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Single Idea 6917

[filed under theme 28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity ]

Full Idea

In Hegel the essence of God is actually nothing other than the essence of thought, or thought abstracted from the ego, that is, from the one who thinks.

Gist of Idea

God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker

Source

report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §23

Book Ref

Feuerbach,Ludwig: 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', ed/tr. Vogel,M [Hackett 1986], p.36


A Reaction

Presumably Descartes' Cogito is the origin for this train of thought. This is Feuerbach's reading of Hegel, but the former was keen on the idea of God as idealised humanity.


The 28 ideas from 'Phenomenology of Spirit'

Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The structure of reason is a social and historical achievement [Hegel, by Pinkard]
I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel, by Hegel]
Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Experience is immediacy, unity, forces, self-awareness, reason, culture, absolute being [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Hegel tried to avoid Kant's dualism of neutral intuitions and imposed concepts [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Hegel claims knowledge of self presupposes desire, and hence objects [Hegel, by Scruton]
For Hegel knowledge of self presupposes objects, and also a public and moral social world [Hegel, by Scruton]
Modern life needs individuality, but must recognise that human agency is social [Hegel, by Pinkard]
History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom [Hegel]
Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Hegel, by Aho]
God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Hegel, by Feuerbach]
Hegel made the last attempt to restore Christianity, which philosophy had destroyed [Hegel, by Feuerbach]
Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself [Hegel]
Consciousness derives its criterion of knowledge from direct knowledge of its own being [Hegel]
Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel]
The God of revealed religion can only be understood through pure speculative knowledge [Hegel]
Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel]
The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited [Hegel]
In the Absolute everything is the same [Hegel]
The true is the whole [Hegel]
The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness [Hegel]
The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method [Hegel]
Truth does not come from giving reasons for and against propositions [Hegel]
Science confronts the inner necessities of objects [Hegel]
Being is Thought [Hegel]
Without philosophy, science is barren and futile [Hegel]
Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds [Hegel]