2025-04-11

I had to pause for a minute to absorb these two paragraphs: above are the words from Stephen Houlgate and the block quoted passage below is from Hegel.

I've thought about this before when I tried to define my own idea of belief and lately when I am absorbed in thinking about my own decisions and catching my responses to it. I think it really helped me to have an ideal definition of who I want to be because it is perhaps what Hegel has been wanting: to have an ideal purpose of Geist, which is an ideal in itself, directing it towards self-understanding and recognition of the freedom of Geist.

In some sense, it can be oversimplified in "just having a plan and direction" that one will be able to propel oneself towards it. But I understand that it is more than that where every single person has this potential (which is a word that wholly embraces its own definition, to emphasize its weight and usage in Hegel's terms) that is inherently there that is waiting to be recognized, realized, and manifested. In the process of initiating that potential comes the dialectic push and pull of the self and the world in achieving that potential.

It surprises me that I have already been thinking this way, creating a meta reaction within me because this realization itself, this experience that I am having right now is what Hegel has been describing. It almost feels like divine revelation that is in some way, a type of consciousness that I have always imagined but never fully understand. I am experiencing once again that mid-state between knowing and unknowing, where this tension between "I know" and "I don't know" comes from my cognitive starting point "I can't possibly know for sure" even if I have an intuition developed at the back of my head. What is often left for me to do is to confirm that assessment and look for evidences that would support my intuition. I can't claim that "I know" when I don't have the materials to support that I know.

Perhaps it is deferring understanding and prioritizing perception over intuition. But at the same time, intuition is the guide that allows its confirmation through perception. By prioritizing perception, it allows the ideal of intuition to form and solidify to what is more true than just merely an initial assumption.