Even more basic introduction to Hegel

Here is an even more basic introduction to Hegel (and particularly Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and "dialectic") than the one before. It should provide a good sort of primer for anyone reading Derrida's "The Pit and the Pyramid" in Margins of Philosophy, in that it gets you thinking in the general mode of Heidegger and Hyppolite about Hegel and language--this is the mode of thought that Derrida in that essay elaborates, investigates, and to which he reacts:

Here are some simple passages in the chapter on sense-certainty that have to do with language, and particularly the conflicts, the frustrations, the impossibilities—in short, the problems—of language:

In J.N. Findlay’s analysis of the Phenomenology: “In the use of demonstrative words, there is a conflict between what we really say and what we mean to say (our Meinung, was wir meinen [i.e. what we ‘intend.’])” (p. 508).

Also in Findlay’s analysis: “Language, being divine and rational, frustrates the attempt of sense-certainty to grasp… particulars” (p. 509-10).

And in the Phenomenology itself: “If they actually wanted to say ‘this’ bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language” (§110).

I’m taking these quotes (especially the last one) about language and its specific relation to sense-certainty as representing how language relates to the larger task of the Phenomenology. If I can tease out the significance of language in general, then, this should orient you so that you can understand specifically what is going on in the quotes—i.e. language’s relation to the “this” to the “now,” to “particulars,” to the “bit of paper” and the like.
What does this mean if I can do this? It means I’m elaborating a thesis of Heidegger’s (as well as Kojeve’s and Hyppolite’s) about the meaning of language in the way this task unfolds or accomplishes itself (cf. “Hegel and the Greeks” in Pathmarks).
To put it plainly, the task of the Phenomenology is to try and show thought, or have thought show itself. This thought is thought in action, thought beyond the distinction between thinking and doing—Hegel calls it Spirit. A culture is in a sense this type of thought; battles between nations or plays in the theatre are types of this thought in some way, in some aspect of their existence. This thought, then, shows itself in acting in various forms, forms like “Consciousness” “Self-consciousness” “Reason,” etc.—the general divisions of the Phenomenology—and also in more specific forms, like “sense-certainty,” “perception,” and “understanding”—the individual chapters of the work. It should be obvious that when there is no more showing of thought, when thought just simply is what it is and does not show itself as what it is, the task of the Phenomenology is completed. Hegel then goes to describe how this thought is, beyond its appearance, beyond its being a phenomenon. This is the task of the Science of Logic. But it is clear that if the task in the Phenomenology is to have thought show itself, when Hegel is writing about sense-certainty, he is trying to make thought in this particular form show itself as thought that takes this particular form. He is trying to show how sense-certainty—a way our consciousness is sure of the objects to which we relate—is thought showing itself in some way, and furthermore is thought in its action as showing and not simply just being itself.
Now we can understand that in claiming that language has some relationship to the task of the Phenomenology I’m claiming that language has a relationship to the way that this showing of thought has to unfold. In short, it means how this showing must be described by Hegel, how it must be put into language.
Now, taking a step back, we usually say that Phenomenology is an unfolding of something called “the dialectic.” Could it be that this putting into language is “dialectic?”
But don’t we normally think of dialectic as a threefold structure (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) of some sort that organizes or is the organization of what comes to light in the Phenomenology? Or, better, as the twofold interplay between something and its own contradiction?
Heidegger claims that both of these interpretations are right in a sense, but only if they get their meaning from this first meaning of dialectic—in the sense of the relationship of language to the unfolding of thought. I’ll note now that for Jean Hyppolite and Alexandre Kojeve, and thus for Derrida, this is the case too. The dialectic, for these philosophers, is a going-through-language. Heidegger specifically reads dialectic as “dialegesthai:” from dia, Greek for “going through,” and legein, “the gathering (and only gathering, not unifying) of disparity, of multiplicity, under a signifier or movement of signifiers, that is at the heart of logos, language.”
But we can think this more simply if we just think that dialectic will come on the scene when the showing of thought has a relationship to language. It is only in this sense that the dialectic is the threefold or twofold structure in the Phenomenology that we might normally think it is—before it is the “thesis, antithesis, synthesis,” or the interplay between “identity and contradiction,” it is this establishing of the relationship of thought to language.
So when thought indeed has a relationship to language, sense-certainty, as a way thinking shows itself, it will be dialectical in the way it unfolds, in the way it accomplishes this showing. But then why do all the quotes above talk about the failure of language to get at what sense-certainty wants it to get? Why, in general, is language a problem in the Phenomenology?
Because these represent moments in the Phenomenology when thought is trying to establish a relationship to language that is not dialectical, that is, when it is, in an effort not to show itself but to hide itself, trying to twist language into a mode that it does not want to inhabit. What is this mode of language? A mode where language disappears in front of what it communicates, where it undoes itself as language and does not, rather, make thought show itself in language, through the mediation of language. In short, a language that erases itself so that we get only the showing of thought, and no language with it.
This is impossible for Hegel: just this pure showing is precisely what “cannot be reached by language.” In the chapter on sense-certainty, we have portrayed a form of this showing of thinking that is nothing but this desire to have language erase itself, to have what is meant to be shown exceed the attempt to mean by putting it into language. It wants to have the showing of thought be just a “this,” a “here,” a “now.” But this is precisely what, in its frustration, Hegel says is “divine and rational.”
So we have a problem, don’t we? Thought when it does not show itself is precisely when it shows itself purely, without language, when language disappears in front of what it shows. Thought when it shows itself purely does not show itself, but hides itself.
I leave this for you to think about. Meanwhile, what has been proven, if we accept this, is that dialectic is the only way that thought can show itself—that is, as a way thought relates to language. If dialectic does not appear, there we have no showing, and in fact no thought as well. Dialectic, properly understood, is a relationship of thought to language without which thought is incomprehensible. The failure of language in these instances in the chapter in sense-certainty then only serves to prove how dialectic is necessary for the thought to appear, if we understand dialectic as the relationship between thought and language.