On Sun, Sep 8, 2019 at 9:07 PM Mary Malo reading_for_meaning@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Thank you for your response. At my great age I often encounter resistance to my use of the second, third, etc. meanings of words. I've resorted to the dictionary time and again in recent years and find my usage further and further down the list :-)

Hegel claims that ethical/belief systems prior to Christianity contain irreconcilable differences resulting in anguish. I submit that even Christians may experience this. I'm trying to emphasize that it's not what we think/feel about any set of beliefs but their inner conceptual development. Myths and doctrines have contradictions which can be treated speculatively to show their antitheses.. Hegel does so with the Garden of Eden story in terms of the relation between cognition and evil. 

Perhaps you'll appreciate what Slavoj Žižek says below:

The next standard argument against Hegel's philosophy of religion targets its teleological structure: it openly asserts the primacy of Christianity, Christianity as the "true" religion, the final point of the entire development of religions.* It is easy to demonstrate how the notion of "world religions," although it was invented in the era of Romanticism in the course of the opening toward other (non-European) religions, in order to serve as the neutral conceptual container allowing us to "democratically" confer equal spiritual dignity on all "great" religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism...), effectively privileges Christianity—already a quick look makes it clear how Hinduism, and especially Buddhism, simply do not fit the notion of "religion" implied in the idea of "world religions." However, what conclusion are we to draw from this? For a Hegelian, there is nothing scandalous in this fact: every particular religion in effect contains its own notion of what religion "in general" is, so that there is no neutral universal notion of religion—every such notion is already twisted in the direction of (colorized by, hegemonized by) a particular religion. This, however, in no way entails a nominalist/historicist devaluation of universality; rather, it forces us to pass from "abstract" to "concrete" universality, i.e., to articulate how the passage from one to another particular religion is not merely something that concerns the particular, but is simultaneously the "inner development" of the universal notion itself, its "self-determination" (p. 27, The Monstrosity of Christ).

*...The development of religions from primitive animism through polytheism to the last triad of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is inherent to divinity itself, it is God's self-development—a notion, which from within the perspective of a Christian believer, cannot but look like heresy, even blasphemy. (p. 101, The Monstrosity of Christ)

As a "Christian believer," I don't find this blasphemous. I've recently posted Hegel's own words to this effect which are generally ignored in this group—either because they're considered "God" talk by atheists or heresy by Christians. However I find this Žižek's major contribution to Hegelian theology, regardless of his "materialist" stance.

At any rate, I've no horses in this race and will be happy to move on from a thread apparently fraying from overuse, to mix metaphors...

Mary

On Sunday, September 8, 2019, 03:05:41 AM CDT, R Srivatsan r.srivats@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

My post wasn't a question.  It was an expression of interest regarding how the conversation between you and Paul would go.  This is because, Paul has been insisting for some time that the unhappy consciousness was there (and important) in Hinduism, based on his perspective on Hegel's exposition.  I responded saying that Hinduism, as an ancient system of ethics and belief didn't seem to me function in the mode of an unhappy consciousness.   This was based on my cultural acquaintance (not scholarly knowledge) with and lived experience of Hindu texts, practices, figures, sages, heroes, etc.

Gods don't function in Hinduism the same way as He does in Christianity.  There is both more of a distance and a familiarity. So my first (and second) response to Paul was, "probably not:", but if there is, one has to see how it (UC) functions in the self-consciousness that constitutes the Hindu mind.

I think there is a version of stoicism though.  Not so much as what is understood as Western Stoicism the realm of the emergence of thought in self-consciousness as Hegel puts it, but in the realm of conduct: not crossing boundaries, not giving in to greed, keeping a discreet profile, controlling desire, disciplining life, perhaps even at an extreme a mode of ascetic withdrawal. In some ways, the Laws of Manu, behind their heartless punishments for infractions, are the statement of stoic principles of life too for each caste. But here the similarity falls apart.  This kind of code of life practice is governed by a consideration for the community (and no doubt the different parts/castes of the community were severely unequal).  It is not a stoicism of the primitive (as in conceptually primitive, not necessarily culturally) consciousness that Hegel seems to be talking about.

Srivats

On Sun, Sep 8, 2019 at 7:11 AM R Srivatsan <r.srivats@...> wrote:

Dear Mary,

I am not exactly which question of mine you are referring to here.  I haven't yet spoken of stoicism etc., in this thread.  Could you clarify?

Best

Srivats

On Sat, Sep 7, 2019 at 11:33 PM Mary Malo reading_for_meaning@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Paul and others,

Hegel presents these various attitudes as attempts toward ethical happiness conceptually. Each is unable to bridge the rupture/cleavage in self-consciousness which leads to estrangement/alienation within self and with the world. A person may possess a single, combined or overlapping of these perspectives but only through conceptual examination of each stance do we find incomplete, one-sided abstractions which cannot make finite spirit objective to itself. He also addresses infinite cleavage and anguish as part of divine history (moments of divine diremption), a co-development of infinite with finite as generally the sublation of external objectivity.

"This is the moment of divine, developed objectivity, wherein divinity arrives at its most extreme mode of being-outside-itself no less than it finds its turning point there; and this moment of return itself consists in both the most extreme estrangement [Entfremdung] and the pinnacle of divestment [Entäusserung].

"Since this is the history of the divine idea in finite spirit, this history itself directly contains two sides: it is the history of finite consciousness itself as isolated in immediacy; and it is this history as an object for consciousness, as objective in and for itself, i.e., as the history of God as it is in and for itself. This is our concern here, that is the concern of the community. 

"The necessity of such a history is found, first of all, in the divine idea: God as spirit is this process, whose moments have themselves the shape of complete reality and thereby of finite self-consciousness; hence the divine idea actualizes itself in and to finite self-consciousness. The other aspect of the necessity of this manifestation, however, is that it take place for self-consciousness, precisely because it is this history in finite self-consciousness. God must be for himself as the whole of his revelation; only thus is he revealed. This history of his must be an object for him, but in its own objectivity and truth. This true history of finite spirit is what now must be grasped. (pgs. 91-92 LPR III)

To answer what I think Srivats is asking: for stoic, skeptic, beautiful soul, monastic, ascetic, unhappy consciousness, etc., in all forms of religious/secular development, happiness is conceptual only in relation to its opposite—anguish and need for reconciliation. God also experiences anguish, love, reconciliation, and freedom. Human 'happiness' with any of the above attitudes is merely escape—escape from internal antithesis and/or escape from external antithesis. Renouncing oneself and/or renouncing the world of others is faux wholeness. God and other as object remain in-itself but not for-itself. Hegel's development of these various positions co-exists with us today as part of our understanding but they exist sequentially as conceptual moments of finite and infinite spirit.

If I remember correctly, Stephen Theron reminds us there is one Spirit.

With regards,

Mary

On Friday, September 6, 2019, 07:23:00 PM CDT, Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Mary,

I rushed to my copy of LPR 3, directly to pages 304-310, and noticed that I have them marked in five different highlighter colors as well as margin notes.   This is one of my favorite sections of LPR 3. 

Among my notes is Hegel's emphasis on "Estrangement," or as Marx would say, "Alienation."    For Marx it was an economic term -- the worker's "Alienation" from the means of production.   For Hegel it meant something more. 

Beyond Marx, Hegel also finds a "religious" meaning to Alienation.   His consistent metaphor is the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."  

That is, Hegel finds two dimensions of Alienation: (1) Alienation from the World; and (2) Alienation from God, the Universal, "the deepest depth" (p. 305).

We are all immediately aware that in our innermost existence we are a Living Contradiction, he says.  We are both Good and Evil in the same person.  This is the root of our Alienation from God.

This split in our souls is "infinite anguish," he says (p. 306).   Here, indeed, is the Unhappy Consciousness!   Hegel says, "I know myself a.ways as what ought not to be" (p.. 307).

Now, Hegel implies that we have always had this feeling, going back into prehistory -- yet Hegel also says that with Judaism -- when God becomes One God -- that anguish reaches the point of infinitude, because of our infinite distance from the perfect righteousness of the One God.

I'm so glad, Mary, that you raised this citation from Hegel's LPR 3, because it speaks directly to the Unhappy Consciousness in a pre-Christian setting.   Hegel says:

"...Humanity is in a state of unhappiness.  It is 

this unhappiness that drives and presses human 

beings back into themselves...they renounce the 

world."  (Hegel, 1827, LPR 3, Hodgson, pp.. 307-308)

There is the key!   There Hegel speaks directly of spiritual Unhappiness!  There Hegel speaks of World Renunciation -- a spiritual status that we find in the most ancient Religions and priesthoods, long before Abraham was born!   That is exactly what Hegel gets at in his PhG narrative of the Unhappy Consciousness.

All best,

--Paul

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On Wednesday, September 4, 2019, 06:10:52 PM CDT, Mary Malo reading_for_meaning@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Paul,

I notice in the LPR 3, especially the 1827 Lecture, (part d. knowledge, estrangement and evil), pages 304-310, that anguish is treated similarly to the unhappy consciousness or alienated soul. Hegel emphasized religions and attitudes previous to Christianity (Parsee, Jewish, Stoicism, Skepticism) all demonstrated that inner (between God and man) and outer (between man and world) antitheses needed reconciliation.

Mary 

--

R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
Telangana 500026
Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
Landline: +91 40 2773 5193

--

R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
Telangana 500026
Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
Landline: +91 40 2773 5193

--

R Srivatsan
Flat 101, Block C, Saincher Palace Apartments
10-3-152, Street No 2
East Marredpally
Secunderabad
Telangana 500026
Mobile: +91 77027 11656, +91 94404 80762
Landline: +91 40 2773 5193