Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking (original) (raw)
Related papers
2005
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is one of the most important resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. A critical edition of these lectures was published in the 1980s, which makes possible a study of the text on a level of accuracy and insight hitherto unattainable. The present book (by the editor and translator of the critical edition) engages the speculative reconstruction of Christian theology that is accomplished by Hegel’s lectures, and it provides a close reading of the text as a whole. The first two chapters argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion is a philosophical theology focused on the concept of spirit, and they provide an overview of his writings on religion prior to the philosophy of religion. The book analyses Hegel’s conception of the object and purpose of the philosophy of religion, his critique of the theology of his time, his approach to Christianity within the framework of the co...
Towards a theological interpretation of Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectics. ‘The hill and the eye which sees it are object and subject, but between humanity and God, between spirit and spirit, there is no such cleft of objectivity subjectivity; one is to the other an other only in that one recognizes the other’ (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1827) At heart Hegel suggests man is fundamentally a religious being. Religious not in a sense of fulfilling liturgical ceremonies and thus reaching apotheosis. Religion here indicates the order of the world and the self which is not in conflict, an order in real sense of its meaning. Order -where everything is clear and thus apotheosis is reached through as a form of total knowledge. In this sense Hegel is a religious man, and according to him, all men are religious in their roots, as they are part of that ethereal world order. This quest for order thus makes his philosophy a theological one.
Hegel and Phenomenology: Introduction
Hegel Bulletin, 2017
Reaction against Hegel-which leads back to Hegel. How?', we read in Merleau-Ponty's course notes from the Collège de France (Merleau-Ponty [1954-55] 2010: 63). This interrogative marks the whole history of twentieth-century phenomenology, which is clearly indebted to Hegel's thought in significant ways. Husserl's concern with the historical and cultural life-world in the Crisis of European Sciences; Heidegger's ontological interpretation of logic and concern with the historicization of human existence; Merleau-Ponty's dialectic of the visible and invisibleall involve an implicit return to Hegelian themes and strategies. Surprisingly, however, such affinity was not acknowledged by most of the representatives of the phenomenological movement. 1 At the dawn of the phenomenological movement both Husserl and Heidegger were deeply influenced by Franz Brentano, who was virulently anti-Hegelian. In his Four Phases of Philosophy of 1895, Brentano theorized that philosophy progressed in four phases, including alternating phases of abundance and different stages of decline. Brentano diagnosed his own age as one of decline, hence he advocated a renewal of philosophy as rigorous science. According to his periodization, all great periods of growth in philosophy are characterized by the preponderance of the purely theoretical interest and develop a method proper to the subject matter (Brentano 1968: 9). In this first stage philosophy is pursued as a theoretical science. After a while, theoretical activity inevitably weakens and practical interests begin to dominate, e.g., the Stoics and Epicureans in the post-Aristotelian period. This applied phase is followed by a third phase when scepticism grows, counterbalanced by the construction of sects and dogmatic philosophies (among which he included Kant). Finally, in a fourth phase, mysticism, intuitionism and irrationalist world views, 'pseudo-philosophy', and religious Schwärmerei proliferate (e.g., Plotinus; Schelling and Hegel in recent times), leading to moral and intellectual collapse (Brentano 1968: 58). Hegel, then, was seen by Brentano as a Romantic mystic who betrayed the true spirit of scientific philosophy. Husserl rarely refers to Hegel. In the 1900 Prolegomena to his 1901 Logical Investigations he repeats the common prejudice against Hegel that he rejected the Principle of Non-Contradiction (Husserl 1975: §40). The early Husserl in his
How theological is Hegel's theology? A response to Cyril O'Regan
A defence of Hegel's 'logic of reconciliation' in the light of O'Regan's critique of Hegel in /The Heterodox Hegel/ and in /The Anatomy of Misremebering I/. It is argued that Hegel makes valid claims about certain pairs of terms (e.g. thinking/being, subject/object) but over-extends them into areas where those claims do not apply (e.g. prayer, doctrine). O'Regan (and Balthasar, in his account) make valid criticisms of Hegel but over-extend them to include his entire thought. This inhibits proper appreciation of where Hegel's generativity for theology lies, namely in his investigations into logical forms.
This essay traces the relationship between Hegel and some common portrayals of modern philosophy in the nineteenth century. I explain much of the rationale behind the neo-Kantian narrative of modern philosophy, and argue that the common division of modern philosophers into rationalists and empiricists executed a principally anti-Hegelian agenda. I then trace some failed attempts by anglophone philosophers to reconcile Hegel with the neo-Kantian history, in the interest of explaining Hegel's subsequent unpopularity in England and America. Finally, I argue that recent attempts to read Hegel in Kantian terms often rest on a misguided appropriation of an anti-Hegelian historical narrative.
Idealistic Studies, 2010
Hegel indicates toward the end of his Phenomenology of Spirit that there would be a parallelism in the categories of his later system to the various configurations of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Some general correspondences have been indicated by Otto Pöggeler and suggested by Robert Grant McRae, but I argue in this paper that there are at least four important and more specific parallels, bringing out simultaneously a similarity of content and a difference of approach and methodology in the two works: 1) in the philosophical construal of "categories"; 2) in the conceptualization of a "phenomenology"; 3) in the analysis of the dialectical relationship of religion and art; and 4) in the relationship of the history of philosophy to the Absolute.