Did Hegel believe in God?

[Anonymous No.19011889]

I am very confused

When I read Hegel, it seems very theological. He speaks about God, Christianity, and the Absolute, as if he believes in a Christian God. But when I read second hand sources and commentary, they say the most insane shit about Hegel's theology. They claim he was basically an atheist who didn't believe in God and thought only man's mind was "God".

What is up with these "secular" or almost "inverted" readings of Hegel from the academic community? I literally feel like we're reading two different books when I see what they're saying about Hegel's writings

[Anonymous No.19011896]

Yeah. It was a requirement back then.

[Anonymous No.19011900]

anyone who believes in god is a dipshit.

[Anonymous No.19011905]

>>19011900
tip harder

[Anonymous No.19011916]

>>19011896
In 19th century Europe? Weren't there atheist writers?

[Anonymous No.19011940]

>>19011889
From one of Hegel's contemporaries and friendly acquaintances, the poet Heinrich Heine:

"I have seen the master composing with obscure and intricate signs, so that they could not be easily deciphered.] I often used to see him looking around anxiously as if in fear he might be understood. He was very fond of me, for he was sure I would never betray him. As a matter of fact, I then thought that he was very obsequious. Once, when I grew impatient with him for saying: 'All that is, is rational', he smiled strangely and remarked, 'it may also be said that all that is rational must be'. Then he looked about him hastily; but he was speedily reassured, for only Heinrich Beer had heard his words."

[Anonymous No.19011959]

>>19011940
lmfao is this serious

so is this accusing him of being a Hermeticist or something? I'm not getting it

[Anonymous No.19011967]

>>19011916
Not in Germany!
That was more a French thing. Leibniz and all that.

[Anonymous No.19012131]

>>19011959
I’ve also heard this rumour

[Anonymous No.19012703]

>>19011900

Cope.

[Anonymous No.19012809]

>>19011889
because the modern academia is atheist and it wants to impose its worldview on every thinker of the past

[Anonymous No.19012910]

>>19011900
Evidence?

[Anonymous No.19012930]

>What is up with these "secular" or almost "inverted" readings of Hegel from the academic community?
Maybe the people who have dedicated their lives to philosophy are better judges of what he meant, rather than students/hobbyists on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.19012955]

>>19012930
>Maybe the people who have dedicated their lives to philosophy are better judges of what he meant, rather than students/hobbyists on /lit/?
Are they? What are they being paid to say exactly?

You don't need to "trust le' experts" to read a fucking philosophy book. This isn't 1100 A.D., you can just pick up the book and read it yourself. These "Hegel Scholars" are saying some utterly bizarre shit that is simply not in the texts, some secondhand sources not even citing primary texts hardly at all.

Here's even a brief video on the subject. Some truly bizarre things happening in "academia"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvFu6ak_SGk&t=6s

[Anonymous No.19012981]

>>19011889
a large bunch of hegelians today are either marxists who of course read hegel through the lens of materialism or are atheists who take insights from hegel's dialectical historical method without the overly theological baggage

he is definitely a theological writer - he was trained in theology, all his early works are theological, and he is influenced by neoplatonists and mystics like boehme

[Anonymous No.19012998]

>>19011889
Yes. Hegel believed that the entire superstructure of reality including Logic/Nature/Spirit and the dynamis that moved it were parts of God. At his core Hegel was deeply immersed in Swabian pietism ala Oetinger and German mystical shit from Cusanus, Eckhart and most importantly Boehme. In fact Boehme's dialectic of God's existential creation of Being mirrors very closely the schema of Phenomenology of Spirit. Also, don't be fooled by translations of Hegel's works where Spirit = God or whatever, these moments described through his System, which is meant to be a complete system of Absolute Knowing, only describe aspects of the Absolute which can only be grasped through a sort of intellectual intuition. The most important parts of the dialectic are the bits dealing with the opposition of Unity and Difference taking place within God/Absolute, in fact this is what kickstarts the entire Event of Creation and the development of the Parts towards a grander Unity that incorporates even this Difference back into itself. Thus Creation's telos is a sort of divine mirror with which God looks back onto himself and re-incorporates himself. You can refer to Hegel's Triangle Fragment for this, but its also implicit in his Logic and PoS. God's self-revelation is tied to corporealizing through Christ who embodies Spirit, which makes for a very heterodox Christianity. Early Hegel on the other hand (esp the earlier theological writings) is definitely not a Christian, he is more of a pantheist/deist with pagan sympathies, but nonetheless retaining a strong belief in God as Idea/Real/Absolute throughout his intellectual life.

[Anonymous No.19013002]

>>19011900
(you)

[Anonymous No.19013025]

>>19012930
You can go read for yourself: Night Thought, Triangle Fragment, Eleusis, Spirit of Christianity. All of these texts are authored by Hegel and they are pretty explicitly theistic or panentheistic. I really don't see how someone can come away from his more famous works like PoS, Philosophy of History or SoL and think he doesn't believe in God. Mind you he isn't an orthodox theist, and his God isn't some purely transcendent personal deity but rather a sort of structuring force of reality that nonetheless retains a separation from its own creation.

[Anonymous No.19013093]

>>19012998
Great comment

Even though I’m not sure I agree with hegel’s views, his theology is very beautiful. I feel like it’s art when I’m reading it

[Anonymous No.19013111]

>>19011959
No, atheist.

[Anonymous No.19013125]

>>19013025
>and think he doesn't believe in God. Mind you he isn't an orthodox theist, and his God isn't some purely transcendent personal deity but rather a sort of structuring force of reality
I think that would be how. Rejection of a deity with a kind of personhood and interest in our personal lives in favor of ontology. Calling it god is just to play word games at that point.

[Anonymous No.19013128]

>>19011940
>'it may also be said that all that is rational must be'
Sounds like Thomas Aquinas to me.

[Anonymous No.19013155]

>When I read Hegel, it seems very theological. He speaks about God, Christianity, and the Absolute, as if he believes in a Christian God. But when I read second hand sources and commentary, they say the most insane shit about Hegel's theology. They claim he was basically an atheist who didn't believe in God and thought only man's mind was "God".
Which sources are you referring to?
To answer your question, Hegel definetely believes in God. Wether his God is the Christian God can be debated, since it seems to have certain traits that are incompatible with Christian Orthodoxy. The main one would be, imho, that God, to be God, needs to create us. Hegel downright rejects the self-sufficiency of God, which puts him at odds with most Christian theology written so far.
That said his God is still a person, he is still a Spirit, he is still in contact with us, etc, so it would be unfair to call him an atheist (at best a devout Christian might call him an heretic).

Regarding the sources, there are 2 popular distortions of Hegel's thought, one coming from the Young Hegelians with Feuerbach, and another one coming from analytical circles (basically all the most famous living Hegelians you might know of, like Brandom, Pippin, Pinkard and Houlgate).
The one you've mentioned, for which Hegel "was basically an atheist who didn't believe in God and thought only man's mind was "God" is 100% Feuerbach, and it will become the standard method of reading Hegel among the Young Hegelians and, successively, Marxist circles. That said they do not claim that Hegel himself held this position, rather they claim that his position led to that conclusion, regardless of wether Hegel noticed it or not.
Analytic philosophers instead do not mount any such systematic critique. For the most part they presuppose a pragmatist or naturalist framework, and then they try to read Hegel in that fashion (this is called "the non-metaphysical reading of Hegel"). This usually leads them to disavow any theological and metaphysical content of Hegelian philosophy. If this seems absurd to you, do not worry, you're right: it is absurd. That said, to be fair, I think Houlgate is just hiding his power level to familiarize analytic readers to Hegel's thought. The other 3 instead are either actually convinced of the fact that Hegel should be read in this way (Pippin and Pinkard), or simply do not care about offering an accurate reconstruction of Hegel's philosophy (Brandom).

[Anonymous No.19013159]

>>19012998
There is no intellectual intuition in Hegel's philosophy though. His logic works due to its circuarity, rather than some immediate datum that supposedly justifies the whole system.
I agree with the rest, but I would also point out that Hegel had never read any text by Cusanus

[Anonymous No.19013164]

>>19013159
>There is no intellectual intuition in Hegel's philosophy though. His logic works due to its circuarity, rather than some immediate datum that supposedly justifies the whole system.
It's the exact same with Fichte, and even he gets accused of appealing to intellectual intuition. Hegel actually ripped the idea of logical circularity straight from Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. The reason one is acceptable and one isn't (Fichte), is that Hegel's philosophy is vague enough, especially the historicism, to be able to apply to any given person's ideology if they manipulate it enough. Fichte is too clear to be misinterpreted and abused.

[Anonymous No.19013177]

>>19011900
cope seethe dilate

[Anonymous No.19013183]

>>19013125
He doesn't reject the personality of God though. God is Spirit, which means that He is both conscious and selfconscious. As the other anon correctly claimed, the Hegelian God is not transcendent, but He still mantains His individuality. This is what the notion of "Spirit" is all about: it is a Self that is in-another (as in, it is not fully separated from everything else), and that in its alterity finds its being in-itself.
>>19013128
>>19011940
Remember that for Hegel "reality" and "existence" are not synonimous. Hegel is not a justificationist, and he explicitly rejects that position in the PoS (in the sections dedicated to Stoicism and Honest Consciousness) and in the Introduction of the Encyclopedia.

[Anonymous No.19013190]

>>19011900
Checked

[Anonymous No.19013198]

>>19013164
Are you sure about your claim about Fichte?
I have read only the 1794 Wissenschaftlehre, and in it he seems to be unapologetical about the grounding his system on the intellectual intuition of the pure I. That said, I have been told by other people that in later versions of fhe WL he formulates his system without appeals to intellectual intuitions. Is that right?

[Anonymous No.19013208]

>>19013159
The influence from Cusanus is largely distilled through generations of German mysticism, especially in Swabia where Hegel would doubtless have been exposed to very similar ideas through a number of esoteric/pietist authors close to him. Perhaps a better illustration of that point is to point towards Baader who was conversant with Hegel + Schelling and Holderling who were both deeply immersed in Hermetic and Esoteric traditions. Regarding intellectual intuition, Hegel himself explicitly states that the meaning of Speculation is the same as what used to be called the Mystical (if this is not II then idk what is). The entire image of Hegel as arch-rationalist is somewhat misleading: seeing as to the fact that he characterized his own philosophy as Speculative (or Mystical). And while we ought to keep in mind that Hegel is trying to create a system of meta-speculation in order to grasp these moments of the Absolute, there is certainly a place for Mystic Intellectual Intuition, since Speculation itself is akin to a sort of Platonic Recollection as opposed to the movements of Reason.

[Anonymous No.19013211]

>>19013198
Not that guy but yeah the 1804 WL starts from positing the Absolute and then recursively builds towards the "I" in a sort of inverse dialectic. That being said the later formulations are far more mystical relying on a very complex philosophy of consciousness (it almost seems reliant on the 1794 WL and in this way seems quite circular).

[Anonymous No.19013217]

I ordered Hegel from a commie book publisher, I hope they didn't fuck up the translation too much.

[Anonymous No.19013219]

>>19013125
God is both structuring force of reality and in-himself outside of his Creation for Hegel. And imo Hegel is completely compatible with Christianity, in a heterodox way, whereas someone like Heidegger or Spinoza are not. Hegel's God/Absolute does retain Individuality (this is very very important for his grounding of the entire dialectical process and its something borrowed from Boehme).

[Anonymous No.19013234]

>>19013198
You likely misread it. He explicitly states that his search for the unconditioned principle is merely an epistemological starting point and not ontologically first. He states in explicit terms (using the sequence A -> B -> D -> A, as acts of consciousness where D is an empirical act and A is unconditioned, non-empirical and logically necessary, but discovered by D) that it is necessarily circular and self-grounding.

>"When the time comes to represent this science, it will be shown, also, that it really describes this circle, leaving the student precisely at the point from which it started, and thus furnishing also the second positive proof in and through itself.
>"The science of knowledge has absolute totality. In it one leads to all, and all to one. But it is also the only science which can be completed. ..."
>It is unnecessary to be suprised at this circle. For to demand that it should be annihilated is to demand that human knowledge should be utterly groundless ..."

[Anonymous No.19013266]

>>19011967
Leibniz was not an atheist. Don't troll OP.

[Anonymous No.19013341]

>>19013208
You're right concerning the first point, I should have mentioned that Schelling too had read Cusanus, and that probably Hegel unkowingly got some of his ideas through osmosis (I suppose he wasnt aware that those ideas came from Cusanus, mostly because he never mentioned his name in any of his writings).

Regarding the second point, are you following Magee's interpretation? Anyway, I think that by "mystical" Hegel is not talking about the immediate, intuitional character of the knowledge of God. Rather, he is talking about the mystical union of Creator and Creature, which, in his system, is reached in a non-intuitionist manner (namely, through discursive, speculative reasoning). If knowledge of God were to be an ineffable intuition, then we would be back to Pure Being. And if knowledge of God were to be an intuition with a positive content, then we would be in the domain of representation, which falls under the figure of Religion.
I would also put it in this way: in the Encyclopedia, Philosophy itself is not sublated. As such, the adequate knowledge of God is inherently philosophical, and as such it is conceptual, rather than intuitional.

[Anonymous No.19013346]

>>19013234
I guess you're right, I might have bought into some serious misreadings of Fichte's philosophy

[Anonymous No.19013376]

>>19011900
based

[Anonymous No.19013397]

>>19011959
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Glenn Alexander Magee

[Anonymous No.19013468]

Taking advantage of the thread to ask if pic related is a valuable secondary source.

[Anonymous No.19013479]

>>19013341
>>19013219
>>19013208
>>19013183
>>19012998
Since Hegel was deeply influenced by Boehme, do you think a voluntarist reading of Hegel’s theology and ontology is possible?

[Anonymous No.19013538]

>>19013479
Definitely not. Hegel would probably see Will/Intellect as an opposition that needs to be overcome rather than resting in one moment (Will). I guess it depends on how you are defining Will but I dont think Boehme is necessarily a voluntarist either

[Anonymous No.19013566]

>>19013341
>are you following Magee's interpretation?
Somewhat, yes. Is there a real difference between the Mystical Union and Intuitional Knowledge such as I=I etc... I don't think so personally but that's beyond Hegel I suppose. I do agree that his System is non-intuitionist, which is why I mentioned that his Philosophy is essentially meta-speculative, describing the structural moments of the real. Regarding your post I pretty much agree with you wholesale I just think that Magee's view on Hegel's Speculation - Recollection is quite similar to Neoplatonic Int. Intuition, that being said it is by no means at the forefront of his System. I might say that Intuition is rather a moment in the birth of Philosophy, a stepping-stone but a necessary one.

[Anonymous No.19013900]

>>19013538
A sublation of will and intellect? Boehme posits a pure Will as the principle coming from the Ungrund and which will find itself as the foundation of the Trinity. Perhaps we could say Will finds Logos and becomes Spirit, confirming the idea of a sublation of will and intellect into pure Spirit. I read here Hegel thought the spirit was a part of God, but he makes a distinction between transcendent Spirit and immanent Spirit, no?
Also since Love is the ultimate expression of God, I’d say that this goes beyond any reason, being a pure force, not irrational as primordial, pure will, but harmonic, ordered.

[Anonymous No.19014301]

>>19011889
plastic Gook

[Anonymous No.19014326]

>>19011889
Once you the prior Idealists and the subsequent Hegelians your confusion will be lifted

[Anonymous No.19014742]

>>19014301
still cute

[Anonymous No.19015597]

>>19011905
ok dipshit.

[Anonymous No.19015606]

>>19011889
Hegel was a Satanist.

[Anonymous No.19015908]

>>19015606
Was Hegel's God actually the "anti-christ"?

Think about it, his "end of history" is basically just end days prophecy about man reconciling himself with "God', except it lines up more with the anti-christ. The actual Biblical "God" says his followers will remain a persecuted minority, not enter into some kind of conscious "singularity" with the rest of the world

[Anonymous No.19016115]

>>19012910
Correlation between high IQ and atheism, look it up

[Anonymous No.19016131]

>>19011889
The secondary sources are wrong. Hegel was deeply Christian and his Logic is a kind of theo-logy.

Learn more here: https://hegelsbagels.net/posts/what-is-happening/

[Anonymous No.19016157]

>>19016131
I already read your blog and have it bookmarked

[Anonymous No.19016165]

>>19016157
amen brother

[Anonymous No.19016665]

>>19011889
How the fuck do I read Phenomenology of Spirit and understand it? What do I need to be able to read it like any other intelligible book?

[Anonymous No.19017344]

>>19012809
>because the modern academia is atheist and it wants to impose its worldview on every thinker of the past
thread/

[Anonymous No.19017357]

>>19011889

[Anonymous No.19017511]

>>19016665
>What do I need to be able to read it like any other intelligible book?
You need to be retarded.
Hegel was a charlatan, as everybody knows.

[Anonymous No.19017543]

>>19015908
this, the true redpill is reverse dialectic

[Anonymous No.19018055]

>>19016131
>But at least she gave a λόγος.
Stop being such a faggot and just write "logos"

[Anonymous No.19018212]

>>19013217
why'd she do it, bros?

[Anonymous No.19018215]

>>19018212
Never try to understand a woman's motivations. Repeat after me, they are evil.

[Anonymous No.19018612]

>>19018215
Having dirty nasty sex isn’t evil.

[Anonymous No.19018623]

>>19017511
At least he didn’t condense it into whatever would brainwash poor fags like Marx

[Anonymous No.19018654]

>>19011889
>broke
Most philosphers are Christian
>joke
Most philosophers are pretending to be Christian and actually atheists
>woke
Most philosphers are mystery school occults

[Anonymous No.19019949]

>>19015908
Hegelians are a persecuted minority anon, and it's not about achieving singularity dummy

[Anonymous No.19019986]

>>19013266
Leibniz wasn’t French.
I should have wrote “Leibniz vis à vis Voltaire”, but I was distracted.
Muffins

[Anonymous No.19020017]

>>19011889
Who's the chick

[Anonymous No.19020036]

>>19015597
ok tipshit

[Anonymous No.19020131]

>>19016115
>Atheist
>IQfag
ishygddt

[Anonymous No.19020390]

>>19011900
Based

[Anonymous No.19020394]

Anyone who truly believed in God wouldn't write a grimoire -- which is what PoS is.

[Anonymous No.19020399]

>>19013538
Will and intellect aren't even oppositions. There is a third factor, appetite, which isn't even included by either of you, and it is not the "synthesis" either. These three are all distinct principles and they are not necessarily at odds with each other. Plato figured this basic stuff out 2000 years ago.

[Anonymous No.19020433]

>>19020399
Thanks for the laugh anon, its always funny to see someone think so highly of themselves while revealing their ignorance at the same time.

[Anonymous No.19020454]

>>19020433
You have no argument. Anyone who asserts will and intellect as oppositions is equally as ignorant in my view.

[Anonymous No.19020472]

>>19020454
>in my view
Didn't know you were an authority on philosophy, mr. Plato figure out all of this "basic stuff" 2000 years ago. Fuck outta this thread pseud, you are talking out your ass in an effort to seem intelligent.

[Anonymous No.19020494]

>>19020472
I'm not using my authority to justify anything, I'm merely stating that any assertion of opposition between the two given principles is imaginary, and that if one wants to see the truth, they should go and read Plato instead of taking my word for it. You, on the other hand, have not done anything except fling insults at me for bringing attention to your mistake.

[Anonymous No.19020649]

It’s a complex issue and you won’t get very far if you apply your own static definitions of “believer” and “atheist” to his thinking regarding God. On the one hand, Hegel’s thoughts on Christianity don’t present a radical break with the text of the New Testament, especially John and Paul’s letters. The event of the Incarnation and some of Jesus’ proclamations—like “you are gods” (said to his disciples and quoting David) and “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”—as well as Paul’s understanding of the Church and Spirit as the body of Christ are all in line with Hegel’s thinking. On the other hand, no matter how well it reflects scripture, his view of God was not one that sat well with the Lutheran clergy of his day, and during his time in Tübingen as a seminarist and budding philosopher, he was forced to tread carefully and find a way of synthesizing his interests in Rousseau, Kant’s critical philosophy, and the pre-Christian Greek world with Christianity in a way that wouldn’t seem sacrilegious.

As for a general account of his thoughts regarding God, I’m going to necessarily butcher it, but in short, his view was that Christianity presented a substantive development in the history of man’s discovery of the truth and relation to God: God had become a man, died, and then conquered death by becoming embodied in the community of believers (the Spirit/Church). In the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, man came to know both God and himself as Spirit, the unification of the transcendent and immanent, infinite and finite, etc. But Hegel’s understanding of Spirit is not relegated to the “visible” Church: rather, he sees Spirit as the universal cultural, intellectual, institutional, and spiritual world-producing capacity of the human species over time. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, Spirit returns home and comes into its own by leaving itself, by self-alienation. For Hegel, Christianity proper was and is the step in this odyssey that best presented its overall structure. Obviously, those who find Hegel either heretical or atheist think that by bringing the human and divine together in this way, he was doing away with God and replacing Him with humanity. But as you noticed yourself, you can’t excise the Christian God or Christian concepts like providence from his work. In a sense, and pardon the dialectricks, I think he was both an atheist and a theist.

Of course, he had much more specific views on God and religion than what I’ve laid out here and you can find those in his early theological writings, in Faith and Knowledge, parts of the Phenomenology, and his lectures on religion.

[Anonymous No.19020653]

>>19011889
He believed whatever Prussian Junkers told him to believe.

[Anonymous No.19020864]

>>19020649
Thank you for this post. It seems indeed that Christianity as the ultimate expression of Spirit and the Spirit being exactly the fruits of an expression of the numinous consciousness (reason, non sacrificial civilization, artistic productions) are the points many recognized, including people like Nietzsche, Klages. These pagans posit a war between Soul and Spirit and this seems to be the dialectics in which the world develops, impulses/will vs spirit/intellect (a controled, sublated will, so to speak). There is a lot more to examine here.

[Anonymous No.19020966]

>>19011900
based

[Anonymous No.19020974]

>>19011900
Hegel DEBUNKED
Never reading that nazi german anyway.

[Anonymous No.19022433]

>>19011900
Just curious, what is everyone's definition of God? My interpretation is it's essentially just the universe and everything contained within it.

>the creator
>all powerful
>all seeing
>all knowing
>omnipotent

If you just replace the word "God" with "the universe" everything makes more sense. I'm open to being refuted for the sake of conversation.

[Anonymous No.19022500]

>>19018215
>they are evil
The motivations. I'd say women are just fine, or no better or worse than men, anyway. Men are more prone to doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, and women doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Both of those actions, undertaken, will get people into trouble. That being said one of the greatest mistakes a man can make is trying to understand why they (women) do something, anything. That's how they get ya.

[Anonymous No.19024019]

>>19012955
But do you have the proper training to contextualize philosophical texts and truly understand them?

Things that might seem true to you based on your rudimentary understanding might turn out to actually be false. If all you know is newtonian physics, quantum physics might seem absurd to you.