Hegel's God a Counterfeit

7/28/2019 Hegel's God a Counterfeit

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Hegel's thought. Hegel's thought is interrogated not only with respect to its consistency, internalcoherence, and how it fares relative to other forms of philosophical thought that bear onreligion, but also-and more importantly-how successful it is in being faithful both to what isgiven in experience and Christian self-understanding. Such questioning provides, Desmondbelieves, the means to break the self-legitimating circuit of Hegelian conceptuality, which almostinevitably reinscribes critique within its totalizing system.

On the level of fact, Desmond's text represents nothing less than a final settling of accounts witha philosopher who has served for him over the years the dual role of inspiration and obstacle.Hegel's God effects as well as announces a weaning from Hegel, which is necessary in order forthought to think reality and its origin more deeply and the relations between discourses moreadequately. Desmond says in his preface that this work bids adieu to Hegel after a pondering of twenty-five years. This prior engagement referred to, which in its own way had its share of goodbyes, gives gravity to the adieu that is the text, and is ingredient in the note of hospitality that sounds throughout a rigorously sustained outbidding of Hegel's dialectic. For one does notsay goodbye to an implacable enemy; one says goodbye to someone who was once a friend, evenif ambiguously so. And even if one were not familiar with Desmond's voluminous work, simply in terms of Hegel's God it would be easy to infer what would have held the friendship together.For as Desmond moves in his chapters from Hegel's early writings, through ThePhenomenology of Spirit (1807), to the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) andLectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), it becomes clear that readers are not dealing withan anodyne philosophical figure. Rather Hegel comes across as a bold, in fact "monstrously ambitious thinker" who cannot be domesticated (89). Constructions of Hegel as an apostle of common sense, as an analytic philosopher, as a Kantian transcendentalist, as an unreconstructed

historicist, or as a post-Enlightenment thinker all fail. They represent, for Desmond, so many reductive reconstructions of a thinker who is relentlessly speculative, and who resolutely thinksthe intimacy of religion and philosophy from the very beginning. But it is equally a misconstrualto presume on Hegel's say-so that Hegel is a theist of some general stripe, and that the markeddifferences between his construal of God and the relations between Christianity and philosophy and those of the Christian tradition should be regarded as inessential. Hegel, Desmond believes,may not be straightforward on his view of God or the relation between discourses-Desmond willaccuse Hegel of "double talk"-but neither is he evasive. Hegel advances a position that refïguresChristian understanding in significant ways. The critical issues for Desmond are whether therefiguration involves a fundamental distortion of Christianity, and just as importantly a distortion

of a proper view of philosophy pledged to listen to the deliverances of other discourses. Onething is certain for Desmond: Hegel's position has undeniable prestige and a considerableamount of persuasive power. In a meticulous and sustained conversation with Hegel's texts,

which manages to put them in their historical context, and adduce the relation of Hegel'sthought to other modern thinkers, for example, René Descartes (95), Spinoza (96, 108, 129), andKant (118-26), Desmond's aim is to remove the Hegelian spell by detailing the inadequacies inHegel's treatment both from the point of view of Christianity and philosophy.

The overall thesis of Desmond's book is fairly easy to state, and is in fact given in the title.

Proceeding from the point of view of a philosopher rather than a theologian, thus interested in what is given thought to think, Desmond judges that despite the fact that throughout his career



Hegel maintains the conviction of the real intimacy of philosophy and Christianity, Hegelianthought represents a "counterfeit double" of Christianity. The basic content of the accusation isthat while Hegelian philosophy pretends faithfully to reduplicate Christianity in its conceptualframework, it in fact fatefully and fatally distorts it. The distortion lies essentially in philosophy'sabrogation of the basic structure of Christian confession and orientation on grounds that itadheres to an illegitimate mode of transcendence (Jenseits) and a deficient mode of relationality in which the insistent otherness of God determines that the mode of God's relation to natureand finite spirit does not mimic the mode of relation of nature and finite spirit to God. It is thisasymmetry that Hegel finds so provocative, and Hegel's ambition, at least from the time of thePhenomenology on, is to find a way in which to overcome the asymmetry (51, 75), and to see thedouble mediation as two different aspects of a univocal self-mediation of the whole (59-60). Themost obvious problem with Hegel, then, is his commitment to an articulative whole that"speculatively airbrushes" transcendence as other (51, 55). Hegel, then, refigures transcendenceas self-determined and self-mediated and thus continues by other means the modern project of the relocation of transcendence in the subject (69).

Pointing to the operation of refiguration and its result, Desmond concludes that the relationbetween philosophy and Christianity in the texts of Hegel is only apparently harmonious. ForDesmond it is little more than a sleight of hand to claim, as Hegel does, that nothing essential islost in the move from Christianity to philosophy. Aside from the fact that Hegel is not exactly paying Christianity a compliment by speaking of it as completed in philosophy, Hegel does notevince an accounting of the losses as well as gains in the transaction. But, for Desmond, the gainof speculation involves losses to Christianity, some of which are unrecuperable. Echoing nineteenth-century critiques of Hegel, and that of the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig in

the twentieth century, Desmond suggests that revelation, which is always in excess of logic, isreduced to the logic of manifestation regulated by dialectical reason (66). In addition, therefiguring of representation (Vorstellung) in concept (Begriff) does not simply affect the form of representation; it also affects its content (126-28). For the indelibly symbolic nature of representation is much less an admission of cognitive impotence than an honoring of asuperlative or hyperbolic reality that exceeds the competence of all signification (88-89). Hegel,Desmond eloquently complains, "reinstates a higher speculative univocity at the level of theconcept, in so far as he claims to surpass the immanent equivocity of the religiousrepresentation" (70). This contributes to Hegel's immanentizing of the Christian God (72), whocan and should be considered otherwise than static and unrelated to the world and finite spirit.

In the Christian scheme of things it is precisely the transcendent otherness of God that makespossible communication with the world, indeed the deepest communion with it (59).

Taking Hegel's asseveration in the Phenomenology that truth is the whole (das Wahre ist dasGanze) as regulative, Desmond argues that this view betrays the basic Christian commitment toalterity, which is a truly significant aspect of Christianity's Jewish legacy (106, 122). Essentially this means that Hegel's speculative holism is monistic in character (75, 114). It is sonotwithstanding clear differences between Hegel and Parmenides, on the one hand, and Hegeland Spinoza, on the other (96). For while there is a significant difference between the

unmediated wholes of Parmenides and Spinoza and Hegel's dialectically self-mediated whole, thetruly important difference is between a form of thought that advocates and enacts a self-



mediated and selfrelated whole and a mode of thought for whom God is inalienably beyond the whole, or in postmodern parlance inalienably "outside" the network of signs or names. It is notaccidental, for Desmond, that in his speculative holism Hegel has such a difficult time defending freedom (129-30), whether in its divine or human aspects. First, there is a sense in whichdifference and the dialogue that supports it is abolished, and humanity and divinity are reducedto selfdifferentiated aspects of a whole that exceeds them. second, the dialectical logic thatgoverns the self-differentiating system redefines freedom in such a way as to make itindistinguishable from necessity. However inadequate the Christian understanding of freedom is-and Desmond would agree that it is deficient in the voluntarist and nominalist forms that are thesubject of Spinoza's and Hegel's critique -it is not reducible to necessity.

For Desmond, Hegel's overcoming of Christianity and the substitution of a "counterfeit double"perhaps is captured most graphically in Hegel's understanding of Spirit as Love (112). HereHegel is provided an opportunity to think of a movement that cannot be reduced to necessity either from the divine or the human side, but that fails to do so. The root cause is that Hegelthinks of love primarily in terms of eros and not agape (113-15). Desmond's parsing of thedifference is crucial to his rejoinder to Hegel. Christianity is not betrayed when love is renderedas eros or desire. It was so understood by Augustine. Neither is Christianity betrayed when afterthe Symposium love is understood metaphysically as dynamized by lack seeking fulfillment. ButChristianity is betrayed when the domain of the operation of eros is thought to include thedivine and not simply the human and cosmic nondivine. But this is precisely what happens intext after text of Hegel. It is especially characteristic of Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,in which the divine seeks and finds itself in a process whereby it moves from the abstractness of self-relation to other-relation and thereby to a more perfect self-relation. Here Hegel

misunderstands the Johannine trope that he has invoked. For love in John is agape, and agapedenotes the gratuitous gift of existence and participation in origin (134). It is this that is erased inHegel's reflection. "Hegel's ecstasis of love remains asleep to the agape of God" (115) representsDesmond's summary of Hegel's declension from the Johannine tradition.

At the same time the shift from the agapic sense of love to the erotic provides, in Desmond's view, the interpretive key to what goes wrong in Hegel's conceptual reworking of the Trinity. Ina chapter entitled "Hegel's Trinity and the Erotic Self-Doubling God" (103-20), Desmond showsclearly that Hegel's triadically self-relating divine self-consciousness fails to double or redouble

anything like the Christian Trinity of nature and persons, while it erases the epistemic gapbetween the Trinity known and the finite knower. Desmond shows also how Hegel's speculativetrinitarianism dismantles the classical distinction between a Trinity in se and a Trinity ad extra by making the entire economy of creation and salvation ingredient in the erotic self-development of the divine. Desmond is fully aware that Hegel thinks the sacrifice of Christian doctrine to benecessary if philosophy is to speak to a modern public for whom doctrine has no meaning andfor whom the default is skepticism. But Desmond believes that Christians should be concerned,since with the bleeding off of the traditional content, Christians will have compromised their

view of God as surpassing perfection; have stated and then withdrawn their commitment tocreation as gift; and have reduced redemption and sanctification to merely natural processes.



More, however, is involved than a compromising of Christian self-understanding and expression.Crucially, Hegel also compromises philosophy. Both phenomenologically and historically,philosophy has its beginnings in a wonder that is never exhausted in its expression, and in aperplexity that can never fully be removed. If Hegel rightly thinks that philosophy is a form of

worship, it is clear that not only does it outdo religious worship (59), but it does not correspondto the best instincts of the classical philosophical tradition. In a move that recalls CatherinePickstock's analysis of Plato in After Writing (1999), Desmond argues that worship involvesdistance from, not identity with, the divine. To abolish the distance is to substitute an idol forGod.

Hegel's God will be appreciated by two different audiences. While Desmond's religious reading of Hegel will not be accepted by all, nor will his judgement that Hegel betrays both Christianity and philosophy necessarily welcomed by many in the Hegel guild, no fair-minded reader will belikely to judge Desmond guilty of gerrymandering. Hegel is taken with the utmost seriousness,his sense of discursive and religious crisis confirmed, and the philosophical moves he makesrendered intelligible. If Desmond's disagreements are to the forefront, it is ironically becauseHegel gets so many of the preliminaries right. A way has to be found beyond rationalism andmoralism, and beyond the disjunction of religious and philosophical discourse. It is Hegel'sgenius to have realized that philosophy and religion can only be themselves in relation, even if inthe end his work constitutes a brilliant failure. The other audience that will embrace and enjoy this text are readers familiar with Desmond's stirring revisionist metaphysical project. Thisaudience will grasp that Hegel's God is anything but a filler between the second and third andfinal installment of his important trilogy. For as it says goodbye to Hegel, it says hello to Godand the Between as it outlines some of the main conundrums of the God question, and intimates

what is at stake in terms of conclusions and approach.

[Author Affiliation]

Cyril O'Regan

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

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Hegel's God a Counterfeit