Do the epistemological constraints of Hegel’s theology

lead to apophaticism?

“[A] serious consideration of the apophatic carries one beyond the simple (or simplistic)
alternative between ‘theism’ and ‘atheism’”. (Carlson, 1999, p.6)

Recent postmodern work on Hegel has sought to dissolve the polarity of atheism-theism into
an anti-metaphysical “a/theological” doctrine. Apophatic theology can be understood to
produce the same idea, and in fact the similarities between apophaticism and atheism have
often been made (in historical terms, somewhat pejoratively: Moses Maimonides and Paul
Tillich spring to mind). The question stands then, does Hegel support a negative theology? It
should be pointed out that there are still those who stand on either side of the line and prefer
to interpret Hegel into strict atheism (for example Alexandre Kojeve) or theism (Lauer),
believing that such smudging of terms by the postmodern is a mere avoidance of what is in
fact a definite issue. In this essay, I wish to examine Hegel's epistemology in the hope that
this will demonstrate what the possibilities of theological knowledge are, and therefore what
possible answers there are to the questions of theology. The sources I use fall along the
spectrum of Hegel scholarship, from Quentin Lauer’s explicitly theistic interpretation, to the
postmodern recastings of Mark C Taylor and Thomas Carlson, which draw largely on ‘Death
of God’ theology; between these stand Daniel P Jamros who interprets Hegel from a
Christian though left-wing position, and the sceptical William Desmond, whose work attacks
Hegel for it’s damaging implications for religious faith.

Section A: Hegel's epistemology

It has been usual, when discussing the theological (or, 'a/theological') aspects of Hegel's
thought, to take this in isolation from the rest of his philosophy. Rarely has this been linked
to his epistemology and the relationship between the two fully examined. I believe the latter
can at least shed light on the former, and may well help us toward a cohesive understanding
of the nature of theological truth for Hegel.

Hegel works to repair the divide Kant instilled in the world by uniting 'subjective'
conceptualisation with the true essence of objects. In fact, the duality which Kant perceived
in the knowing process, that of the knower and the known, is a principle target of attack for
Hegel. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel strives to demonstrate that the for-another is
not distinct, not separated from, the in-itself; rather it is the aspect of the in-itself which is
true for-another: “The Concept is that which inhabits things themselves, whereby they are
what they are, and to conceive an object means, thus, to be conscious of its Concept.” - We
do not predicate qualities of the external object, but “we consider the object under the
determination posited through its Concept” (no.166; trans. Lauer 1982, p.88). There are two
important considerations leading from this. The first is that to claim we apprehend the
Concept of a thing, is still to interpret Hegel too dualistically. Rather, the Concept happens
both in the object and in us. The rationality of reality is manifest in both at the same time;
one does not mirror the other. The Concept is the in-itself, as a rational-abstract. However, it
is not a ‘thing’, an object, until it becomes so by the process of appearing to a subject. It is
subjectivity which confers (and realises) the object-nature of a thing, which previously was
only a potential, waiting for the particularisation which perspective and context confer. The
second is that it is not that particular understandings or conceptions of an object are skewed,
and miss the full details of the object itself; an object can only be understood from a
particular viewpoint, and the corollary of this is that from any specific singular viewpoint,
each object can only be viewed in the specific manner in which it appears. There is no non-
contextual object, for an object always exists within a context (the context including the
mode of perception); and there is no contemplation of a non-subjective object for whenever
an object is contemplated it is by definition an object-for-another. To the extent that an object
has a nature not accessible via particular contextualisation (i.e. the empirical senses), it is
the nature which is discovered, unveiled, by the rational faculty of man. The Hegelian
Concept is not a psychological or subjective one; it is not one placed over the empirical
world by thought, rather it is the deepest truth of empirical reality, demonstrated via rational
thought. Thus, the abstract, the conceptual is the interior, the truth not susceptible to sense
experience.

Therefore to question the 'validity', the truth or otherwise of singular appearances is to

misunderstand the nature of perception, and indeed to fall prey to the long standing
philosophical idea of the subject as something like a television screen, a medium upon which
an image of the world is projected, instead of being the end of a process wherein the world
happens. Lauer explains, “there are neither 'objects' nor 'things' except through the
mediation of thought...'object' is the 'realization' (in the etymological sense of 'making real')
of the concept.” (1982, p.96). The object is the Concept made manifest; the Concept
depicted; the Concept “dressed-up” for representational thought. Or further, it is the
subjective activity of thinking “which constitutes the object in its objectivity” (ibid, p.110) –
that is to say, objectivity only makes sense in relation to subjectivity. It is the latter which
conditions the former.
Therefore, the “fear of error” presented by insisting on the epistemological gap between
object and perception is in fact a “fear of truth”: the in-itself can never be a truth for-another.
The in-itself would in fact be a falsity for-another because it is by definition not accessible.
Hegel rejects the understanding of thought as an instrument through which we approach the
world, claiming rather that it is itself an aspect of truth. From this point of view it becomes
clear the fallacy in the attempt to remove the 'distorting effect' of the medium from the
results. If a thing is to be known at all, then it shall be known in the form of subjectivity – this
is not a distortion, but a realisation of the subjective-nature of the thing. It cannot be known
in any other way. The forms of thought are “the living spirit of the actual”. We do not look
beyond or behind appearances for the truth: the appearances are aspects of the truth. They
would not appear if they were not.

So for Hegel, it is not that “objects must conform to our knowledge” (as Kant would have it)
and neither that our knowledge must conform to objects, as is the traditional view of thought
and perception. For Hegel, objects and knowledge are both expressions of the same rational
superstructure. An object and what may be said of it by human beings are thus inseparable.
There is no distortion, for the object admits of a process of coming to be in thought.

Section B: The Implications of Hegel’s Epistemology for Theology

While Kant’s epistemology claims there is an actual nature to things, which is altered in form
by our perceptual (and psychological) apparatus (it is squeezed into a human shape if you
will), if we discard the actual, then there is no epistemic gap. Objects are by necessity
object-of-knowledge. There is no in-itself, only for-other. Clearly, this reappraisal of human
thought will have stark implications for theological knowledge.1

Hegel's God is ultimately rational – in fact, is the ultimately rational. God is the concept of
concepts which is made manifest in – as – the world of consciousness. The rational abstract
eternal empties itself into finite particularisation. As Jamros puts it, God being the
“supersensible truth” of the world (and human consciousness), “God is conceived as the
idea of the world, not as a mind whose thinking contains the idea of the world”. (1994 p.32)
The infinite equals the abstract. Hegel’s God is the abstract from the world, the universal
uninstantiated except as the whole of the world. Here it can be understood that God is the

1
Westphal (1974) has argued that Hegel’s epistemology is in fact a result of his
theology; however, the order of events should not concern us so long as we understand
that the two are inseparable within his system.
abstract essence of what is made manifest in reality; the universal2. And just as the concept
of chair is made real, brought to life, in the reality and human consciousness of a chair (the
concept happens in experience – there being no object outside of experience), so as human
consciousness realises itself and its nature (i.e. as the ground of phenomenal reality), is
divine essence brought fully to life. Here we approach an understanding of Hegel's
difference-in-unity of divine and human spirit. For, until consciousness realises this about
itself, that it is the generative force of the world it encounters, its divine, universal, nature, is
not fully realised: it has not realised its own essence as absolutely free, it has not yet
become what it really is. Only in understanding itself as freedom, as the sole reality and
defining condition, does consciousness actually become self-aware and divine3. Note, it is
only human spirit which can conceive the supersensible inner, the abstract; ergo it does not
have real existence until manifested in human consciousness of the world.

It follows that as for empirical objects, God has no nature outside of what is manifest to
humanity either phenomenally or rationally. What the mind cannot contain, there is not. This
is a problem for it demands that there is no transcendence, only immanence. However,
negative theology rests upon a foundation of limited epistemology, and an ontology which
admits of absolute otherness, at least for one side (that is, God must have a nature which
transcends the ability of man’s mind to represent, conceptualise or describe – it requires the
epistemic gap between subject and object in at least this most extreme of cases, where the
object is the transcendental subject).

Westphal explains that the problem posed by a finite being seeking to know the infinite can
have “only one solution. Knowledge of God cannot be a merely human activity. God himself
must be actively involved in the knowing process.” (1974, p.42). This is to say, the process
of humans knowing God is itself a part of God. God and mankind are not Others, and the
relationship is not one of subject and object. Hegel explains,

“man knows God only insofar as God himself knows himself in man. This knowledge
is God’s self-consciousness, but it is at the same time a knowledge of God on man’s

2
Jamros describes Hegel as seeing “God as an essence that posits its own existence as
the world.” (1994, p.18)
3
Or, to present it another way: Essence cannot be present “in” material objects for it is
immaterial. It is solely a quality of rationality, and the fact that thought discerns it “in”
objects proves the unity-in-rationality of empirical reality and thought. Ergo, finding God
“in” the world as essence can only be consciousness’ finding of itself; of its own ability to
universalise and thereby unite with the rational eternal. Jamros explains well, “God is
immediately present to a thinking that elevates itself to the universal substance of all
things. But since this thinking produces its object, God is immediately present only
through thinking.” (1994, p.65)
 part, and this knowledge of God by man is a knowledge of man by God. The spirit of
man, whereby he knows God, is simply the Spirit of God Himself.” (1962, v.3, p.303-
304)

The shift which Hegel has realised here is that God cannot be thought of in the same way
we think of chairs and tables. God is not object but only ever subject. Object demands
perception, subject only requires the objectivity of others-for-it.

In living, and thinking - in being - we actualise the world and God becomes in the actualising
of the abstract into experiential reality. Just as thought is not the representation of reality but
the taking place of reality, reality is not a creation from God but the creation of God. It is the
bringing of essence into existence. This supersensible is an “inner” as opposed to the outer,
perceptible, nature, it is a “simplicity apprehended by understanding” (1949, p.195) – it is
that consistency which is exhibited in the perceptible world, the “stable presentment or
picture of unstable appearance.” It is “the inherently universal unity” (ibid, p.196).

We can appreciate the telling that God cannot be known as object, that object language is
inapplicable to God, once we understand that God is in fact subject and not object. The
subject is always quality-less in itself. It is an abstraction from particularities, of predicates.

On the nature of the subject, Taylor writes “It is impossible to specify the subject in any way
other than through the predicates...The subject is nothing other than the generative interplay
of predicates” (1984, p.133) – in this way, we can begin to appreciate the subtle quality of
negative theology which demands that the absolute subject, God, cannot be limited to any
particular predicate (for He is beyond particularity) and therefore cannot be spoken about at
all. God is precisely the unspecifiable. While finite beings can be understood by being
abstracted from specific finite predicates, how can we abstract from predication itself? Yet
this is what we must do in order to know the essence of Being. The answer, as we have
seen, is that by coming to understand Being we transcend our finitude and realise Being.

Taylor and Carlson view this doctrine as representing a thoroughly immanentist picture
where metaphysics has been dissolved into the actual: Carlson sees Hegel’s “completion of
metaphysics” as intimately related to the theological and philosophical systematisation of the
“death of God” (1999, p.11).

According to this view, Hegel was identifying the emergence of concrete reality with the
dissolution of God’s reality – i.e., his nature as eternal, ideal, abstract, was utterly – entirely
– negated by the emergence of becoming. The infinite emptied itself into finitude. Being is
negated by Becoming and yet Becoming is all that can claim existence for itself because
Being only exists if we mean by ‘existence’ in this case, the same as we mean by the
thought: numbers for example, do not exist in any different way than they are thought of. The
nature of their existence is conceptual, not material. So, their existence is one with their
essence. They typify the unity of thought and being only by making their being identical with
their thought. Once the number 3 comes into existence as a material property of something,
i.e. is becoming, then it is no longer identical with its thought (its essence and existence
have separated)...so it is with God, the abstract of abstracts, the supersensible idea. Once
God’s essence is made Real, i.e. God is Becoming rather than pure Being, his Being is
negated by the very fact that it has been translated into materiality. The particular, the
manifest, forms the negation and dissolution of God as abstract. Thus, the finite material
world is both the death of the infinite, and its realisation.

“The death of God, then, occurs through the radical kenosis of the absolute, the self-
giving of the absolute into its own most extreme otherness, into finitude and death. In
and through that self-giving, divine nature and human nature finally achieve
substantial unity within then realized knowing of absolute subjectivity.” (Carlson 1999,
p.26).

Carlson sees two strands of the death of God in Hegel which “must be interpreted in light of
one another”: the abstract remoteness of God, and the subsequent movement into
manifestation that is the finite world. God thus empties his own emptiness, in order to
become real, and in becoming real, negates Himself in his most pure form: that of
emptiness. In Faith and Knowledge, Hegel says “the pure concept or infinity as the abyss of
nothingness in which all being is engulfed, must signify the infinite grief [of the finite] purely
as a moment of the supreme Idea”4. i.e., the separation, or Otherness of God from Being, is
only a precursor to the ultimate unity of God and Being via the emergence of subjective
spirit, which can recognise the conceptual, the infinite, in the particular5. So, in being Himself
God is dead to the world; in becoming the world, God dies to himself. As Hegel says, “each
is solely through the other, and what each thus is, it immediately no longer is, since it is the
other.” (1949, p.86)- The divine (that is, subjectivity) finds realisation in its very negation. Via
negation it is at once sublated and transcends itself. Further, “the being of the finite is not
only its own being but is also the being of the infinite.” (1962 v.3 p.254). The infinite, the
unconditioned abstract, is embodied, manifested in/as the finite. But by this very
embodiment its nature as infinite is negated.

4
Trans. Cerf & Harris, quoted from Carlson 1999 p.24
5
And in recognising infinite spirit in ourselves, we both make real and become that
infinite spirit, thereby uniting absolute finitude with absolute infinity in a single dialectical
unity.
This peculiar combination of difference and unity is difficult to understand but Hegel's
Master-Slave myth may help to shed light on it: Although there can be only one fully self-
realised authentic being, this mantle switches in appearance, inhabiting both at different
stages. First the Master claims victory and, in being recognised as human, becomes
(apparently) human. However this fullness is inhibited by the Master’s inability to recognise
the Slave as human, and the consequent devaluing of the Slave’s perception. So it appears
there is a slippery slope whereby the Slave, in being unaware of himself but aware of the
Master’s humanity, sees the possibility of subjectivity in another, something the Master can
never see. And progressively the realisation of subjectivity shifts from the forever-
emasculated Master, to the slowly-awakening Slave, who through his ability to enact his will
on the world, and his knowledge of subjectivity, becomes fully aware of himself as a subject.

So, it seems Geist may work for Hegel as something of a title rather than a proper name.
What can once be called Geist as the unmanifest, is still Geist in that sense although it
comes to be negated by humanity’s self-awareness. Thus, the prominent spirit has changed.
The spirit-nature has evolved, grown, although the individual moments through which it has
moved remain as they were.

However, there is a problem in that the ultimate truth of Geist comes only with its completion
– everything prior to this are just moments; isolated fragments. It is only the whole process
of Geist’s coming to know itself which reveals Geist in its essence. And at the point of finality
there is no other through which to know it. So this 'we' cannot know; this ultimate complete
truth is beyond the finite (and also beyond the infinite). Only Geist in its completion can
realise the Concept of Geist in its completion, by being Geist in its completion.

To address this, we must draw on Carlson’s identification of a subtle but important difference
between the “absence and unknowability of God” in classical and death of God theology
respectively. While the former will see the stripping away of misleading icons and symbols
through which humanity has incorrectly attempted to know God, the latter will see an
important challenge to humanity's self understanding in the absence of any notion of
transcendence.

This important theological divide is apparent between Lauer's and Taylor-Carlson's

interpretations of Hegel, and hinges on one factor. The question is to do with how we place
the relationship between Geist and its moments. Do we follow Taylor and Carlson in making
‘God’ the infinite which empties itself into the finitude of humanity and is thus only a moment
of Geist...or, do we follow Lauer and make God = Geist the infinite which still transcends the
finite? For Taylor and Carlson the personified moment of Geist which is the pictorially-
presented religious God is, has been, overcome and negated by the finite. Geist cannot be
known, except by itself in its fullness once all the dualities have been transcended. But God
can be known for God is what happens in thought; God as a moment of Geist, and Other to
humanity must be known first in order for man to attain self-consciousness. Lauer however,
sees the infinite positing finitude within itself; and flooding finitude with itself, thereby giving it
being; being which will inevitably be reintegrated into the infinite Being. But he does not
claim the infinite empties itself in the absolute sense which Taylor demands: where Taylor
sees the infinite negated by and into the finite, Lauer must retain the infinite over and above
the finite in order to hold onto God as a transcendent Other. Instead of God being a moment
of Geist, “man, finite spirit, is to be seen as a finite 'moment' of the infinite divine spirit who is
God.” (1982, p.141). This question of Otherhood is what divides the two critiques and is the
crucial point for an understanding of Hegel’s relationship to apophaticism, as we shall soon
see.

Conclusion: God and Otherhood

In his disappointed assessment of Hegelian theology, William Desmond asks

“Does [Hegel's] reformation not only risk, but enact, a deformation of divine
transcendence as other? If we decline, or deny, or reconfigure a robust sense of
divine transcendence as other to our human self-transcendence, do we attenuate the
idea of God, producing a 'God' that is not God?” (2003, p.2)

The issue at stake here is the Otherhood of God. If God is not transcendent Other, then to
what extent can He play the role of God? He continues,

“divine transcendence as other is rendered speculatively redundant in [Hegel’s]

vision of 'God'. The word 'God' may be frequently on his lips, but what the word
means hides a hollowness with respect to this irreducible transcendence.” (ibid, p.6).

Desmond is aligned with Taylor and Carlson in understanding Hegel as ultimately

immanentist: transcendence, in terms of Otherhood, is not allowed for. Hegel's attempts to
flatten subject-object duality are reflected in his attempt to flatten spirit into immanence.
However, the postmodern claim would be that it is only through such flattening that an Other
which is truly Other can be realised as such.

Hegel talks at length of the notion of God as transcendent Other using the term 'the
Unhappy Consciousness'. This is part of his critique of religion: It is the apparent
unsurpassable otherness of God that leads to unhappy consciousness. The inability to unite,
to integrate the transcendent Other leaves the finite human outside; abandoned; perpetually
inferior. But the divinity honoured by the unhappy consciousness is Absolute Spirit merely
disguised, divided from itself in its finite and infinite articulations. For Hegel, the sense of
Otherhood is precisely what consciousness must overcome in order to realise its true nature
as ultimately free.

Opposingly, we find in negative theology an articulation of the strongest kind of Unhappy

Consciousness: God as so unimaginably other that we cannot even approach description.
Surely, Hegel’s rejection of the Otherhood of God in promoting the unity of Absolute Spirit
must falsify any claims to apophaticism?

So, on one level it seems the Hegelian defeat of metaphysics leaves no room for
apophaticism: if Other has been dissolved into Self, realised through Self, and all is
ultimately rational then the radical Otherhood and limited epistemology required by negative
theology is abrogated too far to be mended.

However, Taylor argues that

“Hegel is not a philosopher of identity, for whom difference is either penultimate or

epiphenomenal. Quite the opposite, Hegel constantly attempts to overturn the
philosophy of identity, which was so popular during his day and which has returned to
haunt twentieth-century thought and life. In order to effect this reversal, Hegel insists
on the irreducibility of difference. Instead of identity dissipating difference, difference
constitutes identity.” (1984, p.98)

Following this, there is a real sense in which an Otherhood of God can be retained via the
postmodern reading of the death of God: if God has been, is, negated by humanity, if the
infinite (the abyss of nothingness) has been negated by/emptied into finitude and the
formless abstract potential has died by proceeding into form, then divinity has been
overcome by actuality...and we now can make no positive statement about the abyss of
infinite potentiality for it is the negative of our world, of our existence – and this perhaps is
the way it must be, for it is only with the death and disappearance of God that we find the
humanning of man. Subject as Other must disappear in order for subject to be identified as
Self.

It seems the postmodern project, with regard to Hegel, is to retain the Otherness of God by
the very act of making His absence absolute – that is to say, the only valid theology of
otherhood post-metaphysics is an absolutely negative theology based on the death of God:
for God to be meaningful at all for humans now, he has to be the God that has died; the God
whose nature is purely absence, purely non-actual. Any God which is less other than this is
not other enough to differentiate us as alive; we know ourselves as too actual to admit the
presence of another (an other) in the realm of the actual. In this sense, this is the logical
conclusion of Hegel's epistemology: there is no nature other than that which is known: no
object in-itself, only object for-another. Which is to say ultimately, there is only that which
knows itself. That which does not know itself is not, and through this fulfils the role of
distinguishing Other for that which is.

For Lauer, although the finite is infinitised (i.e. is an articulation of the infinite), there is no
concomitant finitising of the infinite: the infinite itself remains, it is not negated in any real
sense, and is not passed beyond. This is what allows for a kind of apophaticism, because it
is only once finite spirit “transcends the naturality and finitude of his spirit and elevates
himself to God” (trans. Lauer 1982, p.141) that the infinite can be known, by itself. Thus,
Lauer appears (successfully) to twist Hegel against himself in disallowing finite knowledge of
the infinite and insisting on a strict ontological gap between God and humanity. If man is the
phenomena of God, the actualising of God, then God cannot be known in itself except
through selfhood becoming what it is; i.e., God. So while finite spirit remains unaware of its
true nature as infinite spirit, negative theology must apply. The interesting distinction then is
the fullness of God for Lauer, versus the emptiness of God for Taylor-Carlson; both of these
points make for an acceptable negative theology.

Hegel ultimately can (and has) been interpreted in a variety of opposing ways. Doubtless
this trend will continue, and new oppositions will continue to be found within his work. On the
question of apophatic theology, I have argued that the essential factor is the status of the
divine as transcendent or immanent. After examining two opposing sides, it seems that while
the more traditionally theistic interpretation is easier to align with apophaticism due to its
intrinsic Othering of God as transcendent, the postmodern ‘a/theological’ reading, carefully
examined, forms a strong bond with negative theology in its attempt to retain an Otherness
via total negation. Although apparently proposing an entirely immanent theology, Taylor and
Carlson in fact allow for the most radical negation – and therefore the most radical sublation
and Othering - through the acceptance of the death of God. This disappearance of the
metaphysical into actuality thus “carries one beyond the simple (or simplistic) alternative
between “theism” and “atheism””. (Carlson,1999, p.6).

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