Anthony Munrer 181

incompatible, held by the same persons. And this muddle seems to be reflected in the institutions of punishment in our society. I agree with Bean that philosophical clarification is required. Unfortunately he has failed to provide it in this book, though if it leads others to start thinking on the topic, it will have a value. I must add that there is a large number of misprints, and that on many occasions the style is less than clear.

Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton.

Hegel’s Concept of God, by Quentin Lauer, S. J., State University of New York Press: Albany, 1982, pp. viii + 339. $33.50 (cloth) $10.95 (paper)

DAVID LAMB, University of Manchester.

Hegel begins his Phenomenology of Spirit with a definition of philos- ophy as ‘the actual knowledge of what truly is’. In the following sentence it is clear that being and the absolute are one and the same. By the end of the book absolute knowledge is defined as ‘spirit knowing itself as spirit’. If by ‘the absolute’ or ‘spirit’ Hegel simply means God then much of what Father Lauer has to say is correct. Unfortunately Hegel is not very helpful since he uses a variety of terms leaving it to the interpreter to decide whether or not they refer to God. Quite obviously Hegel’s concept of God has a much wider meaning than it does for other philosophers. However, Lauer’s account of the Hegelian enterprise ‘as an extraordinarily unified and grandiose attempt to elaborate . . . the concept of God (p. 1) and that his whole philosophy stands or falls in the rationality of the concept of God, (p. 11) or that Hegel is ‘clearly the most “God-inebriated” of philosophers’, (p. 20) will certainly be disputed by Hegelians in the tradition of Feuerbach and Marx. For the latter, it might be said that Hegel replaced religious faith with reason, and that a philosophical comprehension of God undermines the natural representations of pictorial theism. Yet according to Lauer, ‘the problem is not that Hegel has so philosophized theology

182 Philosophical Orursti&tiori,

that he has dispensed with faith, but that he has theologized philos- ophy to such an extent that, even as pure philosophical thinking, it cannot dispense with faith, that is, with faith’s content.’ (p. 11)

In this respect Hegel would appear to have avoided the reason- faith dichotomy. In Hegel’s system reason does not so much cancel out faith but supercedes it in the sense that religious experience i: preserved as a mode of knowledge, which is not only rationally acceptable but rationally necessary. This reconciliation of faith with reason is not achieved without difficulty and raises the following questions. Is Hegel committed to the view that there is no essential difference between religious faith and a philosophical account of that faith? Is the God of religion and the God of philosophy one and the same? According to Hegel philosophy manifests a unity of form and content; it is thought acting upon thought. With religion, one might say, the thought of God is distinct from the God of which one thinks. God can be conceived of in different ways. Lauer argues that philosophy and religion have the same content but differ in form, and that the God of religion is the God of the philosopher. Whilst we can think of God in different ways, ‘it is philosophy’s task to plumb in thought the meaning of what religion says in metaphorical language’. (pp. 61-2 ) But if philosophy provides a better comprehension of God than any other standpoint - of this Hegel is certain - is it then possible to dispense with the religious consciousness? Lauer quite rightly recognises that philosophy can- not dispense with religious revelation since the latter provides the content for reflection. However, Lauer’s thesis that philosophy and religion have the same content suggests that when religion is super- ceded by philosophy it remains untouched. For Hegel, on the other hand, the action of thought on its object involves negation and transformation with no return to an original state once it has been superceded. Philosophical thought is no exception. If its content is religion then it must be transformed. To be sure, philosophy does not eliminate religion and Lauer is surely correct in stressing this point. (p. 215) But it does contribute to a transformation of the religious consciousness. Lauer refers to Hegel’s example of the simple believer who ‘having no time to philosophize’ is not thereby cut off from the rational content of his thought. (p. 215) But what Hegel also recognises is that once he does philosophise the content of his thought will surely change. Thus we see, in Hegel’s Lectures on the History ofPhilosophy, how there could be no return to the

David Lamb 183

natural immediacy of the Greek Sittlichkeit after the Socratic endeavour to equip it with a rational content.

There is a tendency among historians of philosophy to con- centrate, perhaps too heavily, on either early or hitherto unpub- lished writings of great philosophers. Presumably one can avoid criticism this way and still lay claim to have said something orig- inal. Unfortunately this concern with the foothills often blinds the scholar from seeing the importance of scaling the mountains. Many of Hegel’s early theological writings should be seen as preliminary to his major works. They were not published because Hegel did not think they were worth publishing. If Lauer had concentrated solely on these earlier writings he would have written a dull book, although his conclusions might be more acceptable. Instead he has produced a more exciting work which spans the entire Hegelian system, throwing in an essay on pantheism and a textual analysis of one of the key sections of the Encyclopedia for good measure. Whilst Lauer does not ignore the early writings it is to his credit that his thesis, which maintains that the meaning of Hegel’s ‘God language’ is the key to the whole enterprise, is developed out of a detailed analysis of Hegel’s major works. For this reason Hegel’s Concept .f God will be a valuable aid to students of The Phenomenology of Spirit, the Encyclopedia and the Science of Logic.

Department of Philosophy The University of Manchester, Manchester MI3 9 P L .

Phenomenology, dialogues and bridges edited by Ronald Bruzina and Bruce Wilshire, State University of N e w York Press: Albany, 1982, pp. viii + 361. No price.

DAVID LAMB, University ofManChester

As the title suggests this collection ot twenty eight essays by leading phenomenologists is intended to build communicative links between ‘recent American philosophy’ and the ‘metaphysical and phenomenological thought which has appeared on the Continent in