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- In vol. 2 of his lectures on the philosophy of religion, "Determinate Religion", Hegel deals with all the religions except, oddly enough, Islam
I suppose if Christianity is the end of religion, if in Christianity religion has achieved its end, then there is no need to worry about post-Christian religion.
The final triad of determinate religions for Hegel is Greek religion, the religion of beauty, Judaism, the religion of sublimity, and Roman religion, the religion of utility.
Hegel does briefly deal with Islam in the zusatz to paragraph 393 of the Philosophy of Spirit. There he describes it, basically, as Judaism, the religion of sublimity, become universal. He says:
"In Mohammedanism the limited principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as with the Asiatics, contemplated as existent in immediately sensuous mode but is apprehended as the one infinite sublime Power beyond all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, the religion of sublimity.
"The character of the western Asiatics, especially the Arabs, is completely in accord with this religion. This race, in its aspiration to the One God, is indifferent to everything finite, to all misery, and gives generously of its life and its wealth; even today its courage and liberality earns our recognition.
"But the western Asiatic mind which clings to the abstract One does not get as far as the determination, the particularization, of the universal and consequently does not attain to a concrete formation.
"Here, it is true, this mind destroys the caste system and all its works which prevail in India, and every Mohammedan is free; despotism in the strict meaning of the word does not exist among them. Political life, however, does not yet achieve the form of a rationally organized whole, of a differentiation into special governmental powers.
"And as regards individuals these, on the one hand, certainly hold themselves sublimely aloof from subjective, finite aims but again, on the other hand, they also hurl themselves with unbridled instincts into the pursuit of such aims which, with them, lack all trace of the universal because here the universal has so far not attained to an immanent self-determination. So it is that here, along with the noblest sentiments, there exists the greatest vindictiveness and guile.
"Europeans, on the contrary, have for their principle and character the concrete universal, self-determining Thought. The Christian God is not merely the differenceless One, but the triune God who contains difference within himself, who has become man and who reveals himself. In this religious conception the opposition of universal and particular, of Thought and Being, is present in its most developed form and yet has also been brought back again to unity. Here, then, the particular is not left so quiescent in its immediacy as in Mohammedanism; on the contrary, it is determined by thought, just as, conversely, the universal here develops itself to particularization
"The principle of the European mind is, therefore, self-conscious Reason which is confident that for it there can be no insuperable barrier and which therefore takes an interest in everything in order to become present to itself therein. The European mind opposes the world to itself, makes itself free of it, but in turn annuls this opposition, takes its Other, the manifold, back into itself, into its unitary nature. In Europe, therefore, there prevails this infinite thirst for knowledge which is alien to other races. The European is interested in the world, he wants to know it, to make this Other confronting him his own, to bring to view the genus, law, universal, thought, the inner rationality, in the particular forms of the world. It subdues the outer world to its ends with an energy which has ensured for it the mastery of the world. The individual here, in his particular actions proceeds from fixed general principles; and in Europe the State, by its rational institutions, exhibits more or less the development and realization of freedom unimpeded by the caprice of a despot."
Hegel then deals with Islam again in the context of a discussion of pantheism in paragraph 573. He writes:
"If we want to see the consciousness of the One in its finest purity and sublimity, we must consult the Mohammedans. If, e.g., in the excellent Jelaleddin-Rumi in particular, we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as love, this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and vulgar, a transfiguration of the natural and the spiritual, in which the externalism and transitoriness of immediate nature, and of empirical secular spirit is discarded and absorbed."
And finally, he writes:
"Of the oriental, especially the Mohammedan,modes of envisaging God, we may rather say that they represent the Absolute as the utterly universal genus which dwells in the species or existences, but dwells so potently that these existences have no actual reality. The fault of all these modes of thought and systems [these pantheistic systems] is that they stop short of defining substance as subject and as spirit."
Hegel also deals briefly with Islam in his philosophy of history.
John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] - In response to the Mon13Feb12 post by John Bardis:
> ...In regard to Islam, as I mentioned, he has very little to say about it...
> John
While that's true, John, Hegel does say a little about Islam, and that is
illuminating.
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1818-1831) Hegel suggests the
following:
1. Christianity and Islam are the two dominant living religions, and are
continually in competition with each other.
2. Both religions have expressed a strong religious calling to convert the
entire world to their religion.
3. The number of Christians and the number of Muslims is continually
approximately the same.
4. Christianity and Islam can never be reconciled, since Christianity is based
on the doctrine that God has a Son
(namely Christ) and Islam (like Judaism) is fundamentally opposed to that
Doctrine.
5. In other words, even though the Koran accepts the doctrine of the virgin
birth of Jesus, it finds the doctrine
of Jesus as the Incarnation of God to be blasphemy.
6. It is no more likely that the Muslims will change their position on this
than the Jews will change theirs.
7. While a minority of Christians criticize the Incarnation of God in Jesus
(e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses), most
Christians accept the Catholic/Lutheran view of it.
8. The beauty of the Trinity doctrine, for Hegel, is its harmony with the
Dialectic.
9. The doctrine of God in Islam, for Hegel, is the doctrine
of arithmetic Oneness without any Dialectic. Hegel regards this rigid position
as 'fanatic'. This is the most negative thing he said about Islam.
10. On the positive side, Hegel loved to read the Islamic poet, Rumi. Hegel
would quote Rumi in his lectures.
Best regards,
--Paul Trejo, MA
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]