Hegel's Concept of God (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 247 the self. Ameriks acutely analyzes Kant's notions of inner sense and self-affection, and then he defends Kant's theory of the ideality of the self against criticisms that it is meaningless or inconsistent. In sum, Ameriks's book is an excellent one, both in its scholarship and in its philosophical acumen. It makes several important contributions to our understanding of Kant. Specifically, it shows that Kant's theory of mind is more subtle and complex than standard historical surveys have taught, more coherent and defensible than many contemporary critiques have allowed, more rationalistic than almost anyone has realized, and more of a piece with his larger philosophy (considered both systematically and developmentally) than heretofore has been understood. Ameriks's book also advances a thesis of major consequence concerning Kant's intellectual development during the 178os, a thesis that warrants the immediate attention of those working in the field of Kant studies. MICHAEL C. WASHBURN Indiana University South Bend Quentin Lauer, S.J. Hegel's Concept of God. Albany: State University of New York Press, a98~. viii + 339- $33.5 ~ cloth; $1o.95 paper. Soon after Hegel's death from cholera, vivid disagreements about his view of God arose among his followers, even his actual students. Some suggested that his use of religious language was merely a literary technique to set forth a fundamental humanism or impersonal idealism; others saw him as directly defending Christian faith; others, more conservative, claimed that his views led to a pantheism which they found repugnant. Can it be that interpretations of Hegel today have not advanced much beyond those three positions? This solid treatment of the problem by Quentin Lauer, already known for his scholarly writings on Hegel, undertakes a fresh and systematic examination of those alternatives by concentrating on Hegel's own mature writings and those put together after his death by devoted note-takers. The writings of the young Hegel, which Lauer is glad that Hegel himself did not publish 067), express views that some contemporaries who oppose Lauer's essentially Christian interpretation seem to prefer . At Tiabingen, the youthful Hegel could not stomach the orthodoxy of his teachers Storr and Flatt, but his mature thought is closer to historical Christianity, Lauer maintains, "trinitarian and incarnational"(283). After considering Hegel's view on the relation of Religion to Philosophy, with helpful observations on Kant and Fichte (Chap.l), Lauer treats Hegel's meaning of Concept (57-128), which is both Idea and Process, in an effort to show Hegel's conclusion "that the truth of reality is not 'represented' by ideas but rather 'contained in' ideas to the extent that they were all embraced in the 'absolute unity' of the 'absolute idea', which is at the same time 'Absolute Reason'... God"(ll5). Lauer's stress on the role of purpose here (lo5-1~) is very instructive. He gets more deeply into the problem in his astute third chapter, "God as Spirit," raising the question of 248 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 22:2 APR 1984 the identity of the finite and the infinite, noting that for Hegel "finite spirit is a manifestation of absolute Spirit knowing itself as the totality of both knowing and known"(t32 ), and that "the self-consciousness of infinite Spirit is the very being of finite spirit"(133 ). But this really does little more than raise the spectre of Pantheism, which Lauer tries seriously to dispel in his sixth chapter. This follows his rich but overlong discussion of "The Infinite" (Chapter Four) as "The all-inclusiveness of the totality of differences"(243), and "Proofs of God"(2o3-42 ). These chapters should have been more sharply written but contain stimulating insights such as the view that human reason can not only " 'prove' the reality of God but that human reason is the 'proof' of that reality"(2o6). Also, for Hegel "there will be no religion where there is no longing for moral goodness; only consciousness of self as a moral being leads to religious consciousness of God as fulfillment"(217). One finds it hard to accept Lauer's assertion that Pantheism has no clear meaning (244f). It is at least a metaphysical monism. Traditional...