Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3) — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
From the East other forms of opposition in the principles than those
we mentioned in connection with the Gnostics have been introduced,
namely, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. But more particularly has
this Parsee opposition emerged in Manichæism, in which God, as the
Light opposes the evil, non-existent (οὐκ ὄν), the ὕλη, the material,
self-annihilating. Evil is that which contains contradiction in itself:
the powers of evil (ὕλη), given over to themselves and raging in blind
enmity against one another, were met by a gleam from the Kingdom of
Light and thereby attracted, and this light pacified the powers of
evil, so as to cause them to cease from strife and unite together in
order to penetrate into the Kingdom of Light. As an inducement to make
them so act, in order to weaken and mitigate their blind fury through a
power operating irresistibly, and in order to bring about their final
overthrow, and the universal supremacy of light, of life, of the soul,
the Father of Light delivered over one of the powers of good. That is
the world-soul (ψυχὴ ἁπάντων); it was swallowed up by the material,
and this intermixture is the basis of the whole creation. Hence the
soul is everywhere disseminated, and in the dead husk it is everywhere
working and striving in man, the microcosm, as in the universe, the
macrocosm, but with unequal power; for where beauty reveals itself,
the Light-principle, the soul, obtains the mastery over matter, but in
the ugly, the hateful, it is subordinate, and matter is the conqueror.
This captive soul Mani likewise called the Son of Man—that is, of the
primitive man, the heavenly man, of Adam Kadmon. But only a part of
the Light-principle which was destined to strive with the Kingdom of
Evil is in this manner delivered over; being too weak, it incurred the
danger of being vanquished, and had to deliver over to matter a part
of its armour, this soul. The part of the soul which had not suffered
through such intermingling with matter, but had raised itself freely to
heaven, works from above for the purification of the imprisoned souls,
its kindred portions of light; and that is Jesus, the Son of Man, in so
far as he has not suffered (ἀπαθής), as distinguished from the suffering
Son of Man, the soul confined within the universe. But that delivering
soul remains in the second and visible light which is still distinguished
from the first and unapproachable, having its seat there, and by means
of sun and moon exercising influence in the purification of nature. To
Mani the whole course of the physical as of the spiritual world appears
as a process of purification by means of this soul. The captive principle
of Light required to be raised from the cycle of metempsychosis to an
immediate re-union with the Kingdom of Light. Hence the pure heavenly
soul came down to earth and appeared in the semblance of human form
in order to reach to the suffering soul (to the νοῦς παθητικός of
Aristotle?) a helping hand.