Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God. G. W. F. Hegel
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is indeed the Creator of the world, and is so sufficiently defined. But God is more than this; He is the true God in that He is the mediation of Himself with Himself, and is this love.
Faith, then, inasmuch as it has God as the object of its consciousness, has this mediation for its object; just as faith, as existing in the individual, only exists through teaching and training, the teaching and training of men, but still more through the teaching and training of the Spirit of God, and exists only through this process of mediation. But faith, like consciousness in general, this relation of the subject to an object, is quite abstract, whether God is its object, or whatever thing or content may be the object, and so faith or knowledge only exists through the medium of an object. Otherwise we have empty identity, a faith in or knowledge of nothing.
But conversely there is to be found here the other fact that, in like manner, there can be nothing which is only and exclusively the product of mediation. If we examine into what we understand by immediacy, it will be seen that it must exist in itself without any difference, such as that through which mediation is at once posited. It is simple reference to self, and is thus in its immediate form merely Being. Now all knowledge, mediate and immediate, and indeed everything else, at all events is; and that it is, is itself the least and most abstract thing that one can say of anything. If it is even only subjective, as faith or knowledge is, at all events it is, the predicate of Being belongs to it, just as such Being appertains to the object which exists only in faith or knowledge. The insight involved in this view is of a very simple kind. Yet we may be impatient with philosophy just because of this simplicity, in so far as we pass from the fulness and warmth which belong to faith, over to such abstractions as Being and immediacy. But, in point of fact, this is not the fault of philosophy; on the contrary, it is that assertion of faith and immediate knowledge which takes its stand on these abstractions. In this fact, that faith is not mediate knowledge, there lies the entire value of the matter, and the verdict passed upon it. But we come also to the content, or rather, we may likewise come only to the relation of a content, to knowledge.
It is further to be remarked that immediacy in knowledge, which is faith, has this further quality, that faith knows that in which it believes, not merely generally, not merely in the sense of having an idea or knowledge from without of it, but knows it with certainty. It is in certainty that the nerve of faith lies. And here we encounter a further distinction, we further distinguish truth from certainty. We know very well that much has been known, and is known for certain, which is nevertheless not true. Men have long enough known it to be certain, and millions still know it to be certain, to take a trivial example, that the sun goes round the earth. And what is more, the Egyptians believed, and knew it for certain, that Apis was a great or the greatest god; while the Greeks thought the same regarding Jupiter; just as the Hindus still know for certain that the cow, and other inhabitants of India, the Mongols and many races, that a man, the Dalai-Lama, is God. That this certainty is expressed and asserted is admitted. A man may quite well say, I know something for certain, I believe it, it is true. But, at the same time, every one else must be allowed the right to say the same thing, for every one is “I,” every one knows, every one knows for certain. But this unavoidable admission expresses the truth that this knowledge, knowledge for certain, this abstraction, may have a content of the most diverse and opposite kind, and the proof of the content must lie just in this assurance of being certain, of faith. But what man will come forward and say, Only that which I know and know as certain is true; what I know as certain is true just because I know it as certain. Truth stands eternally over against mere certainty, and neither certainty, nor immediate knowledge, nor faith decides what is truth. Christ directed the minds of the Apostles and His friends away from the genuinely immediate visible certainty which they derived from His immediate presence, from His own sayings and spoken words heard with their ears and apprehended through their senses and feelings, away from such a faith and such a source of faith to the truth, into which they were to be led only in the further future and through the Spirit. For the attainment of anything more in addition to this highest certainty, derived from the source above indicated, there exists nothing except just what is in the content itself.
Faith, in so far as it is defined to be immediate knowledge, as distinguished from what is mediate, reduces itself to the abstract formalism above mentioned. This abstraction makes it possible not only to rank as faith the sensuous certainty which I have that I possess a body, and that there are things outside me, but to deduce or prove from it what the nature of faith is. But we should do gross injustice to what in the sphere of religion is termed faith if we were to see in it only this abstraction. Faith must rather be full of substance; it must be a content, and this is to be a true content; it must be far removed from such a content as the sensuous certainty that I have a body, that things perceived by the senses surround me. It must contain the truth, and quite a different truth from that last mentioned, the truth of finite things of sense, and derived from quite a different source. The tendency above indicated to formal subjectivity must find faith as such even too objective, for this latter has always to do with ideas of things, with a knowledge of them, with a state of conviction regarding some content. This extreme form of the subjective, in which the definite form of the content and the conception and knowledge of it have vanished, is that of feeling. We cannot, therefore, avoid speaking of it too; it is this form, moreover, which is asked for in our times, not feeling of the simple or naive kind, but as a result of culture, derived from grounds or reasons which are the same as those already referred to.
Lecture 4
FOURTH LECTURE
As has been shown in the preceding lecture, the form of feeling is closely related to mere faith as such. It is the yet more intensive forcing back of self-consciousness into itself, the development of the content to mere definiteness of feeling.
Religion must be felt, must exist in feeling, otherwise it is not religion; faith cannot exist without feeling, otherwise it is not religion. This must be admitted to be true, for feeling is nothing but my subjectivity in its simplicity and immediacy—myself as this particular existent personality. If I have religion only as idea, faith takes the form of certainty about these ideas; its content is before me, it is still an object over against me; it is not yet identical with me as simple self; I am not so penetrated through and through with it that it constitutes my qualitative, determinate character. The very inmost unity of the content of faith with me is requisite in order that I may have quality or substance, its substance. It thus becomes my feeling. As against religion Man must hold nothing in reserve for himself, for it is the innermost region of truth. Religion must therefore possess not only this as yet abstract “I,” which even as faith is yet knowledge, but the concrete “I” in its simple personality, comprehending the whole of it in itself. Feeling is this inwardness which is not separated in itself.
Feeling is, however, understood to have the property of being something purely individual, lasting for a single moment, just as one individual thing in the process of alternation with another exists either after that other or alongside of it. But the heart signifies the all-embracing unity of the feelings, both in their quantity and also as regards their duration in time. The heart is the ground or basis which contains in itself and preserves the essential nature of feelings, independent of the fleeting nature of their succession in consciousness. In this their unbroken unity—for the heart expresses the simple pulse of the living spirit—religion is able to penetrate the different kinds of feeling, and to become for them the substance which holds, masters, and rules them.
But this brings us at once to the reflection that feeling and heart as such are only the one side, definite forms of feeling and heart being the other. And, accordingly, we must at once go further and say, that just as little is religion true, because it exists in our feelings or hearts, as because it is believed and known immediately and for certain. All religions, even the most false and unworthy, exist in our feelings and hearts just as much as those that are true. There are feelings which are immoral, unjust, and godless, just as much as there are feelings which are moral, just, and pious. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, backbiting, and so forth; that is