Reflection ii

Hegel says, "True faith is possible only where individuals can seclude themselves--can exist for themselves independently of any external compulsory power." He keeps mentioning a little bit of the "nonage" I'm familiar with through Kant. When I watched a few lectures on Hegel and Marx they mentioned that some argue the genesis of Critical Theory is Kant, not Hegel. Not really that it matters, but I guess you can draft a more authorized syllabus with that information.

Words to examine: true, faith, individuals, seclude, exist, independent, external, compulsory, power. I've only been trudging through the first sections of Hegel's Philosophy of History, those concerning China and India. He says interesting things about patrimony, the analog between familial relationships and governments, and Supreme Power, or substantial being. Basically a bunch of semi-mystical hoo-ha but it's sometimes refreshing.

For example: when speaking of Chinese religion he says it's a religion which "regards as the Highest and Absolute--as God--pure nothing; which sets up contempt for individuality, for personal existence, as the highest perfection." I watched a few lectures by R.C. Sproul on the character of secularism where he explicated a few existential notions, and it all seems now to be about how we conceive of Time. I need to find a biography of Einstein, or some comment on the conversations between Tagore and Einstein maybe a century ago. I think there may be keys there on how to navigate the tipping point between science and spirituality, or even the subjective with the objective. Seems the philosophical speculation is so far removed from action in the world, though.

Do I have a "contempt for individuality" though? I'll run around the social media brandishing my "woe is modernity; woe is individualism; woe is relativism" jargon and propaganda, but to what purpose? But I think it will be useful to think of Modernity not as something antithetical to Religiosity, but as an outgrowth of it. Kind of like a spiritualization of the individual. I think this is why I have been drawn to Hegel through my study of Christianity. There is a certain sense of individuality in the person of Christ that gives me the intuition that it leads to broad ideologies that embrace the secular, relativism, or just subjectivity. Hegel seems to trace history as a "progress" from the objective to the subjective. What I may need to examine next is notions of "freedom." I think there is a "democratic" idea of freedom, and a different kind of freedom that takes into account notions of ethics or duty.

I'll dig into the remainder of the India sections in Hegel tomorrow, but he starts it off saying that in "China the patriarchal principle rules a people in a condition of nonage." I guess my personal politics has to struggle with conceptions of development, when, where and whether or not there is any appropriate "time" for a maturity opposed to "nonage," etc. What happens in a world of pure, true relativistic and subjective freedom, free of patronage and patriarchal principles? What is the consequence of a prevailing ideology that embodies this idea? Did Kant win through Hegel? Isn't this just a new hegemony that pretends it isn't a hegemony? What did Luther say about Christians? “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”