas of
a knowledge which is divided from the absolute
and an absolute divided from knowledge in the
last resort lead, we need not concern ourselves.
All right.
We don't have to worry about
theories that say there is a barrier
between us and knowledge of the absolute.
Nor need we trouble about the about the evasive
pretexts which create the incapacity of science
out of the presupposition of such relations in
order it wants to be rid of the toil of science
and to assume the air of serious
and zealous effort about it.
That's Hume.
Hume says science can't give us
knowledge, necessary universal knowledge.
So, why waste our time trying.
Just realize, you can't have it.
So, Hegel is dismissing Hume and Kant as
trying to, the one's kind of a quitter.
He's a zealous quitter so that he can have
a serious air of dismissing science instead
of engaging in the hard work
of developing an actual science
that can lead to knowledge of the absolute.
Knowledge of the absolute is realizing
we are part and parcel with the absolute.
So, on the right hand column, he says, but
science, all right, so in response to people
like Hume who says science can't
give us universal absolute truth,
he says with better right on the contrary,
we might spare ourselves the trouble
of taking any notice at all of such ideas and
ways of talking which would have the effect
of warding off science altogether.
For they make a mere empty show of knowledge,
which at once vanishes when
science comes on the scene.
So compare David Hume's skepticism about
science to Isaac Newton and Hegel says,
the one gives us actual knowledge.
It works. The other is filled with skepticism,
and its importance vanishes in light of the,
you know, the technological wonders
that science actually provides.
But you'd be quick to note the
science that we have at that time,
which is the 18th century,
isn't the final truth.
So continuing.
He says but science and the
very fact that it comes
on the scene is itself a
phenomenon, meaning in appearances.
It's not the numina, it's
not the thing in itself yet.
The thing in itself entails all
of its levels of development.
And the science coming on the scene at a
certain point in history is necessarily partial.
It has to be seen in relation to
its whole developmental trajectory.
That's Hegel's historicist form of
rationalism that you have to see,
have to learn about the absolute by
seeing how it shapes historical progress.
All right so science and the very fact that
it comes on the scene is itself a phenomenon.
It's coming on the scene
is not yet itself carried
out in all the length and breadth of its truth.
In this regard, it is a matter of
indifference whether we consider
that it's science is a phenomenon
because it makes its appearance
alongside another kind of knowledge.
Which is like, for example, metaphysics of Plato
and the skepticism of Hume and then Kant's,
so all those, there's science and
then there's that other stuff.
That science appears on the scene alongside
other forms of undeveloped knowledge
or whether he's going to go on to say it's the
outcome of those previous stages of knowledge.
It doesn't make a difference.
It's still a partial phase.
So let me read this again.
In this regard, it is a matter of indifference
whether we consider that it, science,
is a phenomenon because it makes its
appearance alongside another kind of knowledge
or call that other untrue
knowledge its process of appearing.
Science, however, must liberate
itself from this phenomenality,
and it can only do so by turning against itself.
So here's this, we can see the idea
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
So there's science.
It shows us oh, look, knowledge of the
objective world, for example, Isaac Newton,
but because that's just, it
appeared in history at one point,
so it's not the whole sequence
of historical events.
It's going to necessarily turn against itself.
But that will then lead to a synthesis.
And then after I go through
a few more paragraphs,
then I'm going to start comparing
it to Zhuangzi.
All right so, it can only do
so by turning against itself.
Moving over to page 489, paragraph 77,
he says now, because this exposition,
this is his writing, he's investigating
knowledge as a phenomenon, all right.
For this reason, we shall here undertake
the exposition of knowledge as a phenomenon.
So phenomenon means something that appears
on the historical scene at a certain point.
And he goes now because this exposition has
for its object only phenomenal knowledge,
the exposition itself seems not to be science,
free, self-moving in the shape proper to itself
but may from this point of view be taken
as the pathway of the natural consciousness
which is pressing forward to true knowledge.
So, his study right now he's saying, I'm not
revealing to you the final shape of all science.
But I'm trying to show you the pathway
of consciousness as it appears naturally
in history pressing forward to true knowledge.
There is a point in history
where true knowledge will be had.
But his, what he's analyzing
right now isn't that yet.
He says or it can be regarded as the path
of the soul, which is traversing the series
of its own forms of embodiment like
stages appointed for it by its own nature
that it may possess the clearness of spiritual
life when, through the complete experience
of its own self, it arrives at the
knowledge of what it is in itself.
So to have a complete experience of its
own self, you have to have knowledge
of the entire historical pattern of development.
So, continuing here on paragraph 780 he
says natural consciousness will prove itself
to be only knowledge in principle
or not real knowledge.
Since, however, it immediately takes itself
to be the real and genuine knowledge,
this pathway has a negative significance for it.
What is the realization of
the notion of knowledge means
for it rather the rule and overthrow of itself?
All right so he's talking about how
science then contradicts itself.
It thinks it has genuine knowledge because it
has knowledge of the objective physical world,
and it's seeing I have knowledge
of a thing outside myself.
And that is not absolute knowledge.
That's relative knowledge.
You're looking at something outside yourself
necessarily from your own outside perspective
that you can't know the thing
in itself that way.
You have to become one with the thing.
That's what he's going to be leading up to.
This is what Zhuangzi also says.
So, he's saying since, however, it
immediately takes itself to be the real
and genuine knowledge, this pathway
has a negative significance for it.
What is the realization of
the notion of knowledge means
for it rather the ruin and overthrow of itself.
For on this road, it loses its own truth.
Because of that, the road can be
looked on as the path of doubt
or more properly a highway of despair.
So Hume was the despairing one.
And even Kant was kind of despairing
of ever knowing the thing in itself.
That's what science, Isaac
Newton's on the scene.
Ah, we know everything.
We have knowledge of the universe.
We understand the ideas God had in
mind when God created the universe.
No we don't, says Hume and Kant.
Although Kant did give us some
hope of at least having science
and absolute certainty of
the world of appearances.
So now Hegel is going to say all
right, but that's just another level.
The final truth will be realizing that there
is no ultimate separation between the world
as it appears to us and the thing in itself.
That's absolute knowledge.
And that is very similar to Daoism.
So continuing here, paragraph 79 on page 489.
The series of shapes which
consciousness traverses
on this road is rather the detailed
history of the process of training
and educating consciousness
itself up to the level of science.
All right so the series of shapes
which consciousness traverses
on this road is rather the detailed
history of the process of training
and educating consciousness
itself up to the level of science.
Science, properly understood, understands all
of these phases along the
way of its own development.
That resolve presents this mental development
in the simple form of an intended purpose
as immediately furnished and
complete as having taken place.
This pathway on the other hand is as opposed
to this abstract intention or untruth,
the actual carrying out of the process of
development to follow one's own conviction.
All right, so, skipping down
a little bit more on page 489.
Skepticism, directed to the whole
compass of phenomenal consciousness
on the contrary makes mind for the first time
qualified to test what truth is since it brings
about a despair regarding what are called
natural views, thoughts and opinions.
So skepticism is a required phase along
the path leading to absolute science.
Because he says it makes mind for the
first time qualified to test what truth is.
And that was Hume.
So Hume, Kant said Hume awoke
him from his dogmatic slumber.
So the skepticism of Hume made Kant stop and say
wait a minute, this is, he's got a good point.
And it prompts the next phase of knowledge.
So, for Zhuangzi, he was a skeptic about
gaining knowledge through the world
and all of the different people
with their different perspectives.
And his whole point was unite the opposites, put
yourself in subjective relation with everything,
with externals, and that way
you can have absolute knowledge
of the Dao, universal knowledge.
So we'll get to that as soon as
we finish going through Hegel.
So continuing on page 49 he says,
the completeness of the forms
of unreal consciousness will be brought about
precisely through the necessity of the advance
and the necessity of their
connection with one another.
So unreal consciousness is the partial
historically isolated phases along the way.
Their connection is the necessary reality
that when you can see the whole chain
of progress that is real consciousness.
I think it's important to also, at this point,
to point out that Isaac Newton
was superseded by Einstein.
And Einstein's theory of special
relativity and then which was broadened
into general relativity, both of them say
the past, the present and the future coexist.
And to have knowledge of each of these phases
of history for Hegel, that's absolute knowledge.
Well, how can we have knowledge of
each of these phases of history.
They come and they go and they're gone.
They don't exist anymore.
Hegel didn't believe that
and neither did Einstein.
So, and there's a lot of similarities
between Hegel's philosophy and Einstein's.
The way Einstein responded to Newton is similar
to the way Hegel's philosophy kind of responds
to the philosophies that were sparked
by Newton's theory of gravity.
So, just the point is me talking about
absolute knowledge entails knowing the whole
historical progression.
Well, Einstein showed that the
whole historical progression
of the entire universe does coexist the
past, present and future, they all coexist.
What's the past for you would be considered
the future for someone else moving
in a different direction at a different speed.
So it's called the relativity of simultaneity.
What's happening, two things happening now
to you from someone else's perspective.
One could be happening first and then the other.
And from someone else's perspective moving
in another direction at a different speed.
It gets reversed.
The ultimate result is all
points of space time coexist.
And that is important for Hegel's philosophy.
So, I'll read that again and then continue.
The completeness of the forms of unreal
consciousness will be brought about precisely
through the necessity of the advance and the
necessity of their connection with one another.
To say that they are necessarily
connected in a certain way is
as much as to say it's determined.
Well that's what Einstein was,
he was a determinist, yes.
Things are connected in a certain way.
You can see them, you can
perceive them differently depending
on your point of view, but all events coexist.
So now I'm getting out of my
own league here to a degree,
but just keep in mind what
he's saying isn't unscientific.
He's saying this is the future of science.
Well, it really was the future of science to a
degree of what he's trying to talk about here.
So to make this comprehensible we may remark
by way of preliminary that the exposition
of untrue consciousness in its own
truth is not a merely negative process.
Such a one-sided view of it is what the
natural consciousness generally adopts.
So it's not only negative that each phase is
partial and therefore not absolutely true.
Because that idea is itself the
one-sided point of view that is untrue.
He says, and a knowledge which makes
this one-sidedness its essence is one
of those shapes assumed by incomplete
consciousness which falls into the course
of the inquiry itself and
will come before us there.
For this view is skepticism which always
sees in the result only pure nothingness.
All right.
So again, skepticism is just one phase,
a necessary phase along the path
toward realizing the whole sequence
of the evolutionary phases of knowledge.
And that's absolute truth.
So, page 490, paragraph 80 he says the
goal, however, is fixed for knowledge just
as necessarily as the succession in the process.
Determinists is at that point where knowledge
is no longer compelled to go beyond itself
where it finds its own self,
and the notion corresponds
to the object and the object to the notion.
If you go over on page 491 paragraph
84 he says but the nature of the object
which we are examining surmounts this separation
or semblance of separation and presupposition.
Consciousness furnishes its
own criterion in itself.
And the inquiry will thereby be a
comparison of itself with its own self
for the distinction just
made falls inside itself.
Continuing to the other side
of the page he says,
thus in what consciousness inside
itself declares to be the essence
or truth we have the standard which itself sets
up and by which we are to measure its knowledge.
All right so he concludes
by saying consequently,
we do not require to bring standards with us.
So standards by which to
measure the objective world.
Nor to apply our fancies
and thoughts in the inquiry.
And just by our leaving these aside, we are
enabled to treat and discuss the subject
as it actually is in itself and for
itself as it is in its complete reality.
All right so that is the
end of the Hegel reading.
I'm sure that didn't make complete sense to you
because it didn't make complete sense to me.
But I have a pretty good
idea of what Hegel is saying.
He's not quite as a complicated of a writer, at
least in the excerpt, as Kant was in my opinion.
But I think comparing it to Zhuangzi's
Daoist philosophy will help make both
of them a little more understandable.
So, how is Hegel's philosophy similar.
I'll just read this.
How is Hegel's philosophy similar to Zhuangzi's
Daoist philosophy in chapter 13 of our book.
So I got to make sure not
to turn this camera off.
All right now going back to
page, let's see here, page 324.
So this is from Zhuangzi.
He begins on page 323, great knowledge embraces
the whole small knowledge of part only.
Great speeches universal,
small speech is particular.
In a way, that's similar to Hegel
who says absolute knowledge
comprehends the entire sequence
of historical development of thought itself.
That's great knowledge.
It embraces the whole.
Small knowledge is each of
the phases along the way.
Each one tending to contradict
the one before it.
So you have the thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
But that synthesis is then
contradicted as I have said before.
All right so continuing now
on page 324, he says,
I'm going to skip to the right-hand
column about halfway down.
He says Dao is obscured by our want of grasp.
So the Dao, Daoism based
on the concept of the Dao.
That's the one.
That's everything.
It contains everything.
It orders everything.
It gives structure to everything
that has structure.
And it is the process of reconciling
opposites, which is very similar to Hegel's idea
of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
For the Dao, everything is a combination in a
union of the opposites of the yin and the yang.
Yin is feminine.
Yang is masculine.
Yin is dark.
Yang is light.
All the pairs of opposites are
contained in the yin and the yang.
But each contains the seed of the other,
as you can see in the yin yang symbol.
So, I'll read here, continuing here.
Dao is obscured by our want of grasp.
Speech is obscured by the gloss of this world.
Hence, the affirmatives and negatives
of the Confucian and Maoist schools,
each denying what the other affirmed
and affirming what the other denied.
But he who would reconcile
affirmative with negative and negative
with affirmative must do
so by the light of nature.
So again, that's similar to Hegel's
idea of reconciling the opposites,
to lead you towards absolute knowledge.
Then continuing, Zhuangzi says there
is nothing which is not objective.
There's nothing which is not subjective.
But it is impossible to start from the objective
only from subjective knowledge is it possible
to proceed to objective knowledge.
So, that is we saw also Hegel
say things very similar to that.
Those who think knowledge is a medium
or a instrument to gain knowledge
of something outside of ourselves, put up a
barrier between us and absolute knowledge.
But if we are that absolute knowledge,
then we can actually know it.
We can know ourselves immediately.
We can't know something outside of
ourselves because it's mediated to us
and thereby altered by that mediating process.
Hegel says ultimately there is no mediating
process required when you realize you are one
with the absolute, the absolute idea.
Similar to Plato's idea of the good.
It's the ultimate knowledge to be had.
Open the eye of the soul to the idea
of the good then realize how all
of the eternal forms are imprinted on your
soul, and you are one with everything.
You can have knowledge of everything
because you're one with everything.
All right so, the bottom of page
324 on the right-hand column.
He goes which being the case, the true sage
rejects all distinctions of this and that.
He takes his refuge in Dao and places himself
in subjective relation with all things.
Similar to what Hegel was saying as we saw
when we went through that Hegel reading.
So continuing here, page 325 on the left.
When subjective and objective are both without
their correlates, that is the axis of Dao.
And when that axis passes through the
center at which all infinities converge,
positive and negative the like,
blend into an infinite one.
And so it has been said that there's
nothing like the light of nature.
And we saw Hegel say that.
Don't think that there's a barrier
between us and universal knowledge.
We are one with the universe to be understood.
And although it's not in the selection that
we are reading in this book from Hegel,
the imagery of the light of nature
and the infinite one in which all
of infinities converge is very similar
to Hegel's concept of the absolute,
the absolute idea, the final goal of history.
So, on the bottom of the
left-hand column, page 325,
Zhuangzi says only the truly
intelligent understand this principle
of the identity of all things.
They do not view things as apprehended by
themselves subjectively but transfer themselves
into the position of the things viewed.
In viewing them thus, they
are able to comprehend them.
They too master them, and he
who can master them is near.
So it is that to place one's self in subjective
relation with externals, without consciousness
of their objectivity, this is Dao.
But to wear out one's intellect in an
obstinate adherence to the individuality
of things not recognizing the
fact that all things are one.
This is called three in the morning.
So then we went over that in the video
about Zhuangzi, the monkeys getting mad
when the zookeepers says I'll give you three
acorns in the morning and four in the evening.
They want four first and three later.
The zookeeper says all right.
It's the same amount, but I'm
putting myself in your shoes.
It's no skin off my back.
If that makes you happy, fine.
So that is becoming, understanding others
by putting yourself in their shoes,
or in other words, in a deeper sense, realizing
you and them are all rooted in the Dao.
You share one supreme source.
And therefore, it is possible
for you to have knowledge
of absolute not, meaning not relative knowledge.
Relative knowledge means partial
knowledge from your limited perspective.
Absolute knowledge meaning
complete and whole knowledge,
which necessarily requires becoming
one with the thing to be known.
All right so on page 326, at the bottom,
so he's going through skepticism.
So Zhuangzi is a skeptic about normal
mundane knowledge giving you any kind
of certainty about the way things work.
How can you decide which standard to use?
If you want to try to know
what is beautiful or, you know,
there's famously beautiful women to human males.
But deer are afraid of those beautiful women.
So are the fish and the birds.
So they think they're fearsome and terrible.
So who's right?
Who's got the absolute standard
of beauty in their mind?
Is it the human species, the deer species?
So he's going through different reasons,
typical reasons for having skepticism.
And Hegel will say that is one of the phases
you need to go through in order to achieve
that certainty that you can
actually gain absolute knowledge.
So after going through all
this skeptical arguments
about no one has the absolute standards
of knowledge, Zhuangzi then goes on to say
at the very bottom of the
right-hand column on page 326.
The perfect man, answered Wong Yi
[phonetic] is a spiritual being
where the ocean itself scorched
up, he would not feel hot.
Where the Milky Way frozen
hard, he would not feel cold.
Where the mountains to be riven with
thunder and the great deep to be thrown
up by his army would not tremble.
In such case, he would mount upon the
clouds of heaven and driving the sun
and moon before him would pass beyond the
limits of this external world where death
and life have no more victory over man.
How much thus?
What is bad for him?
Okay, so the sage pays no
heed to mundane affairs.
He neither seeks gain or avoids injury.
And then later on he'll go and say how does
the sage see himself by the sun and moon
and hold the universe in his gras?
He blends everything into one harmonious whole,
rejecting the confusion of this and that.
Rank and precedence which the vulgar
prize, the sage stolidly ignores.
The revolutions of 10,000 years
leave his unity unscathed.
The universe itself may pass
away, but he will flourish still.
So, then he talks about there's
a great awakening
when you realize this whole world is a dream.
On the bottom of the right-hand
column, page 327.
Since then, you and I and man cannot decide.
Must we not depend upon another?
Such dependence is as though
it were not dependence.
We are embraced in the obliterating
unity of Dao.
There is perfect adaptation to whatever may
eventuate, and so we compete our allotted span.
But what is it to be embraced in
the obliterating unity of Dao?
It is this with reference to
positive and negative for that
which is so and for that which is not so.
All right.
So I'm going to leave it there.
He ends with the butterfly passage.
I had a dream I was a butterfly, then I woke up.
Now I don't know.
Am I the butterfly dreaming I'm Zhuangzi,
or am I Zhuangzi dreaming I was a butterfly?
It's hard to tell.
So he's the skeptic who never thus believes
that there is this ability to
achieve absolute knowledge.
Putting yourself in subjective
relation with the external.
Which is the obliterating unity of Dao.
Everything is rooted in Dao, which
Hegel is calling the absolute.
And although it seems that there
are isolated parts of the absolute
and that there's a boundary between
us and knowledge of the absolute.
In fact, there is no boundary.
And we can gain absolute knowledge,
which automatically is the goal
of the historical progress of knowledge itself.
So, I'll leave it at that.
I think I've given you enough
material to create your own opinion.
And the next video will be about Nietzsche.
