New INTP obsessed with Hegel here !

[DIALECTIC]

Hello !



I am 38. Found about MBTI about 1 year ago.
At first i found the whole thing extremely complicated... But after a few months i found myself absolutely hooked. Not only i was able to understand myself much better but i was able to make better sense of the world around me and coming up with my own crazy theories ! Some of them i will have to post about.

Also please forgive me but english is not my mother tongue, i am french (believe me, i am not proud whatsoever ha !) but i have been living in the UK since 1996. I love the UK, shouldn't i have moved here to from France i would have remained a very angry, arrogant and hateful person...

I am glad i found this message board, i feel like i have found another home outside my own head !

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Hey, welcome to the forum.

If you like Hegel's dialectic I think you should read The Kybalion. Among the hermetic philosophy are the themes of polarity & duality and transcendence of contradictory properties(especially ch. 10/X).

The complete book is available online here : http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

May god have mercy on your poor soul.

 

[Introspective]

Hello.

 

[BigApplePi]

Hialictic. I've heard Hegel is hard to read. Is he? Off hand I'd say a thesis can have a few alternatives, not just one. So one looks over the whole thing and tries to make sense of it, searching for something to ease the clashes. It's a higher level we can call it. If there is something a thesis cannot explain, inevitably it must get defeated.

 

[Proletar]

Nice.


I'm into dialectics too. Marxist dialectics.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

May god have mercy on your poor soul.

You have all roused the beast.

Prepare for the unstoppable capitalist tide that is Proxy.

 

[DIALECTIC]

Hey, welcome to the forum.

If you like Hegel's dialectic I think you should read The Kybalion. Among the hermetic philosophy are the themes of polarity & duality and transcendence of contradictory properties(especially ch. 10/X).

The complete book is available online here : http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php

I had heard about it a few months ago but i hadn't gotten into it, yet ! Thanks i willl.

 

[Architect]

Hello !

@DIALECTIC

hello. My wife (INFJ) and I believe that France is an INFJ culture. This doesn't mean that the French are INFJ's, but that for whatever reason the gross characteristics of the culture are INFJ like. Such as care about food, social justice, and the desire to tell everybody how they should live.

Fe & Ni predominant. Agree or disagree?

 

[DIALECTIC]

Hialictic. I've heard Hegel is hard to read. Is he? Off hand I'd say a thesis can have a few alternatives, not just one. So one looks over the whole thing and tries to make sense of it, searching for something to ease the clashes. It's a higher level we can call it. If there is something a thesis cannot explain, inevitably it must get defeated.

What about if there are countless of thesis > antithesis > synthesis being worked out at the same time (in parallel) ? To me absolutely everything is a synthesis of a previous thesis + antithesis... But is synthesis becomes a new thesis and the cycle repeats itself perpetually...

For example, i wouldn't call INTP's "analysts" (INTJ's are the archetypical analysts to me), but we are synthetizers... That's why i find Hegel's work so interesting, after all he himself was an INTP.

 

[DIALECTIC]

@DIALECTIC

hello. My wife (INFJ) and I believe that France is an INFJ culture. This doesn't mean that the French are INFJ's, but that for whatever reason the gross characteristics of the culture are INFJ like. Such as care about food, social justice, and the desire to tell everybody how they should live.

Fe & Ni predominant. Agree or disagree?

To me i see more France like an unhealthy INTJ culture (after all Robespierre was INTJ) where abstract concepts are forced onto the people without any concern for the human/natural factor !

For example, i think the french don't live in subjective reality, they live in pure abstract conceptualized reality. For example, for the french love is what they have read about in books, what they have thought/fantasized about, what they parents and their friends told them it was...

The archetypical french is hypocritical, reactionary, conservative: "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" ! He dismisses progress/change/spontaneity...

So i think France is a sick culture that started as an INTJ concept... But somehow steam ran out, so now what's happening there are armies of ISTJ's bureaucrats that are trying to implement an INTJ concept... I think the INTJ architects left the (sinking) boat and moved elsewhere, maybe when they realized they were themselves in the wrong ?

I hate France ! I was there for 1 week just recently and i got so depressed !

I think it's because they are extreme JUDGERS ! They are control freaks... And i am a perceiver...

Also i would say the french's conscious cognitive process is to analyse/deconstruct and see details (hence why they live stuck in the past and oppose so much change/evolution/progress) while their unconscious cognitive process is to synthesize/construct and see the bigger picture...

While say the Brits/anglosaxon cultures's conscious cognitive process is to synthesize/construct and see the big picture, while their unconscious cognitive process is to analyze/deconstruct and see the details...

That's why the French always seem to go against the stream of progress/evolution Anglosaxons are so fond of !

What do you think ?

I apologize i am not so clumsy with words usually but i need to get used to write again so i am not that good yet to express my thoughts/feelings/unconscious flashes with WORDS...

 

[BigApplePi]

To me absolutely everything is a synthesis of a previous thesis + antithesis... But is synthesis becomes a new thesis and the cycle repeats itself perpetually...

I'd say there is an ongoing building process which eventually breaks down bringing the synthesis to a number of isolated theses which can be abandoned and forgotten.

For example, i wouldn't call INTP's "analysts" (INTJ's are the archetypical analysts to me), but we are synthetizers... That's why i find Hegel's work so interesting, after all he himself was an INTP.

Didn't know he was an INTP. If he or someone can clean up his act, I could take a look.

 

[Architect]

To me i see more France like an unhealthy INTJ culture (after all Robespierre was INTJ) where abstract concepts are forced onto the people without any concern for the human/natural factor !

...
That's why the French always seem to go against the stream of progress/evolution Anglosaxons are so fond of !

What do you think ?

But don't forget that the INFJ is a strong thinking type with Ti in the tertiary. As a minor function the INFJ gone bad is overanalyzing and over thinking.

Also, to be INTJ culture it would have to Ne in the dominant, which is looking for possibilities and future directions. As you say the French are somehow anti-progress.

I'd describe Britan as likely INTJ (however the Brits have a good sense of humor which INTJs generally don't), France as INFJ, and the US as nominally ESFP. I say nominally because the US is so large and diverse it doesn't really conform to any one culture, being made up of many subcultures.

 

[DIALECTIC]

Such as care about food, social justice, and the desire to tell everybody how they should live.

- Food: there is no choice and no novelties (again we are stuck in time), there is no quality (A french supermarket assistant will typically tell you showing you a half rotten avocado you dared to return: "well it's an avocado, isn't it !?"

- Social justice: there is NONE. It's a lie !! We have the highest taxes in Europe after Germany and Norway... However their wages are much higher ! Shouldn't we have taxes that high we would have the highest salaries in Europe.

As for the desire to tell everybody how they should live: you are 100% right ! That's exactly what i did for a few years when i first moved to the UK: i had the nerve to criticize Brits and tell them how they should live, what they should eat etc because "in France we don't do X or Y, so why shouldn't Brits do like us !?".
I am lucky Brits are EXTREMELY toterant and i never got punched in the mouth ! So yes that's what French do, in their own country and... Abroad !

I understand now why Northern Africans in Algeria, Maroco and Tunisia in the 60s got sick of those control freaks telling them how they should behave and kicked them out ! That's also why foreigners who make the mistake to move to France can't never integrate, because the French don't let them, the French can't comprehend "a posteriori", they just refuse them ! They can only understand judgmental "a priori".

So now, in France you have about 8-10 million muslims out of 70 millions unhabitants and a civil war waiting to happen ! Yet muslims say in Britain pretty much integrated okay so surely it's because of the French ! Of course, some muslims who live in France are crazy but i think a lot has to do how they have been treated for the last 40years+ !

To me, a lot of French have strong psychopathic tendencies (if they do believe 1+1=3 they will never question it, why should they because they do believe 1+1=3). "The Terror" during the French the Revolution is the perfect example of abstract thinking gone mad... And Robespierre was the man behind it ! Not much has changed in the mindset of the average Frenchman since, sadly !

 

[DIALECTIC]

But don't forget that the INFJ is a strong thinking type with Ti in the tertiary. As a minor function the INFJ gone bad is overanalyzing and over thinking.
Also, to be INTJ culture it would have to Ne in the dominant, which is looking for possibilities and future directions. As you say the French are somehow anti-progress.

You do make 2 good points here indeed. I am not too sure now ? I will think about it !
However a lot of French seem to be very conservative ISTJ's ("footsoldiers of the culture") stuck in the past with the same boring habits and refusing/fearing any change.

I'd describe Britan as likely INTJ (however the Brits have a good sense of humor which INTJs generally don't)

No, i definitely see Britain as an ExFP culture. Definitely "E". Definitely not "J". Britain is the antithesis of France; most people are very warm, friendly, tolerant, helpful...
In fact the right medium between France and Britain would be ideal. The main problem in Britain is the lack of discipline/direction/serious thinking before acting/lack of will power...

To me France's emphasis is on the Culture with all the excess it implies (without emphasis on Nature)... Britain is the opposite; again with the associated extremes.

 

[Architect]

However a lot of French seem to be very conservative ISTJ's ("footsoldiers of the culture") stuck in the past with the same boring habits and refusing/fearing any change.

Yes cultures are rarely or never pure, and I agree there is a strong dash of ISTJ in France.

No, i definitely see Britain as an ExFP culture. Definitely "E". Definitely not "J". Britain is the antithesis of France; most people are very warm, friendly, tolerant, helpful...
In fact the right medium between France and Britain would be ideal. The main problem in Britain is the lack of discipline/direction/serious thinking before acting/lack of will power...

You know better than me, I'll defer. I've spent significant time on the Continent (France and Germany mostly) and still haven't made it up to England. I'm not much into travel anymore but that is on my very short list.

 

[DIALECTIC]

I'd say there is an ongoing building process which eventually breaks down bringing the synthesis to a number of isolated theses which can be abandoned and forgotten.

...

Hegel calls his dynamic aspect of his thinking the power of "negation". It is by means of this "negativity" of thought that the static (or habitual) becomes discarded or dissolved, made fluid and adaptable, and recovers its eagerness to push on towards "the whole".
Dialectical thinking derives its dynamic of negation from its ability to reveal "contradictions" within almost any category or identity.
Hegel's "contradiction" does not simply mean a mechanical denial or opposition. Indeed, he challenges the classical notion of static self-identity, A = A, or A not= non-A.
By negation or contradiction, Hegel means a wide variety of relations difference, opposition, reflection or relation. It can indicate the mere insufficiency of a category or its incoherence. Most dramatically, categories are sometimes shown to be self-contradictory.

 

[DIALECTIC]

I've spent significant time on the Continent (France and Germany mostly) and still haven't made it up to England.

How do you view Germany as ?
Germany strikes me as a hard working healthy/actualized ISTJ culture ? Very similar to Japan i find ? They don't seem to like change unless it is for the benefit of the collectivity.
While French don't like change period because they are selfish and it's always easier to force others to change than to change themselves !

Again, to illustrate France's "my way or the high way" intolerant culture, here is a great article about one of France's few great but short lived inventions, the MINITEL:

Full article (28/6/2012)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18610692

And so on Saturday, exactly 30 years after it was launched, the Minitel is bowing out. After that, the little beige box will answer no more.
It was born in the white heat of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's technological great leap forward of the late 1970s.


"Of course it looks terribly old-fashioned by today's standards," says Lefevre. "But it was simple to use. You pressed a button and it did something. Just like on a tablet today."


So France being France, the government intervened to save the press. It made a rule which said that the only institutions entitled to provide services on Minitel were registered newspapers.


Briefly in the early 1990s, France Telecom did set up a pilot project in Ireland. The idea was to test Minitel in a small Anglophone environment, with an eye on a bigger launch in the UK or the United States.
A few thousand terminals were sold, but it never took off.

Valerie Schafer Co-author, France's Digital Childhood
"I remember when I joined in 1990, it all felt extremely funky. My friends were all very impressed that I was bringing in this new sexy piece of French kit," says Gary Jermyn, who was the joint operation's finance director.


For Benjamin Thierry, a Sorbonne university lecturer and co-author of the recent book on Minitel, France's Digital Childhood, Minitel's failure to penetrate foreign markets is a classic French experience.


"When the French try to sell overseas, they insist on selling a whole system lock, stock and barrel. They don't know how to adapt, to break it up into parts. That just puts people off," he says.
Indeed the whole Minitel adventure can be seen as a typical French experience.

Only in France could the public resources have been mobilised to give the project its initial boost. So for a few years, the country was the envy of the world.
But then, immobility and inertia - as the market simply passed by.

"The failure of Minitel was not one of technology," says Benjamin Bayart, head of France's oldest internet provider, French Data Network.
"It was the whole model that was doomed. Basically to set up a service on Minitel, you had to ask permission from France Telecom. You had to go to the old guys who ran the system, and who knew absolutely nothing about innovation.

"It meant that nothing new could ever happen. Basically, Minitel innovated from 1978 to 1982, and then it stopped," he says.

 

[BigApplePi]

Hegel calls his dynamic aspect of his thinking the power of "negation". It is by means of this "negativity" of thought that the static (or habitual) becomes discarded or dissolved, made fluid and adaptable, and recovers its eagerness to push on towards "the whole".

An issue here is what is the content of this "negation" and where does it come from? For the negation to exist, it has to be discovered.

Dialectical thinking derives its dynamic of negation from its ability to reveal "contradictions" within almost any category or identity.
Hegel's "contradiction" does not simply mean a mechanical denial or opposition. Indeed, he challenges the classical notion of static self-identity, A = A, or A not= non-A.

A challenge to A = A? Huh? Does he mean A changes? If so, okay.

By negation or contradiction, Hegel means a wide variety of relations difference, opposition, reflection or relation. It can indicate the mere insufficiency of a category

When a category is found to be insufficient, we can go outside the category. Now we have something to compare and contrast.

or its incoherence. Most dramatically, categories are sometimes shown to be self-contradictory.

Analysis should reveal incoherence and contradictions. Proceed from there.

 

[Architect]

How do you view Germany as ?
Germany strikes me as a hard working healthy/actualized ISTJ culture ?

Germany is strongly ISTJ. I don't know about healthy - ISTJ's tend to be somewhat unbalanced, as does Germany (WWII an obvious example). They follow rules to an unhealthy and unreasonable degree.

Very similar to Japan i find ? They don't seem to like change unless it is for the benefit of the collectivity.

I've spent even more time in Japan. I'm not sure how to characterize them, they are just different from everybody and defy the conventions. Isolated island culture I guess ...

 

[DIALECTIC]

An issue here is what is the content of this "negation" and where does it come from? For the negation to exist, it has to be discovered.

There is no known negation until whatever proposition (thesis) is created and implemented, then conflicts arise giving birth to a new proposition (antithesis), and again there are more conflicts leading to yet another proposition (synthesis) of both thesis and antithesis. But that leads to a new thesis and the cycle repeats itself... The force behind it is negation. Nothing is destroyed, each proposition is like a brick in a superstructure. At the top of the superstructure (pyramid like ?) is Absolute Knowledge... Maybe everyone is like a brick in that superstructure ?

I could extrapolate and say we can see/objectify this in life: indeed it is through the force of the negation of whatever situtation we are in and in which conflicts exist, that we evolve, towards better understanding (of ourselves first and the of the world which in fact is a reflection/projection of ourselves) and better perfection for the good of everything and everyone.

Without negativity to make us leap/move forward/upward there would never be any change; in a way it would be boring ! We don't learn/change through the "positive", only through the "negative" ! "Positivity" to me is stagnation/concentration, while negativity (even if at the time we hate it !!!) is change/momentum/expansion !

Anyway, that's the way i see it and that's what seduces me so much about it.
We have to work through the negative.


"the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things — may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things." HEGEL

 

[DIALECTIC]

I've spent even more time in Japan. I'm not sure how to characterize them, they are just different from everybody and defy the conventions. Isolated island culture I guess ...

I read Japanese language uses both the left and right brain, therefore is both synthetic and analytic ?
For example: English, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian are synthetic language, while French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese are analytic...

In theory Chinese should be similar to Japan and therefore stimulates both hemispheres too ?


I would dare abducting German also uses both hemispheres ? The way they construct sentences seem to be a synthesis between both Greek and Latin languages ?
They seem to see both the details and the big picture ?

 

[EyeSeeCold]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hegel-intro/message/670

 

[Architect]

I read Japanese language uses both the left and right brain, therefore is both synthetic and analytic ?

Sorry but I think that is too simple a theory. Japanese culture is surely due to much more than the mechanics of their language. The Samurai culture is alive and functioning, for one thing.

I would dare abducting German also uses both hemispheres ? The way they construct sentences seem to be a synthesis between both Greek and Latin languages ?
They seem to see both the details and the big picture ?

English is a Germanic language at root through Old English, which is a different branch from Latin & Greek, though they all derive from Indo-European. English borrowed heavily from Latin (via French) during the Norman conquest, because the Anglo tribesmen didn't have the necessary words for culture, law etc.

You can detect the difference easily, most mono-syllable words in English are from OE, such as corn, gold, king, hill. Strong words. Multi-syllabbic words are usually Latinate based, such as, well, syllabic.

J.R.R Tolkien used this to great affect in LOTR. Simpler folks - hobbits - used OE derived words while the Elves used more Latinate.

Anyhow I wouldn't derive cultural observations from this personally.

 

[Cherry Cola]

figures this b on d t?

http://www.celebritytypes.com/blog/2011/04/french-german-and-english-philosophy-in-mbti-terms/

England as an Exfp culture is completely off. Think Spanish speaking countries for instance, compare England to Cuba. France's leanin a helluva lot more in that direction than does England, remember (and shudder) Jacques Derrida for instance.