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The Individuality in the Deed: Hegel on Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Jeanette Bicknell
Jeanette Bicknell*
Affiliation:
York University, Ontario
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Abstract

The topic of forgiveness and reconciliation is one of the areas in Hegel's philosophy in which an uneasy tension between philosophy and religion, logic and existence, is most obvious. My goal in this paper is to illuminate Hegel's discussion of forgiveness and reconciliation in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion by examining his treatment of the same topic in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Previous commentators have discussed the political and social aspects of reconciliation, but paid little attention to its religious aspects. Similarly, commentators who have addressed the psychological and social aspects of reconciliation in the Phenomenology, have too seldom turned their attention to Hegel's full discussion of the religious aspect of reconciliation in the Lectures. In bringing these two texts together, I hope to make a contribution to the larger project of showing the relevance of the Phenomenology to Hegel's later works. Finally, I will suggest some limitations in Hegel's analysis of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Part III of the Lectures delineates three levels of rupture and reconciliation: within the individual consciousness, among individuals of the community, and between the individual and God (215-251 ). This last level of reconciliation is the religious aspect and presupposes the earlier levels. To help understand the individual's reconciliation within himself and with others, which will be my main area of concern in this paper, we will now look at the relevant passage of Phenomenology of Spirit.

Type
Hegel and Ethics
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 19 , Issue 1-2: number 37/38 , 1998 , pp. 73 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1998

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References

1 Hardimon, Michael O., “The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel's Social Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1992): 169–82Google Scholar; Duquette, David, “The Political Significance of Hegel's Concept of Recognition in the Phenomenology ,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 29 (1994): 38–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schlitt, Dale M., “The Whole Truth: Hegel's Reconceptualization of Trinity,” The Owl of Minerva 2 (1984): 169–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flay, Joseph C., “Religion and the Absolute Standpoint,” Thought 56 (1981): 316–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For instance, H.S. Harris is convinced that the Phenomenology is the proper key to Hegel's system as a whole. See his Hegel: Phenomenology and System (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995)Google Scholar.

4 Quotations and references to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are to the 1827 edition unless otherwise indicated. See Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, One Volume Edition, ed. Hodgson, Peter C., trans. Brown, R.F., Hodgson, P.C. and Stewart, J.M. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Page references (in brackets) refer to the German edition: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, ed. Jaeschke, Walter (Hamburg, 1983–1985)Google Scholar, as indicated in Hodgson.

5 Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A.V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar. Quotations and paragraph references refer to this edition.

6 Bernasconi argues that one may follow Hyppolite in reading the preceding section as representative of tension within the individual, but the discussion beginning at ¶666 can only be read as being between two separate consciousnesses. Bemasconi, Robert, “Hegel and Levinas: The Possibility of Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” Archivio di Filosofia 1–3 (1986): 325–46Google Scholar.

7 For clarity of explication, in the following discussion I will alternate between reference to the “judging consciousness” and the “judge” (using a masculine pronoun) and between the “acting consciousness” and the “doer” (using a feminine pronoun).

8 Bemasconi, 338.

9 The following interpretation was suggested by my reading of Kierkegaard, Søren, “The Woman that was a Sinner,” in Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Abrahim H. Khan for bringing this text to my attention.

10 This story raises issues regarding the tensions between human and divine forgiveness, to which I will return in the third section of this paper.

11 In Werke, eds. Philipp Marheineke and Bruno Bauer (Berlin, 1840); 456-457n. in Hodgson.

12 In Marheineke and Bauer; 466-467n. in Hodgson.

13 Cf. the hero of Borges' short story “The Shape of the Sword”: “Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it”. Labyrinths, ed. Yates, Donald A. and Irby, James E. (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964), 70 Google Scholar.

14 In Marheineke and Bauer; 466-67n. in Hodgson.

15 Information about the commission is taken from Brittain, James, “Healing a Nation: Interview with Desmond Tutu,” Index on Censorship 5 (1996): 39–43 Google Scholar; and Rosenberg, Tina, “Recovering from Apartheid,” The New Yorker 35 (18 11 1996): 86–95 Google Scholar.

16 Lauer, Quentin, A Reading of Hegel's ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ (New York: Fordham University Press, 1976), 229 Google Scholar.

17 Earlier attempts to identify her with Mary Magdalene have been discredited. See Deen, Edith, All the Women of the Bible (Edison: Castle Books, 1955), 203–04Google Scholar.

18 H.S. Harris, 78.

19 I am in agreement here with Falk Wagner who has argued that Hegel glosses over important differences between reconciliation with the divine and the reconciliation of conscience. Wagner, Falk, Der Gedanke der Persönlichkeit Gottes bei Fichte und Hegel (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, G. Mohr, 1971), 182–87)Google Scholar

20 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov trans. Magarshack, David (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 287 Google Scholar.

21 I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor H.S. Harris for discussion and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks are also due to Ariadna Epshteyn, Ian Jarvie, and Ellen Miller.