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
secular; but this whole secular government of the Church claims at the
same time the dignity and authority of the divine. This mingling of the
sacred, divine, inviolable, with temporal interests, begets, on the one
hand, fanaticism, as among the Turks, and on the other hand, the humility
and _obedientia passiva_ of the laity against this dread power. It was
this ruin of the supersensuous world, as represented in knowledge and as
the actual Church, that inevitably forced man out of a temple such as
this, the Holy of Holies degraded into finitude.
Against this disunion, on the other hand, the secular element has
spiritualized itself in itself; or it has established itself firmly in
itself, and that in a manner which the Spirit justifies. To religion was
lacking the presence of its culminating point, the present reality of
its head; to the present secularity there is lacking the presence in it
of thought, reason, spirit. In the tenth century there was manifested
in Christendom a general impulse to build churches, although it was not
possible to regard God Himself as present therein. It was thus that
Christianity rose up, in her longing to take to herself the principle
of reality as absolutely her own. But neither these buildings, nor
external wealth, nor the power and dominion of the Church, nor monks,
nor clergy, nor Pope, are the principle of real actual presence in
her; they were insufficient for the spiritual. The Pope or the Emperor
is not Dalai-lama, the Pope is only the Vicar of Christ; Christ, as
a past existence, is in memory and hope alone. Impatient at the lack
of reality and at the want of holiness, Christendom goes to seek this
true Head; and this is the ruling motive of the Crusades. Christendom
sought Christ’s outward presence in the land of Canaan, the traces of
Him, the mount where He suffered, His grave; they took possession of
the Holy Sepulchre. What they represent to themselves as real they also
take possession of in fact as real; but a grave is a grave—all that they
find is a grave, and even that is torn from them. “Because Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see
corruption.” Christians made the mistake of thinking that they would find
satisfaction in this; this was the true object of their search; but they
did not understand themselves. These holy spots, the Mount of Olives,
the Jordan, Nazareth, as external sensuous presence of place without
presence of time, are things of the past, a mere memory, no perception
of the immediate present; the Christians found only their loss, their
grave, in this present. Barbarians all the time, they did not seek the
universal, the world-controlling position of Syria and Egypt, this
central point of the earth, the free connection of commerce; Bonaparte
did this when mankind became rational. The Crusaders were by the
Saracens and by their own violence and repulsiveness, as also by their
own misery (p.
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