/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18605575]

"Allah has not the affirmative, limited aim of the Judaic God. The worship of the One is the only final aim of Mahometanism, and subjectivity has this worship for the sole occupation of its activity, combined with the design to subjugate secular existence to the One"

I find Hegel's judgment on Islam to be very idiotic when he says that it is repugnant Kantianism in the sense that there is no incorporation of negativity through "othering" of the self what with the rejection of divine immanency in the essence of God (trinity) because it sounds like something an idol-worshipper would say. All pagan religions and cults thrive on divine immanency with there being little transcendence recognized within their primitive spiritual meditations. So I don't think Absolute Transcendency of God is a bad thing because it makes us feel cold and alone but rather this coldness is a consequence of the misdirection of unrepentance.

[Anonymous No.18605635]

Why

[Anonymous No.18605677]

>>18605575
Hegel was a careerist charlatan anyway. Meanwhile, pic related was found in Goethe's private papers. For those not in the know, it says Ali is the Guardian of Allah [on earth], which is the motto of the Shi'a.

[Anonymous No.18605691]

>>18605677
>Hegel was a careerist charlatan
He really wasn’t, he was so passionate about his writings he’s recognised as the original schizo of philosophy

[Anonymous No.18605708]

>>18605691
right...

[Anonymous No.18605711]

>>18605691
His writings are nothing but senseless scribbles. Even if he was "passionate", that was just an act to complement his carefully crafted picture as le quirky philosopher.

[Anonymous No.18605724]

>>18605575
Wait, was Hegel critical of Islam? I thought that quote was a positive remark.

[Anonymous No.18605739]

>>18605575
The thing is, Hegel tried to fit everything into his philosophy of history so he had to say SOMETHING about Islam considering Christianity served as the axiom of his idealization of history. Though he gave Islam a single paragraph in his book, Islam was actually one of the biggest problems to his conception of the world-spirit because Christianity was supposed to be the end-all of all religions and dogmas of the world yet Islam came into the fray taking what should've been Christianity's spot as the last world religion.

[Anonymous No.18605760]

>>18605724
"Islam hates and proscribes everything concrete; its God is the absolute One, in relation to whom human beings retain for themselves no purpose, no private domain, nothing peculiar to themselves. Inasmuch as they exist, humans do in any case create a private domain for themselves in their inclinations and interests, and these are all the more savage and unrestrained in this case because they lack reflection.… But since human beings are in fact practical and active, their purpose can only be to bring about the veneration of the One in all humanity. Thus the religion of Islam is essentially fanatical."

[Anonymous No.18605769]

>>18605677
Goethe was a Shia?
I want this to be true but I have doubts

[Anonymous No.18605777]

>>18605769
i think it was just omnism on his part considering he was an artist

[Anonymous No.18605827]

>>18605677
>>18605769
>>18605777
Goethe once translated Voltaire's Mahomet & changed it all to blot out much harshness in the original depiction of the prophet. He did however also voice a wish to strangle V for mistreating the Bible so it's more of an artist's omnism yeah.

[Anonymous No.18605870]

>>18605677
Based Goethe

[Anonymous No.18605880]

>>18605827
>harshness
Based Muhammad ﷺ making libshits seethe

[Anonymous No.18605882]

>>18605769
Nobody knows, but it is likely (after all, Shias are supposed to be secretive and do Taqqiyyah). "Ali Wali Allah" can be found in random places in his papers.

[Anonymous No.18605898]

>>18605827
Sounds like something a secret convert would do desu

[Anonymous No.18606047]

>>18605677
>taking Goethe's fan fiction serious
NGMI

[Anonymous No.18606068]

>>18606047
>Goethe's fan fiction
Which one is this?

[Anonymous No.18606070]

>>18605882
holy based

[Anonymous No.18606081]

>>18606047
Also keep in mind his views on Christianity. He said he believed in God but he did not believe Jesus was God, which is pretty much the Islamic position.

[Anonymous No.18606112]

>>18606081
>He said he believed in God but he did not believe Jesus was God, which is pretty much the Islamic position.
>Muslims invented Arianism

[Anonymous No.18606117]

http://www.themodernreligion.com/convert/convert_goethe.htm

[Anonymous No.18606132]

>>18606112
>In a letter to his son August from the 17.1.1814 (WA IV, 24, 110) he adds: "Several religious ladies of us have asked for the translation of the Coran from the library." Goethe's positive attitude towards Islam goes far beyond anyone in Germany before: He published on 24.2.1816: "The poet [Goethe]... does not refuse the suspicion that he himself is a Muslim." (WA I, 41, 86) In another poem of the "Divan" Goethe says:
>"Ndrrisch, da_ jeder in seinem Falle
>Seine besondere Meinung preist!
>Wenn Islam Gott ergeben hei_t,
>In Islam leben und sterben wir alle."
What did Goethe mean by this?

[Anonymous No.18606177]

Just goes to show that the Qur’an is a work of genius, but midwits and /pol/ kiddies are unable to realize this

[Anonymous No.18606269]

>>18606068
Divan
>>18606132
he played with the idea of peace between all Abrahamic religions. given that the closest he ever got to a muslim country was Italy, and he liked to be mysterious, it is safe to say he was an open-minded esoteric, but no muslim. btw that little stanza contradicts at least three suras I know.

[Anonymous No.18606279]

>>18606269
His private writings about Ali is not part of the Divan though.

[Anonymous No.18606294]

>>18606132
Muslim Goethe has to be of the the biggest wewuzzery of the history of literature. How do people even fail to grasp basic artistry? This is on the same level as the larpagans.
Goethe was an esoteric writer more likely to identify as a (literal) Illuminati. He switched between calling himself Christian and non-Christian several times in his life.

[Anonymous No.18606322]

>>18606269
>btw that little stanza contradicts at least three suras I know.
How so? I see no contradiction.
>>18606294
>Muslim Goethe
Kind of what people come to suspect when he repeatedly writes the Shia Shahada in his notebooks. There is evidence that at least he was *likely* a Muslim, though you and the other anon provide no refutation other than "b-bbut artistry! esotericism!"

[Anonymous No.18606353]

>>18606279
>language learning scribbles
is this evidence?
>>18606322
according to the Quran, you are either Muslim in line with Islam or you're not. Goethe tries to wash away this line and nullify different doctrines as special opinions. pretty haram, if you ask me.

[Anonymous No.18606385]

>>18606353
>according to the Quran, you are either Muslim in line with Islam or you're not
And according to Goethe, he was a Muslim in line with Islam. As stated in >>18606132. "Islam" literally means "submission", which is in line with Goethe's esoteric beliefs. Within Germanic christianity "Gelassenheit", is also a common theme, as is a general appreciation towards the Islamic world. If Goethe read the Quran (he did), made Shahada (he did), and lived his life in submission to Allah (as he stated on many occasions he did) then he is a Muslim. Whether or not he said Shahada in the presence of another Muslim is questionable, but likely, and the fact that his own son speculated towards him being a secret Muslim (as well as the fact that Goethe himself chose to stay silent on the matter) is illuminating. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of European intellectuals were secrete Muslims, many of them had read the Quran and held deep theological beliefs in line with Islam.

[Anonymous No.18606404]

>>18606353
>is this evidence?
This (>>18605677) doesn't seem to be a "scribble". He spent time on decorating it.
>according to the Quran ...
According to 7:172 (a famous verse in theology, known as the Verse of the Promise), every individual, before they are born, bears witness that "Allah is God";- thus, every non-Muslim is only trying to run away from and deny the vow they made anyway, and there is no running away from submission to God. Goethe was likely alluding to this verse, that you have submitted to Allah whether or not you acknowledge it.

[Anonymous No.18606411]

>>18606385
>Whether or not he said Shahada in the presence of another Muslim is questionable
If he was a Shia, he did not need to. According to the Shia only believing in the Shahada is enough to be a Muslim, meaning that there is no need to recite it to other Muslims out loud.

[Anonymous No.18606421]

>>18605677
>>18605882
What the fuck

[Anonymous No.18606423]

>>18605827
Not really, he removed the ending monologue of Mohammed where he confesses to being a pretender and evil warlord, but the main tone of the play is still very much anti-islamic. The ending line Goethe left in is even someone before killing himself uttering to Mohammed "The world is made for tyrants, you stay here". Did you read Goethes translation even?

[Anonymous No.18606433]

I have often thought that the cold, mercantile quality of Islamic spiritualism came from their prophet’s background, but perhaps such a thing comes directly from their conception of god.

[Anonymous No.18606445]

>>18605677
Is there a book delving into the subject? I love mysteries like these

[Anonymous No.18606458]

>>18606445
>>18605677
Goethe liked copying Arabic calligraphy and the subtitle in german reads "zum künftigen Divan" - "For the future Divan", the east-western Divan being a collection of poems imitating the middle eastern arts. He never in his life learned arabic properly. That should be enough context to judge those trolls claiming Goethe to be muslim.

Goethe was a freemason btw.

[Anonymous No.18606472]

>Goethe could have been a Muslim
Why are Germans like this? Many scholars on Islam in the 20th century also happened to be German (not saying these guys were muslim but there was interest in the subject) so the question is why?

[Anonymous No.18606473]

>>18606445
It isn't that mysterious. He read the Persian poet Hafez and he fell in love with his work, even going so far as writing a book of poetry with similar themes as his. Afterwards, he started learning Arabic, and started reading any book in Arabic he got his hands on. There is evidence that the Shia hadith book al-Kafi was likely one of those books.

[Anonymous No.18606488]

>>18606458
>He never in his life learned arabic properly.
That applies to the majority of Muslims who can read the Quran in Arabic but have no idea what they're reading

[Anonymous No.18606494]

>>18606473
>Persian poet Hafez
He wasn't a shia though. Anyway it's a mystery for me since this is the first time I've heard of it

[Anonymous No.18606504]

>>18605677
GOETHE was an ALEVITE confirmed. Ottom*n and ar*b roaches entirely btfo by worlds greatest poet accepting the truth that there is only one God, Mohammed is his prophet and Ali his friend. Sunnis so butthurt they're still seething 200 years later.

[Anonymous No.18606506]

>>18606458
>He never in his life learned arabic properly.
You have no way of knowing this.
>Goethe was a freemason btw.
The German freemasonry in his time was different from what we call freemasonry. It was mostly Rosicrucianism. It is said by the Rosicrucians that their founder, Christian Rosenkreuz, was a disciple of some Sufis.

[Anonymous No.18606533]

>>18606445
So yeah is there a book delving into Goethe's beliefs. I like reading Shakespeare authorship books they're fun and I imagine a book on Goethe would be similar in nature. I tried searching online but all I get are Muslim websites saying wow look this guy was a Muslim.

[Anonymous No.18606534]

>>18606494
I agree it is certainly very interesting. Shias believe Sufis were originally Shias who later diverged, and Sufis acknowledge that their spiritual lineage traces back to Shia Imams. Like many other Sufis/Islamic esotericists, Hafez has poems exalting Ali, calling him his "pir" (spiritual teacher).

[Anonymous No.18606550]

>>18606533
I've also looked into this. The primary scholar exploring the relationship between Goethe and Islam is the German scholar Katharina Mommsen, and she has a book "Goethe und der Islam" (untranslated).

[Anonymous No.18606565]

>>18605575
>and subjectivity has this worship for the sole occupation of its activity, combined with the design to subjugate secular existence to the One"
I'm afraid I'm too much of a brainlet to understand what this means.

[Anonymous No.18606575]

>>18606322
Do you also think that Wagner worshipped Wotan? That Racine was a flamen of Jupiter?

>>18606458
>Goethe was a freemason btw.
Goethe was a bona fide illuminati and influenced by Weishaupt. No amount of dialectics will make that compatible with Islam. On top of being Spinozist. Not to mention the theory of a secret inner conversion would involve a decade long role play with Eckermann for who he had no secret and to who he occasionally talked about being Christian before ranting about his naturalistic theism.

>>18606506
First of all Rosenkreuz is fictional. He is also very explicitly Christian and travelled through some Muslim lands to meet local esoteric masters. His order is supposed to be a renewal of Solomon and the teachings of Ancient Egypt (as all hermeticism).

[Anonymous No.18606613]

>>18606565
I hate philosophers who use buzzwords. Plato is more accessible

[Anonymous No.18606845]

>>18606550
If you're still here there's a thing you can do with untranslated texts. Get a pdf open it in Google docs and translate it

[Anonymous No.18606872]

>>18605575
>>18605677
Biggest shock to me is that Hegel and Goethe knew Islam existed. I didn't realize Europeans interacted with Muslims until colonization in the 19th-20th centuries (except the Crusades and A-Andalus)

[Anonymous No.18606877]

Had no idea Goethe (pbuh) was this based. Brb going to reread Faust with a Shi'ite hermeneutic

[Anonymous No.18606889]

>>18606872
Many philosophers had things to say about Islam, but much like Neetchee it was never anything of substance and just them liking it because they preserved some works by the greeks and they kicked the shit out of Christians from time to time, it's honestly just self hatred coupled with the oriental exotic appeal it had at the time with the Ottomans and Iranians.

[Anonymous No.18606892]

>>18606575
>First of all Rosenkreuz is fictional.
No.
>He is also very explicitly Christian and travelled through some Muslim lands to meet local esoteric masters.
You refuted yourself in the same sentence.
>His order is supposed to be a renewal of Solomon and the teachings of Ancient Egypt (as all hermeticism).
And many esoteric Islamic orders.

[Anonymous No.18606896]

>>18606889
Basically today's yellow fever but it was an Islamic fever at the time

[Anonymous No.18606903]

I only managed to find a 16 page excerpt of Goethe und der Islam and I used the google translate document tool. How is the translation?

[Anonymous No.18606904]

>>18605575
>>18605677
>>18606889
Why do Germans always like to ruin theology? They have never produced a single coherent metaphysical framework and almost every bastardized form of Christianity today has its roots in German autism.

[Anonymous No.18606907]

>>18606903
>poet likes middle eastern bedouins (which are basically nomad rednecks who like poetry)
more at 5

[Anonymous No.18606911]

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=docs&hl=en
here's a link to the google translate. just upload a document and translate it to whatever language you want. I wonder how much of a gamechanger this will be in the translation field

[Anonymous No.18606920]

>>18606872
To be fair aside from specialists they barely knew about it, especially in the romantic age. You should read their rare references for the orientalism it is.
Most including Hegel or Goethe had views on it that were extremely at odds with any school of Islam (in addition to not sharing them).
German scholarship on the subject is not very good either, perhaps for having so little contact. It is arguably even worse than the pseudo-Hindu influence on a few Germans. In both cases it was nothing but an exotic tradition that they never developed for itself but as a way to project their own philosophy (the two cited in OP didn't even do that). Traditionally Frenchmen (and Englishmen) have been the better islamologists, whether wholly negative or appreciative (like Massignon).

[Anonymous No.18606921]

>>18606904
Because Christianity is fake and they have been trying to break free from Christian heresy to the pure religion of God. Goethe is the case in point.

[Anonymous No.18606938]

>>18606892
>>18606921
Muslim education.
Do Muslims really?

[Anonymous No.18606940]

>>18606920
Goethe shows a clear and good understanding of Islam in his Divan.
>It is arguably even worse than the pseudo-Hindu influence on a few Germans.
Is there anyone aside Schopenhauer? I have seen some "criticisms" by Buddhists of him, but they entirely miss his points. He also had a very good grasp of Hinduism and Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.18606943]

>>18606920
>German scholarship on the subject is not very good either, perhaps for having so little contact. It is arguably even worse than the pseudo-Hindu influence on a few Germans. In both cases it was nothing but an exotic tradition that they never developed for itself but as a way to project their own philosophy (the two cited in OP didn't even do that). Traditionally Frenchmen (and Englishmen) have been the better islamologists, whether wholly negative or appreciative (like Massignon).
Germans were the ones who wrote things like origins of Mohammedan jurisprudence which was a pioneering work in the field

[Anonymous No.18606954]

>>18606904
The Germanic tribes originally converted to Arian Christianity and have been cryto-Arians ever since

[Anonymous No.18606961]

>>18606907
>nomad rednecks who like poetry

[Anonymous No.18606970]

>>18605708
What? You have a counter-argument for that?

[Anonymous No.18606972]

>>18606904
Germans are crypto muslims. It's why the jews hate them

[Anonymous No.18606973]

>>18606903

[Anonymous No.18606978]

>>18606973

[Anonymous No.18606980]

>>18606904
>Why do Germans always like to ruin theology?
Guardini, Albert Magnus and Leibniz are Germans.
>almost every bastardized form of Christianity today has its roots in German autism
Swiss you mean.

[Anonymous No.18606981]

>>18606920
>German scholarship on the subject is not very good either, perhaps for having so little contact
10/10 bait, but German scholarship on Orient studies is widely regarded as among the best in Europe. Matched, perhaps, only by Italy.

[Anonymous No.18606987]

>>18606978

[Anonymous No.18606996]

>>18606987

[Anonymous No.18607002]

>>18606996

[Anonymous No.18607004]

>So I don't think Absolute Transcendency of God is a bad thing because it makes us feel cold and alone but rather this coldness is a consequence of the misdirection of unrepentance.

Check Volume 1 of his Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, or the notes Pure Being and Nothingness (or even better, the section of finitude, negative infinity and affirmative infinity) in the SoL.
They will show you that Hegel does not criticize the absolute transcendency of God because it "makes us feel cold", for he has actual philosophical concerns for this problem.
Imho the two big ones are these, as far as I understand (I'm sure people more knowledgeable than me could name other issues):
1) the concept of an absolutely transcendent God entails complete abstraction from any determination (as it is the case for pure Being), which means that far from being the most perfect essence concievable, the one of God's would be the poorest and least concrete one. This has also a negative effect on religion, since, given a completely abstracted God, the believer doesn't really know what he is worshipping.
2) if God is fully transcendent, then he is fully separate from us, as in: on one hand there is God, and on the other there is all that is created, and they both occupy different "ontological spaces". Hegel thinks that if this is the case, then we have turned God into a finite thing, since the being of creatures constitute a determinate limit to his essence. Because of this, Hegel thinks that if God is to be truly perfect (and therefore infinite), then absolute, abstract transcendency must be denied.

[Anonymous No.18607008]

>>18607002

[Anonymous No.18607015]

>>18607008

[Anonymous No.18607028]

>>18607015

[Anonymous No.18607033]

>>18607028

[Anonymous No.18607037]

>>18606889
Christianity is so dumb so the great minds of the West were never able to believe in it. This is why so many of them gets really schizo when it comes to religion, they'll say they're Christian in one sentence and then they'll contradict every core non-moral claim of Christianity in the next. They need to culturally affirm it and intellectually reject it at the same time.

Of course modern tradlarpers don't really care. If they like some aspect of their works then the person is a Christian no matter what conceptions he had for this supposed "Christian" god, and if the tradlarper generally dislikes the works the person becomes at the very best a Christian heretic.

[Anonymous No.18607044]

>>18607033

[Anonymous No.18607051]

>>18607044
and done. So how is the google translate?

[Anonymous No.18607121]

>>18607037
I think this has more to do with Christianity being a more complex and abstract religion than Islam. My discussions Muslims both on here and elsewhere have only shown that they are either deliberately misunderstanding it or are incapable off doing so. Islam honestly seems to be a lobotomizing force.

[Anonymous No.18607246]

>>18607004
I'll also add this that although Hegel criticizes constantly Judaism and Islam (and Eastern religions in general) for worshipping a purely abstract, separate, absolutely transcendent God, it is not so clear that this critique hits the mark. For example, all those branches of Judaism and Islam that accept any form of Mysticism and gnosis (Kabbalistic traditions, Chassidism, Sufi mysticism and so on) are already outside of the aims of this critique, and should be placed at an higher stage of the dialectic development of the Concept of Religion. More in general, historians of religion seems to agree that Hegel misinterpreted most of the religions he talked about, mostly because the academic literature on non-Christian religions was still in its infancy in Hegel's time, and often it was extremely biased (to the point of often producing radical distortions) too in the reconstruction of the actual beliefs of non-Christians believers.

That said, even with all the corrections you could make about his history of religions, it still remains that in Hegel's system the highest conception of religion is the Christian one. All the corrections would only change the order in which other religions are placed below the Christian one.

[Anonymous No.18607271]

>>18607037
Have you even read Aquinas to be saying things like this? Even most of the modern philosphers remained Christian even while their systems started to veer away from older Christian metaphysics

[Anonymous No.18607287]

>>18605575
>All pagan religions and cults

Name all pagan religions and cults

[Anonymous No.18607314]

>>18605760
And he's absolutely right. The more fundamentalist Islam has become the less civilised they're societies. Again, Hegel used his science of history to form a hypothesis that the passage of time has proved.

[Anonymous No.18607418]

>>18605575
Why does he talk about Allah and the Judaic God like they're different entities.
They're the same thing.

[Anonymous No.18607458]

>>18607418
The Jewish God knows what it's doing. There's a sense that Allah doesn't really know what it's doing.

This is what Maimonides said, and he was a rabbi who converted to Islam (perhaps was forced) for a number of years.

[Anonymous No.18607762]

Is it any good bros?

[Anonymous No.18607778]

>>18607037
Nice try accusing people of being schizos while claiming that people from Augustine to Leibniz were not Christian.
>they'll say they're Christian in one sentence and then they'll contradict every core non-moral claim of Christianity in the next
>no matter what conceptions he had for this supposed "Christian" god
It sounds like you ascribe some ultra specific "core non-moral claim" that have really nothing to do with dogmas to Christianity and imagine anyone not following your strawman is not Christian.
Just last week on /lit/ I was confronted to a moron affirming you couldn't be catholic without being Thomist, and another saying that you couldn't be a Christian hermeticist. I've seen the same with utilitarianism, materialism, idealism, realism, nominalism, panpsychism, etc.

[Anonymous No.18607830]

>>18607271
>Aquinas
refuted by Hume and Kant.

[Anonymous No.18607953]

>>18607830
How did Hume refute Aquinas? I know very little about his philosophy of religion

[Anonymous No.18608063]

>>18607953
>How did Hume refute Aquinas?
By showing that causality is not apriori. He showed that there isn't a *necessary* connection between a cause and its effect, therefore we can't use apriori reasoning to find the effect of a cause or the cause of an effect. So all of those autistic arguments from Aquinas are thereby shown to be null.

[Anonymous No.18608377]

>>18608063
Ok, but Kant (whom you cited as one of the btfoers of Aquinas) btfo'd Hume's argument against the aprioriticity of causality

[Anonymous No.18608958]

>>18607004
holy shit when i read this i almost lost my faith in islam because the incarnation started making way more sense but alhamdulilah i realized that the conception of the world in the christian-sense is foreign to Islam i.e. that we are disconnected from Allah eternally since we believe we know Allah best in creation by His works. I also began to consider how God is such a force that when you simply think of Him within cognition as completely abstract i.e. transcendant, Truth and Falsehood are put in their respective places within the categories of sense-consciousness because His is the highest our reflection can reach. So within sense-representation i.e. space time His transcendence turns into Immanence almost immediately within consciousness