In this book, Hegel tries to forge a new understanding of Christianity insofar as it is both anti-Nature (this is a desirable quality, contra NietzschIn this book, Hegel tries to forge a new understanding of Christianity insofar as it is both anti-Nature (this is a desirable quality, contra Nietzsche), and a synthesis of Kantian law and desire. All of this is understood in opposition to, in a strange but ultimately satisfying rhetorical turn, the Greek idea of Fate whereby Jesus prophecies the battle between the Holy and Unholy which ultimately must end in a synthesis of its own, hence destroying the Holy. It is because of this that Jesus must sever himself, in the NT, from society and ultimately his own disciples. Hegel is here attempting to present Christianity from a very Greek perspective, representing both Eastern religions and traditional conceptions of Christianity in the West as extremes which surround the moderate Greek worldview.
A lot of this is conceptually stimulating but, as it so often happens with Hegel, stems from really laughably bad misunderstandings/-readings of particular material, in this case NT Greek, which is ironic given Hegel's rector speech on the general awesomeness of classical philology presented later in this collection. Not to mention this is hard to ground, but damn when you're talking about the ultimate ablation of all contradiction in the Absolute Spirit, with the impetus for this found in Love, with Life defined as "the union of union and nonunion" how are you going to propositionalize this?
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
"The necessary consequences of proposing to command feelings were, and were bound to be, these: (a) self-deception i.e., the belief that one has the prescribed feeling�(b) The result of this self-deception is a false tranquility which sets a high value on these feelings manufactured in a spiritual hothouse and thinks of itself on the strength of these…he sinks into helplessness, anxiety [angst cf. Kierkegaard], and self-distrust…he falls into despair�" pg. 141
"This spirit appears in a different guise after every one of its battles against different forces or after becoming sullied by adopting an alien nature as a result of succumbing to might or seduction. Thus it appears in a different form either as arms and conflict or else as submission to the fetters of the stronger; this latter form is called "fate." pg 182
"religious practice is the most holy, the most beautiful, of all things; it is our endearvor to unify the discords necessitated by our development and our attempt to exhibit the unification in the ideal as fully existent, as no longer opposed to reality, and thus to express and confirm it in a deed." pg. 206
"Since laws are unifications of opposites in a concept, which thus leaves them as opposites while it exists itself in opposition to reality, it follows that the concept expresses an ought." pg. 209
"Jesus chose the latter fate, the severance of his nature from the world, and he required the same from his friends…But the more deeply he felt this severance, the less could he bear it calmly, and his actions issued from his nature's spirited reaction against the world; his fight was pure and sublime because he knew the fate in its entire range and had set himself against it…The struggle of the pure against the impure is a sublime sight, but it soon changes into a horrible one when holiness itself is impaired by unholiness, and when an amalgamation of the two, with the pretension of being pure, rages against fate, because in these circumstances holiness itself is caught in the fate and subject to it. Jesus foresaw the full horror of this destruction: "[Matt. 10:34-35]"…With the consequences before his eyes, Jesus did not think of checking his activity in order to spare the world its fate…Thus the earthly life of Jesus was separation from the world and flight from it into heaven; restoration of the ideal world, of the life which was becoming dissipated into the void�" pp. 286-7...more
Most of Hegel's philosophy of history seems to stem directly from historical racial distinctions which are cashed out as and (attempted to be) re-inviMost of Hegel's philosophy of history seems to stem directly from historical racial distinctions which are cashed out as and (attempted to be) re-invigorated as the Idea of the National Spirit, strange rhetorical uses of Kantian philosophy (cf. a distinction made later on between the empire of time and that of space), and Protestant theological dialectic. Taken strictly as philosophy, much of this is meaningless and doesn't really allow one to make any sort of actual judgement about, according to, from, or to otherwise think history (Hegel concludes in an excerpt of the section on the Geographical Basis of History presented here that "[North] America is not yet approaching such a [political] tension..."—this was written sometime in the 1820s—and Hegel seems to think that the US could be represented by a coherent National Spirit derived from the European one, all of which seems to show a profound misunderstanding of the history, "character", or makeup of the US, even when using Hegel's own theories to do so; this either reflects badly on them or shows a lack of scholarly rigor). Not that this is supposed to be science, which (to borrow Kuhn's distinction) normal history was considered in Hegel's day. This is the study of paradigmatic history, which finds its footing in something close to religion, and as a sermon, this is quite effective and affective. Hegel's incomprehensibility is at a minimum here, or is at least streamlined towards a clear goal. The rhetoric is high and there are several times where the artistic merits are enough to recommend this work, if not for the repugnant nationalistic notions and ramifications running underneath all of it.
This is all to say nothing of Hegel's political philosophy, which seems Hobbesian (at least in regard to the relation between ethics and the state, with the state and its laws being the only place in which ethics or morality can develop, by definition), the relation of language to thought and history, aesthetics, psychological development, and logic. There is a whole lot in here that is hard to say anything about judging only from this short text.
But as purely introduction, this was pretty lucid and clear, and is from Hegel himself, more or less. ~
I would think that Hegel, were he an analytic, would say something like: A people can be considered to have a National Spirit insofar as such criteria are met: 1. Its culture must be aesthetically contiguous 2. Its culture must be coherent 3. It must have art, philosophy, religion, and science, whatever forms they take 4. 3. is necessary but not sufficient in order to have National Self-Consciousness 5. Freedom is sought by the Absolute spirit via Self-Consciousness (3,4), where Freedom is understood as 5a. Separate from the historical Material 5b. Oriented towards the teleological end point, defined as Def. 1. That which already is and is in the process of Becoming via the means of historical Material and through 5, and such a synthesis that cannot be met with another thesis.
I'm kidding around here a little bit but this is just a nightmare after Kant....more
Loading...
