Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God. G. W. F. Hegel
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that the nature of knowledge itself is to be examined before the actual, i.e., concrete knowledge of an object. We thus incurred the danger—a danger, however, necessary in the interests of thoroughness—of having to trace the subject further back than the time at our disposal for carrying out the aim of these lectures would permit of our doing. If, however, we look more closely at the demand which appears to have met us, it becomes perfectly plain that it is only the subject that has changed with it, not the thing. In both cases, either if we admitted the demand for that inquiry, or stuck directly to our theme, we should have to know, and in that case we should have a subject, too, in the shape of knowledge itself. And as in doing so we should not have emerged from the activity of knowledge, from real knowledge, there is nothing to hinder our leaving the other subject which it is not our aim to consider, alone, and thus stick to our own subject. It will further appear, as we follow out our purpose, that the knowledge of our subject will also in itself justify itself as knowledge. That in true and real knowledge the justification of knowledge will and must lie, might admittedly be said in advance, for to say so is simply a tautology, just as we may know in advance that the desired way round, the desiring to know knowledge before actual knowledge, is superfluous just because it is inherently absurd. If under the process of knowledge we figure to ourselves an external operation in which it is brought into a merely mechanical relation with an object, that is to say, remains outside it, and is only externally applied to it, knowledge is presented in such a relation as a particular thing for itself, so that it may well be that its forms have nothing in common with the qualities of the object; and thus when it concerns itself with an object, it remains only in its own forms, and does not reach the essential qualities of the object, that is to say, does not become real knowledge of it. In such a relation knowledge is determined as finite, and as of the finite; in its object there remains something essentially inner, whose notion is thus unattainable by and foreign to knowledge, which finds here its limit and its end, and is on that account limited and finite. But to take such a relation as the only one, or as final or absolute, is a purely made-up and unjustifiable assumption of the Understanding. Real knowledge, inasmuch as it does not remain outside the object, but in point of fact occupies itself with it, must be immanent in the object, the proper movement of its nature, only expressed in the form of thought and taken up into consciousness.
We have now provisionally indicated those standpoints of culture which in the case of such material as we have before us ought in the present day to be taken into account. It is pre-eminently, or, properly speaking, only here that it is self-evident that the proposition already laid down, according to which the consideration of knowledge is not different from the consideration of its object, must hold good without limitation. I will therefore at once indicate the general sense in which the proposed theme, the proofs of the existence of God, is taken, and which will be shown to be the true one. It is that they ought to comprise the elevation of the human spirit to God, and express it for thought, just as the elevation itself is an elevation of thought and into the kingdom of thought.
And to begin with, as regards knowledge, Man is essentially consciousness, and thus what is felt, the content, the determinateness which a feeling or sensation has, is also in consciousness as something presented in the form of an idea. That in virtue of which feeling is religious feeling, is the divine content; it is therefore essentially something of which we have knowledge. But this content is in its essence no sensuous perception or sensuous idea; it does not exist for imagination, but only for thought; God is Spirit, only for Spirit, and only for pure Spirit, that is, for thought. This is the root of such a content, even though imagination and even sense-perception may afterwards accompany it, and this content itself may enter into feeling. It is the elevation of the thinking Spirit to that which is the highest thought, to God, that we thus wish to consider.
This elevation is besides essentially rooted in the nature of our mind. It is necessary to it, and it is this necessity that we have before us in this elevation, and the setting forth of this necessity itself is nothing else than what we call proof. Therefore we have not to prove this elevation from the outside; it proves itself in itself, and this means nothing else than that it is by its very nature necessary. We have only to look to its own process, and we have there, since it is necessary in itself, the necessity, insight into the nature of which has to be vouched for by proof.
Lecture 2
SECOND LECTURE
If the undertaking which is commonly called proof of the existence of God has been understood in the form in which it was set forth in the first lecture, the chief objection to it will have been got rid of. For the nature of proof was held to consist in this, that it is only the consciousness of the proper movement of the object in itself. If this thought might be attended with difficulties in its application to other objects, these difficulties would necessarily disappear in the case of the object with which we are concerned, for it is not a passive and external object, but really a subjective movement, the elevation of the Spirit to God, an activity, the following of a certain course, a process, and thus has in it that necessary procedure which constitutes proof, and which has only to be taken up and studied in order that it may be seen to involve proof. But the expression proof carries with it too definitely the idea of a merely subjective line of thought to be followed on our behoof, to allow of the conception of it just stated being considered sufficient in itself apart from any attempt to expressly examine and get rid of this contrasted idea. In this lecture, then, we must first come to an understanding about the nature of proof in general, and with especial definiteness as regards that aspect of it which we here put aside and exclude. It is not our business to assert that there is no proof of the kind indicated, but to assign its limits, and to see that it is not, as is falsely thought, the only form of proof. This is bound up with the contrast drawn between immediate and mediated knowledge, in which in our time the chief interest centres in connection with religious knowledge, and even the religious frame of mind itself, which must accordingly be likewise considered.
The distinction, which has already been touched upon in connection with knowledge, implies that two kinds of proof must be taken into account, of which the one is clearly that which we use simply as an aid to knowledge, as something subjective, whose activity and movement have their place within ourselves, and are not the peculiar movement of the thing considered. That this kind of proof finds a place in the scientific knowledge of finite things and their finite content, becomes apparent when we examine the nature of the procedure more closely. Let us take for this purpose an example from a science in which this method of proof is admittedly applied in its most complete form. If we prove a geometrical proposition every part of the proof must in part carry its justification within itself, so also when we solve an equation in algebra. In part, however, the whole course of procedure is defined and justified through the aim which we have in connection with this, and because that end is attained by such procedure. But we are very well aware that that of which the quantitive value has been developed out of the equation, has not as an actual thing run through these operations in order to reach the quantity which it possesses, and that the magnitude of the geometrical lines, angles, and so on, has not gone through and been brought about by the series of propositions by which we have arrived at it as representing a result. The necessity which we see in such proof corresponds indeed to the individual properties of the object itself, these relations of quantity actually belong to it; but the progress in connecting the one with the other is something which goes on entirely within us; it is a process for realising the aim we have in view, namely, to see into the meaning of the thing, not a course in which the object arrives at its inherent relations and their connection. It does not thus create itself, and is not created, as we create it and its relations in the process of attaining insight into it.
Besides proof proper, of which the essential characteristic—for this is all that is necessary for the purpose of our investigation—has been brought out, we find further, that in the region of finite knowledge the term proof is also applied to what, when more closely examined, is only the indicating of something, the pointing out of an idea, a proposition, a law, and so on in experience. Historical proof we do not require from the point of view from which we here