Posts by Amanda Jackson5

Amanda Flores88 said:But couldn't someone explore just to deepen their faith or confirm what they already believe?

Is there actually an issue if he were a believer?

Honestly, even if he were religious, it wouldn't change his philosophy one bit.

James Lee77 said:So I was reading through this. We're basically debating your whole revolutionary take on Hegel—the idea that we should just toss out everything he didn't publish while he was actually alive.

Look, I never said they should be discarded; I just suggested putting them into perspective. It’s a bit like teaching high schoolers theology—you’d expect the discourse to be scaled down accordingly. Trying to pull some sort of definitive Hegelian apology for religion out of those messy, unfinished lecture notes is, to put it mildly, intellectually dishonest and biased—which is funny, considering that’s exactly what you’re accusing me of doing. Anyone who has actually spent time with his major works—whether they lean left or right—can see pretty clearly that Hegel could be interpreted in a dozen different ways, but he certainly wasn't some religious apologist.

steelridge58 said:Well, that is exactly what I am doing right now.

Fair point. My bad.

steelridge58 said:By the way, I think John really hit the nail on the head with that realization..

God and the absolute are two different things. Especially not according to Hegel.

Quincy:

James Lee77 As if I haven't heard this all before. It looks like everyone who actually took the time to read this is about to find out. logic science I’m right there with you on that one. This whole idea of dividing people into "left-wing Hegelians" and "right-wing Hegelians" is just a total fabrication.

Have you actually read logic science or haven't you? Because if you haven't, I honestly don't even know what we're talking about here.

James Lee77 said:Was he just talking out of his ass in those lectures? And were those philosophy of history talks total nonsense too—you know, that whole bit about history moving toward this ever-growing consciousness of freedom and all that? I mean, he didn't even write the book on it. Same deal with aesthetics?

It’s not just that Hegel claimed to be a believer; he actually was. Like, in his downtime, he’d hang out with that theosophist Baader just to geek out over Meister Eckhart. I mean, there's no way he wouldn't have lost his job because of that, right?

I actually know what Hegel thought about God and the divine, mostly because I’ve sat down with his logic science. You clearly haven't. Honestly, that book is a far more useful resource for understanding his views than any of those random notes he left behind for his theology classes.

gentlerider7 said:You’re just seeing what you want to see because you guys are completely biased.

Right, because you’re clearly the gold standard of objectivity here. By all means, keep preaching; maybe if you say it loud enough, we’ll all suddenly wake up from our delusions. Just stay consistent, I guess.

steelridge58 said:That wasn't actually a critique of religion; it was more like just making a fool out of someone else.

Just something to chew on.

Look, it isn't your job as a moderator to hand out these kinds of black-and-white judgments; your job is simply to manage the board. I haven't insulted anyone, I haven't incited any hatred, and I certainly haven't been crude—as for whether I was being "unpleasant" to someone, frankly, I couldn't care less. There’s plenty of stuff on this forum that I find unpleasant to read, too.
Think about that.

James Lee77 said:You could honestly read multi-layered sentences like these in a million different ways (though I guess you should probably try not to overcomplicate things too much while you're at it):

We have honestly covered this ground more times than I care to count, but fine, let’s go again. We are talking about a book that Hegel never actually published; it was compiled after his death from various lecture notes and exists in several different editions (one of which was even edited by Marx). Hegel wasn't just lecturing on the Philosophy of Religion; he was also teaching religious studies in schools. There aren't formal notes from those specific classes, but I suspect that for you religious enthusiasts, they would feel even sweeter or more useful in your persistent attempts to scientifically prove your own faith—which is inherently bizarre, though perhaps understandable if you're nursing some doubts about that very faith. So, naturally, he talked about God during religious studies classes. What else would he have talked about? It isn't even controversial that he identified as a believer; back then, all professors declared themselves believers, otherwise they would have been fired immediately (something that happened to Fichte, for instance). The point that actually matters is what he writes in his actual books, the books he published—Phenomenology and Science of Logic—and we all know exactly what he says there regarding God and how he approaches it.

Terry Martinez10 said:I’m certainly not out here contaminating anything, especially when I am simply providing a quote and its translation. I haven't actually written a single word regarding religion itself. It isn't a matter of us having differing perspectives; rather, it seems to be about this hypersensitivity triggered by a single word just because it was capitalized as a proper noun.

Look, it doesn't really matter if you wrote the words yourself or if you're just passing along someone else's quote; you can still clog up a discussion with them. And when you say "aggressive," what exactly do you mean by that? Are we talking about having a heated debate, or is there something else?

steelridge58 said:Honestly, no matter what someone's personal thoughts might be, they just don't have any right to be rude or start jumping down someone else's throat just because they saw the word God—especially when it’s capitalized like that, and in this case, we're talking about a translation, so sure, we can discuss the ideas, but automatically becoming hostile toward another person just because God was mentioned? No way.

What exactly was so offensive about it? Are we really going to start banning criticism of religion, especially within the context of a philosophy discussion?

steelridge58 said:She wrote this earlier

So, continuing from that quote...

I used bolding just to highlight the parts that semantically correspond to one another, so I guess I'm wondering where exactly we are "introducing God through the back door" when you look at the context of both these quotes together.

Okay. But what—or rather, where—is the actual (metaphorical) problem here?

The real issue is how religion ends up muddying the waters of philosophy.

steelridge58 said:I wasn't even referring to the Christian God here, especially since I explicitly mentioned this isn't meant in a religious sense, so I honestly have no idea why anyone would immediately jump to the conclusion that I'm talking about a religious deity (not that I ever would)

What exactly is a non-religious God supposed to be? Honestly, I feel like I’m hearing that term for the very first time.

Terry Martinez10 said:These quotes come straight from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. The whole work centers on the nature of art... specifically his search for a definition of true beauty, which leads him into a deep dive attempting to define truth itself.
He’s talking about pure, unadulterated truth—the kind untouched by human oversight or subjective interpretation—and he weaves the concept of beauty right into that same framework.

Honestly, it blows my mind to think about how individuals would attempt to censor this kind of thought or strip away freedom of speech if they actually had the chance.

Let's not get carried away here. In what possible universe would I be stripping you of your right to free speech? If you feel the need to bring God into every single post, go right ahead—be my guest. But just keep in mind that if you do, I reserve the right to step in and explain exactly why that’s a flawed way of looking at things. Don't act like I'm the one trying to silence you.

Terry Martinez10 said:The core question here is: What actually constitutes truth?
It’s one of those philosophical rabbit holes that looks different depending on which angle you take, isn't it? Personally, I find a certain quiet pleasure in digging through various essays and interpretations, just wandering through all the possible answers people have tried to construct over the centuries.
That seems to be the aim here too—to pin down what truth really is—so I’m a bit puzzled by this sudden religious fixation that has emerged in the comments, especially since it wasn't even on my mind when I first posted.

I'm not sure what your intention was, but this is what you actually wrote:

Terry Martinez10 said:Think about it: the Platonic Socrates was firmly convinced that things are good or beautiful only by virtue of being good or beautiful. Hegel leans heavily on this doctrine of "participation"—that idea of *methexis*—when he argues that anything constituting truth is only true through the lens of Truth itself; thus, God, acting as the sole source of absolute Truth, becomes the ultimate, final reality behind all things.

So, yeah, you basically dragged God into a conversation where He didn't belong.

gentlerider7 said:I feel like Hegel laid out his whole deal regarding religion and God pretty clearly enough right here;

"The starting point of religion—or rather, its actual core—is the concept of religion itself, the idea that God is the absolute truth, the truth behind all things, which makes religion the only source of absolutely true knowledge...

The Church has always been consistent and just in refusing to let reason stand in opposition to faith, or worse, to let faith be forced under the thumb of reason. Look, the human spirit isn't some fractured thing where you can just host two contradictory elements at once. If there's a massive rift between what we see intellectually and what we believe religiously, and if our knowledge can't bridge that gap, we don't get harmony—we get despair. And really, isn't despair just a one-sided attempt at reconciliation? It's when you just toss one side away and cling desperately to the other, but how is anyone supposed to find any real peace doing it that way?

One way out is for a divided spirit to just ditch intellectual demands entirely and try to crawl back to a simple, unthinking religious feeling. But let's be real, the mind can only achieve that by basically bullying itself, because you can't just force a conscious mind to ignore what it knows; a healthy mind won't allow it. So, that religious feeling just turns into a hollow kind of hypocrisy, leaving a lingering sense of dissatisfaction underneath. The other option is just falling into this total indifference toward religion—either ignoring it completely or just attacking it blindly. That’s the path taken by shallow minds, anyway.

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

Clear enough for people who are either willfully ignorant or just too emotionally attached to their little religious biases to see anything else. I feel like I've had to explain this at least twenty-five times on this board already, but let me break it down quickly for those paying attention: Hegel never actually wrote a book by that specific title.

Terry Martinez10 said:Well, obviously, I agree; it's not like I was saying anything else to begin with.

Yes, you did. You really tried to squeeze God through a keyhole there.

Terry Martinez10 said:Think about it: the Platonic Socrates was firmly convinced that things are good or beautiful only by virtue of being good or beautiful. Hegel leans heavily on this doctrine of "participation"—that idea of *methexis*—when he argues that anything constituting truth is only true through the lens of Truth itself; thus, God, acting as the sole source of absolute Truth, becomes the ultimate, final reality behind all things.

In Hegel's framework, the concept of God functions primarily as a metaphor. When we get down to the brass tacks of what constitutes truth, Hegel puts it quite succinctly: "The Truth is the Whole." It’s essentially the same sentiment expressed by a fellow forum member over in the "What is truth?" thread:

planinar said:Truth is the synthesis of all knowledge—past, present, and future—as perceived by all knowing beings.

That ultimate totality is what we call the Absolute, a point previously noted by our friend Simpleton. If you follow the logic that some people equate God with the Absolute, then everything actually fits together quite neatly, provided you look at it from a broad, unifying perspective rather than through a narrow, sectarian lens.

Terry Martinez10 said:It keeps coming back to me, if my memory serves me right: "God alone is the true correspondence of the concept and reality; all finite things, however, have an untruth in themselves, they have a concept and an existence, but the concept is inadequate."

If I were to put this into my own words...

Only God represents the true correspondence of the concept and reality for all finite things, yet all finite things possess an inherent untruth in themselves; they have a concept and an existence that is fundamentally inadequate to their own understanding.

What you're describing there is essentially Platonism—or perhaps that scholastic version of "realism"—which Hegel eventually absorbed, integrated, or synthesized into his own framework, much like he did with pretty much every other philosophical system out there.

medonaodmoru said:Look, the truth is my dog peed on the car.

What you've done here is offer a specific claim that might be true or might not be—it’s only actually "the truth" if your dog really did just mark the car.
If the question had been "What is the truth?", then your answer would have been ambiguous enough to pass, even as a joke. But since the question is "What is truth?", we're looking for the concept itself, the actual definition of what makes something true. So, technically speaking, the joke misses the mark.

ruggedraven36 said:If we actually bothered to distinguish between correctness and truth, then most of these definitions are really just talking about being correct, not finding the actual truth.

That might hold water when you're looking at how Hegel defines a concept, but we aren't just playing around with conceptual definitions here; we’re talking about the classical notion of truth, which isn't strictly tethered to the concept itself.