Date: Mon, 18 Sep 95 12:15 BST
From: WIDDER-AT-VAX.LSE.AC.UK
Subject: Re: Susan Says Here It Is, There It Isn't


Well, I would say language has a representative quality (or is thought to
have a representative quality) insofar as it's supposed to describe or mirror
a pre-existing reality (a designative concept) or, alternatively, if it's 
concerned with self-consciousness, etc, it does not necessarily reflect a
prior reality but is part of a hermeneutical process by which humans 
supposedly come to know (or develop and to know) their 'true selves' (a la
someone like Charles Taylor and a hermeneutical reading of Hegel).

But with regards to Hegel and the question of essence and existence, it should
be noted that any sort of full reconciliation between the two and any sort of
self-identity which is supposed to result (which is not an 'indifferent' self-
identity, as you wrote earlier, but rather the so-called identity of identity
and difference) is reserved for the realm of self-consciousness (and there
are readings of Hegel which can be pretty persuasive that he doesn't believe in
any such final reconciliation).  Geist can be seen to operate in this realm,
hence in the realm of society, culture, etc., not in, say the realm of nature.
That's why Hegel says nature has no history and can only be seen as a series
of purely contingent events.  Supposedly human institutions can be seen to have
a development or progress.  Anyway, this all rests upon a nature/culture divide
which really can't be maintained. 

Nathan

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