Tragedy in Hegel's Early Theological Writings

Peter Wake

Description

Tragedy plays a central role in Hegel's early writings on theology and politics. Hegel's overarching aim in these texts is to determine the kind of mythology that would best complement religious and political freedom in modernity. Peter Wake claims that, for Hegel at this early stage, ancient Greek tragedy provided the model for such a mythology and suggested a way to oppose the rigid hierarchies and authoritarianism that characterized Europe of his day. Wake follows Hegel as he develops his idea of the essence of Christianity and its relation to the distinctly tragic expression of beauty found in Greek mythology.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Monotheism of Reason and the Heart, Polytheism of the Imagination and Art

Part I. Positivity and the Concrete Idea of Freedom
1. Positivity and Historical Reversal
2. On Expansion

Part II. The Spirit of Withdrawal
3. The Idea of Freedom as Independence
4. Withdrawal and Exile
5. Dialectic of Love

Conclusion: Comedy, Subjectivity, and the Negative
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy of religion

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253012616
• Langue: English

Extrait

TRAGEDY IN HEGEL S EARLY THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS
I NDIANA S ERIES IN THE P HILOSOPHY OF R ELIGION
Merold Westphal, editor
TRAGEDY IN HEGEL S EARLY THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS
PETER WAKE

Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Monotheism of Reason and the Heart, Polytheism of the Imagination and Art
PART 1 Positivity and the Concrete Idea of Freedom
1. Positivity and Historical Reversal
Positivit t: Either Life or Death Conviction and the Proper Name Hegel Faith and Knowledge in Modernity Kant in Athens Secret Revolutions in Spirit Volksreligionen Greeks, Jews, and Christians Positivity Embodied Quality, Quantity, and a Lack of Measure Friendship Excursus on Measure in the Greek Republic Sects The Circuitous Route
2. On Expansion
Divided Jesus The Comedy of Failed Sacrifices Die Mahle der geistlichen Liebe The Drive Outward Resentment and the Imperial Will Internal Expansion The Modern Complementum of the Law Positivity as Asceticism A German Theseus? Excursus on H lderlin s Death of Empedocles Truth for the Imagination The Flight of the Gods and the Loss of Immanence The Greek versus Christian Imagination
PART 2 The Spirit of Withdrawal
3. The Idea of Freedom as Independence
Baptismos A Typology of Responses to Nature s Infidelity The Abrahamic Tear Mastery, Imagination, and Fate Human Nature and Its Perversion Poetic History Tragic Sacrifice and World Historical Individuals Jesus in the First and Final Act
4. Withdrawal and Exile
Separation from Separation The Shaman of K nigsberg I was once alive apart from the law Married Life A Different Genius Pl r ma On Crime and Punishment Grace, Fate, Catharsis The Empty Site of the Law Beauty in Withdrawal
5. Dialectic of Love
Beauty as Love Objectified Last Supper Revisited The Proper Vessel of the Infinite Beyond Faith Pure Life Logic of Love The Fate of Christianity as Tragedy The Hovering God Dissolution/ auf heben
Conclusion: Comedy, Subjectivity, and the Negative
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was conceived while I was a student in the Philosophy Department at DePaul University. I wish to acknowledge, first and foremost, David Krell for the inspiration he provided during these years. His seminars on H lderlin and Greek tragedy were decisive in shaping this book on Hegel. I also extend my deep thanks to Will McNeill for the close reading he gave to earlier versions of this text and for his continued support. Bill Martin, Michael Naas, and Angelica Nuzzo have each, in their own distinct ways, shaped the approach to philosophical texts reflected in this work. Kevin Carey, Sarah Dwyer, Laura Santos, and Mark Walter read sections of the book at various stages of its development, and I am grateful for their comments and our discussions. My thanks to Merold Westphal for his faith in the project and to Dee Mortensen at the University of Indiana Press for her advice and patience during its completion. My thanks also to Mary Lou Bertucci for her meticulous work in copyediting the manuscript.
I am particularly grateful to my students and colleagues at Saint Edward s University for their friendship and for the many conversations we have had about the ideas that animate this book. Evidence of these conversations can be found on virtually every page. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the members of the Philosophy Department at Saint Edward s. Thanks to William Zanardi, Mark Cherry, Jack Green Musselman, and Stephen Dilley for their encouragement and collegiality. My thanks as well to Richard Bautch, Lou Brusatti, Kerstin Somerholter, and the late Harald Becker, all of whom assisted in various ways in refining the work. I would also like to recognize George Martin for the St. Edward s Presidential Research Grants that made much of the writing and editing of this volume possible.
Above all, I give my most heartfelt thanks to Phil and Irene Wake for the in-numerable ways in which they have lent their support during the long process of completing this project; and to Ren e for her generous, indomitable spirit.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Citations that give both the German and the English sources will always list the German first. I have occasionally modified English translations and have indicated when I have done so.
G. W. F. Hegel
D
The Difference between Fichte s and Schelling s System of Philosophy. Translated by W. Cerf and H. S. Harris. Albany: SUNY Press, 1977. Referred to in the text as the Differenzschrift.
FK
Faith and Knowledge. Translated by W. Cerf and H. S. Harris. Albany: SUNY Press, 1977.
L
Love. In Early Theological Writings. Translated by T. M. Knox, 302-308. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Seventh paper-back printing 1992.
LFA
Hegel s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T. M. Knox. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
LJ
The Life of Jesus. In Three Essays (1793-1795), edited and translated by P. Fuss and J. Dobbins, 104-165. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
LPR
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by P. C. Hodgson. Translated by R. F. Brown et al. 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
LWH
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. 3 vols. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1992.
N
Hegels theologische Jugendschriften. Edited by Herman Nohl. T bingen: Mohr, 1907.
NL
Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law. Translated by T. M. Knox. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975.
OP
The Oldest Program toward a System in German Idealism. In D. F. Krell, The Owl of Minerva, 17, 1 (1985): 8-13. This translation of The Oldest Program is embedded within a longer article by David Farrell Krell.
P
The Positivity of the Christian Religion. In Early Theological Writings, translated by T. M. Knox, 67-181. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Seventh paperback printing 1992.
PdG
Ph nomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988.
PH
The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956.
PR
Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
PS
Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
SC
The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate. In Early Theological Writings, translated by T. M. Knox, 182-301. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Seventh paperback printing 1992.
TE
The T bingen Essay. In Three Essays, 1793-1795, translated by P. Fuss and J. Dobbins, 30-59. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. This fragment is also known by its first words Religion ist eine
W
Werke in zwanzig B nden, edited by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969-1971. Reference to this edition of Hegel s work is cited by volume followed by page number.
Friedrich H lderlin
FH
S mtliche Werke und Briefe. Edited by Michael Knaupp. 3 vols. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992.
Immanuel Kant
Ak
Kants gesammelte Schriften. Edited by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and Its Successors. Berlin: Reimer; later Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-1938, 1968.
TRAGEDY IN HEGEL S EARLY THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS
INTRODUCTION
Monotheism of Reason and the Heart, Polytheism of the Imagination and Art
The following study addresses what I will call G. W. F. Hegel s early theologico-political writings. It focuses primarily on a series of unpublished, fragmentary works that Hegel produced while living in Bern (1793-1796) and Frankfurt (1797-1800). I will, however, make no attempt to engage these early writings as if the later system did not exist. Indeed, one of the aims of revisiting them is to read parts of Hegel s later systematic texts through the earlier ones with the hope of capturing a spirit of engagement and an openness to future events that is too often concealed behind the still-lingering image of Hegel s work as a triumphalist philosophy of historical progress, a totalitarian theory of the Absolute, and the last stand of the onto-theological tradition. 1 Hegel s early thought amounts to a thoroughgoing challenge to religious dogmatism and a rejection more specifically of the positive use of abstract, impersonal, metaphysical categories when conceiving of the divine. The force of Hegel s challenge ought to give us pause before this persistent image of his work.
More narrowly, this study of Hegel s early writings can be understood as an excavation of two intertwining dialectical movements related to the Religion section of the Phenomenology of Spirit. As such, it is, in part, an attempt