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5 1 At the Crossroads of Philosophy and Religion: Deleuze’s Critique of Hegel Brent Adkins For Hegel and Deleuze both religion and philosophy are undeniable facts of human existence. Thus neither Hegel nor Deleuze can avoid an account of how religion and philosophy relate to one another. For Hegel religion and philosophy are related to one another as content and form. For Deleuze religion and philosophy are two different types of creation, which are often confused with each other but ultimately are distinguishable by what they create. Religion creates figures, while philosophy creates concepts. Crucially, since for Hegel the content of philosophy cannot be any religion, but must rather be Trinitarian Protestant Christianity, he is dependent on a progressive notion of religious history.1 In contrast to this, since philosophy and religion have different tasks, Deleuze is not required to think of either as progressive. After articulating both Hegel’s and Deleuze’s positions with regard to philosophy and religion , I will show that Deleuze’s account of philosophy exceeds Hegel’s in its ability to think the contingent and affective nature of human existence. Hegel In 1785 F. H. Jacobi upended the German intellectual community with the revelation of G. E. Lessing’s Spinozism. Moses Mendelssohn took up Lessing’s defense, while Jacobi widened his offensive to include all of philosophy . Jacobi argued that all philosophy, insofar as it is thought consistently , tends toward Spinozism, atheism, and nihilism (a term coined by Jacobi).2 Jacobi’s scathing condemnation of philosophy had wide-ranging consequences for years to come. J. G. Fichte lost his position at Jena when he was charged with atheism. F. W. J. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, 6 B R E N T A D K I N S who remained at Jena after Fichte’s departure, were scrupulous in their writings about God to avoid the same censure, even as they were trying to further their philosophical projects.3 Hegel goes out of his way in Faith and Knowledge (Glauben und Wissen)to praise Jacobi even as he criticizes him as a manifestation of the subjective tendency in current philosophy. The subjective tendency in philosophy, Hegel argues, results in an untenable split between faith and knowledge. The solution to this difficulty for Hegel is to reconcile the opposition in terms of content and form. Faith, explicitly Trinitarian faith, provides the content that is given philosophical form in speculative philosophy. This is the call for a “speculative Good Friday” with which Hegel ends Faith and Knowledge.4 And this is the promise that Hegel fulfills in the Phenomenology of Spirit.5 That Hegel sees the Trinity as the essential content of philosophy does not mean that Hegel is trying to Christianize philosophy or turn philosophy into theology. Rather, Hegel is trying to account for the basic historical fact that the rise and spread of Christianity has profoundly changed the nature of thought in Europe and has become determinative for European identity. In short, Europe would not be what it is in any sense (material, cultural, moral, etc.) without Christianity. The task of philosophy for Hegel is to account for this change to show the contradictions that arise in a culture because of this change, as well as what is new in thought because of this change. Hegel articulates this change in terms of freedom in Reason in History (Die Vernunft in der Geschichte). Under oriental despotism only the despot is free. All others are in bondage to the ruler. In Greece and Rome some, the citizens, are free. With the coming of Christianity, Hegel says that all are in principle free, but that this freedom is not actualized until the Reformation. For philosophy to fulfill its purpose it must account for this expansion of freedom and it cannot do so without taking Christianity into account.6 In Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, he repeatedly notes that what separates philosophy proper from its origins in Eleatic philosophy is Christianity. Thus, in discussing the difference between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Hegel notes that Heraclitus is superior because he makes negativity immanent within the very concept of philosophy itself. Parmenides, since he fails to do this, is left with a “dead infinite.” The crucial moment comes when Hegel compares the immanent negativity of Heraclitus with the Trinity. “All that is concrete, as that God created the world, divided Himself, begot a Son, is contained in this determination .”7 Here we see that Hegel identifies the...

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