German idealist philosopher Cameron uses to periodize the emptying-out of Western culture. Hegel named three "absolute forms of experience" — philosophy, religion, and art — and already saw philosophy dying in his own lifetime, lamenting "the incredible fate of a country that no longer has metaphysics." Cameron extends the clock by centuries: religion gone a hundred years after Hegel, art gone a hundred years after that — the West left, as Bob frames it, with nothing but anti-environment.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the periodizer of the West's exhaustion — his triad of philosophy, religion, and art gives Cameron a century-by-century clock for the deaths that leave the culture with nothing but anti-environment
Cameron takes Hegel's triad of absolute forms — philosophy, religion, art — as a measuring rod for Western decline, each form "cancelled" a century apart, philosophy first (already dying in Hegel's own time).
"Hegel said that there are three absolute forms of experience, philosophy, religion, and art."
Recruited as McLuhan's unacknowledged predecessor — the plural absolute is read as requiring tactility between its terms, which makes German idealism a first attempt at the problem this series calls the art formula
The distinction that lets Hegel into this series — a single absolute cannot express plurality, so only a plural one can model a genesis that produces genuinely different expressions.
"the absolute of Fichte is singular, but the absolutes of Hegel are plural."
Tactility found already at work in 1800s philosophy — the intervals between plural absolutes are the same intervals McLuhan would later call touch.
"the absolute plurality of Hegel includes tactility, because you couldn't have a plurality of absolutes without tactility between them, right?"
He puts Hegel on the same footing as the series' central figure — unread rather than superseded, and for the same reason.
"Hegel is one of the sort of great world figures of thought, at least in my estimation, and needs to be reread as much as McLuhan does or more."
Connections
Hegel is placed among those working out the problems Kant left.
Fichte's absolute is singular where Hegel's are plural — the difference Cameron makes decisive.
Faraday's experimental work is placed alongside post-Kantian idealism as one thinking in two registers.