The position of art in the development of thought
In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel showed us the alienation process of consciousness (in a broad sense) from natural consciousness-self-consciousness-reason-spirit-religion-absolute spirit, which "can be regarded as the epitome of all stages that human consciousness has gone through in history". And Hegel classified it as a religious part. In the religious stage, consciousness transcends from the limited scope of the spiritual stage to infinity, and finally realizes the unity of subject and object. At this time, self-consciousness not only realizes that it is a free and independent reality, but also realizes itself in reality. Self-consciousness has gone through three stages in the religious state: natural religion-art religion-apocalyptic religion. In art and religion, spirit can realize its absolute essence, that is, it is no longer the same entity of all individuals, but the entity recognized by individuals as the inherent essence of individuals.
Here, Hegel adhered to the fundamental principle of the constant unity of opposites between subject and object, self and object. Among them, art, as a link, is the only way for religious consciousness to flow from nature to the apocalypse. However, in aesthetics, Hegel regards art, religion and philosophy as three absolute spiritual fields with the same content and special significance. They are different from each other in form and consciousness. The first form of spiritual knowledge is direct and perceptual knowledge, the second is imaginary consciousness (or representation), and the third is the free thinking of absolute mind. These three correspond to art, religion and philosophy respectively.
Art presents truth to consciousness through perceptual visualization. The artist expressed what was brewing in his heart in this way. "But when the content is fully expressed in the artistic image, the soul who sees farther will get rid of this objective reality and turn back to the inner life." . So as to enter the religious field. The form of religious consciousness is concept, because it absolutely leaves the objectivity of art and turns to the inner life of the subject, presenting the concept in a subjective way, so the mind and emotion, that is, the inner subjectivity, become the basic elements. At this time, piety is not the highest form of inner life. Hegel also realized that in his narrative system, "art is only one aspect of religion". Because emotions and ideas in religion will use this free thinking to provide consciousness with the same content as religion and become the most spiritual cultivation, thinking is used to master and understand the content that was originally only the main emotions and ideas in religion. Philosophy also grasps thinking itself in the form of thinking, which is the highest form of absolute knowledge.
There are differences and connections between these two discourses. This also reflects Hegel's ideological transformation process from the early stage to the mature stage of the system: his attitude towards Kant's philosophy changed from approval to criticism; On the Relationship between Religion and Philosophy —— From Religion to Philosophy to Religion: On the Relationship between Aesthetics and Rationality, from Aesthetics to Rationality to Aesthetics. Charles Taylor believes that Hegel's potential thinking route is: "The complete clarity of thinking can be found in philosophy. However, in the absence of these clear concepts, people use unclear representation styles in the process of exploring them. " ⑤ The domain of "Vorstellung" is the domain of religious thinking. In this field, Hegel thinks about God not with clear concepts, but with images. ⑥ Especially, "In art, self-awareness is embodied in works and in external and perceptual objects. It can't simply lead us beyond ourselves and achieve what it describes. On the contrary, it only allows us to understand absolutes through their existence as perceptual objects. "Therefore, Hegel believes that art is lower than the appearance of philosophy or religion, because it does not stipulate or describe absoluteness, but only presents shape to the absolute consciousness that is not the appearance." The lack of clear definition and thinking is very important for art, because it is a form of consciousness embodied in external works, rather than the internal style of consciousness embodied in concepts. Where our concept is clear, art is redundant. However, we should see that Hegel regards art as the development link of absolute idea, not to underestimate art, but more importantly, to give art the consciousness of natural development and the important task of religion and philosophy later.
The system of art itself
Hegel's aesthetics has constructed a huge art system (or network), and natural beauty cannot be excluded from it. "The objective existence with the closest concept is nature, and the first kind of beauty is natural beauty", which can be divided into three stages. The lowest level is an individual object separated purely from mechanical physics, while higher-level nature, such as the solar system, has achieved internal unity, but this unity is only comfortable. The highest natural thing is a living organic nature, and only this living organic nature is life. The natural scenery makes people feel beautiful because human beings see a pleasant and moving external harmony among various things. Only through human observation and thinking and according to the universality of natural life can it be transformed into beauty. Nature can be called beauty when it shows its sensibility as a concrete concept and concept. Therefore, Hegel declared that "natural beauty is only for other objects, that is, it is beautiful for us and aesthetic consciousness".
Artistic beauty is far higher than natural beauty. "The purpose of art is to put aside daily trifles in content and performance, expose self-sufficient rational things from the inner world through spiritual activities, and make them obtain a true external image." Attending doctor. Based on the relationship between concept and image, Hegel identified three types of art: symbolism, classicism and romanticism.
As the beginning of art, symbolic art is not perfect. First of all, the concept it wants to express is erratic, not qualitative, and it is impossible to find a qualitative form from specific phenomena. It can only be "the bull's head is not the horse's mouth", and it barely finds an expression form, showing only a state of distortion and opposition between content and form. "This kind of unsuitability makes the concept transcend its external image and cannot be completely integrated with the image. The more this concept shows the image of limited things, the higher the general character. " It can be divided into unconscious symbol, sublime symbol and concrete symbol.
Classical art is an independent and complete unity of content and form represented by ancient Greek art, and the reason why the ancient Greeks were able to create artistic forms that conform to ideal beauty is closely related to their real life. "According to their direct real life, the Greeks lived in the middle of the two fields of conscious subject freedom and ethical entity." The substance of political life is immersed in personal life, and individuals can only find their freedom in the interests of all citizens. The Greeks freely and consciously used "a body full of spirit and showing vitality" to embody the ideal that has become a concrete image, and the content and form reached the perfect combination of independence and unity. Only the artistic spirit of the Greeks has the honor to become the center of the world, and only Greek sculpture can perfectly combine the spirit with the individual.
After the spirit is embodied in the perceptual image, its rising power still forces it to leave the unity with the body and achieve the unity of spirit and itself. This is the center of romantic art, when the spirit returns to its inner world, and its artistic form is spiritual subjectivity. This kind of thing decomposes all special sexual stages into a pure, infinite self and its own unity. In the process of transforming matter into spirit, space is denied. Romantic art only uses the sound that disappears as soon as it appears as a medium, and expresses the profundity of inner life with sound, like a kind of self-communication gibberish. "The principle of romantic art lies in the ever-expanding universality and things that often move in the depths of the soul. Its tone is musical, and when combined with certain conceptual content, it is lyrical. "
At the same time, Hegel did not give up the investigation of the actual category of art because of the profound philosophy, and divided art into five systems: architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. The five systems are time-dependent, architecture corresponds to symbolic art, sculpture corresponds to classical art, painting and music correspond to romantic art, and they have their own independent development processes. Architecture, in particular, covers three types: symbolism, classicism and romanticism. Because it is the original origin of human art, compared with other art categories, it has the characteristics of the above three. Its task is to transform the external nature into an independent spirit, that is, a god who has been molded or objectified for people and people, and make it a shelter with a beautiful image created by the spirit itself through art, so it is always symbolic in nature. But if its practical and religious purpose is abolished and it serves the spiritual significance of independent reality, Doric classical architecture, high-tech romantic art and so on will be produced. And "classicism runs through sculpture, romantic art runs through music and painting". Not only does natural beauty reflect the development process from low to high, but all the factors in art are also arranged by Hegel in the order of consciousness development: nature-abstract rationality-concrete rationality-infinite rationality. This is consistent with his definition of beauty.
The flowing system of artistic philosophy
Hegel's aesthetics shows us an art pedigree with many branches, close relations and spiraling upward, which makes it have distinct organic and fluidity. Apart from the content, this is mainly related to his knowledge view of "negation of negation"
Hegel believes that truth is a flowing process. He pointed out: "At the beginning of culture, that is, when people are just beginning to try to get rid of the directness of real life, they must always start from acquiring knowledge about universal principles and viewpoints, strive for the first step to reach a general idea of things, and at the same time support or oppose it according to reasons, understand its concrete and rich content according to its provisions, and be able to make an orderly statement and serious judgment on it." He is deeply dissatisfied with the rush to find the "boundary" or "end point". He believes that such action is not to master things, but to get rid of things forever. He turned to flowers as an example to illustrate: when flowers bloom, buds disappear, and people will say that buds are denied by flowers; Similarly, when it bears fruit, flowers are interpreted as a false existence form of plants, and fruits are replaced by flowers as the real form of plants. These forms are not only different from each other, but also mutually exclusive and incompatible. However, their fluidity makes them an organic whole at the same time. They are not only incompatible with each other, but also necessary. It is this necessity that constitutes the whole life. Bud, flower and fruit are different manifestations of flowers in different periods, and the different characteristics of each stage constitute the truth system of "flowers" Hegel emphasized that knowledge can only be stated if it is realistic as a science or system. And a so-called philosophical principle or principle, even if it is true, is already false as long as it is only a principle or principle; So it is easy to refute it. Truth is a collection of concepts, a process in which one concept denies another concept and another concept denies other concepts. "Truth is its own process. It is a circle. This circle takes its end point as its purpose and its end point as its starting point. Only when it is realized and reached the end point is it realistic. " Hegel's special preference for "absolute spirit" is because he believes that spirit has great intellectual power of its own decomposition.
The rigor of Hegel's aesthetic system is amazing. His aesthetic system, even his philosophical system, revolves around a central issue-absolute spirit. He believes that the development process from nature to individual, from individual to society (including individual-nation-state) is actually a process in which self-consciousness constantly denies its one-sidedness, transcends itself and gradually moves towards perfect absolute spirit. His aesthetics is also centered on the development of self-consciousness, from concept to image, and with the continuous enrichment and deepening of forms, art also moves from primitive to ideal, and then to negative ending. In his artistic system, there is a force that constantly denies the old content and promotes it, which promotes the transformation of artistic symbolism-classicism-romanticism, and art itself also participates in the progress of art-religion-philosophy. He believes that this is the power of the spirit to deny itself. This is a milestone in the development of time and space, spirit and history, just like flowers bloom and fall, and the deceased is like a husband.
On the Metaphysical Construction of Hegel's Religious Philosophy
Li Pengcheng is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
I. Basic characteristics of the structure
At that time, when Hegel gave four lectures on religious philosophy at the University of Berlin from 182 1 to 183 1, it belonged to the later period of the European Enlightenment. At that time, religious philosophy was not a mature subject in European academic circles. At that time, philosophy began to give itself the task of studying religion. It can be said that this happened almost simultaneously with the formation of philosophy of art, philosophy of history and philosophy history.
However, to some extent, the establishment of religious philosophy as a discipline is carried out in an unfavorable situation. Metaphysics at that time18th century severely criticized "philosophical theology". At the same time, is it possible to "know" God in a rational way? This was also a heated debate at that time. Therefore, religious issues are closely related to many social realities and ideological issues.
Kant first talked rationally about God with an optimistic attitude, full of hope. He tried to set ethics as a new way of "thinking" about God. However, this attempt soon proved to be unreliable.
There were three debates about "knowing God" at that time, namely, the debate about "pantheism" in 1785; 1798 debate on "atheism"; 18 1 1 year's debate on deities or monotheism. Among these arguments at that time, there was a heated debate about the correct way to think about God. At that time, almost all important thinkers were caught in these debates.
At the same time, there has also been fruitful development in theology: first, the historical criticism method was introduced into the interpretation of the Old Testament and the New Testament, and then, almost at the same time, the concept of myth was quickly introduced into the interpretation of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Hegel's religious philosophy was formed under the background of this debate.
However, Hegel did not put himself in a position of various opinion factions in the above debate, but made his own new and deeper understanding of the rational understanding and interpretation of religion.
Hegel believes that religion is a form of spirit, in which spirit seeks to dominate its self-consciousness. This? Quot spirit is not a mythical image, but a summary (synthesis) of our own existence as the essence of spirit. In such a religion, when thinking about God, what our spirit expresses is what we think is true. Religion is such a form of spiritual self-awareness, which is adjacent to art and philosophy. Different from art, religion is an appropriate form of spiritual self-awareness. Because those natural connections that rely on art to express sacred things have been overcome in religion. But for the same reason, Hegel thinks that religion is not in the stage of philosophy, but the stage of philosophy is higher than religion, and philosophy developed outside of religion, overcoming the external connection of self-knowledge (self-setting) in ways other than spirit, such as overcoming the solidification of time and space.
Therefore, together with religious philosophy, artistic philosophy and philosophical history, * * * created the highest point and end point of Hegel's philosophical system. Therefore, Hegel's "philosophy" cannot be a complete knowledge without knowledge about religious philosophy, artistic philosophy and philosophy history. In other words, if we don't understand Hegel's religious philosophy, it is impossible to understand the real history of his metaphysical philosophy system.
Hegel's interpretation of religion liberated religion from the concept of "moral religion" in the late Enlightenment. Most scholars in the late Enlightenment believe that religion only interprets moral customs as sacred commandments. This understanding leads to many spiritual things being ignored or excluded. Religion itself actually contains more things than all moral elements, which is beyond the moral stipulation. These spiritual things directly guide us to grasp the distinction and difference between religion and morality. Therefore, this distinction is very important and should not be ignored.
Different from the popular view that "religion equals morality" at that time, Hegel placed religion in the central area of people's spiritual life, but it was certainly not the core of this area. In this way, Hegel formed a unique religious philosophy position different from the previous enlightenment scholars: he criticized religion and defended it.
This duality of Hegel's religious philosophy has led to a fierce debate about the nature of Hegel's religious philosophy, which has formed two factions among Hegelians. They either hold the view of theological defense of religion or hold the view of fierce social criticism of religion. The former returned to the traditional revelation belief, while the latter contributed to the change of radical religious criticism position in the middle and late19th century.
However, it is this duality that embodies the metaphysical characteristics of Hegel's religious philosophy and its richness of the times.
At the same time, it can be seen from the manuscript of Hegel's speech that Hegel's interpretation of "spiritual philosophy" of religion has a result worthy of serious concern by researchers: it is the first time in the history of western religious philosophy that a unified religious history has been constructed at a lower level by recalling the history of ancient and medieval times, and it is known to the world, such as "paganism", Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity in the East. In terms of its progressive significance, this stepped unified structure recognizes the objective inevitability and legitimacy of the existence of religions other than Christianity in world history, and compares it with Christ? Quot "juxtaposition" is regarded as the necessary different stages of religious historical development, as the self-consciousness of human spirit, instead of treating all other religions as "evil" or as the existence without any inevitability like traditional Christian monarchists. On the other hand, Hegel's historical method of dealing with the theoretical relationship between religions in different regions and nationalities in the world is ultimately based on a powerful defense theory, that is, through this so-called "objective" spiritual development sequence, Christianity is strengthened into a "real" religion, while other religions are condemned as so primitive, uncivilized and paranoid. This is an obvious "Christian cultural centralism", namely Eurocentrism. Of course, for Hegel, the religion of Christ is a "perfect" religion, not because it is a European religion, but because only it is inspired by the "true God" and because it has a "religious concept" in its thinking about God. It is the most mature development (expansion) of spiritual "self-consciousness" in the religious framework. However, it also emphasizes that all religious forms of self-awareness are spiritual forms. In a sense, there are no false religions, but in these religions, the spirit has not reached the corresponding level of self-awareness.
Hegel believes that all religions should be regarded as various forms of spiritual self-knowledge. According to this intention, Hegel first surpassed the western religious traditions (including Judaism and Christianity and Islam, which was regarded as a threat to western politics), and paid attention to various religions in the East-based on the reports of missionaries or travelers at that time, as well as eastern religious works translated into European languages for the first time, especially Indian religious works. It is true that people can easily see today that Hegel's understanding of these religions is not sufficient, even quite poor, and some of them are very one-sided. But what is important is that Hegel dared to have the academic intention of integrating all religious forms in the world and trying to make a unified and reasonable explanation before the formation of comparative religion, and gradually deepened this intention in lectures again and again, which is his genius.
In addition, the metaphysics of Hegel's religious philosophy tries to show that no matter where the spirit exists, it strives to pursue its own understanding and unity with other forms of self-consciousness. This religious self-consciousness pursues the unity of art and philosophy. Therefore, studying the relationship between religion and art, religion and philosophy must be one of the tasks of religious philosophy. At the same time, this religious form of self-consciousness also pursues the unity with other spiritual life forms such as legal rights and political forms. Similarly, it also stipulates that religious philosophy should explain the theoretical relationship between religion and law and the theoretical relationship between religion and politics from the philosophical dimension. Hegel's thought of constructing the metaphysics of religious philosophy is so profound that it has not even been fully understood and absorbed by various popular religious philosophy concepts in contemporary times.
Second, thinking about the significance of building structure
Hegel clearly pointed out at the beginning of the Lecture on Philosophy of Religion that, generally speaking, philosophy of religion has the same purpose as the previous metaphysical epistemology Theologia Naturalis1:people can understand the range of simple and rational things in which they can know God. It is completely different from the active and enlightened religion that is not recognized in a rational way. It can be seen that the metaphysical basis of Hegel's religious philosophy is religious rationality, and he opposes positivism and enlightenment as the theoretical basis of religion.
In Hegel's view, the object of religion itself is the highest, absolute, completely true, and the "truth" (that is, truth) itself. He believes that religion is a state in which all doubts, ideological contradictions and emotional pains in the world will be eliminated. "This is a state of eternal truth and eternal peace, that is, absolute truth itself" (German version of Hegel's religious philosophy speech manuscript, page 5. The following quotations only indicate page numbers, all of which are quotations from this book).
For the understanding of religion, Hegel thinks that we should first make a simple explanation from the relationship between man and God. Man is different from animals because he is conscious and thoughtful. However, starting from people's own ideological ability, people have produced various sciences and arts, known and understood various interpersonal relationships, living habits and customs, and produced various activities, skills and ways of enjoyment. Hegel believed that all these things found their ultimate center in the thought of the only God. God is the starting point and the end point of all things. Everything gets its own beginning from God, and everything goes back to it.
Because of this, Hegel regards God as the only object of philosophy. Philosophy studies it, understands everything in it, and leads everything back to it, and at the same time leads everything special out. Therefore, only philosophy can give reasons for everything, because everything originates from the object of philosophical research-God, and exists in contact with it, living on its glory and including its soul in itself. Therefore, in this sense, Hegel bluntly called philosophy theology, which is a study of theology. Or, in philosophy itself, it contains the worship and service to God. Only this object exists by itself, it exists for itself; It is completely self-sufficient, unconditional, independent and free, and it is its highest and ultimate goal. If this object exists in this way, the research on it is like this, and the research on it cannot have another ultimate purpose besides itself; This kind of research is the most free, and the spirit is born in this kind of research. In this study, the spirit got rid of all finiteness and was preserved and verified on all finiteness.
Therefore, the study of religion by philosophy is the study of eternal things. Philosophy should and can focus on this kind of research activity, and examine life itself with eternity and in eternity-and because philosophy feels this kind of life, it also has feelings for this kind of life, so this feeling is the resolution of all imperfect things and limited things-this is the [feeling] of [happiness], and, It doesn't understand happiness as anything else-because God is the origin and destination of the truth of everything and every action, every clue and every effort, so everyone is aware of God and this absolute entity, which is the truth of everything and themselves-the truth of all their existence and actions. At the same time, people regard this research, understanding and emotion of God as their higher level.
Corresponding to the "truly dignified" religious life that people pursue (that is, the spiritual life of religion), people's secular life is a "limited" life, pursuing a limited purpose. In the secular life, there are pains in this life, people's own misfortunes, troubles, boredom, worries, regrets and sympathy for this impermanent world.
In religious life, what people feel in real secular life will drift away like a dream and become a thing of the past. "Just like a mind born in the wave of forgetting, its temporary existence is dissolved into a phantom, which no longer scares the mind and is no longer supported by it? Quot (page 7). Hegel said that when people enter the field of religion, just like we are on the highest peak of a mountain-away from all the certain sights of the world, we regard ourselves as narrow people who have entered the blue sky and have a peaceful and beyond bird's eye view of the earth and the world. Therefore, from a spiritual point of view, people who believe in religion-after getting rid of the suffering of reality, they just regard this reality as a flowing illusion. " In this pure realm, only under the light of satisfaction and love can this illusion and its shadow, contrast and light be eased into eternal peace-and reflected "(page 7). In this kind of religious intuition and emotion, man abandons himself in reality, so he has nothing to do with himself, his real interest, vanity, pride, etc., and his knowledge and actions. It is only related to his connotation, that is, to declare the glory of God and enlighten the sublimity of God. Hegel called the mental state of people's thoughts after they left the secular realm "universal intuition, emotion and consciousness". These ideological forms belong to religion.
Hegel said that the intention of religious philosophy is to investigate and understand the nature of these ideological forms.
It should be said that Hegel's explanation of the object and purpose of religious philosophy research is very clear. However, is the metaphysical basis of this religious philosophy reliable?
His contemporaries criticized his way of thinking. The question is straightforward: Can God be known in a way of thinking? Therefore, can God be presupposed as "the object of philosophical research"?
In the era of Hegel's life, this is a controversial issue. The "emotional religionist" represented by schleiermacher asserted that it is impossible for people to "know" anything from God, and it is impossible for people to "know" God. (See schleiermacher: On Religion. Speech to educated people who despise religion, Berlin, 1799, pp. 1- 133; See also Complete Works of schleiermacher (Annotated Edition), Volume 2, p. 189-247. )。 This view was very popular at that time. On the contrary, people are keen on knowledge about limited things, and the expansion of science is almost completely infinite? Quot People know everything, even endless objects, but know nothing about God "(page 8). People have great enthusiasm for science, great interest in science, tireless pursuit of everyday concrete things, and no interest in the highest and infinite things. People regard God as their emotional object, thinking that as long as they are pious and have feelings, they can have religious feelings and reach faith.
Hegel believes that such a position is "in direct opposition to the overall nature of Christianity". In the process of investigating this position, Hegel discussed the relationship between philosophy as a discipline and religion, and also discussed the relationship between knowledge and religion. He pointed out that spiritual goals cannot be achieved through emotional methods. For example, dogs should not be allowed to chew printed manuscripts and make them energetic; You can't show a blind person the colors of things by telling him all kinds of colors. The key is that people with spiritual needs should liberate themselves from the narrow shackles of low-level sensibility and limited things. Only through philosophical understanding of religion can we awaken people's deep religious consciousness and raise people's religious feelings in their hearts, so that they can be qualified to bear the fate of religion and obtain spiritual truth. If people lack rationality and indulge their feelings and emotions, they may become willful, irritable, crazy, depressed and lack normal thinking ability. Such people can't touch the spiritual subject of the universe.
So Hegel believes that religion can only rise in mind and spirit through philosophy. Of course, the way of philosophical understanding is only a way of enlightenment. If the subject doesn't have or doesn't want to have anything that belongs to religion, then knowledge can't arouse the emotion of converting to religion in this or that subject and make him a religious person (page 12- 13). In Hegel's view, man is a man, not an animal, because he has the true spirit of pursuing perfection. Therefore, religion is not a strange emotion or concept for human beings.
However, whether a person can really become a religious believer depends on the relationship between the religion in his heart and the rest of his world outlook, consciousness, knowledge, purpose, interest and so on. Philosophical knowledge comes from