Knowledge of God in Hegel
Hüseyin ÇetinThe Absolute Spirit stage, which Hegel reached after passing through the Subjective Spirit and Objective Spirit in the Science of Spirit (Philosophy of Spirit) sections in Hegel’s system, manifested itself in three stages, the first of which is art, the second is religion, and the third is philosophy. Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, divided religion, which is the second stage of the development of the Absolute Spirit, into stages such as the concept of religion, finite religions, and absolute religion. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion in 1827, the concept of religion is again evaluated by Hegel in three stages, which are the concept of God, knowledge of God, and cult. The focus of this study is the knowledge of God within the concept of religion. The Absolute Spirit, which appears as God in religion, is also the only content of religion in this form. For Hegel, knowledge of such content is not possible either by pure faith or by reason understood by rational theology. The elevation to God is an elevation that begins without immediate knowing but does not stay there, progressing to the stages of feeling, representation, and thinking.
In this study, before the views of Hegel on the knowledge of God are shown, the views of his predecessors on the knowledge of God and Hegel’s criticisms of these views are mentioned. From these views, Hegel especially wants to answer the rational theology and Kant’s understanding of God and Jacobi’s understanding based on immediate knowledge. In the study, after these views and criticisms, Hegel’s understanding of the knowledge of God in his system was examined. Within the scope of God’s knowledge, three types of religious consciousness are discussed: feeling, representation, and thinking, as well as their relationship with God. In this sense, the aim of the study is to show that the knowledge of God is possible for Hegel and that this can only be examined in the three forms of religious consciousness, feeling, representation and thinking.
Hegel’de Tanrı Bilgisi
Hüseyin ÇetinHegel’in, dizgesinde mantık bilimi ve doğa bilimi kısımlarından sonra gelen tin bilimi (tin felsefesi) kısmındaki öznel tin ve nesnel tinden geçerek ulaştığı mutlak tin aşaması, kendini üç aşamada ortaya koymuştur. Bunların ilki sanat ikincisi din ve üçüncüsü felsefedir. Hegel, mutlak tinin gelişiminin ikinci aşaması olan dini de Din Felsefesi Üzerine Dersler’inde din kavramı, sonlu dinler ve mutlak din olarak aşamalandırmıştır. 1827 yılındaki Din Felsefesi Üzerine Dersler’inde din kavramı Hegel tarafından yine üç aşamada değerlendirilir. Bunlar Tanrı kavramı, Tanrı bilgisi ve külttür. Bu çalışmanın odaklandığı kısım din kavramı dahilindeki Tanrı bilgisidir. Dinde Tanrı olarak ortaya çıkan mutlak tin, bu biçimiyle dinin de tek içeriğidir. Hegel için böylesi bir içeriğe ilişkin bilgi de ne salt iman ya da dolaysız bilgi ile ne de rasyonel teolojinin anladığı akılla olanaklıdır. Tanrı’ya yükseliş dolaysız bilmeden başlayan ama orada kalmayan, duygu, tasarım ve düşünme aşamalarına ilerleyen bir yükseliştir.
Bu çalışmada Hegel’in Tanrı bilgisi üzerine sunduğu görüşler gösterilmeden önce Tanrı bilgisine ilişkin kendisinden önceki görüşler ve Hegel’in bu görüşlere getirdiği eleştirilere değinilmiştir. Hegel bu görüşlerden özellikle rasyonel teoloji ile Kant’ın Tanrı bilgisi anlayışına ve Jacobi’de öne çıkan dolaysız bilgiye dayalı anlayışa bir yanıt vermek istemektedir. Çalışmada bu görüş ve eleştirilerin ardından Hegel’in kendi dizgesindeki Tanrı bilgisi anlayışı incelenmiştir. Tanrı bilgisi kapsamında dinsel bilincin üç biçimi yani duygu, tasarım, düşünme biçimleri ve bunların Tanrı ile ilişkisi ele alınmıştır. Bu anlamda çalışmanın amacı da Hegel için Tanrı’ya dair bilginin olanaklı olduğunun ve bunun dinsel bilincin üç biçimi olan duygu, tasarım ve düşünme biçimlerinde incelenebileceğinin gösterilmesidir.
According to Hegel, the absolute Spirit reveals itself in three stages: art, religion, and philosophy. All of them, in their way, take the absolute as their content. For this reason, Hegel understands the Absolute and God as the same thing. In religion, the absolute Spirit manifested itself as God. However, the foundation on which religion whose main subject is God is built will be possible with the consciousness of God, because according to Hegel, it is like God to announce itself. So God is not incomprehensible, if not, it is because consciousness is not yet in the stage of mind. To the consciousness in the stage of mind, God is self-evident. For this reason, Hegel criticizes the common understandings of his time that have the opposite view. Rational theology makes possible the knowledge of the existence of God with the proof of God’s existence. To dwell on the knowledge of God’s existence, according to Hegel, is to reduce God to an empty abstraction. In this regard, rational theology provides no information about God. However, Hegel regards these proofs as valuable because they are the result of a desire to know God. Kant, on the other hand, in the context of his critical philosophy, says that the information provided by these proofs is not about God, but about the idea of God in man. Hegel also rejects his idea, which he thinks limits knowledge. Jacobi and those who emphasize immediate knowledge also strictly distinguish between mediation and immediacy. For Hegel, however, God can be known when it is understood that mediation and immediacy are one as much as they are different. These views and criticisms form the background of what Hegel wants to achieve with his approach to the knowledge of God, namely that God is not close to being known. According to Hegel, when the consciousness of God is reached, in other words, when the religious consciousness is reached, it is now possible to talk about man’s knowledge of God. In this consciousness, the knowledge of God is explained in forms of feeling, representation, and thinking. In the person who starts with direct knowledge, there is still the knowledge that God exists here, but when this is overcome, the feeling about God occurs. The first form we encounter here is feeling. At the stage of feeling, God appeared in man as feeling. The idea that religion is a matter of the heart comes from this form. Still, the stage of feeling is far from confirming its content. The content of the feeling may be something other than God, and it does not say anything about the truth of the content of the feeling. In feeling, then, everything about god has become contingent. Thereupon, Hegel switches to the form of representation, at which stage it has become possible to talk about God. Religions use various symbols and metaphors, which is possible through representation. In this respect, representation includes this unique way of expressing religion. Yet the content of religion is not here in its true form. This is possible only in the form of thinking. When it comes only to the form of thinking, the reality of its content has also become necessary. In thinking, unlike representation, a basic determination is a necessity. Thus, the existence of God and the knowledge of what God is are both necessarily so in the form of thinking. In this context, the study consists of two main parts. In the first part of the study, it is shown how the common views on the knowledge of God in Hegel’s period were understood and described by Hegel. Then, his criticisms of these views were put forward. In the other part of the study, it was tried to show what Hegel himself thought about the knowledge of God. While creating the study, I tried to be faithful to Hegel’s expressions. It was possible to see a concrete form of his philosophy of religion view through lectures on the philosophy of religion he gave in Berlin, which was published as a book after his death. Another importance of these lectures is that Hegel’s ambiguous style of expression, which is often criticized, has left its place for a clearer and more understandable expression. Apart from this, the religion part, to which he devoted a long chapter in the Phenomenology of Spirit, is also useful for learning his views on religion. In addition, in terms of explaining the relations of art, religion, and philosophy with the truth, it is possible to identify his ideas on this issue in various paragraphs in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and Science of Logic. The primary source for this study will be Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.
