1 Islam and Philosophy: the Hidden Link in Spirits History Ben Schewel 03/05/11 My goal in this paper is to make

sense of Hegels sparse remarks on Islam in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Lectures)1 and The Philosophy of History (History).2 Within the Lectures, I will focus primarily on Hegels 1824 Lectures, as it is here that we find Hegels most sustained treatment of Islam within the three versions (1824, 1827, 1831). Sustained may not be the right word to describe Hegels account of Islam in the 1824 Lectures though, as his remarks are limited to two pages of analysis and one passing comment elsewhere. Hegels most extended examination of Islam is found in his History, though even there his analysis is limited to five pages. Given such meager treatment, one would expect Islam to be of only minor importance within Hegels philosophy. The point I hope to make here is precisely the opposite, that Islam plays an essential role within Hegels account of spirits movement. Religion for Hegel is concerned fundamentally with mans separation from himself as spirit. Hegels Lectures trace religions evolution from its earliest stage as natural religion, in which spirit seeks to submerge itself within nature, to its culmination in philosophical German Protestantism. Along the way Hegel treats Chinese religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Egyptian religion, Greek religion, Judaism, Roman religion, Christianity, and, albeit briefly, Islam. Christianity is the culmination of representational religion, insofar as it represents mans spiritual reconciliation with himself and God. Christianity then, is the only religion that overcomes evil, insofar as evil is for Hegel simply mans self-separation as spirit. It only remains for Christianitys content to be extrapolated by philosophy. It is quite tempting to assume that Christianity develops the abstractive spirit necessary for transforming representative religion into philosophy from within itself. Yet, upon closer investigation it becomes clear that Hegel attributes the development of
1

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Volume III The Consummate Religion. Ed. Peter C. Hodgson. Berkeley: University of California, 1986. 2 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. Trans. J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publications, 1956.

2 this abstractive spirit to Islam, and its integration into European culture as enabling the Enlightenment, the precursor to Hegels true philosophical civilization. Hegel thus claims that Islam was the missing like in spirits history necessary to lift Christianity towards philosophy. I will elucidate Hegels reasoning in what follows, and as his account of religions movement in history centers on spirits self-separation and quest for reconciliation, I will begin with a discussion of these themes, describing the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and Roman religion, and then the rise of Islam in relation to Christianity. I. Evil and Reconciliation The phenomenon of evil is for Hegel spirits separation from itself.3 Evil is a necessary moment for spirits advance though, as by such self-separation spirit begins to realize explicitly what it is implicitly within itself, a unified totality. It is good implicitly, insofar as spirit is in its essence reconciled with itself, but it is evil insofar as this reconciliation has not been made explicit. Spirits need is to become good explicitly, which is to achieve reconciliation with itself in perfect self-knowledge, as spirit is that which by definition steps outside of itself into actuality in order to eventually become what it is implicitly. At that moment when spirit first steps outside of itself, spirit is thus not what it ultimately should be. It is on the way to being good, and thus for the moment it is not good, or evil. Spirit is not what it ought to be, insofar as it craves for an actualized reconciliation with its implicit, and it is this craving precisely that leads spirit to struggle towards its reconciliation throughout the history of religion. In his lead up to Christianity, Hegel recounts the great roles played by Judaism and Roman religion in advancing spirit towards reconciliation. In Judaism, the idea of one spiritual God arises for the first time, and in relation to this one God human finitude becomes evil.4 Having awoken to the consciousness of themselves as essentially separate from God, the Jews experience great anguish, though this anguish cannot destroy their finitude. The Jews are Gods chosen people, and thus they must preserve their finite particularity in obedience to the God who makes this very particularity evil. Thus, spirits infinite anguish arises in Judaism from its attempt to achieve reconciliation in a

3 4

Lectures, p. 295 Ibid. 306

3 manner that by definition makes such reconciliation impossible.5 In Roman religion on the other hand, spirit recognizes the actual world to be the source of evil, claiming mans rational spirit to be inwardly good. In identifying the world as the source of evil, the Roman experiences a great unhappiness concerning all things worldly and seeks to achieve reconciliation by submerging himself in the harmony of his own rational thought.6 Thus, in Judaism we have the abstraction of the finite self as separated from the one God, and in Roman religion the abstraction of the inward self as reconciled with itself in separation from the actual world. Roman religion is thus likewise founded upon a structure that makes spirits reconciliation impossible, as it abstracts the inward self from the need to manifest itself in actuality.7 It is only Christianity that can reconcile these abstractions and the suffering they cause through its Trinitarian God. II. Christianitys Development While spirits inward essence has always been reconciled with itself, it is only in Christianity that spirit becomes aware of this implicit language, albeit within the symbolic content of representational religion. This knowledge is first spoken by Christ and demonstrated through his life to his disciples. These disciples allow for Christ to disclose himself as the Son of God insofar as they have faith in the sensible person of Jesus as the Christ, as God in his self-determination within the finite world of actuality. Because the disciples faith begins from an interaction with Jesus as a sensible person, their transformation of faith moves first into representational symbolism, yielding the divine narrative recorded in the Gospels. In essence, the movement of faith is an early manifestation of spirits drive to raise the actual up to the universal, and so this symbolic narrative faith must continue to develop into the higher conceptuality of doctrine.8 The next stage begins when the church authoritatively presents its doctrine as the mediating medium through which divine reconciliation can be realized in every soul. Thus, in order to enter the community one must first submit to the doctrinal authority of the Church, afterwards assimilating this doctrine into ones thought, and finally participating in the communitys reconciliation through communion. Resulting from this

5 6

Ibid. 309 Ibid. 308 7 Ibid. 309 8 Ibid. 324-5

4 process is the believers feeling of internal certainty regarding his reconciliation with God, and thus spirits feeling of being reconciled with itself. Though Christianity in one sense constitutes the manifestation of spirits inner reconciliation to itself, such faith remains abstract as long is it has not become manifest within the believers actual lives. Thus, Christianity must in its next stage sanctify the world of actuality, and this process involves the transformation of the community, its recasting and modification.9 This is the process by which reconciliation in faith becomes explicit as the Kingdom of God, bringing as its final result the movement into philosophical civilization. Hegel describes this movement of realization as proceeding through three styles of external objectivity, to each of which it must bring actual reconciliation. These three moments are heart, then reflection, and then the concept. By heart [Gmut], Hegel means the immediate external world as colored by our private concerns. In the 1827 Lectures, Hegel describes heart as the whole complex of feeling which is simultaneously the feeling of a content and the feeling of oneself.10 Accordingly, we do not know the world as it is shown to our heart in separation from ourselves, but only as it appears in its emotive connection to ourselves. Though Christian reconciliation is meant to manifest itself within the heart, the simple assimilation of doctrine and participation in communion does not suffice for its transformation. Thus, the heart of the believers and the world disclosed therein still stand in need of actualized reconciliation, and the Church, as the community through whom reconciliations actualization takes place, must embrace its believers in the weakness of their hearts, struggling with the evil of their self-interest and self-separation from God. By taking up its believers crude hearts into itself though, the Church falls into worldliness, corruption and an overwhelming concern with the particular, losing for a time its universalizing drive. It is at this point in his Lectures that Hegel moves to the second moment of Christianitys realization, reflection, which he describes in the 1824 Lectures as involving Islam and Enlightenment rationalism. In order to clarify Hegels reasoning in so linking Islam and Enlightenment rationalism, I will turn to Hegels discussion of German Christianity and Islam in his History. III. The German Heart
9

10

Ibid. 337 Ibid. 138

5 Though he makes no reference to the Germanic peoples in his Lectures, it is clear from his History that the term heart is meant primarily to signify the Germans in their defining characteristic. There, Hegel defines heart [Gemt] as that undeveloped, indeterminate totality of Spiritin which satisfaction of soul is attained in a corresponding and indeterminate way, and heart in this sense is the exclusive quality of the Germans.11 While Hegel speaks in the Lectures of heart as a complex of feelings, the German peoples seem to be utterly unique in that their entire being and thus their entire world functions as one large complex of feelings without any determinate purpose. Accordingly, the German people are animated by a desire for an overall sense of enjoyment without binding themselves to any particular object of desire. It is their quality of heart that makes the Germans particularly suited to carry forward the Christian principle towards its culmination. As Hegel explains, the Christian God is the absolute object, and thus contains all determinations within himself. That which contains all determinations within itself cannot itself be determinate, and so the Christian God is indeterminate. God does acquire concrete determination through his incarnation in his Son, and through his Sons death and resurrection God remains reconciled with himself in spirit. Thus, the Trinitarian God is the spiritual unity of absolute indeterminacy and absolute determinacy. The Germanic peoples possess the same structure by virtue of their quality of heart. They are determinate as a particular people, yet the very quality of their determinate being is to be directed towards the indeterminate as such. Hence, Hegel can claim that the destiny of the German peoples is, to be the bearers of the Christian principle, as their heart is exactly that for which we found an appropriate application in the principle of Christianity.12 The German heart needs to be tamed and purified though, insofar as it must relate to Gods indeterminacy through the world of determinacy, and thus God as the universal drawn from the worldly. In order for such a purification to take place, the German peoples must make two movements. First, they must enter into the world with directed interests more or less similar to those of other peoples. Second, having entered into the world, they must then learn how to understand law and act according to principled aims, developing thereby an abstractive spirit. Hegel explains how the Germans will enter into
11 12

History, p. 350 Ibid. 341, 351

6 society through their own qualities, leading to the formation of a state, though one that is not animated by universal cognition and thus devoid of true laws and rights.13 If we make the connection between Hegels Lectures and his discussion of the German people in his History, it becomes clear that the Churchs fall into worldliness in its attempt to embrace the heart of its believers refers to a large extent to its conversion and incorporation of the Germanic peoples. Hegel describes this period as one in which Spirit in the concrete is realized.14 From where come spirits abstractive realization, then? The purification for developing Spirit in the abstract, Hegel explains, is accomplished in Islam, for while the West began to shelter itself in a political edifice of chance, entanglement and particularity, the very opposite direction necessarily made its appearance in the world, to produce the balance of the totality of spiritual manifestation.15 It is Islam that provides German Christianity with the movement it needs to raise itself up to the pinnacle of philosophical civilization. IV. Islam and the Spirit of Abstraction As Hegel remarks, Judaism is an objective [or negative16], inward absorption into evil, and this negative absorption creates great anguish by forcing the Jews to maintain their particularity. On the other hand, there is an inward absorption of an affirmative kind which is absorption into the pure unity of God.17 This is an absorption that is not bound to the particularity of ones finitude, but finds in the identification of the finite self as the source of evil the energy for the infinite task of submerging the self in Gods transcendent oneness. This non-particular form of Judaism is Islam. Similar to Judaism, Islam believes in one God who is a pure unity of thought, an abstract God incapable of becoming concrete. Islam makes a significant advance beyond Judaism though, as it breaks Gods limitation to a particular people, freeing thereby the full energy of his abstract universality. As Hegel says, Islam bathes in the aether of limitlessness, and thus its practitioners pursue the negation of their

13 14

Ibid. 353-4 Ibid. 355 15 Ibid. 355-6 16 Ibid. 306, footnote 156 17 Ibid. 306

7 particularity through union with God with unprecedented vigor.18 In this regard, Islam is clearly distinguished from Christianity for Hegel: Muhammad is a man, not God, and God can have no concrete determinations for Muslims, being thus purely intellectual. Accordingly spirit can never become fully free in Islam as it can in Christianity, never achieve full reconciliation with itself. Yet, it is precisely in this lack of reconciliation that Islam finds its dramatic energy, for better or for worse. For the Muslims, every worldly task must be expanded towards infinity in such a way that all its determinations are eventually abolished in union with God. Hegel describes this movement as the struggle for abstract worship, and such abstract worship cannot help but be fanatical. In fact, in his Lectures Hegel states that the religion of Islam is essentially fanatical, and he again affirms this insight in his History.19 Though fanaticism in Hegels usage carries at times the negative connotations we today associate with religious fanaticism, by the term he simply means an enthusiasm for something abstract, insofar as this abstract thought, being detached from concrete determination, must carry a negative relation to all things determinate.20 Accordingly, fanaticism is capable of both great destruction and the greatest elevation, and, in Islam, as he says, Never has enthusiasmperformed greater deeds.21 Islam becomes for Hegel the very essence of fanaticism, as there has never been before a people governed by an all-comprehensive enthusiasm restrained by nothing, finding its limits nowhere, and absolutely indifferent to all beside.22 In almost complete opposition to the German heart, when a Muslim embraces a particular aim he embraces it with the entirety of his soul, and it becomes his one passion and that alone. If he is cruel, then he is the cruelest of all men. If he loves, then he loves with the reckless abandon of the Sufi mystics. Hence, when the Arab Muslims begin their conquest they triumph rapidly over a massive territory. And when they turn to scientific and philosophical learning they pursue it with the utmost vigor, spreading the arts and sciences nobly throughout their empire. Also in the arts, the reckless fervor of Islam generates the glowing warmth of the Arab and [Muslim] poetry through an absorption

18 19

Lectures, p. 244, footnote 215 Lectures, p. 243 20 History, p. 358 21 Ibid. 359 22 Ibid. 359

8 in the life of its object and the sentiment it inspires, so that selfishness and egotism are utterly banished.23 And with the same explosion of energy, the Islamic civilization came upon its golden age after only two hundred years. As Hegel describes this period, Large cities arose in all parts of the empire, where commerce and manufactures flourished, splendid palaces were built, and schools created. The learned men of the empire assembled at the Caliphs court, which not merely shone outwardly with the pomp of the costliest jewels, furniture and palaces, but was resplendent with the glory of poetry and all the sciencesThe meanest [Muslim], the most insignificant old woman approached the Caliph as his equals.24 Such glory, intellectual, aesthetic, and political, would not last long though, as Islams decline soon began. The Abbasid Caliphate, the seat of high Islamic culture, was attacked and defeated by invaders, and the Ottoman empire arose in its ashes. Whereas the Abbasids were glorious by virtue of their reckless pursuit of all things, the Ottomans sought to preserve stability and thereby sacrificed the fanaticism on which Islams astounding achievements depended. Without such fanaticism, the Islamic civilization was submerged into great vice, and Islams lack of concern for its believers private domain made such vice all the more savage and unrestrained in this case because they lack reflection.25 At present, remarks Hegel, driven back into its Asiatic and African quarters, and tolerated only in one corner of Europe through the jealousy of Christian Powers, Islam has long vanished from the stage of history at large, and has retreated into Oriental ease and repose.26 This is not the end of Islams Hegelian story though. Hegel then goes on to explain how Europeans were ennobled through their warring interactions with the Muslim world. They learned the infinite task of abstraction by virtue of their cultural interactions, and were thus able to idealize what valor the Europeans possessed into a fair and noble chivalry.27 Even more important, with the adoption of such an abstractive spirit, Europeans were able to receive great aesthetic inspiration from the Muslims, influencing the likes of Goethe to push towards an ever more liberated imagination. Most importantly of all, Europe received science and philosophy from the Muslims.

23 24

Ibid. 359 Ibid. 359 25 Lectures, p. 243 26 History, p. 360 27 Ibid. 360

9 It was, for Hegel, Islam that provided spirit with its abstractive development, and when European Christianity assimilated this development it eventually gave birth to Enlightenment rationality. This is why Hegel speaks of Enlightenment rationalism and Islam the two sides of reflections antithesis of the Christian Church.28 Islam and Enlightenment rationalism are on par for Hegel, in that God has no content and is not concrete. The main difference between the two is that Enlightenment rationalism dwells in abstract inwardness, manifesting a caprice an obsession with its power over everything its power to produce objectivity, the good, and imbue it with content.29 Islam on the other hand, dwells in the abstraction of God in an attempt to destroy subjectivity. Regardless, it is clear from the above analyses that Enlightenment rationalism is the echo of European Christianitys subsumption of Islams abstractive spirit, and it is only through this echo that German Christianity is raised to the level of a philosophical state. Hegel describes this philosophical development of German Christianity in his Lectures as the third moment of Christianitys realization, the stage of the concept. V. Conclusion I find two things most surprising about this last insight. First, just as the German heart provided the worldly indeterminacy needed for spirits movement into concreteness, it was Islamic monotheisms relentless push through all determinacy towards God as absolute object that generated the abstractive movement necessary to generate European civilization. While clothed in Hegels particular historiography, a historiography that I neither accept nor for which I seek to apologize, his acknowledgement of Islams place in world history is remarkable, as it is only recently that historians have begun to acknowledge Islams profound contributions to the construction of the modern world. Within Hegels system there can be no doubt that Islam logically holds a place just as high as that of Greece and Rome. Second, despite the clear importance of Islam for Hegel, he covers up this aspect of his thought almost entirely, spending page after page on seemingly ever other source of Western civilization but for some reason breezing over Islam. What motivated Hegel to treat Islam so strangely?
28 29

Lectures, p. 241 Ibid. 242

10

To conclude, I will consider briefly four possible interpretations as to Hegels motivation for his obscurely exalting approach to Islam: 1) Hegel simply did not know or have access to as much scholarly information concerning Islam as he did with other religions, and thus chose not to write on the subject too extensively. I find this dubitable, as the study of Islam was by that time as well developed as the study of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Chinese religion. There had been a chair of Arabic at Cambridge since 1643; 2) as the powers of Europe and the Ottomans were still competing at Hegels time, Hegel may have wanted to deemphasize Europes debt to Islamic civilization; 3) Hegel may have found the radical nature of his ideas concerning Europe and Christianitys debt to Islam too dangerous for his career, insofar as he was already under attack from pietists and the like for his unorthodox views of Christianity; 4) perhaps Hegel found his insights concerning Europes debt to Islam unsettling in their implications within his system, and sought to focus on other rivals to his vision of his Germanized philosophical Europe, such as pietism. While other interpretations may be possible, it seems to me that the answer lies somewhere in between the last three.