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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ค. 2016
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Thank you for making the show possible. 🙂 Today we talk about Hegel and a unique possibility of what God could be.
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“I saw a commercial on late night TV, it said, ‘Forget everything you know about slipcovers.’ So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were.” ―Mitch Hedberg
249 subscribers? 88 views? WTF!? Did I just find an ignored gold mine?
Yes we both did.@@philosophizethispodcast
Yes and if I may recommend another gold mine: revolutions podcast, Mike Duncan. TH-cam: Timaeus
Great job! I really like your podcasts. You do such a great job of condensing these grand schools of philosophy.
The more that believers of a traditional God, in particular, an Abrahamic God, can broaden their perspectives and be open to possibilities, the more tolerant of a world we will live in.
I have just finished reading Hegel's complete Encyclopedia (the last of Hegel's work for me). Now I've come full circle. The whole journey took me 4 years. Now it is time to discuss and debate it. Glad I've found this. Thank you.
What was your initial conclusion from finally engulfing in Hegelian frame of thought
What was the best secondary material you read to understand Hegel or did you just tough your way through?
Thank you.
Your thought is a rare dose of open-mindedness, so much needed these days.
Omg, you just saved me. I was sobbing for analysis essay. Thank you so much. Subscribed!
"Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are not philosophers." Quite true. It's also correct that religion vs. new atheism is a false dichotomy.
"Every belief is a leap of faith to some extent, but not all leaps of faith are created equal." Also true.
Alan Watts once mentioned in a lecture about how often through the ages philosophers have, while lecturing or writing, made similes or metaphors referencing desks, since they were always in front of one.
I think Tupac might’ve found it poetic that instead, philosopher West talks about his mic. Dope.
after watching your video, my initial feeling was like "omg i m at home!!!"
On my journey away from theism, there was a point where I realized that I was wrestling with definitions of God that were so far removed from the God of my family as to be completely irreconcilable. When I became aware of that, it led me to seemingly the opposite conclusion that you expound here. I realized I could no longer profess a belief in God except out of cowardice (desiring to conceal my true beliefs) or bad faith (lacking a sincere desire to be understood).
As a member of a certain language community, I believe I have a responsibility not to stray too far from using words as my interlocutors use them. If I say "God means X", where X is something totally alien to my language community's definition of God, I'm not proposing a hypothesis that can be tested. I'm merely proposing a new language community, one whose communication with the original language community will likely be blurred and distorted by this redefinition.
If I believe a word has an unclear or erroneous definition, I'm usually in favour of rehabilitating it rather than retiring it. The reason I don't feel this way about God, the reason I don't want to redefine it back into existence in my mind, is because the global language community -- even of other languages -- sees God as necessarily an intentional being: a subject that does something.
The intentionality of a supreme being is precisely what I do not believe in, and as far as I can tell, it is precisely what almost all people in my language community mean by God, whether they believe in that being or not. That's why I resist the attempt to redefine it out of that essential quality: it would only serve to create confusion about what I actually believe with people who define the term differently.
This is an excellent point, however for me the God pointed towards by all monotheistic Abrahamic religions is the God of absence not the supreme being that most of the contemporary community worship.
The 'god as a being' should be rejected not by science but by a devout faith in the rejection of idols, a central theme to Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Once this god as a being has been rejected through logic, we are then open to leaving behind not just the gods of the past but the definitely of the past, we are open to searching for a new definition without acting in bad faith.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just defending my actions because I am still heavily involved in the church and still talk a lot about God despite having rejected the ontological supreme being concept.
@@MatthewAppleby42 I'm always curious about interpretations of Abrahamic religion that reveal such a different definition of God. Genesis has God say “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.” If anything, he reads to me as more of a “being”-bounded, contingent-than even the God of modern Christianity.
Yeah absolutely, so I'm going to go for a ramble and hopefully sort of talk about your point even if I don't directly anwer it.
Before Judaism, most faiths were polytheistic (multiple Gods, worship lots of them). Early Judaism was likely Henotheistic (multiple Gods, worship one of them) and only later did monotheism (only one God exists) become the norm. In fact everytime the word "El 'elim" is used in the Bible, this is a hangover from Judaism's Henotheistic roots as it directly translates as "God of gods".
When the Romans occupied Jerusalem, they were very happy with the Jews and then later the Christians worshipping their own God. All localities worshipped their own gods. What annoyed the Romans was that they Jews and Christians refused to worship the Roman gods. The Romans even referred to the Jews as "licenced atheists". What we forget these days is how radical atheism is and how religious its roots truly are. These days, nearly everyone is an atheist (by the Roman definition) because whatever we might believe, we all don't believe in something else.
So the bible is long and inconsistent so what I find best when reading it to try to understand not what God it's talking about but what God it's pointing towards. I do the same when reading the Quran. All these holy books point towards the rejection of idols in favour of a God beyond God. There are some Jews who believe uttering the name God (YHWH) is a sin of blasphemy and this was echoed by Christian mystics who believed to say God was to say less than God. Meister Eckhart famously said "I pray God to rid me of God". This idea goes a step further than rejecting other people's gods because it's an acceptance that any notion of God that a human can conceptualise is finite and thus an idol. We must therefore say no to any possible idea we have of God deepening our religious atheism.
So the bible is continually pointing at something beyond itself, something which cannot be grasped, something greater than a being something which is greater than existence. If you want to understand more about Hegel and God I would look up Peter Rollins who looks at Hegel's notion of the death of God. Admittedly, he copies most of his philosophy from Zizek but he does it in a more theological way.
John Caputo is, in my opinion, one of the most cutting edge theologians of our era. He uses an excellent expression when refering to God. He says, "God does not exist, God insists".
I know I haven't answered your question but I hope I've at least pointed in the direction of an answer which itself cannot be grasped.
I wonder if the idea of "God" came around the same time as language.. cause at some point people started attributing a name to the doings of a person's mind and body.. but before that did life just feel like light coming in through eyes and viscerally responding to emotions to get us to eat and avoid tigers? was there any regard for one as a self before language? To think of people as a "Soul/Spirit" seems similarly spooky to me as it is to believe in a God/Spirit.. both seem like they're kinda imagined.. although people spirits talk back to you and god doesnt seem to, at least not in a language i understand.. Maybe rain clouds are secretly communicating to eachother in a language we cant see by the ways they swirl, and they're saying to eachother "I dont see any other life forms communicating in the universe besides us"... although rain clouds dont seem to brains or minds.. What is the mind? It seems like its an ongoing bad-quality livestream recording of all the stuff thats come into our senses, with the most recent stuff clearest at the top, and its producing more thoughts and actions that are also being recorded in our mind.. its so weird! You know what else is weird, is that all that alot of the stuff you've seen/remembered seems ever-present.. like, in order to recognize anything, you must be referring everything coming into your senses to everything you remember, and you do it kinda instantly.. like, if you turn a corner and see your psycho ex girlfriend you might get started immediately because you recognize her.. its not a like a computer that has to run a search through its archives, it seems more like a starry night sky in the back of your mind with everything you've ever seen to varying degrees of brightness which you're comparing to all the new stuff coming into your mind, and its producing more thoughts and actions, which are being compared and logged, and producing more thoughts and actions :D its so weird! (sorry, i know too long, i had to talk tho, i feel all alone in the universe! :O this is a great podcast! :)
You mention sam Harris is not a philosopher. You are correct. What a shame he's one of the few popular "philosophers" of the day..
mark sanchez He’s more of a philosopher than a neuroscientist
Sam Harris never studied philosophy only neuroscience, similarly Dawkins is a evolutionary biologist not a true philosopher. This is why I find it ridiculous that Harris is trying to sell himself as a moral philosopher when you can find better moral philosophers such as Immanuel Kant that try to find new sources of morality to replace religion.
@@hamizanyunos1502 Because you have to study philosophy to be a 'true' philosopher? 😅
this is great - in what text of Hegel's were you looking where you hit upon this discussion? Philosophy of Religion? his early writings?
the phenomenology of mind
Wasn't Spinoza the one that revoliutionized our understanding of god? I don't think that Hegel took that much of a step forward, he adopted Spinozza's understanding.
Edvardas Juškauskas I completely agree with you
Very true
Lol
Spinoza did redefine God away from a being but he proposed a pantheistic notion that everything is God. Spinoza's god was nature, the universe, substance, everything. Hegel didn't agree with this.
The part which highlights the difference the most in this video is around 9:30.
From my understanding of Hegel, he took a more panentheistic approach. God was not a being in the universe, or everything in the universe but the ground of being that the universe emerged from.
I've kinda stoled Tillich's language here who was inspired by both Hegel and Spinoza. Please chip in if you have a different reading of Hegel, I'm still learning
@@MatthewAppleby42 In one of my university courses we were thought that during the "panteism-debate" Hegel tried to rehabilitate Spinoza's conception of God, as to show that Spinoza's god is not contradictory to the Christian concept of God. Hegel defended Spinoza's point by coining a new term for the religious belief that Spinoza had, namely "acosmism" (feel free to look it up). The difference between panteism and acosmism is that in panteism everything is "god" - you, me, a tree, etc. In acosmism however, all things are but a constituents of the Absolute a.k.a. God.
(It seems to me that acosmism would permit panentheism too, which might resemble Spinoza's conception better.)
Hegel is a gold mine 🙏I took 14 years to read Hegel. However I am happy. For Hegel God is a Subject and not a substance. Christianity as an institution will never survive without accepting Hegel
What do you mean by GOD is a subject, not a substance
@@emmanueloluga9770 The term subject means that a reality that can choose and act. Sun gives light. Can Sun deny sunlight to anybody? If Sun gives light to us with a capacity to deny light is subjectivity. So sun is not a subject but a substance. Man has the capacity to do or not to do. So man is subject. God also has the capacity to do or not to do. Man shares this capacity from God. Jesus says you can't do anything without me.
@@franciskm4144 thanks for your apt reply. Please what resources do you recommend on Hegel
Hey can you give me your instagram or messenger so we can chat?
Well I think it makes sense to define God as the process of self determination. It is a more plausible definition of God than the conventional one (though not objective, Hegel's definition of God is a subjective one).
However, folk like Harris and Dawkins are not against such definitions of God.
They are against the personal god that scriptures have defined historically. The gods that people pray to. The gods that people think, cares for them. This nature of God defines human life attributes to it and hence leads to the kind of arguments that the pro atheist movement have their base in.
Nietzsche once remarked that the idea of God became thinner and weaker as the ages went by, culminating in his death. Hegel's God is not an answer to atheism but rather a massive concession. Since both theists and atheists can acknowledge a process of self-determination, why don't we ditch God and simply talk about the process of self-determination?
I think Hegel was a panentheist and the Incarnation is a symbol of God becoming the Cosmos.
"....your not a god.".....How dare you!
Some people don't like the mention of God because they were beaten for two decades by people invoking God. It's not that crazy
You are THE MAN! When are you going to write a book on philosophy? What do you think is the most profound philosophical questions being worked on now by contemporary thinkers?
I see no reason Drs Harris and Dawkins can not be philosophers. They have both put in the work. Was Henry David Thoreau?
OH God
I mean yeah, I can create some grandiose new definition of "god". Hegels or spinoza or other deists of sorts do that often. And as you said god is a place holder for emotions/feelings and ideas. But impersonal god is no different than say something like "energy and mass is god" or "entropy is god". Impersonal god is of no use. He is causally inert.
An entertaining episode. Why chafe at mention of God? Because there often seems to be a "malevolent providence" that frequently inflicts on our lives "an aimless piece of devilry."
"New Atheists" in this video seem to be blamed for having such an ego to describe themselves as being "new". This is a significant error though because the term "new atheism" was not created by any of the men mentioned in this video. "New atheism" and "new atheists" are pejorative terms created for use by the Christian right.
Wow. Most all of this video was directed at a angry closeminded strawman atheist. Awful.
Why should I accept this definition tho?
How do I know that real reality is God?
Because its the only one that accepts that you can never have an adequate definition of something transcendental
Long as language does what it was ment to do, you will know. As one knows intuitively that the whole is greater then the part( given they are able to understand the implication of the term "part" and "whole")
For language to do what it's supposed to do is a condition that is sometimes not fulfilled. Hence the need for etymological investigation. I heard the word arose from the term "good". For Catholics the term Good, One, Being and few others are transcendentals.
I hope you respond to this comment. I have an atheistic attitude about conventional religions.
But my real thoughts about God is confused. What I do know for sure is that I am not a biological fluke.
This I cannot deny. Thank you for you channel I feel that I can really find answers here.
just replace the word faith as belief system
He says we should seek honestly without the shackles of mere faith, but nowhere does he discuss Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit. The Ans is: find out for yourself!
There’s a lot of gobbledygook until we get to 17:54 in this video. The heart of the matter between religion, science and faith is evidence. And then when you talk about “sufficient evidence” you’re actually making an argument about the utility of the belief to oneself. If a belief, be it religious or scientific, is not sufficient in so far as it it useful. The moment it’s not useful then one goes looking for new evidence to establish new beliefs, and vice versa.
How about Spinoza?
There’s already a episode about Spinoza, find the podcast
What's your standard for a philosopher if Sam Harris doesn't make the cut, or did I mishear you?
Philosophize This! Thank you, I will, I enjoy your podcast. And I agree, his work with Maajid Nawaz and the 'war of ideas' he mentioned on Maher is admirable.
Sam Harris is not a philosopher, he’s a mass debater who is looking to win arguments utilizing fallacies, that he hopes his audience is not educated in logic to discern them. That’s what Sam Harris is, pretty simple.
God is not a process ... What is the first cause of creation ? You still need to use your head - even with philosophers.
“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”
― Voltaire
OK, NOW do I get to dismiss all blather about "god"? Now that I've listened to this episode TWICE?
a) The baggage far outweighs this variant of blather;
b) Of COURSE the god-marketers are happy to say "See? Even that highly-respected Hegel believes in our god. ... He's just a bit mistaken about the details, but we can give you the truth";
c) You could also call the basic physical forces (here-among gravity) "god", but why add to the confusion? Calling them by their proper names is far less dishonest and misleading.
d) What am I to Hegel that he gets to insist that I entertain yet more fucking drivel? Just his mental latrine?
16:22
Hegel does not provide an answer to atheism any more than Spinoza
This is very unfocused and meandering.
God exists outside of the universe. He exists without the constraints of space and time
Sovereign
Im surprised a female holds that view. Or rather, I am surprised I have perceived a woman expressing that view.
Words don't have inherent meaning, and the reason I cringe when someone uses the word God or faith is because of what they very likely mean by those words.
You say that every piece of knowledge is based on some faith, but that's meaningless; sure, we should never be certain of things, but for example, you can either:
1) Have faith that you can fly
2) "Have faith" that you can't
One of these makes you more likely to die, feel free to choose.
The point is, reality can be assumed to exist, and rational deduction is a sound way to discover reliable facts about reality. Evolution has favoured our rational reasoning abilities and the fact is that the more reliable your "faith held belief" is at describing reality, the less likely you are to die.
The definition of a word is a matter of consensus. It's fine to speak of god as abstract in a philosophical discussion, but when talking to a christian, the baggage of the word is unavoidable, and has to be dealt with. I'm a fan of the strategy of getting the interlocutor to define god, and questioning how they know the details, but it seems like you're saying "There could well be a god, because we could define god to be something that already exists" and that's correct, but not helpful.
I appreciate that there are some people who haven't given this much thought, and you're doing a good job at getting people to revise their opinions. I just felt the need to defend my opinions as rational. I didn't mean to criticise the show; I just thought I'd justify my opinion that faith, as most people understand it, is an anti-intellectual psychological mechanism.
Christian Fieldhouse if any word cluster needs revision, evolution and procedural updates, it is "god/faith" - but a close second would be "atheism/rational." the kind of high ground needed in order to make the sweeping evaluation that something is "meaningless" is, actually, a binary logic not unlike devout christian fundamentalists thumping old books. if said terms are never, in some ways, beyond good and meaningless dichotomies, then the end of faith isn't a call for reflection and reevaluation, but rather a call for conceptual annihilation and anti anti-reason.. make a few steps down that slope and a few more right turns and you are getting close to a reification of those ideas.