The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
Anyone who makes use of the word pantheism nowadays exposes himself
thereby to the grossest misunderstanding. For, to take but one aspect
of the difficulty, this word "all" signifies generally in our modern
acceptation of the term "all, and everything in its wholly empirical
particularity." We have at once recalled to us, for example, this
particular box with all its attributes, its specific colour, size,
form and weight, or that particular house, book, animal, table,
stool, oven, streak of cloud and so on, to the end of the list. When
we consequently find the charge advanced by not a few of our modern
theologians against philosophy, that it makes a God of everything in
general, it is quite obvious that this "everything" is taken in the
sense we have just adverted to, and this it is which is thus bodily
thrust upon her shoulders. In one word the complaint which attaches
to it is absolutely unwarranted. Such a conception of pantheism only
exists in the heads of stupidity, and is not discoverable in any form
of religion whatever, not even in those of the Iroquois and Esquimaux,
to say nothing of any philosophy. The "Everything" in what has been
termed pantheism is therefore neither this nor that particular thing,
but rather "Everything" in the sense of the "_All_," that is the One
substantive essence, which no doubt is immanent in particular things,
but is cognized in abstraction from their singularity and its empirical
reality, so that it is not the particular as such, but the universal
animating essence or soul, or to adopt a more popular way of speaking,
it is the true and the excellent, both equally a real presence in this
particular thing, which are here affirmed and indicated.