Faith and the ‘science of the experience that consciousness goes through’ (Hegel)

reference: Hegel §36 Phenomenology of Spirit

Faith is a powerful idea. Yet, you must also ask what is it that you are placing your faith in?

If it is a fixed idea, i.e. I believe in x, then that is an attachment in itself. Indeed, if it is immune from any criticism, questioning or challenge, then it is dogmatic, arbitrary and blind. These are “truths taken for granted, which it sees no need to re-examine; just lays them down and believes itself entitled to assert them” $67

But the dialectic oppositional extreme is also an error in itself; for if one believes in nothing, then one remains uncertain, lost and doesn’t move at all.

Yet, if you have faith and let that guide your actions, then our experience can provide feedback, from which we can then learn. It may provide feedback that challenges what we believe, and question the underlying assumptions upon which such beliefs depend. It can help us reappraise the ideal we place our faith in, which serves to guides us; one can then reorientate oneself towards the new ideal. This process is recursive, over time becomes autonomous, and eventually becomes self-correcting; using knowledge to guide experience, and feedback to challenge knowledge, and in doing so, learn how better to interpret and act on experience; in this way, interpretation, knowledge and action all become self-correcting. So, in this case, acting on uncertain faith brings its own reward, which then serves to strengthen faith.

Of course, the one who thinks they know has a fixed idea of what is known, doesn’t ever ask any questions and doesn’t ever make progress. The one who thinks about what they know will always ask questions, yet may never find satisfactory answers. Hegel described this as the man who stands on the shore, who tries to learn to swim before getting in the water, or “the mode of cognition which remains external to its material”$48 PoS.

The one who holds his knowledge lightly, who has faith, and tests his knowledge against experience, gets feedback necessary to challenge what he believes he knows. He learns to swim through practice, which requires a leap of faith to get in the water in the first place. This can allow him to reorientate himself, and learn as he goes, and self-correct his knowledge; to walk the path with faith and uncertainty, to learn from experience as to how to better walk the path, and use feedback to know when one has strayed, and so become more certain of the process, and ultimately understand it so clearly as to see the path unfold before him; not as a manifest, deterministic concrete path, but as dynamic process; true perception in the moment, which itself is already a product of this recursive process of self-correction, and true knowing of exactly what course to take, which itself is a product of the recursive process of self-correction, and so acting truly in the moment. It is the learning that comes from having walked the path, the knowing how to walk the path as it presents itself in each moment, and knowing that the future path is shaped by the path that one has already taken.

This is perhaps the difference between knowing the path, and walking the path; perhaps even what it is to know oneself; to see oneself as a process; of how we came to be, who we are now, and how we can use feedback from our actions in order to unlearn the erroneous lessons that we learned from how we came to be, and in so doing, free ourselves from our past, and become who we truly are; to perceive, understand and act truly; an authenticity of being.

Hegel described this ‘pathway is the science of the experience which consciousness goes through’. $36 PoS

A continual “process which traverses its own moments”, perhaps of knowledge and of self. $47

Until “spirit has made its existence identical with its essence”, and “separation of truth and knowing is overcome” when “being is then absolutely mediated” and “no longer separate into antithesis of being and knowing” $37

If we consider this analogy of learning to swim, and the leap of faith required to do so, in the contemporary historical context. MIllenials, growing up on the internet, there was no choice or leap of faith, they were literally thrown into the deep end. Yet, rather than learn through the experience, they were shamed, and asserted upon mutually inconsistent opinions on what to believe, how to think, and how to live. All partial perspectives, once seen from the benefit of a retrospective perspective.

Get Z can see the partiality and sophistry for what it is, and say ‘ok boomer’ to it all. They won’t suffer the same corrupting influences and indignities that were imposed upon the millenials. They know they are in the water, that they can trust no-one else to guide them, and are learning how to swim through the engagement with experience.

Yet, I know from my own experience that, without guidance, this path means making many mistakes. In a culture that has become so unwholesome, so pornographic and exploitative, I fear how their innocence and purity will be exploited by the very worst parts of our culture. There is a strong need for wisdom; not to tell them how to act, what to believe, how to think, or how to live, but to help them understand the process, how to navigate their experience, and how to curate their own path through life. Wisdom now only needs to speak its truth such that others can unmistakably hear it.