A History of Philosophy | 59 Hegel on Absolute Spirit

to round out our discussion of Hagel and perhaps move to some of the things which immediately followed because of the way he was construed but conversation just now before class leads me to point to two different interpretations of Hagel which I think have a bearing on how easy it is to understand them there there was for number of years I think in the english-speaking world an interpretation of Hagel which tried to see him virtually as an 18th century enlighten enlightenment rationalist trying to work out deductive deductively a speculative metaphysics in other words trying to do in his way what people like Descartes or life it's tried to do in that way that is to say he was a speculative meta physician however with the growing influence in the 20th century of phenomenology in Europe an alternative interpretation has developed which I think is much more in keeping with Hegel himself from whom phenomenology developed and which interpretation I've been trying to suggest to you as we've been going along namely that we have to take seriously the title of his major work the phenomenology of mind so that he's not trying to prove something or develop a well argued rationalistic system when he says that the real is rational and the rational is real he's not using that as a lever for another speculative metaphysic but rather taking seriously the sense of phenomenology as that has become understood in the 20th century he's trying to describe you'll see they phenomenon the consciousness of being at the individual consciousness level that is your my consciousness of being that perhaps the societal level a nation's consciousness of its being and in the case of the absolute the all-inclusive the absolutes consciousness of its being now I think it's that latter phrase which may be difficult your own consciousness of being and of course that's where the emphasis in 20th century phenomenology have been that's what jean-paul Sartre is about the existentialists but what Hegel is after is describing the universal phenomenon of the the selfs own self-consciousness consciousness of being as that unfolds as for instance in something like the master-servant relationship in interpersonal relationships and that the entering through the situation of the stoic the skeptic the unhappy consciousness and so forth movements of reflection like that in one's own conscious being and in talking of objective spirit he's talking of the way in which national self consciousness arises in the light of the concept of law and constitutional government national identity begins to emerge yes a well and when he gets to absolute spirit the section for today then you get to the third phrase you see the absolute consciousness of being now the closest you can get to that in theological language of Judaism or Christianity it would be to talk of God's own knowledge and from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas onwards theologians have indeed talked of the knowledge of God not just in our sense of our knowing God but in God's sense of God's knowing and God's knowing him knowing himself God's self-knowledge know it as much as Hegel is process made a physician he he's thinking of God self-knowledge not of God but of God self-knowledge as being objectified in the world he's creating yes he in the course of the unfolding history of the universe and he sees God self-knowledge is unfolding in our self-knowledge first of all subjective spirit you'll see and in a moment we will be get to talking about his religion and his theology will find him saying that our self-consciousness is really God's self-consciousness God is conscious of himself through our self-consciousness Yesi because if God is the all-inclusive being then my consciousness is a finite moment of God's consciousness and my self-consciousness is a finite moment of God's self-consciousness so God's own knowledge of himself is a knowledge of himself in and through our knowledge of ourselves our self-consciousness our conscious being but then God's self-consciousness is objectified in shall we say his thinking of the world of nature which he has created yes and certainly in the medieval tradition if all of nature in some way was imaging the manifold perfection of the deity if we contemplating nature a drawn to contemplate the perfection of God then certainly guarding contemplating his handiwork is contemplating himself but the the fullest expression development manifestation of God self-knowledge knowledge of his being it's when the the the form of thought logic synthesized with the stuff of nature by virtue of the imaginative creativity of subjective spirit as one part of the consciousness of being of a national spirit hence you get him talking of the art of different cultures and the religion of different cultures and the philosophy of different nations is he when the that the subjectivity the creative creativity imagination of the individual spirit okay in the context of that national consciousness of its being produces art religion philosophy these creative expressions are not only creative expressions of the human spirit but since the human spirit is moment of the divine creative expression of the Divine Spirit you see so there's some phenomenology describing the consciousness of being a a phenomenology a phenomenology of the consciousness of being gets to describing that as it comes out most fully of all with these manifestations of absolute spirit if God's self-consciousness is in and through our self-consciousness and God's creativity is exercised in and through our creativity then the divine consciousness of its own being is in the world of art another creative expression of the human spirit now I think if you read Hegel with with that sort of thing in mind he's doing a phenomenological description describing the phenomena doing a phenomenological description of the growing consciousness of being don't look for him to prove things in the old fashion don't look at this as a speculative system with no grounding in observation its introspective observation or historical observation well up then as much as history as the activity of the Divine Spirit his discussion of art religion and philosophy is historical because it's in the history of these creative expressions that the movement of the absolute becomes most evident okay does that come through clearly it does to me but cluttering does it to you okay said every other day we've been talking about hail but sometimes saying it in different ways helps kale does God have self-consciousness apart from us I don't know what Hagel would say there because his emphasis in the phenomenology is so much in terms of his self-consciousness in and through us and this may depend on how you read his theology he purports you see he thinks of himself as a Lutheran Christian he explicitly however rejects ex nihilo creation and that that part is important you see that's what makes him a pen in theist everything is in God but if he's a pen in theist and not a pantheist you might well be asking Cal well if everything is in God but God is more than everything does it you have any leftover self-consciousness that's not our self-consciousness individually or collectively or does the creation as it were exhaust the consciousness of the bit of the Divine Being well it suddenly seems to me he ought to say the latter yet I don't think he does and it may be that his response to the leftover question would be well history isn't finished yet so in any stage in history there is still more self-consciousness that God is going to have now that's odd way to put it God is going to have more self-consciousness but the point is that if consciousness is a process if he agrees with Kant that time is the form of consciousness you think then there is as long as there is divine being in divine consciousness there is more consciousness going on in history but is that always divine consciousness in and through the creation and I don't find him saying it's not but I want a prejudging the only other comment I can make I think is this that if we are to know anything about the divine consciousness it can only be through the creation and if it can only be through the creation then what that remainder of consciousness leftover is we've no way of knowing which I think fallen look a little more closely here the thesis antithesis synthesis triad in the historical unfolding of absolute Spirit is an art religion and philosophy and the initially interesting thing is to see how he differentiates those three some of you in literature or art may have found yourself asking now what is the difference between what literature is doing and what philosophy is doing when literary people get sort of philosophical Hegel would say it's the the form of the form in which the way in which expression finds articulation the the arts are using images artistic images sure until this day you hear people in literature talking of the images that he used in a ridah even here Joel she's way over in the art department in painting talking of images he recently had a show in Chicago that we went to see one of the gallery's River North Area and you know all sorts of of images of suburbia that seemed to be truncated and chopped off and if you know no she's Lee you know what he was trying to convey by those visual images namely the the incompleteness the paucity of life in suburbia which is less than the whole story his last show was a series of paintings about poverty in line in America get the two in contrast you can see what he's done but by the use of visual images and the poet will use verbal images Wordsworth soda daffodils wandering lonely as a cloud that floats on high or he'll unveil images in talking about the romanticist vision of life and so that's the nature of art the German term Milt image now obviously the the term image is cognitive imagination which is the distinctive activity of the artist not so much craft in applying the pigments as imagination in coming up with the images thinking imaginatively that is to say in images and that of course is the romanticist view that the expression of the human spirit imagined in imagination and accordingly as he traces out the unfolding of the history of art you find that sort of thing given expression he moves from for instance Egyptian art which was more religious and symbolic to a classical art which has more emphasis on rational harmony and order to romantic art which overflows the order in its imaginative expression there's an unfolding of it as art finds its own self understanding conscious being and then religion which speaks symbolically for Stella a representation it was cants word for a representation but the representation is not the reality the representation is the idea that stands for the reality and the way how you'll use it uses it the the terms symbol becomes significant symbolic representation pictorial representation and so religious language is the language of a symbolic story not necessarily parable historical story myths and so forth the term myth does not judge the question of historical or not historical mythos is a story that has religious meaning so the religious form of expression thing is this pictorial representation symbol and so forth and so he he understands religion in in those ways symbolic representation and he traces the the history of religious expression from oriental religion which was largely pin theist everything is one it's a Greek religion which is polytheistic there's the antithesis there are many dear is finite deities to the Christian religion which is Trinitarian three in one and one in three combining the infinity of God with the finite expression of the deity infinite spirit incarnate in all in his history that's what the Incarnation means the story of the Incarnation is a symbol of the way in which God is immanent in everything that happens in history the story is a picture of that so he regards Trinitarian Christianity as the highest expression of religion Christian theology as its symbols being appropriate but noticed that the question of historical truth is the leftover question there but then it is in philosophy that you find the pure concept as the form of expression the philosopher in his analysis of concepts tries to avoid metaphor imagery story and sexualize with clear and distinct thought that's the function of philosophy dealing with the the Bhagirath the concept of being not picture stories about not images are but conceptualizing in a non sensory way so you get these three folds then of expression of the consciousness of beer but keep in mind that while it may be the individual's self-expression at one level more ultimately it's all the expression of the divine consciousness coming out through the individual in the cultural setting well what you see then in Hegel's view of religion comes through fairly fairly clearly first of all he has an mystic kind of theology that is to say God is immanent in everything else the transcendence of God in is in traditional judeo-christian thought the transcendence of God his numerical distinctness from the creation that is lost God is immanent and consequently any notion of supernatural act is regarded as religious symbol picture rather than as historically true there is no act of divine revelation because everything that goes on within the human spirit is god self manifestation all understanding is as conceived as is subsumed within that inner self expression this is related to the concept of the death of God a phrase which he uses in later writers pick up that is to say the the death of the picture of a transcendent deity that's a concept of God which dies in the unfolding history of religious thought secondly you you have his criticism of of certain other views of religions so let's call this his criticism of Schreyer marker in his immediate context and Kant on matters of religion account of course had tended to reduce religion to ethics and Schleiermacher criticized him for that niche LaMarca tended to define religion in terms of a feeling of dependence on the all-encompassing absolute to which Hegel responds if the feeling of dependence with the core of religion then the most religious of all creatures is the dog even Hagel had something of a sense of humor his point being that obviously there is something phenomenologically awry in that description of religion above feelings of dependence you have the imagination involved in the arts you have the symbolizing activity involved in religious stories God is a Sun God began God makes he creates he's creator you see the symbolism of religion is going significantly beyond the mighty acts of God in history but the point is then that the schleier marquee and view of religion is far too limited and it misses the fact that the religious symbols can and are in philosophy and in theology translated into concepts so that philosophy is trying to conceptualize what religion is symbolizing which is why the history of philosophy finds its culmination in a Galleon kind of idealism with a pen in theistic being because this is the truest conceptualization of what religion has been symbolizing so his theological thinking then comes out that way emphasizing on symbolism and its philosophical conception zatia in other words symbols that are there in their root meaning rational concepts rational concepts and it's this which appeals to him about the Christian religion is that the one and the many come together and in that rational concept you find the pinnacle of early Greek thought moving beyond the atomism and the monism to many in one and one in three so okay Hegel then on religion now questions comments yeah Troy yeah yeah there's a history though of Christian theologians or people writing at least matters of theology who are somewhat Penn in theistic that was true of a certain amount of the Christian platonism that developed historically you remember the question in discussion of Plato is he a duelist or an idealist now if he's an idealist matter is simply not being has no existence so that physical particular z-- are simply manifestations of form with physical qualities but not with material substrate now with a time you translate that into Neoplatonism those manifestations of form are emanations from the one and you've got pain in theism now when you get to some of the Cambridge Platonists in the 17th century late Renaissance you find that some of them are not just Christian Platonists but talk explicitly of emanation you say are idealists in that neo platonic sense influenced by them I believe is John Milton whose work on Christian theology talks of emanation rather than ex nihilo creation curiously and yet of course we think of Milton in his Paradise Lost as the epitome of somebody dealing with Orthodox theology well and Hegel's influence in the 19th century is such that there was quite a bit of Christian hug alien ISM Christian idealism I'll be commenting on that in a little while which also tended to be pen in theistic I think it's a fair generalization that when Christianity I come Christian theology combines with idealist metaphysics of a monastic sort rather than pluralistic as with birdly that you've got panentheism as a result so in that sense are you going to call his theology Christian or pantheistic well I I mentioned to you last week that our old colleagues to Hackett's going to be doing a Kant seminar next this time next year I remember one time when we were discussing this and he said well it seems and there are others who can be reduced logically the theists but in itself it's an unstable position so you know what's the response to your question maybe yes and no Hegel thought of himself as a Christian theologian my guess is he would have difficulty taking the Caledonian formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity in its intended form seriously yeah Spinoza seems to be clearly a pen theist yet it's plain that these German idealists have a high respect for Spinoza you find them referring to it but at the same time they try to detach themselves from his pantheism what is what conceptually theoretically is the difference and I think the answer is that Spinoza has a static universe and a static deity consequently there is no room for chaos more to God then there is to the cosmos nature of God coextensive in the case of Hegel by virtue of process there is always more to God that there is at any stage in the history of the cosmos you see so Penn henotheism comes through some degree of initiative and transcendence and freedom is ascribed to God particularly freedom in the creative spirit search whereas the notion of freedom is not exactly a popular term in Spinoza yeah yeah yeah you see I think that the mystics of the Middle Ages were not all of them but I think it's fair to say most of them neo-platonists Christian neo-platonists or Jewish neo-platonists as the case may be it's not making some sense and consequently their expression of religious devotion talked of reunion with the divine you see not just contemplation of God as Aquinas referred it but some sort of mystic oneness with the divine there's similarity yes between the two for that reason the platonic the monistic idealism go well he'd say any story of divine intervention is symbolic now the question is what within the conceptual scheme is it symbolic of yes a so if you regard the incarnation as an intervention or some miraculous deed as an intervention the exodus from Egypt as an intervention is they notice how those stories have tremendous symbolism I mean you read what the psalmist say about the Exodus yes see it's a story with a great deal of symbolic significance for their faith and think of what Christian hymn that he says about the incarnation of the crucifixion yes question is what is it symbolic of but one thing you're seeing here Carl is the way in which there tends to be developing a division between history and faith you see this thing that's significant for faith is the symbol you see the symbols which are an expression of face rather than the history which is the foundation of faith to which the faith looks back so that the historicity of the story is not important now when we get to Kierkegaard we'll find that cave God's very conscious of this we find reference to what's known as Lessing's ditch the german lessened but pointed out that there is a logical gap a ditch between a historical statement and a statement about faith Jesus Christ died he died for our sins how do you get from the one to the other he rose from the dead he rose for our justification how do you get from one to the other you see and this was one of the this became one of the dominant issues in the tensions conflicts between liberal and traditional theology in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century still is crucial the inerrancy business is simply an attempt to my mind to reinforce emphasis on the historicity of the story yes he that's why it's significant but no that's crucial very crucial in fact there's one of our graduates Steve Evans used to teach here who last year got one of these big Pew foundation grants you know that Bob Roberts has coming up one of these hundred thousand dollar grants which is giving him a three year research project on this problem history and face so it's still a major issues well no you see that what's the relationship between thesis antithesis and synthesis you'll see it's not exactly a hierarchy it's not a case of a serial business where the second replaces the first and the third replaces the second know the relationship between thesis and antithesis is that in the dialectic the thesis logically entails an antithesis yes and the thesis and antithesis together produce the synthesis which both preserves and cancels out what's gone before and if you want to see that more closely see it in a normal process of growth you'll see where the child thesis is negated by the adult synthesis yes and the two come together in later stage where should we say senior citizen I didn't say second childhood senior sir or use a botanical example I saw crocuses up at lunchtime in my front yard or are they croak I I think it's a Latin plural croak i thesis the bulb seemingly dead in the dirt the antithesis a little producing bloom but soon the synthesis is coming they'll die off in a couple of weeks and that synthesis will become the thesis for a new antithesis next year out of one grows the other it's an organic model the first crocuses they always look the best of the year scrawny little things okay anything else there David what's the antithesis to his philosophy oh well there he traces the history of philosophy from Greek thought on through medieval thought enlightenment thought and the grand synthesis of alien philosophy German philosophy of his day now will there be an antithesis to that well remember we were talking about that the other day no once you get the complete synthesis the full concept of being all you're doing now is fleshing it out in detail that is to say the little dialectical movements within the synthesis so the rest of the history of philosophy is going to be a series of footnotes to Hegel yeah you see the the thing is that if you map it out completely historically what you have is a history of art parallel to a history of religion part parallel to a history of philosophy art religion philosophy and you can find similarities throughout you know my story just turned that around on the side and you've got it so that you've got Greek art Greek religion Greek philosophy on the earth there's parallels so you can trace the thesis antithesis synthesis across that way but you can also trace it historically this way whichever way you look you can see dialectics yeah that's obviously what a religious believer is inclined to ask for but notice that he's not saying theology is the antithesis religion is the antithesis now there's a difference between religious language that is to say the language of worship the language of piety and theological language which seeks to conceptualize with precision you get the difference take for instance the language of hymnody Oh safe to the rock that is higher than I rock and you're getting pictures in there there are often picked up by preachers with stories of people who hid in a craft of a rock during a big storm you'll see a rock that is higher spatial no that's not quite exact no because the language of piety is often artistic language with imagery it's the language of narrative you see whereas the language of theology is that of a conceptual scheme a conceptual scheme interpreting the theological significance of the narrative you get the difference between religious language and theological language the difference if you like between the language of the Caledonian formula and the language of the preaching in the book of Acts whom you crucified whom God raised from the dead that's the preaching of the book of Acts you see where as the language of kalsa Donne is rather and I said kal sit on rather than Nicaea is a rather careful conceptualization of the three persons of the Trinity yeah now these echoes of the story in it much more so in Nicaea and of course the Apostles Creed is still the story of religion at the religious story the Apostles Creed I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth story Jesus Christ His only begotten Son our Lord born of the Virgin Mary Virgin Mary story crucified under Conte Pontius Pilate crucified dead and buried the third day he rose again from the dead from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead story story story but what he's working with is this distinction between the language of religious piety yes which is very close to the language of artistry image but the images which become symbols now but what he wants is to get the concept so it could be that within what he calls philosophy you have to talk of theological conceptualization as well theological conceptualization now is that the grand synthesis theological conceptualization well you think then you have to raise questions about the whole assumption and is the term a grand synthesis really significant if you don't believe in this unfolding of the divine consciousness and the self in the course of history no that's another thing but it does seem to me that there is sort of a dialectic that goes on between religious and Theological expression you see the theologian works for the conceptualization then he steps back into his worship and sings the hymns with all of the imagery and symbolism of popular religion and listen to the theologian pray yes they and his prayers will often includes the religious as distinct from the conceptualization and I think that that's inevitable if you conceive of Christian religion as having to do with personal relationship because the way you talk about relationships and persons is in terms of story not just conceptualization so I'm inclined to think that there is a story dimension that's necessary in talking of a personal God and a relationship to a personal God particularly when he's known because of the way in which he has acted you can't avoid this time ok now let's go for a few moments if we might to get this glimpse of what comes after hail the transition well there are two ways of talking about the immediate influence of Hegel one is in terms of the left and right wings of religion where the left wing lays emphasis on the evolution of religion the history of religion and the symbolic nature of religion and that left wing as you might gather from the name lest it really spurs the development of liberal theology you'll notice that stunts on page 430 refers to two individuals David Straus and bruno bauer to german biblical scholars strauss wrote a life of jesus who were very much in this tradition their emphasis on identifying god with the human spirit so that our beliefs in God are a projection of our self-consciousness then after all if Hegel tells us that God's self-consciousness that our self conscious right now our consciousness of God hey don't tells us that our consciousness of God is God's self-consciousness in and through us then somebody's going to turn around and say then we can think of God in terms of our own self-consciousness you see and the self-consciousness notice this picture again the self consciousness becomes limbs for thinking about that now that move becomes explicit in the work of Ludwig Fuhrer mark who is one of the people I've asked you to read some selections from for this week very vivid fear bark is one of the primary influences in shaping the thinking of Karl Marx that is to say the fury bark was a materialist a materialist who combined Hegel's dialectic of self-consciousness with a materialistic interpretation of history and Marxism picks up from that it takes it further so that you have some selections from Fuhrer mark in which he says and get this man's god-consciousness now Hegel said that men's God consciousness is the self consciousness of God pure mark says men's God consciousness is the self consciousness of man and men's God consciousness is the self consciousness of man and so the idea of God the concept of God is something that we project as an extension of our own self-consciousness and we ascribe to God attributes that are symbolic of what we see ourselves to be so that theology really becomes simply a veiled exercise in psychology and anthropology simply that the essence of religion is the relationship of man to man and that in fury' bark is one of the main sources for religious humanism is that developed in the 19th and on into the early 20th century that is to say a humanistic religion such as you are often find in the Unity Church where religion is reduced indeed to pursuit of human ideals now the the statement of this sort of thing in Fuhrer bark is it's very explicit listen to this and I'm reading from 239 in the anthology religion at least the Christian is the relation of men to himself to his own nature the divine thing is nothing else than the human being the human being freed from the limits of the individual and made objective contemplated and revered as another distinct being all the attributes of divine nature are therefore attributes of human nature and let's see only when we abandon the theology this is 250 only when we abandon theology distinct from psychology and anthropology and recognize anthropology as itself theology do we attain to a true self satisfying identity of the divine and the human being the identity of the human being with itself so read give some pure bark a quick reading it's taken from his work on the essence of Christianity tremendously influential work at that stage in history and one which underlies the development of religion within a naturalistic philosophy in the 20th century religion within a naturalistic philosophy there when Cole Marx says that religion is the opiate of the masses what he's doing is drawing on what Fuehrer mark says he's drawing on the notion that religion is a form of sublimation of our own ideals desires for our self that we project into a hypothetical mythical being so religious symbolism then cannot be translated into language about God it's simply language about the human condition and human need and the place to address human need is not in religion but there's the story of Marcus's so that that is the left wing of hegelian religious thought the right wing as you might expect to gain from the label is essentially more orthodox in theological terms retaining Hegel's idealism and his pen in theism but retaining a fairly traditional view of Christianity and we will see more of that in some of the later idealists then there is a further distinction that's drawn between the old and the young Hegelians where the old hog aliens are more conservative in their interpretation they agree that Hegel brought philosophy to its finest our 19th century evolutionary idealism you see that her gayly and philosophy is probably the system to end all systems and so there was an extensive neo hog a lien movement in throughout Europe certainly in Britain it took over Oxford in this country in this country it was particularly centered in st. Louis and became known as the st. Louis school the st. Louis school and we all have reason to refer to that later on next time in fact that is against the young Hegelians who wanted to leave to Hegel the theoretical philosophical conceptualization the system building the theoretical work and turned of a kind of action that is implicit within Hegel's thinking that is to say they wanted to turn more de praxis to use the term that's current nowadays to turn to the praxis implicit in her galleon thinking where the aim is not to contemplate the world but to change it not to come template the world but to change it there is to say to be an agent in the dialectical movement of history and as you can anticipate Marx and Engels will some of these young Hegelians so what you get then is the emergence of marxist philosophy in the 1840s marxist philosophy which is known as dialectical materialism they you see the materialism comes from Fira bark who to use his favorite phrase turned Hegel on his head turned Hegel on his head for about did how by saying that our God consciousness is not God's God consciousness but our own self-consciousness so what you get is pure abouts materialism and Hegel's logic Hegel's dialectic so you've got a dialectical materialism that is also known as and this is an important emphasis as historical materialism and notice carefully what that means it does not mean materialism as it was throughout history the Marxist is not thinking of going back to an earlier philosophy at an earlier stage in history no historical materialism is a materialist interpretation of history a materialist interpretation of history if the history is the sphere of praxis of action and so you want a materialist interpretation of history so that you can tap into the action of history the praxis and the materialistic interpretation of history of course is one that is given in terms of the dialectics that's why you call it dialectical materialism the dialectic being a thesis antithesis synthesis movement of history but you see it is the material conditions of history which are the driving force not absolute spirit so instead of history being a manifestation of absolute spirit as it is for an idealist interpretation of history where you can say concepts make history in a materialist interpretation of history it's the material conditions that make history meaning what the forces and means of production that is to say the economic conditions that make history and so you get an economic determinism a class struggle that is the dynamic force in history as a change in history class struggle thesis and antithesis and this is the way in which Marxism developed does that make connection for you okay next time we'll pick up on the 19th century idealists other than Hegel and I'll give you a gross

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