Haz From Infrared Finally Debates Perspective Philosophy 🚀 Infrared Content Catalog

welcome to thank you sunday showdown

today we have

has from infrared and lewis from

prospective philosophy debating whether

veganism

is an ethical duty a quick word about

format and rules

opening statements are eight minutes

long who goes first will be determined

by a coin toss

i will warn you when you hit five

minutes so you can wrap up because when

you hit eight i cut you dead

this will be followed by two sets of

alternating five minute responses

followed by

45 minutes of open discussion and

concluding with 20 minutes

for audience questions regarding

audience questions

super chats will be prioritized and

asked in the order in which they appear

if we have time non-super chat questions

should be marked by an asterisk so i can

quickly find them in the chat

rules of conduct are strict speaking out

of turn will result in 30 more seconds

of speaking time being allotted to the

other party

so save it for the response period or

for the open discussion segment

the use of slurs or personal abuse will

be met with an immediate ban and this

applies both to the audience and to our

participants

if either participant attempts to talk

over or challenge the moderator being

myself during this debate

they will first be muted and warned and

then removed i trust all this has been

made clear and that by participating

both guests

i will take at least to have passively

agreed to the rules as just laid out

with that out of the way we will flip a

coin to see who goes first for opening

statements

has your heads louis your tails

tails louis you go first you are going

to have eight minutes

for your opening statement starting

now

[Music]

okay hi everyone all right

so animals are inherently valuable

consciousness is inherently valuable

and the inconsideration of sentient

beings is inherently wrong

that is essentially what i'm going to be

arguing when i say that veganism is an

ethical obligation

an obligation is a duty or a

responsibility

now i'm arguing from a hegelian position

something that i know that has

at least tacitly um endorses at least

from what i've seen

the endorses so hopefully we can make

some headway there

so all conscious beings have interest

desires and the capacity to feel pain

and pleasure when we are considering

when we are considering conscious beings

and

conscious interests we are considering

what is the foundation of value

and ethics as a whole

if we are to agree with the hegelian

position then what we are understanding

is that there is a right and a wrong

entailed in the world itself it's

objective it's not determined by you

or me or any given party it is something

which is

right and that we can discover that it

is right and then make it a law make it

a rule

i would say that we have already done

such a thing we already have

laws numerous laws which protect the

rights the life

and liberty of individuals within the

state

and uh usually humans of course this

wasn't always the case

the law used to protect classes of

individuals particularly

and even still is inadequate in many

cases to protect the overall

interests of the general population even

humans

not just animals veganism

is this consideration veganism is the

consideration that animals are not being

respected and treated

equally in the eyes of the law as in

their interests their desires and their

preferences are not being met

with reasonable consideration we aren't

considering that the pain of an animal

having its throat slit

is not justified because we wish to eat

them

because we wish to overpower them we are

considering ourselves more valuable

simply based on an identity

which we have constructed rather than

something which is true by nature

if we were to be honest with ourselves

and we'll be honest with the reality

that we are

spawned from the unnecessary suffering

of any conscious being

defies what we are trying to do in in

ethics

that is express consciousness and

subjectivity to the greatest overall

possible degree

to create principles which genuinely

reflect the interests and value

at one moment i'm sorry lewis um

infrared please no burgers in my window

thank you

keep going you have 30 more seconds so

when we consider when we consider

animals and we consider their interest

and their pain and their suffering

what we are doing is the same thing that

we've done for hundreds of years we are

considering

that the values that we hold today or

have held in the past

do not encompass the conscious interests

of individuals throughout society

that for example black people are not

lesser that women are not lesser and now

animals are not lesser just because of

the identities that we have

perpetuated upon them and so when we

consider the conscious interests of

other sentient beings

we are being more ethical more rational

and

essentially doing the right thing so i

hope

that explains my position

and are you wrapping up yeah all right

that was pretty fast okay so

uh has let me reset the clock here

and you have eight minutes for your

opening statement

starting now so

in this debate the main thesis i will

defend

is that lewis or prospective philosophy

plainly fails to grasp the principal

significance of the hegelian conception

of ethics

additionally not only is his conception

of ethics

incompatible with hegelian philosophy

so to art actual contents relevant to

this debate

namely veganism vegans like mr lewis

arrive

by means of conceptual abstraction at

the sweeping insight that mankind's

current and past dietary habits

are radically immoral and unethical

however such a position of radical

skepticism

towards norms in the first place the

widespread popularity of which can be

traced to the counter culture

is completely at odds with hegel's view

it's a position which assumes that the

content of morality can be arrived at ex

nihilo on the basis of an individually

contrived

standard of reason hegelian philosophy

is rather one of reconciliation one

which endeavors to arrive at the deeper

rationality of the world and its norms

whereupon the rational individual who in

hegel's case

is the modern cartesian subject

discovers itself to be radically at odds

with it the definitive case being the

newfound political anxiety

provoked by the french revolution for

the europe's ancient regime

the content of tradition taken generally

as the norms customs and culture of a

given society obviously do change

but if they do not change as a result of

being imposed upon by what hegel calls

the law of the heart

or the frenzy of self-conceit veganism

taken both as an ethical obligation for

the individual

and a collective vision of

transformation rests upon the unhappy

consciousness

which affords recognition only of a

contradiction between reality and this

same individual self-conceit

traditions change as a result of a

radical process of mutual recognition

between thinking beings

which animals could not possibly figure

into

in the past lewis has contrasted the

individualistic morality of kant to

hegel's ethical life of state and

society

while the distinction is superficially

true lewis's conception of the hegelian

ethical life

merely consists in an elevation of

kantian morality to the level of

voluntary collective enterprise

his misreading of hegel has its roots in

a form of neocontianism

that has its origins in the late 19th

century and spans from thinkers like

frederick lang

all the way to habermas hans principal

error doesn't suddenly disappear

when the same abstract and indeterminate

morality shifts from the individual to

collective level

the collective reality relevant to hegel

is not something voluntary but objective

it doesn't register some kind of common

sight of radical skepticism or

abstraction toward the world

but has us its content determinant

relations which manifest

a greater or super individual

rationality which hegel's called geist

or spirit

it is only in the harmony between the

individual will and the institutions of

the state

which the individual forms a part that

the achievement of ethical life is

possible

but the institutions of the state for

hegel are not determined voluntarily by

the product of the individual use of

reason

they are rather the form of civil

society's self-consciousness

the contents of which being not their

moral conscience but their very being

hegel's rejection of volunteerism and

individual rationalism concerning the

institutions of the state

is best epitomized by his defense of the

institution of monarchy

it is precisely on account of the pure

contingency of the monarch's position

being inherited by tradition and

completely outside the sphere of

voluntary tradition by rational will

individual rational will that hegel

defends constitutional monarchy as the

site of a truly actualized freedom

thus from the hegelian perspective the

answer to the question posed by the

debate topic can be

answered with a resounding no the

question

is itself absurd duty to whom and for

what

the hegelian ethical life is not the

product of any abstract or indeterminate

duty

but the harmony between the determinate

private interests of civil society

with the determinant rights and duties

imparted upon it by the state

there can be no real ethical duty

according to hegel that does not fit

within this scheme

it is also peculiar that lewis believes

the hegelian view would be favorable

toward veganism

given hegel's very clear distinction

between humans and animals that renders

any notion of animal rights and

absurdity

within hegel's philosophy of nature it

is precisely spirit or geist that

distinguishes mankind from the animal

kingdom

in that work hegel details that an

animal is defined by the pure immediacy

of external contingencies

its own inner nature being among them

for hegel the animal can only exist

as an immediate individuality its

existence does not contain

quoting the generality that defines it

rather comes at its expense in the form

of an unending and violent struggle for

survival

conversely human beings exist in

societies civilizations and states

the universality of their being does not

strictly stand opposed to its actuality

but is rather defi indefinitely realized

through it which hegel calls history

itself

while vegans claim that such views are

outdated according to natural science

hegel's distinction stands the test of

time at the more fundamental level

an animal cannot have rights and is

qualitatively different from a human

being

one could not be a consistent hegelian

without acknowledging as much

thank you very much all right so

perspective philosophy you're going to

have

five minutes to reply starting

now so that was actually really

interesting i was actually surprised

to be entirely honest with you you

actually know that much about hegel that

was pretty decent i mean you're

absolutely wrong about the idea of the

cartesian subject

being the hegelian subject that's not

entirely wrong

um and i think thinkers like zizek and

lacon

would uh exemplify why that would not be

the case

in fact the cartesian subject implies

some sort of inherent knowledge

and inherent self understanding which is

absolutely absent within the hegelian

dialectic

in fact self-understanding is the middle

term what's the first term is

consciousness

so no you're wrong about that but

otherwise that was actually pretty

decent

um i am not actually arguing for

veganism x nihilo

i'm not arguing it from an abstraction

that we are dismissing all of the ethics

that has come before us in fact i see it

as a rational development of the concept

of equality

that we have we have arrived to this

place and that's how i introduced

um my um opening argument i said that

the

essentially we no longer consider other

ethnicities we no longer consider

other genders as being lesser or weaker

than us hegel did actually see

animals as lesser hegel did but hegel

was a live

300 mark 200 something years ago and um

really his ethics are under his own

system outdated he understood that

ethics was a progressive system that was

developing

and his understanding of animals was

also underdeveloped as his

as his position on women he thought

women were lesser and inferior

just as he thinks that animals are

lesser inferior and he also thought

animals couldn't kill themselves we know

better now

so even in terms of raw psychological

terms we know that hegel's philosophy

did not capture the essence of an animal

which is unsurprising because it was 300

years out of date

now when we consider that you know

the concept of mutual recognition mutual

recognition does not allow for the

establishment

of what is ethical ethically right but

more the investigation of what is

ethically right mutual recognition

allows for the establishment of

self-consciousness which is the middle

term

in the hegelian dialectic which is

infinite the development of

self-consciousness allows for the

development of absolute spirit which

allows the individual to reconcile

themselves

with themselves so you say who am i

considering when i'm considering the

animal i'm considering myself because

there is only

the self understanding the self whether

that includes objects which are

absent and nihilistic in themselves and

being determinant

are ultimately unified in what is the

self

so even if i was considering an animal

uh as in its consciousness even without

its self-consciousness

i'm considering me because we are all

united in spirit that's the entire point

the consideration of consciousness

itself

does not need to recognize an

individual's self-consciousness for them

to have

uh value children do not have

self-consciousness

babies like before the mirror stage and

they are valuable and so are disabled

people

they have experiences which are

inherently valuable

which we become conscious of the whole

point of self-consciousness

is to become aware of the value which

exists which pre-exists

self-consciousness

and construct an identity which allows

for authenticity and freedom which is

the entire point of the hegelian

dialectic hegel's

hegel's dialectic is 300 years out of

date we have now

reached a point in which the concept of

equality has developed past where hegel

was

at that time the cartesian subject in

this respect is

absolutely non-existent the subject is

developing

and moving past the point of um

uh of of an inherent or innate knowledge

which is trying to reconcile itself with

we are trying to reconcile ourselves

with a logos with something which is

uh logically uh uh logically right

within being

we are reconciling ourselves with what

would be considered

natural or with abstract right within

reality you see i'm talking about some

sort of abstract terms no i'm not

i'm talking about the concrete

definitions of equality and its

application

within our society today what we are

considering in that concept

and why the development of the hegelian

dialectic has

has brought us here which is why

philosophers such as jeremy bentham

uh peter singer thomas regan they are

all developing

upon concepts of equality and applying

them to animals which is why when jeremy

bentham said

one minute lewis jeremy bentham said um

the what is it um what is it that should

trace the inseparable line is it the

faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty

of discourse

but the full-grown horse or dog is by

far a more communicable or rational

animal

than an infant a baby an infant of a

week a month

or a year old actually a day a week or a

month old

the question is but if it were not what

would it avail

the question is not can they reason nor

can they talk but can they suffer

that is the question that we are asking

ourselves today within the dialectic

and that is the question that leads us

to a resounding yes upon

the consideration of animals and their

value they matter

we should consider them and we should

protect them in law

thank you very much are you done i am

great okay so haz you're going to get

five minutes let me reset the clock

and

right you are good to start now so right

unsurprisingly you clearly don't know

what you're talking about and fail to

address any substantive point

i raised when i raised the point about

the cartesian

slash modern subject being relevant for

hegel

it is only in so far as this such

subject is relevant for the entire

enterprise of modern philosophy and

modernity

as a whole including things like the

french revolution and so on you

mentioned people like zizek and la khan

but they were among the most um ardent

defenders of this very same insight

obviously hegel goes far beyond the

limits of cartesian philosophy

and what descartes affords of the

cartesian subject

but it is still the same modern abstract

and self-relating negativity of the

cartesian subject

that modern philosophy as a whole must

begin with

as well as the modern subject in general

moreover it's really interesting that

you ground your view

of animal rights in some notion of

equality which you disgustingly also

apply

to ethnic minorities in women which are

on the same level of animal we should

assume equal

well this radical concept of equality

comes and traces its origin in none

other than descartes himself

um we can spar about that point later

now you say that when dealing with

animals you are considering the self yes

precisely and that's why there's no

dialectic process

in which the other actually participates

in that uh

consideration this is exactly why hegel

would describe it

as an example of the law of the heart or

the frenzy of self-conceit

and all the perversions and narcissism

corresponding to it

now hegel being old doesn't actually

address

the meat and potatoes of the fundamental

ontological distinction he's drawing

between animals and humans just because

it's from 300 years ago it doesn't mean

it's not fundamental to his philosophy

without which it becomes entirely

meaningless

now you compared the extending of

equality toward animals toward the

extending of equality toward women and

minorities

but the crucial piece of the puzzle

you're missing there is the actual fact

that minorities and women not only

participated but were the decisive

factor

in acquiring their own equality they

participated in a process

a dialectic and historical process of

mutual

self-recognition again this is something

that

animals are not capable of doing the

only thing animals have going for them

is people like lewis who go on the

internet and claim that we have to give

them rights

now you mentioned children and disabled

people there's two prongs of why that's

ridiculous

children may not have self-consciousness

but there's no such thing as a species

called children

children are precisely the site in which

self-consciousness develops

it's not a static object now granted

disabled people may never develop a form

of self-consciousness

but they represent in the way we treat

them the way we do

in a good way is because of the pure

contingencies to which any individual

may find themselves

as a result of accidents of birth and

other matters of chance

ultimately disabled people form a part

of a human community they come from

humans and they form a part of our human

society otherwise

the question of our obligations toward

them wouldn't even be possible

now when i accuse you of engaging in a

kind of

abstraction it seems like you don't know

what i actually mean i'm not doubting

the fact that you

uh fantasize about some process in which

we all

work together in this dialectic process

to achieve veganism

what i'm actually talking about is that

you counter pose some kind of product of

the individual use of reason to arrive

at an ethical or moral insight

against the whole of the world and

against the whole of society in the

whole of tradition

while appealing to this alone would

never possibly suffice

um it completely betrays the hegelian

spirit according to which evaluating a

tradition in reality so entrenched

as the consumption of meat should lead

the individual to the path of

reconciliation

and understanding why this uh

consumption of meat

is so widespread despite the fact that

not everyone is supposedly as smart or

intelligent as you

it completely betrays the spirit of

higgle finally there's just the final

thing

ethics is for hegel a site of statehood

now you interpret this to mean that we

merely need to pass legislation

to extend rights to animals but again

the institutions of statehood and the

laws therein are not a matter of

voluntary determination according to the

individual

or collective in the neocontinent way

moral conscience

the determinate content of society's

institutions according to hegel

uh is the product of a deeper dialectic

between the

private interests of civil society and

the f and the rights and obligations

sorry the rights and duties imposed upon

them

by the state the contents of which can

only fit

within this scheme and within this

harmony you failed to demonstrate how

veganism could possibly do that

thank you very much and that's time all

right louis you're going to get another

five minutes to respond

let me reset the clock starting

now okay so that was um

i appreciate like why you say that i do

think i did actually respond

i don't think you picked up on it and um

if you if the cartesian subject was only

brought up to recognize

you know the development of philosophy

then why didn't you

mention let's say like i don't know the

freudian subject or something along

those lines

and the ways in which we are balancing

ourselves in relation to our desires

which would be

more hergelian but whatever if you think

that it's philosophically relevant to a

you know

explic you know explicit is that right

yeah

your position that's fair enough okay so

where was i

right okay you said that i am arguing

from what is a nihilistic abstract

position now

and you're saying that i am trying to

propose some sort of

methodology is really just a you know an

affirmation of a subjective

consciousness trying to impose upon

a notion of right from its own

subjectivity which would be what hegel

considers the irony of this objective

i am not doing such a thing i'm actually

building upon the norms and traditions

of our society

which has led us to this consideration

the concepts that i'm using

are widely available in fact many of our

society already engage in notions of

welfarism

and the consideration of animals and

animal rights we have laws in the uk

which protect animals already

some of which have already been extended

and the uk has just recognized

animals as sentient hegel also

recognizes animals as sentient

hegel also recognizes animals as

conscious he

he simply says that they cannot own

themselves so they are not capable of

self-consciousness

that's unsurprising they aren't rational

ethical agents but this does not give us

the kin this does not give us the right

to them it does not give us the right to

dismiss

the fundamental rationality which is

imbued within what they are that is not

something that hegel necessarily

dictates he says they have no right to

life and so on like that

of course he does it's in his interest

he also says women who knows how to get

educated

and that's why i brought it up i'm

saying hegel is wrong on some things

and he himself admits that he can be

wrong in terms of animals yes he is

wrong he admits that conscious

he admits that sentient he admits that

they have interests he just basically

says that they're incapable of knowing

those interests

not that we are incapable of knowing

those interests he points towards

he points towards subjects which are

valuable

but dismisses their value since they

cannot become aware of it

externally from their experiences within

reality

he is dismissing an aspect of

consciousness because

it cannot become aware of itself just

because it cannot become aware of itself

does not mean

that it is not positioned within the

hegelian dialectic the hegelian

dialectic starts

at consciousness and then moves to

self-consciousness

as the middle term the infinite middle

term which is the conscious

re-evaluation of itself

has what is what has led us here the

vegan as an identity

the identity of the animal lover the

carer of animals those individuals who

see themselves

as guardians and not persecutors of

other conscious beings

are much have a much greater

consideration of consciousness

than an individual who is not

considering those interests

they are considering interests of an

animal who does communicate

their interests to us and and you know

actually the funny thing is

is it is the necessary communication

which would have had to have happened to

allow the

hegelian dialect to even form to

produce self-consciousness which is

something recognized by

thinkers such as emmanuel levanas when

he talks about the resistance in the

face

the resistance of the face um

of the ethics of the face and the

resistance the primordial resistance

which is necessary for language which

establishes

the negation required for determinate

objectivity

and the production of words so without

this

non-linguistic communication which can

be seen within the animal

we would not be capable of producing the

middle terms necessary for the hegelian

dialectic to form

so no i am actually responding to quote

unquote the meat and potatoes of your

argument one

minute and it's fundamentally wrong the

reality of the situation is yes

hegel makes a metaphysical distinction

between animals

and humans but only so far as they are

not self-conscious

that does not mean they are not

conscious it does not mean that they are

not considered within the dialectical

process

in fact they are fundamental and

integral to it the understanding of

spirit

as being one and itself with

consciousness as indiscernible from

consciousness

which is the words he uses in the

science of logic

mean that we cannot dismiss any

consciousness

which exists in nature which means we

are bound

by the laws from which we by the laws of

right

which pre-exist our consciousness of

them hegel was unconscious of them

we have become conscious of them

thank you very much let me reset the

clock and has

you have one final five minute response

yeah it wasn't only the development of

philosophy lewis

the modern subject proper begins with

descartes this isn't a controversial

view it's the view of zizek and lakhan

people you yourself mentioned

embarrassingly the freudian subject

doesn't enter the picture until hundreds

of years later

so yes the modern subject and the

cartesian subject are more or less

interchangeable for people who actually

know what they're talking about

and aren't grad students now you claim

to be building upon the norms and

traditions of our society

but you actually have to show for it

there is no imminent development of the

phenomena of veganism

among the broad strata of the people

it's only a tiny minority of overly

socialized and overly urbanized people

precisely the demographic that from as a

logical consequence of hegel's view

would be susceptible to the same frenzy

of self-conceit

and the unhappy consciousness that

propagate this cult of veganism it's not

actually gaining traction in the very

roots of our society

and there's a very clear reason for that

which you're not addressing animals

cannot

participate in a process of mutual

recognition

it doesn't now the fact that animals do

not possess self-consciousness

doesn't give us a right to them but

here's the thing

rights do not factor in this equation

whatsoever

because rights are determinate things

that are granted by the institutions of

the state

not things that come out of thin air

rights

simply don't factor into the question of

the treatment of animals

the custom mores and traditions of

society do which hegel doesn't believe

you can overturn or treat as completely

um complete uh com treating a wave

completely from scratch from the

perspective of philosophy

hegel doesn't actually seek to

annihilate things like

tradition norms culture and religion by

means of philosophy hegel's philosophy

is meant

to be reconciled with those things the

question the deeper question of

the reality of those things is left

later for other thinkers

the fact that it cannot become aware of

itself means that it could not

possibly elevate itself to the status of

the subject

hold on [ __ ] me goddamn i'm sorry guys

don't [ __ ] me

um okay now uh

it could not uh the fact that it can't

be aware of itself means it couldn't be

elevated to the status of a subject that

could be afforded rights or recognition

in the first place

for the ethical state or for the within

the scheme of the ethical life

that would be just as absurd as imported

imposing duties upon animals as well

hegel is very clear that rights imposed

upon the rights given to the individual

are conditioned also by their duties and

vice versa

now obviously there's some kind of

connection between humans and animals

but and hegel makes that very clear but

actually animals are not capable of

language proper in any meaningful sense

language for havel hegel does not simply

mean the display of some kind of

communication this still fits within

hegel's description of animals are only

capable of

being acted upon by pure externalities

the communication by other members of

the species

being among those externalities it's

premised precisely by

language is precisely premised by

self-consciousness

and the radical alienation between a

being and its own essence the very

radical alienation that renders the

subject's relationship

to themselves the self-conscious subject

not only an immediate one

impo forced upon them by pure

externalities

uh now you say that the laws of right

pre-exist our consciousness for hegel

that is true

but they don't exist in the either they

exist in the form of the state which for

hegel is the realized form of humanity's

self-consciousness

the laws of right are not to be found uh

already existing

somewhere outside of the imminent

development of

state and civil society they pre-exist

us

yes but not in a way that

but only insofar as they are already

mediated in the form of the institutions

of the state

oh you don't even need extra time are

you done yeah yeah that's it

okay fantastic so we're gonna move into

open discussion um just a heads up for

people in the audience if you want to

ask questions

um super chats of course will be

prioritized as i mentioned the

introduction

otherwise if you don't want to super

chat a question put an asterisk at the

beginning and the end so i can find it

in the chat

i can't promise we'll answer them all

but we'll we'll we'll do we can

um so i'm going to set the timer for 45

minutes uh again just

to review the rules quickly um no

personal abuse no insults yada yada i

don't mind insinuations of bad faith etc

because that can be part of a

philosophical discussion

but try to keep it civil and above all

do not

argue with me if i interject and give

someone time to finish their point

ready let's go yeah so would it be all

right if i

respond and then you can pick it apart

and look and see

yeah cool so you said um

you said that uh you know they're not

subjects

until they become and recognize

themselves in terms of

self-consciousness

um i would absolutely disagree with that

i would make the distinction between an

agent and a subject in that respect

which is something which fits really

well in the hegelian dialectic because

of the

um the development from consciousness to

self-consciousness you see that um

language presupposes self-consciousness

quite the opposite i would say that

self-consciousness is the product of

language

and i think that fits again in the

hegelian schemata and

levanas describes this as being able to

hover over our own existence

um and this is primarily from the

recognition

you know of each other as having a will

or having interests

and actions within the world which have

separated consciousness which is

the beginning of you know um absolute

spirit right the reality is

that uh the substance of spirit was

separated by action

the unifi the unit unified totality of

spirit has been separated into

individual

uh instances of consciousness because we

aren't aware of our universal nature

now the reason that we you know

when we do engage in recognition we do

gain a conception of rights we do

actually

gain a conception of self um

understanding and we do

create civil society and the product of

laws which allow us to

emulate natural right but natural

right pre-exists even civil society

um the hegel actually states the laws of

right

are also simply there we have to become

acquainted with them

in this way the citizen has more for

firm or less hold of them

than they are given to them and our

jurist also abides the same point

but there is a distinction in the

connection with laws of right and spirit

investigation is stirred up and our

attention is turned at the fact of the

laws

because they are not different not

absolute laws of right are established

and handed down by men

the inner voice must necessarily collide

or agree with them

man cannot be limited to what is

presented to him but maintains that the

standard of right within himself

he is subject to the necessity and the

force of external authority

so he even says in that quote we do hand

down the laws of right

but we must collide or agree with them

to develop them

to correspond with the laws that are

simply

there the natural laws which pre-exist

us the same as the natural laws of

physics

zero yeah i mean other than the fact

that i would mention that obviously

these natural laws

are the laws of consciousness and not

self-consciousness which is the

awareness of those laws

oh has your silent your music okay yeah

i didn't say they aren't a subject

uh i said they are not a subject

relevant for rights in the states

obviously hegel makes it clear

in his philosophy of nature that animals

are some kind of subject but they are

not the subject relevant for rights

duties

and ethical obligations now you say that

animals hover over themselves and the

world

but such a separation namely the

separation between

the animal and the world as mediated by

something like language

could never be proven hegel precisely

claims the opposite about

animals hegel claims that this very such

separation that allows a subject

to hover over the world over themselves

and the world

is not accomplished in the animal being

for the animal being there is

some kind of obvious separation but it

is not a separation that gives rise

to self-consciousness or language now

natural right may pre-exist civil

society

but you didn't actually hear what i said

with any degree of

precision these natural rights

are only mediated by the institutions

and the state

which rules over civil society for hegel

in other words

natural right does not first strike the

individual moral consciousness like

lightning and then come to determine

civil society in the state the laws

of natural right develop in a manner

that is not

premised by the insights of individual

reason or the individual moral

consciousness they develop

through a rational process that is

fundamentally supra individual um

now by super individual by the way i

don't just mean that individuals

collaborate or agree upon

certain rights and norms i mean that

it comes as a kind of cunning of reason

at their expense

even in a way and their expectations and

so on and so on

so it's com it's a completely um

irrelevant point actually

the life two hours of sleep i forgot i

was gonna say the

grasp

the um okay i'll let you i forgot i was

gonna say

yeah um just to clear something up i

didn't see animals and hovered

over their own existence i was saying

that is how language allows for the

development of self-consciousness

and in so much i would agree that

animals do not have that same

self-consciousness

and that notion of identity they're not

in the middle term in the hegelian

dialectic

they're in the first term of the

dialectic they're in the consciousness

um in like there is something as well to

say

that the you're right in saying that the

you know the the the law the abstract

rights

are not you know essentially imbued

within us they don't strike us like

lightning as you said

they're essentially developed and

uncovered

in relation to an examination of reality

itself of the self

understanding the self um but they are

premised by the immediacy of

consciousness

it is this investigation into ourselves

which is precisely what recognition is

an aspect of

and what i'm arguing in that is that

that primordial expression as leaven us

to as levana says would be the

foundation of any and all

notions of resistance which would be

necessary for the negation of our will

is the foundation of self-consciousness

that animals themselves

um display and so without recognizing

this display of will within animals we

are negating the very same display

which has allowed us to develop the

self-conscious dialect

the self-consciousness which is the

dialectical middle term

within uh the hegelian dialectic so in

other words

if we reject this conscious display of

interests and uh value within animals

then we reject the same display our

ancestors

and our traditions contain

epistemologically

uh prior to their um current

uh mediation within civil society we

reject the traditions and their

foundations

which were produced from these

individuals who recognized one

another and decided to form civil

society and create a notion of justice

and fairness and consideration of each

other within uh

abstract right which is an embodiment of

laws of fairness which exists within

reality itself

yeah but uh this examination you're

talking about isn't actually

an enterprise that occurs at the level

of the individual use of reason

the uncovering you're referring to

precisely happens at a historical

and not individual level an individual

doesn't simply examine this like

sherlock holmes and then imposes their

insights upon the whole of society

the examination happens in a way that is

fundamentally supra individual

and moreover the examination the results

of the examination in a sense are

already

predetermined i don't think you would

disagree with that but

so then the quite the burden rests upon

white explains the unhappy consciousness

of the vegan

in their kind of the manner by which

they seek to

um change the laws and impo

now impose uh their view and um

preach and so on and so on now it's

actually interesting because

even if we take into consideration

hegel's view of slavery which i would

have disagreed with at the time but for

reasons different

i would also grant the underlying

rationality for his position

hegel even opposed some

a lot of the kind of abolitionist fervor

in england and throughout europe

which simply sought to abolish the

institution of slavery hegel

actually thought that slavery would be

dissolved through some kind of gradual

historical whatever process which

reflects

hegel's radical uh conservatism now you

could say that it's just because hegel

was an old guy and it was 300 years ago

but this is what is fundamental to

hegelian philosophy now from a marxist

perspective

you could at the same time recognize

that slavery dissolved by virtue of some

kind of material

development in the forces of production

and it would be kind of this similar

insight as hegel's but ultimately

whether you're coming from a marxist

materialist or hegelian perspective this

kind of tier

again friend tyranny of frenzied

self-conceit which hegel also critiques

as

uh present throughout the french

revolution is not compatible with the

hegelian perspective now

you mentioned that uh yeah

i forgot what you said it was something

about animals um

representing a prior state of being that

premises our very self-consciousness

itself

i agree with that but i find the view

that the conclusion

that the necessary conclusion this leads

to is that we cannot eat animals

this would assume that the cultures of

mankind

uh treat in the rituals of animal

slaughter and animal consumption

animals only from the perspective of

some kind of abstract

dominating kaguto which

does not recognize the determinate

particularity of animals

but actually if you investigate from the

perspective of culture the real

rituals of animal slaughter and animal

consumption

you can even explain them in that way

you can even explain them in terms of

the way in which mankind

or self-conscious beings relate to their

antecedent

premises themselves you could even go so

far as to say that this is even true for

things like factory farming which

may appear as the quintessential example

of this dominating

cogito which does not recognize the

particularity of animals and simply

treats it as a kind of

raw material but it does not actually

succeed

in doing that in actuality and it does

reflect

if there is uh something like that

in a factory farming i say i guess i

would say from the marxist perspective

this is only insofar as it represents a

deeper relation

in our world today between mankind and

itself some kind of more fundamental

estrangement between

humanity and itself

but still there there is no reason to

think

that the recognition that

the state of animal being is a necessary

state that premises

are premises the very possibility of

self-consciousness

must lead us to the conclusion that

animals cannot be eaten

according to some abstract duty

um well i guess like the point i was

making is that it's not necessarily an

abstract duty but really the first

judy and the only judy that really

uh we are that we are really engaged in

it is the essence of the will you know

judy is the essence of the will

um that duty is seen in animals and

that's what i'm

trying to argue here that when we

consider animals

um being the fundament as in like animal

behavior as demonstrating

you know desires and interests which um

exist externally to our own we are we

are

essentially recognizing their power to

their power to negate our own interests

the the differences in terms of mutual

recognition they can't recognize our

uh power to uh negate their interests in

the same

way they don't have the necessary

faculties to form a language in a

linguistic structure which allows for

that

uh diuretic um conceptions of themselves

that can't form the eye

you know um that doesn't mean that the

relationship between us and animals does

not

necessitate our consideration of their

will

it means that they are incapable of

returning that consideration

and forming civil society with us and

that civil society

and that absence from civil society does

not

which means they are they can't be um uh

given positive rights within our society

in terms of let's say

uh the right to vote or something like

that but it does not mean that we have

the right

to you know um undermine

what we would consider necessary

faculties and i think this is why for

example i would say i would disagree

with hegel

and say the consideration of slaves um

or people who even accept their slavery

and i think this is kind of hegel's

point you know the slave enslaves

themselves for hegel

the the slave has adopted the mentality

of being slave-like

and needs to almost fight their way out

develop to develop a self-consciousness

which is independent

from the identity imposed by the

lordsman the bondsmen must work upon

themselves

um and i can see why he's arguing from

that i guess my disagreement would be

there

that the power structure from which we

um gain this self-consciousness

it necessarily does not mean that we

should

impose um unfair power dynamics

upon individuals so that they can

develop freedom

our consideration of their will is

separate from their consideration

of our will so this is how mutual

societies or mutually distinct societies

or mutually distinct spirits in terms of

abstract right

would engage with each other until they

form an uh uh you know a

um a coalescence within absolute spirit

and the laws of one land versus the laws

of another

um hegel recognizes that the laws of one

land are

superior to the laws of another and

talks about the progress

necessary within society to you know

essentially reach a more free society

um you know referencing is like

historiography

in um these philosophy of history

um this would mean that individuals in

let's say germany at the time that he

was talking

were obligated to treat other

individuals from society

that are external to germany in a way

that was considered

ethical by their standard and not by the

standard of those in an alternative

society

so if um you know a british person

disagrees with slavery then they ought

to treat individuals

as being equal and not enslave them and

this would be a matter of um

actualizing the self-consciousness which

exists within the state

this is exactly the same thing i would

say about animals

when we recognize the consideration of

animals

um as having this primordial will which

does not recognize itself

we still must consider its interests we

still must consider its value

and in that consideration of its value

we must find

that although it cannot know the

consequences of uh let's say ethical

ignorance

that its ethical ignorance does not

permit our ethical ignorance

so but the issue is that animals are not

human if there is an aspect of ourselves

uh is somehow common with the animal

it is a moment of a greater being of

which we alone

form a part i think there's a confusion

here between the view

of the animal being being a moment in

the being of geist or spirit

or the human being uh and from a broader

kind of

natural historical perspective of like

for example a kind of

evolutionary view of the way in which

animals develop and become

human these are entirely two different

processes

moreover i think this perspective is

radically not hegelian i don't think

hegel is trying

hegel believes that animals are uh

incapable of um self-consciousness on

account of some kind of uh

pure contingency like a person being

disabled would there's actually a reason

why

animals are not human there is an inner

kind of

there is an inner rationality of the

animal being

itself that makes sense so far from the

perspective of the animal

not from the perspective but taken at

the level of the animal being which

makes sense and which

reconciles some kind of some kind of

deeper unity of opposites now

insofar as animals actually do figure in

this moment

of um the premises of self-consciousness

for

the human being it is so far as they are

consumed so far as they allow us to

subsist

and satisfy our base our own base uh

animal necessities

um it's very strange that

the ways in which animals consume one

another does not somehow figure for you

in the fundamental being of the animal

world in general

now hegel's view regarding slavery is

not actually prescriptive

but descriptive he doesn't say this is

what should happen per se

taken by itself he says this is actually

what happens

so when hegel critique and this is

actually something that happens and has

actually happened across history

conquered people's become enslaved and

then

this initiates some kind of dialectic

process that produces real

historical changes and outcomes hegel

merely critiqued abolitionism

because he thought it was a vain attempt

to hover over this type of imminent

uh development in this imminent uh

process

it wasn't prescriptively saying that it

it should happen

it was happening for hagel now

you say that uh hegel

requires individuals to treat others

from different societies and states

by their ethical standard but the

reasons for this contradict

the conclusion that animals themselves

should be treated in the same way

because

plainly put animals don't have any

ethical standard animals do not belong

to a state

or a civil society and do not obey any

kind of

abstract or alienated norms or

institutions whatsoever for hegel

different societies and enter into

moreover a process again of mutual

recognition

and mutual development where it's tit

for tat they both participate and

develop

in it animals aren't capable of that now

you talk about the fact that humans

are obliged and have a duty to fulfill

animal interests but if animal interests

if they are intelligible

um would be radically incompatible with

vegan

veganism there are some animals which

for physiological reasons

must consume and lead to the death of

other animals

even beyond then the conclusion doesn't

actually follow from the premise

animal interests are in no way

compatible with the obligations

hegel believes a given citizen of a

state has

toward another human being which is part

of another state and part of another

community

or even just a random stranger

who isn't part of any clear society or

state

um the difference for hegel is that this

kind of benefit of the doubt that can be

afforded to the stranger

um this sorry emptiness and the

lack of determination apart upon on the

part of the stranger

contains and conceals uh

an imminent potentiality to enter into

the course of um

mutual recognition

and um being a part of some kind of

bigger community

um well i guess this is where i would

say

that say that animals aren't human um

neither is the the first um term in the

hegelian dialectic because humanity

presupposes a form of identity which has

not yet developed

um you know like for example like

notions of humanity even in like the

history of philosophy

um you know like seeing each other as

you know members of um

you know um like was it like homogenous

like

homogeneous like of the same species and

that didn't develop

in terms of self-consciousness even

historically until a certain

until a certain point and then in terms

of individualism

which you know allows the individual to

interact with their state

in a way which is a particular subject

versus

um you know um institutional um

obligations

which mediates the subjective freedom

and the object of freedom of the state

uh that didn't even develop as in until

like hegel really come around so

like these these notions in terms of the

development of

the dialectic um weren't even present um

at the point of the

at the point of the inception the point

of the inception at

um of the first premise of the dialect

is consciousness itself

the imminency and the foundation from

which all reality is

derived which is the consciousness is is

all that's really being considered

and you said that you know i think was

towards the start you said that

um i wouldn't disagree that the

end of history as it would like the end

of the hegelian dialectic would be the

same

well as an empty formulation in a

kantian sense

yeah it wouldn't be the same it would be

absolute knowing or absolute spirit

but what that actually looks like hegel

kind of leaves blank

deliberately because it's not something

that we are actually entitled to know

because of our

history our historicity um

and i don't think i don't know if you

would agree disagree with that um

in so much i would say that hegel would

not have predicted the rise of veganism

and the consideration of animals as the

growing dialectical process

i think that it is the consideration of

the conscious standard which pre-exists

the logic that was developed within the

dialectic

in the philosophy of uh sorry in the

science of right

he goes so far to say that um

where is it let's see if i can find it

second

and one second there just lost it

it's on the genesis of logic i do

believe

uh actually i know where i know where it

is i just realized i think it's page 45.

okay okay while he's doing that um for

people in the audience who have

questions put an asterisk on the

beginning and the end we'll be doing

audience questions in 20 minutes thank

you

um right okay he says that um

here we may quote it from like this is

from the philosophical sciences

encyclopedia of philosophical sciences

and he quotes himself um saying there is

nothing in heaven or nature or spirit or

anywhere else

that does not contain just as much

immediacy as mediation

so that both these determinations prove

to be unseparate

unseparated and inseparable and the

opposition between them

nothing real so in spirit there is no

actual opposition the negation of

negation leads to the unity of being

which is the unity of self-consciousness

and consciousness

animals are an aspect of consciousness

which we must become united

with and so with the development of the

dialectical process

and in consideration of a conscious

being would be a

lesser um media mediated and

a poor um contradictory uh position

within spirit

it would not be spirit as it is or

should be

it would be spirit as uh seen how we

would like it to be

and hegel actually mentions this in the

philosophy of right

where individuals come into conflict

with the law itself

um seeking to express what they think

ought to be the case rather than what

is the case and he says that we need to

essentially bend

to the to the existence of um value in

nature or the

value in consciousness rather than the

other way around

yeah but regarding the first thing you

said about the reason for

uh the fact that the end of history or

whatever

is not act or the philosophy of right

and so on and so on

was not realized until very recently

such changes whatever we want to make of

them is

assuming we're operating from this

strictly yelling perspective were not

physiological or natural changes

which they would have to be in the case

of animals i think again this is a kind

of false

almost caricature of the hegelian view

according to which

there is this kind of linear progression

between

lower and higher forms of being but for

hegel makes it quite clear that there is

a reason why animals exist

as animals and it makes sense animals

are not

moments in animals themselves are not

moments in humanity's being

human humanity possesses an aspect

within itself

that is comparable to the animal being

but

animals themselves uh it's not

so the fact that for most of humanity's

history it did not achieve

the kind of uh whatever you want to call

it i forgot

what you were trying to say it's all con

controversial stuff absolute knowing the

end of history

um and so on and so on this is not

actually uh this is not actually

something

that um animals this is something that

was always already possible

for human beings given their

physiological and natural

presuppositions given where they already

stand within

the philosophy of nature this is not

true for animals

and regarding this as an aside regarding

the question of absolute knowing

yes it's true that its contents are not

transparently pre-established but i

think you're confusing

uh what absolute knowing actually is

absolute knowing will not consist in a

position that's going to possess some

kind of uh

prescriptive stance toward what is truly

uh what one really ought to do and like

for example in terms of one's dietary

habits and ones

participate all of these things for

hegel uh

possess objectivity they possess

objectivity in the form of mores customs

traditions and so on and so on

the position of absolute knowing ends

from the perspective of philosophy

itself

namely the philosopher hegel himself

the one who is cognitive cognizant of

some kind of deeper harmony

of um history and being and so on and so

on

uh regarding the thing you said about

the unity of opposites

and the implication of the relation to

animals i don't really think it's

important to point out that for hegel

there are no true

contradiction it's only a matter of

reconciliation the negation

yeah it's not without it's not relevant

to what i was saying obviously yeah

but regarding this kind of end state of

the relation between humans and animals

again the practice of the consumption of

meat itself

is just as compatible with this such a

um such a consumption affirms

on the one hand uh the premises of

self-consciousness namely the need to

to satisfy physiological base animal

instincts and so on and so on

and on the other hand affirms the

self-consciousness

as a higher moment of being above the

animal kind

so the conclusion plainly doesn't follow

that we can't consume

meat just because so i think you're

making

uh an error here you're making uh you're

not taking note of a necessary

distinction

of course animals within the greater

uh within the greater

[ __ ] uh scheme

form a part and premise a possibility of

self-consciousness

this does not mean that we have an

obligation

to protect animals

because the manner by which this

develops

has already occurred it already has

occurred it's something that has

occurred imminently and is not

the result of um

like you so you talk about the

distinction between that the individual

must make

must bend to what is rather than what

ought right

but bending to what is in this case the

actual and um let's say uh

real relationship between mankind and

the animal world within hagel's scheme

acting in such a way that is cognizant

of what this

is in no way implies that animals

somehow

have rights and cannot be eaten and so

on and so on

um if

and again uh my argument is that the

the the best argument for what this

would look like is the very consumption

of animals

it's the very consumption of animals

that

uh that represents this

acting in regards to what is

so um

and that's why the consumption of meat

across the cultures and history of

mankind is laden with so much

tradition called careful tradition

culture and so on and so on

it can be even explained within this

hegelian scheme

um so yeah like animals

uh not being self-conscious is

not what i'm saying like i do agree

animals are not self-conscious

um animals are animals are not the

middle term

where the middle term um where the

self-consciousness which is

coming to know itself to develop in the

absolute spirit that is

that is the dialectical process and it's

been developing since the inception

which was from consciousness itself

all the way through to the development

of absolute knowing which is the unity

of this middle term with the first term

in the conclusion

which is absolute knowing that's our

absolute spirit

which contains absolute knowledge that

absolute knowledge is as we say like

indeterminate and uh is

non-contradictory in con

in relationship in nature like no

contradictions exist in nature

but the contradictions that exist within

us are what are driving us forward in

terms of the negation of negation

which is leading us to this absolute

spirit and so these contradictions

are contradictions are our awareness

of the contradiction of the mediating

term ourselves

and nature we are realizing that we

ourselves have created

our identities which are inadequately

describing the system of drives

which pre-exists that identity we are

wrongly sublimating

and um engaging in our desires within

society

as to not allow for the greatest

expression of subjectivity within this

hegelian dialect

dialectic which is why uh the conception

of a better and better society

is the greater and greater expression of

the system of drives

animals are within the system of drives

they are simply not conscious of the

system of drives

we are the mediating force they are what

we are

they are part of what we are mediating

they are subject to

our um ethics in our attempts to make

sure that they live

good lives so for example um you know

our consideration of animals an animal

might want to get like

jabbed up or like you know some sort of

vaccine but we would do that to them

regardless of their

you know of their um resistance because

they are not aware

of the positives that would be affecting

them in terms of the system of drives

itself

because we are the self-consciousness we

are what determines

um the abstract notions of right from

which are

which you know determine our treatment

to them but what

is well we are what determine the

contingent laws which are reflective of

the imminent right

which is universal and necessary within

consciousness

the consciousness itself is

immediate consciousness itself contains

immediate notions of right which we are

not aware of

so the animals like animals themselves

and all conscious beings contain this

logical necessity

from which ontological's a necessity

predating logic

actually in terms of the hegelian

dialectic spirit is the necessary

foundation for the production of logic

and in such the resistance that exists

within animals

is the necessary negation from which

logic

requires we would have no notion of

negation and the law of

non-contradiction

at all um or the notion of identity at

all

without the negative force of an

external will

which is essentially what hegel is

pointing to so when we see an external

will embodied in an animal form

if it cannot recognize us it cannot form

a dialectical relationship

and form rules of abstract right that is

absolutely true

but being a conscious being it is

governed by those rules

just as we are the we do not produce

these notions of right

and therefore determine and govern uh as

we see fit based off

our mutual power relationship with the

other the power relationship is actually

an obscurity

really which is prevent preventing us

from seeing reality

in a way which is un um corrupted

by our attempts to put our subjectivity

over the objectivity of what we both

share which is the will so when we look

at the fact that an animal cannot

engage in this power relationship or in

a state of mutual recognition

it's not that the animal is not what we

are recognizing we actually must

imminently recognize the animal

to even have began the dialectic which

is i think you agreed to the animals are

conscious and we do recognize that they

are conscious and feel pain and pleasure

and so on um

animals simply do not recognize it

themselves we do recognize that

consciousness

and we do recognize it in the other but

we recognize as well

that are the rules that we have the

embodied traditions are expressions of

right

that are embodied in consciousness

itself within ourselves

and the other animals do fulfill the

mandate of being the other

they simply cannot fulfill that mandate

within a dialectical

process they cannot um continue

um the um they cannot continue

and form a relationship which you know

constitutes either a master slave

relationship

or a um constant uh conceptual

development they can't hold notions and

concepts

uh we can and we hold notions and

concepts which embody them

and give them meaning uh just as much uh

well

sorry um highlight or uh explanate

the meaning that already exists within

them their pain and pleasure is valuable

in and of itself

we can't know that and meaning and has

to be this way

for hegel the and i think you know

thinkers such as robert brandom

um even talk about how the

some the the foundations of semantics

have to be within reality itself

if we do not allow our words and our

meanings to be given

objective reality separate from this

self-conscious mediation within the

dialectic they

would be would lose grounding it

wouldn't actually make sense there would

be no

unity between what is the mediating

force of the middle term

unconsciousness itself which again is

why hegel

sorry about that uh which is why hegel

says that consciousness or

that um uh that in spirit there is

nothing unseparabe

unseparated unseparated and inseparable

they are um okay lewis just try and wrap

it up in the next 30 seconds because

we're running up your time and i want to

get past the last one

keep going yeah that's that's absolutely

fine they are inseparable and the

notions between consciousness and

self-consciousness are unified in

absolute knowing and absolute

right and this would give us the

foundations for a perfect

will it would actually destroy um

subjectivity in terms of um

and united with objectivity the subject

would be

inherently objective if they were a

member of the community which engaged in

a law

which was absolutely perfect and

absolutely correspondent

to the law of right within nature

okay um so it seemed like you said a lot

of

extremely irrelevant things um

as to the actual debate and point at

hand um

i don't even know if we're gonna have

time to cover all of it but i think i'm

just gonna try and simplify it

to put it simply you are confusing

philosophy of right

with philosophy of nature you're

assuming

that the philosophy of right

is tasked with reproducing

voluntarily the philosophy of nature but

this isn't true

obviously philosophy of nature is a

premise

of the possibility of philosophy of

right

uh put it put differently obviously

nature

is a premise of humanity and uh

spirit and so on and so on but this does

not impose

a duty or an ethical obligation

on part of individuals to

um to uh

preserve this process in a manner

outside of the self-preservation and

self-realization of spirit itself in

other words

like i said animals are not somehow on

the ladder to becoming human agents and

we just have to cultivate

them as an aspect of our being and uh

because they represent or sorry they um

occupy this fear of drives that permit

whatever

but animals will always be animals this

is what you're not understanding this is

why you're confusing the two

things you're making a really crude kind

of

is ought to distinction which is foreign

to

hegel's position you're effectively

trying to say that

because hegel descriptively outlines

some kind of place humanity has within

the whole of nature

humanity then has an ethical obligation

to fulfill this um same

same premises but as a matter of fact

these premises are fulfilled in a manner

that is antecedent

to right and men are antecedent to

obligations

so it could not be possibly be the case

that this could

it would it would be constant right

moreover

even if in some sense this is what

happens namely humanity must

account for its premises obviously

outside of the sphere of ethics uh

and right since such a thing would not

be possible

hegel makes it very clear like if

for example if animals cannot form

within the scheme

of ethics and ethical life proper we can

just condense it that way

that is not our problem that's the

problem of nature itself

this is what is the result of nature

itself

superimposing some kind of duty

to account for our natural premises

beyond accounting for

our our determinate natural premises

for example our need to survive and our

need to satisfy

our animal base wants and so on and so

on is completely foreign to the hegelian

scheme we ourselves are

we so far as we are concerned this is a

very important distinction

we ourselves so far as we are concerned

are the only subject of um

ethics and rights and so on and so on uh

in regard sorry not ethics and rights uh

are only relevant in regard i got two

hours of sleep

in regards to our material premises now

uh you talk about

the fact that we both agree that animals

uh

are conscious i agree but only in a very

restricted

hegelian sense hegel remember is an

idealist what most people mean

colligally by consciousness

is in fact self-consciousness so i just

want to point that out for the audience

now you say that attending to the wants

or needs of animals

it has to be this way on account of the

very fact that animals comprise the kind

of premises

of thinking beings

but the manner by which animals comprise

the premises of thinking beings

happens in a way that is outside of the

sphere

of ethical uh duties of these same

thinking beings

for example hegel does not actually

speak of a right

to food or things like that

even even in so far as it concerns our

subsistence

so it's a kind of ought is distinction

we do

reproduce our physiological premises

that condition

the necessity of self-consciousness but

we do so only

in so far as it is a moment in the

realization of uh spirit we don't do so

as a

matter of imposing some kind of um

abstract duty upon

the world and upon culture and society

now

the crux uh i wrote notes separately to

remember what you were saying the manner

by which this unity of consciousness and

self-consciousness you're talking about

um expresses itself

imminently not voluntarily it doesn't

express itself

in a way that

it doesn't express itself according to

the voluntary will

of the individual it expresses itself

um in the form of the very determinate

development

of history itself so this unity between

self-consciousness

and consciousness that you're talking

about

is something effectively already

reconciled

for hegel it's not that

it's not the fact that uh we are not

vegans

means it's not reconciled no it is

precisely reconciled moreover i find it

interesting that you neglect

the wider point that why can't our

cultural dietary practices of animal

slaughter and consumption and so on and

so on which have many

cultural meaning and laden with

depth and so on and so on why does this

not

according to your view accomplish this

very same

such unity why is it that the

consumption of animals

necessarily means that

self-consciousness denies

the premises its own premises in the

form of consciousness

why could it not also mean that it

affirms its

premises and consciousness after all

isn't that why

especially upon eating meat and people

being brought together in a community to

slaughter a cow or something or a goat

that they basically express their

gratefulness

their some kind of deep gratefulness

that

in a sense not much separates us from

animals uh but at the same time

something manages to and this is of both

a very humbling and

uh both a very humbling and

empower sorry uh what's the [ __ ] word

dignified

experience both very humbling and uh

very dignified

so far as our humanity is concerned um

all right so we're running up to time

yeah yeah um if you guys want to take

five minutes before i go into questions

to grab water or something you've been

here for a long time

so for anybody in the audience if you

want to ask questions uh put them in

asterisks we'll go for about 15 or so

minutes i think we're not going to go

too long our participants are extremely

tired

and um well thank you very much so we'll

come back in five minutes if you're both

cool with that you can go grab a drink

or something and then we'll

get started on audience questions sound

good would house be okay with this just

like

um just making a few points just just

essentially just off what he said there

only if you let me interrupt you

um yeah yeah that seems fair enough uh

within reason i mean like going like

just interrupt like every two seconds or

something just so i don't like actually

say something

absolutely um yeah so um um

hegel doesn't outline humanity's place

um

like as in the the beginning of the

dialectic in his philosophy of nature it

does that in uh

in the phenomenology of spirit and this

is the pre-philosophical work really in

the sense that this outlines the

onological commitments

necessary in philosophy for the

development in the science of logic

so and the beginning of this is

consciousness it's not

it's not the notion of humanity so

humanity's place in nature is secondary

to the its place

in uh the dialectic which is yeah but

the philosophy of nature outlines the

process by which

such a being uh whose development is

expressed in the philosophy

philosophy of mind is possible

um somewhat i think that hegel's notions

in the i think hegel's notions of nature

are tentative and i think that will

i think for hegel at least you may not

agree with it before hegel himself this

is true

oh well for hegel it's it's certainly um

well i would say that it was it's a good

work i don't think that he's necessary

i would not i don't agree with

everything it says but that's separate

um i don't think there is a confliction

in nature in the sense that we are

consuming them

i do think that we can satisfy our uh

system of drives within a vegan society

uh we can sublimate uh our base drives

and needs

uh with a vegan diet and we can live

happy healthy lives and no

yeah i'm not i'm not denying that that's

possible although i think i would argue

that point my point was that

this is not the only manner by which

this would be possible in the most

consistent

and all manner in a way that

is in harmony with uh our

with the realization of spirit basically

um i guess that's the point of

contention because i would say that the

unity of dialectic is an

ever developing not reconciled process

between consciousness and

self-consciousness

that's precisely why it's reconciled

well it's reconciled in formal terms in

but not in but not in concrete

um real terms no it is it is precisely

reconciled

um no i think that there is the the

confliction between the individual and

themselves which is

why the development of spirit the whole

point for hegel is that development

is itself a concrete something that is

concretely reconciled

in becoming but it only is um

it is only truly reconciled when it

becomes unified absolutely with himself

which is the point of absolute spirit um

which hegel claims was

is accomplished in his own work

yes but he also claims to say that the

like

it's almost it's reconciled its absolute

spirit is an ever-developing

infinite isn't it the infiniti yeah of

course it's ever developing but

for hegel that is precisely why it is

reconciled at the same time this

development fits within the scheme

of absolute knowledge itself yeah

but absolutely no but it's the contents

of absolute knowledge are obviously not

pre-written

somewhere but um

the development hegel talks about is

already is already uh

reconciled in its form whatever form it

so happens to be

which hegel was open about yeah but i i

would say that the absolute knowing is a

development from the

logic which is also developing so it's

like yes

hegel reckons recognizes that absolute

knowing is dependent upon the

philosophical forms that are available

to us

but they themselves are developing logic

itself is developing

from epoch to epoch from individual to

individual in terms of a societal

development

for for hegel his was the end

his was the accomplishment of absolute

knowing it was the culmination for

this was the ambition and scope of

hegel's position i know it's a

contentious contended by many

hegelians but i think these hegelians

are kind of uh

chickening out as far as the actual

audacity of hegel's enterprise i don't

think that

i mean don't get me wrong i do think

that he's an audacious kind of guy i

don't think he's that audacious because

he does say that the child of the next

generation is superior to the gene

uh the genius uh the genius of this well

i think what's being mistaken here is

that for hegel

the enterprise of philosophy is

accomplished

this doesn't mean history itself is

ended

in in the strict sense of like there

will no longer be any development

after this obviously that's not hagel's

position but so far as it concerns the

ailment higgle considers there to be a

fundamental

ailment in the enterprise of philosophy

he considers this to be

resolved in his specifics i would agree

with that i would agree with that i

would say that hegel sees himself as

resolving the conflictions in society

and particularly the mediation between

the

external and the internal world which

had plagued philosophy for like

over a thousand years um i would say

okay guys

this this is interesting i'm going to

set a timer for this for 10 minutes and

i'm going to go into audience questions

is that all right

do you guys still want you guys to want

five minutes to

like whatever i'm just going to say one

more thing and then i'm happy to take

the break

go for it um so yeah i would say that

you mentioned like the community

bringing together to slaughter an animal

um as an act of uh unification uh within

consciousness

i would say that the slaughter of the

animal is the destruction of

consciousness

in which an individual associates with a

particular identity

over the universality of consciousness

and represents something like an in and

out group

that would be fundamental to what we see

in

underdeveloped notions of right which

hegel points towards various cultures

and his philosophy of history

as having um and i would say that

communities which engage in this um you

know communal

action are ignorant to the

self-destructive process

which ultimately destroys their own uh

self-consciousness

um in in in that why is it a destruction

of consciousness

because it's the inconsideration of

another of consciousness

in its of consciousness simplicity

why is that why can it not also be an

acknowledgement of consciousness

simplicity and its relation to us

i mean for example the animal kingdom is

itself

like i think there's a lot of confusion

here the animal kingdom itself

is a site of extreme violence

not violence proper i guess but it's a

site of

violence is an anthropomorphic term

animals are eating each other and

whatever dying for no reason and it's a

brutal whatever thing

so eating an animal is in a sense

acknowledging

the actual reality of consciousness

simplicity

actually rejecting eating an animal i

think would be this very same

annihilation of consciousness implicit

or you're talking about the annihilation

of consciousness simplicity

is the rejection of the fact that

there's a distinction between

self-consciousness and consciousness

it's almost like

there is really a imposition

of the of whims that could only possibly

result from self-consciousness

or whims or moral conscience upon

conscious beings like

you are super imposing the human

a product of a strictly human

perspective

um upon animals but animals themselves

don't really give a [ __ ] about any of

that

stuff they don't so when we eat an

animal we are in a sense

acknowledging this fact of both the

animal being and our

own being um i guess what i would say to

that is that

in the consciousness of the animal do we

still see the system of drives

which is why you say animals do like act

on their own

impulses and uh hegel recognizes that

they act on their own impulses and are

actually slaves to them

um i don't disagree with that but that

precisely is why

it must be mediated by us as

self-consciousness as being

expressed but as as forms of

self-consciousness

we ourselves possess drives we do we are

not elevated above our

drives to um determine them voluntarily

we are still bounded by

our own drives and hegel recognizes as

much it's why hegel

completely rejects the kantian moral

perspective because for hegel the

kantian moral perspective

is marked by what he calls the stamp of

particularity we are really given to our

drives whether we want to elevate

ourselves above them

voluntarily or not i do agree with that

actually

um but that's precisely why we share the

exact same

um primordial right as animals the

consciousness and the

the this is the right that was proven

this right was already proven in the

fact that we human beings have history

the right was not proven

so far as animals were concerned but the

proof is separate from

uh well actually the like the right the

right does not exist for

animals precisely because it has not

developed through the court through a

animals do not have a history

so what how can they possibly have this

right if this right

was not imminently developed in history

itself it's a right that

we alone are affording a recognition

too that was that would be um a mistake

to say that the right as a development

of history the right

and development of ontology that exists

separate from us our

understanding of right its development

is through history

the ontological development of right

occurs through the course of history

itself

the middle term the self-consciousness

itself is the development of

of history the understanding of

consciousness

is the development of history

consciousness is the development

of nature itself and so is right

yes but so but

right right both right and nature for

hegel

um are reproduced in this development of

history

exactly which is why we constantly try

to

remove the separation between what we

consider to be right or what we want to

be right in terms of power dynamics yeah

relationship so this this right is

suspended in history itself

and whatever initial right

um human beings possessed the insight

into it is developed by history but this

insight is not some kind of individual

enterprise in which we look at animals

oh this fits somewhere within the scheme

it's something that

actually happens in history this is what

i'm trying to say

it actually does happen imminently it's

not because

individuals like sherlock holmes

discovered something

i don't disagree i think the the value

of genius in the hegelian

dialectic is nominal like it

they're just expressions of the spirit

of the day

i i don't disagree with that um what i'm

saying is that

the laws and fundamental um notions of

rape which we have developed

uh respective of the right which exists

within nature

is um constantly growing and is a

mediation between

um us or what we think to be right

and what is actually right and right

what is actually right

imposes its reality not because

it imposes its reality in an imminent

way is what i'm trying to say

it's not because i would completely

agree i would completely agree with it

it's not it's not because we say this is

right uh but because we i know you don't

you wouldn't like me using this word

abstract but because we arrive at it by

some kind of

abstract conceptual or even scientific

investigation

we discover what is right through an

imminent development of history itself

and i don't see veganism fitting within

the scheme of that

imminent development i don't see any

indications of it becoming

a phenomena that can subsist outside of

what hegel would call the unhappy

consciousness

okay we'll call that we'll call that an

ending statement because we're going to

move into audience questions if you want

to touch on this during the questions

you're welcome to

uh louis yeah but um yeah um and in fact

since

uh has had the last statement i'm going

to send the first question to you

um this is from uh g-nut does

prospective philosophy realize that

animals are savage beings that rape and

kill all the time

why should humans apply ethics to them

yeah i do realize that

animals are savage beings that rape and

kill all the time animals are horrible

man

like i don't know some of them are um

animals can be

vicious uh you know what we what many

would have considered natural

evils almost i mean evil being an

inappropriate term in a hegelian sense

but

you know the there's a lot of horrors in

nature i definitely understand that

but that doesn't mean that animals are

not moral subjects or moral patients

it means that they are in can they

cannot engage

in a dialectical process means that an

animal like a lion when it mauls a human

hasn't denied the value of our

experience for its own

it was unaware of our experience in a

way which is meaningful

and produces a notion of um conscious

conscience which is um developing

from you know this uh process of right

the instead an animal is um you know

subject to its impulses and its drives

it is moved by them it is a slave

to nature whilst we are not um in that

we can see that animals have drives and

are conscious

and they have value and wish to express

those drives they contain subjectivity

they simply do not own themselves and

cannot express that subjectivity

in a way that is um

capable of freedom in a hergelian sense

an animal can never be free

but an animal is valuable and for us to

be free

we must respect that value and try to

perpetuate their freedom

as much as possible to give the greatest

ontological foundation to our beliefs to

respect the middle term

just as much uh sorry the first term

just as much as the middle term

within the dialect process

and uh this is for has from herisenberg

um

this is a two-parter has how do you

respond to a characterization of your

argument as quote unquote evolutionary

colonialism

you recognize that ape slash humans got

there first by achieving

self-consciousness but you deny animals

their quote-unquote right to evolve

[Music]

no please don't let me don't let me deny

animals right to evolve please evolve um

whatever that even means um

[Music]

i i i don't see what you're saying uh

how are we denying the right of animals

uh

here's what do you mean evolutionary

colonialism we're stopping the cows from

uh

uh having a monarchy because

we're eating them i don't see how one

follows i think i think achieving

absolute spirit

but yeah i mean i i to respond to that

um animal consumption does not first of

all animal consumption does not

necessarily

first of all here's why it's face value

wrong because

colonialism is not simply something that

was condemned by virtue of the guilty

conscience

of colonizers the colonial themselves

rose up and overthrew those

[ __ ]

so the day a cow and a goat can do that

be my guest cows and goats overthrow me

just like

you know people in africa were thrown

overthrowing the spanish and the french

and the british

please do it if if you can but i don't

think they're going to be doing that any

time soon that's my response

yeah i think you're going to eat those

words someday this is for perspective

philosophy

from angelo marney how important is

mutual recognition are animals capable

of engaging

in history um i don't think animals are

capable of engaging in history

um at least maybe not all of them it's i

guess it's possible that some would be

would be capable of um at least some

forms of um conceptual development some

animals have been taught

like some more primitive linguistic

concepts and able to

adhere to them that doesn't mean that

they wouldn't necessarily be

um attributable to a dialectical form i

don't think that's necessarily important

the development of history

isn't a development that is meant to

replace nature

but is meant to uh develop our

understanding of nature

our understanding of right it's not

meant to replace right the fundamental

right

that existed at the beginning of the

dialectic when man was pre-linguistic

or partially linguistic or becoming

linguistic

was is the same right that is being

expressed

um at the end of the dialectic the truth

doesn't change it is fundamental it is

um inherent

uh within the ontology of being itself

what changes

is uh our mediation with it

thank you also from angela marnie for

has um has how do you feel about

post-humanism

it depends on what you mean by that um

i think a lot of the conceptions of

humanism

have thus far been straw straw men

i think i kind of i did have many

disagreements with him but

i kind of sympathize with um

the neo-rationalists i don't know if

they still call themselves like

reza negarstani and others who say that

we have underestimated what human means

thus far

human does not mean

the subject of humanitarianism which is

something recent so

i think we have underestimated what is

the human

uh thus far and if we acquire an

appreciation of the human

we will once again be allowed to

recognize the significance of uh

humanism as a historical phenomena

which has been strawmanned in the modern

age and not the modern but the 21st

century

thank you very much uh for perspective

philosophy

from voidborn wouldn't it be a more

grounded position to concede that

animals are not equal to humans since

they cannot form societies

so then humans being higher should be

allowed to preserve animals

um well this is this is what it depends

on what you consider the notion of

equality the notion of equality

is not the power dynamic in terms of an

individual's

um of an individual's ability to let's

say overthrow another

and for example the colonials that were

overthrown in

and defeated by the natives what they

did was wrong

not because they were overthrown but

because of the reasons that they were

overthrown

and the development of that

consciousness in

but that's only proven when they're

overthrown

the reasons are only proven in the act

of overthrowing

i i would disagree i would say that it

develops within consciousness itself

the mediation between the individual and

the other can happen without let's say a

violent contestation

but the the point is finished and then

you're going to go okay

and yeah i would say i would say that is

necessarily the case i would say that we

know this in terms of

there are many cultures that have been

absolutely annihilated by

other cultures as in their consciousness

and their spirit has been

incapable of having the ethical growth

which would necessarily gain

uh which would necessarily give us the

resistance necessary to to develop it

the point of the point of the matter is

the ontological resistance

of the will is what we become

um uh conscious of that is what we

become conscious of in terms of right we

see the resistance

we see the harm we see the negativity in

terms of consciousness and that

contradiction and we seek to resolve it

within a new dynamic which is what the

overthrowing process

is the overthrowing process is not a

development

of a notion of this is now wrong nor the

slavery was wrong

and therefore we seek to cast off these

chains

thank you okay has go yeah well i wasn't

aware we're still debating he's like

answering questions and also trying to

respond and rebuke my previous points so

that's why

but if you want to if you want your

objective i'll give you i'll give you a

couple minutes

okay sure yeah yeah i'm sorry i didn't

mean to like cause a contestation now

yeah so in in the case of um

in the case of the overthrowing this is

what you say you want to be the case

in your head but in real history as far

as real history is concerned

it is true that might is right it is

actually true

this is also true within the hegelian

scheme itself how else does slave become

slave

and master become master the reason why

slave some kind of different result is

produced from the master slave dialectic

isn't because

um some kind of guilty conscience on

part of the master but because of an

imminent development that renders

this slave puts the slave in a position

superior ultimately to the master

now regarding his business of entire

cultures and peoples

being annihilated i would contest that

this happens in a way

that does not ultimately affect the

imminent reality of

uh of the uh annihilating uh

force in some kind of way i think that

the pretension of europe and america

to absolute power and colonial powers of

absolute power

is a bluff they can't do it because

doing so would fundamentally affect

their own societies in a way they cannot

afford it similar to the israel kind of

uh

gaza situation can the israeli merit

military go and

do horrible things eliminate

gaza yes they can but they can't

physically yes but they still

can't not because it was determined

ethically but because

the consequences would not be possible

both internally and

obviously for the international scene so

this is what i mean the act of

overthrowing is what effectively proves

because we don't know before the fact it

is effectively what proves

uh right and wrong um

thank you i i definitely disagree with

that i will say i think that

the the proof of right and wrong

um is essentially established in the

self-consciousness that is

uh come to the conclusion that this

action of um

control and domination was wrong

that that development that doesn't

account for the contingencies

of things like strategy and war and all

of those things for hegel are not

accidental contingencies they figure

within the deeper rationality of right

and

or the will so for hegel all of those

contingencies are not

accidents the reason why for example

napoleon defeats europe isn't simply

because of contingent whatever it's

actually because

this is in a sense right

from the perspective of history i i

disagree i think that what he would say

and i think this is i think an

understanding of hegel would lend itself

to an understanding of ideological power

and

um political power just as much as

authoritarian power

so the direct opposition of the of the

individual

uh to us but this distinction

not only does hegel overcome this

distinction in history this distinction

is overcome

in like maoist guerrilla war strategy or

people's war like

the ideology for example marxism

leninism

and its ability to strategically when

these are or

let's say win the class struggle these

are one and the same thing it's not like

oh first you're right then you win no

you winning is proof

that you're right if you can't win

you're not right so you have to win

basically well i would have i would have

said i would have said another thing i

would have said that i think it would be

embodied really in the philosophy of

someone like martin luther king

and the the developments that he managed

to produce

um non-violently but through an act of

resistance and the resistance itself and

its demonstration to the world

showed um civil society the injustice

that was going on and allowed for

the development within civil society

without actually i'm more of a malcolm x

guy so let's just leave it there and

that's like the difference between us

basically

one question in terms of mao they

in and mao's philosophy do you not think

that he's fundamentally wrong on his

rejection of the negation of negation

and um falling into i think

uh you know a form of

particularity and everything can be

fundamentally

and almost nominalism really he has a

one-sided dialectic of um

kind of almost uh pure either pure

negation or this kind of pure

reconciliation i think mao was both

correct and incorrect he was correct

because his rejection of the

prior conception of the negation of the

negation allowed him to introduce

the concept of infinity to the marxist

dialectic which is coming from chinese

tradition and the chinese philosophy

and this was an incredible achievement

in innovation ultimately

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negation of negation can be made

compatible with mao zedong thought

but it must first take note of the

achievements of mao zedong thought but

yes he doesn't he rejects the nation

negation of the negation but this is in

a sense

necessary for the time and it's

necessary uh

for that time for him to do that okay

thanks guys we're going to move on to

the next question

um i'm going to combine these two for

has because they're relevant to each

other so this is from voidburn and

noobslayer u

so question for has exceptions like

cephalopods and dolphins have been able

to express higher levels of

self-awareness and

thought why is it the fact that the

species is what matters

but not the universality of

consciousness itself that matters

because the universality of

consciousness as you're putting it is a

kind of

it's not what hegel means it's a kind of

like new age spiritualism thing

so when it comes to all of the newly

observed things about dolphins and even

apes

these still do not go beyond the bounds

of what hegel described animals in the

philosophy of nature as being only acted

upon by immediate and pure externalities

so the fact that different animals

display different degrees of complexity

does not

still does not accomplish the necessary

um

step toward entering history entering

itself there's a qualitative difference

that we're talking about here

that's whatever i know you maybe saw

something about a dolphin

that impressed you or an orangutan but

this is still not enough

for uh them to be ethical subjects

proper

thank you last question for prospective

philosophy this is from angelo marney

how do you justify imposing moral

obligations on other people from a

hegelian perspective

um i don't i don't think that you can

impose a moral obligation

um or an ethical obligation really is

what we should say

in the sense that i don't think that we

can impose something that is outside of

outside of our society and the

development of the concepts from which

we share

everything that i'm saying is

conceptually um available

to you you not only speak the same

language but mostly we're part of

the same culture most people that you

know watch my streams that are engaging

in this

have some shared um ethical concepts or

the majority of the

majority of which share the same ethical

concepts uh we share

to the point in which we could develop

um laws which

govern human behavior relative to each

other

and also to animals as well i think that

there are some societies which have not

hit this point

um and there are some individuals you

know some uh

you know aspects of spur which have not

hit this point and you can't force this

um progression you know hegel says moral

progression is impossible

and i agree with that but you can

challenge it with rational argumentation

and allow for the development of spirit

to happen from external and internal

critique and this is a challenge to

dogmatism itself

rather than a challenge to um rather

than the imposition

of a moral law upon an individual who

would have no um

conceptual connection to it but doesn't

this kind of contradict the hegelian

perspective according to which

whereupon the insights of reason so far

as the individual is concerned

conflict with the deeper rationality of

society in the world

so much worse for the individual's

insights it just reflects a narrow

perspective

so how could arriving at some kind of

conceptual

uh insight on part of the individual or

rational insight on part of the

individual

possibly have consequences for

the society as a whole 100 must have

the whole point of the laws the laws

themselves

are are produced from the dialectical

um production the dialectical engagement

of subject and subject

uh there is no objectivity before that

and then the objectivity of the law

imposed upon those individuals is um the

freedom of the individual from their own

subjectivity

and the elevation of their subjectivity

or to the objective subject

um and and so that that is their freedom

so like to say that like um

like the the difference is is that this

has to be reconciled within the

consciousness of an individual

uh hegel would say the um the

uh abstract enactment of a law from

which individuals did not

have a conceptual understanding of as

inherently wrong he actually points out

that laws from which individuals cannot

understand

such as the he points out a historical

event in which they hammered the laws

higher than anyone could see as being

inherently

unjustified and it actually prevents an

individual from engaging with the law

the law and punishment itself is meant

to enact the subjectivity

and maturity of the individual and so

the punishment of the individual when

they breach the law

is actually a reckon a reconciliation of

that individual

with society and themselves we respect

that they knew the law they could

understand the law

and that they chose to act otherwise

define this or own subjectivity

yeah obviously that's true but that

still doesn't

address the point which is if the law is

the self-consciousness of the individual

then

laws are not established because

individuals come to insights in the way

that

you are coming to an insight here laws

are established because of a combination

of the

contradiction between state and civil

society where it's harmony

um the private interests the all sorts

of different kinds of factors

which are more fundamental particularity

passions which are more fundamental than

just the individual's conceptual use of

reason

but what they are is the individual

elevated to the point of universality

it's a relationship

and if philosophically yeah but this

comes from this

yes but hang on hang on hang on slow

down perspective philosophy finish your

thought then house

um okay yeah i'm just saying it's a

relationship it's a hermeneutic

relationship between the individual

themselves and the as an individual

instancing of the universal principle so

the individual themselves

is um a necessary component in this so a

society which does not allow for the

freedom of an individual

and rejects the freedom of an individual

would be inherently

uh dogmatic and tyrannical and negative

for hegel

yes i understand that laws

elevates the self-conscious but here's

the thing

there's a reason why they have to exist

in the estranged form of the law

it's not just a matter of kind of

worldly convenience it's the fact

that this self-consciousness is greater

than what can be afforded by the

insights of individual reason alone now

the individual can be cognizant

of the law but even

in being cognizant of the law this will

not fully satisfy

the demands of the rational subject

insofar as they do not recognize uh

the reality of a supra supra individual

irrationality that can often

come at the expense of their

expectations prejudices and beliefs

like a thief in the night so to speak

like uh it's an expression of a higher

cunning i would agree

i would agree with that i guess the only

thing i would say is that

just just finish up really quickly

because it has two more questions needs

to answer and then we're going to wrap

up yeah that's fine

i just said that essentially um that's

true the universality of reason

is you know essentially the driving

force of what we must give ourselves

into

we must we are subject to the laws we

cannot override them in the irony of the

subjective

but that the laws are constitutive of

subjects

coming together reasoning together and

putting forward their rational

um their rational um conclusions

to produce the laws the laws should be

rationally attainable by everyone

and so um follow what is

um a testable and reliable understand

testable and reliable

to the understanding of an individual

and be produced from

all of the individuals and the

consideration of those individuals and

not produced by

a class of individuals like a master

slave dialectic would

give itself into but hegel precisely

disagrees

when is precisely produced by a kind of

class of individuals not democratically

it's the class of

civil society sorry it's the class of

civil servants

the well if you look at if you look at

how um

how hegel's society works it's almost

like trifecta

isn't it with the king sitting on the

top so you've got um

like you've got essentially civil

society um uh was it civil society

um individual interests or private

interests

and um and then is it the king or

there's it's like another

there's another um institution i think

that also mediates

but they're also all contradictory uh

drives within society

that are being mediated by the king it's

not yeah it's not democratic

and yeah but the king himself is and

people

argue about whether he was just

essentially tipping his heart

essentially to the the king at the time

because

uh and for his own political interest

which i think he was

because the king himself has no um

subjective formulation

they are entirely objective the king is

the form

is the king is purely the expression of

the will of the people

the king would be replaceable with an ai

like

not neces i mean the king is inherited

by tradition and custom and there's

there's there's a

argument to be made for why hegel was

not necessarily

just trying to circumvent censors and so

on and so on

obviously the king doesn't have a lot of

power

basically to some of what you're saying

but for hegel

it's not like this kind of neil kantian

which is how i think you're describing

it this kind of neo-kantian

social democratic kind of we all get

together and rationally decide an

outcome in some kind of way for hagel no

it's it's not it's hegel rejects this

volunteerism i think almost explicitly

in his form of the rejection of his

critique of the english reform bill and

his

uh critique of the french revolution and

so on and so on

well okay lewis final word and then

we're gonna move on to the next question

that's that's fair enough i think that

hegel being

um hegel it wouldn't agree with

something like a marxist lenin estate i

don't believe or any sort of

um top-down sort of um dictatorship he

may agree with the

dictate of the proletariat dependent

let's not get into this let's just

yeah yeah that's fair um but i will say

that hegel does lend himself

to um i would say democracy um in many

ways which is why a lot of

you know hegelians are pro-democracy and

myself included i think that democracy

analytically aliens like brandon and

pippin like the hardcore hegelians

not so much you know oh absolutely i

mean you can go and read um

the beginner's guide to the philosophy

of write written by david ross

who is more continental than [ __ ] than i

don't know swiss cheese his name

sounds at anglo like what about kojev

and people like that like

real i'm not i'm not denying that there

are people that do interpret hegel and

like hardcore

i think real hegelians continental

hegelians um

can be liberals even um i just think

that i think that is a bad stance to

take i'm not a liberal

um but you know what i would say is that

something like

um socialism and uh you know i would

even say something like

something close that even anarchism

lends itself to hegel in a way let's

debate about that another day jesus

christ

thank you very much guys all right uh

has there's

two final questions for you and then

we're going to wrap up so the first is

from uh horizonburg

uh could factory farming be a morally

acceptable practice under socialism if

so what conditions would need to be met

for to be acceptable

obviously it could be morally acceptable

i don't see where morality

is has relevance here um

morality i if i'm a socialist i'm a

marxist right so

remarks this kind of um

estrangement of morality and ethics and

religion

from the actual uh material reproduction

of society as a result of the division

of labor so for marx

um

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the new society kind of reconciles

all of these things into determinate

forms of labor

and things like that it's not like these

are all we

approach things from is this morally

correct is this religiously correct for

marx all of these things

become reconciled

so is factory farming morally accepted

well

it doing away with factory farming would

not be because

of moral considerations that's your

question

i think there are health considerations

and things like that to be investigated

but

from a moral perspective i don't see why

it's the problem

thank you and final question for has um

this is from josh henniosa

i take this to be a accusation of

two fallacies so i'll let you just

respond to them uh the first

is name the trait also you are appealing

to nature and tradition fallacy

i don't know what this uh name the trait

stuff is from ask yourself

i think i've already debated i had i

debated someone from their server and i

talked about

why this is not i watched that debate i

don't know i'll put it on

louis is familiar with it does he want

to give a quick explication well

just let me answer the second question

please i know what no

name the trade is i know what name the

trade is i reject name the trait because

it's undialectical that's my

summarization

uh the real difference between mankind

and animals

is not because of some kind of formally

and

arbitrarily formally intelligible trait

it's because of something suspended in

actual area it's proven in a dialectic

way not because of some kind of

axiom or dogma the second thing was a

question about

appeal to nature and tradition

um i didn't i didn't actually

appeal to nature and tradition if this

is what you're saying

um but that doesn't mean that

traditions attest to a deeper

rationality

um that requires one to possess an

attitude of caution and more

consideration like oftentimes when

people critique

traditions they're taking a one-sided

and very narrow perspective

in relation to those same traditions

they're not

actually understanding why those

traditions have

stood the test of time and the reason is

not because

people are simply less intelligent than

you are

that would assume that tradition the

reason i have problems with this as a

logical fallacy is because it assumes

that the products of in the individual

use of logic

premise real human traditions but what

premises real human traditions is not

the individual

use of logic um what premises are

traditions is ontological it is our

fundamental

relationship to both our own being and

nature and so on and so on so i reject

this kind of

uh [ __ ]

thank you all right um so that's it for

questions so thank you gentlemen for

participating

um if uh anyone and thank you to the

audience as well for your questions and

for

being extraordinarily civil i greatly

appreciate that if

you are a small content creator and you

are interested in taking part in a

future sunday showdown dm me on twitter

or in the discord server

um if both of you would like to i

realize that i'm the smallest channel of

three of us here but if you'd like to

shout out your

channels and say what you're about um

please feel free

uh house would you like to go first

yup i'm on uh youtube it's the infrared

just search infrared you'll find me i'm

big enough for that now

twitch.tv slash infrared show um

where marx is lending his channel but

we're not

just about politics you know i'm also

a really entertaining person and really

funny

um and i'm also uh doing debates a lot

and it's entertaining especially when i

can get uh

more than two hours of sleep um

so yeah come watch me i think for two

hours of sleep you did pretty damn well

uh lewis please yeah so hello and

perspective philosophy

you can find me respect philosophy on

youtube uh i do debates

like this one on thoughts on philosophy

veganism um

politics ethics and uh loads of loads of

other stuff really

um i do and longer phone videos as well

even

outlining ontological uh positions and

ethics

and other you know philosophical

positions so yeah just check us out and

my audience check out president sunday

and you know what actually check out

check out uh

um infrared like that this was actually

pretty productive i wasn't expecting

that so

yeah yeah i agree this is easily the

most interesting discussion i've hosted

so far granted only

only the fourth but um i hope this

pretends uh

the quality we'll be looking at in the

future anyways we're going to call off

now so

thank you very much everybody and take

care

okay bye all right thanks guys bye