HEGEL & SCHOPENHAUER: Toxic Fanboys!
Once upon a time there lived two professors and they both though IMMANUEL KANT was the greatest philosopher EVER!
written by Fred Van Lente drawn by Ryan Dunlavey colored by Adam Guzowski
Script for ACTION PHILOSOPHER #24 & 25: HEGEL & SCHOPENHAUER!
Written by Fred Van Lente
ACTION PHILOSOPHERS © 2006 Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. So there.
ONE
Panel 1: Establishing shot of the University of Berlin.
CAPTION: Once upon a time… (the 1820’s)
CAPTION: …in a school FAR, FAR away…. (The University of Berlin)
Panel 2: Big panel: Hegel and Schopenhauer both moon, in love, over a portrait of IMMANUEL KANT.
CAPTION: …there lived TWO teachers…
LOGO #1: Georg W. F. Hegel
(Action Philosopher #24)
LOGO #2: Arthur Schopenhauer
(Action Philosopher #25)
CAPTION: …and they BOTH thought that IMMANUEL KANT was the greatest philosopher EVER.
CREDITS: World (COMIC) = Will (Fred Van Lente’s SCRIPT) + Representation (Ryan Dunlavey’s ART)
Panel 3: An “X” through a miniaturized version of Page Eleven, Panel 4, of “Kant”: Cognopolis floating in a sea of NOUMENA.
CAPTION: Nevertheless, they BOTH disagreed with Kant’s assertion that Things-in-THEMSELVES were fundamentally UNKNOWABLE.
CAPTION: But from THERE…their paths radically DIVERGED!
TWO
Panel 1: Hegel flips a coin.
CAPTION: GEORG said…
HEGEL: …everything that IS, is KNOWABLE!
HEGEL: For KNOWING and BEING are TWO SIDES of the SAME COIN!
Panel 2: Two coins lie on a table – one side is heads up, depicting BEING (literally, a BEE) and the other is tails up, depicting NOTHING (literally, the black outline of the bee – its negation in picture form).
CAPTION: In fact, for Hegel, every thing (THESIS) also contains its opposite (ANTITHESIS)!
CAPTION: For example, without the concept of NOTHING, the concept of “BEING” makes no sense: for what is a Something except a NOT-NOTHING?
CAPTION: And what is Nothing except a NOT-SOMETHING?
Panel 3: Stoner is blown away that he can make a coin flip using just his mental waves.
CAPTION: By THINKING about Being, you also HAVE to think about NON-BEING – and VICE-VERSA – because you can’t define the ONE without the OTHER.
STONER: Duuuude! Far OUT!
CAPTION: This movement produces a THIRD category, a SYNTHESIS of the two that Georg called…
Panel 4: Zoom in on the coin – we’re looking at its ridged side! An arrow points to it.
CAPTION: …BECOMING!
CAPTION: Which is not quite NOTHING, but not quite SOMETHING, either – it’s still IN-BETWEEN!
Panel 5: Returning to the old chair analogy – a wooden chair with various ideas floating around it (in words): WOOD; BROWN; SITTING-PLACE; FOUR-LEGGED; 3.5 FT-high; etc.
CAPTION: Therefore, because ALL of reality is a PROCESS of BECOMING…
CAPTION: ...objects-in-THEMSELVES are nothing more than the sum of the THOUGHTS we have ABOUT them!
Panel 6: Hegel with three cookie cutters labeled “1”, “2” and “3” in his kitchen, gleefully making cookies with them on dough stretched out on his counter.
HEGEL: Not only is APPEARANCE also REALITY…
HEGEL: …but reality is RATIONAL, following the LOGIC of the TRIADIC DIALECTIC!
HEGEL: “What is rational is real, what is REAL, is RATIONAL!”
THREE
Panel 1: Hegel holds a magnifying glass over a bee buzzing at a flower in a garden.
CAPTION: Georg reached HIS conclusions…
HEGEL: …by starting with the LOWEST LEVEL of knowledge – sense perceptions, etc. -
HEGEL: --posing a THESIS, deducing its ANTITHESIS, then finding their unity in a higher SYNTHESIS--
Panel 2: Blind men paw an irritated elephant.
CAPTION: --for SINGLE FACTS are “IRRATIONAL” by themselves –
BLIND MAN #1 (at trunk): This is a SNAKE!
BLIND MAN #2 (at leg): This is a TREE!
ELEPHANT: This is HARASSMENT!
CAPTION: —they must be considered within context of the WHOLE!
Panel 3: In the background, the infuriated elephant chases the blind men around, goring one with its tusk, while Hegel addresses the reader in the foreground.
HEGEL: At the END of this chain of conclusions one finds the IDEA—
HEGEL: —which is the synthesis of SUBJECTIVITY (thesis) and OBJECTIVITY (antithesis)!
Panel 4: Another callback to “Kant”: On the subway in the morning, an Antimony, floating brain bailiff guy, and an egghead, strap-hang or read newspapers with regular commuters. Both group ignore the other.
CAPTION: “Kant was WRONG to think his CATEGORIES were mere figments of REASON!”
CAPTION: “On the contrary, they are MODES OF BEING that exist IN THE WORLD!”
Panel 5: Hegel at the bottom of a ziggurat atop which is a huge, gold, glowing Light Bulb – the ABSOLUTE IDEA!
HEGEL: And the synthesis of BEING (thesis) and COGNITION (antithesis) is the ABSOLUTE IDEA, which all other ideas move TOWARD…
HEGEL: …in a process of PERFECTION within which the Absolute fully KNOWS itself IN objects!
FOUR
NOTE: To differentiate Schopenhauer’s sections from Hegel’s, let’s wrap Schopenhauer’s sections in borders, a la the Krypton sections from Moore and Gibbons’ “For the Man Who Has Everything”.
Panel 1: Schopenhauer opens a narrow door in his chest. Is that something glowing inside?
CAPTION: But ARTHUR said that…
SCHOPENHAUER: …while Kant was essentially RIGHT about the unknowability of Things-in-THEMSELVES, we do have ONE NARROW DOOR into their nature…
SCHOPENHAUER: …because that door is within each and every one of US!
Panel 2: A video game fan shoves fists full of money at a bored toy store clerk to buy the latest hot game console from the stack behind her.
CAPTION: That “door” is our BODILY ACTIONS, which we usually ASSUME to be merely INSPIRED by our DESIRES – our WILL!
GAMER: I WANT it I WANT it I WANT it!!
Panel 3: Later, in a darkened home theater, the gamer watches a projected film of him buying the game console (stat previous panel), and he is intrigued. (Quote: Stumpf 348)
CAPTION: But Arthur points out that it is only upon REFLECTION that there is a CAUSAL relationship between will and action.
CAPTION: Rather, he writes, “The action of the BODY is nothing but the act of the will OBJECTIFIED!”
Panel 4: Stat Panel 2 inside a cube, which is shown via an “equal” sign to the CHAIR which Hegel was examining on the previous page!
CAPTION: “The act of will is … the closest and most distinct MANIFESTATION of the thing-in-itself!”
CAPTION: “WE ourselves ARE the thing-in-itself!”
Panel 5: A glowing will, like a raging sun, explodes like a Big Bang, spinning out as many things that have already appeared on this page as you can cram in one panel – the game console, the kid, the chair, the bored clerk, the projector, the door – and Schopenhauer (maybe just his head?)!
SCHOPENHAUER: Things-in-themselves ARE Will…
SCHOPENHAUER: …OR, more PRECISELY, there is only ONE will, and things-in-the-world are individual manifestations OF that will!
FIVE
NOTE: SCHOPENHAUER PAGE (BORDERS)
Panel 1: Schopenhauer holds a glass of water in one hand and a tray filled with ice cubes in the other! (Yet another “Kant” callback.)
CAPTION: ARTHUR reached HIS conclusions—
SCHOPENHAUER: --because the PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON shows us that EVERYWHERE is present NECESSITY!
SCHOPENHAUER: To have physical objects, or PHENOMENA, you need CAUSE-and-EFFECT!
Panel 2: Schopenahuer stands between stands between Rodin’s Thinker, who is thinking the word “freedom”, and a huge stopwatch that ticks down the sections … but doubles also as a geometric circle, with its radius drawn for us (denoted by the geometric italic “r”).
SCHOPENHAUER: ABSTRACT CONCEPTS require INFERENCE or IMPLICATION!
SCHOPENHAUER: MATH is nothing without SPACE (geometry) and TIME (you cannot COUNT without a succession of MOMENTS)!
Panel 3: Stat Page Four, Panel 3 again – the gamer watching the film of himself. Except you should “spotlight” two aspects of it – perhaps through shading? -- the gamer’s head on the screen, and the gamer’s head in real time, so they can be labeled respectively as “subject that wills” and “willing object”.
CAPTION: “And for there to be a SELF, there needs to be an aspect of YOU that YOU observe … an OBJECT-you for the SUBJECT-you!”
CAPTION: “The Self is the subject THAT WILLS and the WILLING subject is the OBJECT for that KNOWING subject!”
Panel 4: Same shot as the previous panel, except the gamer is now watching the PLANET EARTH projected onto the screen! (No shading or labeling here.)
SCHOPENHAUER: EVERYTHING in the world (including YOU) is PRESENTED to your mind as an object to a subject.
SCHOPENHAUER: Arthur concludes, “The whole world of objects is and remains REPRESENTATION, and therefore wholly and forever determined by the SUBJECT.”
Panel 5: The cube-with-the-willing-gamer in it and the planet from the previous panel, linking with two moving arrows thus suggesting that one flows into the other and they are the same.
CAPTION: Hence the title of his most famous book:
CAPTION: The World as Will and Representation*
CAPTION (small): *: “Vorstellung” in German, which in English is frequently (mis-) translated more simplistically as “IDEA”.
SIX
NOTE: HEGEL PAGE AGAIN (NO BORDERS)
Panel 1: Hegel skips through a woodland scene, which, like a Highlights for Children find-the-picture puzzle, is filled with hidden drawings of LIGHT BULBS!
CAPTION: For GEORG, though, the World – NATURE – is the EXTERNAL/CORPOREAL form (antithesis) of the IDEA (synthesis)!
Panel 2: Out of a broken light bulb and a flower with a broken stem floats a Mother Gaea-like spirit of “Geist”, which sort of seems to be what Hegel had in mind. To be honest with you, Ryan, I have no idea what this crazy Kraut is talking about.
CAPTION: The SYNTHESIS of Idea and Nature is Geist (“Spirit” or “MIND”), a rather SLIPPERY concept—
CAPTION: --that appears to be to HUMAN BEHAVIOR what “BEING” is to Georg’s METAPHYSICS – a state of highest ABSTRACTION in “the realm of FREEDOM.”
Panel 3: Like the old evolution diagrams that show a walking progression from ape to Neanderthal to modern man: a prehistoric goddess of nature/fertility/beauty (take your pick – make sure she looks like this statue, though), evolves into BACCHUS, the Greek wine god (carrying a bottle of wine and everything) and then again into JESUS, carrying the Cross.
CAPTION: Just as individual THINGS emanate from formless BEING, so individual MOMENTS IN HISTORY emanate from SPIRIT.
CAPTION: And as the Absolute Idea is in a never-ending process of ACTUALIZATION, History itself is a never-ending forward ADVANCEMENT toward PERFECT EXPRESSION of Absolute SPIRIT!
CAPTION: In RELIGION, for example, we began with amorphous ANIMISM (thesis), which moved to pagan ANTHROPOMORPHISM (antithesis) – in which SPECIFIC aspects of reality were identified with SPECIFIC personages – which moved to CHRISTIANITY (synthesis), in which ALL of reality is embodied in ONE, SPECIFIC individual!
Panel 4: Likewise, big strong caveman (the Superman from “Nietzsche”) evolves into a Roman senator, who evolves into a medieval Prussian king, wearing Chainmail and a crown, and carrying a sword.
CAPTION: Likewise, the STATE, in Georg’s view, is not created by MAN, but EMANATES from dialectic movements of HISTORY!
CAPTION: “The state is the ACTUALITY of the ethical IDEA,” he wrote, an organism striving toward MAXIMUM FREEDOM.
CAPTION: And so it moved from TYRANNY (thesis) to DEMOCRACY (antithesis) to European-style MONARCHY (synthesis)!*
CAPTION (small): *: Yup, you read that right.
SEVEN
NOTE: SCHOPENHAUER PAGE (BORDERS)
Panel 1: A human in a loincloth with a spear fights a giant amoeba similarly wielding a spear! (Who says I don’t give you cool shit to draw?)
CAPTION: But for ARTHUR, the omnipresence of WILL – the primal desire to produce and maintain LIFE that exists in ALL living things, no matter how LOWLY – exposes an unfortunate PARADOX:
CAPTION: The need for individuals to SURVIVE causes never-ending DEATH and DESTRUCTION to OTHER individuals!
Panel 2: A fax machine with a spear duels with a telegraph machine with a spear!
CAPTION: Arthur said that even INANIMATE OBJECTS possess will – which, remember, is a PREREQUISITE to BEING-in-the-world!
SFX (TELEGRAPH): tik tik tik tik tik…
Panel 3: A LAPTOP with an EMAIL ICON on its screen stands triumphantly over the defeated fax and telegraph machines – holding a spear, natch!
CAPTION: That means the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is a never-ending TERRORDOME of conflicting wills, causing UNTOLD SUFFERING in both THEMSELVES and OTHERS in order to perpetuate their own existences!
Panel 4: On a monitor, the glowing corona of Will seen earlier watches the gamer try to buy the console. On a panel in front of the corona one of its energy “fingers” reaches out and presses a button marked “WANT CONSOLE”.
CAPTION: All PAIN in your life is caused by the ENDLESS DESIRES that bubble up from your WILL TO LIVE! Different creatures have DIFFERENT desires dependent on their individual circumstances, but we are ALL puppets of our WILLS--
CAPTION: “I have proven its OMNISCIENCE,” Arthur declared!
Panel 5: A philosophical confrontation for the ages: PARIS HILTON vs. SCHOPENHAUER!! Gasp!!! (Stumpf 344-345)
HILTON: Oh my GAWD! You’re so, like, PESSIMISTIC!
SCHOPENHAUER: BAH! What YOU call pessimism is “an OBJECTIVE recognition of FOLLY and MALEVOLENCE!”*
CAPTION (small): *: Actual quote!
Panel 6: Schopenhauer and some screaming MONKEYS admire ALBERT EINSTEIN in a CAGE in the ZOO.
CAPTION: Arthur was UNIQUE among philosophers in believing that humanity’s INTELLECT was no better – or DIFFERENT – than the instincts of ANIMALS!
SCHOPENHAUER: “Rationality” is sustained only for BRIEF periods of time – while the Will PERPETUALLY drives us!
CAPTION (small): (You might not be shocked to hear that Arthur was a VEGETARIAN.)
EIGHT
NOTE: Now we run even, Schopenhauer (bordered) panels on the right side of the page, opposite odd, unbordered Hegel panels. I will border the Schopenhauer panel descriptions to make this even easier to read.
Panel 1: Hegel addresses his (off-panel) class.
CAPTION: Georg told HIS students…
HEGEL: FREEDOM is expressed in relation to MATERIAL things!
HEGEL: Objects only have MEANING when they are appropriated by HUMANS!
HEGEL: The Universe WANTS us to have PRIVATE PROPERTY!
Panel 2: Schopenhauer rants at his (off-panel) class.
CAPTION: But ARTHUR told HIS students…
SCHOPENHAUER: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREEDOM!!
SCHOPENHAUER: YOU ARE ALL PUPPETS OF THE WILL! PUPPETS!!!
Panel 3: Close on Hegel’s eyes – he’s got like mad, swirly-eyed, Svengali like peepers … but he’s a total loon, ‘cause he totally believes his own gibberish! It’s like Jim Jones right before he tells his followers to drink the Kool-Aid!
HEGEL: In FACT, because it does SO WELL at preserving landowners’ PROPERTY RIGHTS, I’d have to say the PRUSSIAN STATE of our glorious KING FREDERICK WILLIAM III is the CULMINATION of ALL human history!!!
HEGEL: We’re living in the VERY BEST OF TIMES!!!
Panel 4: Close on Schopenhauer reaches the frothing climax of his rant.
SCHOPENHAUER: The life of the ASCETIC – the squashing of ALL DESIRE, as BUDDHA recommended –
SCHOPENHAUER: THAT is the only way to escape the tyranny of the WILL and live in PEACE!!!
Panel 5: We see now that Hegel addresses a lecture hall packed with Prussian nobility.
CAPTION: Georg’s pro-STATUS QUO message was lapped up by his WELL-TO-DO students. HIS lectures were always DENSELY PACKED…
Panel 6: We now see that Schopenhauer slumps his shoulders in defeat because he addresses an EMPTY HALL.
SCHOPENHAUER: …but NOBODY came to hear ARTHUR’s message of FATALISTIC PESSIMISM…
NINE
Panel 1: In the hallway outside, cheat the angle so we can see Schopenhauer ranting through one doorway and Hegel hypnotizing in the other one, across the hall, at the same time!
CAPTION: …in PART, we must assume, because Berlin U scheduled their lectures for the EXACT SAME TIME!
Panel 2: Schopenhauer Panel: Schopenhauer at the mike at a comedy club, reading a book labeled “HEGEL”. The audience laughs uproariously.
CAPTION: Arthur didn’t appreciate that too much:
SCHOPENHAUER: “If I were to say that the so-called PHILOSOPHY of this fellow HEGEL is a colossal piece of mystification”…
SCHOPENHAUER: “…with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking…”
SCHOPENHAUER: “…I should be QUITE RIGHT!”*
CAPTION (small): *: Actual quote!
Panel 3: Schopenhauer Panel: Schopenhauer wheels a giggling, laughing Hegel in a straightjacket into a mental asylum. Orderlies hold the door open for him.
SCHOPENHAUER: “Further, if I were to say that this summus philosophus scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him…”
SCHOPENHAUER: “So that whoever could read [him] without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for Bedlam, I should be no less right!”*
CAPTION (small): *: Ditto!
Panel 4: Schopenhauer Panel: Schopenhauer sculpts a statue of Hegel dressed in lederhosen with a dunce cap on his head; the base inscription reads “DUMMHEIT.” (“Stupidity,” natch.)
SCHOPENHAUER: “The height of audacity in … stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words … was finally reached in Hegel … with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity…”
SCHOPENHAUER: “…as a monument to German stupidity!”*
CAPTION (small): *: Ditto ditto!
Panel 5: Schopenhauer Panel: Now reaching the height of his utter fury, Schopenhauer, dressed like one of the firefighters (scroll down) from Farhenheit 451, sets fire to an entire library filled with Hegel books with his flamethrower! (Stumpf 341)
SCHOPENHAUER: “Out of every PAGE of HUME’S there is MORE to be learned than out of [ALL] of the philosophical works of Hegel!”*
CAPTION (small): *: You see where we’re going with this, right?
Panel 6: NORMAL panel: Hegel looks confused, sheepish.
CAPTION: As for what GEORG thought about ARTHUR…
HEGEL: Um…
HEGEL: Arthur WHO?
HEGEL (small): He’s the one with the FUNNY HAIR, right…?
TEN
NOTE: Again, alternate between Hegel and Schopenhauer panels.
Panel 1: Hegel gets married to some broad. His eyes still have the swirly Svengali thing going on.
CAPTION: Much has been made of the fact that Hegel was one of the ONLY major philosophers since pagan times to actually get MARRIED.
HEGEL: The STATE is but the SYNTHESIS of the FAMILY (thesis) and CIVIL SOCIETY (antithesis)!
Panel 2: Schopenhauer lies awake at night in his spare bedroom, clutching a pistol. (Quote Bluffer’s 91)
CAPTION: Arthur SHUNNED human contact and slept with a PISTOL.
CAPTION: He was so PARANOID he did all his own SHAVING because “I wouldn’t trust my NECK to another man’s RAZOR.”
Panel 3: A Right Hegelian – a Nazi type in a pointy-helmet WWI Kaiser’s outfit, battles with a Left Hegelian – epitomized by KARL MARX: The People’s Hero!
CAPTION: Georg was so POPULAR, his followers split into conservative RIGHT Hegelians, who supported the Prussian monarchy…
CAPTION: ...and radical LEFT Hegelians, the most famous of which is KARL MARX, who wanted a revolutionary SYNTHESIS out of the governments of the PAST!
Panel 4: Schopenhauer and Buddha sit on the couch with beers, watching an off-screen TV, beneath a portrait of KANT and Schopenhauer’s POODLE lying at his feet.
CAPTION: Arthur said that the only three characters in history worth knowing were Buddha, Kant, and his pet POODLE.
SCHOPENHAUER: “I feel MOST at home among DEMIGODS and DOGS.”
SCHOPENHAUER: “They ALONE are free from the failings of MEN!”
Panel 5: On his deathbed, Hegel dies from cholera, his wife at his side.
CAPTION: When a CHOLERA epidemic swept through Berlin in 1831, Georg SUCCUMBED to the plague. Supposedly his LAST WORDS were:
HEGEL: “Only ONE MAN ever understood me.”
HEGEL (small): “And he DIDN’T understand me.” >GAK!<
Panel 6: Schopenhauer, wearing a surgical mask and his hands covered in surgical gloves and booties covering his shoes, flees the pestilence-plagued city of Berlin with his luggage.
CAPTION: But ARTHUR, who was TERRIFIED of disease, fled the city as soon as the pandemic STARTED and lived for another THREE DECADES!
SCHOPENHAUER: My ASS is obeying my WILL to get the Hell OUTTA here!
CAPTION: Who got the BETTER of the other? YOU be the judge!
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