Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1. THE HISTORICAL SIDE OF THIS CONNECTION.
Philosophy does not reflect on any particular thing or object already existing as a first substratum; its content is just Thought, universal thought which must plainly come first of all; to put it otherwise, the Absolute must in Philosophy be in the form of thought. In the Greek Religion we find the thought-determination “eternal necessity;” which means an absolute and clearly universal relation. But such thought has other subjects besides; it only expresses a relation, the necessity to be the true and all-embracing Being. Thus neither must we take this form into our consideration. We might speak in that way of a philosophy of Euripides, Schiller or Goethe. But all such reflection respecting, or general modes of representing what is true, the ends of men, morality and so on, are in part only incidentally set forth, and in part they have not reached the proper form of thought, which implies that what is so expressed must be ultimate, thus constituting the Absolute. _γ. Particular theories found in Religion._
In conclusion, the philosophy which we find within Religion does not concern us. We find deep, speculative thoughts regarding the nature of God not only in the Indian Religions, but also in the Fathers and the Schoolmen. In the history of dogmatism there is a real interest in becoming acquainted with these thoughts, but they do not belong to the history of Philosophy. Nevertheless more notice must be taken of the Schoolmen than of the Fathers, for they were certainly great philosophers to whom the culture of Christendom owes much. But their speculations belong in part to other philosophies such as to that of Plato, which must in so far be considered for themselves; partly, too, they emanate from the speculative content of Religion itself which already exists as independent truth in the doctrine of the Church, and belongs primarily to faith. Thus such modes of thought rest on an hypothesis and not on Thought itself; they are not properly speaking themselves Philosophy or thought which rests on itself, but as ideas already firmly rooted, they act on its behalf either in refuting other ideas and conclusions or in philosophically vindicating against them their own religious teaching. Thought in this manner does not represent and know itself as the ultimate and absolute culmination of the content, or as the inwardly self-determining Thought. Hence, too, when the Fathers, seeing that the content of the Christian Religion can only be grasped after the speculative form, did, within the teaching of the Church, produce thoughts of a highly speculative nature, the ultimate justification of these was not found in Thought as such, but in the teaching of the Church. Philosophic teaching here finds itself within a strongly bound system and not as thought which emanates freely from itself. Thus with the scholastics, too, Thought does not construct itself out of itself, but depends upon hypotheses; and although it ever rests more and more upon itself, it never does so in opposition to the doctrine of the Church. Both must and do agree, since Thought has to prove from itself what the Church has already verified.
But the drawback that attaches to this Philosophy is that the ultimate appeal—even in modern times—is made to the fact that men are constituted such as they are by nature, and with this Cicero is very free. Here the moral instinct comes into question, only under the name of feeling; Religion now rests not on what is objective but on religious feeling, because the immediate consciousness of God by men is its ultimate ground. Cicero makes copious use of the _consensus gentium_; in more modern times this appeal has been more or less left alone, since the individual subject has to rest upon himself. Feeling is first of all laid hold of, then comes reasoning from what is given, but in these we can appeal to what is immediate only. Independent thought is certainly here advanced; the content too, is taken from the self; but we must just as necessarily exclude this mode of thinking from Philosophy. For the source from which the content is derived is of the same description as in the other cases. Nature is the source in finite sciences, and in Religion it is Spirit; but here the source is in authority; the content is given and the act of worship removes but momentarily this externality. The source of popular Philosophy is in the heart, impulses and capacities, our natural Being, my impression of what is right and of God; the content is in a form which is of nature only. I certainly have everything in feeling, but the whole content is also in Mythology, and yet in neither is it so in veritable form. The laws and doctrines of Religion are that in which this content always comes to consciousness in a more definite way, while in feeling there still is intermingled the arbitrary will of that which is subjective.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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