Hegel and Monasticism

HEGEL AND MONASTICISM T O MANY, A REVIEW of Hegel's views on monasticism may seem both trivial and inconsequential. Indeed, the philosopher's understanding of the historical phenomenon was, at best, poor. He was aware that monasticism had its origins in Egypt; 1 however, he does not seem to have been able successfully to integrate this fact into his various schemes of Universalgeschichte, which were able to comprehend ancient Egypt within its purview, even the intellectual Christian Egypt of Alexandria, but not the early origins of monasticism. This blind spot might be ascribed merely to the nineteenthcentury Protestant bias against monasticism or to the lack of accurate historical knowledge of early monastic history; but it is more likely due to the strong influence of Chapter 37 of Gibbon's rationalistic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,2 which saw in the otherworldliness of monasticism the death of Roman civic responsibility. In Hegel's historical schemes, then, monasticism is largely a phenomenon of the post-Roman mediaeval world; it is even made to characterize the Middle Ages generally. Hegel's views on the subject would, indeed, be both trivial and inconsequential were it not for the perduring influence of Hegel, consciously or unconsciously, on twentieth-century philosophical and theological thought; and more importantly, were it not for the fact that his negative stance regarding monasticism rests heavily upon fundamental principles and 1 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, ed. C. Hegel, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 888. 2 For the influence of Gibbon on Hegel's views on the classical world of Rome (though in his Jugendschriften Hegel both agrees and disagrees with Gibbon's rationalism) see T. L. Haering, Hegel: sein WoUen und sein Werk, !i! vols. (Aalen: Scientia, 1968), I, 222-225; also Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl (Frankfurt/ Main: Minerva, 1966), pp. 865-866. 4~3 424 GEORGE J. SEIDEL viewpoints in his philosophy and acts as a veritable touchstone for his views on theology and the Christian religion. Hegel's attitude toward monasticism may already be gauged by his views on marriage. In the Rechtsphilosophie (# # 158-163) he sees marriage as the immediate ethical relationship and the family as the immediate substantiality of spirit. C. J. Friedrich asks rhetorically whether the fact that Hegel was one of the first of the modern philosophers to marry did not have something to do with the broader social view of man, the break from radical individualism and bachelorhood which is exhibited in his thought.3 Even in his Logic Hegel's emphasis upon the genus over the individual 4 and his view of reproduction as the moment of actual individuality, as that which truly relates the individual toward the objective world,5 already indicate the direction of Hegel's sympathies. In discussing marriage in the Rechtsphilosophie Hegel goes on to condemn "Platonic love " related, in his view, to a monastic viewpoint which sees the physical as simply negative, separating the godly, the human spirit, from its existence (Dasein) through abstraction.6 Hegel's use of the term abstract and abstraction should be carefully noted. As Iwan Iljin points out, it is contrasted with concrete (con-crescere), a growing together into a concrete synthetic unity.7 Abstract means the same as "op-posited" (entgegengesetzt) .8 The term Iljin uses to describe the meaning of abstract in Hegel, of course, conjures up Fichte. And in Fichte abstraction means separation, the separation of a content in consciousness op-posed to the one concentrated • C. J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Modern Library, 1954), p. xxxviii. • G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, tr. A. V. Miller (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 7!l0. • Ibid., p. 769. • G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, tr. T. M. Know (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 194!l), pp. 110-113. • !wan lljin, Die Philosophie Hegels als kontemplative Gottealehre (Bern: Francke, 1946), pp. 10 and 19. 8 Ibid., p. 43. HEGEL .AND MONASTICISM 4~5 on. This meaning of abstraction is shared by Hegel. In his Logic he discusses the thoughts of pure being and pure nothing-with which abstractions, incidentally, the Logic begins-as abstractions, that is...