Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası Fəlsəfə Ġnstitutu “Müasir fəlsəfə problemləri” Ģöbəsi
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- C. Hegel and Schelling
- IV. Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism and Daoism A. Confucianism as Family Ethic 1) Objectification – Personalization
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B. Hegel and Marx How problematic it is to speak of a German philosophy can also be illustrated by the names of Hegel and Marx. Marx has unquestionably become a thinker of worldwide significance, and Hegel‘s philosophy is as international as that of Kant. Hegel had considerable influence on Marx. Hegel‘s conservative political views were rejected by Marx. But Hegel cultivated the ancient philosophical method called dialectic in a way that convinced Marx. To use the dialectic approach meant of course, that a given theoretical position is subjected to argument and allowed to be questioned by confronting it with contradictory statements. In the next step a synthesis between the two, originally contradictory positions new insight is then achieved at a higher level. Hegel had been a Protestant Christian theologian, and his intellectual development led him to conceive a philosophy in which the creator god is replaced with what Hegel calls the World Sprit. That Spirit appears in a variety of forms, and the changes which it undergoes are treated in Hegel‘s famous text: The Phenomenology of Spirit 39 . The section on self-reliance and dependence of self-certainty (which English translations call The Truth of Self-Certainty) contains reflections on the dialectic of the relationship between Master and Servant and shows how that relationship gradually inverts the hierarchical positions letting the servant became master and the master in turn become the servant. This occurs in the context of physical
38 Kant, ibid. 39 G. W. F. Hegel. Werke in zwanzig Bänden (Hegel WW), Bd. 3: Phänomenologie des Geistes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970. Chapter heading: Selbständigkeit und Unselbständigkeit des Selbstbewusstseins. 518
work, an activity the servant originally performs under the direction of his master. It does not take much imagination to come up with the conjecture that Marx replaced the servant with the working class and the master with the class of the capital, finding in the dialectic of their interaction the blueprint for the historical events that would lead to the revolution. But first, what were the inspirations he found in Hegel‘s text? Being Master depends – as Max Weber later also states in his sociology of domination – on the assent of the servant. However, if the dialogue between Master and Servant gradually dies down and eventually ceases entirely, the servant will become estranged, stop agreeing with the superior position of his counterpart and thus no longer view the Master as a Master. The servant‘s estrangement is derived from the observation that in his work he creates a material product which however, not he, the maker, but the master defines with regard to that product‘s meaning and significance. As a consequence, the servant is the maker of a material form which then represents in a symbolic way not his, but somebody else’s Self-Certainty as content. This tension initiates change in the relationship between the two actors. Change must be visualized as occurring in several phases: Originally the loyal servant fully agrees to the arrangement, by which an object he produces becomes the objectification of his master‘s Self-Certainty. As a result, in this initial phase, the servant gives his master power over the material objects he manipulates, by letting them become expressions of the master‘s mind. But if – as was indicated above – the dialogue between the two fades away and eventually disappears, the Master no longer even recognizes his servant as a person with a Self-Certainty of his own, but instead counts him among the material objects under the master‘s control. That will then deprive the master of his previous ability to recognize and appreciate his servant‘s state of mind. The dialogue between master and servant having completely disappeared the master is isolated and cut off from any chances to anticipate and possible influence what will happen next. The servant on the other hand, learns more and more to form a realistic impression of his position with regard to his master. He will thus become the self-conscious subject of his own Self-Certainty, also by realizing that and how he depends on his master for attaching immaterial significance to the object he produces through his work. Gaining this insight means in Hegel‘s language that now comes "das dienende Bewusstsein zum Fürsichsein" (the serving consciousness arrives at existing for itself). This – in a completely nonviolent way – is the final
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step toward the emancipation of who previously was the servant, merely as the result of the dialectic process working automatically. As we indicated above, the young Marx most likely read these reflections by Hegel with admiration. But in contrast to the individualistic thinking of German Idealism, Marx grew out of the Mosaic religion about the people of god, and thus was used to thinking in terms of peoples deciding the course of history. Accordingly, in his thinking he replaced the two individuals confronted in Hegel‘s philosophy with the two classes whom he saw as giving history shape in the drama of the struggle between the proletariat and the capitalists 40 . C. Hegel and Schelling Again, the question must be raised, if philosophy can be national or ethnic at all, or if it is by necessity a project which overarches the borders separating nations and populations. But while leaving that unanswered here, as a next deliberation we can look at the writings of two noted German philosophers: Again G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) and F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854). Schelling became Hegel‘s successor in Berlin and started lecturing there in November of 1841. Both share some basic assumptions in their philosophy of religion, a comparatively young discipline within philosophy which had established itself as late as the end of the 18th century. Hegel and Schelling agree in wanting to overcome the rationalistic concept of religion that is typical for Kant 41 . A general idea of a religion of reason is for them nothing more than merely a theoretical construct. To stay close to the reality of religious experience, they look instead into the history of religions and study systems of faith in comparison without, however, depriving Christianity of the status of the highest level of religious evolution. Indeed, in their view the other religions were necessary as it were, as the background against which Christianity could become the highest form. In this context Hegel expresses quite remarkable views on
40 Compare Karl Marx, "Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, Einleitung", 1964, original written in 1843. 41 We follow here the thoughts of the Schelling expert Albert Franz (born 1947), Professor emeritus of Theology at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, see his article: Religion und Religionen bei Hegel und Schelling - Ein kritischer Vergleich aus heutiger Perspektive, pp. 453-470 in: Kircheneinheit und Weltverantwortung, Festschrift für Peter Neuner, edited by Christoph Böttigheimer and Hubert Filser. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2006: 779 pages. We also point the reader to the book on Schelling by Albert Franz: Philosophische Religion. Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam and Würzburg 1992.
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Islam in his lectures on the philosophy of history. Nevertheless, Hegel and Schelling also disagree in a crucial point, to which we will come later in this article. First, we must confirm the consensus between Hegel and Schelling about leaving the rationalistic approach to religion and replacing it with an historical and empirical study of comparative religions. To subject religion to the judgment of reason is of course a method familiar also from certain schools of theological thinking. Both German philosophers agree on wanting to reject that subordination of what happened in history to the one- sidedness of asking how reasonable it has been 42 . Hegel as well as Schelling were leading representatives of German Idealism and in spite of their differences, they agreed in wanting to overcome the rationalist take on religion that was current 43 . To them religion had to be studied and interpreted in the context of its specific phase of historical change and in that particular culture in which it had evolved and was practiced. Schelling in particular also criticized the notion, according to which a ―religion for the senses‖ was needed to engage the masses who wanted music and theatrical performances in their liturgies. He argued: ―Not just the masses, the philosopher too is in need for such‖ appeals to the senses 44 .
claim that empirical religions needed to be acknowledged and studied with the understanding, that ―religion in general was to be regarded as the species (genus) and the particular religions as the types‖ 45 . The question was no longer: ―Is this system of beliefs and behavior a religion?‖ But rather: ―What type of religion is this?‖ Along with this elevation of religion as empirical and historical phenomenon came Hegel‘s statement that as such it was not the subjective opinion of certain, possibly misguided, people: ―But religion is not merely a type of subjective notion, instead it is in and of itself objective, since it has a way of existing all its own‖ 46 . Hegel thus wants individual religions to be looked at and listened to independently of the urge to press them into a corset of ―truths‖ generated by reason 47 .
Schelling agrees with that. For him too it would be unacceptable to subject
42 Ibid, p. 453. 43 Ibid, p. 455. 44 Ibid, p. 455. 45 Ibid, p. 456. 46 Ibid, p. 456 47 Ibid, p. 457. 521
the various religions to a general concept of religion and then to deduce from it what is and what is not religious about them 48 . Schelling even describes the variety of historical religions as ―a coherent chain from which no link may be removed‖ provided one really wants to understand the religion under study. It had essentially been the achievement of Kant to construe a scholarly religion based on reason. Precisely that is not acceptable to Schelling because according to him Kant‘s religion of reason did not come about as a result of ―mythology and revelation‖ as the historical religions did 49 . Those are thus unfairly compared to the construct of the scholar and as a result the ―age-old faith of the peoples for which they have given their lives are dissolved into mere philosophy‖ 50 .
Schelling is particular stringent when he attacks the rationalistic method by applying it to Christianity: ―From the point of view of rationalism which excludes anything historical from explaining the world, mythology is merely a chaos of nonsensical impressions. From that point of view, anyone looking at Christianity must find its historical dimensions just as absurd as the notions of mythology‖ 51 . Therefore, any scholarly religion is to be rejected as having no foundation in experienced reality. It has been deprived of all that is historical, and mythology as well revelation are reduced to media of communication. In contrast with approaches to older religions as representing error of the unbelieving versus Christianity representing the truth, Hegel as well as Schelling acknowledge and accept the world of the religions as necessary preconditions for Christianity. The process of finding the truth and of realizing human freedom in history is dependent upon the critical study of the various religions and religious phenomena 52 . Thus, Christianity does in fact need those studies. This becomes abundantly clear in Hegel‘s works, be it his philosophy of history, his phenomenology of the sprit, his philosophy of law: Religion is a topic throughout theses texts. In his lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel deals with Islam in detail, giving it the name Mohammedanism. He praises what he calls Islamic Monotheism as a ―Revolution of the Orient‖. While ―the West begins to feel at home in matters of coincidence, complications, and particularisms‖ the radical monotheism of Islam encourages the ―principle
48 Ibid, p. 458. 49 Ibid, p. 458 50 Ibid, p. 459. 51 Ibid, p. 459. 52 Ibid, p. 464. 522
of simply unity‖ 53 . This Hegel sees leading to the high levels of poetry and scholarship in Islam. When its monotheism later degenerates into fanatism and fatalism, this happens – according to Hegel – because that principle becomes an empty formalism not taking advantage of its potential for the
Enlightenment: In both cases the concept of ―God does not have any content, is not concrete‖ 54 as a You. Schelling may not engage in comparing religions with the same systematic consistency as Hegel, however, Schelling not only reads his sources in Greek and Latin, but also in Hebrew, Arabic and the Sanskrit of Persia, which gave him access to a wide variety of religious texts, wider than Hegel‘s access. But more important than this is Hegel‘s decision to classify historical religions as forms of consciousness. Hegel writes: ―Religion finds its reality as consciousness… its content is determined by the fact that it is in consciousness and how it is there‖ 55 . This premise subjects religion to human thinking! ―Thinking is the absolute judge, before whom content must authenticate and certify itself‖ 56 .
This has fundamental consequences for Hegel in that in none of the religions, not even in Christianity, can truth really be recognized, nor can freedom be realized. To Hegel religious truth is only that truth which results from a particular way of looking at things, just as religious freedom always exists merely as imagined freedom. At the end of his Phenomenology of the
Geistgestalt wissende Geist,‖ meaning ―the spirit which recognizes itself as existing in no other form than in that of being spirit.‖ This indeed subjects all religious knowledge to philosophy, and true knowledge is to Hegel post- religious knowledge. True freedom too, is possible only as the result of abandoning religious ties, as the achievement of post-religious autonomy! 57 .
includes human knowledge and human freedom into the general course of history as the process of creation. Thus, to him the history of religions is not a history of forms of consciousness, but instead is the result of the evolution of the direct dialogue between man and God. Truth and freedom cannot be realized without religion and cannot be post-religious. Rather, for Schelling,
53 Ibid, p. 464, Hegel, WW 12, 428. 54 Hegel WW 17, 337, as quoted by A. Franz 464. 55 Hegel WW 16, p. 251, Franz 466. 56 Hegel WW 16, p. 341, Franz 466. 57 A. Franz, op. cit. 467. 523
in confrontation with the philosophy of religion a-religious (or even anti- religious) rationalism and secularism are post-secular 58 . The philosophy of religion is a discipline which suggests a comparison with China. But first we must introduce the fundamental Chinese philosophers. IV. Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism and Daoism A. Confucianism as Family Ethic 1) Objectification – Personalization As we move toward Chinese culture and philosophy, we follow (to some extent) the views of the most influential Chinese sociologist of the last century, Fei Xiaotong (費孝通) (1910 – 2005). Possibly the most fundamental difference between philosophical thinking in the orient and the occident can be illustrated by first quoting from Simmel, and then adding Fei Xiaotong‘s very short comment to that. Simmel describes a transition in Wester philosophy toward objectification in several steps, and Fei states that this leads him to a fundamental distinction between Chinese and Western philosophy. Here is the exchange between the two scholars: Simmel writes: ―When the stoics later demanded, as an ethical goal, to be in harmony with the general supreme reason of the world [Weltvernunft], when the Christian ethic depicted the same as a realization of God's Kingdom on Earth, then we have to search for the founder of these objective moral principles in Plato, who for the first time cut loose the absolute good from the entanglement with human subjectivity, be it egotistical or altruistic, and who placed that highest objective idea into the center of the world orbit‖ 59 . It is one of the striking theses of Fei Xiaotong that this turn toward objective moral principles never happened in China 60 . The objectivation to which Simmel refers is a step in Western, and by implication also in German philosophy, which Simmel attributes to Plato. It will have to be tested, if Plato can indeed be seen as the originator of this crucial aspect of Western and of German philosophy, and if and why no parallel development occurred in Chinese philosophy. Our tentative answer is this: Western philosophy tended to extract from knowledge about human behavior the general and abstract principles and formed those into a new and independent system of knowledge. Chinese philosophy, however, remained based on reports about striking and memorable events, and left it
58 Ibid. 468. 59 Georg Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. Eine Kritik der ethischen Grundbegriffe, Bd. 1, Aalen: Scientia Verlag 1983 (Original 1893), p. 154. 60 Fei Xiaotong, China‘s Gentry. Essays in Rural-Urban Relations. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, 26. 524
to the person reporting it as well as to his or her listener, to draw the correct conclusion. Here are some illustrations: There are four classical novels in Chinese literary tradition which virtually everyone familiar with that culture knows: Journey to the West, A Dream of Red Mansions, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the latter it happens that a band of soldiers approaches the large mansion of the nobleman Zhuge to capture him, and he knows about this. Unable to defend himself or to flee he takes two young boys to stand at his side while he plays a Guzheng, a musical instrument similar to a zither. The hostile group arrives and hears the music. Confronted with this peaceful scene their leader concludes that there must be a large contingent of fighters hiding in the building, and that the musician‘s composure can only be explained as the total absence of fear on his part combined with trickery due to the knowledge that nothing can happen to him because he feels well protected. Being afraid of the suspected defenders of the mansion, the band retreats and no violence occurs. – In China today, if a person is admired for his or her good judgment, that person may be called ―as wise as Zhuge‖. A particular type of wisdom is not objectified but rather
The Zhuge-story is an illustration of the method that dominates Chinese philosophy. The following ancient test introduces us to the content of family relations, and how reflections about the kinship system dominate that subject matter: Both examples share the Chinese tradition of passing on
the days of Confucius the special type of loyalty between father and son was not the same all over the country and certainly not the same in the different strata of society. But the following story explains how the ethical imperative evolved that is valid in China to this day: That is spelled out explicitly in the Analects of Confucius in the chapter that is named after his student Zi Lu. In a conversation that took place in 489 BCE the Duke of She (沈 諸 梁) informed Confucius, saying, "Among us here there are those who may be styled upright in their conduct. If their father has stolen a sheep, they will bear witness to the fact." Confucius said, "Among us, in our part of the country, those who are upright are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this". No matter how strange it may appear to a Western observer of Chinese culture, the great sage himself here defines law-abiding conduct in the ―public sphere‖ to be of lesser dignity than the family duty of filial piety toward a father.
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We can see here, that in comparing the two philosophies there are not only differences in method and procedure, but also in the results as ethical conviction. We cannot go into the problem here, to which extent such differences place a burden on the debate about corruption and favoritism that happens at the present time. Since spectacular advancements usually come at a price, we can conclude that the West suffered the loss of some valuable component of its cultural tradition in exchange for its turn toward objective moral principles. In response to this question it seems that the absence of ―that highest objective idea‖ 61 helped China maintain value positions that – for better or for worse – have been lost in occidental quarters. We can observe in this context that in the Chinese cultural tradition, loyalty toward a person is regarded as being more important than obedience to an abstract rule. We will come back to that later in the context of obligations a son has toward his father. The priority of loyalty to a person has private as well as political implications. It also puts less emphasis on objectification as goal in cultural development. Yüklə 6,92 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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