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{"id":18504,"date":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=236"},"modified":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","slug":"hegel-the-theologian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/11\/hegel-the-theologian\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegel the Theologian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

E<\/span>nrique Dussel (Underside of Modernity<\/em><\/a>) explains Hegel\u2019s defection from Kant in theological terms. Inspired by Schiller\u2019s distinction of reason as \u201cthe vital faculty of synthesis\u201d and understanding as the faculty that \u201cdetermines its object, separates it, kills it,\u201d Hegel described the kingdom of Jesus in terms of reason rather than understanding: \u201cIn the Kingdom of the Heavens he [Jesus] shows to them [his disciples] not the elimination of the law, but instead that these will be fullfilled through a justice, one which will be different and greater than the justice as is ob\u00adtained from the mere fidelity of duty\u201d (quoted p. 140).<\/p>\n

Dussel explains that \u201cFor the young Hegel, still a theologian, Kant is the Old Testament of the formal law (morality, Moralitat); <\/em>Jesus is the New Testament, the subsumption (Aufhebung) <\/em>of the unilateral in the pleroma <\/em>(the future ethical life, Sittlichkeit)<\/em>.\u201d Hegel\u2019s basic concepts of Aufhebung<\/em> and Sittlichkeit<\/em> are not only formulated over-against Kant, but formulated in theological terms.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hegel writes, \u201cThe most comprehensive principle may be called a tendency to execute what the law commands, unity of inclination [Neigung] <\/em>and law, thanks to which this loses its form as law; this agreement with the inclination is the pleroma <\/em>of the law. . . . The same is true with this tendency, a virtue [Tugend], <\/em>is a synthesis in which the law loses its universality (in virtue of which Kant always named it objective), the subject its particularity, and both their con\u00adtradiction [Entgegensetzung]<\/em>\u201d (quoted 140).<\/em><\/p>\n

This sublation of duty into the pleroma is a sublation of universal into particular, and of objective, eternal law into a synthesis of subject and object that occurs in a community. Instead of coming from outside, ethical demand appears as \u201csecond nature. Sittlichkeit<\/em>,\u201d and the ethical life, \u201coperates through love, through inclination, through ethos.\u201d As Hegel himself put it, \u201cAgreement [Obereinstimmung] <\/em>is life, and as such relation of the different: love.\u201d Thus, for Hegel, \u201cthe Kingdom of God . . . is a living community,\u201d rather than the individual who is confronted by objective law, which (Hegel channeling Paul) kills (quote 141).<\/p>\n

The assumptions and conclusions aren\u2019t from Paul, but much of the form of the argument is typological and Pauline.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"