Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:25:47.040Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel and the ontological argument for the existence of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2014

PAUL REDDING  and
PAOLO DIEGO BUBBIO
PAUL REDDING
Affiliation:
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, A14, NSW 2006, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
PAOLO DIEGO BUBBIO
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We reconstruct Hegel's implicit version of the ontological argument in the light of his anti-representationalist idealist metaphysics. For Hegel, the ontological argument had been a peculiarly modern form of argument for the existence of God, presupposing a ‘representationalist’ account of the mind and its concepts. As such, it was susceptible to Kant's famous refutation, but Kant himself had provided a model for an alternative conception of concept, one developed by Fichte with his notion of the I=I. We reconstruct an Hegelian version of the ontological argument by considering the possibility of a Fichtean version, and then subjecting it to a critique based on Hegel's critical appropriation of Fichte's I=I.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 465 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aner, Karl (1909) Gottfried Ploucquets Leben und Lehre (Halle: Niemeyer).Google Scholar
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958) ‘On brute facts’, Analysis, 18, 69–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1981) ‘The first person’, in Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: Collected Philosophical Papers, II (Oxford: Blackwell), 21–36.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1962) How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert B. (2002) ‘Holism and idealism in Hegel's Phenomenology’, in Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 178–208.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert B. (2009) Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Bubbio, Paolo Diego (2012) ‘Sacrifice in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20, 797–815.Google Scholar
Bubbio, Paolo Diego (2014a) ‘God, incarnation, and metaphysics in Hegel's philosophy of religion’, Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, DOI 10.1007/s11841–013–0391-z.Google Scholar
Bubbio, Paolo Diego (2014b) ‘Hegel, the Trinity, and the I’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Di Giovanni, George (2007) ‘“Das Logische” of Hegel's logic, in the Context of Reinhold's and Fichte's late theories of knowledge’, in Bubner, Rüdiger & Hindrichs, Gunnar (eds) Von der Logik zur Sprache: Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 2005 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta), 71–87.Google Scholar
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1982) ‘Foundations of the entire science of knowledge’, in The Science of Knowledge, Heath, Peter and Lachs, John (ed. & tr.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 89–206.Google Scholar
Harrelson, Kevin J. (2009) The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel (Amherst NY: Humanity Books).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1969a) Science of Logic, Miller, A. V. (tr.) (London: Allen and Unwin).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1969b) Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Moldenhauer, Eva & Michel, Karl Markus (eds) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, Miller, A. V. (tr.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991) The Encyclopedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the ‘Zusätze’, Geraets, T. F., Suchting, W. A., & Harris, H. S. (trs) (Indianapolis: Hackett).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1995) Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, Haldane, Elizabeth Sanderson & Simson, Frances H. (trs) (Lincoln NB: University of Nebraska Press).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1996) Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume I, Introduction and the Concept of Religion, Hodgson, Peter C., Brown, R. F., Hodgson, P. C., & Stewart, J. M (trs), with the assistance of Fitzer, J. P. & Harris, Henry Silton (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Hintikka, Jaakko (1969) ‘On Kant's Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, in Penelhum, T. & MacIntosh, J. (eds) The First Critique: Reflections on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Belmont CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.), 38–53.Google Scholar
Hölderlin, Friedrich (1988) ‘Judgment and being’, in Essays and Letters on Theory, Pfau, Thomas (tr. & ed.) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 37–38.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1995) Opus Postumum, Förster, Eckart and Rosen, Michael (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Gregor, Mary (ed.), introduction by Andrews Reath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) Critique of Pure Reason, Smith, Norman Kemp (tr.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
Kremer, Michael (2010) ‘Representation or Inference: must we choose? Should we?’, in Weiss, Bernhard & Wanderer, Jeremy (eds) Reading Brandom: On Making it Explicit (London: Routledge), 227–246.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1996) New Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Remnant, Peter & Bennett, Jonathan (trs & eds) (New York: Macmillan).Google Scholar
McDowell, John (1994) Mind and World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
McDowell, John (2010) ‘Brandom on observation’, in Weiss, Bernhard & Wanderer, Jeremy (eds) Reading Brandom: On Making it Explicit (London: Routledge), 320–326.Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (1995) Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (2011) ‘Ontological arguments’, in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/ontological-arguments/>.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert B. (1989) Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Redding, Paul (1996) Hegel's Hermeneutics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Redding, Paul (2012) ‘Kantian origins: one possible path from transcendental idealism to a ‘post-Kantian’ philosophical theology’, in Diego Bubbio, Paolo & Redding, Paul (eds) Religion after Kant: God and Culture in the Idealist Era (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars), 1–21.Google Scholar
Redding, Paul (2013) ‘Hegel, Aristotle and the conception of free agency’, in Hindrichs, Gunnar & Honneth, Axel (eds) Freiheit: Stuttgarter Hegelkongress 2011 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann), 389–404.Google Scholar
Redding, Paul (2014) ‘The role of logic “commonly so called” in Hegel's Science of Logic’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Schelling, F. W. J. (1988) Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, Harris, E. E. and Heath, P. (tr.) (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter (1966) The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen).Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958) The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar