The first instalmment then is the opening paragraphs from Ch. 2. The chapter is called Politics in the Severe Style. Tahir
`In general religion and the foundation of the state is (sic) one and the same thing; they are identical in and for themselves.'(Hegel)
We may understand the proposition or judgement that religion is identical with the state in several ways. We may read it as a contingent generalization based on induction from experience. In this case we might argue, on empirical grounds, that it is wrong. We may read it as a prescription, as a recommendation that the state and religion should be identical. In this case we might disagree, and argue that such an identity is inconceivable, undesirable or impossible. We might protest, on the basis of yet another reading, that the proposition is neither empirically wrong, nor undesirable, but unintelligible. For how can religion and the state be identical, unless 'religion' and the 'state' are so defined that the proposition becomes an uninformative tautology? If the proposition is made tautologically true, there is no point in our assent or our dissent....''
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I read this post last week and then looked up Rose on Wiki, and read a few more things on her where it was claimed she followed Hegel for awhile. I find that very difficult to believe given the above attempt at analysis.
If you or anybody else is interested, I'll put together a critique of Rose's approach---in the above example.
My motivation is this. Rose must have been trained in the Logical Positivist school. I think of this sort of training as the Anglo-American deadheads. They are profoundly deaf to many if not all of continental philosophy post-Kant. They are even worse at their grasp of the so-called Postmoderns.
My first class in philosophy used a Paul Edwards edited text called Introduction to Modern Philosophy. (Please do a Wiki on Edwards) The state college professor was quite fastidious in his lectures. Looking back, I assume he was a thorough going advocate of some US branch of logical postivism. I got an A. The next philosophy class I took was called Inductive Logic where we were introduced to the theory of sets, a varied background in the philosophy of science, that more or less culminated in methods of inductive proof. None of the reading was noteworthy---quasi-=math quasi-logic bullshit. I got a C. The next philosopby class I took was called Existentialism and Continental Philosophy. It was a survey that began with brief excertps from Kant and Hegel, then went on to books by Kierkegarrd, Nietzsche, Husserl, (or selected chapters) and then more extensive readings in Heidegger and Sartre, with some desert readings in Campus. I was breathless and intoxicated, drinking vast quantities of instant coffee, living on sandwichs, tang, spagetti, and an occasional gallon of red wine. I got another A. Four o'clock nights living in an abandoned store on Reseda Blvd. 1965. One night the cops pulled up to watch me open my whited out store front---just checking. I'd been in a night print making class at SUN, then gone to the library and finally walked home. No car. All walking is suspect in LA, especially in the Valley.
I am explaining this because Rose reminded me of my first philosophy class, and Hegel obviously reminds me of the last class mentioned at Northridge. Two years later in Berkeley, I took Feyerabend's open course on philosophy that had some vague title that meant nothing. Feyerabend did philosophy the old fashioned way. He delivered lectures on his favorite subjects and you never knew what he was going to say. That was my real introduction to philosophy---the philosophy of anything, at anytime, for whatever reason. I got an A, but then almost everybody got A's from him. You could bake weed brownies and get an A. You could even offer weed-free brownies and at least get an A-. 1967.
>From one self-taught philosopher to another, you gotta loosen up, and
read more. Gillian Rose has a problem (at least in the quotes you
supply). But it is a problem that I recognize and I am interested
in. If you or anybody else want to hear more, you gotta say so. It
requires a lot of work on my part.. Gillian Rose's tone deaf reading
of Hegel illustrates a very interesting problem in the US-UK. Short
form, both country's academic establishmnts are from the Freudian
point of view, waay anal.
You want hear more, let me know....
CG
(yes, my spell checker is broken...)