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Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Mark C. Taylor
Mark C. Taylor
Affiliation:
Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267
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Extract

Abraham, born in Chaldaea, had in youth already left a fatherland in his father's company. Now, in the plains of Mesopotamia, he tore himself free altogether from his family as well, in order to be a wholly self-subsistent, independent man, to be an overlord himself. … The same spirit which had carried Abraham away from his kin led him through his encounters with foreign peoples during the rest of his life; this was the spirit of self-maintenance in strict opposition to everything—the product of his thought raised to be the unity dominant over the nature which he regarded as infinite and hostile (for the only relationship possible between hostile entities is mastery of one by the other). With his herds Abraham wandered hither and thither over a boundless territory without bringing parts of it any nearer to him by cultivating and improving them. … The groves which often gave him coolness and shade he soon left again; in them he had theophanies, appearances of his perfect Object on High, but he did not tarry in them with the love which would have made them worthy of Divinity and participant in Him. He was a stranger on earth, a stranger to the soil and to men alike.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 70 , Issue 3-4 , October 1977 , pp. 305 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977

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References

1 Hegel, G. W. F., Early Theological Writings (trans. Knox, T. M.; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1971) 185–86.Google Scholar I have checked all the quotations from Hegel and Kierkegaard against the original German and Danish, and have corrected texts when necessary.

2 Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling (trans, by Lowrie, Walter; Princeton: Princeton University, 1970) 71–72.Google Scholar

3 See, e.g.: Thulstrup, Niels, Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel og til den spekulative idealisme intil 1846 (København: Gyldendahl, 1967)Google Scholar, and Brazill, William J., The Young Hegelians (New Haven: Yale University, 1970).Google Scholar

4 I have examined the coherence of Kierkegaard's writings in Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self (Princeton: Princeton University, 1975).Google Scholar

5 This similarity is all the more remarkable when one realizes that these writings were not published until this century. Hence there would seem to be little likelihood of any direct influence of Hegel's analysis of Abraham on Kierkegaard's discussion. See Hegels Theologische Jugendschriften (ed. Nohl, Herman; Tübingen: Mohr, 1907).Google Scholar

6 As Harris points out, this work grew out of a series of shorter essays Hegel had been preparing throughout 1798 and 1799 (Hegel's Development Toward the Sunlight, 1770–1801 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972] 330).Google Scholar Unlike Harris, however, I believe “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate” represents a decisive turning point in Hegel's development. In following this line of argument, I side with Professor Dieter Henrich against Harris. See Harris, ibid., 294–95n, and Henrich, Dieter, “Hegel und Hölderlin,” Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971) 9–40.Google Scholar

7 For details of Hegel's relation to romanticism, see: Henrich, ibid.; and Taylor, M. C., “Love and Forms of Spirit: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10 (ed. Thulstrup, Niels; København: C A. Reitzel, 1977) 95–116.Google Scholar

8 Harris has carefully documented Hegel's preoccupation with the figure of Abraham throughout this period. The materials finally included in “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate” are abstracted from numerous drafts on Abraham written between 1797 and 1799. Harris, Hegel's Development, 27ff.

9 It should be noted that Hegel's view of Judaism does not change significantly throughout his career.

10 Hegel, Early Theological Writings, 182. Hereafter page references to this text are given in the body of the essay.

11 Hegel's argument at this point is a remarkable anticipation of Feuerbach's analysis of the origin and the function of religion developed in Lectures on the Essence of Religion and of Freud's position in The Future of an Illusion. See Lectures on the Essence of Religion (trans. Manheim, Ralph; New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 131, 250–54d;Google ScholarThe Future of an Illusion (trans. Robson-Scott, W. D.; New York: Doubleday, 1964) 21–28.Google Scholar

12 It should be evident that the essential features of Hegel's famous analysis of the master-slave dialectic developed in the Phänomenologie des Geistes are already present in his discussion of the God-self relation. What we do not see at this stage in his thought is the dialectical reversal by which the slave becomes the master and the master becomes the slave. See The Phenomenology of Mind (trans. Baillie, J. B.; New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 229–35.Google Scholar

13 In Hegel's later writings, the oppositional quality of Abraham's faith is incorporated in his interpretation of Verstand. According to the principles of understanding, “the determinations of thought are absolutely exclusive and different and remain unalterably independent in relation to each other.” Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (trans. Spiers, E. B. and Sanderson, J. B.; New York: Humanities Press, 1968) 2. 18–19.Google Scholar

14 As we shall see in what follows, Abraham's exclusive relation to God is the source of further opposition.

15 For a later statement of this position, see Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 2. 173–74, 188–89, 207–08.

16 See also Lectures on the Philosophy, 2. 196, 210; and The Philosophy of History (trans. Sibree, J.; New York: Dover Publications, 1956) 195.Google Scholar Hegel's discussion of Judaism bears an interesting relationship to Marx's analysis in “On the Jewish Question,” Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (trans. Easton, L. D. and Guddat, K. H.; New York: Doubleday, 1967) 216–48.Google Scholar

17 I use the word “devotion” in this context to call attention to the parallel between Hegel's analysis of Abraham and his discussion of the “unhappy consciousness” in the Phenomenology. In the later work, devotion (Andachi) is one of the fundamental ways in which the believer approaches his God. The term suggests the servility of the relationship.

18 The abstract otherness of God and the quantitative infinity of divine demands are definitive characteristics of what Hegel later labels the “bad infinite.” See, e.g., The Science of Logic (trans. Miller, A. V.; New York: Humanities Press, 1969) 139–43.Google ScholarPubMed

19 Phenomenology of Mind, 251.

20 Hyppolite, Jean, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. Cherniak, S. and Heckman, J.; Evanston: Northwestern University, 1974) 251.Google Scholar

21 This way of stating the argument points toward the complex epistemological analyses developed in Hegel's mature system. The attempt to reconcile self and world, self and God, and self and self, is nothing other than the effort to establish absolute knowledge.

22 And, we might add, of Enlightenment philosophy in general, and Kantian philosophy in particular.

23 Crites, Stephen, The Problem of the “Positivity” of the Gospel in Hegel's Dialectic of Alienation and Reconciliation (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1961) 30.Google Scholar

24 Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 164.

25 In fact, Hegel sometimes sounds like a Marcionite.

26 This text is an explicit anticipation of Hegel's mature position. In his completed system, spirit and reason play a role strictly parallel to the notion of love in the early writings. The telos of Hegel's entire philosophical endeavor is precisely the reconciliation prefigured in the analysis of love.

27 Quoted by Harris, Hegel's Development, 316n.

28 Throughout this section of the discussion, we have stressed the way in which Hegel's analysis of love foreshadows central aspects of his developed system. One significant difference should be noted. At this stage, Hegel does not think that the unity apprehended in love can be grasped through rational reflection. To the contrary, reflection ruptures the harmonious unity established in love. “The connection of infinite and finite is of course a ‘holy mystery,’ because this connection is life itself. Reflective thinking, which partitions life, can distinguish it into infinite and finite, and then it is only the restriction, the finite regarded by itself, which affords the concept of man as opposed to the divine. But outside reflective thinking, and in truth, there is no such restriction” (262). Clearly, Hegel's position on the role of reason in the achievement of reconciliation changes radically. As we have suggested, reason later fulfills the function previously accomplished by love.

29 These themes are developed in more detail in the first two chapters of my Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship.

30 In some contexts, Kierkegaard presents refinements of this threefold scheme. For our purposes, however, the triadic structure is most important.

31 In their eagerness to delineate the differences separating Hegel and Kierkegaard, most commentators overlook the no less significant positive relation between their positions. This essay as a whole attempts to underscore the necessity to reconsider the Hegel-Kierkegaard relationship.

32 Hegel, of course, does not use biological language to make this point.

33 In order to evaluate Kierkegaard's critique of the Hegelian system, it is essential to stress that Hegel insists that difference remains in the final unification. In terms of selfhood, the reconciliation of self with other enhances and does not abrogate individuality. From the perspective of Kierkegaard's criticism, the third moment of Hegel's dialectic is a simple reversion to the first moment. Our discussion has made it clear that this is contrary to Hegel's intention. Existentialist critics of Hegel have been too willing to accept Kierkegaard's misrepresentation of the Hegelian position.

34 Kierkegaard, , “The Joy of It—That Affliction Does not Bereave of Hope, But Recruits Hope,” Christian Discourses (trans. Lowrie, Walter; New York: Oxford University, 1962) 113.Google Scholar

35 Kierkegaard, , The Point of View of My Works as an Author: A Report to History (trans. Lowrie, Walter; New York: Harper & Row, 1962) 73.Google Scholar

36 Kierkegaard, , De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Trans. Croxall, T. H.; Stanford: Stanford University, 1967) 148–49.Google Scholar

37 Developing the Hegelian notion of aufheben, Kierkegaard argues that each earlier stage is taken up into (ophaeve) the later stage(s) in such a way that it is simultaneously displaced and preserved.

38 Fear and Trembling, 64–65. Hereafter page references to this text are given in the body of the essay.

39 Lowrie obscures this important passage by translating Enkelte as “particular” rather than as “individual.”

40 Kant himself commented on the Abraham story: “Abraham would have had to answer this supposedly divine voice: ‘That I ought to kill my good son, that is wholly certain; but that you, who appear to me, are God, of that I am not certain and never can become certain, even if it should resound from the (visible) heavens.’” Friedens-Abschluss und Beilegung des Streits der Fakultäten, quoted by Kaufmann, Walter, Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1965) 271.Google Scholar

41 Kierkegaard, Søren, Journals and Papers (trans. Howard, and Hong, Edna; Bloomington: Indiana University, 1967) no. 2052.Google Scholar

42 Kierkegaard, “The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air,” Christian Discourses, 334.

43 I have explored the theme of silence in a forthcoming article: “Sounds of Silence,” Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins.

44 Kierkegaard, , Training in Christianity (trans. Lowrie, Walter; Princeton: Princeton University, 1967) 218.Google Scholar