more on this theme     |     more from this thinker


Single Idea 15633

[filed under theme 28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / a. Ontological Proof ]

Full Idea

One unification through which the Ideal is to be established starts from the abstraction of thinking and goes on to the determination for which being alone remains; this is the ontological proof that God is there.

Gist of Idea

We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking

Source

Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §51)

Book Ref

Hegel,Georg W.F.: 'The Hegel Reader', ed/tr. Houlgate,Stephen [Blackwell 1998], p.161


A Reaction

It should come as no surprise that a philosopher who so passionately endorses pure thinking, in opposition to empiricism, should end up endorsing the highly implausible ontological argument for God's existence. Jacquette gets existence from reason.


The 46 ideas from 'Logic (Encyclopedia I)'

In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton]
We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel]
The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel]
The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel]
Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel]
Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel]
In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel]
The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel]
True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel]
Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel]
Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel]
Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel]
Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel]
Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel]
Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel]
Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel]
If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel]
In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel]
If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel]
Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel]
Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel]
Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel]
Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel]
Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel]
Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel]
Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel]
Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel]
The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel]
Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel]
Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel]
The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel]
The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel]
We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel]
Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel]
The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel]
The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel]
Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel]
Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel]
Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel]
Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel]
God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel]
The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel]
Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel]
Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel]
Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel]