TYPICAL MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF GOD—(Continued).
ANALYSIS. | REFERENCES. |
I. Typical Views of God—Philosophers: 6. Schleiermacher; 7. Hegel; 8. Schelling; 9. Spencer; 10. Fiske. | The works cited in Lesson xxvii and xxviii, will be available in this lesson; also the works quoted in the notes of this lesson. The notes aim to convey in condensed form the generalized view of each Philosopher quoted. They make difficult reading, but—master them. |
SPECIAL TEXT: "I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith." Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Ch. i, 13.
NOTES.
1. Schleiermacher's Conception of God: Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, 1768; died at Berlin, 1834. The primary thought of God for Schleiermacher, is that of Feeling, which apprehends the unity of things in a single and immediate act of consciousness. "He regards the God-consciousness as immediate. The direct organ of the Knowledge of God is feeling." * * * * "The infinite is not outside the world of phenomena. On the contrary the latter exists within the 'Infinite One.' The 'Infinite One' is the completion of the series of conditioned existences, and not something separated from them. 'The Infinite exists in the finite.' The Infinite One 'is a living Spirituality, dynamically conceived, in which thought holds the primacy.'" (Modern Conception of God—Leighton—p. 93).
Schleiermacher is contrasted with Spinoza, by one author, in the following manner (For Spinoza views see note I, Lesson XXIX.):
"Spinoza's Absolute is the static indifference-point of an infinite number of attributes, of which two, thought and extension, are known to us. Moreover, Schleiermacher's most original and important philosophical doctrine, that of the worth of individuality, separated him from Spinoza. Whilst the latter holds that Body and Soul are related only in and through the Divine substance, Schleiermacher regards every human individual as a unique manifestation of the unity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being. Hence, human individuality is with him a sacred and significant manifestation of the Absolute." (Ibid, p. 94).
2. Hegel—Extreme Idealist: Born at Stuttgart, 1770. "Hegel gives to idealism its full systematic development" (Elmendorf). He conceives the Absolute "as wholly immanent in the temporal world of human experience. He labors to subjugate all spheres of existence, every phase of human experience to the dominion of the immanent Divine Reason" (Leighton, "Typical Modern Conceptions of God," Introduction). "A reason-derived Knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy." (Wallace, "The Logic of Hegel," p. 73). "God is for him [Hegel] the self-conditioning, self-centered totality of all that is, i. e., the ultimate unity" (Leighton, "Typical Conceptions of God," p. 35). "Truth, for him, is the agreement of a thought content with itself; i. e., self-consistency" (Ibid, p. 36). "Hegel analyzes the notion of self-consciousness, and puts it forward with courageous anthropomorphism as the ultimate explanation of the universe" (Ibid, p. 42). "The task of philosophy is to know God. * * * * Immediate Knowledge tells us that God is not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, He must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in His relation to them, He is the One Spirit Who pervades reality and thought. Hence, there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of Him and our mediate Knowledge of reality" (Ibid, pp. 46-47). "The three aspects of God are treated respectively under the realm of the Father; the realm of the Son; the realm of the Spirit; God is the absolute eternal Idea Who exists under these aspects" (Ibid, p. 50). "The question has been raised as to whether Hegel's God is not better described as a society than as a single person. Now, Hegel's God is certainly not an individual spirit, existing in single blessedness apart from all the contents of His universe. He therefore is not a single person in the sense in which we are individuals. But He is forever the unity of the society of individual finite spirits. In Him the scattered rays of light which issue from the multitude of finite selves, converge to a single point—to the unstained purity and translucency of an absolute self-consciousness. God, then, is the unity of spirits. The society of finite individuals exists as the object of his thought. Without them his life would be blind. Without Him they would be chaos, and anarchy, and naught."
In brief, "God," in Hegel's philosophy, "is the universal self-consciousness which comprehends within itself all concrete differences, men and things—'God is a spirit in His own concrete differences, of which every finite spirit is one.' Man truly knows God when he sees nature and himself as manifestations of God, and recognizes himself as the highest of these manifestations, capable of grasping in thought the whole of which he is a part.
"It has been doubted whether there is any place in Hegel's system for individuals. It seems to me that the most insistent note in Hegel's writings, is the emphasis on the concrete individual. He never wearies of attacking abstractions like 'being' and 'substance.' The movement of the 'Logic' is towards the category of individuality." (Modern Conceptions of God, pp. 65-66.)