(Originally written March 1, 2007 in Book 13)
Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
The Meaning of Reality
"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).
In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.
There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.
All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.
"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).
Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.
Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.
Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.
Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.
Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.
Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.
Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.
Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.
"Reality means to have an independent existence"
Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.
"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).
Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.
The Need For Verification
Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.
Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.
Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).
Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.
He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.
Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".
Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".
There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.
"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).
Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience
People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.
Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?
The Need for the Transcendent
Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.
Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.
The Sense of Absolute Dependence
Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.
"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).
Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.
A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.
There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.
People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.
Humanity's Being Unto Death
Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".
Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.
"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).
Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.
Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.
Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?
The Existential Need for God
Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).
Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.
Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.
Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).
Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.
The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.
Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?
The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.
Showing posts with label Schleiermacher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schleiermacher. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Characteristics of Religious Experience
(Originally written February 27, 2007 in Book 13)
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Part 2 The Characteristics of Religious Experience
In order for an experience to be a religious experience it must:
1) Involve awareness of the Transcendent
2) Involve a person making an ultimate commitment to the Transcendent
Religious Experience Involves an Awareness of the Transcendent
Whatever the description or name for the Transcendent, there is something, real or unreal, which goes beyond the individual in which or by which he transcends his finite conditions.
Some Paradigms for the Meaning of Transcendence
Paul M. van Buren believed that all language used as God-language or its equivalent is a dead language.
Ian T. Ramsey holds that metaphors and odd words have a power of disclosure. These odd phrases, metaphors and tautologies have deeper meanings than can be linguistically expressed.
The need for self-transcendence
"Religious experience involves the need to transcend the unalterable displeasures of life" (30).
Peter Koëstenbaum's description of religion: "man's effort to do something about the desperate condition of his own finitude" (30-31).
Sigmund Freud depicted religion as the human search for a cosmic father.
Rudolf Bultmann defined religion as a human longing to escape this world by discovering a sphere above this world.
Walter Kaufmann - Religion is rooted in man's goal to transcend himself. Man is the ape that wants to be god and man is the God-intoxicated ape.
Jean-Paul Sartre believed man's project is to become God.
A human being is that which needs self-transcendence.
Koëstenbaum held that love is an "a priori category by which the religious person unifies his world and overcomes the opposing otherness and attains self-fulfillment" (31).
Religious experience characteristically involves some means by which a person can self-transcend or "go beyond his own frustrating limitations" (32)
Chris Linehan: Then would not a failure to transcend one's self be a failed religious experience, but a religious experience nonetheless?
The Necessity of the Transcendent Other in Religious Experience
In order to have a religious experience one must believe that a Transcendent thing exists outside of one's self.
Religion is an "I-Thou" relationship, not an "I-I" relationship.
The Unity of Meaning of the Transcendent
Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that multiplicity of content of experience and expression is necessary for the complete manifestation of religion.
William James held that this plurality is necessary to fit the plurality of human needs.
William James argued that all religions have three common characteristics:
1) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe
2) that union with that higher universe is our end
3) prayer is a process wherein work is done and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects within the phenomenal world
James held that the basic cognitive content of all religions have:
1) an awareness that there is something wrong with us as we naturally are
2) an awareness that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers
Religion and the transcendent
Religious experience implies a dimension that is called the Transcendent
The transcendent is with whom religious experience happens. The transcendent is many things and not limited to any conceptualizations of a personal or impersonal God.
Religious experience always involves a transcendent dimension.
Religious experience involves both self-transcendence and a transcendent realm.
"In order to go beyond, there must be a Beyond (real or imagined) toward which as in which the religious experience moves" (35).
The Transcendent discloses itself and evokes a response from the individual experiencing the Transcendent.
Religious Experience involves a total commitment
Religious experience involves an a awareness of the Transcendent and an awareness of it as ultimate and as demanding an ultimate commitment.
In religion, individuals give a total commitment to the whole universe.
Experience is religious in nature if it involves ultimate commitment to the Ultimate.
Religious experience involves at least two fundamental factors:
1) An awareness of the Transcendent
2) a total commitment to it as the ultimate
"Religious experience is universal. It involves two basic elements: an awareness of the Transcendent and a total commitment to the Transcendent" (39).
The Transcendent is necessary to the fulfillment of man's fundamental drive to transcend.
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Part 2 The Characteristics of Religious Experience
In order for an experience to be a religious experience it must:
1) Involve awareness of the Transcendent
2) Involve a person making an ultimate commitment to the Transcendent
Religious Experience Involves an Awareness of the Transcendent
Whatever the description or name for the Transcendent, there is something, real or unreal, which goes beyond the individual in which or by which he transcends his finite conditions.
Some Paradigms for the Meaning of Transcendence
Paul M. van Buren believed that all language used as God-language or its equivalent is a dead language.
Ian T. Ramsey holds that metaphors and odd words have a power of disclosure. These odd phrases, metaphors and tautologies have deeper meanings than can be linguistically expressed.
The need for self-transcendence
"Religious experience involves the need to transcend the unalterable displeasures of life" (30).
Peter Koëstenbaum's description of religion: "man's effort to do something about the desperate condition of his own finitude" (30-31).
Sigmund Freud depicted religion as the human search for a cosmic father.
Rudolf Bultmann defined religion as a human longing to escape this world by discovering a sphere above this world.
Walter Kaufmann - Religion is rooted in man's goal to transcend himself. Man is the ape that wants to be god and man is the God-intoxicated ape.
Jean-Paul Sartre believed man's project is to become God.
A human being is that which needs self-transcendence.
Koëstenbaum held that love is an "a priori category by which the religious person unifies his world and overcomes the opposing otherness and attains self-fulfillment" (31).
Religious experience characteristically involves some means by which a person can self-transcend or "go beyond his own frustrating limitations" (32)
Chris Linehan: Then would not a failure to transcend one's self be a failed religious experience, but a religious experience nonetheless?
The Necessity of the Transcendent Other in Religious Experience
In order to have a religious experience one must believe that a Transcendent thing exists outside of one's self.
Religion is an "I-Thou" relationship, not an "I-I" relationship.
The Unity of Meaning of the Transcendent
Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that multiplicity of content of experience and expression is necessary for the complete manifestation of religion.
William James held that this plurality is necessary to fit the plurality of human needs.
William James argued that all religions have three common characteristics:
1) That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe
2) that union with that higher universe is our end
3) prayer is a process wherein work is done and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects within the phenomenal world
James held that the basic cognitive content of all religions have:
1) an awareness that there is something wrong with us as we naturally are
2) an awareness that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers
Religion and the transcendent
Religious experience implies a dimension that is called the Transcendent
The transcendent is with whom religious experience happens. The transcendent is many things and not limited to any conceptualizations of a personal or impersonal God.
Religious experience always involves a transcendent dimension.
Religious experience involves both self-transcendence and a transcendent realm.
"In order to go beyond, there must be a Beyond (real or imagined) toward which as in which the religious experience moves" (35).
The Transcendent discloses itself and evokes a response from the individual experiencing the Transcendent.
Religious Experience involves a total commitment
Religious experience involves an a awareness of the Transcendent and an awareness of it as ultimate and as demanding an ultimate commitment.
In religion, individuals give a total commitment to the whole universe.
Experience is religious in nature if it involves ultimate commitment to the Ultimate.
Religious experience involves at least two fundamental factors:
1) An awareness of the Transcendent
2) a total commitment to it as the ultimate
"Religious experience is universal. It involves two basic elements: an awareness of the Transcendent and a total commitment to the Transcendent" (39).
The Transcendent is necessary to the fulfillment of man's fundamental drive to transcend.
God and Experience
(Originally written February 27, 2007 in Book 13)
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Eugene, OR 2003
Part 1 - God and Experience
1. The Nature of Religious Experience
"Religion is an experiential issue, not a merely intellectual one" (Geisler, 13).
The Meaning of Experience
Experience is the awareness of a subject that individuals have.
Experience can be viewed two ways:
1) Generally
2) Specifically
General experience is the totality of consciousness.
Specific experience is the experience of a certain event in one's life.
Experience in general is the basis for particular experiences.
Primary awareness is the most basic level of experience. It's the basic unreflective consciousness of an individual.
Secondary awareness is the consciousness of being conscious. Remembering, reflecting, relating and reasoning occur in secondary awareness.
Secondary awareness presupposes primary and awareness.
The Meaning of Religion
Religion is difficult to define in a universally accepted way.
By using Wittgenstein's notion of "family resemblance", philosophers of religion can state that no two religions have identical characteristics, but all religions exhibit typical characteristics to some degree.
Awareness of the Transcendent is usually included in most definitions of religion.
There are at least two senses in which religious experience involves transcendence:
1) Self-Transcendence: the process of overcoming the conditions of one's finitude
2) The Transcendent: the object of religious experience
The Christian God is one form of the Transcendent. The two terms are not equivalent.
Transcendent means two things:
1) Going beyond one's immediate consciousness while is somehow always known to be there.
2) Religious transcendent is the ultimate, that which is Beyond beyond where no more beyonds can be sought for.
Religious Experience Distinguished from other experiences
Religious experience is often closely associated with three other types of experience:
1) Moral
2) Aesthetic
3) Secular
Religious experience in contrast to moral experience
Some equate religious experience and moral experience. Kant defined religion as "the recognition of all duties as divine commands".
Soren Kierkegaard drew the sharpest distinction between a moral duty and a religious duty. Moral duties express one's universal duty, but that religious duties hold the individual as a particular as higher than the universal. Basically Kierkegaard claimed that a moral experience responds to a moral law, whereas a religious experience responds to the moral Law-giver.
Morality is a responsibility to the world; religion is a responsibility to beyond the world. "Morality tells a person what he ought to do; religion can help him do it" (20).
A religious experience has a broader scope of commitment, the commitment is different in kind, the object is higher, and its object has the power to overcome and unify.
"Morality is a matter of duty; religion is a matter also of desire" (21).
Moral mistakes can be overcome by religious experience.
Religious Experience in contrast to Aesthetic Experience
Schleiermacher states that science is speculative, art is practical and religion is intuitive.
Kierkegaard views the aesthetic, moral and religious as three dimensions of one's life:
Aesthetic - level of feeling
Ethical - level of deciding
Religious - level of existing
Aesthetic is simply knowing, religion is what one chooses to live.
"Aesthetics involves a sense of wonder and amazement; religion involves a sense of worship and adoration" (24).
The religious experience experiences what is ultimate; the aesthetic experience, regardless of how profound, is not ultimate.
Religious Experience in contrast to purely secular experience
There is a difference between humanistic and secular experience.
Humanistic experience can still be an experience of that which is transcendent.
"The fact that purely secular experiences are difficult to find is testimony to how incurably religious man is" (25).
That which is unable or unwilling to transcend in any direction is non-religious.
The transcendent is difficult to find, so some have given up the search. Others are completely unwilling to search for it.
Some refuse to commit to the Transcendent because they wish to honor themselves as the ultimate.
There are two ways in which a person can be irreligious or purely humanistic:
1) He is unable to see the Transcendent
2) He is unwilling to submit to it
The universality and reality of religious experience
Few, if any, have attained a state of complete secularism. "Most secular experience is quasi religious" (26)
Human kind as a whole has been religious. "To be human means to reach toward God" (27).
"The mere universality of religious experience is by no means a guarantee of its reality or a sure indication of its unreality" (27).
Philosophy of Religion 2nd Edition
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Eugene, OR 2003
Part 1 - God and Experience
1. The Nature of Religious Experience
"Religion is an experiential issue, not a merely intellectual one" (Geisler, 13).
The Meaning of Experience
Experience is the awareness of a subject that individuals have.
Experience can be viewed two ways:
1) Generally
2) Specifically
General experience is the totality of consciousness.
Specific experience is the experience of a certain event in one's life.
Experience in general is the basis for particular experiences.
Primary awareness is the most basic level of experience. It's the basic unreflective consciousness of an individual.
Secondary awareness is the consciousness of being conscious. Remembering, reflecting, relating and reasoning occur in secondary awareness.
Secondary awareness presupposes primary and awareness.
The Meaning of Religion
Religion is difficult to define in a universally accepted way.
By using Wittgenstein's notion of "family resemblance", philosophers of religion can state that no two religions have identical characteristics, but all religions exhibit typical characteristics to some degree.
Awareness of the Transcendent is usually included in most definitions of religion.
There are at least two senses in which religious experience involves transcendence:
1) Self-Transcendence: the process of overcoming the conditions of one's finitude
2) The Transcendent: the object of religious experience
The Christian God is one form of the Transcendent. The two terms are not equivalent.
Transcendent means two things:
1) Going beyond one's immediate consciousness while is somehow always known to be there.
2) Religious transcendent is the ultimate, that which is Beyond beyond where no more beyonds can be sought for.
Religious Experience Distinguished from other experiences
Religious experience is often closely associated with three other types of experience:
1) Moral
2) Aesthetic
3) Secular
Religious experience in contrast to moral experience
Some equate religious experience and moral experience. Kant defined religion as "the recognition of all duties as divine commands".
Soren Kierkegaard drew the sharpest distinction between a moral duty and a religious duty. Moral duties express one's universal duty, but that religious duties hold the individual as a particular as higher than the universal. Basically Kierkegaard claimed that a moral experience responds to a moral law, whereas a religious experience responds to the moral Law-giver.
Morality is a responsibility to the world; religion is a responsibility to beyond the world. "Morality tells a person what he ought to do; religion can help him do it" (20).
A religious experience has a broader scope of commitment, the commitment is different in kind, the object is higher, and its object has the power to overcome and unify.
"Morality is a matter of duty; religion is a matter also of desire" (21).
Moral mistakes can be overcome by religious experience.
Religious Experience in contrast to Aesthetic Experience
Schleiermacher states that science is speculative, art is practical and religion is intuitive.
Kierkegaard views the aesthetic, moral and religious as three dimensions of one's life:
Aesthetic - level of feeling
Ethical - level of deciding
Religious - level of existing
Aesthetic is simply knowing, religion is what one chooses to live.
"Aesthetics involves a sense of wonder and amazement; religion involves a sense of worship and adoration" (24).
The religious experience experiences what is ultimate; the aesthetic experience, regardless of how profound, is not ultimate.
Religious Experience in contrast to purely secular experience
There is a difference between humanistic and secular experience.
Humanistic experience can still be an experience of that which is transcendent.
"The fact that purely secular experiences are difficult to find is testimony to how incurably religious man is" (25).
That which is unable or unwilling to transcend in any direction is non-religious.
The transcendent is difficult to find, so some have given up the search. Others are completely unwilling to search for it.
Some refuse to commit to the Transcendent because they wish to honor themselves as the ultimate.
There are two ways in which a person can be irreligious or purely humanistic:
1) He is unable to see the Transcendent
2) He is unwilling to submit to it
The universality and reality of religious experience
Few, if any, have attained a state of complete secularism. "Most secular experience is quasi religious" (26)
Human kind as a whole has been religious. "To be human means to reach toward God" (27).
"The mere universality of religious experience is by no means a guarantee of its reality or a sure indication of its unreality" (27).
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Hegel - Raymond Plant
(Originally written April 22, 2006 in Book 1)
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
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