Hegels Philosophy of Nature as the Avatar of

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature as the Avatar of Spirit 1

Meaning of “avatar” • Avatars – 1) role playing games – 2) movie watching – 3) The Matrix – 4) Hinduism: Krishna as the avatar of Vishnu – 5) Christianity: Jesus as the avatar of the Second Person of the Trinity – 4) Avatar • The avatar bodies of the scientists • Pandora as the avatar of Eywa 2

Disenchantment • Enchanted world of early humans • Disenchantment of the world – Heidegger’s argument that Plato and Christianity produced the modern world, with its science and technology – Because it placed what is of value outside of the world in a higher realm, beyond this world and this life • exploitation of the earth for profit 3

God in the world • Reply to this? – Plato’s concept of Beauty in this world • Love as the discovery of the other person as divine – Christianity: incarnation of God in this world, • and the mustard seed conception of the Kingdom of God 4

Main idea • Against separation of nature and spirit – Conventional idea of God and the world as separate – Avatar: native people (the Navi) sees the planet Pandora 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 5

Spirit descends, incarnates • Nature for Hegel is unconscious Spirit • 1) Devolution of Spirit: Spirit/God “incarnates” as Nature – Proof: The buried power contained in an apparently inert rock (E=mc 2) 6

Spirit evolves from matter • 2) Evolution from nature to the human being – Dialectic of individual plant or animal and its species as a contradiction that presses toward its solution: the human spirit, implicit in organic nature – Q: But where does the plant come from? How does life “evolve” from inorganic bodies? – A: Spirit “devolves” in inorganic matter • Spirit evolves out of matter because it first devolves into/as matter 7

3 Stages of human society • Evolution of humanity from • 1) Spontaneous, unconscious unity with nature of huntergatherers • 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! • Rebels unite with Ewoks 8

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 • H 2 + O = H 2 0 9

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 (goal-oriented) motion? • I. e. , human beings acting to realize goals 10

Theories of nature • Hobbes: It’s impossible, because a deterministic process can only produce more deterministic processes • Kant: it’s a subjective approach that scientists adopt • Emergent materialists: it just happens because of the emergent properties of the complexity • Hegel: evolution requires devolution 11

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 if examined carefully • The lower level implicitly contains the higher – A gas is potentially a liquid – The seemingly mechanistic level of inorganic beings is • implicitly teleological, • and contains a degree of freedom 12

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 internal oscillations) • The higher level of development provides clues for a deeper understanding of the lower level, which must contain the possibility of the higher 13

Deeper position: Devolution • The higher level of Spirit evolves from the lower level, because Spirit first devolves into the lower level – Thus in the rock, in the inert “material” object, there is already a presence of spirit • as evidenced in hydrogen bomb – A deeper analysis of the nature of inorganic beings will show that this is true 14

Science and the avatar • An “Avatar” is defined by the scientists as a remote controlled device – Jake (from his pod) “drives” the avatar – like an automobile • But the experience is different: Jake feels that he 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 • his spirit incarnates in the avatar 15

Empirical science • Materialist science explains consciousness as an effect of the body – Jake supposedly remains in “his” body and steers the other one from his pod • But the experience is one of being outside one body, and in another one – Recall The Matrix: the mind enters a simulated body in the Matrix • 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) 16

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. ” – Recall the development in The Matrix Trilogy 17

Jake is no scientist • In reply to a question about his scientific education, he says that he dissected a frog once • He tells Mo’at (the Shaman of the tribe) that he is an “empty vessel” – i. e. , he is not biased by the outsiders’ science – She says that the scientists don’t understand anything • Scene in the interior of the planet – 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 as whole beings 18

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, inner to outer • 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: devolution of spirit 19

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 (avatars) of spirit – Spirit operates through the body, not because of the body 20

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 animal does what it feels like doing; it always acts “selfishly” – But it is always unconsciously governed by the universal features of its species • The dog instinctively (unconsciously) chooses meat, the horse chooses oats, • because of their different species natures 21

Human species being – 3) Human beings – “Species being”: each individual consciously represents the species – The individual represents his/her action in universal terms – We act on “maxims” or rules – Kant: can we will these as universal laws? 22

Human history • 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 • The structures we impose on experience reflect our social order, not our human nature – As Kant thinks 23

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 24

Cunning of reason • The original people (hunter-gatherers) are dependent on nature • They learn however to tame (cooperate with) their environment to achieve their goals • while still remaining dependent on nature • seeing themselves as part of the natural world, not separate from it • Hegel’s “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 25

Dialectical analysis • Hegel: “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. ” 26

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 27

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 28

Hegel begins The Phenomenology implicitly with modern, “civilized” societies • But the ego of civilization tries to be whole simply by negating the independence of the external world – -> life and death struggle – -> slavery • The Phenomenology begins with modern individualists of Greek and Roman societies – Only much later are the concepts available for understanding the larger historical totality – and its evolution from primitive societies, still dependent on nature, to modern civilizations 29

Holism • The Na’vi understand the holistic connection between self and other, People and Nature. – Everything for them is interconnected with themselves 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. ” 30

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 31

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” – Compare to Kant 32

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. 33

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. ” 34

Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel • Kierkegaard’s criticism of the universals of Kant and Hegel – They leave out individuality which contradicts their focus on universality (reason) • Here Hegel clearly stands up for individuality against the abstract universality of empirical science – The individual and the species (the universal) are two “moments” of a dialectical opposition: – The organic individual is a “concrete universal” 35

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. 36

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. 37

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, the plant or animal, that Jake sees 38

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. ” 39

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. . . 40

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 – Another kind of knowing, teleological, holistic, is necessary for organic living beings • Science thus goes along with the exploitation of the earth as consisting of a dead, disenchanted world – Morpheus: Welcome, to the desert of the real. 41

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. ” 42

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. ” 43

Early societies and Romanticism • The Romantics seek to go back to pre-modern societies, like 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 44

Hegel’s reply: dialectical reason • Logical principle of analytic thought: A = A – Principle of identity – E. g. , A tree is a (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? 45

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) 46

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 47

What is the planet Pandora? • 1) an individual in its own right • 2) a (concrete) universal, the whole in which all the rocks, plants, and animals are contained – not as isolated, separate beings, but – as organs of the totality • An organ is not an organ outside of the living individual for which it exists (teleology, holism) 48

Stages of the history of thought • 1) An instinctive sense of interconnectedness with each other and with nature, characteristic of early peoples • 2 a) 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 • 2 b) Transitional stage: But the deeper science goes in studying the separate entities, the more it is forced to recognize their unity – Grace’s attempt to explain interconnectedness • 3) Hence the need for a new way of thinking arises: dialectical reason 49

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 50

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 (the apparent passivity—rule by outside causes—stemming from their apparent separateness) • 2) and “involves” the other, what it is not, in itself: attraction – A=A, -(-A) (two negatives = a positive) 51

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 evident in the law of gravity (and in atomic energy) • 2) This connectedness gives rise to organic beings, individuals that master their limited environments – They die eventually having reproduced themselves – The species, the larger totality, lives on – But the species has no life of its own • 3) Human species being arises from this tension of individual and species: species-being 52

What is “the Force”? • Obi-Wan to Luke: “The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. ” (Star Wars, Episode 4: A New Hope) 53

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 individual plant or animal and its species 54

Final stage • 3) Human level: unity of individual and species giving rise to human history, in stages: – (1) From unconscious connection in kinship order • Religion of Nature – (2) through separate egos in life-and-death struggle of civilization • Religion of separation: God outside the world – (3) to a higher civilization, that incorporates the first stage, of Spirit: I = We, We = I • Religion of incarnation: God enters the world 55