But, certainly, Ralph, you could be wrong about all that. Men aren't bound to the particular
in the same way that cats and dogs are.

There's been a fair amount of scholarship that has come out on Ibn Arabi in the past fifteen
years, and it is interesting.

But here is something from the Ibn Arabi scholar, William Chittick, that suggests that what you
say would be true if you were talking about birds or chipmunks, but certainly not about humans:

"In the diverse creatures of the cosmos other than man the traces of God's names and
attributes are externalized as the specific and unique characteristics of each thing. Every
creature in the universe 'knows' God in a specific, differentiated, and determined way, defined
by the attributes that the thing displays, or by the 'word' that it embodies; each thing gives
news of God and displays His signs through occupying its specific niche in the never-repeated
speech of God that is the universe.

"Man alone is given the potential to know God in a global, synthetic manner, because man
alone is created in the image not of one or of several specific names, but in the image
of the all-comprehensive name Allah.

"Knowledge of things as they actually are can only come through knowing them as
disclosures of the Real. It is only this sort of knowledge that allows man to see
that everything in this world is accursed if he does not see it as displaying the Real,
and that he himself is accursed to the extent that he does not know that things do
in fact display the Real.

"As Ibn Arabi said, 'The greatest sin is what brings about the death of the heart.
It dies only by not knowing God. This is what is named "ignorance".'"

I can't imagine that Hegel would disagree with any of that.

Concerning the book about the Jews, I was interested to know if Hegel had any Jewish students.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Ralph Dumain
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com ; "hegel"@...
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 2:08 PM
Subject: Re: [hegel] Hegel & Islam


As interesting as this is, the original thesis is specious. The form and
content of all of these religions are not only different from one another,
but are so because they cannot be arbitrarily abstracted from and reduced
to floating abstract notions apart from the very particular social and
cultural beliefs, practices, and arrangements that give them any
recognizable content or form at all. Each of these religions instantiates
provincial superstitions and repressive social practices and prettying them
up by abstracting an esoteric interpretation is duplicity of the highest
order. Protestantism may well have been in the advance position on the
road to modernity, but it proved to be as vicious and oppressive as all the
rest. Secularized, rationalized, and even departicularized versions of it
do not indicate a fundamental overcoming of its social and philosophical
limitations. Hence this whole argument is a lie though and through,
whether it is supported by religionists or Stalinist Hegelians, all of whom
stink to high heaven.

On this note, I had a chance to peruse the first three chapters of GERMAN
IDEALISM AND THE JEWS, concluding with the chapter on Hegel. It's not a
pretty picture. I'll have more to say later.

At 01:09 PM 3/10/2004 -0500, JOHN BARDIS wrote:
>From: "JOHN BARDIS" <jgbardis@...>
>Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:09:33 -0500
>Subject: Re: [hegel] Hegel & Islam
>Reply-To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>According to Hegel all true religions have the same content but different
>forms.
>
>So what is this content?
>
>I believe the content of true religion for Hegel is, first, that God is
>triune, and, second, that God has the form of a man. So, obviously, the
>form of Christianity is best suited to this content.
>
>This content is seemingly not to be found in Islam. But this content is
>certainly to be found in the work of Ibn 'Arabi. For many Muslims Ibn
>'Arabi is regarded as a heretic and a crypto-Christian




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