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G.W.F. Hegel on Art, Religion, and Philosophy
- GenresPhilosophy
324 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1970
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2,187 books2,570 followersGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of German Idealism. Influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism and Rousseau's politics, Hegel formulated an elaborate system of historical development of ethics, government, and religion through the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute. Hegel was one of the most well-known historicist philosopher, and his thought presaged continental philosophy, including postmodernism. His system was inverted into a materialist ideology by Karl Marx, originally a member of the Young Hegelian faction.
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October 11, 2024
COLLECTIONS OF HEGEL’S WRITINGS ON THESE THREE SUBJECT AREAS
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German Idealist philosopher, who was very influential on later Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion, and even Existentialism [e.g., Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'].
He states, “Now, if the beautiful is in fact to be known according to its essence and conception, this is only possible with the help of the thinking idea, by means of which the logico-metaphysical nature of the Idea as such, as also that of the particular Idea of the beautiful, enters into the thinking consciousness. But the study of the beautiful in its separate nature and in its own Idea may itself turn into an abstract Metaphysic… We must understand this Idea more profoundly and more in the concrete, for the emptiness of content which characterizes the Platonic Idea is no longer satisfactory to the fuller philosophical wants of the mind of today.” (Pg. 46-47)
He observes, “For, on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common reality and earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty, hard driven by nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and their enjoyments. On the other side, he exalts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom, imposes on himself as a WILL universal laws and attributions, strips the world of its living and flourishing reality and dissolves it into abstractions, inasmuch as the mind is put upon vindicating its rights and its dignity simply by denying the rights of nature and maltreating it, thereby retaliating the oppression and violence which itself has experienced from nature.” (Pg. 85)
He says, “In the sphere of the romantic, the Idea… has to reveal itself in the medium of spirit and feelings as perfected in itself. And it is because of this higher perfection that it withdraws itself from any adequate union with the external element, inasmuch as it can seek and achieve its true reality and revelation nowhere but in itself. This we take as in the abstract the character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, which represent the three relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the sphere of art. They consist in the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the Ideas as the true Idea of beauty.” (Pg. 117)
He explains, “it is necessary to recollect generally what object we have before us in the philosophy of religion, and what is our ordinary idea of religion. We know that … religion is for our consciousness that region in which all the enigmas of the world are solved… and where the voice of the heart’s pain is silenced---the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace… it is by reason of his being spirit that man is man. And from man as spirit proceed all the many developments of the sciences and the arts, the interests of political life, and all those conditions which have reference to man’s freedom and will. But… all that has worth and dignity for man, all wherein he seeks his happiness, his glory, and his pride, finds its ultimate centre in religion, in the thought, the consciousness, and the feeling of God. Thus God is the beginning of all things and the end of all things.” (Pg. 128-129)
He notes, “A speculative philosophy is the consciousness of the Idea, so that everything is apprehended as Idea; the Idea, however, is the True in thought, and not mere sensuous contemplation or in ordinary conception… Religion… is itself the standpoint of the consciousness of the True, which is in and for itself, and is consequently the stage of spirit at which the speculative content generally is object consciousness. Religion is not consciousness of this or that truth individual objects, but of the absolute truth, of truth as the universal, the all-comprehending, outside of which there lies nothing at all.” (Pg. 147-148)
He asserts, “Thus if philosophy has always been regarded as the opponent of the doctrines of the Church, it cannot any longer be such, since these doctrines, which it seemed to threaten with destruction, are no longer regarded by general conviction as of importance. A great part of the danger which threatens philosophy from this side when she considers these dogmas in order to comprehend them ought to thus be taken away, and so philosophy can take up a more untrammeled attitude with regard to dogmas which have so much sunk in interest with theologians themselves.” (Pg. 164-165)
He states, “For with the thought that all objective determinateness has converged in the inwardness of subjectivity, the conviction is bound up that God gives revelation in an immediate way in man; that religion consists just in this, that man has immediate knowledge of God. This immediate knowing is called reason, and also faith, but in a sense other than that in which the Church takes faith. All knowledge, all conviction, all piety… is based on the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of God exists immediately with the consciousness of itself.” (Pg. 166-167)
He says, “What the history of philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” (Pg. 210)
He suggests, “This is the function of our own and of every age: to grasp the knowledge which is already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it still further and to raise it to a higher level. In this appropriating it to ourselves we made it into something different from what it was before. On the presupposition of an already existing intellectual world which is transformed in our appropriation of it, depends the fact that philosophy can only arise in connection with previous philosophy, from which of necessity it has arisen. The course of history does not show us the becoming of things foreign to us, but the becoming of ourselves and of our own knowledge.” (Pg. 212) He adds, “We must, however, consider it best when thought does not pursue anything else, but is occupied only with itself… when it has sought and found itself. The history which we have before us is the history of thought finding itself…” (Pg. 213)
He observes, “in reference to this Idea, I maintain that the sequence in the systems of philosophy in history is similar to the sequence in the logical deduction of the conceptual determinations of the Idea. I maintain that if the fundamental conceptions of the systems appearing in the history of philosophy be entirely divested of what regards their outward form… the various stages in the determination of the Idea are found in their logical notion. Conversely in the logical progression taken for itself, there is… the progression of historical manifestations.” (Pg. 237)
He concludes, “The final end is to think the absolute as mind, as the universal, that which, when the infinite bounty of the notion in its reality freely emits its determinations from itself, wholly impresses itself upon and imparts itself to them, so that they may be indifferently outside of or in conflict with one another, but so that these totalities are one only, not alone implicitly… but explicitly identical, the determinations of their difference being thus explicitly made ideal.” (Pg. 311)
The selections included in this collection are well-chosen, and will be of great help to anyone studying Hegel.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German Idealist philosopher, who was very influential on later Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion, and even Existentialism [e.g., Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'].
He states, “Now, if the beautiful is in fact to be known according to its essence and conception, this is only possible with the help of the thinking idea, by means of which the logico-metaphysical nature of the Idea as such, as also that of the particular Idea of the beautiful, enters into the thinking consciousness. But the study of the beautiful in its separate nature and in its own Idea may itself turn into an abstract Metaphysic… We must understand this Idea more profoundly and more in the concrete, for the emptiness of content which characterizes the Platonic Idea is no longer satisfactory to the fuller philosophical wants of the mind of today.” (Pg. 46-47)
He observes, “For, on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common reality and earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty, hard driven by nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and their enjoyments. On the other side, he exalts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom, imposes on himself as a WILL universal laws and attributions, strips the world of its living and flourishing reality and dissolves it into abstractions, inasmuch as the mind is put upon vindicating its rights and its dignity simply by denying the rights of nature and maltreating it, thereby retaliating the oppression and violence which itself has experienced from nature.” (Pg. 85)
He says, “In the sphere of the romantic, the Idea… has to reveal itself in the medium of spirit and feelings as perfected in itself. And it is because of this higher perfection that it withdraws itself from any adequate union with the external element, inasmuch as it can seek and achieve its true reality and revelation nowhere but in itself. This we take as in the abstract the character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, which represent the three relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the sphere of art. They consist in the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the Ideas as the true Idea of beauty.” (Pg. 117)
He explains, “it is necessary to recollect generally what object we have before us in the philosophy of religion, and what is our ordinary idea of religion. We know that … religion is for our consciousness that region in which all the enigmas of the world are solved… and where the voice of the heart’s pain is silenced---the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace… it is by reason of his being spirit that man is man. And from man as spirit proceed all the many developments of the sciences and the arts, the interests of political life, and all those conditions which have reference to man’s freedom and will. But… all that has worth and dignity for man, all wherein he seeks his happiness, his glory, and his pride, finds its ultimate centre in religion, in the thought, the consciousness, and the feeling of God. Thus God is the beginning of all things and the end of all things.” (Pg. 128-129)
He notes, “A speculative philosophy is the consciousness of the Idea, so that everything is apprehended as Idea; the Idea, however, is the True in thought, and not mere sensuous contemplation or in ordinary conception… Religion… is itself the standpoint of the consciousness of the True, which is in and for itself, and is consequently the stage of spirit at which the speculative content generally is object consciousness. Religion is not consciousness of this or that truth individual objects, but of the absolute truth, of truth as the universal, the all-comprehending, outside of which there lies nothing at all.” (Pg. 147-148)
He asserts, “Thus if philosophy has always been regarded as the opponent of the doctrines of the Church, it cannot any longer be such, since these doctrines, which it seemed to threaten with destruction, are no longer regarded by general conviction as of importance. A great part of the danger which threatens philosophy from this side when she considers these dogmas in order to comprehend them ought to thus be taken away, and so philosophy can take up a more untrammeled attitude with regard to dogmas which have so much sunk in interest with theologians themselves.” (Pg. 164-165)
He states, “For with the thought that all objective determinateness has converged in the inwardness of subjectivity, the conviction is bound up that God gives revelation in an immediate way in man; that religion consists just in this, that man has immediate knowledge of God. This immediate knowing is called reason, and also faith, but in a sense other than that in which the Church takes faith. All knowledge, all conviction, all piety… is based on the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of God exists immediately with the consciousness of itself.” (Pg. 166-167)
He says, “What the history of philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” (Pg. 210)
He suggests, “This is the function of our own and of every age: to grasp the knowledge which is already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it still further and to raise it to a higher level. In this appropriating it to ourselves we made it into something different from what it was before. On the presupposition of an already existing intellectual world which is transformed in our appropriation of it, depends the fact that philosophy can only arise in connection with previous philosophy, from which of necessity it has arisen. The course of history does not show us the becoming of things foreign to us, but the becoming of ourselves and of our own knowledge.” (Pg. 212) He adds, “We must, however, consider it best when thought does not pursue anything else, but is occupied only with itself… when it has sought and found itself. The history which we have before us is the history of thought finding itself…” (Pg. 213)
He observes, “in reference to this Idea, I maintain that the sequence in the systems of philosophy in history is similar to the sequence in the logical deduction of the conceptual determinations of the Idea. I maintain that if the fundamental conceptions of the systems appearing in the history of philosophy be entirely divested of what regards their outward form… the various stages in the determination of the Idea are found in their logical notion. Conversely in the logical progression taken for itself, there is… the progression of historical manifestations.” (Pg. 237)
He concludes, “The final end is to think the absolute as mind, as the universal, that which, when the infinite bounty of the notion in its reality freely emits its determinations from itself, wholly impresses itself upon and imparts itself to them, so that they may be indifferently outside of or in conflict with one another, but so that these totalities are one only, not alone implicitly… but explicitly identical, the determinations of their difference being thus explicitly made ideal.” (Pg. 311)
The selections included in this collection are well-chosen, and will be of great help to anyone studying Hegel.
Displaying 1 of 1 review