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Hegel’s God
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:08 pm
by Philosophy Now
Robert Wallace describes a little-known alternative divinity.
http://philosophynow.org/issues/86/Hegels_God
Re: Hegel’s God
Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 12:43 am
by ForgedinHell
Re: Hegel’s God
Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:34 pm
by Arising_uk
And yet you have Spinoza as your avatar?
Re: Hegel’s God
Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:53 pm
by ForgedinHell
Arising_uk wrote:And yet you have Spinoza as your avatar?
What's the point of Hegel's god? Am I supposed to believe in it? Just learn about the idea so I can discuss it at dinner parties and impress my friends? Is it supposed to assist me in evaluating factual claims about history? About anything? What is the point about learning about a made-up fiction? I just asked a question.
What does my avatar have to do about anything? You know how hard it was to find a picture that could fit on this forum? My first choice was The Marlboro Man.
Re: Hegel’s God
Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 9:11 pm
by chaz wyman
First Wallace sets up the usual tension between "a" being and "being infinite" that was already fully articulated and answered by Spinoza well over 100 years before Hegel. (and for which the only valid conclusion is that god is everything/nature.)
He then immediately shoots himself in the foot, on these grounds. In this he criticised his own first objection. If God is self determining, then he is by definition limited:
"What is God, then? God is the fullest reality, achieved through the self-determination of everything that’s capable of any kind or degree of self-determination. Thus God emerges out of beings of limited reality, including ourselves."
The rest is drivel and one has to wonder what is motivating a supposed Professor of Philosophy to cling to this nonsense? His god is not only fluffy - what was the word he sued - "squishy". but it is meandering, vague and diffuse; a concept with no use; a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.
The natural conclusion of this idea is atheism, and there is no mystery why Marx felt comfortable with this.