- Oct 19 11:32 AM
You and I are expressing ourselves on different registers.
As usual, you are offering observations and making stray assertions.
As usual, your post is impressionistic.
You do not pretend to be offering a cogent account that would be suited to a public presentation.
Your remarks are more like the kind of remarks one might make to a colleague in a coffee shop after having listened to someone read a paper at a gathering.
What I write here I mean to be presentation worthy.
I offer sustained argument as I follow out the thread of my thought.
I have found it useful for my purposes to enter into discussion knowing that for the most part what I will get back from you will, as I say here, be expressed on a different register.
Since you have strayed quite far afield – again, I suppose this suits your own purposes – I think it best that I leave this be.
- Alan
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 2:10 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Lecture 15 LPEGI was rather hurried at the end, trying to reply to your long messages.
As I indicated referring to Eckhart the point at issue is not or should not be the name "God", though I notice you take it as self-evident that mind, spirit or other philosophical notions (the Notion too) are not "the Christian God". As a practiced Christian I find I don't agree, and have givven reasons here quite often.
This comes out for me well in all Hegel writes on Necessity, for example, which links up directly with Anselmian necessary being. I think your view also fails to advert to the Thomistic point (point of a quite central Christian thinker) that "god", besides being a personal name, is simultaneously a nomen naturae. That is, God is his deity, Deus est deitas. Under deity I understand, simply rationally, infinity, which has to be "that than which a greater cannot be thought".
I also agree with Hegel that the final expression of this, or at least as far as we can get, is that of the mystical body (of Christ the Word) where, ultimately (that does not mean in some far off future) God shall be "all in all". Implied, as also in the Scriptural sources, is a view of eternity as swallowing up the temporal, i.e. it is not really the three-part church militant, expectant and triumphant, as in an old representation. Eternity is one with God himself, necessarily again (God cannot be "in" eternity, if you consider).
Now I note that you refer often to the Second Coming, a stock phrase of piety and, in some form, of theology. I think it is patent to most who have thought about it that this representation is fairly well tied to (Jewish) apocalyptic, which no one is bound to take at face value. We are charged to "interpret spiritual things spiritually", and what else is philosophy. I think you stick to the letter here in order to score a point merely. For we find already in the Scripture, the Gospels, especially the Fourth, that interpretation has gone on. Regarding the "last" judgment, for example, which clashes awkwardly with something called the "particular judgment" at death, in popular Roman Catholic catechisms, for example, this picture is entirely sublated in John where Christ is put as saying "And this is the judgment, that men have loved darkness rather than light" and I think he speaks of the world as being already judged. No, I am sure he does.
For Hegel, i am convinced, this kind of thing is the opening through which he comes to find the complete rationality of Christianity in particular as this comes out in his logic and the earlier book. Confirmation of Christian notions occur there as naturally as does the treatment of syllogistic, which many wrongly assume must be artificially included. Hegel's thought, I believe, is perpetually confirming itself. Thus he shows no special exertion to get in a more "positivist" statement of traditional doctrines, e.g. the Trinity or the Creation, letting them as it were speak for themselves. On the other hand he argues for the necessity of one personal mediator, though without all that much direct argument.
But the main logical thrust is, as you are clear about I think, that nothing can be thought without thinking everything. This is the notion, that everything forms a system, ruled by identity in difference. Here we have the role of necessity, as perfect freedom, so very Thomistic in fact.
Now we find this also as controlling notion in McTaggart's interpretation, which has each of us as Trinitarian persons, you might almost say. That is, he attempts an atheist interpretation without dismissing Hegel's mystical thought. I think this ultimately fails though I could be wrong. We seem left in McTaggart with an absolute that is contingent, which I don't think is countenanced in Hegel. It is what he twists round every which way in LPEG. The contingent for him is, manifestly, nothing, at the same time as it is something. But in McTaggart the persons seem to have no relation to the necessary (or it is not clear). i cannot say more about this at this moment. There might be a final coincidence of what look like two systems, i don't know for sure. By which I do not mean I am agnostic between theism and atheism. Rather, I consider a possibility that the highest theism might find expression in what is formally atheism (I say "might"), since this, for one thing, would accord with Hegel's logical principles generally. In fact I think those principles are just what is needed (they have always been employd in some form there). I have to stop here. The speculative, note, is not taken here as confined within a subjective and finite idealism.
Stephen Theron
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 19 October 2018 02:29
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [hegel] Lecture 15 LPEGAs I mentioned in my post this afternoon, the main problem for a reading of Hegel that puts god at the center of his philosophy is that god is nowhere to be found at the center of his philosophy.
Apart from remarks about the history of philosophy, god is nowhere to be found in the Logic, Hegel’s exposition of infinite thinking.
The god-concept also does not appear anywhere other than in the remarks in the Encyclopedia. The god-concept is not put to work in the development of the system.
And in the Phenomenology, religious devotion appears at various points, but the truth of the exposition – absolute knowing – does not have god as its object of knowledge.
And yet, a good number of secular Hegel scholars are spooked by Hegel’s persistent references to god in the lectures.
These secular Hegel scholars have their reading and seem embarrassed by these remarks many of which you continue to quote on this site.
I find Hegel’s remarks about god in these lectures both interesting and curiously devious.
Interesting because they seem to be at odds with what we see when considering the speculative expositions in the core texts.
And curiously devious since more often than not as I have shown often enough in my posts on this site these remarks end up saying something quite different than they seem to be saying.
But it is understandable that one wishing to promote a theological reading of Hegel would start with these remarks.
Where else could one start? There is really nothing in the core texts from which one could start.
But just the fact that one has to go to the margins, finding passages from unpublished works to make one’s case, suggests that something other than a sober view of Hegel’s thought is motivating such a reading.
It seems that only those with a strong religious conviction see these passages as the key to understanding Hegel’s philosophy.
This is why I am comfortable characterizing a theological reading as predetermined by one’s religious convictions.
This is why I call such a reading as motivated by and following from religious dogma.
The challenge for those who wish to offer a theological reading is to reveal how the core texts come to life through a theological reading.
There have been some attempts to do so, but the most enlightening “theological” reading of Hegel is by Stephen Crites who reads Hegel as deconstructing the god-concept.
It does no good just to assert that by the true infinite or the absolute idea Hegel means god.
It is really an easy matter to show that this is not the case, something I have been doing in my recent posts about the true infinite.
Those who are secular readers tend to stick with what Hegel says in the core texts.
Thus, they are convinced that their secular reading is not dogmatic.
However, they feel ill at ease about the metaphysical shading of Hegel’s thought suggested by the central role given to the term “absolute” employed as either a noun or a verb.
Secular scholars tend to shy away from anything in the core texts that might suggest that Hegel is falling back into outmoded metaphysical thinking.
I say shy away because they really do not argue the point.
In any case, as I have indicated, I do not see my own reading as following from secular dogma. And my reading certainly is not theological.
Based on my understanding of speculation, I believe that one cannot help but read Hegel as a post-theological thinker.
And yet, I do not start by avoiding god. This is simply an implication of speculative thought properly understood.
The god-concept is one of many representational residues from prior philosophic regimes that comes to be speculatively deconstructed on the way to explicating speculative thinking.
Speculation is not about some metaphysical ultimate but instead is about the rational potential of the human intellect as it self-thinks, or as it comes to know the human spirit as the product of human endeavor.
This certainly resonates with the secular spirit of our age. Or as Hegel says, this resonates with philosophy understood as its time in thought.
But curiously enough, this secular spirit as Hegel expounds it seems to elude most secular Hegel scholars.
As I see things, both secular and theological readers evince no clear understanding of speculation.
So, for me, a pox on both their houses.
- Alan
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 6:47 PM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Lecture 15 LPEGIn response to the Mon15oct2018 post by Alan Ponikvar:
> ...What I believe is happening is that there are two dogmas – the
> secular and theological – that sort the scholars into two broad
> groups within which there is much diversity.
>
> In short, it is not the argument but the dogma that sorts the scholars.
>
> No one would admit to this, but I believe that it is a more accurate
> assessment of what is going on.
I see no such division. On the contrary, Hegel's clear push for a theological reading of his Speculative Philosophy contains zero dogma. Hegel is very careful about this.
> What matters is what these readers believe to be true of Hegel.
> Arguments that challenge what these readers believe are not taken
> as gifts. They are taken as insults.
> Until this changes, nothing will change.
>
> * Alan
You are somewhat mistaken on this account, Alan. The hearty debate over the theological aspect of Hegel's Speculative Philosophy has been going on within this web site for YEARS, and although there is no sign of either side changing its orientation, there is clearly some creative process at work.
Ideas are genuinely flowing. I personally thank Stephen Theron, especially, for his ability to maintain a dialogue with both sides. Stephen's appreciation of Hegel's Speculative Philosophy is, in my reading, the more well-rounded..
That said, I cannot disagree with your observation that the non-theological reading of Hegel is by far, the more popular. Yet Philosophy has never been a democracy, so I'm not impressed by the numbers. The explanation is easy to see -- the 20th century was bloated with Marxist rhetoric, from start to finish (and we still hear it in many international terrors today).
Hegel was abandoned by the late 19th century. Here is what Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1960:
"In 1925, when I was twenty years old...the
horror of dialectic was such that Hegel himself
was unknown to us. Of course they allowed us to
read Marx; they even advised us to read him..
But without the Hegelian tradition...they taughtus Aristotelian and mathematical logic in great
detail." (Sartre, SEARCH FOR A METHOD,
1960, Vintage, p. 17)
There Sartre says that when he was in college in 1925, the "horror of the dialectic" was intensive -- and by that we should read "horror of Marxism." But the result was that Hegel was not read precisely because of Marx.
So, yes, the majority reading of Hegel is tempered by Marx and also by Nietzsche -- the whole atheist dogma of the 20th century.
Yes, I do agree with one of your points: the non-theological reading of Hegel -- the most popular reading -- is indeed a dogma. It is ultimately rooted in the 20th century crush on Marx or Nietzsche or both.
Sincerely,
--Paul Trejo
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