Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 16
The foregoing Lectures have dealt with the dialectical element, with the absolute fluidity, of the characteristics that enter into the movement which represents this first form of the elevation of the spirit to God. We have now further to deal with the result in itself as defined in accordance with the standpoint adopted.
This result is the absolutely necessary Essence. The meaning of a result is known to consist simply in this, that in it the determination of the mediation, and consequently of the result, has been absorbed in something higher. The mediation was the self-annulling of the mediation. Essence means what is as yet absolutely abstract self-identity; it is not subject, and still less is it Spirit. The entire determination is found in absolute necessity, which in its character as Being is at the same time what has immediate Being, and which, as a matter of fact, implicitly determines itself as subject, but at first in the purely superficial form of something having Being, in the form of the Absolutely-necessary.
The fact that this determination is not adequate to express our idea of God is a defect which we may in the meantime leave alone, inasmuch as it has been already indicated that the other proofs bring with them further and more concrete determinations. There are, however, religious and philosophical systems whose defectiveness consists just in this, that they have not got beyond the characteristic of absolute necessity. The consideration of the more concrete forms in which this principle has embodied itself in religion, belongs to the philosophy of religion and to the history of religion. Regarding the subject in this aspect, it may here be merely remarked that in general those religions which have this determinateness as their basis have, so far as the inner logical development of concrete Spirit is concerned, richer and more varied elements than any which the abstract principle at first brings with it. In the sphere of phenomena and in consciousness the other moments of the Idea in its full and completed form, are superadded in a way which is inconsistent with that abstract principle. It is, however, essential to find out whether these additions in the way of definite form belong merely to imagination, and whether the concrete in its inner nature does not get beyond that abstraction—so that, as in the Oriental and particularly in the Indian mythology, the infinite realm of divine persons who are brought in not only as forces in general, but as self-conscious, willing figures, continues to be devoid of Spirit—or whether, on the other hand, spite of that one necessity, the higher spiritual principle emerges in these persons, and whether, in consequence, spiritual freedom comes to view in their worshippers. Thus in the religion of the Greeks we see absolute necessity in the form of Fate occupying the place of what is supreme and ultimate, and it is only in subordination to this necessity that we have the joyous company of the concrete and living Gods. These are also conceived of as spiritual and conscious, and in the above-mentioned and in other mythologies are multiplied so as to make a still larger crowd of heroes, nymphs of the sea, of the rivers, and so on, muses, fauns, &c., and are connected with the ordinary external life of the world and its contingent things, partly as chorus and accompaniment in the form of a further particularisation of one of the divine supreme deities, partly as figures of minor importance. Here necessity constitutes the abstract force which is above all the particular spiritual, moral, and natural forces. These latter, however, partly possess the character of non-spiritual, merely natural force, which remains completely under the power of necessity, while their personalities are merely personifications; and yet, although they may not exactly deserve to be called persons, they also partly contain the higher characteristic of subjective inherent freedom. In this way they occupy a position above that of their mistress, namely, necessity, to which only the limited element in this deeper principle is subordinate, a principle which has elsewhere to await its purification from this finitude in the region of which it at first appears, and has to manifest itself independently in its infinite freedom.
The logical working out of the category of absolute necessity is to be looked for in systems which start from abstract thoughts. This application in detail of the category has reference to the relation between this principle and the manifoldness of the natural and spiritual world. If absolute necessity thus forms the basis as representing what is alone true and truly real, in what relation do material things stand to it? These things are not only natural things, but also include Spirit, the spiritual individuality with all its conceptions, interests, and aims. This relation has, however, been already defined in connection with the principle referred to. They are contingent things. Further, they are distinct from absolute necessity itself; but they have no independent Being as against it, and neither has it, consequently, as against them. There is only one Being, and this belongs to necessity, and things by their very nature form part of it. What we have defined as absolute necessity has to be more definitely hypostatised in the form of universal Being or Substance, while, in its character as a result, it is a self-mediated unity in virtue of the abrogation of mediation. It is thus simple Being, and is what alone represents the subsisting element of things. When our attention was previously called to necessity in the form of Greek Fate, it was thought of as characterless or indeterminate force; but Being itself has already come down from the abstraction referred to, to the level of the things above which it ought to be. Still, if Essence or Substance itself were merely an abstraction, things would have an independent existence of concrete individuality outside of it. It must at the same time be characterised as the force of these things, the negative principle which makes its validity felt in them, and by means of which they represent what is perishing and transitory and has merely a phenomenal existence. We have seen how this negative element represents the peculiar nature of contingent things. They have thus this force within themselves, and do not represent manifestation in general, but the manifestation of necessity. This necessity contains things, or rather it contains them in their stage of mediation. It is not, however, mediated by something other than itself, but it is the direct mediation of itself with itself. It is the variable element or alternation of its absolute unity whereby it determines itself as mediation, that is, as external necessity, a relation of an Other to an Other, that is, whereby it spreads itself out into infinite multiplicity, into the absolutely conditioned world, but in such a way that it degrades external mediation, the contingent world to the condition of a world of appearance, and in this nullity comes into harmony with itself, posits itself as equal to itself, and does this in the world as representing its force. Everything is thus included in it, and it is immediately present in everything. It is the Being, as it also is the changeable and variable element of the world.
The determination of necessity as unfolded in the philosophical conception of it, is, speaking generally, the standpoint which we are in the habit of calling Pantheism, and sometimes in a more developed and definite form, sometimes in a more superficial form, it is what expresses the relation indicated. The very fact of the interest which this name has again awakened in modern times, and still more the interest of the principle itself, render it necessary that we should direct our attention to it. The misunderstanding which prevails with regard to Pantheism ought not to be allowed to pass without being mentioned and corrected; and after that we shall have to consider in this connection the place of the principle in the higher totality, in the true Idea of God. Since at a previous stage the consideration of the religious form taken by the principle was dispensed with, we may, by way of bringing a picture of it before the mind, take the Hindu religion as representing Pantheism in its most developed form. With this development there is bound up at the same time the fact that the absolute Substance, the sole and only One, is represented in the form of thought as distinguished from the accidental world, as existing. Religion in itself essentially involves the relation of Man to God, and still less when it appears in the form of Pantheism does it leave the one Essence in that condition of objectivity in which metaphysic imagines it has left it as an object while preserving its special character. We have to call attention first of all to the remarkable character of this attempt to bring Substance under the conditions of subjectivity. Self-conscious thought does not only make that abstraction of Substance, but is the very act of abstraction itself. It is just that simple unity as existing for itself which is called Substance. This thought is thus conceived of as the force which creates and preserves the world, and which also alters and changes its existence as this appears in particular forms. This thought is termed Brahma. It exists as the natural self-consciousness of the Brahmans, and as the self-consciousness of others who put under restraint and kill their consciousness in its manifold forms, their sensations, their material and spiritual interests, and all the active life connected with them, and reduce it to the perfect simplicity and emptiness of that substantial unity. Thus this thought, this abstraction of men in themselves, is held to be the force of the world. The universal force takes particular forms in gods, who are nevertheless transitory and temporary; or, what comes to the same thing, all life, whether in the form of spiritual or natural individuality, is torn away from the finitude of its perfectly conditioned connection—all understanding in this latter being destroyed—and is elevated into the form of divine existence.
As we were reminded, the principle of individualisation appears in this Pantheism in its several religious shapes, in a form inconsistent with the force of substantial unity. Individuality, it is true, does not exactly get the length of being personality, but the force unfolds itself in a sufficiently wild way as an illogical transition into its opposite. We find ourselves in a region of unbridled madness in which the present in its most ordinary form is directly elevated to the rank of something divine, and Substance is conceived of as existing in finite shapes, while the shapes assumed have a volatile character and directly melt away.
The Oriental theory of the universe is in general represented by this idea of sublimity which puts all individualisation into special shapes, and infinitely extends all particular forms of existence and particular interests. It beholds the One in all things, and consequently clothes this purely abstract One in all the glory and splendour of the natural and spiritual universe. The souls of the Eastern Poets dive into this ocean and drown in it all the necessities, the aims, the cares of this petty circumscribed life, and revel in the enjoyment of this freedom, upon which they lavish by way of ornament and adornment all the beauty of the world.
It will be already clear from this picture, and this is a point upon which I have elsewhere explained my views, that the expression Pantheism, or rather the German expression in which it appears in a somewhat transposed form, that God is the One and All, or everything—τὸ ἓν καὶ πᾶν—leads to the false idea that in pantheistic religion or in philosophy, everything (Alles), that is, every existing thing in its finitude and particularity, is held to be possessed of Being as God or as a god, and that the finite is deified as having Being. It could only be a narrow and ordinary or rather a scholastic kind of mind which would expect this to be the case, and which, being perfectly unconcerned about what actually is, sticks to one category, and to the category, in fact, of finite particularisation, and accordingly conceives of the manifoldness which it finds mentioned, as a permanent, existing, substantial particularisation. There can be no mistake but that the essential and Christian definition of freedom or individuality, which as free is infinite in itself and is personality, has misled the Understanding into conceiving of the particularisation of finitude under the category of an existing unchangeable atom, and into overlooking the moment of the negative which is involved in force and in the general system to which it belongs. It imagines Pantheism as saying that all, that is, all things in their existing isolation, are God, since it takes the πᾶν in this definite category as referring to all and every individual thing. Such an absurd idea has never come into anybody’s head outside of the ranks of these opponents of Pantheism. This latter represents a view which is, on the contrary, quite the opposite of that which they associate with it. The finite, the contingent is not something which subsists for itself. In the affirmative sense it is only a manifestation, a revelation of the One, only an appearance of it which is itself merely contingency. The fact is that it is the negative aspect, the disappearance in the one force, the ideality of what has Being as a momentary standpoint in the force, which is the predominant aspect. In opposition to this the Understanding holds that these things exist for themselves and have their essence in themselves, and are thus in and in accordance with this finite essentiality, supposed to be divine or even to be God. They cannot free themselves from the absoluteness of their finitude, and this finitude is not thought of as something which disappears and is absorbed in this unity with the Divine, but is still preserved by them in it as existing. On the other hand, since the finite is, as they say, robbed of its infinitude by Pantheism, the finite has in consequence no longer any Being at all.
It is preferable to use the expression, “the philosophical systems of substantiality,” and not to speak of systems of Pantheism, because of the false idea associated with this term. We may take the Eleatic system in general as representing these in ancient times, and the Spinozistic as their modern representative. These systems of substantiality are, as we have seen, more logical than the religions corresponding to them, since they keep within the sphere of metaphysical abstraction. The one aspect of the defect which attaches to them is represented by the one-sidedness referred to as existing in the idea formed by the Understanding of the course taken by the spirit’s elevation to God. That is to say, they start from actual existence, treat it as a nullity, and recognise the Absolute One as the truth of this existence. They start with a presupposition, they negate it in the absolute unity, but they don’t get out of this unity back to the presupposition. They don’t think of the world, which is considered to be merely comprised within an abstraction of contingency, of the many and so on, as produced out of Substance. Everything passes into this unity as into a kind of eternal night, while this unity is not characterised as a principle which moves itself to its manifestation, or produces it, “as the unmoved which moves,” according to the profound expression of Aristotle.
(a.) In these systems the Absolute, or God, is defined as the One, Being, the Being in all existence, the absolute Substance, the Essence which is necessary not through an Other, but in-and-for-itself, the Causa Sui, the cause of itself, and consequently its own effect, that is, the mediation which cancels itself. The unity implied in this latter characteristic belongs to an infinitely deeper and more developed form of thought than the abstract unity of Being, or the One. This conception has been sufficiently explained. Causa Sui is a very striking expression for that unity, and we may accordingly give some further attention to its elucidation. The relation of cause and effect belongs to the moment of mediation through an Other already referred to, and which we saw in necessity, and is its definite form. Anything is completely mediated by an Other in so far as this Other is its cause. This is the original thing or fact as absolutely immediate and independent; the effect, on the other hand, is what is posited merely, dependent, and so forth. In the antithesis of Being and Nothing, One and Many, and so on, the characteristics are found existing in such a way as to imply that they are matched with each other in their relation, and yet that they have, as unrelated, a valid independent existence besides. The Positive, the Whole, and so on, is, it is true, related to the Negative, to the parts, and this relation forms part of its essential meaning; but the Positive as well as the Negative, the Whole, the parts, and so on, have in addition an independent existence outside of this relation. But cause and effect have a meaning simply and solely in virtue of their relation. The meaning of the cause does not extend beyond the fact that it has an effect. The stone which falls has the effect of producing an impression on the object upon which it falls. Looked at apart from this effect which it has as a heavy body, it is physically separate and distinct from other equally heavy bodies. Or, to put it otherwise, since it is a cause while it continues to produce this impression, if we, for example, imagine its effect to be transitory, then when it strikes against another body it ceases so far to be a cause, and outside of this relation it is just a stone, which it was before. This idea haunts the popular mind chiefly in so far as it characterises the thing as the original fact and as continuing to exist outside of that effect it produces. Apart from that effect which it has produced, the stone is undoubtedly a stone, only it is not a cause. It is a cause only in connection with its effect, or, to introduce the note of time, during its effect.
Cause and effect are thus, speaking generally, inseparable. Each has meaning and existence only in so far as it stands in this relation to the other, and yet they are supposed to be absolutely different. We cling with equal firmness to the idea that the cause is not the effect and the effect is not the cause, and the Understanding holds obstinately to this fact of the independent being of these two categories and of the absence of relation between them.
When, however, we have come to see that the cause is inseparable from the effect, and that it has any meaning only as being in the latter, then it follows that the cause itself is mediated by the effect; it is only in and through the effect that it is cause. This, however, means nothing more than that the cause is the cause of itself, and not of an Other. For this which is supposed to be an Other is of such a kind that the cause is first a cause in it, and therefore in it simply reaches itself, and in it affects only itself.
Jacobi has some reflections on this Spinozistic category, the Causa Sui (“Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza,” 2nd ed., p. 416), and I refer to his criticisms upon it just because they afford us an example of how Jacobi, the pioneer of the party of immediate knowledge or faith, who is so much given to rejecting the Understanding in his consideration of thought, does not get beyond the mere Understanding. I pass over what he says in the passage referred to regarding the distinction between the category of ground and consequence, and that of cause and effect, and the fact that in his later controversial essays he imagines he has found in this difference a true description and definition of the nature of God. I merely indicate the more immediate conclusion referred to by him, namely, that from the interchange of the two “it may be successfully inferred that things can originate without originating, and alter without undergoing alteration, and can be before and after each other without being before and after.” Such conclusions are too absurd to require any further comment. The contradiction to which the Understanding reduces a principle is an ultimate one; it is simply the limit of the horizon of thought beyond which it is not possible to go, but in presence of which we must turn back. We have, however, seen how the solution of this contradiction is reached, and we shall apply it to the contradiction in the form in which it here appears and is here stated, or rather we shall simply briefly indicate the estimate to be formed of the above assertion. The conclusion referred to, that things may originate without originating, and alter without undergoing alteration, is manifestly absurd. We can see that it expresses the idea of self-mediation through an Other, of mediation as self-annulling mediation, but likewise that this mediation is directly abandoned. The abstract expression, Things, does its part in bringing the finite before the mind. The finite is a form of limited Being to which only one of two opposite qualities attaches, and which does not remain with itself in the Other, but simply perishes. But then the Infinite is this mediation with self through the Other, and without repeating the exposition of this conception, we may take an example from the sphere of natural things without going at all to that of spiritual existence, namely, life as a whole. What is well known to us as its self-preservation is “successfully” expressed in terms of thought as the infinite relation in virtue of which the living individual of whose process of self-preservation we alone speak here, without paying attention to its other characteristics, continually produces itself in its existence. This existence is not identical Being, Being in a state of repose, but, on the contrary, represents origination, alteration, mediation with an Other, though it is a mediation which returns to itself. The living force of what has life consists in making life originate, and the living already is; and so we may indeed say—though it is certainly a bold expression—that such and such a thing originates without originating. It undergoes alteration; every pulsation is an alteration not only in all the pulse-veins, but in all the parts of its entire constitution. In all this change it remains the same individual, and it remains such only in so far as it is this inherently self-altering active force. We may thus say of it that it alters without undergoing alteration, and finally—though we cannot certainly say that of the things—that it previously exists without existing previously, just as we have seen with regard to the cause that it exists previously, is the original cause, while at the same time previously, before its effect, it is not a cause, and so on. It is, however, tedious, and would even be an endless task to follow up and arrange the expressions in which the Understanding presents its finite categories and seeks to give them the character of something permanent.
This annihilation of the category of causality as used by the Understanding takes place in connection with the conception which is expressed by the term Causa Sui. Jacobi, without recognising in it this negation of the finite relation, the speculative element, that is, despatches it simply in a psychological, or, if you like, in a pragmatical fashion. He declares that “it is difficult to conclude from the apodictic proposition, everything must have a cause, that it is possible everything may not have a cause. Therefore it is that the Causa Sui has been invented.” It is certainly difficult for the Understanding not only to have to abandon its apodictic proposition, but to have to assume another possibility which, moreover, has a wrong look in connection with the expression referred to. But it is not hard for reason, which, on the contrary, in its character as the free, and especially as the religious human spirit, abandons such a finite relation as this of mediation with an Other, and knows how to solve in thought the contradiction which comes to consciousness in thought.
Dialectic development, such as has been here given, does not, however, belong to the systems of simple substantiality, to pantheistic systems. They do not get beyond Being or Substance, a form which we shall take up later on. This category, taken in itself, is the basis of all religions and philosophies. In all these God is Absolute Being, an Essence, which exists absolutely in-and-for-itself, and does not exist through an Other, but represents independence pure and simple.
(b.) Categories like these, which are of so abstract a character, do not apply very widely, and are very unsatisfactory. Aristotle (“Metaphysics,” i. 5) says of Xenophanes, that “he was the first to unify (ἑνίσας), he did not advance anything of a definite nature, and so gazing into the whole Heavens—into space (ins Blaue), as we say—said, the One is God.” The Eleatics, who followed him, showed more definitely that the many and the characteristics which rest on multiplicity lead to contradiction and resolve themselves into nothing; and Spinoza, in particular, showed that all that is finite disappears in the unity of Substance, and thus there is no longer left any further, concrete, fruitful determination for this Substance itself. Development has to do only with the form of the starting-points which finds itself in presence of subjective reflection, and with that of its dialectic, by means of which it brings back into that universality the particular and finite, which appear in an independent way. It is true that in Parmenides this One is defined as thought, or that which thinks, what has Being; and so, too, in Spinoza, Substance is defined as the unity of Being (of extension) and thought. Only, one cannot therefore say that this Being or Substance is hereby posited as something which thinks, that is, as activity which determines itself in itself. On the contrary, the unity of Being and thought continues to be conceived of as the One, the Unmoved, the Stolid. There is an outward distinction into attributes and modes, movement and will, a distinction effected by the Understanding. The One is not unfolded as self-developing necessity, not, in accordance with what is indicated by its notion, as the process which mediates the necessity with itself and within itself. If the principle of movement is here wanting, it is certainly found in more concrete principles in the flux of Heraclitus, in number too, and so on; but, on the one hand, the unity of Being, the divine self-equality, is not preserved, and, on the other, a principle of this kind stands in exactly the same relation to the ordinary existing world as the Being, the One, or the Substance referred to.
(c.) Besides this One there is, however, the actual contingent world, Being with the quality of the Negative, the realm of limitations and things finite, and in this connection it makes no difference whether this realm is conceived of as a realm of external existence, of semblance or illusion, or, according to the definition of superficial Idealism, as a merely subjective world, a world of consciousness. This manifoldness with its infinite developments is, to begin with, separated from that Substance, and we have to find out in what relation it stands to this One. On the one hand, this definite existence of the world is merely taken for granted. Spinoza, whose system is the most fully developed, starts from definitions, that is, from the actual characteristics of thought and of ordinary ideas in general. The starting-points of consciousness are presupposed. On the other hand, the Understanding forms this accidental world into a system in accordance with the relations or categories of external necessity. Parmenides gives the beginnings of a system of the phenomenal world at the head of which the goddess Necessity is placed. Spinoza did not construct any philosophy of Nature, but treated of the other part of concrete philosophy, namely, a system of ethics. This system of ethics was from one point of view to be logically connected with the principle of absolute Substance, at least in a general way, because Man’s highest characteristic, his tendency to seek after God, is the pure love of God, according to Spinoza’s expression, sub specie æterni. Only, the principles which underlie his philosophical treatment of the subject, the content, the starting-points, have no connection with the Substance itself. All systematic detailed treatment of the phenomenal world, however logical it may be in itself, when it follows the ordinary procedure, and starts with what is perceived by the senses, becomes an ordinary science in which what is recognised as the Absolute itself, the One, Substance, is not supposed to be living, is not the moving principle, the method, for it is devoid of definite character. There is nothing left of it for the phenomenal world, unless that this natural and spiritual world in general is wholly abstract, is a phenomenal world, a world of appearance, or else that the Being of the world in its affirmative form is Being, the One, Substance, while the particularisation in virtue of which Being is a world, evolution, emanation, is a falling of Substance out of itself into finitude, which is an absolutely inconceivable mode of existence. It is further implied that in Substance itself there is no principle involving the characteristic of being creative; and thirdly, that it is likewise abstract force, the positing of finitude as something negative, the disappearance of the finite.
(Concluded 19th August 1829.)