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Hegel’s Familiar & McLuhan’s Environment

John Fraim

Miles Davis / In a Silent Way

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In 2021, an important article appeared in the Hegel Bulletin titled “Hegel’s Concept of the Familiar: Toward a Philosophical Study.” The author was Hammam Aldouri, at the time, at Temple University. 

A brief abstract of the article starts with …

One of the most memorable lines of Hegel’ s oeuvre is from the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. ’ Surprisingly, relatively little philosophical attention has been paid to the notion of ‘the familiar in Hegel scholarship. 

This essay aims to rectify this lack by offering a preliminary inquiry in what the notion means across Hegel’ s work. It does so by focusing on three underexplored moments in Hegel’ s work: (1) the exposition of the logic of appearance in the description and diagnosis of seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch painting in the lecture notes from the 1823 Berlin lectures on the philosophy of fine art; (2) the function of institutionalized practice in Hegel’ s Tübingen essay of 1793; and (3) the conjunctural relation of the familiar with philosophical terminology in an entry from the ‘ Aphorisms from the Wastebook. ’ Through a careful reading of these three moments, I will show that the familiar is a point that constellates multiple processes, mechanisms and apparatuses that, when grasped in their complex totality, functions as the ‘prius’ (priority/prioritization/first moment) of Hegel’ s speculative philosophy.

Aldouri has a spectacular – unique – educational background. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University (London) and was a recipient of a Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Critical Studies from the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (New York). He specializes in Continental philosophy and critical theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and his legacies. His work explores theoretical problems across the practices of philosophy, political theory, and art/art history within the work of major nineteenth century thinkers and artists such as Hegel, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner, Charles Baudelaire, and Edouard Manet. 

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The line from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is not even a popular quote of Hegel. Maybe an essay about the familiar is too familiar to be seen? The article in the Hegel Journal is fascinating and easy to find online. The focus here is on the fascinating insight from Hegel. In effect, he was suggesting something we have learned little about over the years. That is, the invisibility of the familiar. There are many synonyms for familiar that attach themselves. It could mean several things related to “habit” or one’s “environment.” Things we “take for granted” and are “routine” or “habitual” in our lives. We notice them less and less. But then, much of present lives are based on the familiar. Entire days can pass consumed by this invisible “familiar” of life that no one notices except oneself.

It could have a meaning for entire groups of people who no longer see anything new in their days. Everything is familiar yet nothing really seen anew. It could apply to nations. It is a grand problem but unseen and too familiar to place more consideration into: the phenomenology of the present moment in our present time. Little attention is given to this area of research as everyone races so fast forward into the future. Study of the present (or past) gets left behind. 

The idea of the familiar not being seen or sensed is one of the distinctions of modern America and the addiction towards constantly new, and unfamiliar, digital content. To lesser extents this is the same all over the world. The world eats up content and quickly moves on toward more content. There is never any real satisfaction of being in the present Geist of the modern world.

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Hegel’s idea of familiar ties directly into Marshall McLuhan’s media theory. We are not aware of our environment that surrounds us. Like fish aren’t aware of water that surrounds them. As someone once said, “We’re not sure who discovered water but we’re sure it wasn’t a fish.” 

The familiar of Hegel’s day were the events taking place each day in his personal life, his local culture, the grand events of his days. This is what Hegel wanted his readers to feel, to notice. This invisible familiar of their lives. And, this is what one might want modern readers to feel if he/she were translating this “familiar” concept to the present. 

What are the events that create the “familiarity” of our present days. In a general way, they are increasingly defined by digital events in an age one author calls the era of “the extinction of experience.” Experiences lived is becoming rare (and unfamiliar) while experiences viewed (heard about) the familiar, invisible today.

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Aldouri’s article brings up a key issue of our present time. Are we living more in a familiar or unfamiliar world? And what are the consequences of this. Seen or familiar. How much do we recognize everyday events. As Hegel said in the Preface to his Phenomenology, “Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood.” I’m not sure if it is “cognitively understood” as much as it is not cognitively processed in the first place. How dangerous is it not to recognize this? How can we change our lives if we do recognize this?

One of Hegel’s statements makes more sense than most of the others. It escapes to try and tell us something today. The battle between the invisible and the visible of our lives each day. One of Hegel’s truly important ideas. Perhaps others will investigate it.