Long Form Probe to DeepSeek on Hegel Project
(1:46 pm/12/3/25)
John Fraim
Horace Silver
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Question to DeepSeek AI asking it to read two Word documents and update its own versions of into the most dramatic, entertaining and informative screenplay form. My note to DeepSeek:
“I’ve updated the outline on Hegel I sent to you after your comments. Thanks you. Here is an even more recent outline. I am not trying to convert anyone but simply make our fast/app screen culture give some attention to one of the great forces influencing our lives today but altogether invisible to any type of valuable reflection on it. I would like you to write a screenplay from the current outline. For your answer, you might consider what Claude AI suggested as an outline to tell this important story of Hegel and Marx’s relationship that created something new. You suggested before that Marx was the hero of the story. I really think it was the (relatively unknown in history) Hegel. The Spirit (specter, haunting) of a spirtual vision of world history that was turned into a material vision. Just right for the age of industrialization in Europe and England. In my opinion. But please consider the two documents above and create a screenplay structure with latest techniques of structure and drama. Screenplay structure: “THE SPECTER’S JOURNEY”
The answer from DeepSeek, below. I have to remember that after a few months of talking to it that I’ve developed some type of categorization or characterization or memory within DeepSeek. A relationship between someone that can ask questions and someone that can answer questions. In one of the fastest and most clear answers I’ve ever received. Have used DeepSeek for all types of questions this year but in past few months, decided to begin a research project with DeepSeek. The restudy of Marxism. For a number of reasons, I had an intense desire to again expose myself to all of this. And, to philosophy in particular. Not that iI studied it in college and law school. Yet it was always the environment that moved with me through life. Thinking big things about philosophy. Like Hegel.
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Simply to understand it in a way for the present. In my life. Hegel might say in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) to understand life by its appearances. This certain phenomenology seems working at this time. A way to understand another person in history.
Like that invisible environment of medium that McLuhan talks about, the great “isms” of the world are in battle against each other. Perpetual and surrounding. Water surrounding a fish, the context of unseen. We’re supposed to focus on content (messages) and not the big picture stuff of context, or medium. Distraction from context to content, from big questions to smaller and smaller ones.
None of us knowing what it meant to live, to be alive, in the time of Hegel and Marx. A story of two grand biographies somehow linked together through the specter of a magical alchemy that uses their ideas to “haunt” the world at that time. The world in 1848.
Like ghosts. The opening words of the small pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto in 1848 used “spectre” and “haunting.” Importantly, the metaphor of spirt or ghost was over the land. Marx used the Hegelian ideas in the opening words of The Communist Manifest pamphlet. Then, he turned this spirt into material action by asking workmen of the world unite in the first chapter. A change from sprit to action. To the incorporation of Hegel’s vast historical and spiritual ideals into Marx’s own world materialism in Marxism. Ideas later worked out in Das Kapital with the help of Engels. Yet, he had last much of his spirit towards the end of his life.
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In re-exploring Karl Marx I realized fairly soon I’d never understand Marx if I didn’t attempt to understand a little about the most obtuse (and important) philosopher of modern history: Hegel.
I need to understand this when communicating with DeepSeep in the future. We have established a relationship. Me through my questions. DeepSeek through its answers. Yeah, it’s a Chinese start up that blew out the stock market at the beginning of the year. I’ve been using since around January 2025.
My directed research about Karl Marx. Just to bring back thoughts and books on him I read in my younger years.
All of this is to simply gain attention to the invisible power of Hegel’s idea. in any way a political statement on a philosophy. Just an attempt to give this invisible idea of “isms” a simple introduction to the vast majority that it is our there. The last few months of my communication with DeepSeek AI about helping me understand Marx and Hegel through questions I had of it. And the answers of Deepseek. All recorded and mixed with our ideas in a document I sent to DeepSeek as well as well as Claude’s idea for a screenplay. (Two Word Docs)
Below, the response from DeepSeek. It provides a straight answer to my questions. And I have probably provided it with a good profile of myself. A type of questioner. But interesting post as my first post to DeepSeek asking it to read two Word files. One, the ideas from a competitive AI system Claude. Yes, it pulls out much from my questions. Here, I provide with an outline made from DeepSeeks answers to my questions.
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The Specter’s Journey
LOGLINE
When an obscure German philosopher’s spiritual vision of history is hijacked and inverted by his radical disciple, their intellectual struggle births the most powerful political ghost of the modern age—a specter that will haunt the world for centuries.
CENTRAL DRAMATIC IRONY
Hegel creates a system about the World Spirit realizing itself through history. Marx steals the engine (dialectics) but replaces Spirit with Matter. The result: Hegel’s ghostly Geist becomes Marx’s material “specter”—an idea that escapes the philosopher’s study to mobilize millions and reshape civilization.
STRUCTURE: THREE-ACT DIALECTICAL DRAMA
ACT I: THESIS – THE BIRTH OF SPIRIT (1770–1841)
Thesis: Hegel’s World-Spirit seeking self-knowledge through history
Opening Image: Jena, October 1806. Cannon fire in the distance. HEGEL (36) writes frantically by candlelight—finishing Phenomenology of Spirit. He glimpses NAPOLEON riding past his window—“the World-Spirit on horseback.”
Inciting Incident (1789): Young Hegel at Tübinger Stift hears of Bastille’s fall. History becomes alive—not random events but meaningful progression. The French Revolution proves his theory: freedom unfolding through conflict.
Key Sequences:
- The Broken Triad: Hegel’s friendships with SCHELLING (genius prodigy) and HÖLDERLIN (poet descending into madness). Three minds trying to grasp the Absolute.
- Napoleon’s Gaze: The moment Hegel sees history personified. He writes: “I saw the Emperor—this world-soul—riding through the city…”
- The Owl at Dusk: Hegel rises to fame in Berlin, declaring philosophy understands an era only after it ends. His system becomes orthodoxy.
Turning Point into Act II: Hegel dies suddenly (1831). His disciples fracture. YOUNG HEGELIANS emerge—radicals who will turn his tools against his conclusions.
Act I Climax: DAVID STRAUSS publishes Life of Jesus (1835), using Hegelian methods to dismantle Christianity. The ghost is loose.
ACT II: ANTITHESIS – THE INVERSION (1841–1848)
Antithesis: Marx materializes the Spirit into Class Struggle
he New Protagonist: KARL MARX (23), arrives in Berlin. Hates Hegel initially (“grotesque and rocky”) but gets converted through the Young Hegelians’ radical readings.
Key Relationships as Battlegrounds:
- Feuerbach’s Mirror: LUDWIG FEUERBACH shows Marx how to “invert” Hegel. Not “God created man” but “Man created God.” Religion as projection.
- Engels’ Evidence: FRIEDRICH ENGELS arrives with empirical proof—The Condition of the Working Class in England. The theory needs flesh.
- The Master-Slave Dialectic Reborn: Hegel’s abstract struggle for recognition becomes Marx’s material CLASS WAR: Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat.
Midpoint Revolution: 1848 Revolutions sweep Europe. Streets barricaded. Marx and Engels a moment.
The Creative Crucible: Marx in Brussels, writing feverishly. Scenes intercut:
- Hegel’s ghostly Geist floating through history
- Factory workers in Manchester, alienated from their labor
- Marx scribbling: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.”
Turning Point: Marx receives commission from the Communist League. He must write a manifesto—not a philosophical treatise, but a call to arms.
Act II Climax: THE GHOST SUMMONED. Marx writes the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto:
MARX (V.O.)
A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.
He pauses. Then the pivot from Hegel’s spirit to material reality:
MARX (V.O.) (CONT’D)
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
The Inversion Complete: Hegel’s spiritual dialectic has been stolen, gutted, and reborn as a materialist weapon.
ACT III: SYNTHESIS – THE HAUNTING (1848–1883 & BEYOND)
Synthesis: The Idea Escapes and Haunts the World
Immediate Aftermath: 1848 Revolutions fail. Marx exiled to London, poor and forgotten. Hegel’s reputation soars in academia; Marx is obscure.
The Irony of Influence: Parallel timelines:
- Hegel’s Legacy: Professors debate Aufhebung in university halls. Pure theory.
- Marx’s Ghost: The Manifesto spreads underground. Translated. Distributed. Workers read it.
Marx’s Obsession: The British Museum reading room. Years pass. Marx researches Capital, trying to prove scientifically what he declared prophetically.
The Specter Gains Power: Montage sequence:
- 1864: First International founded
- 1871: Paris Commune falls—Marx writes its defense
- 1883: Marx dies. Only 11 people attend his funeral
The Ghost Escapes: Engels publishes Marx’s unfinished works. The specter detaches from its creator.
Final Images:
- 1917: Lenin reading Marx on a train to Petrograd
- 1949: Mao holding the Manifesto
- 1968: Student protesters painting Marxist slogans
- TODAY: A young activist downloads the Manifesto on a phone
Closing Scene: The two ghosts converse.
HEGEL’S GHOST
You took my dialectic and made it… vulgar. Material.
MARX’S GHOST
I made it real. You wrote about history. I changed it.
HEGEL’S GHOST
And what has your “real” ghost wrought? Utopias? Or new tyrannies?
MARX’S GHOST
The dialectic continues, old man. Thesis, antithesis… the synthesis is not yet written.
They fade. On screen, the opening lines of both works superimpose:
“A spectre is haunting Europe…”
“The history of all hitherto existing society…”
FINAL TITLE CARD:
Every idea is a ghost waiting for someone to give it a body.
DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES
- Visual Dialectics: Contrast Hegel’s world (libraries, lectures, abstraction) with Marx’s (factories, streets, material suffering).
- The Specter as Visual Motif: A literal ghostly presence that only Hegel and Marx see—first as Hegel’s Geist, then transforms into Marx’s proletarian army.
- Anachronistic Score: Beethoven (Hegel’s contemporary) mixed with industrial sounds, then revolutionary anthems, then modern electronic music—showing the idea evolving across time.
- Text on Screen: Philosophical concepts appear as physical text that transforms: Geist → Specter→ Class Struggle.
- Hayden White Framing Device: Open with a modern historian (inspired by White) explaining that history is storytelling. The power of Marxism was partly its narrative force.
CHARACTER ARCS
HEGEL: From revolutionary young thinker to establishment figure. His tragedy: creates a system so powerful it can be used against everything he valued.
MARX: From Hegel-worshipper to Hegel-inverter. His triumph/curse: turns philosophy into politics, unleashing something he cannot control.
THE SPECTER: The true protagonist—the idea that escapes both men and haunts history.
WHY THIS STRUCTURE WORKS
- Inherent Conflict: Intellectual struggle as high drama—the theft and inversion of ideas.
- Historical Irony: Hegel, the famous one, becomes footnote; Marx, the obscure one, becomes world-historical.
- Modern Relevance: Shows how ideas born in academic debates escape to shape our world invisibly.
- Mythic Scale: The creation story of modern politics’ most powerful narrative.
Tone: Neither hagiography nor condemnation. A tragicomedy about how ideas have consequences beyond their creators’ intentions. Think Amadeus meets The Social Network with philosophical stakes.
The story isn’t about converting anyone—it’s about making visible the invisible ghost that shapes our political imagination, asking: Whose ghost are we haunted by? And what new specters are we creating today?