Combining Texts

Ideas for 'After Finitude', 'Treatise of Human Nature, Appendix' and 'Logic (Encyclopedia I)'

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6 ideas

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature

15618	If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel]
	Full Idea: When the concept of God is apprehended merely as that of the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God becomes for us a mere Beyond, and there can be no further talk of the cognition of God.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §36 Add)

15635	The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel]
	Full Idea: In earlier times, every type of so-called anthropomorphic representation was banished from God as finite, and hence unworthy of the Infinite; and as a result he had already grown into something remarkably empty.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62 Rem)
	A reaction: Hegel favoured Christianity, because of its human aspect. His description fits Islam, where indeed the concept of God seems so drain of particularity that there is little in it to doubt, which might explain the durability of that religion.

21980	God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel]
	Full Idea: It is true that God ...is the absolute thing: he is however no less the absolute person. That he is the absolute person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.214), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6
	A reaction: Moore says Hegel was a Spinozist, in his commitment to a single substance, but his idea of God is very different, presumably because consciousness and concepts are so important to Hegel. Hegel needs a Lockean abstract notion of 'person' here.

28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / a. Ontological Proof

15633	We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel]
	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.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §51)
	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.

19653	The ontological proof of a necessary God ensures a reality external to the mind [Meillassoux]
	Full Idea: Since Descartes conceives of God as existing necessarily, whether I exist to think of him or not, Descartes assures me of a possible access to an absolute reality - a Great Outdoors that is not a correlate of my thought.
	From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2)
	A reaction: His point is that the ontological argument should be seen as part of the scientific revolution, and not an anomaly within it. Interesting.

28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism

19658	Now that the absolute is unthinkable, even atheism is just another religious belief (though nihilist) [Meillassoux]
	Full Idea: Once the absolute has become unthinkable, even atheism, which also targets God's inexistence in the manner of an absolute, is reduced to a mere belief, and hence to a religion, albeit of the nihilist kind.
	From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2)
	A reaction: An interesting claim. Rather hard to agree or disagree, though the idea that atheism must qualify as a religion seems odd. If it is unqualified it does have the grand quality of a religion, but if it is fallibilist it just seems like an attitude.