Hegel and Historical Context

Hegel (German)

• A reaction to the enlightenment
• Individualism is the core of the enlightenment
• Start of 19th century

Increased Awareness

• A new sense arose from increased travel and awareness of history
• Different parts of the world exist in different historical and cultural contexts

Schools of Thought

• Two schools of thought have deep allegiances among thinkers but are incompatible
• Society feels the values of each school, but the schools oppose each other

Awareness of Birth

• A new awareness leads to the sense that who we are depends on when and where we were born
• Being a product of your community determines you by the period you were born into, limiting freedom
• Another school of thought focuses on freedom

Freedom vs. Environment

• "You're a product of your environment" implies no individual freedom
• "Freedom is everything" suggests freedom is paramount because we are rational
• Rationality allows critiquing birth circumstances and being free; it is the source of freedom

Metacriticism of Reason

• Concerns correlating freedom of liberalists with community ideals
• Hegel is part of metacriticism of reason
• Fundamental critique of enlightenment is crucial

Major Critiques

• Atomistic conception of self
• Ahistorical conceptions of society
• Ahistorical critiques of nationality

Hegel's Preservation

• He wants to preserve some legacy of the enlightenment
• He aims to preserve the authority of reason as the source of freedom

Hegel - Rationalized Romanticism

• Combines two trends in society

Expressivism

• As a goal for humans, encouraging individuals to "express yourself"
• Humans are expressive beings because of belonging to a culture
• Expressive unity exists in community/culture

Radical Freedom

• Focuses on radical freedom
• Science would rule if deterministic, implying we are causally determined

Consciousness

• Nature allows consciousness with building blocks
• Consciousness had to be latent in the "am"

Humanity

• Seen as a pinnacle to the Hegelian, considered an achievement
• Teleological processes have a goal or purpose to achieve

Aspirations

• Involve combining society's rational part with aspirations of autonomy
• The goal is to believe in freedom while being historical products of culture

Actualization

• Requires understanding and awareness of acting freely, not just acting free
• Being aware leads to making choices with the will to do it

Freedom

• Involves awareness to make choices and act
• History is the process of civilizations making it more possible to act freely
• The goal of world history is freedom for everyone

States

• States become more rational by making freedom possible
• Greater awareness of world events results
• The most rational society produces the most freedom

Property

• Property exists only in certain cultures
• A mechanism of self-expression makes a society with property more rational
• The endpoint is the maximum amount of freedom possible

Karl Marx: Theses on Feuerbach

• Eleven observations regarding Feuerbach's ideas

Feuerbach's Influence

• A student of Hegel who critiqued Hegel's philosophy, influencing Marx, who wrote the Theses to clarify his own ideas

Philosophical Action

• Traditional philosophers only think about reality, Marx urges actively changing society

Human Nature

• Feuerbach views humans as purely thinking, Marx sees human nature changing with history and society

Action vs. Thought

• Acting in the real world is more important than just thinking about it

Religion Critique

• Feuerbach criticizes religion, Marx sees religion as reflecting social conditions that need changing

Material Conditions

• Material conditions shape consciousness; ideas come from material reality like work, class, and economics

Social Environment

• Feuerbach treats people as individuals, Marx highlights being shaped by the social environment

Changing Conditions

• Changing thoughts is insufficient; the conditions shaping them need changing

Materialism Views

• Old materialism (like Feuerbach's) only observes the world, Marx materialism aims to change it

Revolution Thoughts

• Too much focus on ideas instead of real-world action
• To change thoughts, social and economic conditions need changing through practice and revolution

Historical Materialism

• Marx and Engels: a society's economic organization fundamentally determines social institutions

Mode of Production

• How a society organizes itself economically (two parts)

Economic Production

• Means of economic production include tools, machines, and factories
• Involves human beings who work and the tools they use

Relations

• Relations between people in terms of economic production
• Describes who owns the factories and who works at them

Marx and Engels' Theory

• Outlined through looking at tribal societies, where the mode of production was hunting, fishing, with divided labor

Influence on Social Relations

• The type of production (hunting, fishing, gathering) influences social relations like family

Superstructure

• Social and political institutions like family are the superstructure to socioeconomic forces
• Changes in economic organization lead to changes in social institutions

Communist Manifesto

• Explains communism's basic ideas and calls for workers to unite and overthrow capitalism

Industrial Society

• Characterized by class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat

Bourgeoisie

• A capitalist class who owns most of the wealth and means of production

Proletariat

• Working class people

Revolution

• Productive forces of capitalism are ceasing to be compatible with its exploitative relationship
• The proletariat will lead a revolution, which will be an abolishment of classes, private property

Instability

• Manifesto argues this is inevitable, as capitalism is unstable
• Crashes and recessions will eventually destroy itself

Class Elimination

• The elimination of classes cannot come about through reforms or changes in government; a revolution must occur

Inequalities

• Capitalism naturally leads to growing inequality over time

"r > g"

• r is the rate of return on capital (profits, dividends, rents)
• g is economic growth (income from wages, GDP growth)

Piketty's Argument

• Historically, the rate of return on capital has been greater than the rate of economic growth
• Wealth grows faster for capital owners, while income doesn't rise at the same rate for wage earners
• Inequality rises over time due to capital accumulating in fewer hands

Rich and Poor

• The rich get richer, the poor stay poor

Disruption

• This pattern was disrupted in the 20th century by wars, the Great Depression, and high taxation, which temporarily reduced inequalities

Wealth Increase

• Wealth becomes more hereditary

Consequences of "r > g"

• The rich earn more from existing wealth than workers earn from wages
• Inheritance matters more than effort occurs

Aristocracy

• Creates a new aristocracy of wealth, like the pre-industrial era
• The middle class shrinks

Disparities

• The gap between rich and poor widens, with fewer people remaining in the middle class
• Wealth concentration leads to reduced social mobility

Democracy Threat

• Wealthy elites use their power to influence politics
• Wealthy elites shape policies that favor capital over labor, leading to a cycle where laws protect the rich

Wealth Regulations

• He does not advocate abolishing capitalism but regulating it with an annual tax on the richest
• Regulations involve restoring progressive tax rates and making financial records public to prevent evasion

Paul Willis: Masculinity and Factory Labour

• How working-class boys develop a culture preparing them for manual labour, even when resisting school

Marxist Perspectives

• grounded in Marxist and cultural studies perspectives

The "Lads"

• Ethnographic research in a British school studying working-class boys called the "Lads"

"Lads" Discovery

• Resisted school authority and rejected academic success

Labor Pride

• Saw manual labour as a source of masculine pride
• Viewed mental labour as weak/feminine

Behavior

• Engaged in "having a laff" to assert dominance over teachers and students who followed school rules
• Masculinity was defined by toughness, resistance to authority, and rejection of middle-class values

Rebellion Results

• The lads' rebellion against school leads them into the working class, the system they claim to resist

Limitation

• By rejecting education, they limit job prospects to low-paying jobs like their fathers

Reinforcement

• Anti-school behaviours reinforce capitalistic class structures by ensuring they enter as obedient labourers

Capitalism Benefits

• Capitalism benefits from working-class masculinity in several ways

Work Identity

• Factories and manual labour rely on workers who see physical toughness as part of their identity
• The lads accept boring, repetitive work because they see it as natural and manly
• They look down on academic success, keeping them out of middle-class jobs

Max Weber

• Explores the relationship between ascetic Protestantism ethics and the emergence of modern capitalism

Calvinists

• Religious ideas of groups like the Calvinists played a role in the capitalist spirit

Encouraging Values

• Protestantism encourages capitalistic values

Beliefs

• Certain Protestant beliefs (Calvinist, Baptist, Methodist, Quaker traditions) encouraged aligned values

Predestination

• Some Protestant sects, especially Calvinists, believe in predestination, influenced people to work hard

Favor Signs

• Looked for signs of God's favors, and economic success was often seen as one
• Encouraged hard work, simple living, and profit reinvestment, forming a foundation for capitalism

Virtue Success

• Material success is seen as a reflection of personal virtue

Iron Cage

• A system where economic logic dominates life, even when it no longer serves religious or personal fulfillment

Bureaucracy Theory

• Structuring an organization into a hierarchy
• Defining a role to help administer an organization and its members

Authority

• Bureaucratic authority is grounded in rules and law,
• Power is exercised predictably and standardized, leading to stability

Key Charateristics

• Tasks and roles are divided and assigned based on expertise, leading to efficiency
• Hierarchy of authority where each employee knows their employer and subordinates exist.
• Decision making is structured and responsibilities are clearly delineated
• Bureaucracies operate according to formalized, impersonal rules, ensuring fairness and standardization.
• Decisions are based on rules and regulations, not personal relationships
• Employees are expected to behave objectively and avoid favouritism
• Employment and promotion are based on objective qualifications and merit rather than social status
• They are typically full-time and stable

Dehumanising Effects

• A system of rigid rules and impersonal relationships reduces freedom, creativity, and individuality
• The impersonal nature of bureaucracy leads to a sense of alienation among employees
• Bureaucracies emphasize efficiency over humanity

Emile Durkheim: Cultural Logic of Collective Representaiton

• Collective representations are more than just individual thoughts

Social Interactions

• Emerge from social interactions and hold authority over individuals
• Aligns with society existing as a reality sui generis—greater than the sum of its parts.

Knowledge Origins

• Categories of thought (time, space, causality) are socially constructed rather than innate
• Religious symbols, moral values, and scientific concepts derive from collective consciousness

Dichotomy

• Societies classify objects, people, and practices as sacred or profane
• This distinction reinforces social unity

Solidarity

• Collective rituals strengthen group identity by reaffirming shared beliefs
• National anthems or religious ceremonies serve as collective representations that sustain social order

Totemic Logic

• Early societies used totems as representations of the collective, forming the basis of religious and symbolic thinking

Modern Society

• Modern societies continue to use logos, flags, and cultural icons in a similar way

Modern Applications

• Collective representation explains nationalism, political ideologies, and consumer culture
• Digital communities form shared beliefs and symbols, influencing social behaviour

Sigmund Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)

• How individuals behave in groups
• Explores the psychological mechanisms that underlie group identity, leadership, and mass movements
• Builds on Gustave Le Bon's theory of the crowd

Psychoanalytic Insights

• Incorporates his own psychoanalytic insights, particularly about the role of the ego, libido, and identification in shaping group behavior

Influence of Group

• Being part of a group transforms behavior
• Rational thought diminishes, emotions intensify, and personal responsibility weakens
• The ego becomes absorbed in the group's identity due to loss of individuality
• People revert to more primal, childlike states, making them more suggestible

Role of Leader Influence

• Identification is the psychological process
• Individuals align with a leader or shared ideal
• The leader takes on the role of a father figure, fulfilling an unconscious need

Leader Member Bond

• Group members experience a libidinal bond for emotional attachment
• Group member attachment is driven by unconscious desires
• The group often collapses or seeks a replacement if the leader is removed

Mass Pyshcology

• A weakened ego allows instinctual drives to take over in a group setting
• People suppress personal desires and adopt group values, leading to herd mentality

Explanations

• Explains fanaticism in politics, religion, and social movements

Oepidus

• Connects group psychology to his Oedipus complex
• Authority figures act as substitutes for the paternal figure in childhood

Leader Obedience

• Obedience to the leader satisfies deep-seated psychological needs for security and order
• Rebellion against a leader mirrors the struggle between desire and moral constraints
• His ideas help explain crowd behavior, cult dynamics, and authoritarian leadership

Freud's Theories Impact

• Political movements, religious sects, and even fan culture can be analyzed

Work Influence

• Work laid the foundation for later research in social psychology, propaganda studies, and mass media influence

Wilhelm Dilthey- Historian and Philosopher

• Known for his work on the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften)
• Known for the distinction between understanding (Verstehen) and explanation (Erklären)

Contributions

• He laid the foundation for the hermeneutic tradition
• He shaped modern approaches to history, sociology, and psychology

Natural vs. Human Sciences

• Methods used in the natural sciences are not suitable for studying human life and culture
• Human sciences require a different approach

Science Examples

• Natural sciences (Erklären – Explanation): Study nature by identifying causal laws
• Human Sciences (Verstehen – Understanding): Study human experience through interpretation
• Humans are self-interpreting beings
• Thoughts, emotions, and cultural expressions cannot be reduced to mechanical laws

Lived Expereince

• Emphasized the importance of lived experience as the foundation of the human sciences
• Humans do not just observe the world
• Experience shaped by history, culture, and personal context

Meaning Study

• Focus on hermeneutics, especially in texts and historical contexts
• Understanding human actions, texts, and historical events requires empathetic engagement rather than detached observation

Historical Consciousness

• Human thought is historically conditioned/shaped
• Intellectual and cultural traditions are inherited
• Historical periods develop unique worldviews, which must be studied within their own context
• Influenced Max Weber, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger

Legacy Work

• Work laid the foundation for qualitative research methods, emphasizing meaning over causality
• Continues to shape debates on interpretive social science and the nature of human knowledge

Culture Influence

• Cultures have these multiple levels, (social personal cultural), and they are integrated

Culture Function

• Cultures function as a system of diffusing meanings or norms into society
• They require a certain amount of value coherence

Stability Production

• Cultures need to produce stability to tell us how to act and behave

Integration Needs

• Integrate to be stable and function properly
• Need complementarity of role expectations and a sense of what everyone is going to do and what we expect them to do within the normative system of that society
• Like gender expectations
• To produce stability but it is never fully achieved

Coherence

• Integrated and coherent to offer a guide for action

Cultural Systems

• A social system is something bigger than the purely cultural system
• Full of cognitive dissonance, we exist in a plurality of cultural systems
• To resolve: adaptive institutionalization/ functional integration

Resolutions

-Integration of values and system of actions with proper priorities, Prioritizing certain values in certain situations, compartmentalization of social roles,

• Different things are expected of us in different situations
• Mechanisms are homologous with mechanisms of defense in personality
• Getting along with people with different values requires compartmentalization

Socialization Failures

• Produce deviance, which is dealt with by direct social control or compartmentalization

Group Values

• Designated spaces are giffen to groups, so long as it doesn't interfere with the other values
• Gambling, spaces for youth culture, outlets for nonconformity, in an isolated space.
• The problem comes when you do these deviant things outside of the allocated spaces.

Culture Spread

• When do deviant things become culture? If its becoming mainstream?

Gramsci

• The revolution happened in Russia disproves the theories
• Given saying that it Marx should have never happened
• It was an agrarian society. It wasn't far down into capitalism

Economism Rejection

• Analyze culture by understanding how ruling groups win, maintain and sometimes lose their power

Failures

• There is a response to what they felt was a failure of the revolutionary wave
• Wasn't supposed to happen in Russia. Didn't happen anywhere else.. More stress on voluntary component in historical change
• Revolution won't happen unless you produce a certain kind of consciousness to birth change
• The superstructure works sometimes against capitalism
• Dominant groups within society generally govern with a good degree of consent from the public they rule
• The maintenance of that consent is dependent on careful and incessant positions of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled

Marshall Sahlins

• Inventor of the teach-in method a nonviolent protest
• He was very antiwar
• Studied the history and ethnography of islands like Hawaii and Fiji during the period of European contact

Western Paradigms

• Decenter Western paradigms
• Challenge from sociobiology and capitalistic economic theory

Cultural System

• More than just a set of rules and behaviors
• People use to create meaning
• Cultural symbols are recreated/created and transformed
• A red light doesn't stop a car because of physics, it's just a colored light. Agreed to that it will stop the car

Cultural Signs

• Used the hawaiians and how they reacted to James Cook's arrival
• They had no idea that what a british explorer was
• And his arrival coincided with one of their festivals
• And in their myths it was said that god Lono would arrive at a festival They made sense of Cook's arrival by using their existing cultural framework (lono)
• Interpreting real events through symbols, stories, and meanings that already exist in a culture.

Social Order

• Culture is an integrated system
• Meanings challenge existing power structures

Individuality

• Humans are not inherently indivualistic
• They're divided into families, villages, and nations
• Units give structures think and behave
• Also critiqued the concept of race to justify their treatment of non-western people

Race as a Construct

• Culture isn't just a behavior, it's a way of interpreting the world
• What one group sees as history, another group might interpret as meaning

Semiotics Meaning

• Is a system of signs and meanings used to interpret reality

Roland Barthes

Semiology: study of signs and symbols

• Understanding of myth is the notion of a socially constructed reality which is passed off as 'natural'.

Sign Operate

• Denotation (literal meaning)
• Connotation/myth (cultural or ideological meaning)
• Wrestling is not just a competitive sport, it's a spectacle full of signs and symbols.

Faces Meaning

• The meaning is that the faces, signs, expressions portray signs that tell a story of justice Moral drama reflects cultural values
• Villain is punished, the hero performs justice

Symbol and Myths

• Shows the people what value are “right” and what is wrong
• Culture is made of signs with hidden meanings
• Decode signs by looking at the relationship between the form of the sign and the meaning

Micheal Foucault

• Power knowledge shapes societies
• Knowledge isn't neutral or objective. It's produced within systems of power
• Power is internalized so we might be watched like a prisoner in a panopticon

Knowledge in Sciences

• In sciences psychiatry, law, media controls how they think and behave
• Homosexuality being labeled a mental illness controls people
• Cultural norms, values and truths are shaped by institutions like schools, medicine and the media
• Culture tells us how to act.

Culture Influence

• A site of power
• "What kind of identities are valid or deviant"
• Postmodernism is suspicious of universal truths, progress, and objective knowledgereason
• he says always tied to power, there is no universal truth

Meaning of Identies

• Cultural norms are created by discourses
• Create what normal is
• In culture, power works through institutions, rules, and internalized discipline

Thedore Adorn

• Deeply concerned wwith how mass culture under capitalism affects human,critical ,and individuality
• He beleived culture enlightenment but has been industrialized and turned into tool of control

Industries

• a system that tv,radio adn flim treat culture like a product

Equality

• things that are same, pseudo individuaality, passive consumption
• in modern capitalitic society, culture has become industrialized
• this is infecting everywhere because its made to keep quite

Recycle Arts

• same recycles with a fully coded script
• brands shaped by expectations, pseudo individialty,

Culture Breakdown

• bad because kills critical thinking stopping deep questions, what how to live happy

Culture Support

• by distracting with lack of real world issue, it is resistance to society

Benedict Anderson

• In imagined, his central idea was nations are natiral
• imagined community are created through culture, language, and media

Nation Ideologies

• A nation is created to have imaginf and imagined group
• The group part has shared community, even if they all never meet their fellow citizens
• Before anderson idea, as tied
• Nation are modern
• Nations are made possible, especially the rise of print

Created Through

• Printing press, journal
• Books create and spreach
• Origins create

Shared Communities

• shared the same experience,
• language is same through media
• creates a shared culture with people feeling equal
• people were religious with others
• religion decline created newspapers for the new community

Nations symbolic

• work as a symol as myth
• they also create unity
• the are not a bunch of individual with distinct boundaries
• they shape structure adn behavior

Colonized

• people only imagining Eurpoe
• begin in aemricas and spread Anderson treat nation They copy colonized own culture of ownselfs Inernal inner create people can accepted reclaim there culture

Culture not passive

• its resistance
• challenges the other ideas, they devveloped in india
• accepted in outer domain
• and resistance with culture

Anthony Giddens

• Late modern
• core is that in modern they not just give identity High global change everything is questions choices • in world • diet of products spotify identify

Existensial and Ontology

• ontogy and what life
• People stability in life

Realitionships

• Emotiona

All Things That Change

• Culture becomes the real thing for structuring the self
• But culture offers pressure to perform what authentic is

Chales Taylor

• Modern Identity withtrouht time
• The they understand happen from cultural things

Self

• Alway is situatiun
• We cant create
• Shpaed meanings we in heriateted
• We draw from what is important

Framework

• Is ground
• And identity what like, for
• modern identitiy is in look and we d efine ourseves
• Today we are trues and come from th

Value Meaning

• there is more to life if it not follow things and its shared to us identity is what we recognise and share the shapes can be to what is around

Taylor Says

• identify ahspes wh at we build to identify a new and build the meanings and value ourselves authentic cruicial for safe

MIchael Walzer

• Multiple cultures in justice, multiculturs coexist,
• challenged the pluralism

Justice

• He says not one size
• and moral pluralism will show us justice
• morals for and have different morals.
• we shudlnt not torture people
• we cant ignores
• equality in tribal for looks for

Rejects Value

• he rejets everything equal money and stuff
• its the complex
• Each will fall there own
• one is good
• to respect all that

Rawl and Plurailsm

• will follow a diversity
• we want to feel like the are one for moral people
• This is overlapping in this

Young

• She what inclusion shudl be included
• the actively need a way to engage

Paradigm

• it about exculde and terroe
• power and all • all thins with a lberal in the same • support of that means can be equal

KYMILCK

• he liberal
• value rights
• not be tur ewithout support minorieie

Autmony

• governtnnece to min
• for the groups. that give people rigths
• is good it cant be without cu tl

Culture

• We will support minorities rigtt
• Each get and help

SEN - IDenity of Virence

• Only on e identity is bad and only divid
• It is easier to what someone to
• And people reduce their selve\ss
• this is minimuialtiu

Identities

• we change accordin gto things
• we are what the world looks at

Sterrotre

• This will cause violence And politicians will
• ethnic violence happens
• and solitarian is a problem

Culture Important

• its not what will happen to us

anthony

• that the world flidud and changing even

Culture is good

• Its a tool creative and help

Bound statis

• Culture change and we follow new one

The esstenalite

• Many like things the can

what is good.

• saying woman in wocuntry
• its not heiritad what shaped
• and we do it

culture

• we freeze and what to is
• we help people

Robinson

• The fear is what shaped That will undermine fear is personal and also a political thing the other thing also helps
• We change and fear also help by not sharing what trust and this can lead to other things that the recovery is the power