UNDERSTANDING HEGEL 13
OR: NO MORE THESIS — ANTITHESIS — SYNTHESIS

Win Corduan

Part 13 The Death of God

The "Hegel" referred to in the picture on the left is with high probability not "our" Hegel. It stood at the city limit of Wabash, Indiana quite a few years ago during election campaign season. The local folks probably pronounced his name "Heegle."

What we need to do tonight, if I can keep myself on topic, is to annihilate God and Humanity so as to clear the way for Absolute Spirit. So, we need to look at the right side of the circle that represents Hegel's system. There you see the various progression of "the spirit," as it grows evermore encompassing. Under the heading of "Subjective Spirit," we focus on the conditions necessary for the individual to have knowledge, which finally leads us to recognize that the reality of knowledge relies on an individual's participation in a social community. Then under the heading of "Objective Spirit" Hegel begins with the smallest community, the family, and looking at the conditions necessary for spirit to function, he increases the size of the social unit step by step (or page by wearying page) until he arrives at Humanity-as-a-Whole. There really is no term in any language that by itself does justice to the meaning of "Objective Spirit" as Hegel uses it here. In German, of course, it is der Mensch, in Latin it would be homo in contrast to vir or anthropos, which totally goofs things up since anthropos is Greek and not Latin. In previous times, we might have said "man," or maybe capitalized it, "Man," but, gender sensitivity aside, none of those general terms totally catch the intent because it's a transcendental category, not a Platonic or Aristotelian form. It is a universal, and it represents corporate humanity, but it functions on the same level of reality as "the human individual," who is also an abstraction, come to think of it. So, I'll stick with humanity, with the request that you think of it as an abstraction that is not a metaphysical reality, but a transcendental necessity.

Now something truly remarkable happens. God becomes human. Just to make sure that we understand each other, this is not quite the Definition of Chalcedon on the Hypostatic Union, which declares that God, the second person of the Trinity, joined himself to a human nature in such a way that the two natures (human and divine) are born by one person without being totally separate units or totally comingled with each other. Jesus Christ is one person who is both God and a man. The man, in the orthodox setting is Jesus of Nazareth. But for Hegel, Jesus Christ's historical existence or metaphysical description are not of much value in contrast to his function in the system. There God, in the incarnation, dissolved himself into humanity. So, for Hegel, the incarnation consists of God, not just limited to the second person of the Trinity, and humanity (objective spirit), not just limited to an individual human person.

And then God died. Hegel was not the first person to make use of the phrase "the death of God" le dieue perdue, but Hegel was the first influential person to incorporate the phrase. Contrary to yet another myth in the history of philosophy, by the time Nietzsche picked it up, it was already pretty worn and patched. However, Nietzsche used the "death of God" as a description of his atheism, whereas for Hegel, it was merely a stage towards the God-behind-God, as it were, namely Absolute Spirit.

Both God and Humanity died on the "speculative Good Friday." Was there a resurrection? I think I've already given it away. Indeed, there was. This virtually inconceivable execution of humanity and deity gave rise to Absolute Spirit.

So--one might inquire politely--what? Why is this such a great achievement, particularly in light of the fact that we already know that Absolute Spirit, whatever it may be, is not permanent, but must give way so that we can travel around the circle once more? That's the question we'll take up in the next episode.