Dear Wil,

I'm terribly sorry to have made you feel that way. I promise you I'm
aware of no condescension in my approach to our discussion. I had no
intention of converting you to anything. Notice that I said "learning
something from religion," as distinct from "accepting religion" (or
the like). I've been arguing all along that Hegel thinks there is
something real to be learned from religion. That's all I was
referring to.

If I've misread your post, I am very willing to be corrected. I
mentioned a couple of possible readings; they were the only ones I
could think of; and neither of them was meant in anything but a
constructive spirit. It may be that I'm being amazingly obtuse, in
not getting your point.

What I think is canceled, by Hegel, in religion, is (a) the idea of
non-rational "faith" (since absolute spirit is meant to be fully
rational), and (b) the conception of God as a spurious infinity: as
the opposite of the finite, rather than the finite's self-surpassing.
Both of these are, I hope evidently, absent from the conception of
God as the highest reality, composed of freedom and love, which lends
everything else whatever full reality it possesses.

Best, Bob

>Bob,
>
>I think you are being a little disingenuous here, and a little
>condescending. That sort of apparently deliberate misreading of my post
>doesn't get us anywhere, and your tone is frankly a great
>disappointment to me.
>
>The question that would really get us over this hump is what do you
>think is canceled? Just what is canceled at that juncture of Hegel's
>text?
>
>As to what I fear from religion is a question that is quite outside the
>scope of this List. I will attend to my own salvation, thank you very
>much.
>
>Yours,
>Wil
>
>

--
Robert M. Wallace
2503 E. Olive St.
Shorewood, WI 53211
USA