Oh, I guess I should introduce myself
I'm Brian Morton a professor of philosophy from Indiana State
University, with some interests in what magic and philosophy have to say
to each other.

Hegel scholars often point to the influence of Jacob Boehme on Hegel. 
Boehme wrote often of the three principles of alchemy, so its not
impossible that Hegel was influenced by the alchemical tradition through
Boehme on this.  Likewise, a lot of Hegel's heretical protestant stuff
about the role of geist in history, looks like Boehme or the earlier
Joachim of Fiore.  The idea in these guys is that the Hebrew's lived
mostly under the shadow of God the Father, the early/medieval Christians
under the shadow of God the Son, but that in the near future (Fiore), or
present (Boehme/Hegel), the 3rd person, God the Holy Spirit will be the
primary engine of history.  Its certainly a mystical view of history,
but magical? maybe.  Right after Hegel, his follower Marx, took the
dialectic and turned it into the Material Dialectic.  Its pretty hard to
look at Hegel these days without the shadow of Marx getting in the way. 
Likewise, Hegel was popular in late 19th century Britain, but 20th
century British philosophy was built on rejecting him.  In philosophy he
might be beginning to re-emerge from Marx's shadow again a little (as in
the thought of Brandom, McDowell, or Singer).  Fukayama had a very Hegel
influenced (and very neo-conservative) book a few years ago, but I
haven't seen a lot of other history that was particularly Hegelian,
(unless it was also relatively Marx-influenced) recently.  Have any of
you?

>>> Mandrake of Oxford <[log in to unmask]> 4/17/2007 12:52 PM
>>>
Sebastian

Welcome - interesting thoughts - my main encounter with Hegel is
through
Borchardt's 'Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy' - which i
believe is
a Hegelian view of history with much talk of the Geist - i wonder
whether
this view of history in terms of 'spirit of an age' is also quite a
'magical' view - and how this sits with modern history writing??

mogg



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  -----Original Message-----
  From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Sebastian
Alexis
Ghelerman
  Sent: 17 April 2007 14:51
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] magic and logic


  Hello everyone. Ím new on the list. Ím a social anthropologyst
from
Argentina. Ím really interested in magic and its development along
history.

  A hint regarding this topic:

  Have you considered that the hegelian dialectic has much in common
with
some philosophical bases of the alchemy?. For e.g: the process
Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis uses the same logic pattern as the "Solve
et
Coagula", where "Solve" is the dissolution of the prime matter, "et"
is
related to the purification process of the stone and "Coagula" is the
solidification of the result of the other two. My thought, and it́s
only an
hypothesis, is that during medieval times and beyond, as other author
describe, the philosophical abstraction was integrated with the
religious
contents and magical "thought" and it́s only through Bacon, Newton,
Descartes and so on, that the science as an abstracted system of
thought was
set appart from the "illussion" of the other ways of seeing the
universe.
Hegel, is "victim of the spirit of his times", which was the time of
progress and rational thought.

  It́s a nice discussion.

  See you.

  Sebastian






  On 4/16/07, Brian Morton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
    Actually the story of Medieval Logic is pretty cool.

    Dialectic was the Platonic form of logic, and that of the Stoics
and
    the Skeptics and most other Greek and Hellenistics, but Aristotle
and
    Euclid, used very monological styles even in the Ancient world.

    Right before the collapse of Rome, there was a form of heresy
called
    Arianism, that became a big threat to the authorities in Rome, and
    Arians loved using Aristotle, so Clement of Alexandria decided to
make
    it a policy to teach all Christian priests just enough Aristotlean
logic
    to be able to oppose the Arians.  When Rome fell, the Stoic and
    Skeptical arts of dialectic were mostly lost, and what survived
was
    Aristotelian logic, and a fair bit of Plato (via Boethius).

    The medievals rebuilt a style of dialogue based argumentation on
their
    own, that had little to do with the older dialectic forms (it was
    probably partly based on Roman legal practices).  This medieval
    "dialectic" was the 2nd part of the trivium, and part of the
education
    off all educated medievals.  Aquinas, and the other philosophers
and
    theologians, are intensely dialectical in their style, but not at
all in
    the way the Stoics were.  And it had lots of interesting
developments
    (see  http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/ for lots of detailed
downloadables
    on medieval dialectics).  Also the medieval faux-dialogues, are
often
    edited versions of real dialogues called quodlibets, that were
ancestors
    to the modern thesis defense, rather than hypothetical dialogues. 
The
    Black Plague killed off this stuff, and later humanists developed
    Topical logics, and then Term logics that were quite different. 
From
    1350-1800's European logics are not very dialectical.

    Kant re-introduces the notion of the dialectic, which for him means
"a
    logic of appearances" rather than a logic of how things actually
are
    (related to Aristotle's grudging use).  Hegel, knows enough history
of
    logic to recognize the Kantian, Medieval, and Platonic notions and
try
    to play with them all.  He's drawing on Christian stuff (both
mystical
    types like Boehm, and non-mystics like Ockham) and Deist stuff
like
    Kant, and older pagan stuff like Socrates or Plato (but probably
not
    folks like Sextus or Chrysippus).

    >>> Sharon Stravaigne <[log in to unmask]> 4/14/2007 11:06
AM
    >>>

    In a message dated 4/14/2007 7:59:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
    [log in to unmask] writes:

    Presumably the Hegelian  dialectic is part of that classical
(pagan)
    tradition -??
    i'm assuming that  'dialectic' was not such
    a strong part of the  christian tradition??

    bb

    mogg




           Both styles seem to have  been in use in early Christian
times,
    though
           in one case it may have  been an actual conversation
recalled,
    they
           weren't much on fiction  until later.

           The monograph style  dominated later I think, but there is
    something
           I noticed which may be a  kind of hybrid, or you could view
it
    as left
           over from dialog style.  This is where in a monograph, the
    speaker
           says, "but if someone  should say blah blah, then I would
    answer
           blah blah." This is almost  like a dialogue but one that is
    obviously
           hypothetical instead of  presented as if real like in a
play,
    and then
           of course you have the  arguments between people writing
    letters
           and yelling at each other  in debates.

           I haven't read all of it, I  glanced at Aquinas years ago,
and
    I
    recall
           that in his presentation of  all the arguments pro and con
on
    every
           conceivable matter, which  was tedious, I suppose you could
    say
           that he dialectized on both  sides.

           Sharon



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