Hegel s Philosophy of Nature as the Avatar of Spirit

1. Hegel�s Philosophy of Nature as the Avatar of Spirit 1

2. Main idea Against separation of nature and spirit Conventional idea of God and the world as separate Avatar sees the planet as the avatar of the Goddess, Eywa Just as the humans, such as Jake, enter the �avatar� of a Navi. Hegel provides philosophical concepts that support these images of the film Recall: Hegel on the relation between philosophy and art, philosophy and religion 2

3. Spirit descends, incarnates Nature: spirit in unconsciousness 1) Devolution of spirit: God �incarnates� and so produces Nature 2) Evolution from nature to the human being Dialectic of individual plant and plant species as a contradiction that presses toward its solution: the human spirit is implicit in organic nature But where does the plant come from? How does life �emerge� from inorganic bodies? 3

4. 3 Stages of human society Evolution of humanity from 1) Spontaneous, unconscious unity with nature of hunter-gatherers The Navi in Avatar; the Ewoks in Star Wars 2) Separation from nature and each other of ego-centered society Capitalist corporation seeking to exploit Unobtainium for profit Death Star as technological power over the galaxy in Star Wars 3) Overcoming of separation by returning to unity: of people with each other, and of humanity with the natural world Jake goes native! Ewoks unite with Rebels 4

5. Theoretical issue of devolution/evolution Why not just evolution? Going from simple inorganic beings to complex biological and social levels of reality =theory of �emergence�: each new level of complexity gives distinctive phenomena, higher level �emergent� realities E.g., two gases with simple structure: hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce a more complex entity which is a liquid, not a gas H2 + O = H20 5

6. Higher from lower? But how can the higher level come from the lower one? How can two gases produce a liquid? Empiricist reply: they just do; that�s what happens How can beings moved by external, mechanical causes give rise, by increasing complexity, to beings with free, teleological motion? I.e., human beings acting to realize goals Hobbes: It�s impossible, because a deterministic process can only produce more deterministic processes Emergent materialists: it just happens because of the emergent properties of the complexity 6

7. Potential for higher in lower Hegel: Higher levels can come from lower levels only if there is a potential of the higher already in the lower: which can be detected on the lower level itself E.g., we see the tension between individual and species in organic life The lower level implicitly contains the higher A gas is potentially a liquid The seemingly mechanistic level of inorganic beings is implicitly teleological, contains a degree of freedom 7

8. Deepening our understanding A deeper understanding of the mechanical level will show this Gases become liquid at lower temperatures So the combination of the two gases must lower their temperature (the rapidity of their oscillations) The higher level of development provides clues for a deeper understanding the lower level, which must contain the possibility of the higher 8

9. Deeper position: Devolution The higher level of Spirit evolves from the lower level, because Spirit first devolves to produce the lower level Thus in the rock, in the inert �material� object, there is already a presence of spirit A deeper analysis of the nature of inorganic beings will show that this is true (we will come back to this) 9

10. Science and the avatar An �Avatar� defined by the scientists as a remote controlled device Jake �drives� the avatar Like an automobile But the experience: Jake leaves one body and enters another The feet of the avatar are his feet: He (his consciousness) is in the avatar; it is not a remote object controlled from afar 10

11. Empirical science Describes consciousness as an effect of the body (materialism) But the experience is one of being outside one body, and in another one Recall The Matrix: the mind enters a simulated body Hence, the consciousness, the spirit, must be separable from the body. Science: this is �pagan voodoo,� like the beliefs of the Navi (says scientist Grace Augustine) Comment by director: she smokes 11

12. Mind and body Spirit/consciousness is not something external to its avatar: Like a driver in his car The avatar allows Jake�s consciousness to act on and in the planet He leaves one body, with one life, and enters another, for a different life He comes to see his life in the avatar as his true life; and that in his original, crippled body as illusory: �Everything is backwards now. Like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.� Theme of dream and reality of The Matrix 12

13. Jake is no scientist He dissected a frog once He tells Mo�at that he is an �empty vessel� i.e., he is not biased by science She says that the scientists don�t understand anything Scene: Grace and her assistant are impressed by digital readouts of some organism Reduction to microstructure Jake is amazed at the awesome beauty of the plants themselves in their unreduced existence 13

14. Two theoretical approaches to nature 1) Grace reduces the macro-level of the plants and animals to the micro-structures The higher level is founded on the lower one: from bottom to top 2) Jake begins with the visible, tangible plant or animal, and admires its individuality Thus he is open a reverse approach: from top to bottom A descent from the Spirit, Eywa, to the planet as her embodiment 14

15. Hegel�s dialectic 1) Spirit descends, �devolves,� to the level of matter/bodies This makes possible the return process If spirit was in no way present in inorganic matter, how could it ever arise from it? 2) Then spirit evolves new forms of matter/body that are better and better vehicles of spirit 15

16. 3 Stages of Evolution 1) Inert things, seemingly separate from each other and moved externally = Model of conventional scientific thought 2) Life forms, animate beings The individual exists only in dialectical relation to others Individual and species in dialectical opposition 3) Human beings Begin as kinship societies immersed in the natural order Then egotism arises, separating individuals from each other and from nature: gives rise to the concept of nature as consisting of separate entities: nature is modeled on egotistical structure of human society 16

17. Theory and Practice Two theoretical approaches From microstructure up (Grace) From macrostructure down (Jake): ultimately, from Eywa to the planet, her avatar Two practical approaches Nature as exploitable resource for economic goals Selfridge Nature as basis of life for native people Neytiri 17

18. Cunning of reason The original people (hunter-gatherers) are dependent on nature She is hungry and needs to eat They learn however to master their environment to achieve their goals The �cunning of reason�: make nature, while still remaining nature, work for our goals, The Navi tame the flying birds for transportation This is not control over nature, but a trick of human cunning whereby the natural world unfolds its own potentials while achieving the goals of humans 18

19. Dialectical analysis �The negation of myself which I suffer within me in hunger, is at the same time present as an other than myself, as something to be consumed; my act is to annul this contradiction by making the other identical with myself, or by restoring my self-unity through sacrificing the thing.� 19

20. The Self and the Other 1) dependence on nature, on something �other� than oneself: experienced as separation, disconnection I am divided from myself: hunger is an emptiness within me: �the negation of myself� And from the other: there is something outside of me that is necessary for me to be me Two things: myself, and the other: one is negative, the other positive 20

21. Connection 2) connect with that other The separate thing is sacrificed in its independence, in its separation I am whole once again: I am myself through the other > I sense my unity with the outside world as the completion of myself 21

22. Holism The Na�vi understand the holistic connection between self and other, People and Nature. Everything for them is interconnected in a circle of life. There is nothing fundamentally dead, expendable, exploitable, nothing purely separate Parker Selfridge complains about this holism: �You throw a stick in the air around here, it�s gonna land on some sacred fern, for Christ�s sake.� 22

23. Reciprocal sacrifice The material sacrifice of the thing requires a reciprocal sacrifice: a spiritual one, to restore the unity �I see you Brother, and thank you. Your spirit goes with Eywa. Your body stays behind to become part of the People.� It is the alien Sky People who destroy without renewing 23

24. Knowledge of the thing in itself Science is ostensibly about knowing the thing as it is in itself The thing should be studied in its independent existence Without interference from the scientist But empiricist science reduces the living individuality of the thing to its micro-structures separate entities, as small as possible changing the thing �in itself� to a thing �for us� 24

25. Impoverishment by thought Hegel: �The more thought enters into our representation of things, the less do they retain their naturalness, their singularity and immediacy. The wealth of natural forms, in all their infinitely manifold configuration, is impoverished by the all-pervading power of thought, their vernal life and glowing colors die and fade away. 25

26. A murky northern fog �The rustle of Nature�s life is silenced in the stillness of thought; her abundant life, wearing a thousand delightful shapes, shrivels into arid forms and shapeless generalities resembling a murky northern fog.... In thinking things, we transform them into something universal; but things are singular, and the Lion as Such does not exist. 26

27. Kierkegaard�s critique of Hegel Recall Kierkegaard�s criticism of the universals of Kant and Hegel They leave out individuality which contradicts universality (reason) Here Hegel clearly stands up for individuality against the abstract universality of empirical science The individual and the species are two �moments� of a dialectical opposition: �the concrete universal� 27

28. A lot of connections Grace to Selfridge: [T]here�s some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora.... Selfridge: Which is a lot I�m guessing. 28

29. Just goddamn trees Grace: That�s more connections than the human brain. You get it? It�s a network. It�s a global network. And the Na�vi can access it.... Selfridge: What the hell have you people been smoking out there? They�re just goddamn trees. 29

30. What each sees Grace sees micro-structures with great complexity Giving rise to emergent qualities of communication throughout the planet Grace thinks she has discovered the scientific truth of interconnection that the Navi hold to in their religion of Eywa Selfridge sees �goddamn trees�: the abstract universal that is the same in each individual Neither sees the individuality of the tree or plant or animal that Jake sees 30

31. Empiricist science analyzes to understand Hegel: �If we examine a flower, for example, our understanding notes its peculiar qualities; chemistry dismembers and analyzes it. In this way, we separate color, shape of the leaves, citric acid, etheric oil, carbon, hydrogen, etc.; and now we say that the plant consists of all these parts. 31

32. Goethe�s commentary in Faust Hegel cites Goethe�s Faust: �If you want to describe life and gather its meaning, To drive out its spirit must be your beginning, Then though fast in your hand lie the parts one by one The spirit that linked them, alas is gone ...� 32

33. Don�t kill the spirit Nature is more than a multiplicity of individuals and of elements The unity, the individuality, of nature as a whole must not be killed in the pursuit of knowledge Kant recognized this: our way of doing science through analysis into separate �objects� in time and space can not give us reality as it is in itself Science thus goes along with the exploitation of the earth as consisting of dead, disenchanted world Morpheus: Welcome, to the desert of the real. 33

34. The Romantic alternative The recognition that analytic science kills the spirit of nature leads to the Romantic response Reject reason, rational science Turn to intuition, feeling Return to pre-modern civilization �This is tsaheylu�the bond,� Neytiri says. �Feel her heartbeat, her breath. Feel her strong legs.� 34

35. Free play of fancy is not truth Hegel: There is something lofty in this approach, but it leads to the belief that there are �favoured ones, seers to whom God imparts true knowledge and wisdom in sleep, or that man, even without being so favoured, can at least by faith in it [i.e., in our immediate oneness with Nature], transport himself into a state where the inner side of Nature is immediately revealed to him, and where he need only let fancies occur to him, i.e., give free play to his fancy, in order to declare prophetically what is true.� 35

36. Early societies and Romanticism The Romantics seek to go back to pre-modern societies, like that of the Navi Feeling as important to both But the Navi live in a complex, stable social order with traditional rules of authority and beliefs The Romantic wants individual freedom for the fancies arising out of his own feelings These are very different outlooks 36

37. Hegel�s reply: dialectical reason Logical principle of analytic thought: A = A Principle of identity E.g., A tree is (just a goddamn) tree Leads to the dissection of reality into the smallest possible elements that can be separately identified And then the reconstruction of reality on this basis A complexity of tiny identities seems to produce something different: an interdependent whole Selfridge: what have you been smoking? 37

38. Dialectical logic The hunter is a hunter, not a deer Two separate entities Deeper analysis The hunter is a hunter only through what he is not, the deer Logical form: A is A, only through not-A Dialectical identity: A = A, �(-A) 38

39. What�s next? Not a return to hunter-gatherer societies We are beyond this origin We must transcend the abstract understanding of modern science The egotism of modern civilization 39

40. What is the planet Pandora? 1) an individual in its own right 2) a universal, the whole in which all the rocks, plants, and animals are contained Not as isolated, separate beings, but As interconnected �organs� of the totality 40

41. Stages of the history of thought 1) An instinctive sense of interconnectedness, characteristic of early peoples 2a) Analytical science which separates the individual from the totality, in order to grasp it more easily > a metaphysics of separate entities connected to analytic thinking 41

42. 2b) Transitional stage: But the deeper science goes in studying the separate entities, the more it is forced to recognize their unity Grace�s unsuccessful attempt to explain interconnectedness of the planet Pandora But she doesn�t believe the planet really is a unity governed by a consciousness 3) Hence the need for a new way of thinking arises: dialectical reason 42

43. Contradiction in modern science 1) Law of inertia: everything is separate from everything else, and changes its motion only as a result of outside causes 2) Law of gravity: everything acts on everything else: universal interconnectedness Newton could not understand how separate beings could affect one another through empty space: no evidence of material causes His reply: God/Spirit, must connect the separate beings according to the law of gravity 43

44. Dialectical unity of inertia and Gravity Hegel: �Gravitation directly contradicts the law of inertia; for, by virtue of the former, matter strives to get away out of itself to an Other.� 1) The inorganic being, a rock, negates the negativity (its apparent passivity�rule by outside causes�stemming from their apparent separateness) 2) and �involves� the other, what it is not, in itself: attraction, or gravity 44

45. Deeper understanding of inorganic matter 1) Inorganic level of matter is only superficially a collection of separate entities moved by outside causes A deeper understanding shows that they are connected to each other by a universal �Force� or Spirit Which is hidden, invisible But manifested in the law of gravity 2) This connectedness gives rise to organic beings, individuals that master their limited environments They die eventually But the species, the larger totality, lives on 3) Human species being arises from this tension of individual and species 45

46. Stages in the evolution of nature 1) Separate inorganic entity A rock, A hydrogen atom Connects with other entities Through universal gravity Through chemical bonding of hydrogen and oxygen 2) Organic level: dialectic of plant and species 3) Human level: unity of individual and species giving rise to human history From unconscious feeling of connection in kinship order Through separate egos in struggle To Spirit: I = We, We = I 46