Telos

Alienation, in Hegel, is failing to see your own particular life as part of Geist, of the whole; its cure is coming to feel at one with the universe's telos.

Put simply Hegel: alienation means failing to see your own life as part of the whole, which he calls "Geist". The cure is to feel at one with the goal (the "telos") the universe is moving toward.

History's end, for Hegel, is a mystical point where all oppositions (freedom and necessity, is and ought, subject and object) dissolve into synthesis; nobody has ever witnessed it.

Put simply Hegel: history ends at a mystical point where all opposites (freedom and necessity, what is and what ought to be, the mind and the world) merge into one. Nobody has ever seen this happen.

One way to situate Nietzsche, Shore's through line here: he is Hegel's alter ego, an anti-Hegel perceiving every antagonism and contradiction Hegel does, yet flatly refusing reconciliation, directionality or telos.

Put simply Shore's way of placing Nietzsche: he is Hegel's mirror image. He sees every conflict and contradiction Hegel sees, but flatly refuses Hegel's promise that they resolve, or that history has a direction or goal.

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.

Finalism (teleology) holds that life moves toward an end planned from the start; Bergson rejects it: more determinism means less contingency and free will, which he wants room for.

Put simply Bergson rejects "finalism", the idea that life heads toward a goal fixed from the start, as an apple seed already "aims" at its apple. The more is fixed in advance, the less room for chance and free will.

Intentionality is the structure of consciousness: always reaching for its object, like a magnet on a string. Neither subject nor object comes first; their relation does, bridged by intentionality.

Put simply Husserl: consciousness is always reaching out toward some object, like a magnet on a string in Shore's image. He calls this "intentionality." Neither mind nor thing comes first; the link between them does, and that link is the bridge.

The Second Sex, Shore observes, ends not in Hegelian reconciliation but in hope: reciprocal freedom is possible, never guaranteed, and only if people seize their own subjectivity.

Put simply Shore: The Second Sex ends not with Hegel's final reconciliation but with hope. Freedom on both sides is possible, never guaranteed, and only if people take charge of their own selves.

Structuralism responds to problems that preoccupied earlier thinkers, teleology and subjectivity, by diminishing both: in some ways it brackets history and the subject.

Put simply Shore: earlier thinkers worried about where history is heading and about the individual self. Structuralism handles both by making them matter less; in a way it sets history and the self aside.

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.

Against the decentering worked by Nietzsche's genealogy, Foucault says, the sovereign-subject tradition set a search for an original foundation, making reason mankind's telos and demanding perpetual return to it.

Put simply Foucault: against the decentering of the self by Nietzsche's "genealogy," the defenders of the sovereign subject sought an original foundation: reason as humanity's goal, to which thought must always return.

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.

Derrida labels the undertaking a hauntology: the many spirits of Marx, and with them Hegel's teleological conception of time, will go on haunting us indefinitely.

Put simply Derrida calls this project "hauntology," from ghosts: Marx's many spirits, and Hegel's idea that time moves toward a goal, will go on haunting us indefinitely.

Patočka and Michalski shared a conviction: in the 1970s communist bloc Heidegger could counteract Hegel, showing meaning need not require wholeness, nor some kind of truth an inevitable destination.

Put simply Patočka and Michalski shared the conviction that, in the 1970s communist bloc, Heidegger could counter Hegel by showing that meaning can exist without wholeness, and truth without history marching to a fixed end.