Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
η. The main endeavour of Bruno was thus to represent the All and
One, after the method of Lullus, as a system of classes of regular
determinations. Hence in the manner of Proclus he specifies the three
spheres: First, the original form (ὑπερουσία) as the originator of all
forms; secondly, the physical world, which impresses the traces of the
Ideas on the surface of matter, and multiplies the original picture in
countless mirrors set face to face; thirdly, the form of the rational
world, which individualizes numerically for the senses the shadows of the
Ideas, brings them into one, and raises them to general conceptions for
the understanding. The moments of the original form itself are termed
Being, goodness (nature or life), and unity. (Something similar to this
we also met with in Proclus, Vol. II. p. 445) In the metaphysical world
the original form is thing, good, principle of plurality (_ante multa_);
in the physical world it manifests itself in things, goods, individuals;
in the rational world of knowledge it is derived from things, goods and
individuals.[89] Unity is the agent that brings them back once more; and
Bruno, while distinguishing the natural and metaphysical world, seeks to
set up the system of the above determinations, in order to show at once
how the same thing is in one way a natural appearance, and in another way
an object existing for thought.
Since Bruno sought to apprehend this connection more closely, he
considers thinking as a subjective art and activity of the soul,
representing inwardly and in accordance with the ordinary conception, as
it were through an inward writing, what Nature represents externally, as
it were, through an outward writing. Thinking, he says, is the capability
both of receiving into one’s self this external writing of nature and
of imagining and substantiating the inward writing in the outward. This
art of thinking inwardly and organizing outwardly in accordance with the
same, and the capacity to reverse the process—an art possessed by the
soul of man—Bruno places in the closest connection with the art of the
nature of the universe, with the energy of the absolute World-principle,
by means of which all is formed and fashioned. It is one form which
develops; it is the same world-principle which causes form in metals,
plants and animals, and which in man thinks and organizes outside
himself, only that it expresses itself in its operations in an endlessly
varied manner throughout the entire world. Inwardly and outwardly there
is consequently one and the same development of one and the same
principle.[90]
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