Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel and the Present

Religious Studies, 2014

Richard Velkley's piece on 'Culture and the limits of practical reason' pursues the role of religion 'in the critical enterprise' (). He explores how the 'primacy of practical reason' leads to positive claims concerning God, freedom, and immortality (), and how practical reason is 'world transformative' (). In pursuing these essential themes, Velkley is virtually alone in this collection in stressing the role in Religion of 'poetic figures coming to the assistance of philosophic reason' (). This in itself casts considerable light on Kant's enterprise, because it is a sub-theme within the larger, crucial issue of Kant's ethical employment of symbolic and allegorical resources drawn from religious history.

Hegel Bulletin, 2009

Reviews the 'absolute knowing' that he rejects. George's phrasing seems at times to imply that the knowledge attained at the Phenomenology^ conclusion constitutes something similar to that provided by the system itself, rather than being its mere starting point. Nonetheless, despite other such minor quibbles, and despite the book's avoidance of the implications that its notion of tragic unity gives rise to, Tragedies of Spirit remains a highly engaging and interesting work, particularly for those interested in the appropriation and development of Hegelian negativity.

2014

Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 2019

Does philosophy comprehend religion, or does religion serve to mark the limits of what can be conceptually expressed by philosophy? Is religion the scene of the concept’s satisfaction? Its infinite longing? Or its transcendental frustration? This dilemma –characteristic of the respective “idealist” and “romantic” responses to the unresolved antinomies of Kant’s transcendental philosophy–was a central concern for G.W.F. Hegel from the years running roughly from 1793-1806. While Hegel begins his career espousing the latter, “romantic” view, he eventually settles on the former, “idealist” option. Why and how Hegel changes his mind on this matter (and good reasons we might have for pressing back against him) is not a matter of mere historical interest. Interrogation of Hegel’s understanding of the use of religious representations –particularly sacrifice –in the development of the idealist viewpoint might spur us to further reflection on philosophical uses of religious materials as they occur and recur in our discourses, opening a way of conceptualizing religion contrary both to Hegel’s idealist construction of spiritual figures, as well as romantic longing for a real but transcendent beyond. This paper concludes by sketching a counter-Hegelian interpretation of religious imagination as the phantasmatic register of the effects of non-dialectical negativity, a form of bricolage which responds to the “transcendental frustration” of the concept.

Journal of Philosophical Investigations,, 2024

Commentators oft cite the rather grand claim that for Hegel there was no concept of individual personality, subjectivity nor personal autonomy in Ancient Greece. Hegel’s claim is either taken as orthodox and making sense in the Hegelian historical system as a whole and so little discussed; or is flatly ignored as the worst kind of metaphysical obfuscation; a response a little too comfortable for liberal thinkers. Neither reaction is entirely satisfying. Not enough attention has been paid to it, especially for the vast majority of social and political thinkers who would find it at least contentious, so the present paper aims to assert its significance both for Hegelian politics as a whole and to pay enough attention to it in order to make it very difficult for those who find it a contentious statement to continue to ignore it. One wants to ask what it might mean for one’s selfunderstanding to be so radically different that, as a human being, I understand myself as first and foremost (and perhaps completely) not as a subjective individual. It is conceptually very difficult to be a self-conscious individual -- in even a minimal sense -- without some idea of being an atomic, individual unit. It is the claim of the following argument that a full understanding of this distinction, between ancient and modern selfunderstandings, would lead to a revision of Hegel’s liberal credentials, though not entirely for liberal reasons.

Philosophy Study

Hegel uses Plato's classical text, Philebus, in two of his most important texts, the so called Shorter Logics, the first part of the famous Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and in The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The aim of this article is to analyze how can this two references be read together as to form a relationship between logic and religion in the very heart of Hegelian philosophy. In the first case, Hegel analyzes Plato's text within the context of his Doctrine of Being, specially from § § 89 to 95, which deal with the question of determinate being. In The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, on the other hand, the reference appears in the 1824 Lectures in a particularly complex chapter called "The Transition to the Speculative Standpoint of Religion," in which Hegel affirms not only that such a speculative standpoint is the only one in which religion can be truly grasped, but also that the Christian concept of "incarnation of God" is the "speculative midpoint" of religion. It will be argued, therefore, that the ontological question of determination and actuality, as exposed in the Shorter Logics, is fundamental to the metaphysics of Christian Religion as Hegel understands it not only in his Philosophy of Religion, but arguably in his whole philosophy.

Scottish Journal of Theology, 1989

SHOLE, 2024

Explicit reflections on intellectual faculties and their good applications begin by talking about a divine spirit and a human soul. Heraclitus seems to be the first to explain that all higher mental capacities rest on ethical formation. Self-conscious thinking leads therefore, as Hegel also sees, to normative sociality as its transcendental basis.

Hermeticism. By exploring this connection further I hope to discover new ways of understanding the extent to which Hegel's philosophy was radical for both the German Idealist movement as well as for the long standing esoteric tradition by which he was deeply moved and influenced. By examining the correspondences-in content and inspiration-between Hegel's enigmatic preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, and the Divine Poimander tractate of the 2 nd century Corpus Hermeticum, I will show how Hegel's re-visioning of the great spirit-matter divide that had come to characterize the intellectual milieu of nineteenth century Europe offers new perspectives about Hegel, philosophy, and the nature of the world that, at our own critical point in the history of consciousness, might help to structure an emerging paradigm that is no longer bound by the conflict of opposites but rather, understands division as a process of creation and an opportunity for evolution.