Representation and Thought

The form of philosophy differs from the form of religion.

The fundamental connection between religion and philosophy is the nature of spirit itself.

1. With regard to spirit the point of departure must be [the realization] that spirit is in manifesting itself

It is this one substantial identity, but at the same time, in manifesting itself it is differentiated within itself.

This is where its subjective, finite consciousness comes in. (That which has its limit in another, be cause at its limit the other begins, is finite; and this is true only where there is a determination, a difference.) Spirit, however, remains free; it remains with itself in being manifested, with the result that it is not disturbed by reason of the difference. To spirit, that which is differentiated is transparent; it is something clear, not something obscure. To put it another way, for spirit there is nothing determinate in the sense that determination means difference. Now, when there is talk of a limit to spirit, from one point of view this is correct; man is limited, dependent, finite – except insofar as he is spirit. Finitude has to do with the other modes of his existence.

To the extent that, even though he is spirit, his attitude is spirit less, he is involved with external things; but when he is spirit and truly spirit he is unlimited. The limits of reason are only the limits of this subject’s reason; but when man’s attitude is genuinely rational he is without limits, infinite. (Of course, infinity is not to be taken in the abstract sense, as a concept of understanding.) Because spirit is infinite it continues to be spirit in all its relationships, expressions, manifestations.

The difference between universal, substantial spirit and merely subjective spirit is a difference for spirit itself. Both spirit as object and the content of spirit must be at the same time immanent in subjective spirit; and this can be only when the immanence is spiritual, not natural or immediate. This is the fundamental characteristic of Christianity, which sees man illuminated by grace, by the Holy Spirit (who is essential Spirit). Then it is that the spirit is immanent in man, is, thus, his own spirit.

A living spirit such as this is, is, so to speak, phosphorus, the volatile, flammable material which can be ignited both from without and from within. It is ignited from without, for example, when man is taught the content of religion, when his emotions and imagination (Vorstellung) are aroused by such a teaching, or when he accepts it on authority. When his attitude is spiritual, he is on the contrary inflamed from within himself; because he looks for the content of religion within himself, it is from out of himself that he manifests it. Then he is his most intimate self.

2. To go further, we must speak of the way in which spirit is objective to itself, of what it is for it to be for itself.

The form in which it is present can vary; thus it can assume a variety of forms. From these diverse ways of appearing (Gestaltungsweisen) comes the diversity of forms of spirit and, thus, the difference between philosophy and religion.

In religion, spirit has its own peculiar form, which can be sensible, e.g., in the form of art, when art pictures divinity, or in poetry, where likewise the sensible representation constitutes the essence of the being-present.

In general we can say that this way of manifesting spirit is representation. It is true, of course, that in religious representation thinking, too, is to some extent involved, but the representation contains thought in such a way that the latter is mingled with an ordinary external content. By the same token, law and morality too are, as it is said, suprasensible, but my representation of them takes its origin from custom, from legal prescriptions (Bestimmungen) which are already there, or from feeling.

With regard to philosophy, then, the difference is that in it the same content is grasped, but the form is that of thinking. In religion there are 2 moments:

1. There is an objective form or determination of consciousness, whereby essential Spirit, the absolute, is present as external to subjective spirit, i.e., as its object, and is represented as historical or as an artistic image, separated in time and space

2. There is the character or stage of devotion, of intimacy, wherein the separation is removed, the gap is bridged, wherein Spirit and object are one, and the individual is filled with the Spirit.

Philosophy and religion have the same object, the same content, the same goal. But, what are in religion two stages, two modes of objectivity, i.e., art, faith and then devotion, are in philosophy united into one; for thought is

• (a) from the point of view of the first character objective and has the form of an object

• (b) it has also lost the form of objectivity, such that in thinking, content and form are posited as unified.

To the extent that what I think – i.e., the content of thinking – is in the form of thought, it no longer stands over against me.

In religion and philosophy:

• there is one substantial content
• only the manner of manifesting it in each is different and even contradictory

This is because the content is represented as essentially linked to the image.

The different manner of presentation which characterizes religion is not to be taken literally.

Thus, it is said: God generated His Son.

The divine Spirit’s self-knowledge, His making Himself into an object, is here called generating His Son.

In the Son the Father knows Himself, because the Son is of the same nature as He.

This relationship, however, is taken from vital nature, not from the spiritual; its expression is characteristic of representation.

It is said, of course, that the relationship is not to be taken literally; but it is simply left at that.

So too, when the mythologies speak of the wars of the gods, it is admitted that this sort of thing is being said partly of spiritual and partly too of natural forces.

Because they are opposed to each other they are in, this way imaginatively represented.

3. It is natural that these diverse forms, as for the first time they appear in a determinate way, and are aware of the differences which separate them, should be inimical to each other; it is, in fact, inevitable.

Thought, after an, first makes its appearance as abstract, i.e., as formally incomplete.

The same is true of religion, since initial immediate religious consciousness, even though it is consciousness of spirit, of that which is in and for itself, still involves a sensible form and sensible attributes, i.e., it too is abstract. Thereafter thinking becomes more concrete, penetrates more profoundly into itself, and brings to consciousness the concept of spirit as such.

Thus aware of itself, it is no longer inseparable from its abstract determination.

The concept of concrete spirit is its own self-conception, or it involves an essential conception of itself, having determination in itself (determination being what is counted as belonging to understanding, to the essence of appearance).

Within itself abstract understanding denies all determination and, thus, with regard to God retains what is left, which is no more than His abstract designation as supreme being. On the contrary, the concrete concept has nothing to do with such a caput mortuum; its object is concrete, active, self-determining, living spirit.

Subsequently, therefore, concrete spirit recognizes in religion the concrete, determinateness in general, not the sensible but the essential.

The Jewish God, for example, God the Father, is abstract. In a later stage of its development spirit recognizes what is essential in that.

The concrete, however, is not merely God as such, but rather God determining Himself, positing another than Himself, and yet as Spirit He does not leave the other simply another but is with Himself in this other. Only this latter is the complete divine Spirit.

What is concrete in religion, however, can be known and recognized only in the concept which is itself concrete. Therein lies the possibility of reconciling religion and philosophy, when abstract understanding struggles against the former.

The historical progress of this opposition is approximately the following. Thinking takes its start at first within religion’s representations and subsequently parallels them, with the result that the opposition is not yet conscious.

Later, however, when thinking is strengthened and relies on itself, it declares its opposition to the form of religion and will not recognize its own concept therein, seeking as it does only itself.

This fight against the form of religion took place early in the history of the Greek world. In as early a case as Xenophanes’ we see a philosopher most vigorously combating the representations of Greek popular religion; and later we see the opposition stiffen, as philosophers arose who expressly denied the gods and hence the ,divine character of the popular religion. Socrates was charged with having introduced new gods.

His daimonion and the overall principle of his system were contrary to the form of Greek religion and of customary morality.

Still, he held on to the practices of his religion, and we know that as he was dying he ordered that a cock be sacrificed to Aesculapius.

It was only very late that the Neoplatonists recognized the universal content of the popular religion, which had been either expressly attacked or put aside by the philosophers. We see not only that the Neoplatonists gave to mythological representations a meaning proper to thought but that they also employed these representations as a sort of imaginative language for their own system.

The path which this opposition follows in the Christian religion is quite similar. At first thinking is dependent, unfree, tied to the religious form. Thus it is with the Church Fathers. With them, thinking develops the elements of Christian doctrine. (The latter becomes a system only in the hands of the Church Fathers who were also philosophers. The developed aspect of ecclesiastical faith emerged in a special way in Luther’s time. At that time and frequently thereafter in more recent times there was a desire to effect a return of Christian religion to its primitive form. This sort of thing has, it is true, a good sense, in that men were concerned with what is authentic and original in Christian teaching, something which was particularly necessary at the time of the Reformation. Nevertheless, it also involves the incorrect notion that the elements should not be developed.) The first step, then, was that thinking expanded the teaching and developed it into a system; subsequently the doctrine was fixed and made into an absolute presupposition for thinking. First, then, comes the development of doctrine; secondly comes its fixation. Only after that does the opposition of believing and thinking, of immediate doctrinal certitude and so-called reason, enter in. Thinking reached the point where it relied only on itself; the first thing the young eagle of reason did was to soar as a bird of prey to the sun of truth, from there to declare war on religion. Then, however, once more justice is done to the religious content also, in that thinking finds its completion in the concrete concept of spirit and enters into a polemic against abstract understanding.

Religion, then, has a content common to itself and to philosophy; it differs from philosophy only in its form. Thus, all that is required for philosophy is that the form of the concept be so far perfected as to be able to comprise the content of religion. This content is primarily what have been called the mysteries of religion, which is to say, the speculative element in religion. Under that heading is understood first of all something mysterious, something which must remain secret and is not to be made known. It is true, of course, that by their nature, i.e., precisely as a speculative content, mysteries are something mysterious for understanding; not, however, for reason. They are, in fact, precisely the rational element, in the sense of being speculative, i.e., in the sense of the concrete concept. Philosophy is opposed to rationalism, particularly in contemporary theology. Rationalism, it is true, is always talking about reason, but what it is really talking about is merely dry, abstract understanding. Nothing in it. is recognizable as reason, except the moment of self-thinking; but even that is a completely abstract thinking. This sort of rationalism is opposed to philosophy both in its content and in its form. From the point of view of content: it has made heaven empty – reduced the divine to a caput mortuum, and everything else to mere finite entities in space and time. Even from the point of view of form it is contrary to philosophy; for the form of this rationalism is argumentation (Rasonnieren), unfree argumentation, and it declares its opposition to philosophy in particular, in order to be able to continue this sort of argumentation forever. That is no philosophizing, no genuine conceptual thinking (Begreifen). Within religion the opposition to rationalism comes from supranaturalism, and this latter is in regard to true content like philosophy and in agreement with it, but different as regards form; for in supranaturalism the spirit is entirely absent, it has become wooden and accepts only positive authority for its corroboration and justification. The Scholastics, on the contrary, were not this sort of supranaturalists; in their thinking they put the dogma of the Church into the form of concept.

As a thinking of this content in the form of concept, over against the representation which is proper to religion, philosophy has the advantage of understanding both. It understands religion and can accord it a justification; it understands rationalism and supranaturalism. too; and it also understands itself. The converse, however, is not true; religion as such, because its point of view is that of the representation, recognizes itself only in representation, and not in philosophy, i.e., not in concepts, not in universal thought-determinations. Often enough no injustice is being done to a philosophy when the complaint is made that it is opposed to religion; frequently, however, the complaint is also unjustified, namely, when the complaint is made from the religious point of view, simply because religion does not understand philosophy.

Philosophy, then, is not contrary to religion; it grasps the latter in concept. For the absolute Idea, however, for absolute Spirit there must be the form of religion, for religion is the form proper to consciousness of the true, the way it is for all men. The structure of religion is (1) sense perception. and (2) mingling with the latter the form of the universal, i.e., reflection, thinking, but still, abstract thinking, which still contains much that is external. Thereafter a ‘transition is made to the concrete structuring of thoughts, there is speculation on the true, which is then in consciousness according to its true form. Nevertheless, the speculative element which enters into the structuring at this point is not the externally universal form of thinking which is common for all men; and so the consciousness of that which is in itself true must have the religious form.

This is the general justification of the religious form [of spirit’s manifestation].

Up to this point we have given an account of the difference between philosophy and religion. With regard, however, to what we want to treat of in the history of philosophy there are a few further remarks to make in connection with – and partly as a consequence of – what has already been said.

3. The Kinds of Religious Contents which Are to be Eliminated from Philosophical Consideration a. The first remark concerns the simply (uberhaupt) mythological. It is said that mythology contains philosophical affirmations, and, it is also said, since in general religious forms of expression involve philosophical affirmations, philosophy must concern itself with such forms of expression. (i) In this regard the work of my friend Creuzer is well known; therein in a distinctively philosophical way he treated mythology and in general the religious representations, expressions, and usages of ancient peoples, showing what was rational in them. Now this method of treatment is attacked by others as an incorrect and unhistorical procedure. The objection is that it is not an historical fact that such philosophical affirmations are contained therein. Included in the mythological are also the mystery religions of the ancients, and in them we are presented with perhaps more philosophical affirmations than in mythology. That objection has already been taken care of by what was said earlier. It is clear enough that in mythology and in the mystery religions of the ancients such thoughts are to be found, since religions and, by the same token, the mythological elements in them are products of man, wherein he has bequeathed to posterity (niedergelegt hat) what to him was supreme and most profound – his consciousness of what the true is. Consequently there is no question that in the forms of mythology are contained reason, universal notions and determinations, and hence philosophical affirmations also. Now, when Creuzer is faulted for introducing such thoughts where they are not really present, for allegorizing, it is important to note that Creuzer shares with the Neoplatonists the tendency to seek philosophical affirmations in the mythological. That does not, however, mean injecting such elements; they are actually there. This sort of consideration, then, is rational and is to be raised to the absolute level. The religions and mythologies which peoples have developed are products of reason becoming conscious of itself.. No matter how naive or nonsensical they may seem, they still contain the rational moment; instinctive rationality is fundamental to them. The method employed by Creuzer and the Neoplatonists, then, is to be recognized as in itself the true and essential method.

Because, however, the mythological is the sensible, contingent presentation of the concept, what has been thought about it or developed out of it always continues to be bound to its external form. But the sensible is not the genuine element in which thought or concept can be presented.

This sort of presentation, then, is always inadequate to the concept. The sensible form must always be described from many sides, e.g., from those of history, of nature, and of art.

It involves so much by way of contingent addition, which makes it fail to correspond exactly with the concept and, in fact, to contradict the intrinsic concept. Nevertheless the Neoplatonists did achieve a new recognition of their own philosophy under the sensible image proper to mythology, and they employed such images as forms for the expression of their own concepts. It is natural to assume that in the explanation of those images, even when they are connected with an intrinsic concept, a good deal of error gets in, especially when it comes down to details, to the multitude of usages, activities, utensils, vestments, ritual sacrifices, etc.

Therein can be found something analogous to thought, a relationship to thought; but this simply shows how separate from each other are the image and its significance and how much contingency and arbitrariness can intervene and obscure the issue. Still, there is rationality here, and it must be taken into consideration.

It is to be excluded, however, from our examination of the history of philosophy, for in philosophy we have nothing to do with such vague philosophical affirmations – i.e., with general ways of representing the true – or with thoughts which are merely contained in some presentation or other or lie hidden and undeveloped under some sensible image.

We are concerned with thoughts which are externalized and only to the extent to which they are externalized – to the extent, then, that the sort of content proper to religion has appeared, been manifested, and come to consciousness. The difference is enormous.

In a child, too, reason is present, but only as a capacity. In the history of philosophy, however, we are concerned with reason only insofar as it has been articulated in the form of thought. The philosophical affirmations which are contained only implicite in religion, then, do not concern us.