A recurring temptation in the course is the promise that everything fits together: that one system can explain the world and nothing is left over. Shore keeps pointing to how attractive that promise is. This route follows its appeal, the suspicion that it leads somewhere dangerous, and the later refusal of any whole at all.
The question is a theme Shore returns to across the course. The route through it, its stages and the summaries are our reading.
Read down. Each claim is our paraphrase; the time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
Berlin, Dostoevsky, Hegel, Shore, Arendt
Berlin's jigsaw image of the Enlightenment and Hegel's "the true is the whole," with doubts attached: Dostoevsky's Underground Man cannot promise a perfectly reasonable life would not be "dreadfully boring," and Arendt says no one could tell whether Hegel's system housed reality or imprisoned it.
Berlin's image for the Enlightenment picture of progress: the world is a vast jigsaw, each piece fitted brings the whole nearer, and makes the next piece easier.
Suppose the Enlightenment program succeeds and every question gets its calculated answer. The Underground Man cannot guarantee such a perfectly reasonable life would not turn out "dreadfully boring."
Put simply Dostoevsky's Underground Man: suppose reason wins and every question gets a calculated answer. He cannot promise that such a perfectly reasonable life would not turn out "dreadfully boring."
Hegel's slogan "the true is the whole" means everything is interdependent and intelligible only together; since a totality shows itself only from its end, meaning arrives in retrospect.
Put simply Hegel's slogan "the true is the whole": everything depends on everything else and makes sense only together. A whole can be seen only from its end, so meaning comes only looking back.
Where to read it Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface §20.
What seduces people in Hegel, Shore judges, is wholeness itself: the promise that unity can finally be achieved and everything be seen as interwoven.
For Arendt, Hegel's philosophy was Western thought's last attempt to reunite being and thought, subject and object; whether it housed reality or imprisoned it, nobody could say.
Put simply Arendt: Hegel's philosophy was the West's last attempt to bring thought and reality, the mind and the world, back together. Nobody could say whether his system gave reality a home or locked it up.
Nietzsche, Shore on Bergson, Lukács
Nietzsche says unity is never coming; Shore still hears a Hegelian longing for wholeness in Bergson, and Lukács makes totality the test of Marxism.
Sooner or later everyone concludes that the harmonious world where contradictions resolve, Hegel's end of history, is never coming. Unity cannot be found: life is nothing but difference.
Put simply Nietzsche: sooner or later we all realize that a harmonious world where every conflict is resolved, the end of history Hegel promised, is never coming. There is no unity to be found; life is all difference.
Shore hears something Hegelian in Bergson: the same longing for wholeness, where fragmentation counts as alienation and whatever is seamless ranks above whatever still shows its seams.
Put simply Shore hears an echo of Hegel in Bergson: the same longing for wholeness, where being in pieces counts as "alienation", not being at home in the world, and anything seamless ranks above what still shows its seams.
Marxism, for Lukács, stands or falls on totality: revolution comes only from a standpoint that sees the social whole, and trade-unionism plainly fails that test.
Put simply Lukács: Marxism depends on seeing society as one connected whole, its "totality". Revolution comes only from that view, and trade unions, which fight for better pay and hours, plainly lack it.
Horkheimer, Adorno, Arendt
Critical Theory rejects closed systems; for Horkheimer and Adorno, Enlightenment ends in a manipulated collective; for Arendt, ideology persuades by replacing a contingent reality with a fiction that has its own logical consistency.
Critical Theory, as Shore sketches the school, opposes theories promising reconciliation of subject and object, closed systems, and claims to absolute truth.
Put simply Shore's sketch of Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School's approach: it rejects theories promising that mind and world will finally fit together, closed systems that explain everything, and claims to absolute truth.
Enlightenment's totalitarian streak is built in, not a detour: a project designed to emancipate individuals arrives at a manipulated collective whose unity is each individual's negation.
Put simply Adorno: the Enlightenment's totalitarian streak is built in, not a wrong turn. A project meant to free individuals ends in a manipulated mass whose unity depends on canceling out each individual.
For Arendt, ideology persuades by smoothing reality out: it swaps the actual world, arbitrary and contingent, for a fictitious one where a single narrative, however false, explains everything consistently.
Put simply Arendt: ideology persuades by tidying up reality. It swaps the real world, full of chance and accident, for an invented one where a single story, even a false one, neatly explains everything.
Shore on structuralism and Girard
For structuralists, a sign means something only within a whole, which Shore hears as an echo of Hegel; Girard's system, she says, seduces because it seems to explain everything.
Structuralists meet Hegelians on totality: a sign means something only within a whole that holds everything in place, so faint echoes of Hegel persist even on the synchronic plane.
Put simply Shore hears a faint echo of Hegel in structuralism: a sign means something only inside a whole system that holds everything in place, even when the system is studied at a single moment.
Girard seduces the way Marx does, Shore thinks: by totality. Inside the system everything seems explained, as though glasses had been put on and the world's hidden secrets appeared.
Put simply Shore thinks Girard is seductive the way Marx is: his system seems to explain everything. Inside it, it feels like putting on glasses that reveal the world's hidden secrets.
Shore, Lyotard, Derrida, Bauman, Foucault
Disbelief in grand stories and an embrace of the fluid, with Foucault's warning that anti-Hegelianism may be one more of Hegel's tricks.
Postmodernity, Shore says, is often defined through its fervent anti-Hegelianism: against Hegel's "the true is the whole," it denies any whole, order, stable meaning, subject or direction.
Put simply Shore: postmodernity is often defined by its fierce rejection of Hegel. Hegel said "the true is the whole"; postmodern thought denies there is any whole, order, stable meaning, self or direction.
The postmodern, in Lyotard's famous 1979 formula, is "incredulity toward meta-narratives": a refusal to believe any single grand story could gather everything up and make it cohere.
To Derrida, anything linear, one-directional or Hegelian feels totalitarian, and goes with an illusion: that a transcendental signified, a unifying first principle, exists.
Put simply To Derrida, anything linear or one-directional, anything Hegelian, feels totalitarian. It goes with an illusion: that a single unifying first principle, a stand-in for God, exists.
Postmodernity, which Bauman names liquid modernity, abandons the search for sturdier solids altogether and welcomes what is fluid, slippery and short-lived instead.
Put simply Bauman calls postmodernity "liquid modernity": people stop trying to replace old foundations with firmer ones and embrace what is fluid, slippery and short-lived instead.
Truly escaping Hegel means calculating what the escape costs and how close he stands; our anti-Hegelianism may itself be one of his tricks, with him waiting at the end.
Put simply Foucault: to really escape Hegel, we must know what breaking free will cost and how close he still is. Our very rebellion against Hegel may be one of his tricks, with him waiting for us at the end.
Our summary of where the lectures leave the question.
The route ends in rejection of the whole, with a doubt attached: turning against Hegel may not be the same as escaping him.
Those with a reading page of their own.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault.