The divine Spirit is not finished, but active. Hegel says: ‘It is […] the activity of coming to itself and thus bringing itself forth, making itself into that which it is in itself.”
The self-becoming of the absolute takes place in the thinking process of the human being.
At the beginning of the 19th century, G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) developed his philosophy of Spirit, which became the basis of his further thinking. He designed a comprehensive philosophical system that makes a high claim. For in human thought, according to Hegel, the self-becoming of the Absolute takes place, God’s self-consciousness develops.
Hegel’s system consists of three parts; they relate to
– the Being of God before the creation of the world,
– God externalising Himself into the opposite, the other, the manifold nature (matter),
– the return of God from his creation to Himself.
We can easily recognise Hegel’s famous scheme of thesis, antithesis and synthesis in these three stages. In the second stage, the Spirit and nature (matter) stand opposite each other in an antithetical way in a tremendous contradiction. For Hegel, the principle of dialectical development takes place here: the movement resulting from the contradiction. It is the engine for God’s dynamically developing process of self-discovery in man.
The structure of reason
Hegel’s train of thought takes place in a dialectic three-step process in the spiritual reason of man. It is formed by two opposing poles: the being of the absolute and, in contrast to it, the alien, the manifold nature or matter and, thirdly, connecting them both, the divine self-consciousness in man. The subject (the Spirit) and the object (nature, matter) are standing opposite each other and are related to each other by a third pole: consciousness. This is where the cognitive process develops.
Human consciousness awakens by relating itself to the opposing poles and connecting them with each other. This is how self-awareness develops, this is how the human being experiences himself ever more deeply.
‘This describes the meaning of Hegelian dialectics: it separates the ego and the object, which is the source of all distinct knowledge and at the same time constantly creates the unity of growing consciousness […]. In this dialectical process, according to Hegel, consciousness must ultimately become fully aware of itself as reason and enlighten itself in its own essence, bringing itself into the light of spiritual existence.” [1]
History as progress in the awareness of freedom
The essence of the Spirit is freedom, and all its properties exist only through its freedom; freedom is the truth of the Spirit. The substance of matter, on the other hand, is heaviness, since it has no centre. It is essentially composed, consisting of many individual parts and drifting towards a centre. The Spirit, on the other hand, is in itself, and this consciousness is its self-awareness. This is ist sense of freedom, which makes it free. The Spirit is also not finished, but rather active. ‘It is […] the activity of coming to itself and thus bringing itself forth, making itself into that which it is in itself.’ [2]
Of world history Hegel says, „that it is the representation of the Spirit, how it acquires the knowledge of what it is in itself; and how the germ carries the whole nature of the tree, the taste, the form of the fruit, so also the first traces of the Spirit virtualiter contain the whole story“. [3]
The application of the principle of freedom to the respective worldly material state determines the long course of human history. The engine that drives this process is the human being’s spiritual self-consciousness, which overcomes the dialectical contradiction between Spirit and matter bringing the two into ever new integration.
Let us take the French Revolution as an example to illustrate this process of development. Jean Jacques Rousseau is considered her early pioneer. His cultural criticism is based on the central idea of a natural development of man. The resulting cultural inequalities among people are one of the main problems: „Man is born free, but everywhere he goes in chains,“ Rousseau stated. He developed a social contract (Contrat social), which unites the “will” of the people in a “total will”. Rousseau’s idea of the fundamental freedom of man had a significant influence on the call of the French people (and subsequent peoples) for „liberty, equality, fraternity“ and led to the French Revolution.
Immanuel Kant was so enthusiastic about it at first that he emphasised that it had never happened before in the history of humanity that an entire nation had overthrown its government.
The revolution ended tragically; people had not yet grown into their demand for freedom.
Albert Camus reminded man in the 20th century with the following words of their inner greatness: “Nothing is given to people as a gift, and the little that they can conquer must be paid for with unjust deaths. But it is not in this that man’s greatness lies, but in his will to be stronger than the conditio humana. And if the conditio humana is unjust, he can only overcome it by being just himself.” [4]
The poet Friedrich Hölderlin, a friend of Hegel’s and, like the latter, at first, himself an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, had recognised in this possibility the inner divine fire of freedom in man:
„Of course, life is poor and lonely. We live down here, like the diamond in the shaft. We ask in vain how we came down to find our way back up again. We are like fire that sleeps in a dry branch or in a pebble, and we struggle and search every moment for the end of our narrow imprisonment. But they come, they make up for eons of struggle, those moments of liberation, when the divine breaks out of the dungeon, when the flame breaks free from the wood and rises victoriously above the ashes, when we feel as if the unleashed Spirit, having forgotten its suffering, its servile form, in triumph returns to the halls of the sun.” [5]
„World history is progress in the awareness of freedom […]“, said Hegel, „it is […] the only purpose of the Spirit. This end is what in world history has been worked towards, to which all sacrifices have been made on the wide altar of the earth and in the course of long time.” [6]
So what is our freedom? we can ask. How can it come together with the freedom of God? It is possible because in our depths we possess a divine aspect, a divinity ‘in prison’, as Hölderlin says. It stirs, can break out, and we can follow its impulses. To experience this and to trust this inner voice, which is an aspect of the world will, therein lies the ‘spiritual path’ that is given to man. In the interaction with his true self, man unites his own with the divine freedom. He unfolds and liberates the divine within himself and transforms himself in the process. At the same time, the self-awareness of the absolute is realised and revealed through and in man.
[1] G.W.F. Hegel, Die Struktur der Vernunft (The Structure of
Reason), in: Texte der Philosophie (Texts on Philosophy), Munich
1972, p. 36
[2] Hegels Bestimmung des tätigen Geistes (Hegel’s Definition of Active Spirit), in: Die letzte Epoche der Philosophie, (The Last Epoch of Philosophy), Stuttgart 1974, p. 15
[3] Ibid. (footnote 2)
[4] Albert Camus, Verteidigung der Freiheit (Defence of Freedom), Hamburg 1986
[5] Friedrich Hölderlin, Des Lebens Bogen, Ein Hölderlin Brevier, Munich
1970, p. 14
[6] See footnote 2, p. 16
… are the whole?
