Geist

Let's talk about Hegel (baby, let's talk about you and me...): Of all the things Hegel talked about, "Geist" was the most important. Geist means "spirit" or "mind." Hegel's philosophy was about the evolution of Geist in humanity through history. He believed that Geist achieved greater maturity and self-awareness over the centuries, culminating in his own lifetime with the modern nation state. There are two ways to interpret this:

Most people claim Hegel was being very literal, and that he believed that there was a human spiritual essence tied to God, and that the appropriate English-language translation of "Geist" should be "Spirit." Slightly more iconoclastic scholars, however, argue that Hegel was talking about a very historically-grounded and accessible concept of progress. He was talking about the French Revolution. He was writing in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, and for the first time a western nation had tried (albeit abortively) to extend universal rights to its citizens. Thus, despite all of the bloodshed and horror leading up to the early 19th Century, there was the possibility of universal legal and social (and, in a sense, spiritual and mental) liberation for the inhabitants of western Europe. Said scholars prefer the translation of "mind" for Geist.

I bring this up because I finally figured out a broad topic to work on. Anyone who has had the misfortune of talking to me about school in the last few years will be unsurprised that it's about existentialism. I have, however, a little more specificity in mind, finally:

1. Big project: existentialism as a latter-day Hegelian philosophy of progress which made certain ontological (i.e. to do with the nature of existence/being) claims, from which existentialists concluded certain logical political positions.
2. Smaller projects: examples of this. The utility of existentialism was in concrete political scenarios in which groups and individuals were being disenfranchised by arbitrary traditions. This means racism, sexism, colonialism, and classism.
   
3. Paper topics: I'm starting with Beauvoir on sexism in Deuxieme Sexe, but I think for my (second) master's essay I'm going to work on her and Sartre on Vietnam, Cuba, and China.

My next blog post will be about bunnies, I promise.