Selection, Round 2, comments...

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.

@Twitter

Look, I just can't get behind your answer—or any answers like it, really. Truth isn't "truth" if it can't be grasped by a self-aware being, and let's face it, humans are self-aware. So, who else would truth even be for? Beyond that, truth has to be communicable. That’s why truth is inherently both beautiful and worthwhile.

Sandra Murphy33 said:What else can one even fathom once they see the word God written down?
I honestly haven't the slightest clue...
We’ve been conditioned enough to think we already know exactly what "God" means.

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.

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.

Don't sweat it too much. The left wing of Hegelianism has its own way of looking at Hegel and God, while the right wing has theirs. They rarely see eye to eye. You've just got your own take based on what you read, and that's perfectly fine.

After Hegel passed away, the focus shifted from political philosophy to intense debates over the philosophy of religion. People were arguing about theistic ideas regarding God, personal immortality, and Christ's divinity, which basically split the school into left and right wings. His direct students, known as the Old Hegelians, wanted to bridge philosophically grounded theology with orthodox religious doctrine. On the other side, you had the younger generation of philosophers who didn't follow Hegel's lead, called the Young Hegelians. d. F. Strauss and B. Bauer pushed a pantheistic view of God, while L. Feuerbach took an atheist turn and developed a critique of religion based on anthropology. These "left" and "right" labels really stem from the political and social stances held back in the 1840s.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hegelianism

Gerald Jackson48 said:Don't sweat it too much. The left wing of Hegelianism has its own way of looking at Hegel and God, while the right wing has theirs. They rarely see eye to eye. You've just got your own take based on what you read, and that's perfectly fine.

After Hegel passed away, the focus shifted from political philosophy to intense debates over the philosophy of religion. People were arguing about theistic ideas regarding God, personal immortality, and Christ's divinity, which basically split the school into left and right wings. His direct students, known as the Old Hegelians, wanted to bridge philosophically grounded theology with orthodox religious doctrine. On the other side, you had the younger generation of philosophers who didn't follow Hegel's lead, called the Young Hegelians. d. F. Strauss and B. Bauer pushed a pantheistic view of God, while L. Feuerbach took an atheist turn and developed a critique of religion based on anthropology. These "left" and "right" labels really stem from the political and social stances held back in the 1840s.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hegelianism

You really shouldn't give any weight to those overly biased or totally arbitrary comments floating around out there. Seriously, why bother? Anyway, I actually posted a lecture regarding this whole topic of Hegel and God over here:

http://www.allmusic.com/search/topic/hegel

Amanda Jackson5 said:The real issue is how religion ends up muddying the waters of philosophy.

Honestly, you can't really "contaminate" philosophy with religion—not when religion itself is a form of philosophy (an earnest pursuit of wisdom) whenever it strives toward true understanding.
Besides, we have entire academic disciplines dedicated to Christian philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_philosophy

But that’s beside the point—what actually matters is fighting for our interlocutor during a dialogue, rather than fighting against them. We seem to be suffering from a deficiency of both meaningful conversation and actual participants. I’m talking about the very method of inquiry here—we can't hear anything, let alone perceive truth, if we don't allow ourselves to truly listen; and we fail to do exactly that when we silence our opponent... at which point, they effectively cease to exist for us.

Amanda Jackson5 said:The real issue is how religion ends up muddying the waters of philosophy.

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.

@Terry Martinez10

First, I went hunting through a translation of Lectures on Aesthetics using the index—nothing. Then I downloaded the full original text to be sure, and that sentence you cited isn't anywhere to be found. I'm stumped—maybe you pulled that Quote from the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences instead?

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):

"God is the one and only subject of philosophy. ... Philosophy is therefore theology, and engaging with it—or rather, within it—is already, in itself, a service to God." (G. W. F. H., from his own handwritten notes for his lectures on the philosophy of religion)

"God revealed Himself through the Christian religion." (G. W. F. H., lectures on the philosophy of history, based on the edition by J. Hoffmeister)

I have no idea what you mean by "jumping on someone else" or why you’re calling my comment
"excessively biased." 🤷

ruggedraven36 said:@Terry Martinez10

First, I went hunting through a translation of Lectures on Aesthetics using the index—nothing. Then I downloaded the full original text to be sure, and that sentence you cited isn't anywhere to be found. I'm stumped—maybe you pulled that Quote from the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences instead?

I recognized the quote immediately yesterday because I had actually scribbled it down in my Hegel notebook under aesthetics, but if you're saying it isn't there, then perhaps I made a mistake when I was transcribing it.
I suppose I'll spend some time working my way through the lectures on aesthetics today just to verify everything once and for all.

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?

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?

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.

Jonathan Brooks8 said:Honestly, you can't really "contaminate" philosophy with religion—not when religion itself is a form of philosophy (an earnest pursuit of wisdom) whenever it strives toward true understanding.
Besides, we have entire academic disciplines dedicated to Christian philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_philosophy

But that’s beside the point—what actually matters is fighting for our interlocutor during a dialogue, rather than fighting against them. We seem to be suffering from a deficiency of both meaningful conversation and actual participants. I’m talking about the very method of inquiry here—we can't hear anything, let alone perceive truth, if we don't allow ourselves to truly listen; and we fail to do exactly that when we silence our opponent... at which point, they effectively cease to exist for us.

Everything said there is true, but I don't see the issue lying with the "unpleasant" speaker. Instead, the problem seems to be with an overly sensitive listener, 🤷
who identifies far too closely with "their own opinion."
Or perhaps they simply lack the capacity to respond just as "unpleasantly"—meaning assertively and with confidence.
So, they retreat in a fit of self-pity.
And then we're left forced to deal with their ego instead of the actual subject at hand.

Gerald Jackson48 said:Don't sweat it too much. The left wing of Hegelianism has its own way of looking at Hegel and God, while the right wing has theirs. They rarely see eye to eye. You've just got your own take based on what you read, and that's perfectly fine.

After Hegel passed away, the focus shifted from political philosophy to intense debates over the philosophy of religion. People were arguing about theistic ideas regarding God, personal immortality, and Christ's divinity, which basically split the school into left and right wings. His direct students, known as the Old Hegelians, wanted to bridge philosophically grounded theology with orthodox religious doctrine. On the other side, you had the younger generation of philosophers who didn't follow Hegel's lead, called the Young Hegelians. d. F. Strauss and B. Bauer pushed a pantheistic view of God, while L. Feuerbach took an atheist turn and developed a critique of religion based on anthropology. These "left" and "right" labels really stem from the political and social stances held back in the 1840s.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hegelianism

The left wing also has this whole specific idea about tolerance: "Emancipatory tolerance would essentially mean being intolerant toward right-wing movements while tolerating those from the left." (Marcuse) Since we aren't exactly "emancipatorily tolerant"—we’re just regular old tolerant—maybe we should just deal with the left-wing Hegelian anxiety over words starting with G.

Sandra Murphy33 said:Everything said there is true, but I don't see the issue lying with the "unpleasant" speaker. Instead, the problem seems to be with an overly sensitive listener, 🤷
who identifies far too closely with "their own opinion."
Or perhaps they simply lack the capacity to respond just as "unpleasantly"—meaning assertively and with confidence.
So, they retreat in a fit of self-pity.
And then we're left forced to deal with their ego instead of the actual subject at hand.

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

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.

Sandra Murphy33 said:Everything said there is true, but I don't see the issue lying with the "unpleasant" speaker. Instead, the problem seems to be with an overly sensitive listener, 🤷
who identifies far too closely with "their own opinion."
Or perhaps they simply lack the capacity to respond just as "unpleasantly"—meaning assertively and with confidence.
So, they retreat in a fit of self-pity.
And then we're left forced to deal with their ego instead of the actual subject at hand.

We aren't all cut from the same cloth, and there's a certain art to dialogue involved here—learning to adapt to the person you're talking to instead of demanding that they bend to your will.

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.