Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God. G. W. F. Hegel

inventing a notation by means of which the relation in inference may be reduced to that of identity, that is, to the abstract mathematical relation of equality, so that inference is shown to be the mechanism of a kind of calculation. As regards, however, the further nature of knowledge in such an external connection of objects, which in their very nature are external in themselves, we shall have to speak of it presently under the name of mediate knowledge, and to consider the opposition in its more definite form.

      As regards these forms which are called species, laws, forces, and so on, knowledge does not stand to them in an external relation; they are rather its products. But the knowledge which produces them, as has been shown, produces them only by abstraction from what is objective; they have their root in this, but are essentially separated from what is actual; they are more concrete than mathematical figures, but their content differs essentially from that from which the start was made, and which must constitute their only foundation of proof.

      The defective element in this mode of knowledge has thus attention drawn to it in a different form from that shown in the way of looking at it, which declares the products of knowledge to be mere phenomena, because knowledge itself is only a subjective activity. But the general result, however, is the same, and we have now to see what has been set over against this result. What is determined as insufficient for the aim of the Spirit, which is the absorption into its very nature of what is infinite, eternal, divine, is the activity of the Spirit which in thinking proceeds by means of abstraction, inference, and proof. This view, itself the product of the mode of thought characteristic of the period, has jumped straight over to the other extreme in giving out a proofless, ​immediate knowledge, an unreasoning faith, a feeling devoid of thought, as the only way of grasping and having within oneself divine truth. It is asserted that that kind of knowledge which is insufficient for the higher kind of truth is the exclusive and sole kind of knowledge. The two assumptions are most closely connected. On the one side, we have, in the investigation of what we have undertaken to consider, to free that knowledge from its one-sidedness, and in doing so at the same time to show by facts that there exists another kind of knowledge than that which is given out as the only kind. On the other side, the pretension which faith as such sets up against knowledge is a prejudice which occupies too firm and sure a position not to make a stricter investigation necessary. In view of this pretension it must be borne in mind that the true, unsophisticated faith, the more it in case of dire necessity might reasonably make pretensions, the less it does make them, and that the case of necessity exists only for the merely rationalising, dry, and polemical assertion of faith.

      But I have elsewhere already explained how the matter stands as regards that faith or immediate knowledge. It is not possible that in the forefront of any attempt to deal at the present time with the proofs of the existence of God, the position taken up by faith can be set aside as done with; the chief points from which it is to be criticised, and the place to be assigned to it, must at least be called to mind.

      Lecture 3

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      THIRD LECTURE

      It has already been remarked that the assertion of faith, of which we have to speak, is found outside of genuine simple faith. This latter, in so far as it has advanced to conscious knowledge, and has consequently acquired a consciousness of knowledge, accedes to knowledge with full confidence in it, because it is pre-eminently full of confidence in itself, is sure of itself, and firmly established in itself. We are rather concerned with faith in so far as it takes up a polemical attitude towards rational knowledge, and expresses itself in a polemical fashion even against knowledge in general. It is thus not a faith which opposes itself to another kind of faith. Faith (or belief) is what is common to both; it is therefore the content which fights against the content. But this fact of having to do with content at once brings knowledge with it. If it were otherwise, the overthrow and defence of the truth of religion would not be carried out with external weapons, which are just as foreign to faith and religion as to knowledge. The faith which rejects knowledge as such, is just because of this devoid of content, and is, to begin with, to be taken abstractly as faith in general, as it opposes itself to concrete knowledge, to rational knowledge, without reference to content. As thus abstract, it is removed back into the simplicity of self-consciousness. This is in its simplicity, in so far as it has any fulness at all, feeling, and what is content in knowledge is definiteness of feeling. The assertion of abstract faith thus leads immediately to the form of feeling, in which the subjectivity of knowledge intrenches itself as in an inaccessible place. The standpoints of both must therefore be briefly indicated, from which their one-sidedness, ​and consequently the untruth of the fashion in which they are asserted to be ultimate and fundamental determinations, becomes apparent. Faith, to begin with it, starts from this, that the nullity of knowledge, so far as absolute truth is concerned, has been demonstrated. We wish so to proceed as to leave faith in possession of this assumption, and to see accordingly what it is in itself.

      To begin with, if the opposition is conceived of as being of such an absolutely general kind as that between faith and knowledge, as we often hear it put, this abstraction must be directly found fault with. For faith belongs to consciousness; we know about what we believe; nay, we know about it with certainty. It is thus at once apparent that it is absurd to wish to separate faith and knowledge in such a general fashion.

      But faith is now called immediate knowledge, and is accordingly to be distinguished radically from mediate and mediating knowledge. Since at this stage we leave on one side the speculative examination of these conceptions, in order to keep within the proper sphere of this kind of assertion, we will oppose to this separation, which is asserted to be absolute, the fact that there is no act of knowledge, any more than there is any act of sensation, conception, or volition, no activity, property, or condition pertaining to Spirit, which is not mediated and mediating; just as there is no other object in Nature or Spirit, be it what it may, in heaven or the earth, or under the earth, which does not include within itself the quality of mediation as well as that of immediacy. It is thus as a universal fact that logical philosophy presents it—we might add, along with the exhibition of its necessity, to which we need not here appeal—in the completed circle of the forms of thought. As regards the matter of sense, whether it belongs to outer or inner perception, it is admitted that it is finite, that is, that it exists only as mediated through what is other than sense. But of this matter itself, and still more of the higher content of ​Spirit, it will be admitted that it derives its essential character from categories, and that the nature of this character is shown in logic to be the possession of the moment of mediation above indicated inseparably in itself. But we pause here to call attention to the absolutely universal fact, in whatever sense and with whatever meaning the facts may be understood. Without digressing into examples, we abide by the one object which here lies nearest to us.

      God is activity, free activity relating itself to itself, and remaining with itself. The essential element in the notion or conception of God, or, for that matter, in every idea of God, is that He is Himself, the mediation of Himself with Himself. If God is defined merely as the Creator, His activity is taken only as going out of itself, as expanding itself out of itself, as sensible or material producing, without any return into itself. The product is something different from Him, it is the world; the introduction of the category of mediation would at once bring with it the idea that God must be through the medium of the world; one might, at all events, say with truth that He is Creator only by means of the world, or what He creates. Only this would be mere empty tautology; for the category, “that which is created,” is itself directly involved in the first category, that of the Creator. On the other hand, what is created remains, so far as the ordinary idea of it is concerned, as a world outside God, as an Other over against Him, so that He exists away beyond that world, apart from it, in-and-for-Himself. But in Christianity least of all is it true that we have to know God only as creation, activity, not as Spirit. The fact rather is that to this religion, the explicit consciousness that God is Spirit is peculiar, the consciousness that He, even as He is in-and-for-Himself, relates Himself, as it were, to the Other of Himself (called the Son), to Himself, that He is related to Himself in Himself as love, essentially as this love