Maverick Philosopher

Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?

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UPDATE (5/8/2024).  This from Kai Frederick Lorentzen:

You write:

" . . . It does annoy  me, however, that  Kainz doesn't supply any references.  For example, we read:

Hegel was critical of Catholicism at times, in his writings and lectures. For example, he once made a scurrilous remark about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . . .

Very interesting, but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?  Inquiring minds want to know . . . . " 

That's from § 552 of the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften where it says in context of the thought that religion is for the Selbstbewußtsein [self-consciousness] the basis of ethics and the state:

Es kann aber das Verhältnis der Unfreiheit [of the Selbstbewußtsein on the one and the content of truth on the other side - kfl] der Form nach stattfinden, obgleich der an sich seiende Inhalt der Religion der absolute Geist ist. Dieser große Unterschied, um das Bestimmtere anzugeben, findet sich innerhalb der christlichen Religion selbst, in welcher nicht das Naturelement den Inhalt des Gottes macht, noch auch ein solches in den Gehalt desselben als Moment eintritt, sondern Gott, der im Geist und in der Wahrheit gewußt wird, der Inhalt ist. Und doch wird in der katholischen Religion dieser Geist in der Wirklichkeit dem selbstbewußten Geist starr gegenübergestellt. Zunächst wird in der Hostie Gott als äußerliches Ding der religiösen Anbetung präsentiert (wogegen in der lutherischen Kirche die Hostie als solche erst und nur allein im Genusse, d.i. in der Vernichtung der Äußerlichkeit derselben, und im Glauben, d.i. in dem zugleich freien, seiner selbst gewissen Geiste, konsekriert und zum gegenwärtigen Gotte erhoben wird). Aus jenem ersten und höchsten Verhältnis der Äußerlichkeit fließen alle die anderen äußerlichen, damit unfreien, ungeistigen und abergläubischen Verhältnisse; namentlich ein Laienstand, der das Wissen der göttlichen Wahrheit wie die Direktion des Willens und Gewissens von außen her und von einem anderen Stande empfängt, welcher selbst zum Besitze jenes Wissens nicht auf geistige Weise allein gelangt, sondern wesentlich dafür einer äußerlichen Konsekration bedarf. Weiteres, die teils nur für sich die Lippen bewegende, teils darin geistlose Weise des Betens, daß das Subjekt auf die direkte Richtung zu Gott Verzicht leistet  und andere um das Beten bittet, - die Richtung der Andacht an wundertätige Bilder, ja selbst an Knochen, und die Erwartung von Wundern durch sie, - überhaupt, die Gerechtigkeit durch äußerliche Werke, ein Verdienst, das durch die Handlungen soll erworben, ja sogar auf andere übertragen werden können, usf., - alles dieses bindet den Geist unter ein Außersichsein, wodurch sein Begriff im Innersten verkannt und verkehrt und Recht und Gerechtigkeit, Sittlichkeit und Gewissen, Zurechnungsfähigkeit und Pflicht in ihrer Wurzel verdorben sind. 

(G.W.F. Hegel, Werke 10, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, pp. 356-357)

Here it is in  English:

As the inseparability of the two sides has been indicated, it may be worth while to note the separation as it appears on the side of religion. It is primarily a point of form: the attitude which self-consciousness takes to the body of truth. So long as this body of truth is the very substance or indwelling spirit of self-consciousness in its actuality, then self-consciousness in this content has the certainty of itself and is free. But if this present self-consciousness is lacking, then there may be created, in point of form, a condition of spiritual slavery, even though the implicit content of religion is absolute spirit. This great difference (to cite a specific case) comes out within the Christian religion itself, even though here it is not the nature-element in which the idea of God is embodied, and though nothing of the sort even enters as a factor into its central dogma and sole theme of a God who is known in spirit and in truth. And yet in Catholicism this spirit of all truth is in actuality set in rigid opposition to the self-conscious spirit. And, first of all, God is in the ‘host’ presented to religious adoration as an external thing. (In the Lutheran Church, on the contrary, the host as such is not at first consecrated, but in the moment of enjoyment, i.e. in the annihilation of its externality. and in the act of faith, i.e. in the free self-certain spirit: only then is it consecrated and exalted to be present God.) From that first and supreme status of externalization flows every other phase of externality - of bondage, non-spirituality, and superstition. It leads to a laity, receiving its knowledge of divine truth, as well as the direction of its will and conscience from without and from another order - which order again does not get possession of that knowledge in a spiritual way only, but to that end essentially requires an external consecration. It leads to the non-spiritual style of praying - partly as mere moving of the lips, partly in the way that the subject foregoes his right of directly addressing God, and prays others to pray - addressing his devotion to miracle- working images, even to bones, and expecting miracles from them. It leads, generally, to justification by external works, a merit which is supposed to be gained by acts, and even to be capable of being transferred to others. All this binds the spirit under an externalism by which the very meaning of spirit is perverted and misconceived at its source, and law and justice, morality and conscience, responsibility and duty are corrupted at their root.

BV: I see no reason to think that Kainz is to referring to the above passage from Hegel's Encyclopedia. In a later article I just now found, Corpus Christi and Reality, Kainz writes,

My reference was to one of Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion, in which he criticized the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, causing a Catholic student to report him to the authorities. Hegel had attempted what we might call a sick joke: he asked whether, if a mouse had come across a consecrated Host and eaten it, Catholics might be obliged to act worshipfully to the mouse, and so forth.

But again Kainz gives no reference! So I consulted Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), but found no reference to any host-eating mouse in the passage in which Hegel refers to communion, which he calls Genuss which means enjoyment but also partaking of  as in the eating or drinking of something. (In some contexts, geniesßar has the connotation, edible.) 

Back to Lorentzen:

Heavy stuff, no? Well, with a little stretch you could say that Hegel is more Lutheran here than Martin Luther himself. Luther's theological approach, as I recently learned from Volker Leppin's brilliant study Die fremde Reformation: Luthers mystische Wurzeln (München 2016: C.H. Beck), was rooted in medieval mysticism in the line of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart, whose idea to give birth to an inner divine child was strongly appreciated by Luther. Regarding extensive philosophical framing of the religious practice he became more and more critical. Here Luther's negative view of the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist finds its place: It's the Scholastics with their detailed Aristotelian understanding of the Eucharist that Luther has a problem with. The flesh and the blood of Christ is absolutely real, but no philosopher can prove how! Instead, the affection of the baptized members of the community validates the ritual. Same problem in the other direction with the merely symbolic understanding of bread and wine, as we find it expressed by Zwingli and his successors like Calvin. Here Luther suspects Neo-Platonist hubris against God.    

Lorentzen's take strikes me as basically correct. Here is a  little under four minutes of  Volker Leppin.

In his 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion Hegel mentions three views about the host or communion wafer:

According to the first, the host -- this external, sensible thing -- becomes by consecration the present God, God as a thing in the manner of an empirical 'thing.' The second view is the Lutheran one . . . here there is no transubstantiation . . . the presence of God is utterly a spiritual presence -- the consecration takes place in the faith of the subject. The third view is that the present God exists only in representation, in memory, and to this extent he does not have this immediate subjective presence. (Hodgson one-volume edition, U. of Cal Press, 1988, 480-481.)

Alles klar? 

This may help: Transubstantion, Consubstantiation, or Something Else?

Also of interest: Must Catholics Hate Hegel?

Herr Lorentzen signs off:

With best wishes!
Ex toto corde

Kai (who likes your recent Sunday meditation - Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected - a lot!)

Hegel on History: Another Case of Misattribution

Misattributed to Hegel: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." Close, but that's not what he says. 

I haven't checked the following quotations, but they look good to the eye of one who has read his fair share of the Swabian genius. HT: Seth Nimbosa

Was die Erfahrung aber und die Geschichte lehren, ist dieses, daß Völker und Regierungen niemals etwas aus der Geschichte gelernt und nach Lehren, die aus derselben zu ziehen gewesen wären, gehandelt haben. (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte)

What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. (Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, tr. H. B. Nisbet (1975))

I'll leave it to the reader to ponder the internal coherence, or rather incoherence, of the Hegelian observation.

Related:

Misattributed to Socrates

A Misattribution [of mine] Corrected

If you can show me that I have made a mistake, I will admit my error.  How many people do that? Am I now 'signaling my virtue' or setting a good example? You decide. 

Of course, it is easy to admit minor errors.  It is the big ones that we are loathe to admit.

Is Hegel Guilty of 'Epochism'?

Substack latest. 

'Medieval' is not a pejorative term!

The Owl of Minerva and the Consolations of Philosophy

It appears that a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  Collective race madness blankets the land, the dogs of destruction have been set loose, and the authorities have abdicated.

Should any of this trouble the philosopher?

Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill.  His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate.  Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

Some of us, those of the tribe of Plato, not that of Hegel, look beyond time's horizon to the topos ouranos where the heavenly Jerusalem and the heavenly Athens are one. We see this world as a vanishing quantity whose very nature is to vanish as all things vain must vanish.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

This Platonizing Owl Feels a Little Guilty . . .

. . . at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day.  It is fascinating to watch the country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  And if the philosopher is an old Platonist who has nearly had his fill of the Cave and its chiaroscuro, he is ever looking beyond this life, and while in no rush to bid it a bittersweet adieu, he is not affrighted at the coming transition either.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.  The old Platonist owl lives by the hope  that the dusk of death will lead to the Light, a light unmixed with darkness.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however; it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

On the other hand, it ain't over 'til it's over, and as citizens we must fight on, lest our spectatorship of all time and existence suffer a premature earthly termination.  The joys if not the  consolations of philosophy are possible only in certain political conditions.  We are not made of the stern stuff of Boethius though we are inspired by his example.

And so, as citizens we arm ourselves in every sense of the phrase, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

Senses of 'Abstract' with a Little Help from Hegel

For Eric Levy, who 'inspired' me to dig deeper into this material.

.......................................

Keith Campbell and others call tropes abstract particulars.  But what is it for something to be abstract?  It may be useful to sort out the different senses of 'abstract' since this term and its opposite 'concrete' are thrown around quite a lot in philosophy.  I propose that we distinguish between ontic and epistemic uses of the word. 

Ontic Senses of 'Abstract'

a. Non-spatio-temporal.  The prevalent sense of 'abstract' in the Anglosphere is:  not located in space or in time.  Candidates for abstract status in this sense: sets, numbers, propositions, unexemplified universals.  The set of prime numbers less than 10 is nowhere to be found in space for the simple reason that it is not in space.    If you say it is, then tell me where it is. The same holds for all sets as sets are understood in set theory.   (My chess set is not a set in this sense.)  Nor are sets in time, although this is less clear: one could argue that they, or rather some of them, are omnitemporal, that they exist at every time. That {1, 3, 5, 7, 9} should exist at some times but not others smacks of absurdity, but it doesn't sound absurd to say that this set  exists at all times. 

This wrinkle notwithstanding, sets are among the candidates for abstract status in the (a) sense.

The same goes for numbers.  They are non-spatio-temporal.

If you understand a proposition to be the Fregean sense of a declarative sentence from which all indexical elements, including tenses of verbs, have been extruded, then propositions so understood are candidates for abstract status in sense (a).

Suppose perfect justice is a universal and suppose there is no God. Then perfect justice is an unexemplified universal.  If there are unexemplified universals, then they are abstract in the (a) sense.

This (a) criterion implies that God is an abstract object.  For God, as classically conceived, is not in space or in time, and this despite the divine omnipresence.  But surely there is a huge different between God who acts, even if, as impassible, he cannot be acted upon, and sets, numbers, propositions and the like that are incapable of either acting or being acted upon.  And so we are led to a second understanding of 'abstract' as that which is:

b. Causally inert.  Much of what is abstract in the (a) sense will be causally inert and thus abstract in the (b) sense.  And vice versa.  My cat can bite me, but the set having him as its sole member cannot bite me.  Nor can I bite this singleton or toss it across the room, as I can the cat.  Sets are abstract  in that they cannot act or be acted upon.  A less robust way of putting it:  Sets cannot be the terms of causal relations.  This formulation is neutral on the question whether causation involves agency in any sense. 

God and Kantian noumenal agents show that the first two criteria come apart.  God is abstract in the (a) sense but not in the (b) sense.  The same goes for noumenal agents which, as noumenal, are not in space or time, but which, as agents are capable of initiating causal event-sequences. 

It may also be that there are items that are causally inert but located in space and time.  (Spatio-temporal positions perhaps?)

So perhaps we should spring for a disjunctive criterion according to which the abstract is that which is:

c. Non-spatio-temporal or causally inert.  This would imply that God and Socrates are both concrete.

d. On a fourth construal of 'abstract'  an item is abstract just in case it is incomplete.  To get a sense of what I am driving at, consider the following from Hegel's essay Who Thinks Abstractly?

A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome . . . .

This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality.

The murderer is not just a murderer; he is other things besides: a father, a son, a husband, a handsome devil, a lover of dogs, a strong chess player . . . .  In general, the being of anything that actually exists cannot be reduced to one of its qualities.  To acquiesce in such a reduction is to think abstractly: it is to abstract from the full reality of thing in order to focus on one of its determinations.  But here we should distinguish between legitimate abstraction and vicious abstraction.  What Hegel is railing against is vicious abstraction.

Now I am not interested here in explaining Hegel.  I am using him for my purposes, one of which is to pin down a classical as opposed to a Quinean sense of 'abstract.'  Accordingly, an abstract entity in the (d) sense   is an entity that is got before the mind by an act of abstraction.  But please note that if epistemic access to an entity is via abstraction, it does not follow that the entity is a merely intentional object.  What I am trying to articulate is a fourth ontic sense of 'abstract,' not an epistemic/doxastic/intentional sense.  It could well be that there are incomplete entities, where an entity is anything that exists.  (As I use 'item,' an item may or may not exist, so as not to beg the question against the great Austrian philosopher Alexius von Meinong.)

We have now arrived at the sense of 'abstract' relevant to trope theory.  Here is a red round spot on a white piece of paper.  When I direct my eyes to the spot I see red, a particular shade of red.  That is a datum.  On the trope theory, the red that I see is a particular, an unrepeatable item.  It is not a universal, a repeatable item.  Thus on trope theory the red I see is numerically distinct from the red I see when I look at a numerically different spot of the same (exact shade of ) color. 

It is important to realize that one cannot resolve the question whether properties are particulars or universals phenomenologically.  That I see red here and also over there does not show that there are two rednesses.  For the phenomenological datum is consistent with redness being a universal that is located into two different places and visible in two different places.  Phenomenology alone won't cut it in philosophy; we need dialectics too.  Husserl take note!

There are philosophers who are not bundle theorists who speak of tropes.  C. B. Martin is one.  I do not approve of their hijacking of 'trope,' a term introduced by D. C. Williams, bundle theorist.  I am a bit of a prick when to comes to language.  Technical words and phrases ought to be used with close attention to their provenience.  It rankles me when 'bare particular' is used any old way when it is a terminus technicus introduced by Gustav Bergmann with a precise meaning.  Read Bergmann, and then sling 'bare particular.'

On standard trope theory, trope bundle theory, the spot -- a concrete item -- is a system of compresent tropes. It is just a bundle of tropes. There is no substratum that supports the tropes: the spot just is compresent tropes.  Furthermore, the existence of the spot is just the compresence of its tropes.  Since the spot exists contingently, the tropes are compresent contingently.  That implies that the compresent tropes can in some sense 'be' without being bundled.  (Note that tropes are bundled iff they are compresent.)  For if there were no sense in which the tropes could 'be' without being bundled, then how could one account for the contingency of a give trope bundle? 

Now if tropes can be without being bundled, then they are not products of abstraction:  they are not merely intentional items that arise before our minds when we abstract from the other features of a thing.  When I consider the redness of the spot, I leave out of consideration the roundness.  On trope theory this particular redness  really exists whether or not I bring it before my mind by a process of abstraction.  Tropes are thus incomplete entities, not incomplete intentional objects.  They are in no way mind-dependent.  They have to be entities if they are to be the ultimate ontological building blocks of ordinary concrete particulars such as our  round, red spot.

An abstract item in the (d) sense, then, is an incomplete entity.  It is not complete, i.e.,  completely determinate.  For example, a redness trope is a a property assayed as a particular.  It is the ontological ground of the datanic redness of our spot and it is this by being itself red.  Our redness trope is itself red. But that is all it is: it is just red.  This is why it is abstract in the (d) sense.  Nothing can be concrete if it is just red.  For if a concretum is red, then it is either sticky or non-sticky (by the Law of Excluded Middle) and either way a concrete red thing is either red sticky thing or a red non-sticky thing.

The Epistemic Sense of 'Abstract'

I have already alluded to this sense according to which an item is abstract iff it is brought before the mind by an act of abstraction and is only as a merely intentional object.

At this point I must take issue with my esteemed coworker in these ontological vineyards, J. P. Moreland.  He writes, ". . . Campbell follows the moderate nominalist tendency of treating 'abstract' as an epistemic, and not ontological, notion." (Universals, p. 53)  I don't think so.  The process of abstracting is epistemic, but not that which is brought before the mind by this process.  So I say that 'abstract' as Campbell uses it is an ontological or ontic notion.  After all, tropes or abstract particulars as Campbell calls them are not mere products of mental abstraction: they are mind-independent building blocks of everything including things that existed long before minds made the scene.

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I Feel a Little Guilty . . .

. . . at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day.  It is fascinating to watch the country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  And if the philosopher is an old Platonist who has nearly had his fill of the Cave and its chiaroscuro, he is ever looking beyond this life, and while in no rush to bid it a bittersweet adieu, is not affrighted at the coming transition either.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.  The old Platonist owl lives by the hope  that the dusk of death will lead to the Light, a light unmixed with darkness.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however; it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

On the other hand, it ain't over until it's over, and as citizens we must fight on, lest our spectatorship of all time and existence suffer a premature earthly termination.  The joys if not the  consolations of philosophy are possible only in certain political conditions.  We are not made of the stern stuff of Boethius though we are inspired by his example.

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Can Anyone Recommend a Good History of Philosophy?

A graduate student in philosophy asks about histories of philosophy:

Suppose I wanted, over time, to work through a text or series of texts. Which ones are worthy of consideration? I've heard good things about Copleston's 11 volumes. There's also Russell's history of western philosophy and Anthony Kenny has done a history as well. Do you recommend any of those (or perhaps another)? I should say that any history text will not supplant primary sources; it would be an addition to them.

While Bertrand Russell is entertaining, I can't recommend his history.  He wrote it for money, or rather he dictated it for money.  (When he was asked why he wrote a blurb for a certain book, he said that he had a hundred good reasons: the author paid him $100.)  For a taste, consider the following passage  from Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1945), p. 427. I found it here, but without a link and without a reference. So, exploiting the resources of my well-stocked library, I located the passage, and verified that it had been properly transcribed. Whether Russell is being entirely fair to the Arabs is a further question.  In fact, I am pretty sure that he is not being fair to Avicenna (Ibn Sina) who played a key role in the development of the metaphysics of essence and existence.

Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry; in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism; the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than that produced by the transmitters -- in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).

Copleston is good, and you might also consider Hegel.  He will broaden you and counteract the probably excessively analytic atmosphere which you now breathe.  But the Swabian genius is quirky and opinionated just like Lord Russell.  When he comes to the medieval period in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he puts on his “seven-league boots” the better to pass over this thousand year period without sullying his fine trousers. (Vol. III, 1)

Summing up the “General Standpoint of the Scholastics,” he has this to say: “...this Scholasticism on the whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we cannot return.” “Barren,” and “rubbishy” are other terms with which he describes it. (Vol. III, 94-95) The politically correct may wish to consider whether the descendants of Hegel should pay reparations to the descendants of Thomas Aquinas, et al.

ComBox open for anyone with recommendations.

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Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism

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Nietzsche and the New Atheists

Hegel on Original Sin

What follows is an excerpt from section 24 of the William Wallace translation of what is sometimes referred to as Hegel's "Lesser Logic," being Part One of The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Oxford UP first ed. 1873, 2nd 1892, 3rd 1975:

We all know the theological dogma that man’s nature is evil, tainted with what is called Original Sin. Now while we accept the dogma, we must give up the setting of incident which represents original sin as consequent upon an accidental act of the first man. For the very notion of spirit is enough to show that man is evil by nature, and it is an error to imagine that he could ever be otherwise. To such extent as man is and acts like a creature of nature, his whole behaviour is what it ought not to be. For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realise itself by its own act. Nature is for man only the starting point which he has to transform. The theological doctrine of original sin is a profound truth; but modern enlightenment prefers to believe that man is naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues true to nature.

I reject the progressivism whereby man can realize himself by his own act, but I like the poke at Rousseau at the end.

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Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?

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Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?

Howard Kainz writes,

It’s a good question. Hegel and Aquinas are certainly comparable in the sense that they treated a wide variety of topics in philosophy and theology, and unified and organized them. Another similarity resides in the prominence of theology in their writings – but with the following caveat: Whereas, in the scholastic approach adopted by Aquinas, philosophy (Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, etc.) is the “handmaid of theology,” with Hegel the relationship is inverted: theology becomes the handmaid of philosophy.

It is certainly true that for Aquinas, philosophia ancilla theologiae, "philosophy is the handmaiden of theology," where the theology in question is a reflection on, and systematization of, the data of divine revelation, and not a branch of philosophy.  But it strikes me as not quite right to say that, for Hegel, the relationship is inverted. 

First of all, in what sense is philosophy a handmaiden to theology for Aquinas? Philosophy takes us some distance toward the knowledge of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, but not all the way, and not to the truly essential.  It takes us as far as we can go on the basis of experience and discursive reason unaided by revelation  But if we would know the whole truth about the ultimate matters, and indeed the saving truth, then we must accept divine revelation.  We can know that God exists by unaided reason, for example, but not that God is triune.  Thus, for Aquinas, theology supplements and completes what we can know by our own powers.  It neither contradicts the latter, nor does it express it in a more adequate form: it goes beyond it.  A second sense in which philosophy is ancillary to theology is that philosophy supplies the tools of theology, though not its data.  It supplies concepts and argumentative procedures with which the data of revelation can be articulated and organized and shown to be rationally acceptable, a reasoned faith, though not a rationally demonstrable faith.

For Hegel, however, the content of theology and philosophy are the same; it is just that philosophy expresses this content in an adequate conceptual manner whereas theology expresses it in an inadequate pictorial manner.  To throw some Hegelian jargon, the thinking of theology is vorstellendes Denken; the thinking of philosophy is superior: begriffliches Denken. If Hegel were Aquinas on his head, then Hegel would have to be saying that philosophy brings in new content beyond that of theology.  But that's not his view.  And if Aquinas were Hegel on his head, then Aquinas would have to be saying that the content of philosophy and theology is the same, but that philosophy expresses it inadequately.  And that is not what he is saying.

Hegel clearly subordinates theology to philosophy but it is incorrect to say that, for Hegel, theology is the handmaiden of philosophy in the way that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology for Aquinas.

 This cavil having been lodged, Kainz's piece is a useful little piece of journalism for those who don't know anything about this topic. 

It does annoy  me, however, that  Kainz doesn't supply any references.  For example, we read:

Hegel was critical of Catholicism at times, in his writings and lectures. For example, he once made a scurrilous remark about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . . .

Very interesting, but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Would it have killed Kainz to insert a few references into his piece?  Then a serious dude like me who has almost the whole of Hegel in German and English in his personal library could check the context and amplify his knowledge of the work of the Swabian genius.

Related:  Is Hegel Guilty of 'Epochism'?

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At the Supermarket: I Think of Hegel's Logic

The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

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At the Supermarket: I Think of Hegel's Logic

I was cruising the booze aisle in the local supermarket yesterday in search of wines for Thursday's Thanksgiving feast.  I got into conversation with a friendly twenty-something dude who worked there.  I said I was looking for sweet vermouth.  He thought it was used to make  martinis and so I explained that martinis call for dry vermouth while the sweet stuff is an ingredient in manhattans.  He then enthused about some whisky he had been drinking.  I asked whether it was a scotch or a bourbon.  He replied, "It's whisky."  I then explained that whisky is to scotch, bourbon, rye, etc. as genus to species and that one couldn't drink whisky unless one drank scotch or bourbon, or . . . .  This didn't seem to register.

But it did remind me of another twenty-something dude whose comment about the church he attended prompted me to ask what Protestant denomination he belonged to.  He said. "I am a Presbyterian, not a Protestant."

These two incidents then put me in mind of a story Hegel tells somewhere, perhaps it's in the Lesser Logic.  A man goes to the grocer to buy fruit.  The grocer shows him apples, oranges, pears, cherries . . . .  Our man rejects each suggestion, insisting that he wants fruit.  He learns that fruit as such is not to be had.

The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

Obama won, conservatism lost, and a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  The economy is bad, the opposition fought hard and well, and the incompetent leftist won anyway.  Why? The Left promises panem and the culture's circenses have kept the masses distracted from higher concerns and real thought.  That's the answer in a sentence.

Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill.  His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate.  Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

Hegel on Wall Street

Here.

Is Hegel Guilty of 'Epochism'?

In these politically correct times we hear much of racism, sexism, ageism, speciesism, and even heterosexism. Why not then epochism, the arbitrary denigration of entire historical epochs? Some years back, a television commentator referred to the Islamist beheading of Nicholas Berg as “medieval.” As I remarked to my wife, “That fellow is slamming an entire historical epoch.”

The names of the other epochs are free of pejorative connotation even though horrors occurred in these epochs the equal of any in the medieval period. Why then are the Middle Ages singled out for special treatment? This is no mean chunk of time. It stretches from, say, the birth of Augustine in 354 A.D. , or perhaps from the closing of the Platonic Academy in 529 A. D., to the birth of Descartes in 1596, albeit with plenty of bleed-through on either end: Greek notions reach deep into the Middle Ages, while medieval notions live on in Descartes and beyond.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) counts as an epochist. When he comes to the medieval period in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he puts on his “seven-league boots” the better to pass over this thousand year period without sullying his fine trousers. (Vol. III, 1) Summing up the “General Standpoint of the Scholastics,” he has this to say: “...this Scholasticism on the whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we cannot return.” “Barren,” and “rubbishy” are other terms with which he describes it. (Vol. III, 94-95)

The politically correct may wish to consider whether the descendants of Hegel should pay reparations to the descendants of Thomas Aquinas, et al.