Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 9
If we look at the difference which exists between the proofs of the existence of God with which we are dealing, as it actually presents itself, we come upon a distinction which is of an essential kind. One set of the proofs goes from the Being to the thought of God, that is, to put it more definitely, from determinate Being to true Being as representing the Being of God; the other set proceeds from the thought of God, from truth in itself, to the Being of this truth. This distinction, although it is brought forward as one which merely happens to exist in this form, and is of a contingent character, is based on a necessary principle which requires to be taken notice of. We have before us two characteristics—the thought of God and the Being of God. We may start from the one or from the other indifferently in following out the course of reasoning which is supposed to result in their union. Where it is thus a question merely of possible choice, it appears to be a matter of indifference from which we start; and further, too, if the one leads to their being brought into connection, the other appears to be superfluous.
But what thus at first appears to be an indifferent duality and an external possibility has a connection in the Notion, so that neither are the two ways of arriving at the truth indifferent to one another, nor is the difference between them merely of an external character, nor is one of them superfluous. This necessity is not of the nature of an accessory circumstance. It is closely connected with the deepest part of our subject, and chiefly with the logical nature of the Notion. So far as the Notion is concerned, the two paths are not merely different in a general way, but are one-sided, both in reference to the subjective elevation of the spirit to God, and also in reference to the nature of God Himself. We wish to exhibit this one-sidedness in its more concrete form in reference to our subject. We have before us, to begin with, merely the abstract categories of Being and Notion, the contrast between them and their mode of relationship. It will be shown at the same time how these abstractions and their relations to one another constitute and determine the basis of what is most concrete.
That I may be able to put this thought in a more definite form, I may, by way of anticipation, refer to a further distinction, according to which there are three fundamental modes in which the connection of the two sides or characteristics appears. The first represents the passing over of the one characteristic into its Other; the second, their relativity, or the appearance of the one implicitly or actually in the Being of the Other; the third mode, again, is that of the Notion or the Idea, according to which the characteristic preserves itself in its Other in such a way that this unity, which is itself implicitly the original essence of the two, is considered as their subjective unity. Thus neither of them is one-sided, and they both together constitute the appearance of their unity, which is, to begin with, merely their substance, and thus eternally results from them as being the immanent appearance of totality, and is distinguished from them for itself as their unity, as this eternally unfolds itself in the form of their outward appearance.
The two one-sided ways of elevating the spirit to God thus indicated, accordingly directly exhibit their one-sidedness in a double form. The relations which spring from this call for mention. What has in general to be effected is that in the characteristic of the one side, namely, Being, the other characteristic, namely, the Notion, should appear, and, conversely, that in this latter the first-mentioned should be exhibited. Each determines itself to its Other, gives itself the characteristic of its Other in and out of itself. If, accordingly, only the one side were to determine itself so as to be the other, this determination would, on the one hand, be merely a passing over, in which the first would lose itself, or, on the other hand, a manifestation of itself, outside of itself, in which each would certainly preserve its independent existence, but would not return into itself, would not be that unity for itself. If we give to the Notion the concrete signification of God, and to Being the concrete signification of Nature, and conceived of the self-determination of God in the form of Nature, as found only in the first of the connections indicated, this would be the process whereby God becomes Nature. But if, according to the second of the connections, Nature is to be taken merely as a manifestation of God, then she, as something in course of transition, would represent the unity inherent in this only for a third thing, only for us, and this would not be unity which is actually present in-and-for-itself, the true unity, determined beforehand. When we put this thought in more concrete forms, and conceive of God as the Idea existing for itself from which we start, and think of Being as also the totality of Being, as Nature, then the advance from the Idea to Nature takes (1) the form simply of a passing over into Nature, in which the Idea is lost and disappears. (2) In order to bring out more clearly the meaning of this transition, we may say that this would be merely an act of remembrance on our part that the simple result had issued from an Other which had, however, disappeared. So far, again, as the outward form is concerned, it would be simply we who had brought the semblance or appearance into relation with its Essence and referred it back to this. Or, looking at the question from a broader standpoint, we may say that God had merely created Nature, not a finite spirit which returns from Nature back to Him; that He had an unfruitful love of the world as of something which was the mere semblance or show of Himself, and which as such remained an Other in relation to Him which did not reflect Him, and through which He did not shine as through Himself. And what is the third thing supposed to be; what are we supposed to be who have brought this show or semblance into relation with its Essence, and referred it back to its central point, and have been the means whereby the Essence first manifested itself and appeared in itself? What would this third thing be? What would we be? We would represent a knowledge whose existence was presupposed in an absolute way, in fact an independent act of a formal universality which embraced everything in itself, and in which that necessarily existing unity which is in-and-for-itself would itself be included as a mere phenomenon or semblance without objectivity.
If we form a more definite conception of the relation which is set forth in this determination, then it will be seen that the elevation to God of determinate Being, of Nature, and of natural Being in general, and, along with this, of our consciousness, the active form of this elevation itself, is simply religion or piety which rises to God in a subjective way only, either simply in the shape of an act of transition whereby we disappear in God, or by setting ourselves over against Him as a semblance or illusion. If the finite were thus to disappear in Him, He would be merely the absolute substance, from which nothing proceeds, and into which nothing returns to itself, and even to form ideas of or to think of the absolute substance would be already too much, something which would itself have to disappear. If, however, the relation of reflection is still preserved, the elevation of the pious mind to God, in the sense that religion as such, and consequently the subjective for itself, continues to represent what has Being and is independent, then what is primarily independent or self-existent, and the elevation to which constitutes religion, is something produced by religion, something conceived of, postulated, thought or believed, an appearance or semblance merely, not anything truly independent which starts from itself. It is substance as an idea merely, which does not decide for itself, and which consequently is not the activity which as activity is found only in the subjective elevation as such. It would not in this case be known and recognised as true that God is the Spirit who Himself arouses in men that desire to rise to Him, that religious feeling in which the elevation begins.
If from this one-sidedness there results a broader idea and a further development of what does not, to begin with, get beyond something which has the character of a reflex semblance, and if we thus reach its emancipation, in which it, as being independent and active, would in its turn be defined as not-semblance, then we would attribute to this independent existence merely a relative, and consequently a half connection with its other side, which contained in it itself a non-communicating and incommunicable kernel which had nothing to do with the Other. We would be dealing merely with the superficial form, in which the two sides were apparently related to each other, and which would not imply a relation springing from their essence and established by their essence. Both sides consequently would be wanting in the true, total return of Spirit into itself, and Spirit would thus not search into the deep things of the Godhead. But this return into itself and this searching into the Other are essentially coincident; for mere immediacy, substantial Being, does not imply anything deep. It is the real return into self which alone makes the depths of God, and it is just the act of searching into the Essence which is return into self.
We may stop here with this preliminary reference to the more concrete sense of the difference indicated, and which we discovered by means of reflection. What had to be called attention to was that the difference is not a superfluous multiplicity; further, that the division springing from it, and which was, to begin with, of a formal and external character, contains two characteristics—Nature, natural things, and the progress of consciousness to God and from Him back to Being, both of which equally and necessarily belong to one conception, and this quite as much in the course of the subjective procedure of knowledge as when they have an absolutely objective concrete sense, and, regarded each for itself, present a one-sidedness of a most important kind. So far as knowledge is concerned, their integration is found in the totality which the Notion in general represents, and, more strictly speaking, in what was said about it, namely, that its unity as a unity of the two moments is a result representing the most absolute basis and result of the two moments. Without, however, presupposing this totality and its necessity, it will follow from the result of the one movement—and since we are beginning we can begin only in a one-sided way from the one—that by its own dialectic nature it forces itself to go over into the other, and passes from itself over into this complete integration. The objective signification of what is, to begin with, a merely subjective conclusion will, however, at once make it evident that the inadequate, finite form of that proof is done away with. Its finitude consists, above all, in this one-sidedness which attaches to its indifference and its separation from the content. When this one-sidedness has been done away with and absorbed, it comes to have the content also in itself in its true form. The process of elevation to God is in itself the abolition of the one-sidedness of subjectivity in general, and, above all, of knowledge.
To the distinction which, regarded from the formal side, appears as a difference in the kinds of the proofs of the existence of God, there has yet to be added the fact that if we look at the proof from the one side according to which we pass from the Being of God to the conception of God, it presents itself under two forms.
The first proof starts from the Being which as something contingent does not support itself, and from this reasons to a true necessary Being in-and-for-itself—this is the proof ex contingentia mundi.
The other proof starts from Being in so far as it has a definite character determined in accordance with relations implying an end, and reasons to a wise author of this Being—this is the Teleological Proof of the existence of God.
We have still to deal with the other side, according to which the notion or conception of God is made the starting-point, and from which we reason to its Being—the Ontological Proof. As this is the plan we mean to follow out, there are thus three proofs which we have to consider; and also, as being of no less importance, we have to consider the criticism which has been given of them, and owing to which they have been discarded and forgotten.