Religion
Journal of World History, Vol. 25, Nos. 2 & 3 © 2014 by University of Hawai‘i Press
397
Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Philosophy of Religion
sai bhatawadekar University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
It is well known that G. W. F. Hegel sees in Christianity the greatest achievement of human religious thinking, the epitome of the con- cept of religion, and the fulfillment of God himself. In Christianity, Hegel argues, the idea of God is perfectly postulated; a real, tangible connection is established between divinity and humanity in the form of the Son of God; and human consciousness continually strives to elevate its finiteness to divine infinity. In Hegel’s scheme, compared to Christianity all other world religions are flawed, lacking, and unso- phisticated in theory and practice. Islam, for Hegel, is no exception: It is a religion of fanaticism. God, indeed, is a universal divine absolute, but man has no other function than to be subservient to God, to be a believer, and to die for his faith. Unlike Christianity, neither is a mean- ingful bond created between God and man, nor is the finite humanity truly raised to be one with the divine.
Compared to other religions that Hegel discusses at length and depth in his works, placing them in the trajectory of developmental stages of world religions, Islam gets very little attention from Hegel. In his Philosophy of History “Mohametanism” is limited to but a small sub- chapter within his discussion of “the Germanic world,” in the History of Philosophy “Arabian philosophy” is considered not contributive at all to the development of philosophy, and Islam finds a few scattered men- tions in the Encyclopedia and in the three parts of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. That Hegel was Eurocentric is as clear as day, and that he called Islam a “fanatic” religion is also not unknown. To
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historians of Europe it is also evident that Hegel’s appraisal of Islam is deeply rooted in Europe’s complicated relationship with the Ottoman Empire.1 Suzanne Marchand reminds us that early modern Europeans, some of whom praised the Prophet, the piety of the Muslims, and the nomadic wandering Arabs, still largely lived in immediate fear of the Ottoman Empire and, by association, of Islam; criticized its brutality, superstition, and polygamy; and had to keep convincing themselves of the superiority of Christianity.2 We have comprehensive and mul- tifaceted histories of European and specifically German engagement with Islam in Franco Cardini’s Europe and Islam, for example, or Nina Berman’s German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Prac- tices, 1000–1989.3 Michael Curtis gives a concise account of Europe’s encounter with Muslim forces since the seventh century, a multifac- eted history in which the political, military, and economic aspects were inseparable from religion. They included territorial and terrible con- quests; trade of perfumes and weapons; constant calls for two centuries from the popes, culminating in the crusades, to protect Christians and the Holy Land from the Muslim “race utterly alienated from God”; the glorious feats of the Ottoman Empire and its control of the Medi- terranean and beyond; Europe’s internal conflicts; and French diplo- matic alliances with Turkey against the Habsburgs, until the defeats and retreats of the Ottomans from the end of the seventeenth century well into the early nineteenth.4
In his excellent work Ian Almond presents the complexities and motivations of Hegel’s understanding of Islam in the context of his response to Kant, his bourgeois social and academic status, ideas on race and religion, and his aesthetic appreciation of Persian literature and poetry.5 Hegel’s assertions on everything Islamic were not monoto- nously derisive; they oscillated between appreciation and criticism, and so did his sources. Almond gives a concise account of Hegel’s expo-
1 For a glimpse of this relationship, see the chapter “How Did Islam Make It into Hegel’s Philosophy of World History?” in Mohammad R. Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 103–122.
2 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Schol- arship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 25–26.
3 Franco Cardini, Europe and Islam, trans. Caroline Beamish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).
4 Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 18–30.
5 Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought: From Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 108–134.
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sure to various sources, some of which (Johann Buhle, Edward Gibbon, various articles in the Edinburgh Review) described Muslims as barbaric, monstrous, and fanatic, but others (Johannes von Müller, Charles de Peyssonel) praised Ottoman Turkey as a great illustrious nation with spiritual, intelligent, witty, and heroic people. As the editor of Bam- berger Zeitung (1807–1808) during the time Turkey was seeking French assistance to introduce Western modernizing reforms in the empire, Hegel allowed detailed and expansive coverage of the Ottoman world in the newspaper, which included both critical and sympathetic reports.6
Hegel’s selective assessment of Islam, then, is not due to shortage of information, but it is also not lacking in philosophical reflection. While we should keep the historical backdrop in mind to understand Hegel’s famous remarks about Islam’s terrible power and its eventual disappearace from the stage of history, we should also remember the philosophical battles Hegel was engaged in to understand his concep- tual analysis of Islam. He rejected German Romantic glorification of the East for mysticism and spiritual rebirth in the same breath as he criticized Kant’s limits of knowledge and rational thinking. He sys- tematized a philosophy that declared reason as the all-encompassing principle and Spirit as the self-determining universality on a higher, more self-aware level than religion, but at the same time (in the wake of the famous Pantheismusstreit between Jacobi and Mendelssohn), he defended speculative thought against charges of pantheism and atheism. Hegel refused to reduce God to a mere subjective feeling or banish him outside of reason. Thought was infinite and was able to conceive and articulate God, and the Christian faith was the only religion of reason.7
It is often repeated in secondary scholarship that Hegel called Islam “fanatic,” and that he described Allah as the pure abstract oneness. How he philosophically justified those statements, how the tenets of his philosophy of religion provided him the tools and vocabulary, and how it dictated his interpretation of Islam are not clearly parsed. I place Hegel’s assessment of Islam in the tripartite framework of his dialectic as he applies it to the concepts of God and religion. In Hege- lian thought, as we all know, triadic dialectics is the necessary struc- ture of all concepts and ideas, yes, of reality itself as it progressively unfolds in human thought. For God and religion too, Hegel seeks
6 Almond, History of Islam, pp. 111–117. 7 Walter Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion,” New Perspec-
tives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, ed. David Kolb (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 1–18.
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three aspects to evaluate their philosophical worth in any civilization, namely (1) how the abstract divine concept—God—is conceived, (2) how finite human particularity functions, and (3) if and how the latter reconciles with the former. Moreover, in the linear, progressive, and teleological scheme of history in Hegel’s philosophy, the more Eastern and ancient a religion is, the more primitive and flawed it is, and the more Western and younger, the more evolved it is, until the trajec- tory culminates into the perfection of Christianity. In this vision, to put it simply in Goux’s words, Islam is “untimely” and it “puts Hegel in a very awkward position.”8 Islam is both Eastern and modern, and as such “this could seem like a violent offense to chronology, a kind of outrageous anomaly.”9 As it arrives later than Christianity, it can potentially qualify for being more evolved than Christianity or, at least, somehow instrumental in facilitating the advancement from Catholi- cism to Protestantism.10 Either way, this would challenge the very core of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. We will see with what “speculative sleight of hand” Hegel argues Islam’s imperfections despite its temporal placement after Christianity.11
My analysis is not simply, as Almond says, “a vulgarized version of Hegel, stuffed full of ‘End of History’ and ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis cliches.’”12 It is an attempt, first, to bring together two sides of the interpretive spectrum—Gadamerian hermeneutics and Orientalist/ postcolonial protest. That is to say, on the one hand, it is an attempt in intellectual history to understand (not defend, but clarify) Hegel’s philosophical “horizon” that filtered his understanding of Islam, and, on the other hand, it is an attempt to reveal how he imposed criteria and structure that confined and judged Islam, to expose his compulsive repetition of the same criticism, with which he brushed off Kant, Hin- duism, Buddhism, Pantheism, and Islam alike!
Second, and most interesting, we will briefly look at two instances as an application of Hegelian ideas to Islam: Zizek’s comment propos- ing Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a progressive dialectic triad in its own right, and John Oliver’s hilarious explanation on The Daily Show of the different “ages” of religions and in particular Islam’s current
8 Jean-Joseph Goux, “Untimely Islam: September 11th and the Philosophies of His- tory,” SubStance 115 (2008): 56.
9 Ibid., p. 56. 10 As Marchand briefly states, in the debates between Catholics and Protestants, Islam
was being praised for its “piety and abstemiousness” in contrast to the corruption of the Roman Catholics. Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 25.
11 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” p. 58. 12 Almond, History of Islam, p. 111.
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“awkward teenage phase.” These are not just philosophical musings or a spicy attempt to connect German idealism with American popular culture. It is a demonstration of subversion from within Hegel’s system and a new direction in which hermeneutics and critique of Orientalism can move forward: It is easy, on the one hand, to fault Hegel’s Euro- centrism from today’s perspective or, on the other hand, to excuse it with his own hermeneutic horizon, explaining that he could not have interpreted Islam any other way given his philosophical and historical situatedness. The exciting part is that Zizek and Oliver show that even from within his system, using his own paradigm and measures, Islam could have a different face in his philosophy that would subvert his core and end goal. There is a real encounter here between West and East, self and the other: It is not just a simple Orientalist scene, where Hegel, the quintessential Western observer, imposes a derogatory defi- nition on a passive voiceless East; from within his system, playing by his rules, the East has agency here to shake him loose.
Triadic Dialectics
Triadic dialectics is, for Hegel, the fundamental and necessary struc- ture of reality as it progressively reveals itself in and through thought13: First, thought establishes an entity or a concept (“being,” for example); second, it proceeds to posit its negation (“nothing”), without which the first entity cannot be comprehended. The contradiction between the concept and its negation is sublated or aufgehoben in an elevated state of their resolution (“becoming”), which at once includes and yet overcomes the difference between the entity and its negation.14 The dialectical movement is not simply the process of human consciousness comprehending a concept, but rather a movement through which the
13 Lauer explains that for Hegel “it simply was not true that the locus of concreteness was in the immediacy of reality’s presence to sensation . . . reality was more concretely pres- ent (more real) in thought, in ideas.” Lauer states further that the “totality of reality” itself is its “progressively concrete manifestation” into thought. “[T]his involves a realization that man will find the very reality of reality only in the awareness of reality which is at the same time reality’s progressive self-manifestation.” Lauer summarizes this correlation of reality and thought by stating that “Hegel’s system is his Logic, which penetrates thought and finds in it the revelation of reality.” Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971), pp. 2–3.
14 This process of Hegelian dialectic is often termed as the progression from thesis to antithesis to synthesis; however, as Findlay points out, Hegel himself rarely employs these terms. Findlay states that these terms are more characteristic of Fichte than Hegel. J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 70.
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concept develops itself 15: First it is only a concept, an idea—abstract and implicit. It then, in the second moment, has to negate its abstract- ness and become concrete in reality, in human thought and life, in society and history—that is, it manifests and actualizes itself in its par- ticularity. Finally, in the third moment, the concept relates to itself, completely cognizes itself in a higher synthesis of its Begriff (abstract idea) and its Bestimmtheit (concrete manifestation).16
Hegelian triadic movement is not merely a conceptual dialectic; it encompasses the entire temporal dimension—namely, the entirety of human history. A concept concretizes and develops itself through time, through history, in progressively more self-aware stages, advancing toward the concept’s complete fulfillment. The initial implicit idea, which is not quite self-aware, actualizes itself first in an imperfect, con- fused first draft with many loose ends, then revises itself several times in progressively better formulations, until it arrives at a final draft, in which the once implicit idea is fully developed and perfectly stream- lined. This necessarily implies a linear teleological progress of history, suggesting that the earlier stages of history embody the concept only in an imperfect and primitive manner, and each next step is more evolved than all the previous ones.
In Hegelian philosophy, Spirit is the idea and human civilizations are its drafts, its concrete manifestation in various stages. Through their phases in history Spirit actualizes itself until it reaches perfec- tion and complete self-cognition as Absolute Spirit. Hegel introduces a remarkable vision of the world that proposes that the entire human history, the development of human thought, its concrete manifestation in art, religion, and philosophy are actually the Geist getting to know
15 Walter Jaeschke, Hegel Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003) p. 231. Hegel explains that the threefold structure is “immer der Gang in aller Wissenschaft: zuerst der Begriff, dann die Bestimmtheit des Begriffs, die Realität, Objektivität und endlich dies, daß der erste Begriff sich selbst Gegenstand ist, für sich selbst ist, sich selbst gegen- ständlich wird, sich zu sich selbst verhält.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 5 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983–), p. 177.
16 Findlay explains the various “levels” on which Hegelian dialectic functions: “In Dia- lectic one-sided abstractions demand to be complemented by alternative abstractions, which are often as much antithetical as complementary . . . At higher stages, however, Dialectic becomes a reflective shuttling to and fro between notions known to be interdependent and correlative, and at a yet higher level it becomes a simple development of our notions, the more narrowly abstract merely growing into the more ‘concrete’ or rich in ‘sides.’ In all these processes contradiction is most evident: it is implicitly present in the original products of Understanding, it becomes explicit when these products break down, and start passing into their complements, or being referred to their correlatives, or growing into more ‘concrete’ forms, and it is ‘preserved’ in the result of all such processes.” Findlay, Re-examination, p. 63.
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itself. If one studies a particular civilization—the emodiment of Spirit at a given stage—then its social and political institutions and struc- ture, its aesthetic, spiritual, and philosophical vision, would reveal to what extent they are truly rational and free—that is, to what extent the Spirit is self-aware. The world, in other words, is a progressive teleo- logically developing actualization of the Spirit’s journey toward com- plete self-cognition. Art, religion, and philosophy are modes of human consciousness and activity, and they function as vehicles for Absolute Spirit’s self-knowledge. Consequently, the history of art, religion, and philosophy reveals the progressively more evolved stages in the Spirit’s self-development. It follows that the further and earlier into the past and history one looks, the more primitive are the concepts, ideas, theo- ries, and their manifestations in various civilizations. The later civili- zations reveal more sophisticated artistic, religious, and philosophical ideas and practices. The earlier religious notions of God and nature or philosophical concepts of universality and particularity are wild, con- fused, and unorganized. The later ones progressively display more and more insight into the true nature of Spirit, until history culminates into the fulfillment and complete self-awareness of Absolute Spirit.
An abstract concept, its concretization in reality, and its fulfilment in self-awareness (both as the idea and its manifestation) is really the all-pervasive core, the distilled essence of Hegelian thought that per- meates the content and structure of all his works from Phenomenology and Encyclopedia to his political writings. All this informs his aesthetic, religio-philosophical, ethical, and political assessment of civilizations. For the purpose of this paper, to understand Islam as a religion in Hege- lian terms, it is concise to concentrate on his philosophy of religion.
Triadic Dialectics of God and Religion
Religion and philosophy both are modes of Absolute Spirit’s self-cogni- tion; religion is relatively less self-reflexive than philosophy. However, both concern themselves with the same content, namely the absolute. Philosophy articulates the concept of absolute as Spirit, whereas reli- gion conceives it as God.17 Fackenheim explains the common content of religion and philosophy and argues for the dependence of the latter
17 Dickey explains Hegel’s controversial correlation between religion and philosophy: “Hegel begins by defining religion as ‘a mode of consciousness’ that seeks to establish the truth of the relationship between man and God.” Hegel maintains that this truth has been expressed in different ways at different times. Speculative philosophy is trying to articulate
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on the former: “It is a central Hegelian doctrine that the true religion already is the true ‘content,’ lacking merely the true ‘form’ of specula- tive thought; that philosophy could not reach truth unless its true con- tent preexisted in religion; that philosophic thought therefore requires religion as its basis in life, and that the true philosophy, in giving the true religious content its true form of thought, both transfigures reli- gion and produces itself.”18
God, then, is simply a religious designation of Spirit. Hence, as Spirit, God is also subject to triadic dialectical development. This implies that God, as the absolute substance, as infinite divine univer- sality, is, at first, only implicit, abstract, and indeterminate. The dialec- tical movement necessitates that God—this abstract divine universal principle—concretizes itself. God concretizes itself by becoming an object of human consciousness. Human consciousness knows, feels, rep- resents, or thinks about God, thereby giving the abstraction of divine universality some concrete determinate form. The implicit universality thus particularizes or concretizes itself in human consciousness. The third moment of God’s dialectical movement is achieved when human consciousness elevates itself to God, thereby sublating the opposition between human finiteness and divine infinity, human particularity and divine universality.19
However, this third moment is not simply a process of human con- sciousness comprehending God; it is a process of God knowing him- self.20 Hegelian dialectic is a self-movement of concept toward com- plete self-cognition. As Schlitt explains, “In Hegel’s philosophy God is a dynamic movement of inclusive divine subjectivity.”21 This suggests
this truth in a way that suits the advanced consciousness of the modern world. Dickey adds that Hegel complained that Protestant demagogues in Berlin should not stigmatize phi- losophy, because it told the same truth in a nonreligious philosophical language. Laurence Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 309.
18 Emil L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indi- ana University Press, 1967), p. 23.
19 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion I, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2007). As the lectures have three volumes—I. The Concept of Religion, II. Determinate Religion, and III. The Consummate Religion—henceforth they will be identified with their volume name and number.
20 Taylor quotes Hegel to explain the necessary dialectic development of God toward self-knowledge: “God is God only insofar as he knows himself; his self-knowledge of himself is moreover his self-consciousness in man, it is man’s knowledge of God that goes on to become the self-knowledge of man in God.” Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 481.
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that God is not an object merely reflected upon by man; God is not passive; it is an active subject acting on its own account, determining its own dialectic development. Second, as Schlitt suggests in the above quote, God is an inclusive subjectivity: In the third moment of self- cognition God contains within himself the sublation of particularity and universality, of finiteness and infinity. Third, the concept of God is a movement: It is not an abstract static entity; it is a dynamic self- determining dialectical movement.
Hegel, as he revises his own philosophy of religion, applies his tri- partite structure not only to the concept of God, but also to religion.22 Religion is also a concept, which itself is subject to its own triadic dialectical self-movement, which involves the concept itself, then its concretization, and finally its fulfillment in complete self-cognition. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion thus also display the triadic structure, which corresponds to the three stages of the dialectic devel- opment of a concept. His work is divided into three component parts: (1) “Der Begriff der Religion,” which explains “religion” as a concept; (2) “Die bestimmte Religion,” which examines the concretization of the concept in actual determinate world religions from Chinese reli- gions, Hinduism, and Buddhism to Greek, Jewish, and Roman ideas and practice, and places them in historical and conceptual progression; and (3) “Die vollendete Religion,” which argues for Christianity as the consummate religion embodying the fulfillment of the concept and its actualization in reality.
The first part—“Der Begriff der Religion”—explores religion as an implicit abstract concept, as an embodiment of the process of God’s development toward self-cognition.23 According to Hegel, given the dialectic development of God, the concept of religion also necessar- ily displays three aspects: (1) the concept of God—that is, an implicit abstract notion of divine absolute universality; (2) the knowledge or concretization of God—that is, a theoretical way in which human con-
21 Dale Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity: Understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (Scran- ton, N.Y.: University of Scranton Press, 1990), p. xiv.
22 Initially, in his 1821 lectures Hegel formulates the concept of religion in a more dyadic form, as objective and subjective, arguing that religion is the unity of the object or God and the finite subject who is conscious of the object. Schlitt, Divine Subjectivity, p. 104.
23 Since God, as Spirit, is determined to go through the dialectic process and come to complete self-cognition, Hegel rejects the Romantic notion of the unknowability of God. Hegel did not agree with Romantic spirituality, which focused on the devotee or the wor- shiper, made religion completely subjective and accepted “the conclusions of Enlighten- ment epistemology that nothing can be known about God . . . but that he is.” Taylor, Hegel, p. 481.
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sciousness represents God in some form and envisions its own relation- ship and worth vis-à-vis the absolute universality; (3) cultus—that is, a practical way in which human consciousness elevates itself to infinite divinity, sublating their difference in “the knowing of myself within God and of God within me.”24
The second part—“Die bestimmte Religion”—explains the con- cept’s particularization and concretization in actual world religions. For Hegel, every determinate religion of the world, Eastern or Western, ancient or modern, must be investigated for the extent to which it accomplishes the above-mentioned triadic dialectical structure. How- ever, the religions are not to be examined in isolation, disregarding their chronological and other connections. This is because the second moment of concretization in Hegel’s dialectic development necessar- ily entails a teleological progress of a concept toward self-fulfillment. Therefore, the determinate or bestimmte religions of the world embody the historical developmental stages of the concept of religion itself, until it reaches its perfection in the consummate or vollendete religion of Christianity. Hence, all of the religions except Christianity are only imperfect and flawed stages of the journey, within which the concept has not yet reached perfection. They attempt to display the concept of religion and the triadic development of God—universal divinity, its concretization, and cultus—but they reveal this structure with more or fewer imperfections, depending upon where a particular religion stands in time within the development of the concept of religion. Hegel pro- poses that the conceptual or philosophical development of religion coincides with the historical progression of religions. He proposes that the philosophical analysis of a religion’s triadic structure can locate a given religion within a particular stage of historical development. Conversely, as the philosophical examination reveals a religion’s his- torical placement, the historical placement of a religion indicates its philosophical worth.
This necessarily implies that the more ancient (and, for Hegel, also the more Eastern) the religion, the less evolved it is. Eastern religions, including Chinese religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism are, for Hegel, the earliest and therefore the least advanced and most primitive reli- gions, which he labels unmittelbare or “immediate” religions. Their primitiveness consists primarily in the inconcretness of their divine principle. From here the concept of religion moves through Persian
24 Hegel, Philosophy of Religion I, p. 443.
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and Egyptian religions and advances to more developed stages of Greek and Jewish religion, in which the concept of God becomes progres- sively more concrete. Finally, the Roman religion enables the transi- tion into the consummate religion of Christianity. The third part of Hegel’s philosophy of religion—“Die vollendete Religion”—discusses Christianity as the consummate religion. For Hegel, the defining aspects of Christianity consist in God creating the world and creating man in his own image, the fall of man from paradise, God begetting his son, the son’s death, resurrection and ascension, and finally the Holy Ghost enabling humans to elevate their finitude to a spiritual union with divine infinity. These aspects, according to Hegel, perfectly embody and fulfill the dialectical development of the self-determining God: the abstract universal divine concept—God—begets a son and thus concretizes himself in humanity, and through man sublates the opposition of human finitude and divine infinity, thereby reconciling with himself. In Christianity both the concept of God and the concept of religion find their fulfillment and perfection.
Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Islam
The leading features of Mahometanism involve this—that in actual existence nothing can become fixed, but that everything is destined to expand itself in activity and life in the boundless amplitude of the world, so that the worship of the One remains the only bond by which the whole is capable of uniting. In this expansion, this active energy, all limits, all national and caste distinctions vanish; no particular race, political claim of birth or possession is regarded—only man as a believer. To adore the One, to believe in him, to fast—to remove the sense of speciality and consequent separation from the Infinite, arising from corporeal limitation—and to give alms—that is, to get rid of particular private possession—these are the essence of Mahometan injunctions; but the highest need is to die for the Faith. He who perishes for it in battle is sure of Paradise.25
This paragraph stems from Hegel’s subchapter “Mahometanism” in his Philosophy of History, in which he dedicates but five pages to Islam. In History of Philosophy, too, “Arabian philosophy” earns a few paragraphs and a kinship with Oriental pantheism but not enough worth to claim
25 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche Books, 2001), p. 374.
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to have contributed much to the development of philosophy. The Encyclopedia has isolated references to Islam; in his Philosophy of Reli- gion, too, unlike he does with other religions, Hegel does not dedicate a specific section, category, or extensive attention to Islam; his references to Islam are strewn in all three volumes of the work. These scattered assertions need to be understood in the framework and background of Hegel’s dialectical tripartite structure. As with any other religion, he also evaluates (1) how Islam defines God—that is, the divine abstrac- tion; (2) how Islam envisions human concreteness; and (3) whether a true sublation takes place between the two.26 Understanding Hegel’s view of Islam in this context makes his remarks comprehensible, to say the least, but it also helps us realize that they are not just a side note or his contemplative musings outside of the core of his philosophi- cal doctrine. As he claims that his philosophy is an all-encompassing system, he is compelled to show how Islam fits in it or in the least argue how it is an anomaly. In that sense, Hegel’s tripartite evaluation of Islam also reveals the loopholes that can threaten its teleological vision in his supposedly tightly wound system. After all, Islam emerged temporally later than Christianity, and, by Hegel’s trajectory, it should qualify for being more evolved than it. However, in order to escape the awkward predicament of throwing Christianity off its throne, Hegel applies to Islam his often repeated bullet points of criticism that he uses for Hinduism and other religions to discredit Islam’s vision of God and the place and function of man vis-à-vis the divine absolute. As we shall see, he deems the God of Islam so abstract that it does not have any concrete content or self-determinacy to be in charge of its own conceptual development, and criticizes that in Islam human life and
26 I found this interesting yet problematic statement, which, although at the end would like to surpass Hegel for better understanding of different religions, in some ways promotes Hegel’s methodology of analyzing religions under specific standardized philosophical cat- egories: “If we shift the focus from a larger rubric, ‘Christianity,’ to the specific features that constitute its consummateness, we can begin to examine particular religious communities with a more fine-grained lens, appreciating precisely what self-conception and conception of others are produced by that cultus. In this respect, Hegel’s philosophy of religion gener- ates a research agenda, studying religions specifically for the self-understandings they incul- cate in participants. For such queries, our categories will need to be much more specific than ‘Christianity,’ or ‘Islam’ attending closely to differences within these two larger categories, for instance. Doing so may enable us to perceive—much more clearly than Hegel could—a wider range of doctrines and practices that cultivate the self-conceptions he finds uniquely instantiated in Protestantism.” Thomas A. Lewis, “Finite Representation, Spontaneous Thought, and the Politics of an Open-ended Consummation,” in Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, ed. Slavoj Zizek et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 213.
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existence have no real grounding or worth as it is obliterated in the service of the One divine abstraction. Since he criticizes the very core philosophy of Islam as flawed, as rather a regression from the Christian God, who concretizes himself in human form, consciousness, and his- tory, Islam cannot even play the role of the facilitator religion, which can be instrumental in Christianity’s own evolution from Catholicism to Protestantism. The self-determining God and conceptual core of Christianity itself make it possible.
Divine Universality: God as “the One” Divine Universal Absolute Being
To be sure, Hegel is impressed with the idea that Allah is truly “the One” absolute divine universality. For him, it is certainly an advance- ment over Judaism, which restricts the divine principle to a chosen community; Islam acquires that principle and extends it to the entirety of humanity. The concept of God in Islam is not a privilege enjoyed by birth or nationality, and access to it is not hierarchically bestowed by caste or any other social order. There may be hierarchies in society, clearly, but everyone, kings and slaves alike, are equally included in the service of God: “from any people, who fears God is pleasing to him, and human beings have value only to the extent that they take as their truth the knowledge that this is the One, the essence. The determination of subjects according to their station in life or class is sublated; there may be classes, there may even be slaves, but this is merely accidental.”27
God in Islam is truly a pure universality, without any representation, in anthropomorphic or otherwise forms. Consciousness of “the One,” thus, is an attempt to grasp a sheer abstraction, without any tangible embodiment, image, or even link or mediation. Even “Mahomet,” the prophet, is still a man, and hence does not embody divinity in the same sense as Christ does. Islam makes “the abstract One the absolute object of attention and devotion, and to the same extent, pure subjec- tive consciousness—the Knowledge of this One alone—the only aim of reality; making the Unconditioned [das Verhaeltnisslose] the condition [Verhaelt-niss] of existence.”28
Describing Allah as the unconditioned, pure, divine universality that includes the entirety of humanity seems like high praise coming from Hegel. He even goes so far as to say, “This One has indeed, the
27 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243. 28 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 372.
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quality of Spirit,”29 and elsewhere adds, “In it Christianity finds its antithesis because it occupies a sphere equivalent to that of the Chris- tian religion.”30 High praise indeed, almost to the point of jeopardizing his system: If the universal divine absolute in Islam has the quality of Spirit, it has the potential to compete with Christianity for the top spot. However, Hegel immediately resorts to applying the same criti- cism to the universal concept that he simultaneously uses to evaluate Kant and even Hinduism and Buddhism—religions temporally and conceptually as far away from Islam as possible. The criticism is that the universal concept is so abstract that it does not have any concrete- ness. “God has no content and is not concrete.”31 For Hegel, Kant’s Ding an sich is unknowable, unreachable, and only beyond and nega- tive of representation. Likewise, nothing can be said about the Hindu brahman; it is such a pure abstraction that it is empty, devoid of all con- tent, and functions only as the opposite of everthing concrete, which must dissolve itself to become one with brahman. And the Buddhist nirvana, by definition, is the extinguishing of all things; it is pure nega- tion, emptiness. It is this “epistemological renunciation” that frustrates Hegel.32 For him, complete abstractness, while being a pure Oneness, is unfit to ground human existence in a meaningful way or to ensure a true sublation between human particularity and divine universality. True dialectic between two opposite concepts is achieved only when they both have equal status in defining the other, and only when they are both at once preserved and overcome in the third moment. If one of them has to dissolve itself completely in order to unite with the other, then real sublation in the Hegelian sense is not accomplished. So to become one with the One if human existence has to obliterate its concreteness into divine abstractness, then it is a clear sign that the concept of religion has not fulfilled itself.
“This One has indeed, the quality of Spirit,” says Hegel and adds, “yet because subjectivity suffers itself to be absorbed in the object, this One is deprived of every concrete predicate; so that neither does sub- jectivity become on its part spiritually free, nor on the other hand is the object of its veneration concrete.” 33 “Subjectivity” in this quote refers to human consciousness, which has for its object of veneration “the One.” However, due to the complete abstract conceptualization of the
29 Ibid., p. 373. 30 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, pp. 242–243. 31 Ibid., p. 244. 32 Almond, History of Islam, p. 118. 33 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 373.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 411
One, subjectivity fails to meaningfully function as its concretization, and in seeking union with it, it is completely absorbed and erased.
Human Concreteness: Its Status, Function, and Relationship with the Divine Absolute
“The relationship [is that] of the servant to a Lord; the fear of the Lord is what defines it. In any religion, such as Judaism or Islam, where God is comprehended only under the abstract category of the One, this human lack of freedom is the real basis, and humanity’s relationship to God takes the form of a heavy yoke, of onerous service.”34
In Islam, then, God is the Lord, and the only occupation of human- ity is to serve him. There is an undeniable hierarchical relationship here, in which human consciousness is not given the status and free- dom to be the vehicle through which God can know himself. God remains an isolated entity outside of humanity, and it is the latter’s obligation to fear him, submit to him, remain under his authority, and give itself up in his service. “The worship of the One (Allah) is the only final aim of Mahometanism, and subjectivity has this worship as the sole occupation of its activity, combined with the design to subju- gate secular existence to the One.”35 Ivan Kalmar’s words in this regard are absolutely crucial:
All Abrahamic faiths—Christianity and Judaism as much as Islam— demand devotion to a sublime power broaching no opposition and needing no counselors. But they couple obedience to that power with faith in its benevolence . . . The conception of a sublime power ruling the universe (or the state) brings with it the anxiety that this power is, in fact, unloving and uncaring . . . Christians who vilify Muslims . . . are afraid to recognize this monster as a common Abrahamic inven- tion . . . they project it—have always projected it onto the Muslims as if it were the downside of Islam alone (and maybe of Judaism as well) and not of Christianity. This perverse process of projection . . . explains—more than the relevant facts—the persistent picture in the Christian West of Muslims as slaves, soldiers, and terrorists of Allah: fanatical devotees of a remote and terrifying sublime power.36
34 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 156. 35 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 372. 36 Ivan D. Kalmar, Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power,
Islamic Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 1–2.
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“Now the fear of the Lord,” says Hegel in his Logic, “is, doubtless, the beginning, but only the beginning, of wisdom. To look at God in this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone, is especially characteristic of Judaism and also of Mohammedanism. The defect of these religions lies in their scant recognition of the finite, which, be it as natural things or as finite phases of mind, it is characteristic of the heathen and (as they also for that reason are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact.” 37 Since God as the “unconditioned” One is the condition of all concrete existence, and yet it itself is a complete and utter abstraction, concrete human existence lacks any substantial anchoring in that concept. This again is the same criticism Hegel applies to pantheistic notions of God, in which the all-encompassing divine concept is too universal to pro- vide a grounding for any concreteness for human activity. In such a philosophical insecurity, concrete human existence is either rejected as a dream, an illusion, or an existence only to be escaped and overcome, as Hegel sees in some Indian schools of thought, or here in the case of Islam, it is totally arbitrary, aimless and wandering, flaky, unfixed, and subject to utter instability like the Arabian sand in the wind. In “Arabian Philosophy,” in which Hegel puts Jewish and Muslim think- ers together, he refers to the Medabberim who believe
Everything may just as well be something else as what it is, and there is no reason at all why anything should be one way rather than another. They term it a mere habit that the earth revolves round a centre-point, that fire moves upward and that it is hot; it is just as possible, they say, that fire should be cold. We thus see an utter inconstancy of every- thing; and this whirl of all things is essentially Oriental . . . which allows of nothing definite. God is in Himself the perfectly undefined, His activity is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars produced thereby are perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of things, the term is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt should be made to comprehend it. The activity of God is thus represented as perfectly devoid of reason.38
The religious analysis is conceptually connected to a society’s morality and ethics, its state structure and political activities. For
37 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic, trans. William Wallace, p. 264, available at Marx- ists Internet Archive, http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/books/hegels-logic/Hegels -Logic.pdf, accessed 3 November 2013.
38 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, available at Marxists In- ternet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hparabian.htm, accessed 3 November 2013.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 413
Hegel, the unsophisticated “idea” of Islam manifests itself in a socio- politically and ethically erratic and tentative society, and, conversely, the sociopolitical and ethical instability gives an insight into what the “idea” of Islam must be. In Muslim states and societies, says Hegel, excess and extravagance in either direction—love or cruelty—com- pletely overtake any notion of virtue or morality: A king abandons his scepter and throne for the love of his slave just as easily as in a stroke of anger and vengeance he would have their heads cut off. Dynasties come and go; human life has no worth; the sphere of human activity is boundless but has no aim or direction. Hegel mentions Islam’s religious and political expansion from Syria to Persia and Asia Minor and from Egypt and northern Africa to Spain and southern France.39 However, he adds, “But all this is only contingent and built on sand; it is to-day and to-morrow is not. With all the passionate interest he shows, the Mahometan is really indifferent to this social fabric, and rushes on in the ceaseless whirl of fortune . . . Those dynasties were destitute of the bond of an organic firmness, the kingdoms therefore did nothing but degenerate; the individuals that composed them simply vanished.”40 Hegel does acknowledge that the Arabs zealously promoted art and literature, and built cities, schools, and commerce, that science and philosophy came from the Arabs into the West, that poetry and imagi- nation were kindled among the Germans by the East. “But,” he adds, “the East itself . . . sank into the grossest vice.”41
The only—absolutely only—real content of human subjectivity, of human thought and activity, is the worship of God, and that is the only bond between humans. Other than that there exists nothing that can define, prescribe, or moderate any relationship between them. Social institutions exist, but without foundation. “It is only a singular pur- pose that all peoples should be brought to glorify the Lord.” 42 This, for Hegel, is what drives Islam to aspire for “world domination,” and makes the religion “fanatical.” Hegel clarifies his earlier mentioned comment claiming Islam to be an “antithesis” of Christianity:
The antithesis consists in the fact that in Christianity spirituality is developed concretely within itself and is known as Trinity, as spirit; and that human history, the relationship to the One, is likewise a concrete
39 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 374. 40 Ibid., p. 375. 41 Ibid., pp. 376–377. 42 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 438.
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history . . . The religion of Islam, by contrast, hates and proscribes everything concrete; its God is the absolute One, in relation to whom human beings retain for themselves no purpose, no private domain, nothing peculiar to themselves. In as much as they exist, humans do in any case create a private domain for themselves in their inclina- tions and interests, and these are all the more savage and unrestrained in this case because they lack reflection. But coupled with this is also the complete opposite, namely the tendency to let everything take its own course, indifference to life; no practical purpose has any essential value. But since human beings are in fact practical and active, their purpose can only be to bring about the veneration of the One in all humanity. Thus the religion of Islam is essentially fanatical.43
In effect, for Hegel there are three fundamental reasons embedded in the essential philosophical core of Islam that make it fanatical: First, the concept of God is extended over all of humanity, which must be brought to acknowledge it; second, man is to live in fear and service of that God, without freedom; and third, other than the worship of that God, no other content of human thought or activity is real, lasting, or instrumental in creating a bond among people. The only purpose is to live or, better yet, die for God with “sensual enjoyment . . . as a reward of the faithful in Paradise.”44
These “fanatical” aspects are a clear indication for Hegel that human consciousness and activity have not been given their proper place, compatible status, and value in the equation between man and God. If man is subservient to God, in his fear, and unhinged and lost in unlimited superficial activity, then man cannot be a vehicle for God’s self-awareness; consequently, the concept of God itself, by being removed and disconnected from man, is not evolved and self-deter- mining enough, not in charge of its own conceptual development and actualization in man.
The fundamental flaw of Islam, according to Hegel, is its complete disregard of the worth, self-determinacy, and groundedness of human existence. Human consciousness and activity are God’s concretization of himself and the means of his self-knowledge. Any religion that seeks to devalue human life or the substantiality of social institutions, any civilization that has the character of aimless, arbitrary, and unstable existence, that is here now and gone tomorrow, is a civilization that has not understood its own worth as the embodiment of God. Any religion
43 Hegel, Consummate Religion III, p. 243. 44 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 415
that aims to end the specificity of human life in order to obliterate con- creteness in the abstractness of the One, is incapable of truly grasping the essence of sublation.
Lack of Sublation between Man and God
To begin with, if God is not properly self-determining, man is not free and grounded, and man is limited to the role of a servant vis-à-vis God, there is certainly no possibility of sublation in the Hegelian sense. “God’s acceptance has occurred once and for all, and what replaces reconciliation and redemption is something that has implicitly hap- pened, a choice, an election by grace involving no freedom. [We have here a] view grounded on power, a blind election, not an election made from the viewpoint of freedom.” 45 This is an incredibly crucial state- ment. Before one attempts to interpret it with secular and current con- cerns of “freedom”—too much of it or not enough46—it needs to be understood in Hegelian terms within his philosophy of religion. To be sure, I do not intend to defend Hegel’s opinions about Islam; I simply clarify them. The way Hegel sees it, in Christianity, the very possibility of elevating human consciousness to divine infinity implies freedom. Articulating the divine absolute, realizing one’s relationship to it, and raising human consciousness to divine infinity is a process, a move- ment of actualization, at the end of which sublation of God and man is achieved. And this process happens as and when (and, to make the point, if ) human consciousness unfolds it. In that sense it implies a free choice. In Islam, according to Hegel, there is no such process required, because it has already “implicitly happened.” The definition of the divine absolute as the Lord and man’s relationship with it as servant is axiomatically given at the very outset, without choice or without any need to contemplate and realize it. Hence, says Hegel, there can be no process, no freedom, and hence no possibility of sublation. Sublation would take place, if some philosophical and religious-spiritual practice were in place in Islam that would help man raise his consciousness to a union with God in a way that human particularity is preserved in the divine absolute.
In response to this, one immediate question that was asked by the listeners of this paper was, What about Sufism? In Sufism is a union
45 Hegel, Determinate Religion II, p. 158. 46 Salama, Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History, pp. 113–115.
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with God not sought and achieved? Is the individual not free, in the spiritual sense, to go against prescribed notions of religiosity, and find an intimate and real connection with God in a way that a union of man with God, a recognition of the divine within, is encouraged and accomplished? The question here, however, is not what kind of reli- gious philosophy Sufism presents, or what the difference is between Sufism practiced in various parts of the world, and much less how we understand Sufism today. The question is if Hegel would agree to call Sufi mysticism (or any mysticism) sublation.
The answer, of course, is no. There is evidence that Hegel read translations of Rumi and Hafez.47 To begin with, though, Hegel refers to them in his discussions on poetry and art, which, according to him, is a definitely less evolved and less self-reflexive mode of Spirit’s expres- sion in the triad of art-religion-philosophy. And even in that discussion he categorizes their poetry as “mysticism” under “Pantheism of Art.”48
[O]riental pantheism is elaborated in Mohammedanism more particu- larly among the Persians . . . To explain this more fully we would point out that so long as the poet yearns to behold the Divine in every- thing, and really so beholds it, he also surrenders his own personality; but, while doing so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence of the Divine in his spiritual world thus expanded and delivered; and conse- quently there grows up within him that joyful ardour of the soul, that liberal happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the Ori- ental, who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems wholly to sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to know and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things. Such a self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in God borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is more famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi . . .49
As is well known, the controversial Pantheismusstreit between F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn in 1785–1786 brings Spinoza’s
47 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, vol. 2, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1920), pp. 89–97; Gerrit Steunebrink, “A Religion after Christianity: Hegel’s Interpretation of Islam between Judaism and Christianity,” in Hegel’s Philosophy of the Historical Religions, ed. Bart Labuschagne and Timo Slootweg (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 236–240.
48 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 89–95. Klas Grinell, “Hegel Reading Rumi: The Limitations of a System,” available at http://www.grinell.se/Hegel%20reading%20Rumi .pdf, accessed 15 February 2013.
49 Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, pp. 92–93.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 417
pantheism to the forefront of philosophical discussions in Germany.50 Hegel all too well recognizes that claiming the entirety of the world as an embodiment of the divine/philosophical absolute—Spirit—brings his own thought dangerously close to pantheism, which believes God is immanent in all the material world. Hegel defends speculative thought against the charges of pantheism as well as atheism. That is to say, he argues that the pietists (who declare that God is knowable only in personal immediate feeling) and the Enlightenment rationalists (who declare that God is unknowable because reason has limits) are both wrong. Thought is not a finite human faculty and activity; it is infinite and therefore able to conceive, articulate, and develop God. While it might be admirable for art and poetry to express an emotional experience of the pantheistic Divine, philosophy is too sophisticated an enterprise to have a vague, empty, and abstract all-one-doctrine of pantheism, to reduce God merely to an intuitive feeling, or to simply banish God outside thought and reason.51 Hegel opposes the panthe- istic all-in-one doctrine precisely by making a dialectic argument to combine divine universality with concrete thought. In an all-in-one pantheistic doctrine, God is everything in a way that it is indistinguish- able from nothing. Hence, intuitive and immediate union with the divine universality involves emptying of one’s mind of all concrete- ness, all thought, surrendering all particularity. In meditation practices of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, for example, says Hegel, becoming one with the divine abstraction does not preserve human concreteness. The latter has to be utterly obliterated; the mind and consciousness need to be completely absorbed and dissolved into God.52 Dissolution of consciousness and thought to be one with the One is by no means a sublation for Hegel.
If Hegel were to comment on Sufism in his philosophy of religion, which he does not, he would apply the same criticism of pantheism to it that he uses for other “primitive” Eastern religions. We may refer to Naim Şahin’s comparative philosophical study between Rumi and Hegel, which, much like many other comparative studies in philoso- phy, concludes with “some similarities” and “some differences” between
50 Daniel Dahlstrom, “Moses Mendelssohn,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 ed.), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/ mendelssohn, accessed 15 February 2013.
51 Jaeschke, “Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion,” pp. 1–18. Also see John Macquarrie, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2006); F. Stoeffler, “Pietism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 2005).
52 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 373.
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the two.53 However, the author does mention that for Rumi God is a “Oneness”; the real world is fleeting, and it has no absolute existence vis-à-vis God, whereas in Hegel the world is absolutely necessary for the embodiment and process of God’s self-actualization.54 Hegel would whole-spiritedly agree!
The Rumi type of aesthetic spirituality belongs, for Hegel, in the realm of art, and that pantheistic mysticism is quite different from the Muslim conception of God as the Lord, in whose fear and service man spends and ends his life. Hegel is careful to state that in either idea of God, though, human particularity needs to be absorbed; a sense of self is required to be annihilated in the divine or in service of the divine, not aufgehoben, elevated, or sublated.
So Islam is not a perfect embodiment of Spirit. But how does one explain the fact that it arose after Christianity? How does Hegel explain this anomaly in the linear progress of history and thought? Exactly the same way as he treats early philosophies of the East, namely by banish- ing them if not completely outside then to the very periphery of his- tory. For example, despite his relative openness to revise and recognize Indian thought as “philosophy,” he claims that “philosophy proper” began with the Greeks, and hence the earlier Eastern thought should be placed on the outskirts as the “presupposition” of the history of phi- losophy.55 In the same way, Islam should fall (and has fallen) on the outside of religion on this side of the spectrum, after it has culminated and ended in Christianity. “At present, 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.”56
Conclusion
We have unfolded both approaches at once in the above triadic analy- sis of Hegel’s understanding of Islam namely Hermeneutic and Criti-
53 Naim Şahin, “Der Vergleich einiger Metaphysischer Begriffe Zwischen Mewlâ Na Dshcelâ Leddin Rûmi Und G. W. F. Hegel,” Selcuk Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi 20 (2008): 747–777, http://www.sosyalbil.selcuk.edu.tr/sos_mak/articles/2008/20/ NSAHIN.PDF, accessed 22 February 2013.
54 Ibid., p. 774. 55 Robert Bernasconi, “With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s Role
in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of Philosophy,” in Hegel’s History of Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. David Duquette (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 35–50.
56 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 419
cal.57 That is to say, in Gadamer’s terms, we have explained Hegel’s hermeneutic horizon and his system’s prejudices that filter his interpre- tive lens, and in Ricoeur’s terms, we have critically revealed Hegel’s exercise of power and domination in confining and condemning Islam as a savage religious philosophy. On the hermeneutic hand, we see that his scattered references to Islam in his Philosophy of Religion and other texts need to be understood in the conceptual quest of his triads, in order to philosophically parse what he exactly means by descriptions as specific as “absorption in the abstract One” and even as general as “fanatic” and “aimless.” He is looking for a concept of divine univer- sality that is abstract yet concretized in human particularity and the sublation of the two. In Islam he finds the concept of God too abstract, and as a result a humanity that is ungrounded, disconnected, and sub- missive to it, rather than being its free vehicle of self-determination. Hegel’s situatedness in his core triadic dialectic dictates his reading of Islam and leads him to his conclusions and judgments.
On the critical hand, his foregone predetermined conclusion, his “inside candidate” (in the parlance of our profession)—Christianity— creates a position description for the perfect religion that no other religion can fit. His interpretive methods prompt him to dig into his paradigm, impose familiar criteria on Islam to argue its imperfections, and confine it in the threefold superstructure. It would be one thing, although still an act of structural imposition, if he were to tease out a conceptual design of Islam from within the information presented to him, but his domination and violence consist in inflicting the tri- adic framework from without and in blatantly repeating arguments that would reinforce or leaving out information that would challenge his judgments. References to the “Osman” empire, for example, are sparse in Philosophy of History, which refer to its “terror” and acknowl- edge that the “Osman race at last succeeded in establishing a firm dominion,” only resulting in the fact that “fanaticism having cooled down, no moral principle remained in men’s souls.” 58 The Turks are, of course, “the terrible power which threatened to overwhelm Europe from the East.” 59 In Philosophy of Religion, Islam is not given the sta- tus of a separate chapter or section, worthy of focused and undivided attention dedicated to it; it is demoted to scattered mentions that
57 Bradley Herling, “Either a Hermeneutical Consciousness or a Critical Consciousness: Renegotiating Theories of the Germany-India Encounter,” Comparatist 34 (2010): 63–79.
58 Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 452, 377. 59 Ibid., p. 452.
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appear in comparison to other religions, to Judaism and Christianity in particular. Moreover, Hegel opens his good old bag of tricks and pulls out the same vocabulary of criticism for Islam—namely, a much too abstract unreacheable concept of the universal absolute—that he uses for Kant (who shows the limits of reason), pantheism (that sees the divine manifested in everything), Hinduism (a polytheism with a posi- tive all-encompassing universal Self ), and Buddhism (with a negative all-extinguishing nirvana) alike.
Bringing hermeneutic and critical consciousnesses in conversation with each other is already a respectable task given where German Ori- entalism theory is today. But to move it forward, we have to explore further than one-sided Western appropriation of the East and wonder what effect the other side has on the interpreter’s clarity, comfort, and conviction. Hegel’s structural confinement and his obsessive omis- sions and repetitions are not only evidence of a certain violence to his sources, but also indicative of a desperation and anxiety that Europe, Christianity, and his tightly wound system of philosophy might be crumbling under the conceptual weight of foreign thought. What if we pursue this anxiety? Hermeneutic consciousness implies that given the precepts of his system, Hegel’s interpretation could not have been much different. But what if we dive into the same precepts and show that it could, if we use Hegelian paradigm and vocabulary itself and argue Islam’s position in a way that could potentially destroy Hegel’s teleology?
It is in this regard that I think the following examples of applied Hegelianism are crucial. First, a footnote by Slavoj Zizek in his article “A Glance into the Archives of Islam,” in which he proposes Judaism- Christianity-Islam as a Hegelian dialectic triad.60 Second, John Oli- ver’s hilarious comments in an episode of The Daily Show explaining the young adulthood and maturity of Islam (and Judaism and Christi- anity) as they grow, age, and live out their lives.61
Zizek opens his article acknowledging that to Western historians of religion Islam presents a problem of temporal and spacial contradic- tion, given that it emerged after Christianity and is still ascribed to the “Orient.” But more interestingly, he proposes that Judaism, Christian-
60 Slavoj Zizek, “A Glance into the Archives of Islam,” http://www.lacan.com/ zizarchives.htm, accessed 25 September 2012. Also see http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj -zizek/articles/a-glance-into-the-archives-of-islam/, accessed 16 October 2014.
61 “Actual Democalypse 2012,” The Daily Show, http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/ mon-september-17–2012/actual-democalypse-2012--islam-s-growing-pains, accessed 19 Sep tember 2012.
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 421
ity, and Islam could embody the triad of Hegelian dialectic develop- ment: “first the immediate/abstract monotheism which, as the price to be paid for its immediate character, has to be embodied in a particular ethnic group (which is why Jews renounce all proselytism); then Chris- tianity with its trinity; finally Islam, the truly universal monotheism.” The first moment of Judaism conveys only a constrained and narrow sense of monotheism/God, which rules over a restricted community, which itself goes through trials and tribulations to conceive its mono- theism consistently. Christianity is the second moment, in which the initial un-self-aware abstraction of God becomes concrete, manifest, and manifold (in the trinity) and partakes directly in history and human particularity in the form of the son of God. In the third moment, the original limited Jewish monotheism, having concretized itself in Chris- tianity, fully reconciles with itself in Islam, sublates the concreteness back into a now universally applied concept of the divine absolute. Zizek strengthens the same argument with a different perspective:
Judaism is the religion of genealogy, of succession of generations; when, in Christianity, the Son dies on the Cross, this means that the Father also dies (as Hegel was fully aware)—the patriarchal genealogi- cal order as such dies, the Holy Spirit does not fit the family series, it introduces a post-paternal/familial community. In contrast to both Judaism and Christianity, the two other religions of the book, Islam excludes God from the domain of the paternal logic: Allah is not a father, not even a symbolic one—God is one, he is neither born nor does he give birth to creatures. There is no place for a Holy Family in Islam. This is why Islam emphasizes so much the fact that Muhammed himself was an orphan.62
Judaism is bound by a genealogy and hence to a community; Chris- tianity acknowledges this, uses this feature to establish an unprec- edented connection between God and man, and thereby accomplishes the concretization of God, and yet ultimately eliminates it. And Islam, once again, overcomes the need of genealogy at all; it has no use for it any more, now that it has reabsorbed the all-encompassing universal- ity in its God. Zizek’s take on Judaism-Christianity-Islam as a Hege- lian triad is indeed an interesting idea, which brings together the three Abrahamic religions in a conceptually progressive and chronologically consistent unity. While potentially resolving Hegel’s struggle with
62 Zizek, “Archives of Islam,” http://www.lacan.com/zizarchives.htm.
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Islam’s young age, Zizek’s argument, of course, completely destroys Hegel’s teleological culmination into Christian perfection.
Whereas Zizek proposes to observe the triadic concept of religion evolving through different religions, John Oliver of The Daily Show urges his viewers to consider one single religion aging and maturing through its own stages. As with everything on the brilliant Daily Show, it too is a hilarious take on our own hypocrisy, but it is also an applica- tion of the Hegelian organic evolution of a concept through the stages of its life and its journey toward self-awareness. Hegel is not averse to the idea of one single religion’s stages of maturity; after all, Christian- ity matured into Protestantism too. If in Hegelian terms “God” and “religion” are concepts that determine and carry out their own stages of life, and earlier civilizational manifestations of the concept “reli- gion” (Hinduism, for example) can be said to be in the “childhood” stage of history, then “Islam” (or Judaism or Christianity) is a concept too, in charge and subject to its life, age, and maturity. John Oliver in his 17 September 2012 segment—“Islam’s Growing Pains”—pres- ents just that notion. While reporting on the Cairo protests, Oliver says, “We should really remember Islam’s young age.” The host, Jon Stewart, exclaims, “What . . . Islam is fourteen hundred years old!” to which Oliver responds, “Exactly, Jon, in religious years Islam is still just a teenager and, to put it in context, think what Christianity was doing when it was only fourteen hundred years old . . . exactly! Bloody crusades, the inquisition, execution of heretics.” After big applause from the audience and further discussion with Stewart on “what Juda- ism was doing” when it was that young, John Oliver adds, “The point is, Jon, there is good news, and that is that religions grow out of this awkward phase. Again, look at Christianity. We’ve aged into young adulthood, and now we can all laugh about the time we used to burn young girls at the stake for being left-handed, or, as we called it back then, witchcraft.”63
In this context of applied Hegelianism, Goux’s words are aptly applicable:
What makes current events enigmatic is that they are the conse- quence of a tremendous and dangerous collision of two temporalities or temporal modes. We must therefore think the untimely—that is, the upsurge of a foreign temporality in our History as well as the upsurge of our History in a foreign temporality . . . One of the dramas of our time
63 “Actual Democalypse 2012.”
Bhatawadekar: Islam in Hegel’s Triadic Understanding of Religion 423
is that accelerated globalization . . . no longer allows civilizations in close proximity and juxtaposed to one another to live under different temporal regimes.64
While Zizek’s interpretation is more philosophical, academic, and declaredly Hegelian, Oliver is clearly less serious, more popular, and, perhaps, therefore, more problematic. The Daily Show audience, with its religious relativism, would normally consider all world religions at a given time equal and different, and would ideologically hesitate to call one religion more or less primitive than another. Of course, there are several subtle shades of the appeal of Oliver’s argument and several reasons for the roaring audience applause. But if some of it is to allow Islam some leeway in the wake of Christianity’s past, and if Goux’s above words on the clash of temporal modes speak to us, then it is indicative of the fact that Hegelian notions of temporalities and of progressive journey of thought and action have long seeped into our collective mind.
Hegel would be equipped, mind you, if he were to be presented with the above two examples, with his oft repeated argument that in Islam’s case, because of its core conceptual insufficiency—God’s abstractness and disconnection with the ungrounded unfree aimless humanity—it has no device to mature into a sophisticated religion or to sublate the triad of Abrahamic religions. But these applied Hegelianisms are pre- cisely the occasions through which the weakness of Hegel’s system can be exposed from within its paradigms in a way that Hegel’s preemp- tive defense of Christianity cannot address. To be fair, rather than as a fully reasoned philosophical counterattack on Hegel, these examples are intended to serve as cracks and crevasses that would question the strength and sustainability of his grand edifice. And in that capacity they would open up a direction for East-West studies, in which herme- neutic and critical consciousnesses can move forward together: Along with understanding the Western interpreter’s horizon as well as expos- ing his power and violence, they can explore the subversive agency of the interpreted East in stirring up the interpreter, his anxiety ridden defensive rhetoric, and thus the tipping of the power scales.
This exploration is absolutely crucial, for while it may be inter- esting to imagine Hegel turning in his grave to see Islam not quite “vanished from history,” 65 for not foreseeing its role in world politics
64 Goux, “Untimely Islam,” pp. 55, 68. 65 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 377.
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as we experience it today, it is also rather obvious that the idea of a rational West vis-à-vis an inherently religio-philosophically fanatical Islam have been glaringly at play in intellectual, theological, political, and popular discourses. Oliver’s reference to Islam’s and Christianity’s ages and stages is not far from a nineteenth-century Orientalist—Julius Wellhausen—who drew an analogy between Islamic rule and “Luther’s view of medieval Catholicism . . . of Caesaro-papism, complete with inquisition, executioners, and court astrologers.” 66 Pope Benedict XVI, in his infamous 2006 Regensburg lecture, feels it justified to quote a fourteenth-century Byzantine text and use Hegelian rhetoric to jux- tapose European and Christian synthesis of faith and reason against Islam, an irrational and fanatic religion based on obedience and abso- lute submission to God.67 And the image of an analytical West and a mystical East is far from gone from our popular perception. In Paul de Man’s gloriously horrifying words, “whether we know it or not, or like it or not, most of us are Hegelians and quite orthodox ones at that.”68 If Hegel is, as Almond says, an oscillating sum of his “textual memory . . . an intensely lexical phenomenon, an absorber, modifier and redistribu- tor of the written,” 69 we have to ask ourselves how much we have inter- nalized our textual memory of Hegel. Indeed, hermeneutic and critical consciousness should go past being interpretive theories and together become a self-reflexive consciousness.
66 Marchand, German Orientalism, p. 188. 67 David Nirenberg, “Islam and the West: Two Dialectical Fantasies,” Journal of Religion
in Europe 1, no. 1 (2008): 3–33. 68 Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 92. 69 Almond, History of Islam, p. 133.
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