God-haunted humanity (Feuerbach)

Cool post. But acceptance often seems monstrous. Acceptance of child abuse, for instance.

Reply to Mongrel
Thanks. I agree that acceptance seems monstrous. In my view, there's no cure for life, no perfect philosophy that destroys cognitive dissonance and annihilates the angst of freedom. Of course there are some perspectives that do a better job than others, and I'm always looking for an update. But, anyway, I'm not trying to take either side here. I was and still am "God-afflicted." I have "grown up" and improved my position in the world, for instance, but I feel that no particular "objective" achievement "beats the game." It's as if money just buys the opportunity for fantasy, partially embodying it (allowing us to wear certain clothes or call ourselves experts) and partially allowing it (giving us quiet, private, comfortable homes in which to enact our truer selves.)

Nietzsche is a great case. He was God afflicted. His superman is a modified Christ figure. He got an ideal/idea in his head of worldliness as holiness, an inversion of the usual formula. But he was a man of concept and music, which is to say of the dream. He dreamed of himself as the most awake man. Not scientism but some other kind of objective face of God was central to his myth, despite the talk of perspectivism. Since ultimately we must have perspectivism as living truth (with all of its contradictions) to really give a damn. In short, we want our private dreams recognized as public spiritual reality --or at least some nagging part of us does. I think this was Hegel's answer to the The Irony.

Hegel:
The next form of this negativity of irony is, on the one hand, the vanity of everything factual, moral, and of intrinsic worth, the nullity of everything objective and absolutely valid. If the ego remains at this standpoint, everything appears to it as null and vain, except its own subjectivity which therefore becomes hollow and empty and itself mere vanity.[53] But, on the other hand, the ego may, contrariwise, fail to find satisfaction in this self-enjoyment and instead become inadequate to itself, so that it now feels a craving for the solid and the substantial, for specific and essential interests.

Of course Hegel takes sides with the "grown-ups" here. He himself clearly wanted (and achieved) worldly recognition. The "solid and substantial" is (to me) the objective and the social. I remember shifting from a vision of myself as an artist (more of the God-like creator role) to the scientist. There was something beautiful about the cold and the objective. It had a "weight" that music, for instance, did not have. Of course I'd still rather live Mick Jagger's life from the beginning than Isaac Newton's. But it's easier (though not easy) to make it in an objective discipline, especially if you're ambivalent about becoming a fixed avatar in the mind's of your consumers. (Fame is commonly craved and yet I'm sure there's a hellish aspect to it.)

Quoting Ignignot

Of course we call dreamers childish, and perhaps they are. But they are childish in relation to our adult, business-like selves

Maybe childlike, not childish.

Reply to Noble Dust
I guess "childish" is pejorative, but then there is disdain for the impractical artist, for instance. The successful rock star or painter or writer is envied. The young artist who is not yet recognized is a question mark, especially if they are charming and attractive. Their like high-risk high-yield investments. But the aging dreamer is not so lucky, unless they are quite sure of themselves. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to rail against (or take the side of) the mystique of fame and money. I'm just trying to understand and clarify this tension. Some of us dream of being great writers or world-historical philosophers, which is to say we dream of being Christ figures, really. Did we get too much breastmilk as infants? I suppose I'm thinking of the dream of power and actual worldly power, where no actual worldly power can compete with the dream. So who loves power the most? I think of lonely, unwordly Nietzsche fantasizing about worldliness, writing lyric poems in prose to his Christ image.

Reply to Ignignot

I guess in simple terms, when a person can retain their imagination through to adulthood, I would say they have a childlike quality to their personality, not a childish quality. I see it as a very valuable quality.

Quoting Ignignot

Some of us dream of being great writers or world-historical philosophers, which is to say we dream of being Christ figures, really.

I've never had a problem with this, really. I'm one of those people myself. So what? What's the criticism against this attitude? Too much ego? But I think there's a difference, now in the world we live in, than in the past. Our society is all about individualism, so everyone thinks they can make it on American Idol. We're further removed from reality in that way. But there will always be people with talent who have the same dreams. But now we live in a society where those dreamers are often overlooked because they tend to not be so flashy or attention-seeking. Their work might be, but we live in an age of personality, not artistic depth.

Reply to Noble Dust
Just to be clear, I also see it as a valuable quality. I guess it is a shallow age, but I wonder whether "deep" art has ever been mainstream or whether we view the past through the lens of its best works. Wasn't most oil painting just portraits of the rich and their property (John Berger, etc.)? A few painters occasionally did something grand and spiritual, and those we hang up in secular cathedrals (museums).

Video killed the radio star. You have to look like heroic youth and beauty even to sing about it these days. This isn't all bad. The perfect execution of the fantasy is indeed consistent between the media. Why not have the visual ideal sing about the spiritual ideal? But here we are at the center of the fantasy: to be young, beautiful, profound, famous, and rich. (Of course it's wise not to pine away in envy, but I like clarifying the fantasy. We can make peace with the gap between fantasy and reality later in all of the usual ways, likely by consuming the art of said fantastic objects/persons. And of course philosophical glamour makes room for the ugly. Like the Underground Man of Dostoevsky who wanted to look very intelligent at least if he could not be handsome.)

Quoting Ignignot

I guess it is a shallow age, but I wonder whether "deep" art has ever been mainstream or whether we view the past through the lens of its best works.

Some of the past's best works were mainstream at the time, so I don't think that's the dichotomy. Bach or Beethoven were successful in their time.

Quoting Ignignot

A few painters occasionally did something grand and spiritual,

The early renaissance is when art began to be grander within a religious context, as far as I understand it.

Quoting Ignignot

secular cathedrals (museums).

Yes indeed, I've used that phrase many times myself.

Quoting Ignignot

Like the Underground Man of Dostoevsky who wanted to look very intelligent at least if he could not be handsome.)

I never interpreted that book that way, but I guess I can see that. I'm not sure what you mean by philosophical glamour. As far as the shallowness of mainstream music, I think that has as much to do with money as anything else. Music now is a capitalistic money-making industry; that wasn't the case until about 100 years ago. In the past, the gatekeepers were wealthy patrons; rub someone wrong and you don't get any funding, but now it's just economics. Of course there's a philosophical underpinning as to why wealth and beauty and youth are worshipped in this age as well. That's tied to nihilism and the "means with no ends" era of the internet, and technology that evolves on a bell-curve...

Adaptation is an awesome movie.

Reply to Noble Dust Quoting Noble Dust

Some of the past's best works were mainstream at the time, so I don't think that's the dichotomy. Bach or Beethoven were successful in their time.

True, and Shakespeare was respected in his. So the mainstream doesn't exclude greatness. But surely we forget much of the mediocrity of the past. Currently TV is in something like a golden age. I don't read many novels these days, since I'm finding such sophisticated and well-executed narratives in various shows.

Quoting Noble Dust

I never interpreted that book that way, but I guess I can see that. I'm not sure what you mean by philosophical glamour. As far as the shallowness of mainstream music, I think that has as much to do with money as anything else. Music now is a capitalistic money-making industry; that wasn't the case until about 100 years ago. In the past, the gatekeepers were wealthy patrons; rub someone wrong and you don't get any funding, but now it's just economics. Of course there's a philosophical underpinning as to why wealth and beauty and youth are worshipped in this age as well. That's tied to nihilism and the "means with no ends" era of the internet, and technology that evolves on a bell-curve...

Of course Notes from Underground is about (among other things) consciousness in excess as a curse. But self-consciousness is a big part of his disease. He obsesses over slights, obsesses over how he looks to others, experiences himself as a object of contempt when he wants to be admired. The Crane poem about the suicide arriving at the sky gets the dark humor right.

You make some good points about the money factor. I think the youth/beauty worship is perhaps related to our electronic devices. We see images so often in such high resolution that we have a sort of "oil painting" second reality of advertisements, most of which employ models to portray how consumers want to see themselves. If the ad (for realism) features older actors, they tend to be slim and have great skin for their age. So the world of images is a much better looking world than that world in which these images are embedded. This echoes what I mean by "haunted by God." We might say that reality is haunted by the imagination as ellipses are haunted by the perfect circle.

By philosophical glamour I just mean status and fame. Everyone wants to have read you. It's the intellectual version of popularity. It's often enjoyed indirectly, since it's hard to directly pull off for obvious reasons. The indirect method is to surf on the coattail on whoever's in, which is to say proclaim and exalt them. There are A-list philosophers who one might feel ashamed of not having read, for instance. Other philosophers are taboo. You lose points for suggesting their ideas are worth talking about. Anyway, we still allow our intellectuals to be ugly, perhaps for the reason that we allow our male comedians to be ugly, as a sort of symbol for the "objective" and traumatically "real."

Has anyone watched this? It's a Black Mirror episode. Bing is the "ugly" intellectual who pops a hole in a dream within the dream. There's an appetite for Bing with his glass to his throat, just like there was an appetite for grunge. There's an appetite for dissonance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

Quoting Ignignot

Currently TV is in something like a golden age. I don't read many novels these days, since I'm finding such sophisticated and well-executed narratives in various shows.

Yes indeed; and I'm a failed millennial for not "keeping up on my shows" like society tells me I should >:O although, within the context of your argument, I'm not sure how this applies to greatness in the mainstream, vs. forgetting the mediocrity of the past. Do you think the Golden Age of TV is a mediocrity, or a form of greatness, or something in between, or what?

Quoting Ignignot

Of course Notes from Underground is about (among other things) consciousness in excess as a curse. But self-consciousness is a big part of his disease. He obsesses over slights, obsesses over how he looks to others, experiences himself as a object of contempt when he wants to be admired.

Yes; this is the main gist I got from that book when reading it in college, and then re-reading it for pleasure (?) later on.

Quoting Ignignot

This echoes what I mean by "haunted by God."

Can you explain this concept further? I'm very intrigued by it, but also confused by your obtuse language in describing it.

Quoting Ignignot

There are A-list philosophers who one might feel ashamed of not having read, for instance. Other philosophers are taboo. You lose points for suggesting their ideas are worth talking about.

This is so profoundly the bane of so much critical thought.

Reply to Ignignot
I like some of the ideas here, but what is the main claim you are trying to promote here? It looks like you are saying that everyone has a fantasy vision of themselves as having grandiose power, but the reality is that we are pragmatic thinkers, moving through a world already set-up for us; we are but a minimal player, circumventing the mazes of social reality one mundane day at a time.

If that is the claim, what do you think this means? What is its significance?

Reply to Ignignot I like -and can relate to - a lot of what you've said but two quick things

(1)It seems like 'dreaming of a better world' and 'dreaming of being the focal point of a better world' are being conflated here. I'm not sure it has to be that way

(2) It doesn't have to be dialectic reversals all the way down! (e.g. 'unwordly Nietzsche fantasizing about worldliness' & "the "ugly" intellectual who pops a hole in a dream within the dream. There's an appetite for Bing with his glass to his throat, just like there was an appetite for grunge. There's an appetite for dissonance.")

So, it's possible just to find something you're not very good at, but capable of learning, and, slowly, through fucking up a lot, learn it. From within a hero/master dialectic, this just looks like 'trying to achieve a deeper mastery through mastering the idea of relinquishing mastery" but, if you just actually do it, patiently, the actual fine-grained texture of the process repels dialectical thought.

The dialectic is a great and useful tool, and can yield all sorts of important truths, but has serious limits - the trouble is it wants to set its own limits, endlessly. (Incidentally, it's only from within a brutally sharp beauty/ugly dialectic that, say, Louis CK is a symbol of the traumatic real. For most peole It's more like: i can relate to that guy)

Quoting Noble Dust

Do you think the Golden Age of TV is a mediocrity, or a form of greatness, or something in between, or what?

I sincerely think there's some great TV at the moment. (I realize I've been mixing my points, trying to rip out the entire thought-clump at once.)Quoting Noble Dust

Can you explain this concept further? I'm very intrigued by it, but also confused by your obtuse language in describing it.

My lingo for the thought is influenced by a recent reading of The Essence of Christianity. I could less pretentiously call the god-haunted "idealists," but idealists are typically thought of as nice little fellows who would never admit to wanting to be God. Or I might describe "spirit" as an itch or a restlessness, something that urges us even to transgression when boredom is the alternative. I think of the critical mind that turns inward on itself, sculpting itself, throwing certain aspects of the current personality on to the fire. I thinking of the hatred of being a cliche (anxiety of influence). Maybe Jung would talk about a drive toward individuation. (It's a fog or clump of thoughts or a theme, not a thesis really. I do believe philosophical types can relate, though maybe especially the masters of suspicion of anti-systematic types. )

Reply to schopenhauer1
That's roughly the theme. I'm especially connecting the idea of God to that fantasy. A nice little point to add: Feuerbach stressed that the gods of the Greeks were still part of nature, while Jewish and Christian God was utterly separate from nature. For Feuerbach, this emphasized the Christian impatience with Nature and desire to dominate. If our God can create nature on a whim, he can destroy it on a whim. If we look at movies like The Matrix, we see humans creating reality from scratch just like God. These days gender and sexual orientation are two more things we can toggle on our profiles. I'm not complaining. I'm saying that we are incarnating the image of our transcendent God, especially a certain kind of atheist (because surely God himself has no God but himself). Even Nietzsche's over-man is a Christ-image, which is to say an image of the divine brought "down" (up?) to the flesh. I'm not advocating anything or complaining about anything, but only opening up about a theme that I've always found interesting as one more person trying to incarnate the divine. (I'm an atheist, so the divine is just whatever has mystique or beauty or whatever in an overpowering way.)

Reply to csalisbury
I hear you, and even largely agree. But I think you've framed me in your mind (incorrectly, from my perspective) as a recurrent forum type, namely the angry/angsty young man.

True, we can embrace the objective and find satisfaction as part of a team (which I have done, professionally, abandoning art/music/writing for science/academia), but I for one still demand or desire recognition from my wife, for instance, and real friends, as a...unique snowflake, shall we say. Fight Club tells me otherwise, but it's just cute insincerity. Yes, most non-conformity is a petty secondary conformity. Being original means nothing if you suck, etc. But after all of the the wisdom and the caveats are dispensed with, I still seek out (and want to be) those with the divine spark, which is to say with a sense of themselves as transcendent or bigger than any particular role they find themselves playing. Of course the "looks" issue is a delicate one, but anyone who's felt physically attractive and been treated as a physically attractive person as a general rule can surely relate to the dread aging. We get mentally younger and freer in a certain sense, while the face/body sends an opposite message. (Thank the gods I didn't get fat, but why did they take my hair?)
On the other hand, this aging "trauma" is bittersweet, because it's another great theme to contemplate. It forces one to identify more with the imperishable realm of thought. (And despite the egoism talk pursued in a quest for truth/authenticity/sincerity, I understand the beauty of true humility, of the courage to not know and to not dominate. But the anti-ego talk can become so false and masochistic that I like to "confess" what the behavior of those around us tells us every day -- that looking out for and building up #1 is the living religion on which the other stuff functions as an icing or a lubricant. (I'm not complaining or rebelling. Amor fati, etc. But this "amor fati" is one more "finite" and quickly mockable persona, for instance, which the restless spirit does not neglect to chew. )

Louis C.K. gets pretty brutal. I think we can relate to him because he talks openly (with a transcendent gleam in his eye) about subjects we wouldn't touch in mixed company. I could find some clips, but just recall some of his bolder jokes. He's something like an implicitly "nihilist" clown, in the sense that a certain kind of skeptic (close to my meaning of nihilist) plays by the rules for pragmatic reasons, without affirming those rules from his depths as an expression of his true self.

Reply to Ignignot I may have misframed you, but not quite as an angry young man (they talk more Schopenhauer, Zapffe & Cioran). You reminded me a bit of another poster - I can't remember his name, don't think he's posted recently - but a mid-late 30s recovering artist who had shifted to academia (pure mathematics) but was still in touch with his Blake. & also Stirner.

Here's my grand theory: Some people grow up feeling somehow cut-off from the group, and the group's recognition/admiration economy. That sucks, and is no-joke traumatic. Or, more exactly, its traumatic if you've have at least a taste of intimate adoration at home. Then this having-been-cut-off feels like a terrible breach, and its like something's gone very wrong. It feels like there's some gap between what you actually are (the rightfully admired child) and what you're perceived to be. Then: you build up a persona and self-image, half-knowing its false, in order to re-position yourself in a way that will restore things to how they're supposed to be. It's a white lie, because it's not quite you, but it's your way of getting the admiration your deserve. But forever after you're aware of the ad hoc precarious nature of the persona. Not always consciously (you can sink deep into the persona) but perhaps as a vague anxiety or mistrust. And in this half-conscious state, there's a tendency to want to build up the persona, to make it as air-tight and grand as possible.

(I think there's a parallel story, one I haven't experienced, but where people do admire you, but it strikes you that they admire you for the wrong reasons, but oh well, you double down on the stuff they admire you for anyway, which, again, cashes out as a persona)

And if you think about yourself that way, then you start to think about the whole world that way. Not people, but personas. A persona can only see personas. That kinda thing.

Maybe you don't have that kind of thing, but I know I've struggled with it, and you have the tics: ("But this "amor fati" is one more "finite" and quickly mockable persona, for instance, which the restless spirit does not neglect to chew" & " I understand the beauty of true humility, of the courage to not know and to not dominate. But the anti-ego talk can become so false" & "He's something like an implicitly "nihilist" clown, in the sense that a certain kind of skeptic (close to my meaning of nihilist) plays by the rules for pragmatic reasons, without affirming those rules from his depths as an expression of his true self."

Incidentally, I asked for The Essence of Christianity as a fuck-you-I'm-an-atheist xmas present in high school and my dad wrote on the inside front cover 'I hope this will take you far in your journey for understanding' and I thought that was so funny, at the time.

Quoting csalisbury

a mid-late 30s recovering artist who had shifted to academia (pure mathematics) but was still in touch with his Blake & also Stirner.

I had that thought, also.

I didn't much like Feuerback, or Marx, for that matter, or any of other European atheists intellectuals. My view always was, they're reacting against the extreme pressure to conform that characterised the Western and European religious tradition. In European history, the Church was for a long while the only central authority and political power. The various wars of religion and other conflicts, engendered a massive counter-movement, exemplified in Enlightenment rationalism, of which the secular intelligentsia are a product.

But this reaction was based on a particular type of religous mentality and an authoritarian conception of God. It is not at all like the understanding of the mystics, the spiritually illuminated, and many other forms of religious sensibility that existed inside, outside and along side the Church-dominated authoritarianism of the West.

Reply to csalisbury

Great post. Quoting csalisbury

Then: you build up a persona and self-image, half-knowing its false, in order to re-position yourself in a way that will restore things to how they're supposed to be.

There's a line in Derrida's Spurs that I struck me as true. In short, men are their masks. They kill and die for "honor." Of course Hegel/Kojeve comes to mind. Man as such is the animal who throws away his biological reality (if necessary) in the name of a "spiritual" (linguistic) notion of himself. Man is a futile passion to be god, or present and transcendent at the same time (Sartre). But maybe all these dudes were drunk on too much breast-milk. I read Being and Nothingness as an badly written but highly relevant autobiography that won't confess itself as such--or maybe it was just slick and less embarrassing for both reader and writer to frame it all as universally valid psychology rather than as abstract, confessional, lyric poetry. (For what it's worth, I was basically a "gifted" child from a dysfunctional, working-class family. But momma did love her babies, and I was the first. )

Anyway, more to the point. I really don't believe there is a true human essence beyond the shared biological foundation. I do believe that "spiritual" pain (shame, guilt, dissatisfaction) carves our mask. I do not believe that we are always self-conscious enough to worry about it. Joking/playing with the wife is pure. Maybe because we are naked in our infinitude there.

Quoting csalisbury

And if you think about yourself that way, then you start to think about the whole world that way. Not people, but personas. A persona can only see personas. That kinda thing.

I take your point. Still, when we speak as "philosophers" (or present a crystallization of our living personality in a blog post), we are indeed (like it or not) carving a persona, which is to say an image of ourselves in the mind of another. We do not have direct access to one another. We do tend to attempt at least to control this image. And this makes sense, since we largely define ourselves in terms of the inferior other (liberals versus conservatives is an easy example). We know all too well (from our own dark hearts) how quick to stereotype and categorize that pesky, self-preserving Other can be.

Reply to csalisbury
I came to Feuerbach late, unfortunately, but it's a great book. He's a more "objective" man than Nietzsche with many of the same concerns.

F:
To speak is an act of the will; thus, creation is a product of the Will: as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the Will: not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the imagination – the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of nothing. As the eternity of the world or of matter imports nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness of the world.

I've sometimes thought about the "white man" colonizing North America with his iconoclastic religion. Feuerbach really brought home for me what iconoclasm is all about.

F:
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and reality: nothing else than the ability to posit everything real as unreal – everything conceivable as possible: nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-will.
...
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature.

Jesus, Feuerbach! Nailed it. "This distinction of his is his God."

Quoting Wayfarer

I didn't much like Feuerback, or Marx, for that matter, or any of other European atheists intellectuals. My view always was, they're reacting against the extreme pressure to conform that characterised the Western and European religious tradition.

Feuerbach seemed to see himself as fixing Christianity so that it would work better. He thought that if man would just wake up from his confused projection, then man could get his act together. Kind of touching isn't it? I won't defend Marx, though he has his moments. But, seriously, have you read Feuerbach closely?

F:
Not to invent, but to discover, “to unveil existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis, – since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology; – but in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism – at least in the sense of this work – is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

Quoting csalisbury

still in touch with his Blake. & also Stirner.

'Exuberance is beauty' applies to both of them, but Stirner has lost points with me since I have discovered him to be an elaborate footnote to Hegel.

Hegel:
Spirit thus rises to itself or attains to self-consciousness, and by this means finds within itself its own objectivity, which it was previously compelled to seek in the outer and sensuous forms of material existence. Henceforth it perceives and knows itself in this its unity with itself; and it is precisely this clear self-consciousness of spirit that constitutes the fundamental principle of Romantic Art. But the necessary consequence is that in this last stage of the development of art the beauty of the Classic ideal, which is beauty under its most perfect form and in its purest essence, can no longer be deemed a finality; for spirit now knows that its true nature is not to brought into a corporeal form. It comprehends that it belongs to its essence to abandon this external reality in order to return upon itself, and expressly posits or assumes outer reality to be an existence incapable of fully representing spirit.
...
The true content of Romantic thought, then, is absolute internality, the adequate and appropriate form of which is spiritual subjectivity, or conscious personality, as comprehension of its own independence and freedom. Now that which is in itself infinite and wholly universal is absolute negativity of all that is finite and particular. It is the simple unity with self which has destroyed all mutually exclusive objects, all processes of nature, with their circle of genesis, decay, and renewal which, in short, has put an end to all limitation of spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular divinities into itself. In this pantheon all the gods are dethroned. The flame of subjectivity has consumed them. In place of plastic polytheism, art now knows but one God, one Spirit, one absolute independence, which, as absolute knowing and determining, abides in free unity with itself, and no longer falls asunder into those special characters and functions whose sole bond of unity was the constraint of a mysterious necessity.

And Feuerbach was another elaboration, though with an important materialistic emphasis.

Hegel:
But in order that spirit may thus realise its infinite nature it is so much the more necessary that it should rise above mere natural and finite personality in order to reach the height of the Absolute. In other terms, the human soul must bring itself into actual existence as a person (Subjekt) possessing self consciousness and rational will; and this it accomplishes through becoming itself pervaded with the absolutely substantial. On the other hand, the substantial, the true, must not be understood as located outside of humanity, nor must the anthropomorphism of Greek thought be swept away. Rather the human as actual subjectivity or personality must become the principle, and thus, as we have already seen, anthropomorphism for the first time attains to its ultimate fullness and perfection.

Note that there's not much difference between Hegel and The Irony. Hegel is just the "mature" man who sees that he also wants something solid, objective, social. He's a "god haunted
weirdo that got himself taken seriously.

F:Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature.

I can't see how that works. The explicit discussions of the 'distinction of man from Nature' I recall are those from Indian philosophy, although usually described in terms of 'self and other'. But the central theme of non-duality which is found in both Hindu and Buddhist sources, is grounded in the 'non-division' or 'non-duality' of self and world - the sense that self-and-world is in some sense a construction (vikalpa) in consciousness. So through the process of yoga, union, one is 'bound' to the divine by self-negation.

I don't think I see anything like that in those quotes from Feuerbach.

Hegel was not in any case an atheist, and he also had some affinities with mysticism. There's a nice short essay by Robert Wallace in PhilosophyNow, which summarises it as follows:

[i]Hegel begins with a radical critique of conventional ways of thinking about God. God is commonly described as a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth. Hegel says this is already a mistake. If God is to be truly infinite, truly unlimited, then God cannot be ‘a being’, because ‘a being’, that is, one being (however powerful) among others, is already limited by its relations to the others. It’s limited by not being X, not being Y, and so forth. But then it’s clearly not unlimited, not infinite! To think of God as ‘a being’ is to render God finite. [WF- this is also a point that is made by Paul Tillich.]

But if God isn’t ‘a being’, what is God? Here Hegel makes two main points. The first is that there’s a sense in which finite things like you and me fail to be as real as we could be, because what we are depends to a large extent on our relations to other finite things. If there were something that depended only on itself to make it what it is, then that something would evidently be more fully itself than we are, and more fully real, as itself. This is why it’s important for God to be infinite: because this makes God more himself (herself, itself) and more fully real, as himself (herself, itself), than anything else is. [WF - I don't quite get why 'infinite' here, but otherwise, this is simply a re-statement of the dependent nature of contingent beings vs the 'self-originated' first cause.)

Hegel’s second main point is that this something that’s more fully real than we are isn’t just a hypothetical possibility, because we ourselves have the experience of being more fully real, as ourselves, at some times than we are at other times. We have this experience when we step back from our current desires and projects and ask ourselves, what would make the most sense, what would be best overall, in these circumstances? When we ask a question like this, we make ourselves less dependent on whatever it was that caused us to feel the desire or to have the project. We experience instead the possibility of being self-determining, through our thinking about what would be best. But something that can conceive of being self-determining in this way, seems already to be more ‘itself’, more real as itself, than something that’s simply a product of its circumstances. [WF - similar to Maslow's 'self-actualised beings']

Putting these two points together, Hegel arrives at a substitute for the conventional conception of God that he criticized. If there is a higher degree of reality that goes with being self-determining (and thus real qua oneself), and if we ourselves do in fact achieve greater self-determination at some times than we achieve at other times, then it seems that we’re familiar in our own experience with some of the higher degree of reality that we associate with God. Perhaps we aren’t often aware of the highest degree of this reality, or the sum of all of this reality, which would be God himself (herself, etc.). But we are aware of some of it – as the way in which we ourselves seem to be more fully present, more fully real, when instead of just letting ourselves be driven by whatever desires we currently feel, we ask ourselves what would be best overall. We’re more fully real, in such a case, because we ourselves are playing a more active role, through thought, than we play when we simply let ourselves be driven by our current desires.

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.

Note that I haven’t said that God is ourselves, or that God is the world, or (as Spinoza said) that God is Nature. Instead, I’ve said that God is the fullest reality, arising out of ourselves, the world, and nature. This doesn’t reduce God to us, the world, or nature, because the God that we’re talking about is more fully real than they are. There is a process of increasing reality at work here, rather than some underlying ‘stuff’ that’s simply the paradigm of what’s ‘real’. [/i]

I think the above is compatible with the second of the two passages quoted above. Notice however the emphasis on retaining 'the person' as the locus of the realisation which is attained by 'being pervaded by the absolutely substantial'. That sense of the retention of the person is where Christian differs from Oriental mysticism. Also, notice that Hegel's model allows for the retention of an hierarchy of being, i.e. greater and lesser degrees of reality. That, I think, came into Hegel from Christian mysticism, specifically, Eckhardt and also Eirugena.

Quoting Wayfarer

The explicit discussions of the 'distinction of man from Nature' I recall are those from Indian philosophy, although usually described in terms of 'self and other'.

Feuerbach is stressing that the transcendence of the Christian God is the essential point. When a community's God is above or outside of nature, so is that community, implicity. He traces intstrumental egoism to the creation-from-nothing myth. A less egoistic/transcendent community would fit their God within nature (since God is their avatar).

Reply to Wayfarer

Feuerbach is talking about the distinction of ourselves as the authority over nature.

A person (or God) is distinct from the rest of the world, is the one with the power, who could choose to do anything, to control the world to the image of their liking.

The distinction which the understanding of our (or God's) ideas or fantasies as power or control over the world. Man (or God) is the creator. They can do whatever they might conceive, no matter how difficult, destructive, unethical or even (to the distinction in question) impossible-- Utopia is ours, Man (or God) only has to imagine it (and it costs nothing, for lowly Nature has no authority, value or impact on the acts of Man (or God). Even is it is all destroyed, nothing has been lost).

Quoting Wayfarer

Hegel was not in any case an atheist, and he also had some affinities with mysticism.

I don't Hegel's God has much to do with the usual theism (though maybe with yours, if you consider yourself a theist.) Of course Hegel isn't the easiest guy to be sure about, but his religion is definitely anthropomorphic. Or that's what I've come away with so far.

Hegel:
Equally unsatisfactory is the merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts. On the contrary our earnest endeavour must be directed to the recognition of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day; viz. that of the possibility of knowing God: or rather — since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question — the doctrine that it is impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in holy Scripture as the highest duty, — that we should not merely love, but know God, — the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there said; viz. that it is the Spirit (der Geist) that leads into Truth, knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead. While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge, and outside the limit of all human things, we have the convenient licence of wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True. On the other hand, the vanity and egotism which characterise it find, in this false position, ample justification and the pious modesty which puts far from it the knowledge of God, can well estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis - that Reason governs and has governed the World — and the question of the possibility of a Knowledge of God, chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the imputation against Philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths, or of having occasion to be so in which is insinuated the suspicion that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is, that in recent times Philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian religion God has revealed Himself, — that is, he has given us to understand what He is; so that He is no longer a concealed or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes no narrow-hearted souls or empty heads for his children; but those whose spirit is of itself indeed, poor, but rich in the knowledge of Him; and who regard this knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of the thinking spirit, which has resulted from the revelation of the Divine Being as its original basis, must ultimately advance to the intellectual comprehension of what was presented in the first instance, to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for understanding that rich product of active Reason, which the History of the World offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess admiration for the wisdom of God, as displayed in animals, plants, and isolated occurrences. But, if it be allowed that Providence manifests itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in Universal History? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But Divine Wisdom, i.e. Reason., is one and the same in the great as in the little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realising the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom, is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicaea, — a justification of the ways of God, — which Leibnitz attempted metaphysically in his method, i.e. in indefinite abstract categories, — so that the ill that is found in the World may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil.

He doesn't strike me as the typical theist, though.

And I don't think that he had an affinity for mysticism.

Hegel:

When we state the true form of truth to be its scientific character – or, what is the same thing, when it is maintained that truth finds the medium of its existence in notions or conceptions alone – I know that this seems to contradict an idea with all its consequences which makes great pretensions and has gained widespread acceptance and conviction at the present time. A word of explanation concerning this contradiction seems, therefore, not out of place, even though at this stage it can amount to no more than a dogmatic assurance exactly like the view we are opposing. If, that is to say, truth exists merely in what, or rather exists merely as what, is called at one time intuition, at another immediate knowledge of the Absolute, Religion, Being – not being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itself – from that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for systematic philosophical exposition. The Absolute on this view is not to be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited; it is not its conception, but the feeling of it and intuition of it that are to have the say and find expression.
...
The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinity – he may look where he likes to find this: he will easily find for himself the means to procure something he can rave over and puff himself up withal. But philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying.

? 10. Still less must this kind of contentment, which holds science in contempt, take upon itself to claim that raving obscurantism of this sort is something higher than science. These apocalyptic utterances pretend to occupy the very centre and the deepest depths; they look askance at all definiteness and preciseness of meaning; and they deliberately hold back from conceptual thinking and the constraining necessities of thought, as being the sort of reflection which, they say, can only feel at home in the sphere of finitude. But just as there is a breadth which is emptiness, there is a depth which is empty too: as we may have an extension of substance which overflows into finite multiplicity without the power of keeping the manifold together, in the same way we may have an insubstantial intensity which, keeping itself in as mere force without actual expression, is no better than superficiality. The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself when spending and giving out its substance. Moreover, when this unreflective emotional knowledge makes a pretence of having immersed its own very self in the depths of the absolute Being, and of philosophizing in all holiness and truth, it hides from itself the fact that instead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for all measurable precision and definiteness, simply attests in its own case the fortuitous character of its content, and in the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus God’s beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.

Of course Hegel is no final authority on the validity of mysticism. But I've been tackling the juicier bits in the original, and I come away with a sense that Hegel is worldly and conceptual to the core.

Feuerbach was materialist, Hegel not. To my knowledge, Hegel remained a Lutheran Protestant all his life. I note from the Wikipedia entry on Feuerbach that

When the student Feuerbach presented his own theory to Professor Hegel, Hegel refused to reply positively to it.

With respect to the long passages:

Hegel:I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day; viz. that of the possibility of knowing God: or rather - since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question — the doctrine that it is impossible to know God.

I think that is a reference to Kant. He is protesting the idea of the unknowability of the Divine - which was very much part of Kant's philosophy, on account of the unknowable nature of the noumena. But, he says, the Divine Will has been revealed in the life and example of Jesus, and also:

Hegel:I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis - that Reason governs and has governed the World - and the question of the possibility of a Knowledge of God

I think that is very much in keeping with the ancient idea of the 'logos', which was appropriated by Christianity as 'the Word of God', but which in its Greek sense meant something more like the 'animating reason behind existence', and very much in keeping with Hegel's philosphy.

I am not sure who the second passage is referring to. I think the connection between Hegel and mysticism to be sought more in terms of the influence of the German mystical tradition of Eckhardt and the 'Rhineland Mystics', and also the more recent Jacob Boehme, a Protestant mystic. I suspect that what Hegel means by 'mysticism' in that second passage is not what I have in mind, and that he would categorise Eckhardt and Boehme philosophers rather than mystics. Obviously, a murky area, but there are many studies of Hegel and mysticism.

Reply to Wayfarer
As I understand it, the knowability of God asserted by Hegel is founded on an identification of God and (social) man. (I don't, however, see this kind of God as a ground of nature or matter. Why there is a man who makes Gods in his own image remains mysterious to me. But this "why" also feels merely lyrical or irreducible.)

https://mises.org/library/hegel-and-man-god:
In Professor Tucker's words, Hegelianism was a "philosophic religion of self in the form of a theory of history. The religion is founded on an identification of the self with God" 1 It should not be necessary to add at this point that "the self here is not the individual, but the collective organic species 'self.'" In a youthful essay on "The Positivity of the Christian Religion," written at the age of 25, Hegel revealingly objects to Christianity for "separating" man and God except "in one isolated individual" (Jesus), and placing God in another and higher world, to which man's activity could contribute nothing. Four years later, in 1799, Hegel resolved this problem by offering his own religion, in his "The Spirit of Christianity." In contrast to orthodox Christianity, in which God became man in Jesus, for Hegel Jesus's achievement was, as a man, to become God! Tucker sums this up neatly. To Hegel, Jesus

<<is not God become man, but man become God. This is the key idea on which the entire edifice of Hegelianism was to be constructed: there is no absolute difference between the human nature and the divine. They are not two separate things with an impassable gulf between them. The absolute self in man, the homo noumenon, is not mere godlike … it is God. Consequently, in so far as man strives to become "like God," he is simply striving to be his own real self. And in deifying himself, he is simply recognizing his own true nature.>>2

If man is really God, what then is history? Why does man, or rather, do men, change and develop? Because the man-God is not perfect, or at least he does not begin in a perfect state. Man-God begins his life in history totally unconscious of his divine status. History, then, for Hegel, is a process by which the man-God increases his knowledge, until he finally reaches the state of absolute knowledge, that is, the full knowledge and realization that he is God. In that case, man-God finally realizes his potential of an infinite being without bounds, possessed of absolute knowledge.

This is from Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. This fits with God as Logos, but the Logos is incarnate.

Feuerbach:
Taken as an intelligible (geistig) or an abstract being, that is, regarded neither as human nor as sensuous, but rather as one that is an object for and accessible only to reason or intelligence, God qua God is nothing but the essence of reason itself. But, basing themselves rather on imagination, ordinary theology and Theism regard him as an independent being existing separately from reason. Under these circumstances, it is an inner, a sacred necessity that the essence of reason as distinguished from reason itself be at last identified with it and the divine being thus be apprehended, realised, as the essence of reason. It is on this necessity that the great historical significance of speculative philosophy rests. The proof of the proposition that the divine essence is the essence of reason or intelligence lies in the fact that the determinations or qualities of God, in so far as they are rational or intelligible and not determinations of sensuousness or imagination, are, in fact, qualities of reason.

Here's an interesting quote that shows that gap between Hegel and Feuerbach (as I understand it).

F:
I owe my existence by no means to the verbal or the logical bread – to the bread in itself – but always only to this bread, the "non-verbal." Being, grounded as it is altogether on such non-verbalities, is therefore itself something non-verbal. Indeed, it is that which cannot be verbalised. Where words cease, life begins and being reveals its secret. If, therefore, non-verbality is the same as irrationality, then all existence is irrational because it is always and forever only this existence. But irrational it is not. Existence has meaning and reason in itself, without being verbalised.

https://mises.org/library/hegel-and-man-god:This is the key idea on which the entire edifice of Hegelianism was to be constructed: there is no absolute difference between the human nature and the divine.

Even according to orthodoxy, Jesus was at once human and divine - that is in keeping with trinitarian theology although I don't think they would accept absolute identity. But the key difference between Hegel and Feuerbach would be, I'm sure, that Hegel believes in the reality of spirit (geist) where the latter cannot.

Reply to Ignignot

'God-as-reason' could be interpreted as 'spirit-as-reason', if "reason" is understood in its broadest possible sense. Remember that for Hegel, following Kant, the deepest aspect of reason is antinomy, and Hegel interprets this as a sign that being itself is antinomous (dialectical).

I don't see the purported gap between Hegel and Feuerbach in the second quoted passage. Could you explain?

Feuerbach:God is nothing but....

That sets off all my reductionist red flags....

Hegel lectured on Eirugena as part of his 'history of philosophy', and Eirugena's dialectic was formative for Hegel's philosophy.

[i]As a speculative theologian, Eriugena concerned himself with the question, why did God have a need to create, or, “why is there something rather than nothing?”...

The answer to the question of 'why God creates' constitutes a theodicy that anticipates what must logically follow as the reason d’être of the hidden principles in nature that the natural philosopher seeks to uncover. Eriugena’s answer to the question of 'why God creates' is that, before God created, He Himself had no existence; thus, God and his making, or His creative action, are not distinguishable, but come into being co-constitutively. Whatever is understood in Him is actualized and participates in Him. Creation, in the orthodox sense of an ontological wedge driven between God and nature, is for Eriugena only metaphorical because the creator does not transcend nature, and therefore the creation is not dependent on the creator, nor does the creator depend on the creation — the creator and His creation are of the same indivisible substance. (Note this anticipates pantheism, although that is a term which did not exist at the time.]

Accordingly, the metaphysical speculation of Eriugena pre-supposes no radical separation between the creator and the creation [however, see note below]; hence, his supposition that the creation is of the same substance as that which is created, as in the case of Plotinus’ order of metaphysical entities emanating from the One. All things, events, and their consequences, are rationally and logically connected. According to Eriugena, there is reason and purpose inscribed in the order of nature because the source of nature is itself rational and purposive. The motives of human beings, then, are the motives of God; furthermore, the rational nature of the human subject allows the rational mind of man to access and become one with the rationally intelligible object. In terms of nature achieving final stability and perfection, the cycle of the return of nature to its divine source crowns Eriugena’s conception of God as the beginning, middle, and end of Himself.

According to Hegel, the act of the World Spirit coming to know itself through human history is likewise a dialectical process that culminates in the manifestation of universal freedom [here is where you can see the indebtedness to Eirugena]. The Hegelian contribution to the conception of 'God becoming man' plays out in his conception of the progress of world history, which is moved through a series of punctuated events involving what are referred to by Hegel as “world historical individuals.” These individuals, of which such men as Caesar and Napoleon are exemplars, are the tools of the World Spirit, the means by which history is moved forward. Great leaders, while believing themselves to be in command of their own will and actions, are in reality guided by the World Spirit towards the achievement of its necessary end, which is the coming to a knowledge of itself through history.[/i]

But a couple of other major points have to be noted. One, it was precisely this conception of 'the geist realising itself in history' that Marx inverted, leading to the saying that 'Marx stood Hegel on his head' (i.e. by converting an idealist dialectic to a materialist one). Feuerbach was also part of that movement, which re-interpreted Hegel's philosophy in materialist terms. So I think Hegel could not have accepted Feuerbach's interpretation, although I don't know that for sure.

Secondly, the above excerpt leaves out something important about Eirugena, which is the dialectical nature of his account of the relationship of God and the world:

[i]an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher. (Periphyseon, I.444a)
According to this mode, the affirmation of man is the negation of angel and vice versa. This mode illustrates Eriugena's original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angels do not exist in that way.[/i]

SEP.

So here is preserved the notion that there are different kinds or levels of being - that the 'being of an angel' is of a different kind to 'the being of a human'. I think that was subsequently lost with Duns Scotus and the 'univocity of being', but vestiges of it lived on in philosophy, even in Hegel.

I am reading Dermot Moran's The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (an expensive and hard-to-find book, but it's actually findable as PDF on Moran's site.) Moran argues that Eirugena lays the groundwork of what was to become German idealism a millennium later.

Reply to Wayfarer
Nice quote. Marx strikes me as an over-correction. If the German philosophers emphasized the dominance of non-thought by thought, then Marx did the opposite. Instead of matter as a function of the idea, we have the idea as a function of matter. But Marx sawed off the branch he was singing from. If the realm of culture is one with the deterministic realm of history and matter, then why all the hand-wringing and accusation? In short there's a tension between the scientific role and the prophetic social-justice role in Marx that's hard to take seriously. Feuerbach was more of "scientist" in his desire. I think he wanted to see clearly more than he wanted to lead others in a practical cause. (His biography supports this.)

But the "levels of being" seems to run through all of them, in terms of stages of consciousness and stages of the division of labor. At the end is absolute knowledge, complete incarnation, classless society, the abolition of difference, etc. I like this period in philosophy because it's so "human." Just about everyone cares about this sort of issue. And I think this connects to Feuerbach's materialism. He was trying to get real, become genuine.

F:
The unity of thought and being has meaning and truth only if man is comprehended as the basis and subject of this unity. Only a real being cognises real things; only where thought is not its own subject but the predicate of a real being is it not separated from being. The unity of thought and being is therefore not formal, meaning that being as a determination does not belong to thought in and for itself; rather, this unity depends on the object, the content of thought.

From this arises the following categorical imperative: Desire not to be a philosopher if being a philosopher means being different to man; do not be anything more than a thinking man; think not as a thinker, that is, not as one confined to a faculty which is isolated in so far as it is torn away from the totality of the real being of man; think as a living, real being, in which capacity you are exposed to the vivifying and refreshing waves of the ocean of the world; think as one who exists, as one who is in the world and is part of the world, not as one in the vacuum of abstraction, not as a solitary monad, not as an absolute monarch, not as an unconcerned, extra-worldly God; only then can you be sure that being and thought are united in all your thinking. How should thought as the activity of a real being not grasp real things and entities? Only when thought is cut off from man and confined to itself do embarrassing, fruitless, and, from the standpoint of an isolated thought, unresolvable questions arise: How does thought reach being, reach the object? For confined to itself, that is, posited outside man, thought is outside all ties and connections with the world. You elevate yourself to an object only in so far as you lower yourself so as to be an object for others. You think only because your thoughts themselves can be thought, and they are true only if they pass the test of objectivity, that is, when someone else, to whom they are given as objects, acknowledges them as such. You see because you are yourself a visible being, you feel because you are yourself a feelable being. Only to an open mind does the world stand open, and the openings of the mind are only the senses. But the thought that exists in isolation, that is enclosed in itself, is detached from the senses, cut off from man, is outside man – that thought is absolute subject which cannot or ought not to be an object for others. But precisely for that reason, and despite all efforts, it is forever unable to cross over to theobject , to being; it is like a head separated from the body, which must remain unable to seize hold of an object because it lacks the means, the organs to do so.

Reply to John
Sure, I think F has this kind of passage in mind:

H:
It is as a universal, too, that we(3) give utterance to sensuous fact. What we say is: “This”, i.e. the universal this; or we say: “it is”, i.e. being in general. Of course we do not present before our mind in saying, so the universal this, or being in general, but we utter what is universal; in other words, we do not actually and absolutely say what in this sense-certainty we really mean. Language, however, as we see, is the more truthful; in it we ourselves refute directly and at once our own “meaning”; and since universality is the real truth of sense-certainty, and language merely expresses this truth, it is not possible at all for us even to express in words any sensuous existence which we “mean”.

...
Pure being, then, remains as the essential element for this sense-certainty, since sense-certainty in its very nature proves the universal to be the truth of its object. But that pure being is not in the form of something immediate, but of something in which the process of negation and mediation is essential.

Hegel makes a great point here, but perhaps he is attached to the domination of matter by mind or the reduction of non-mind to mind.

F:
The most important thing to realise is that absolute thought, that is, thought which is isolated and cut off from sensuousness, cannot get beyond formal identity – the identity of thought with itself; for although thought or concept is determined as the unity of opposite determinations, the fact remains that these determinations are themselves only abstractions, thought-determinations – hence, always repetitions of the self-identity of thought, only multipla of identity as the absolutely true point of departure. The Other as counterposed to the Idea, but posited by the Idea itself, is not truly and in reality distinguished from it, not allowed to exist outside the Idea, or if it is, then only pro forma, only in appearance to demonstrate the liberality of the idea; for the Other of the Idea is itself Idea with the only difference that it does not yet have the form of the idea, that it is not yet posited and realised as such. Thought confined to itself is thus unable to arrive at anything positively distinct from and opposed to itself; for that very reason it also has no other criterion of truth except that something does not contradict the Idea or thought – only a formal, subjective criterion that is not in a position to decide whether the truth of thought is also the truth of reality. Ale criterion which alone can decide this question is sensuous perception. One should always hear the opponent. And sensuous perception is precisely the antagonist of thought. Sensuous perception takes things in a broad sense, but thought takes them in the narrowest sense; perception leaves things in their unlimited freedom, but thought imposes on them laws that are only too often despotic; perception introduces clarity into the head, but without determining or deciding anything; thought performs a determining function, but it also often makes the mind narrow; perception in itself has no principles and thought in itself has no life; the rule is the way of thought and exception to the rule is that of perception. Hence, just as true perception is perception determined by thought, so true thought is the thought that has been enlarged and opened up by perception so as to correspond to the essence of reality. The thought that is identical, and exists in an uninterrupted continuity, with itself, lets the world circle, in contradiction to reality, around itself as its center; but the thought that is interrupted through the observation as to the irregularity of this movement, or through the anomaly of perception, transforms this circular movement into an elliptical one in accordance with the truth. The circle is the symbol, the coat of arms of speculative philosophy, of the thought that has only itself to support itself.

Of course I think they're both great. Hegel is spectacular. His critics often take and use more than they object to. They sacrifice the husk to save the kernel.

Reply to Wayfarer

I didn't much like Feuerback, or Marx, for that matter, or any of other European atheists intellectuals. My view always was, they're reacting against the extreme pressure to conform that characterised the Western and European religious tradition. In European history, the Church was for a long while the only central authority and political power. The various wars of religion and other conflicts, engendered a massive counter-movement, exemplified in Enlightenment rationalism, of which the secular intelligentsia are a product.

But this reaction was based on a particular type of religous mentality and an authoritarian conception of God. It is not at all like the understanding of the mystics, the spiritually illuminated, and many other forms of religious sensibility that existed inside, outside and along side the Church-dominated authoritarianism of the West.

I think your diagnosis is exactly right, but that doesn't mean there's nothing of value in Marx (or Feuerbach, though I don't know with him. I never read more than a tenth of the book; i asked for it more for symbolic reasons. What I do recall strikes me as Common Sense carving a path in the Hegelian thicket.)

But mysticism and lived-religion (as opposed to socially-driven participation in rituals for pragmatic reasons) carries its own dangers. The guy who does Slate Star Codex made the very good point that mysticism is a practice but a weird one in that, to a much greater extent than with other practices, people are prone to conflate knowledge/theory of the tradition with actual faniliarity(think periodic participation in meditation retreats as analagous to silver-spooned well-theoried radicals participating in worker demonstrations from time to time. Does the theory serve the participation or is the participation an offering to (or credentials to speak of) the theory?)

Reply to Ignignot

I take your point. Still, when we speak as "philosophers" (or present a crystallization of our living personality in a blog post), we are indeed (like it or not) carving a persona, which is to say an image of ourselves in the mind of another. We do not have direct access to one another. We do tend to attempt at least to control this image. And this makes sense, since we largely define ourselves in terms of the inferior other (liberals versus conservatives is an easy example). We know all too well (from our own dark hearts) how quick to stereotype and categorize that pesky, self-preserving Other can be.

(forewarning: this is a rambly post)

Yes, agreed. I've always struggled to understand the ethical import of the fact that we carve personas. Like, is carving a persona a falsification, a cynical manipulation? Maybe some of the moral stickiness of this stems from the Romantic idea that a work in any given medium can - and ought - to express fully the person who creates it.

One way to sidestep this dynamic is to view any expression, in any medium, as operating within an (inherited) genre. It's impossible for a work, within a genre, to express the whole, and there's no way to escape genre into the Genre of all Genres. Literature's 'realists,' for example, quickly, helplessly, developed their own set of conventions (and also half-consciously imported a whole bunch of old ones.)

This is a kind of language-game type view. A blog post (or anything else) would consist of 'moves' within a game. In addition to object-level moves (just the shit you talk about: Recipes maybe or thoughts on Hegel or Hillary's being implicated by Benghazi etc.) there are also meta-moves which

- communicate your own credentials to make certain object-level moves ('hell I was THERE at Benghazi" "I went to a prestigious culinary school" etc.)

- anticipate and prevent undesired countermoves ( "I know DMT has a reputation, but I'm not one of those Joe Rogan bros, my experience with it stems from my background in chemistry" "One objection to what I've said is x, but this is why x doesn't apply here" etc.)

- change the rules of the game itself (Having trouble thinking of a good example at the moment, but basically reframing things in a way that disrupts the way one's audience has grown to expect how one move will lead to another.)

- facilitate a transition from one game to another ( "OH YEAH, how bout you come down here and say that to my face!"

Anyway, the whole idea is that, if you get rid of the notion that you can or ought to express yourself fully in any one game, then the authentic/inauthentic dialectic and the language of masks no longer applies. An attack on one's honor isn't an unmasking, but an assault on one's right to participate in this or that social or political game. Of course that doesn't make it any less emotionally charged.

& of course, things don't break apart that easily. We contain multitudes, right, and we're animated by different forces that are all jostling to play different games, often at the same time. Many different uses can be made of the same game. So, for instance: talking about an alternative reading of Sartre's Being and Nothingness can be both an analysis germane to the topic and hand and a way of signalling that you have the capacity to not only comprehend difficult texts, but to also understand it at a level that goes beyond simply grasping what the author is trying to communicate.

I still can't meditate very well, but I started to get better when I realized the point wasn't to shut up my inner dialogue, but to watch it without identifying with it. (That's a truism, but it took me a long time to realize what that really meant.) But the neat part was seeing how my inner chatter consisted of a bunch of different, like, voices, each with very different goals. One would talk about how much I fucked this up, and that that meant I was BAD . One would talk about conceivable fantasy futures where I'm recognized as really great for x, y or z. One would talk about reasonable, practical ways to do this or that. One (instantly shouted out by the others) would try to get me to remember this or that memory from childhood.

One in particular though, was (is) super obsessed with stating novel truths. It's an end-in-itself for this voice. It's always on the prowl for new material to do this. But it's also kind of dumb in that it seems to think that the next truth will be the final one, despite that (obviously) never having happened in the past. This voice likes to team up with the voice that says I'm BAD and the voice that talks about fantasy futures. Or rather, the fantasy future voice and the let's-say-a-truth voice are constantly fighting with the bad voice, in a futile sisyphean tug-of-war. 'You're Bad.' 'But you could be very good!' 'And one way to do that is to find a truth, and say it!'

To go back: while the dialectic is useful, it seems to unfold by drowning out most of the voices, in order to highlight a select few. And when those voices have the stage, they like to pretend they're the only ones.

This seems impossible to escape if you're (half-consciously) identifying with any given voice (and so assenting to what it says). It takes effort - for me at least - to remember that anything I happen to be thinking at any time is only a small part of the actual situation.

In Hegel's case the need to state the final truth was desperately trying to assert itself, I think, above all the other voices. And Hegel was clever and self-conscious enough to realize he couldn't simply ignore those other voices. So instead he organized them and set them in motion in a way that allowed them to be subjected to the one voice.

So, there was a time when I would have written this whole thing goaded on by the 'future fantasy' voice, only to realize that I was looking for recognition for stating a final truth, which would make me feel bad.

But like, Idk, its part true, part not. I'm trying to convey something I actually feel, and, probably, some of the other voices, or tendencies, are gonna try to get their cut, but that's only a small part of the whole.

(Also NB these aren't 'real' voices.)

tl:dr

finite doesn't have to mean false & authentic doesn't have to mean infinite.

From the beginning, to find the reasons and remedies for the unpredictable phenomena of nature and life, humans stretched their imagination beyond the realm of available facts. Such a quest is emotional thinking, driven by greed and fear coupled with pride, which makes you fool your mind. This is how some prophets come up with off answers.

In a family, parents hold large control over the children. Since in pre-industrial time humans always faced the raw forces of nature, and often the flagrant and lawless interaction with others, the stronger of the two ganders, man, was the head of the family. Therefore, naturally, a figure of the supreme father was imagined. This is how God, and associated concepts were formed. We call this set of concepts spirituality. Spirituality demands blind obedience, because logic cannot explain it. Since spirituality depends largely on imagination, its format differs from culture to culture. Over time, mystery, myth and rituals were added, by greedy and misguided spiritual leaders.

Trade with other lands created towns. As communities grew in size, more law and order were established within, and their collective abilities were better able to counter the threats from outside and the wreath of nature. But we know that even the national strengths of a mighty super power, like us, is sometimes not enough to overcome the threats. For this reason the concepts involved in spirituality keep improving, as new facts are uncovered by cumulative observations and logic (i.e. scientifically), throughout the history.

Around 700 B.C, Iron was discovered. This made for higher production, enhancing the division of labor, and faster transportation and communication, by clearing land for roads faster. As a result, the kingdoms stared expanding. The ensuing wars devastated communities. This pain encouraged deep introspection. The world saw the lords of wisdom emerging. These exalted persons shaded all the crud from the definition of meaning of life, and gave us the quite correct roads to happiness. Incidentally, they defined the entity controlling our fate. Ironically, indigenous Indian religions deny the existence of God, and place ‘Karmas’ in the status of the supreme entity.

We perceive that everything has a cause, and that it becomes reason for a subsequent event. We call the understanding of this cause and effect as logic. The universe is logic. You can see this more vividly in mathematics. And so logic is the only vehicle on which, our effort to sustain our existence, and to manipulate the universe, within our sphere of influence, to achieve happiness, can ride. Majority of people in the world still proffer blind obedience to their religions. This gives them temporary respite from fear and impetus to their greed. This is an effort to shortchange your fate of due efforts. This is pride. On the other hand all sound religions preach humbleness.

Now no new religions are taking root, not only because all cultures of the world are already deeply rooted in their respective religions, but also because we have enough wisdom available from the masters to please the sincere followers, seeking deep wisdom about life. And science is destroying myths at an accelerating pace. God, being only a tool for this purpose, is slowly taking a back seat.

Quoting csalisbury

Maybe some of the moral stickiness of this stems from the Romantic idea that a work in any given medium can - and ought - to express fully the person who creates it.

I definitely relate to the impulse to tell the whole truth, which is to say reveal the whole person. But that's like exposing one's belly to the claws of a strangers. I think I might really have the courage to face merely verbal contempt, but I'm a slave to the dollar. Truth's a dog that must to kennel, even if it's just "truth." But I still measure personal relationships in terms of how much I have to censor myself (which I might self-flaterringly describe in terms of how "free" or "real" the persons involved are.)

Quoting csalisbury

One way to sidestep this dynamic is to view any expression, in any medium, as operating within an (inherited) genre. It's impossible for a work, within a genre, to express the whole, and there's no way to escape genre into the Genre of all Genres. Literature's 'realists,' for example, quickly, helplessly, developed their own set of conventions (and also half-consciously imported a whole bunch of old ones.)

I love this, and I totally agree. To be understood at all requires a background of mutual assumption,exposure, and expectation. Novelty is key. We want to delight others, and jokes and philosophy arguably do this in terms of surprise--which requires expectation.

Quoting csalisbury

his is a kind of language-game type view. A blog post (or anything else) would consist of 'moves' within a game. In addition to object-level moves (just the shit you talk about: Recipes maybe or thoughts on Hegel or Hillary's being implicated by Benghazi etc.) there are also meta-moves which

- communicate your own credentials to make certain object-level moves ('hell I was THERE at Benghazi" "I went to a prestigious culinary school" etc.)

- anticipate and prevent undesired countermoves ( "I know DMT has a reputation, but I'm not one of those Joe Rogan bros, my experience with it stems from my background in chemistry" "One objection to what I've said is x, but this is why x doesn't apply here" etc.)

- change the rules of the game itself (Having trouble thinking of a good example at the moment, but basically reframing things in a way that disrupts the way one's audience has grown to expect how one move will lead to another.)

- facilitate a transition from one game to another ( "OH YEAH, how bout you come down here and say that to my face!"

Again, I totally agree, and I'm delighted to see it written in black and white. That's the sort of self-consciouness that fascinates me. Changing the rules of the game is what I mean by abnormal discourse (which I steal from Rorty who stole from ...). That's the thrill of philosophy. It doesn't just break this or that proposition. It goes all King Slender on paradigms as a whole. (I also liked the lizard guy, but King Slender was my go to, and I hope this reference lands, so I feel less old.)

Quoting csalisbury

Anyway, the whole idea is that, if you get rid of the notion that you can or ought to express yourself fully in any one game, then the authentic/inauthentic dialectic and the language of masks no longer applies. An attack on one's honor isn't an unmasking, but an assault on one's right to participate in this or that social or political game. Of course that doesn't make it any less emotionally charged.

& of course, things don't break apart that easily. We contain multitudes, right, and we're animated by different forces that are all jostling to play different games, often at the same time. Many different uses can be made of the same game. So, for instance: talking about an alternative reading of Sartre's Being and Nothingness can be both an analysis germane to the topic and hand and a way of signalling that you have the capacity to not only comprehend difficult texts, but to also understand it at a level that goes beyond simply grasping what the author is trying to communicate.

I agree with all of this. But I feel compelled to clarify my own position. I try to avoid thinking in terms of oughts (beyond simple prudence). Instead I think in terms of desire. I desire to create the genre or game if necessary to express myself fully, but really this already exists partially in my best relationships. Occasionally one bumps up against limits and greedily fantasizes about a yet more circular ellipse. For instance, I'm "alone" with my favorite books in real life. Part of my reason for appearing on a forum like this is simply the desire to share affection for certain glorious ideas or realizations, which for me is more or less synonymous with friendship in a highly sublimated form. Anonymity is beautiul. We are "pure spirit." We are word-streams. Of course the bodiless god of the OP comes to mind. I experience my own name as a toe-tag. I didn't choose it. Of course that's silly and eccentric, but I associate it with what I respect about myself. History is a nightmare from which we continuously awake. (It's not that dire of a situation, but who doesn't wince as their stupid, former selves? Quoting csalisbury

I still can't meditate very well, but I started to get better when I realized the point wasn't to shut up my inner dialogue, but to watch it without identifying with it. (That's a truism, but it took me a long time to realize what that really meant.) But the neat part was seeing how my inner chatter consisted of a bunch of different, like, voices, each with very different goals. One would talk about how much I fucked this up, and that that meant I was BAD . One would talk about conceivable fantasy futures where I'm recognized as really great for x, y or z. One would talk about reasonable, practical ways to do this or that. One (instantly shouted out by the others) would try to get me to remember this or that memory from childhood.

One in particular though, was (is) super obsessed with stating novel truths. It's an end-in-itself for this voice. It's always on the prowl for new material to do this. But it's also kind of dumb in that it seems to think that the next truth will be the final one, despite that (obviously) never having happened in the past. This voice likes to team up with the voice that says I'm BAD and the voice that talks about fantasy futures. Or rather, the fantasy future voice and the let's-say-a-truth voice are constantly fighting with the bad voice, in a futile sisyphean tug-of-war. 'You're Bad.' 'But you could be very good!' 'And one way to do that is to find a truth, and say it!'

Yes, indeed. Multitudes. In that sense the chosen persona is very much a mask. We are brown in our guts but get to choose how we paint our verbal surface, within Freudian limits.

The honor issue is fascinating. It touches on conflicting visions of the masculine. In some cases it would just be crude to defend one's honor. One debases one's self further by taking the dishonor seriously. There's some great Dostoevsky on this theme. Stavrogin in The Possessed is unforgettable. He refuses to kill what's-his-name after the public slap. At first all the men of honor despise him as a coward. Finally some old general re-interprets this restrain in terms of what's-his-name's social status being too low to ...deserve retribution. Then they all celebrate him for being more noble and impressive than they are. There's a humor so deep and black in Dostoevsky (here and there) that makes we want to cry....with a dark joy, of course.

Anyway, I know what you mean about the voices. I also try to listen neutrally and stony-faced to the complexity of my heart in all of its wickedness and generosity. Somehow it became a matter of principle. This is one of the reasons I love Kojeve. Philosophy as a religion of self-consciousness? You betcha. Childhood happened to shape me for just that questionable game.

I really like the "You're bad, but you could be good." I think we tend to preserve our "spiritual bodies" which is to say self-image so that criticism is hard to admit to consciousness without the accompanying possibility of a fix. As a writer and musician, I've often decided that everything I had done to that point was shit. But this was only tolerable when I felt that I had just figured out why it was shit and how it therefore wouldn't be shit in the future. The same applies to the self. "I can admit I'm shit now because I was shit relative to the recently discovered future and diamond self."

Of course I also relate to truth-presentation as a supreme heroism. Sure, I shave off universal validity in theory. I embrace pragmatism and skepticism. But there is some synonym of the word truth that I can't help adoring and pursuing. I might say "style" or "beauty," but it's a little more scientific/conceptual than that, if only because it's conceptual.Quoting csalisbury

To go back: while the dialectic is useful, it seems to unfold by drowning out most of the voices, in order to highlight a select few. And when those voices have the stage, they like to pretend they're the only ones.

This seems impossible to escape if you're (half-consciously) identifying with any given voice (and so assenting to what it says). It takes effort - for me at least - to remember that anything I happen to be thinking at any time is only a small part of the actual situation.

So, there was a time when I would have written this whole thing goaded on by the 'future fantasy' voice, only to realize that I was looking for recognition for stating a final truth, which would make me feel bad.

But like, Idk, its part true, part not. I'm trying to convey something I actually feel, and, probably, some of the other voices, or tendencies, are gonna try to get their cut, but that's only a small part of the whole.

(Also NB these aren't 'real' voices.)

This is all great, too. I phrase in terms of "the laughter of the gods." We can get very passionate about the intellectual performance and lose ourselves in it, but, indeed, we speak from partial selves and in sense only partial truths. One could say that all thinking is reductionist. I very much appreciate that you are communicating something you actually feel. That's also what motivated me to be open about things that I knew weren't entirely respectable and could easily be misunderstood.

Reply to csalisbury Pardon me butting in - I like the 'genres'. I'm interested in taking from Bakhtin the notion of speech genres and applying them in the philosophy of language to the idea of speech acts. But it can be a creepy idea. There is no 'authentic' voice, only the ring of authenticity in a particular genre. (Just as there is no metalanguage for the 20th century logicians, you've got to face it, the metalanguage is English too.)

Still, I'm amazed you two get all this from Feuerbach, whom I've tried, but to me he's only seemed a footnote to Marx on the one hand and George Eliot (his first translator) on the other. Maybe I need to give him another go. :)

Quoting mcdoodle

Still, I'm amazed you two get all this from Feuerbach, whom I've tried, but to me he's only seemed a footnote to Marx on the one hand and George Eliot (his first translator) on the other. Maybe I need to give him another go. :)

I was surprised by how deep Essence turned out to be. And the Eliot translation is beautiful. As far as Marx goes, I recently enjoyed The German Ideology. I did learn to respect Marx in a new way, but I can't help feeling that Marx had a narrower soul. Feuerbach is a big-hearted man. As you may know, he had a great love affair that was connected to his embrace of "sensualism"(materialism). He felt the poverty of conceptual clockwork that willfully ignored the largely sensual human situation. "Real" bread (this bread here "beneath" the concept , however invisible to the system of universals) is nevertheless primary.

Quoting Wayfarer

That sets off all my reductionist red flags...

It is indeed reductionist. But one could argue that all philosophy is reductionist, just as every map is a reduction of the territory and useful exactly for that reason. I can't fit the city in my pocket. If I could, I still wouldn't have the vision to read this copy of the city.

So maybe the real issue is whether a personality as a whole is narrow. We might carry a plurality of potent reductions that balance one another out. To studiously avoid reductions in any particular work threatens the work with a useless ambiguity. It's arguably better to err on the side of exaggeration, so that the thesis is clear enough to be assimilated. Rest assured the experience reader will figure out its limited zone of application and its friction against other beloved and useful reductions.