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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
1 Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1824), in the critical edition by Jaeschke, W. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985), Vorlesungen, vol. 4a, p. 344 (my translation)Google Scholar.
2 I am generalising here. Obviously, philosophers who are habitually lumped together under this title do not all share the same beliefs regarding the matter in hand.
3 See e.g. de Vries, Hent, Theotopographies: Nancy, Hölderlin, Heidegger, in Modern Language Notes 109 (1994), pp. 445–477 Google Scholar.
4 Cf. Derrida, Jacques, Foi et Savoir (Paris: Seuil, 2000), p. 32 Google Scholar. Derrida speaks of an ‘irrecusable mystical ground of [the] authority’ of reason.
5 See de Vries, H., Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Cf. Hegel, , Phenomenology of Spirit, in the critical edition by Bonsiepen, W. and Heede, R. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1980)Google Scholar, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, p. 19 Google Scholar.
7 See esp. Hegel, , Jenaer Kritische Schriften, edited by Buchner, H. and Pöggeler, O. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968)Google Scholar, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, pp. 325–336 Google Scholar.
8 To insist on the absolute irreducibility of otherness boils down to a purification of otherness, reducing it to pure potentiality, and so emasculating its meaningfulness. This is the case, for example, with Derrick's Jewish (messianic) notion of the ‘to come’ (l'à-venir), which effectively amounts to infinite postponement.
9 The agency at work here is presumably the principle of reason (Satz vom Grund) which asserts the identity of particular beings in each individual case, implying the infinite particularisation of reality. Contrary to Kant who criticises the ontological interpretation of the principle of reason, I believe that Hegel thinks that God, as absolute ground of being, is this principle of reason, which in delimiting itself determines and so engenders all particular beings. In this way God is the infinite universal ground of infinite singularity. If we relate this to Christian doctrine, the concrete manifestation of God as this universal warrant of particularity is his humbling himself to earthly appearance in the historical figure of Jesus Christ, thus becoming reflective identity by pulling himself out of his ‘immersion’ in the empty Absolute and subsequently surrendering himself to human death on the cross. In his Son's humanity and death (particularity par excellence), God is immediately present as the concrete universal.
10 Cf. Hegel, , Lectures on the Philosophy of Reiipon (1827), one-volume edition by Hodgson, P. C., (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 359 n.450CrossRefGoogle Scholar (quoted by Desmond, 123, 124); in Meiner edition, Vorlesungen, vol. 5, p. 563 n.232Google Scholar.
11 I would argue that the morbidity Desmond discerns in Hegel's allegedly counterfeit double of God who produces evil so as to redeem, already subtends Christian belief itself. Apart from the legalistic connotations of paying for guilt, is there not morbidity in the fact that in order for our sins to be redeemed God requires an evil act, namely the vicarious death of another person?
12 Such an argument would be on a par with the apostle Paul's rhetorical question in his Letter to the Romans 6:1: ‘What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’ (American Standard Version, 1901; cf. Romans 3:8 and 6:15).
13 Cf. Desmond's account (153). Notice that in Christian theology there exists already the problem of the necessary inducement to sin caused by the law (cf. Romans 7:8). The law solicits its own transgression. It is only in being set free, through spiritual union with Christ, from the law's heteronomous authority, that is, from ‘the law of sin and death’, as Paul writes to the Romans (8:2), that this necessity is broken. This does not mean that, in actual fact, we shall stop sinning. As Paui avers, ‘[s]o, then, I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin’ (7:25; ASV).
14 There is a certain reserve of human action over which God has no authority; this constitutes our genuine freedom as rational moral agents in the context of the contingency of human behaviour. The amount of real freedom on our part constitutes God's gracious gift to us, but this gift equally delivers us to the irrevocable possibility of committing evil, for which God cannot be held responsible. It is for this reason that evil necessarily occurs, not because God wills it.
15 Interestingly, Desmond speaks by contrast of ‘the shocking perplexity about evil that exceeds immanence’ (191f.).
16 It might be argued that the dialectic of the Concept is precisely this gift of grace, namely the gift of the ‘Spirit of Truth’, the spirit that is poured out over the Christian community on Pentecost and which is the principle of ‘making utterances’ (cf. Acts 2:3, 4).
17 No amount of presumably rationally incomprehensible de facto assistance from beyond could alleviate our being alienated, for it would not relate to what we do comprehend; I believe such assistance should be readily rejected. For divine assistance to be of genuine help, to be truly comforting (the Spirit as paraclete! [John 14:26]), it must at least be in accordance with our moral, rational faith. Cf. by contrast, Desmond, 193–194. Desmond protests against identifying knowing as salvation (194). For Hegel, of course, we already know that we are saved, just because we have a capacity for reasonable action. Desmond objects to a conflation of salvation and knowing such that the knowing as such is already salvation. However, even if Desmond is right that knowing about salvation is not to be conflated with salvation itself, I contend that salvation cannot be beyond rational knowledge either; we should at least be able to understand the ramifications of our being saved, if the notion of salvation is to retain its significance. For example, how do we know when we are saved?
18 To talk of an ‘abyss’ in this context connotes a Kierkegaardian flirtation with the demonic.
19 See, for example, Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), op. cit., p. 422.
20 See Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), op. cit., p. 400.