Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 13
The general form of the process has been already referred to as consisting of a mediation with self which contains the moment of mediation in such a way that the Other is posited as something negated or ideal. This process has likewise been described, so far as its more definite moments are concerned, as it presents itself in the form of Man’s elevation to God by the path of religion. We have now to compare the explanation given of the act whereby Spirit raises itself to God with that to be found in the formal expression which is called a proof.
The difference between them seems slight, but it is important, and supplies the reason why proof of this kind has been represented as inadequate and has generally been abandoned. Because what is material is contingent, therefore there exists an absolutely necessary Essence; this is the simple fashion in which the connection of ideas is put. Since mention is here made of an Essence, and since we have spoken only of absolute necessity, this necessity may certainly be hypostatised in this way; but the Essence is still indeterminate, and is not a subject or anything living, and still less is it Spirit. We shall, however, afterwards discuss the Essence as such in so far as it contains a determinate quality which has any interest in the present connection.
What is of primary importance is the relation indicated in the proposition: because the One, the contingent, exists, is, therefore the Other, the Absolutely-necessary, is, or exists. Here there are two forms of Being in connection, one form of Being connected with another form of
Being, a connection which we have seen in the shape of external necessity. It is, however, this very external necessity which is recognised to be a form of dependence in which the result depends on the starting-point, but which, in fact, by sinking to a state of contingency, is recognised to be unsatisfying. It is against it, accordingly, that the protests have been directed which have been advanced against this method of proof.
It contains, that is to say, the relation according to which the one characteristic, that of absolutely necessary Being, is mediated by the Other, by means of the characteristic of contingent Being, whereby the former is put in a dependent relation, in the relation, in fact, of what is conditioned to its condition. This was the main objection which, speaking generally, Jacobi brought against the knowledge of God, namely, that to know or to comprehend means merely “to deduce anything from its more immediate causes, or to look at its immediate conditions as a series” (Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza, p. 419); “to comprehend the Unconditioned therefore means to make it into something conditioned or to make it an effect.” The latter category, however, according to which the Absolutely-necessary is taken as an effect, can be at once discounted, since the relation it implies is in too direct contradiction to the characteristic with which we are dealing, namely, the Absolutely-necessary. The relation of the condition, which is also that of the ground, is, however, of a more outward character, and can more easily find favour. In any case it is present in the proposition: because the contingent exists, therefore the Absolutely-necessary exists.
While it must be granted that this defect exists, it is, on the other hand, to be observed that no objective significance is given to a relation like this implying conditionateness and dependence. This relation is present only in an absolutely subjective sense. The proposition does not state, and is not meant to state, that the Absolutely-necessary has conditions, and is in fact conditioned by the contingent world—quite the contrary. The entire development of the connection is seen only in the act of proof. It is only our knowledge of the Absolutely-necessary which is conditioned by that starting-point. The Absolutely-necessary does not exist in virtue of the fact that it raises itself out of the world of contingency, and requires this world as its starting-point and presupposition, in order that by starting from it it may thus first reach its Being. It cannot be the Absolutely-necessary, it cannot be God who has to be thought of thus as something mediated by an Other, as something dependent and conditioned. It is the content of the proof itself which corrects the defect which is visible only in its form. We are thus in presence of a distinction and a difference between the form and the nature of the content, and the form is more certainly seen to contain the defective element, from the very fact that the content is the Absolutely-necessary. This content is not itself devoid of form, as was evident from the nature of its determination. Its own form as being the form of the True is itself true, and the form which differs from it is for that reason the Untrue.
If we take what we have in general designated Form, in its more concrete signification, namely, as knowledge, we find ourselves amongst the well-known and favourite categories of finite knowledge, which as being subjective is defined generally as finite, while the course followed by the movement of knowledge belonging to it is defined as a finite act. Here accordingly the same element of inadequacy appears only in another shape. Knowledge is a finite act, and any such act cannot involve the comprehension of the Absolutely-necessary, of the Infinite. Knowledge demands, in short, that it should have the content in itself and should follow it. The knowledge which has an absolutely necessary, infinite content must itself be absolutely necessary and infinite. We thus find ourselves in the best position for wrestling once more with the antithesis whose affirmative and subsidiary help given by what was more of the nature of immediate knowledge, faith, feeling, and such like, we dealt with in the first Lectures. We must for the present leave the Form in this shape alone, but later on we shall have some reflections to make on the categories belonging to it. We have in the meantime to deal with the Form in the more definite shape in which it appears in the proof which forms the subject of discussion.
If we call to mind the formal syllogism previously dealt with, it will be seen that one part of the first proposition, the major proposition that is, runs thus—If the contingent exists; and this is expressed in a more direct way in the other proposition—There is a contingent world. While in the former of these propositions the characteristic of contingency is posited essentially in its connection with the Absolutely-necessary, it is nevertheless stated to be at the same time something contingent which has Being. It is in the second proposition, or in this characteristic of the existent as it appears in the first, that the defect lies, and this in fact means that it is directly self-contradictory, and shows itself to be in its very nature an untrue one-sidedness. The contingent, the finite is expressed in terms of what has Being; but it is, on the contrary, characteristic of the finite that it should have an end and drop away, that it should be a kind of Being which has the value of what is merely a possibility and which may either be or not be.
This fundamental error is found in the form of the connection, which is that of an ordinary syllogism. A syllogism of this kind has a permanent immediate element in its premisses, it is based on presuppositions which are stated to be not only what is primary, but to be the permanent primary existent element with which the Other is in general so closely connected as some kind of consequence, something conditioned, and so on, that the two characteristics thus linked together constitute a relation which is external and finite, in which each of the two sides is in a relation of reference to the other. It constitutes one of the characteristics of these two sides, but it has at the same time a substantial existence of its own outside of the relation between them. The characteristic which the two different elements taken together constitute, and which is in itself simply one, is the Absolutely-necessary. Its name at once declares it to be the Only-one, what truly is, the only reality. We have seen how its notion is the mediation which returns into itself, the mediation which is merely a mediation with itself by means of the Other which is distinguished from it, and which is taken up into the One, the Absolutely-necessary, negated as something having Being, and preserved merely as something ideal. Outside of this absolute, inherent unity, however, the two sides of the relation are in this kind of syllogism kept also externally apart from each other as things which have Being; the contingent is. This proposition is inherently self-contradictory, and is likewise in contradiction with the result, the absolute necessity, which is not merely placed on one side, but, on the contrary, is the whole of Being.
If therefore we begin with the contingent, we must not set out from it as if it were something which is to remain fixed in such a way that it continues to be in the further development of the argument something which has Being. This is its one-sided determinateness. On the contrary, it is to be posited with its completely determinate character, which implies that non-Being may quite as well be attributed to it, and that it consequently enters into the result as something which passes away. Not because the contingent is, but, on the contrary, because it is non-Being, merely phenomenal, because its Being is not true reality, the absolute necessity is. This latter is its Being and Truth.
This moment of the Negative is not found in the form taken by the syllogism of the Understanding, and this is why it is defective when it appears in this region which is that of the living reason of Spirit, in the region, that is, in which absolute necessity itself is considered as the true result, as something which does indeed mediate itself through an Other, but mediates itself with itself by absorbing this Other. Thus the course followed by that knowledge of necessity is different from the process which necessity is. Such a course is therefore not to be considered as simply necessary true movement, but rather as finite activity. It is not infinite knowledge, it has not the infinite for its content and for the basis of its activity, for the infinite appears only as this mediation with self through the negation of the negative.
The defect which has been pointed out as existing in this form of the process of reasoning, means, as has been indicated, that the elevation of Spirit to God has not been correctly explained in that proof of the existence of God which it constitutes. If we compare the two we see that this act of elevation is undoubtedly also an act whereby Spirit goes beyond worldly existence, as well as beyond what is merely temporal, changeable, and transitory. The world-element, it is true, is declared to be actual existence, and we start from it; but since, as was remarked, it is defined as the temporal, the contingent, the changeable and transitory, its Being is not satisfying for truth, it is not the truly affirmative, it is defined as what annuls and negates itself. It does not persistently retain its characteristic, to be; on the contrary, a Being is attributed to it which has no more value than non-Being whose characteristic contains in itself its non-Being, its Other, and consequently its contradiction, its disintegration and dissolution. But even if it seem to be the case, or may even actually be the case, that so far as faith is concerned this contingent Being as something present to consciousness remains standing on one side confronting the other side, the Eternal, the Necessary in-and-for-itself, in the form of a world above which is heaven, still the real point is not the fact that a double world has been actually conceived of, but the value which is to be attached to such a conception. This value is expressed when it is said that the one world is the world of appearance or illusion, and the other the world of truth. When the former is abandoned, and we pass over to the other only in the sense that the world of appearance still remains present here, the connection between them as it presents itself to the religious man does not mean that that world is anything more than merely the point of departure, or that it is permanently fixed as a ground or basis to which Being, or the power of acting as a basis or condition, could be attributed. Satisfaction, everything in the way of a foundation or first principle is, on the contrary, found to exist in the eternal world as something which is independent in-and-for-itself. As opposed to this, in the form taken by the syllogism, the Being of both is expressed in a similar way—both in the one proposition of the connection: If a contingent world exists, an Absolutely-necessary exists too; as also in the other in which it is stated as a presupposition that a contingent world does exist; and further, in the third and concluding proposition: Therefore an Absolutely-necessary exists.
A few remarks may be further added regarding these propositions thus definitely expressed. And first of all in connection with the last of them, the way in which the two contrasted characteristics are linked together, must at once strike us: Therefore the Absolutely-necessary exists. Therefore expresses mediation through an Other, and yet it is immediacy, and directly absorbs the former of these characteristics, which, as has been indicated, is just what supplies the reason why such knowledge regarding whatever is its object is declared to be inadmissible. The abolition of mediation through an Other exists, however, potentially only. The syllogism, on the other hand, as exhibited in detail, gives full expression to this. Truth is a force of such a character that it is present even in what is false, and it only requires correct observation and attention in order to discover the True in the False itself, or rather actually to see it there. The True is here mediation with self by the negation of the Other and of the mediation through the Other. The negation, both of mediation through an Other, as well as of the abstract immediacy which is devoid of mediation, is present in the “therefore” above referred to.
Further, if the one proposition is: The contingent is, and the other: The necessary in-and-for-itself is, this essentially suggests that the Being of the contingent has an absolutely different value from necessary Being in-and-for-itself. Still Being is what is common to both, and it is the one characteristic in both propositions. In accordance with this the transition does not take the form of a passing from one form of Being to another, but from one characteristic of thought to another. Being purifies itself from the predicate of contingency, which is inadequate to express its nature. Being is simple self-identity or equality with self. Contingency, on the other hand, is Being which is absolutely unlike itself, which contradicts itself, and it is only in the Absolutely-necessary that it is once more restored to this condition of self-identity. It is accordingly here that the course thus followed by the act of elevation to God, or this aspect of the act of proof, differs more definitely from the others referred to, in this, namely, that in the former of the two methods of procedure the characteristic which has to be proved, or is supposed to result from the proof, is not Being. Being is rather what the two aspects have permanently in common and which is continued from the one into the other. In the other method of procedure, on the contrary, the transition has to be made from the notion or conception of God to His Being. This transition seems more difficult than that from a determinateness of content in general, what we are accustomed to call a notion or conception, to another conception, and to what is more homogeneous, therefore, than the transition from the notion to Being is apt to appear.
The idea which lies at the basis of this is that Being is not itself a conception or thought. The proper place to consider it, in this antithesis in which it is exhibited as independent and isolated, will be when we come to deal with the proof referred to. Here, however, we have not, to begin with, to take it abstractly and independently. The fact that it is the element common to the two characteristics, the contingent and the Absolutely-necessary, suggests a comparison and an external separation between it and them, while at first it is in inseparable union with each, with contingent Being and absolutely necessary Being. In this way we shall once more take up the form of the proof already referred to, and bring out still more definitely the difference in the contradiction which it undergoes, regarded from the two opposite sides, the philosophical side, and that of the abstract understanding.
The proposition indicated expresses the following connection—
Because contingent Being exists, therefore absolutely necessary Being exists.
If we take this connection in its simple sense without characterising it more definitely by means of the category of a ground, or reason, or the like, its meaning is merely this—
Contingent Being is at the same time the Being of an Other, that of the absolutely necessary Being.
This phrase “at the same time” seems to imply a contradiction, over against which the two contrasted propositions are placed as solutions, of which the one is—
The Being of the contingent is not its own Being, but merely the Being of an Other, and in a definite sense it is the Being of its own Other, the Absolutely-necessary. And the other—
The Being of the contingent is merely its own Being, and is not the Being of an Other, of the Absolutely-necessary.
It has been shown that the first of these propositions has the true meaning, which was also the meaning expressed by the idea contained in the transition. We shall take up further on the speculative or philosophical connection which is itself immanent in those determinations of thought which constitute contingency.
The other proposition, however, is the proposition of the Understanding in which thinkers of modern times have so firmly intrenched themselves. What can be more reasonable than to hold that anything, any form of existence, and so, too, the contingent, since it is, is its own Being, is in fact just the definite Being which it is, and not rather an other kind of Being! The contingent is in this way retained on its own account separately from the Absolutely-necessary.
It is still easier to employ the characteristics finite and Infinite in order to express these two characteristics above mentioned, and thus to take the finite for itself, as isolated from its other, the Infinite. There is therefore, it is said, no bridge, no passage from finite Being to infinite Being. The finite is related only to itself, and not to its Other. The distinction which was made between knowledge as form and knowledge as content, is an empty one. This very difference between the two was rightly made the basis of syllogisms, syllogisms which start with the hypothesis that knowledge is finite, and for this reason conclude that this knowledge cannot know the Infinite because it has not the power of comprehending it. Conversely it is concluded that if knowledge did comprehend the Infinite it would necessarily be infinite itself; but it is admittedly not infinite, therefore it has not the power of knowing the Infinite. Its action is defined just as its content is. Finite knowledge and infinite knowledge yield the same kind of relation as is yielded by the finite and the Infinite in general. The only difference is that infinite knowledge is in a relation of stronger repulsion towards its opposite than the naked Infinite, and points more directly to the separation of the two sides of the antithesis, so that one only remains, namely, finite knowledge. In this way all relation based on mediation disappears, every kind of relation, that is, in which the finite and the Infinite as such, and so, too, the contingent and the Absolutely-necessary, might have stood to each other. The form of finite and Infinite is the one which has come to be most in vogue in connection with this way of looking at the question. That form is more abstract, and accordingly seems more comprehensive, than the first-mentioned.
The finite in general and finite knowledge have thus necessity directly ascribed to them over and above contingency. This necessity takes the form of continuous advance in the series of causes and effects, conditions and things conditioned, and was formerly described as external necessity, and was included in the finite as forming a part of it. It can be understood, indeed, only in reference to knowledge, but when included in the finite it is put in contrast with the Infinite without risk of the misapprehension which might arise through the employment of the category of the Absolutely-necessary.
If, accordingly, we keep to this expression, then the relation of finitude and infinitude at which we stop short will be that of their absence of relation, their absence of reference. We have reached the position that the finite as a whole and finite knowledge are incapable of grasping the Infinite in general, as well as the Infinite in the form it takes as absolute necessity, and also of comprehending the Infinite by the aid of the conceptions of contingency and finitude from which finite knowledge starts. Finite knowledge is accordingly finite just because it is based on finite conceptions; and the finite, including also finite knowledge, stands in relation to itself only, does not go beyond itself, because it is its own Being, and not in any sense the Being of an Other, and, least of all, the Being of its own Other. This is the proposition upon which so much reliance is placed. It supplies no way of passing from the finite to the Infinite, nor from the contingent to the Absolutely-necessary, nor from effects to an absolutely first non-finite cause. A gulf is simply fixed between them.