...Feuerbach begins by analyzing the strengths of the Hegelian perspective in dispelling the otherworldliness of God or Spiritual meaningfulness by having God be the product of a dialectical movement of worldly actions, as we noted just now and earlier. Spirit is in the world (or, rather, is the world) for Hegel, dependent on the actions of beings for its completion: this is an improvement for Feuerbach, who believes that this lends incredible and holy determinateness to God. Indeed, God’s otherworldly guarantee of meaning for the world was detestable for both Hegel and Feuerbach not because they just felt that God should be in the world and not outside it. Rather, they objected to this conception of an otherworldly God based on its specific effect: this view left God and meaning ultimately indeterminate. God and meaningfulness was only the mere negation of what was worldly or came about due to the actions of beings: because it was merely what was not worldly, it could be anything not worldly. In fact, if God could be anything except what was worldly, he could just as well be nothing instead of something. Thus this view’s specific effect that offends Hegel and Feuerbach was that it encouraged a profound skepticism concerning whether there really was meaning to the world: if God or significance was otherworldly, unable to be affected or known by beings, the statement that “God or significance exists,” could, for Kant and those of the Christian tradition, mean essentially the same thing as saying “God or significance may not exist.” Thus God and meaningfulness needed to be in the world, have qualities, be determinate, if they were to exist. And so Feuerbach says, after summarizing the Hegelian achievement, that
A God who is injured by determinate qualities has not the courage and the strength to exist. Qualities are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt of existence. An existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity.
-The Essence of Religion, in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, 240, italics added
Translated into the language of Hegel, this means that Spirit, in its most developed or completed or Absolute form, the form where what exists Spiritually is nothing other than Spirit itself—this Spirit must be determinate or have qualities in order to actually exist. Now, Spirit or the meaningfulness of the world (and world-history) of beings attained this stage supposedly after it had developed itself out of itself, or, to use the Hegelian language of Feuerbach here, determined itself to the fullest extent. Does it necessarily follow, then, that merely because this determination through development occurred (as Hegel said it did) Absolute Spirit or God existed? No—and this is the point at which “the spell was broken,” and “the system was cast aside.” In other words, because Hegel cannot answer this question sufficiently Feuerbach disparages Hegel’s idea of the Absolute as merely a subtler skepticism, “a still milder way of denying the divine” (240), and outlines how this divine should be replaced.
Now, why does Hegel’s reasoning flawed? Well, Feuerbach points out that Hegel needs Spiritual events to effectuate the Absolute, God, and not merely the completed form of Spirit. For it does not follow that when Spirit determines itself, it will at this point bring forth anything other than completed and totalized Spirit—what then ensures that this completed Spirit is indeed the Absolute, that they are identical? Even if there is nothing more than the completion of Spirit, even if all that meaningfully exists is the totality of meaningful action, and even if this action is determined as that which possesses an elusive, intersubjective quality, the result of the development of Spirit is nothing other than existing Spirit.
The crucial turn in Feuerbach’s reasoning appears here: after showing us this indeterminacy in Hegel, he turns around and advocates the Hegelian conception of God—i.e. he affirms that the Absolute is Spirit. So he outlines how Hegel’s conception of the necessitation of God from the full development of Spirit does not follow, only to then affirm the result of that error. This means two things: 1) Feuerbach believes that there can be no coherent conception of God or the Absolute other than that of fully developed Spirit, the totality of meaningful action, and 2) that he nevertheless believes that the way this conception is proved in Hegel is erroneous. Feuerbach does not advocate another type of God than Hegel’s fully determined Spirit, and yet he finds this God must be shown to arise in a different way. Thus, in this sense, our remark that Feuerbach seeks to replace Hegel’s conception of the divine or Absolute is completely wrong, for Feuerbach does not substitute any other “better” type of Absolute for the Hegelian determinate Spirit. At the same time, our remark is completely correct insofar as the way this Absolute is proved is really the crucial thing for the beings that are to conceive and access it—in short, Feuerbach does seek to replace the Absolute as an object of religion.
Now, instead of specifying what “as an object of religion” actually means (we will get to this later), it is important to stick with and emphasize this first point for now, because it brings Feuerbach’s position with respect to Hegel into sharp focus. That Feuerbach assents to the Hegelian conception of God reveals to us that his motives in showing how Hegel’s fully determined Spirit is only Spirit, and necessarily not anything more than this, did not arise from any indignation at the fact that the Hegelian determinate Spirit does not “resemble the traditional features we ascribe to God,” or some similar notion. Feuerbach is in fact quite ready to affirm a conception of God that is “nontraditional,” to the extent that he virulently attacks the critics of Hegel who advance lines of argument like this. Feuerbach feels that Hegel’s God, as merely the culmination of Spirit, is a more coherent conception of the divine (that is, we remember, of reality or the real) than any anthropopathized (“humanized”) conception of God—the God with which all existent religions would supposedly replace this Hegelian Absolute in order to “more accurately reflect the Divine,” to be “more in conformity with the nature of God.” Indeed, this argument against the common practice of anthropopathizing or ascribing human features to God is the main thrust of Feuerbach’s remarks throughout The Essence of Christianity: Feuerbach thinks anthropopathizing is an irreligious act that wishes to make God somewhat determinate yet retain his indeterminate and otherworldly character, that has the effect of bogging the divine itself down in contradiction. By making God merely the meaningful culmination of worldly action, Hegel, in Feuerbach’s eyes, purges the conception of the divine from this inconsistency, as well as his otherworldliness. What results is a consistently determinate conception of the meaningful for the world—what Feuerbach indeed thinks is in conformity with the essence of Christianity...
No comments:
Post a Comment