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
however, is still only implicit.
But the fact that because man is capable of the divine, the identity of
the divine and human nature must likewise be present for him, has in an
immediate way become known to him in Christ, as one in whom the divine
and human nature are implicitly one. In the world what has come to pass
is that the Absolute has been revealed as the concrete, and, further, not
only in thought in a general way as intelligible world, but because it
has in itself proceeded to its ultimate point of intensity. Thus it is
an actual self, an “I,” the absolute universal, the concrete universal,
that is God; and also the absolute opposite of this determination, the
clearly finite as it exists in space and time, but this finite determined
in unity with the eternal as self. The Absolute comprehended as concrete,
the unity of these two absolutely different determinations, is the
true God; each of them is abstract, and either of them taken by itself
is thus not the true God. The fact that the concrete is thus known to
men in this perfection as God, brings about the whole revolution that
has taken place in the world’s history. The Trinity is thereby not
only present in conception, which would not yet constitute the perfect
concrete, but actuality is perfectly united to it. In the consciousness
of the world it has consequently broken in upon men that the Absolute has
attained to this “culminating point” of immediate actuality, as Proclus
says; and that is the manifestation of Christianity. The Greeks were
anthropomorphic, their gods were humanly constituted; but the deficiency
in them is that they were not anthropomorphic enough. Or rather the Greek
religion is on the one hand too much, and, on the other hand, too little
anthropomorphic—too much, because immediate qualities, forms, actions,
are taken up into the divine; too little, because man is not divine as
man, but only as a far-away form and not as ‘this,’ and subjective man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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