Date of Award
Spring 1996
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Kainz, H.
Second Advisor
Harrison, Stanley, M.
Third Advisor
Vater, Michael G.
Abstract
This dissertation was initially inspired by two things: first, what might be called an existential interest in a lasting reconciliation between faith and knowledge and, second, an intuition that the Hegelian philosophy was extremely instructive. Although I was impressed by Kant's attempt to critically secure both faith and knowledge, I tended to agree with Hegel that the truce for which re (Kant) had so shrewdly negotiated was largely inadequate. When Kant claimed that he found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith, i.e. Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen, one is tempted to agree with Hegel that reason no longer seemed worthy of its name and faith no longer seemed worth the bother. It is, I think, the genius of Hegel to reverse this Kantian dictum--i.e. that we must sub late (reading sub late for aufheben) faith in order to make room for knowledge (i.e. Wir mussten also den Glauben aufheben, um zum Wissen Platz zu bekommen); though Hegel nowhere says this, this is clearly his position. When thinking about Hegel's reconciliation between faith and reason, it would be disasterous to forget that Hegel is the product of an exceptional era in which knowledge and faith meant something quite different from what we might think. Recognizing this, i.e. the extremely historical dimension of Hegel's thought, I have thought it wise to suspend judgement concerning the Hegelian answer and concentrate more carefully on the questions which gave determinate shape to the answer. To do this, I focused largely-though not exclusively--on Hegel's 1802 Critical Journal essay Glauben und Wissen. According to the Differenzschrift, knowledge is "the conscious identity of the finite and the infinite, the unity of both worlds, the sensible and the intellectual, the necessary and free in consciousness." In the same text, the DS, faith refers to a "relation of restriction to the absolute, a relation in which we are conscious of the opposition alone in consciousness, indeed, in which we are fully unconscious of any identity [hingegen uber die Identitat eine vollige Bewubtlosigkeit vorhanden ist]; faith does not express the synthesis of feeling and intuition; in short, it is a posture of reflection to the absolute." The faith to which Hegel is referring is one which one-sidedly exhibits the opposition between humanity and divinity--in particular, he is referring here to the faith of Protestantism (i.e. the faith of the reflective philosophies of subjectivity)...