Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Part 2 (90-230)

A. Consciousness

1. Sense-Certainty: or the "This" and "Meaning" (Meinen)

We begin with sense-certainty, which "immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge" (91). Hegel began with sense-certainty partly to counter philosophers of intuition: immediacy is not where we end but where we begin. Sense-certainty knows "This," "Here," "Now," but soon becomes aware of the fact that what it takes to be real (a Now, for instance) is fleeting (into the past). Similarly, any "This" is not known only according to the "This" but also according to a "That." The only common element here is the I that perceives them

2. Perception (wahrnehmen = to take as true): or the Thing and Deception

First, a simple definition of aufheben: "Supersession exhibits its true twofold meaning which we have seen in the negative: it is at once a negating and a preserving" (113).

To continue: what does the I perceive? Attributes: the Thing is x, y, z, etc. But how is it that one thing is made from this possibly infinite list of attributes? Or in Hegel's language, how is it that this singular "One" is in fact a "One" based on the infinity of "Also's" through which it is known? Answer: the thing is one in itself, and many for another. Seeing these two aspects "being-for-self" and "being-for-another" in a single unity allows for "unconditioned absolute universality" (129). Unconditioned/concrete here does not mean simply "free from conditions" but rather that the universality is relational.

3. Force and the Understanding: Appearance and the Supersensible World

The "Force" section is what I took to be Hegel's way of dealing with physics. He defines Force as the movement wherein "the 'matters' posited as independent directly pass over into their unity, and their unity directly unfolds its diversity, and this once again reduces itself to unity" (136). Force in the singular is thus always a plural "play of Forces," similar to the way the Thing is always known by a plurality of attributes. The notion of Force disrupts the unconditioned universal by again introducing a plurality. But this plurality of Forces (gravity, electricity, etc.) qua plurality is really only appearance; we know that they in fact operate by a supersensible Law. Thus what Force really is (and thus what the Thing is too) is Law. Law shows the essence (gewesen, that which has become) of appearance. The Law is consciousness' mirror: in the law, consciousness becomes self-consciousness. I'm thinking of Kant's self-legislating law.

B. Self-consciousness

4. The Truth of Self-Certainty

First, a simple definition of Notion: "If we give the name of Notion to the movement of knowing, and the name object to knowing as a passive unity, or as the 'I', then we see that not only for us, but for knowing itself, the object corresponds to the Notion" (166).

To continue: with self-consciousness, desire emerges: desire is born from the doubling of the object for consciousness: "one is the immediate object, that of sense-certainty and perception, which however for self-consciousness has the character of a negative; and the second, viz. itself, which is the true essence, and is present in the first instance only as opposed to the first object" (167). It is in this gap that the striving-toward-unity that desire is emerges. In fact, "self-consciousness is Desire" (174): it now seeks only to completely destroy the independent object "and thereby give itself the certainty of itself as a true certainty" (174). But this certainty is fleeting; when the object is destroyed, so too is the ground of self-consciousness' true certainty. Self-consciousness then realizes that it "achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness" (175); it is only as reflected in another that self-consciousness can truly gain the recognition that affirms itself. It is at this moment that intersubjectivity is born: "I that is We and We that is I" (177).

A. Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage

"Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged" (178). But immediately this recognition is only deemed real when carried to the extreme, when life itself is on the line; one self-consciousness has to prove to another that it is willing to risk death for recognition. But in that battle, the death of the other is no good, for then one eliminates the ground of recognition: the other must be preserved as bondsman. At first, the lord is "the pure, essential action in this relationship, while the action of the bondsman is impure and unessential" (191). But the lord soon realizes that he is at an impasse, for he is dependent on what he considers a lesser being for recognition; it is never enough. The bondsman, on the other hand, through his fear of the lord and with his work realizes he is in fact independent, that he possesses no dependence on another and the ability to transform the objects of his labor into his own self-image.

Freedom of Self-consciousness:

B. Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy consciousness

The bondsman, while still in bondage, retreats into the freedom of thought: "its principle is that consciousness is a being that thinks, and that consciousness holds something to be essentially important, or true and good only in so far as it thinks it to be such" (197). But the Stoic's freedom is too abstract; in reality, stoicism leads to scepticism, to the recognition that all is an endless flux of experience. "Consciousness is itself the absolute dialectical unrest, this medley of sensuous and intellectual representations whose differences coincide, and whose identity is equally again dissolved" (205).

Scepticism then devolves into Unhappy consciousness, which posits the Unchangeable in distinction from the changeable I and laments the gap. "But what it does not know is that its object, the Unchangeable, which it knows essentially in the form of individuality, is its own self, is itself the individuality of consciousness" (216). Then some stuff about the "grave of life" (217) and the "return of the feeling heart into itself" (218). And then self-surrender to the Unchangeable (222), where work and enjoyment lose all significance (225). And then Reason. Breaking down to build back up again.

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Part 1

Preface: On Scientific Cognition (numbers are paragraphs)

Hegel begins with a few notes about the superfluity of a philosophical preface, how "contextualizing" one's argument only "drags in an extraneous concern" (2). Such prefaces set the work up to either be affirmed or rejected; Hegel, by contrast, wants to "comprehend the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive unfolding of truth" (2).

His task in the Phenomenology is to "help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title 'love of knowing' and be actual knowing" (5). We need his Science of mediation to counteract the spiritual loss brought up by philosophies of immediacy, intuition and mysticism. We must "tear men away from their preoccupation with the sensuous, from their ordinary, private affairs, and direct their gaze to the star" (7).

This Science, "the crown of a world of Spirit" (12), is only in its beginnings. At present, it is pervaded by a rigid formalism where "in the Absolute everything is the same," the "Absolute as the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black" (16 - a stab at Schelling).

To get beyond Schelling's formal Absolute, "everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance [which Spinoza did], but equally as Subject" (17). "The Substance is, as Subject, pure, simple negativity" (18). In other words, Substance is a moment in the movement of Subject, and "the True is the whole" (20), or the incessant Substance/Subject movement. Some reject this view with horror, claiming that that which is mediated is false; but, Hegel claims, so long as we understand the work of Reason as mediating with "purposive activity" (22), it is not nightmarish at all. One must grasp the work of the negative from the point of view of system or Science (24); "the True is actual only as system" and it "is expressed in the representation of the Absolute as Spirit - the most sublime Notion and the one which belongs to the modern age and its religion" (25).

Spirit has to be worked for: "least of all will it be like the rapturous enthusiasm which, like a shot from a pistol, begins straight away with absolute knowledge" (27). This work is accomplished by the "tremendous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure 'I'" (32). "Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being" (32). In turn, in order for the negative, the I, to attain to Spirit, the I must give "up the fixity of its self-positing" (33) and see itself in an "organic whole" (34).

In 39-47, Hegel examines various conceptions of truth: "truth is not a minted coin that can be given and pocketed ready-made" (39). For dogmatism, the True "consists in a proposition which is a fixed result, or which is immediately known" (40). There are also historical truths and mathematical truths, neither of which is internal "to the thing" (43); "Philosophy, on the other hand, has to do, not with unessential determinations, but with a determination in so far as it is essential; its element and content is not the abstract or nonactual, but the actual, that which posits itself and it alive within itself - existence within its own Notion" (47). "The True is thus the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk; yet because each member collapses as soon as he drops out, the revel is just as much transparent and simple repose" (47). Hegel claims later, at the end of the preface, "we must hold to the conviction that it is the nature of truth to prevail when its time has come" (71).

Introduction

Through what instrument are we to "get hold of the Absolute"? (73) The usual notion of an instrument carries the presupposition that "the Absolute is supposed merely to be brought nearer to us through this instrument, without anything in it being altered" (73). This obviously is no good for Hegel.

The road that he will take is a "pathway of doubt, or more precisely,...the way of despair" (78). "This path is the conscious insight into the untruth of phenomenal knowledge, for which the supreme reality is what is in truth only the unrealized Notion" (78). Along this path, consciousness is educated (impt. of "Bildungsroman") and progress is "unhalting" (80); consciousness, when on this path, is essentially "something that goes beyond itself" (80).

Hegel ends the Introduction with a brief explanation of the logic of in-and-for-itself: "being-in-itself," he tells us, "is called truth" (82). Yet this in-itself of the thing only exists for us, and we come to think, like Kant, that "consciousness cannot, as it were get behind the object as it exists for consciousness so as to examine what the object is in itself" (85). "So consciousness now has two objects: one is the first in-itself, the second is the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself" (86). The True here ends up being the relation between the two, "the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself" (86), or perhaps, the co-emergence of appearance and essence.

How to begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed - Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss begins his discussion of the Guide by giving an outline of its contents. This outline is very useful as the principles governing the structure of the Guide is difficult to ascertain.

Strauss asserts early on that the first premise of the Guide is that being a Jew and being a philosopher are two incompatible things, which he claims is an old Jewish adage, where this adage appears, however, is far from clear.

Strauss explains that the purpose of the Guide is to explain the true science of the law, in particular to give the proper explanations of the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot. However, he notes that to give such explanations publically violates the Law. Therefore, he believes that Maimonides took pains to write esoterically.

However, Strauss stresses not all of the Guide is devoted to secret, non-public teachings. In fact, the teachings of the Guide are partly public and partly private. In any event, Strauss stresses that what Maimonides could mean by identifying the Account of the Beginning with physics and the Account of the Chariot with metaphysics is the secret par excellence of the Guide.

Strauss then, without addressing that secret, moves to a consideration of who the intended audience of the Guide could be. He concludes that "the addressee of the Guide is a man regarding whom it is still undecided whether he will be a genuine man of speculation or whether he will remain a follower of authority, if of Maimonides' authority. He stands at the point of the road where speculation branches off from acceptance of authority." The point on which this decision stands is, according to Strauss, the study of Natural Science because natural science upsets habit and traditional authority.

Strauss describes how in the Guide the exegesis of Biblical text stands in the place of the knowledge of the natural sciences that the addressee lacks. It provides the foundation from which to ascend to a consideration of the divine sciences, with the advantage, however, of not upsetting habit and tradition. It establishes what could be established through natural science, that God exists and that he is one. However, it seems to conflict with what is taught in natural sciences when it seems to attribute to God corporeality. Thus, Maimonides must show that, in fact, it does not indicate God's corporeality.

Strauss then discusses how Maimonides begins with incorporeality because he wants to rule out worship of other Gods. However, he maintains that Maimonides designs the Guide in order to obscure the different cognitive status between belief in God's unity and incorporeality on the one hand and belied in purposive creation on the other. The former is demonstrable, the later must be taken on authority. However, only the later can really forbid worship of other entities besides God.

Strauss also discusses how Maimonides introduces Reason in the guise of authority by interpreting the corporeal statements about God in the Bible metaphorically. Maimonides know that this must be so based on reason, but his typical addressee only accepts this based on authority.

In addition to the intended addressee of the Guide, there is also an atypical addressee. This addressee knows the philosophic issues involved in demonstrating God's incorporeality. He will also look more critically at Maimonides's interpretation of Biblical passages as well as notice contradictions in the Guide. Strauss then makes all sort of hints as to what to look for in Maimonides discussions of Biblical terms.

Strauss now begins to discuss particular subsections of the Guide:

First Subsection: Strauss claims that it is devoted to explanation of the two most important passages in the Bible that seem to imply incorporeality. While Strauss does this however he throws out tantalizing claims about how a corporeal view of God is connected to seeing God as Will instead of Intellect; additionally, that embedded in Maimonides exegesis is of the Bible are indications that he believes that Bible is implicated in Sabianism (idolatrous beliefs).

Second Subsection: Strauss believes that this subsection is riven with tensions between Maimonides interpretations so as to remove changability from God and his claims that God does act providentially for Israel's sake. Strauss then embarks on all sorts of textual and numerological speculations.
Strauss also claims that in the second sub-section Maimonides draws us to the differences between Biblical and post-Biblical teaching. Additionally, according to Strauss, Maimonides is indicating that Isaiah reached a higher intellectual level of knowledge of God than Maimonides. Progress is possible beyond Moses' prophecy, according to Strauss, because Moses' achievement reflects the limitations of Law as opposed to philosophical speculation. It is also possible to progress beyond Moses because Moses' teachings was given during the period of Sabianism. Consequently, it contains a political response to the need to eradicate Sabian worship, even while making allowances for Israel's inner Sabianism.

Maimonides also discusses the problems with Maimonides' claims that Moses' prophecy was entirely intellectual, that it was devoid of any hint of the imagination. The most important problem with this is that there are parables in the Torah, which are supposedly the result of the imagination. Metaphorical interpretation, then, presumes imagination. The absence of imagination entails literalism, which Maimonides obviously does not espouse.

Strauss then hints that all of these issues are wrapped up in the proper relationship between the Account of the Creation on the one hand, which is Mosaic, and the Account of the Chariot on the other, which is from Isaiah. Involved also in this relationship is the issue for free purposive creation and all that that entails.

This consideration also allows for the possibility of post-Biblical progression, through the Talmud to Maimonides himself. Through this progress there is a diminution of corporealism and an increase in asceticism. This progress is possible because of the spread of Monotheism in Christianity and Islam and of philosophy from Greece and Rome. However, the threat of internal Sabianism remains and Maimonides attempts to vanquish it through the Guide. He does this through allegorical interpretation and by subtly indicating the progress that occurs throughout the Bible.

After all of this Strauss returns to discuss the different divisions in the second sub-section.

He now turns to the third subsection. It deals with a number of issues. Chief among them is the relationship of forbidden knowledge to forbidden worship. Maimonides stresses the danger of overstepping the limitations of proper knowledge.

The fourth subsection: this serves as a transition from a consideration of God's incorporeality to his unity, which had been presupposed.

Fifth subsection: the first purely speculative or philosophic subsection. This subsection also assumes that God is one, however, based off of this assumption it draws many implications, including eliminating the predication of attributes to him. Strauss believes that Maimonides is trying to secretly indicate how radically different the philosophic notion of God's oneness is from the Biblical idea that God is One. It is only the idea of God as perfect, according to Strauss, that saves Maimonides from being entirely subversive. Many would think that this is Strauss being Straussian.

Sixth subsection: Maimonides discusses the divine names, which moves him into speculation again, or philosophy proper in the seventh subsection. According to Strauss, this subsection is meant to finish the task of this entire first part which is to move the reader from the creaky and insecure foundations of authority to a search for demonstrative knowledge, which will be the theme of the second part of the guide. This transition is indicated by Maimonides' movement from consideration of the views of the Islamic Kalam thinkers to those of Aristotle, from those that deny natural science to those that begin with natural science.

In the second part the ambiguity which will dominant Maimonides writings are whether God's will can be said to be identical with his intellect or whether will and intellect are exclusive possibilities. This issue will come to a head over the issue of the creation or eternality of the world. However, Maimonides does not explicitly decide between them, rather he vacillates between the two possibilities throughout. The biggest problem though is that the eternality of the world entails the rejection of the law. This motivates Maimonides to argue that Aristotle's view has not been demonstrated and is not even probable. Maimonides is less clear, however, about the acceptability and implications of Plato's view.


Strauss then discusses that Maimonides seem at the end to reduce all knowledge to that of natural science, foreclosing the possibility of the knowledge that we wanted most. Finally, Strauss himself closes with enigmatic phrases about perplexities and how they freeing.

Guide of the Perplexed - Maimonides (Rabbi Moses the son of Maimon)

Mention should be made at the outset that many have claimed that the Biblical 'quotes' at the heading of each part have much significance. I am going to try to keep this summary as pure exposition, so I will not discuss them. Additionally, as you might expect this text has been the subject of much commentary, like many of the texts, but more so because of its explicitly esoteric character. I am not going to go into all of that, I will try summarize the text as straightforwardly as possible and leave the rest to Strauss.

Epistle Dedicatory
The Guide is structured as a letter from Maimonides to one of his students who learnt with him in the past but is currently not with him. Maimonides recaps how the student came to him with some intellectual skills and a desire to engage with speculative issues. The student succeeded in his preliminary studies with Maimonides, so Maimonides began to offer him hints and indications of divine matters. The student was in a state of perplexity and Maimonides cautioned him to approach philosophical issues in an orderly manner. The student had to leave Maimonides before his education was complete so Maimonides has composed this Treatise for him to further his studies
Most commentators assume that there is no particular student that the Guide was composed for, or if there was then it was not composed only for him. Many claim that that the description of the student is meant to indicate who the direct message of the Guide is addressed to, thus allowing other readers to unlock the indirect messages that are hidden away. (Key conspiracy music)

Introduction to the First Part
Maimonides claims that the first purpose of the Guide is to explain ambiguous words and expressions in the Bible, identifying which terms should be understood equivocally, which ones derivatively, and which ones are amphibolous. He describes this task as the true Science of Law as distinguished from the Halakhic, or legalistic, study of the law. Moreover, the purpose of the treatise is to help the perplexed individual, one who believes in the Law or Torah and has also studied philosophy. This individual may be divided between his allegiance to what he believes scripture demands and what he thinks philosophy teaches. Maimonides wants to guide this perplexed individual and show him how to reconcile the two, thus allowing him to accept what he believes to be true and retain his commitment to religion.

The second purpose of the work is to explain difficult parables in the Bible. Particularly, this will focus on the Account of the Creation and the Account of the Chariot. The first thing to realize is that these are parables. Maimonides then shows how they fit with Neoplatonic/Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, respectively.

Maimonides stresses the delicacy with which these subjects must be taught. That is why they were indicated by parables in the Bible. Additionally, he maintains that no one knows all the great secretes that lie behind the major parables in the Bible. He illustrates this with a parable of his own about the different levels of people and the extent of the light which they are able to see. Moreover, he argues that even for one who understands it is difficult to put down what he comprehends into writing.

Maimonides proceeds to discuss the nature of metaphors more broadly. One should note that he is inconsistent in his valuation of the external meanings of metaphors, sometimes he says that they too have value, while at other times he seems to claim that they are valueless.

Also, parables found throughout Scripture are not all the same, sometimes each word is important, other times only some words are important and the others are just props.

Instruction with Respect to this Treatise
Maimonides stresses the very careful reading that is necessary in order to unlock the meaning of his text. Additionally, he exhorts his reader not to explain to anyone else what he had understood from the Guide, especially in the cases in which Maimonides differs from those Rabbis that preceded him. Maimonides explains that different readers will get different things from the Guide. He also stresses that he would not have set down his ideas in writing if not for the crisis that the Jews find themselves in at this time. One should not that this is a trope in Rabbinic writings, starting with the composition/anthologization of the Mishna (ca. 200 CE). There is a principle that the Oral Law, the Law not part of the written Torah, should remain Oral. However, everyone breaks this principle, but always notes that they are breaking the principle because of the needs of the time.

Introduction
Maimonides begins, again, by describing seven different causes that can account for contradictions in texts.
1) Because different opinions of different scholars are being cited
2) The author has rejected an opinion that he held earlier
3) Some non-literal interpretation is needed
4) One or both of the statements has been accepted only provisionally
5) Necessity of teaching
6) Errors by the author who did not realize that there was a concealed contradiction in two statements
7) Necessary concealment

Maimonides then describes which types of works include which causes of contradiction. He also claims that his work contains contradictions caused by the fifth and seventh reasons. (Key conspiracy music again)

Chapter 1
Maimonides begins his lexical task of explaining difficult words in scripture. It will become apparent that these are not arbitrary words. They are words which are used in the Bible to describe God as well as man's relationship to Him. Indeed, the first chapter explain the terms image and likeness, both used in the Bible to say that man is created in the image of God. In effect, Maimonides explains that they do not connate actual corporeal similarity. But rather, the fact that man has intellectual apprehension. Later Maimonides will, following Aristotle, equate God with thought thinking itself, thus drawing out the connection between Man and God. Despite say that God is though thinking itself, Maimonides will undercut this in many many other chapters in which he says that we cannot know what God is.

Chapter 2
Maimonides embarks on a seeming tangent in order to explain the Adam and Eve story. The reason why it is not a tangent is that in it he is responding to those who would claim that man only received the intellect because of his sin. The tree is, after all, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Maimonides obviously rejects this as he believes that man's intellectual nature was there from the start when God created him in His image. This much is clear, what Maimonides believes the tree did give Adam and Eve is up for debate, opinions ranging from morality to aesthetic preference.

Chapter 3
Maimonides explains the meaning of the terms figure and shape. Shape means corporeality and therefore is never used to describe God. Figure on the other hand can mean a number of things from actual figure to the true notion of a think grasped by the intellect. It is this term that is used in reference to God.

Chapter 4
Maimonides now discusses various terms relating to seeing. This is closely connected to the prior chapter because it ended with a quote about Moses 'seeing' God. But what could that mean, if God does not have a physical form? According to Maimonides, all these terms can be read non-literally to mean intellectual apprehension.

Chapter 5
This chapter is a bit of a reintroduction, but using some of the grammatical work that has been done in the past four chapters. Maimonides holds up the of figures of Aristotle and Moses as the proper models for how one should go about inquiry. Both of them, according to him, proceeded cautiously not trying to overstep what they could properly apprehend. Maimonides refers back to a verse in the Bible were Moses holds back from 'seeing' God. Because Moses refrained from 'seeing' God he was later rewarded with knowledge of God. This is contrasted with the behavior of the nobles of the people who looked at God directly; because they overstepped, their knowledge of God was corrupted and they conceived of him as corporeal.

Chapter 26
In this chapter Maimonides presents his overarching hermeneutical principle - that the Torah speaks in the language of men. This means, according to him, that the Bible speaks to the level of understanding of the general populace. In particular, the Bible says many things about God that are not necessarily true, but are said so that the general populace should understand what is necessary for them to understand. Specifically, first they must be taught that God exists. This done through language that seems to imply corporeality, because the masses cannot understand non-corporeal existence. In truth, Maimonides claims God is incorporeal and that all the verses that seem to ascribe a body or movement to Him should be interpreted metaphorically.

Chapter 31
Maimonides reflects on human knowledge. He argues that there are some things that everyone can know, some things that no can know and different levels of intellectual apprehension among different people. There also things which man very much would like to know, but cannot know with certainty.
Maimonides then quotes Alexander on the causes of disagreement, including love of domination and strife, difficulty of certain subjects, and ignorance of the individual. He then adds to those the baleful effects of habit and upbringing.

Chapter 32
Maimonides cautions against trying to attain certain demonstration in areas of knowledge that do not allow it. However, he argues that in those domains in which knowledge is possible one must seek it. This is an important point, because as we will see, Maimonides believes that that which can be demonstrated must be accepted and Scripture must be understood to conform with it. That which is not demonstrated does not demand assent and the plain meaning of scripture can be upheld.

Chapter 33
Maimonides explains the dangers involved in the study of the divine science. He links this to the reason that the Torah is written in the language of man. It allows for the non-elite to read it and receive benefit without being exposed to danger. It also, however, has a metaphorical content that can be accessed by the elite.

Chapter 34
Maimonides now discusses the causes that prevent individuals from learning the divine science
1) Difficulty of the subject matter
2) Insufficiency of the minds of all men when they are young
3) Length of the course in order to get to divine science, one must go through the physical sciences in order to learn what God is not
4) Natural aptitudes
5) Men are occupied with necessities of physical existence

Chapter 35
After having indicated what comprises the divine science and how difficult it is, Maimonides returns to re-stress what is necessary for everyone to know, whether they can understand it or whether they accept it on authority. Everyone must know God's incorporeality and God's incommensurability. Other areas, such as God attributes, creation, governance, providence, and prophecy are matters that are reserved for the elite in the divine science.

Chapter 36
In this chapter Maimonides discusses idolatry, which is called false worship in Rabbinic Hebrew. Maimonides entirely re-centers this idea on belief as opposed to action. Maimonides believes that all idolatry is worship of intermediaries that stand between man and God. What is problematic in this case is merely that the idolater gives an intermediary the prerogative that is reserved for God - worship. How much worse, Maimonides claims, is one who believes God to be different than He actually is. According to Maimonides, foreign belief, theological error, is worse than foreign worship. The prime example of theological error for Maimonides is belief in God's corporeality and this is why even the masses must be instructed with authority against it.

Chapter 37
Maimonides explains the various meaning of the word face. This word is important because Moses is described as having spoken to God face to face. In that context, according to Maimonides, face means presence and in the verse means that God spoke to Moses without intermediary. This term will be important later when Maimonides explains Moses' request to see God's face.

Chapter 38
This chapter also discusses a term that will be important in that later explanation. When Moses requests to see God's face, he is denied and shown His back instead. But what does that mean if God is incorporeal? Back can mean actual back, after, or following an example. In the context of Moses seeing God's back it means that which follows from God's will or the natural world, physics.

Chapter 50
In this chapter Maimonides begins his discussion of God's attributes, or lack thereof. He starts by discussing what true knowledge is, as opposed to mere utterance with the mouth. In effect, true knowledge is realizing all the implications of what one is saying. Consequently, Maimonides argues that in order to truly understand that God is incorporeal and is one, or lacks all composition, one must realize that God does not possess any essential attributes at all.

Chapter 51
In this chapter Maimonides sets up his discussion of attributes that will continue in the forthcoming chapters. He argues that there are two general division of attributes,: essential attributes, which are either tautologies or explanation, and superadded, or accidental, attributes.

Chapter 52
Maimonides expands on the two major divisions of attributes and shows why most of them cannot be applied to God and that those that due must be qualified. He identifies five categories of attributes and describes how appropriate they are in reference to God.
Essential Attributes are definitions. For example, man is a rational animal. According to Maimonides, these attributes cannot be predicated of God because there is nothing existent before God that he should be composed of a union of them.
Partial Essential Attributes are objectionable for the same reason as the first group, but additionally they point out that any articulated statement about God imputes composition in Him.
Accidental or Qualitative Attributes: these cannot be predicated of God because they too would imply composition in him. Maimonides claims that later he will demonstrate why God cannot be composite. This assumption is the background of this whole discussion.
Relational Attributes are more tricky than the previous attributes. They are not problematic because they imply multiplicity or change in the essence of the subject. At first Maimonides considers admitting them. However, he then argues that relationship is premised on some sort of equivalency between two subjects. But that is impossible between God and anything that exists in the world. Just as it is not possible to establish the equivalence between two created things like intellect and color, how much the more so is it impossible to establish an equivalence between a being that has necessary existence and those that have only possible existence. In the end though, Maimonides says that we can be lenient in regard to relationship, tolerating its predication of God despite the fact that it is not entirely correct.
Attributes of Action are attributes that one ascribes to God as result of his actions. These are acceptable as long as one is clear that these attributes are predicated solely because of the actions that God has performed and not because there actual exists in his essence multiplicity.

Chapter 53
Maimonides claims that those that came to believe that God possesses attributes were led to this conclusion for the same reason that those who believe that he is corporeal were, they followed the literal sense of scripture. In fact, in this case to Scripture was merely speaking in the language of man. It meant to assert perfections of God based on his actions, not to actually claim that God has attributes. Indeed, all of God's diverse actions proceed from one unified essence.

Chapter 54
Maimonides connects his foregoing account of God's attributes to the Biblical story of Moses' request to see God's face. This request is denied, but Moses is allowed to see God's back. What could this mean? According to Maimonides, Moses request to see God's face meant to understand God's essence. God denies this request because know one can know his essence. However, he allows Moses to know God's back or actions. That is why following his request God makes his thirteen attributes of mercy known to Moses. Maimonides stresses that it is not that God actually acts out of having these passions, rather it is just what we would label the motive for the actions if a man performed them. Additionally, Maimonides stresses that God made him aware of those divine actions that show proper governance.

Chapter 55
Maimonides returns to discuss why certain predicates must of necessity be negated in reference to God. Corporeality must be negated because it implies composition. Affections must be negated because they imply change. Privations must be negated of him because that would require predicating potentiality to him, which is connected to composition or worse yet matter. Commensurability must also be denied of him. Maimonides stresses that one must know natural science in order to fully understand these concepts and realize why they cannot be predicated of God.

Chapter 56
In this chapter Maimonides returns to the theme that in order for their to be any relation between two things there must be some sort of likeness posited between them. Since God is like no other thing, there can be no relation between him and other things. Additionally, Maimonides argues that even if one wants to acknowledge, wrongly, that God has essential attributes one must understand that these attributes are in no way like the similarly named attributes that are predicated of created beings.

Chapter 57
Maimonides, believing existence to be a predicate, argues that while other existents have existence superadded to their essence when they happen to exist, God's existence, because it is necessary, is part of his essence. The same holds true, according to Maimonides, to such descriptions as oneness. He then explains the difficulty of using language to discuss these issues. Language according to him often leads to errors.

Chapter 58
Maimonides now moves into a direct discussion of using negative attributes in reference to God. According to him, negative descriptions are more appropriate for God than positive descriptions. This is because positive attributes do not particularize objects, do not show it as entirely unique, rather they actually equate the object with other objects. This is important because, as we discussed earlier, God is not like anything else. Additionally, as we discussed earlier, positive attributes are bad because they imply some form of multiplicity.
Negative attributes are better because they conduct the mind towards what should be believed about God as well the limit of what can be known about God. According to Maimonides, many of the predications in the Bible are actually negative attributes. When the Bible says that God is a living God, it really means that he is not dead.
Thus, according to Maimonides the only attributes that should be ascribed to God are attributes of action and negative attributes.
Indeed, it is seriously possible that Maimonides does not think that we can have any knowledge of God whatsoever and that 'knowledge' of God consists of knowing that we do not know. He writes, "Glory then to Him who is such that when the intellects contemplate His essence, their apprehension turns to incapacity; and when they contemplate the proceedings of His actions from His will, their knowledge turns into ignorance; and when tongues aspire to magnify Him by means of attributive qualifications, all eloquence turns into weariness and incapacity!"

Chapter 59
Maimonides makes this more clear in this chapter when he discusses how individuals can have greater and lesser knowledge of God if we can only make negative statements about him. In effect, Maimonides claims that the more we negate of God the superior our knowledge of him is. This is paradoxical because negations express the fact that God is not like something we know. Thus the more that we know that we don't know, the more we know.

Chapter 60
In this Chapter Maimonides recaps much of what he has said regarding negative and positive attributes. Praising negative attributes because they tell us the only knowledge of God that we can have - what he is not like, and disparaging positive attributes because they ascribe humanly perfections to a Divine being. Towards the end, Maimonides seems to imply that even negative attributes are not really correct. They too have a hint of multiplicity in them, the multiplicity that is inherent in any act of predication.


Part II
Introduction to the Second Part
Maimonides begins the second part of the Guide by listing twenty-five premises that he has culled from the work of Aristotle and his followers that enable him to demonstrate that 1) God exists 2) that He does not have a body and 3) that He is one. He maintains that each of these premises can be demonstrated. He also grants one more premise that he believes is questionable but that he will provisionally accept for purposes of proving God existence - the eternity of the world. Maimonides sees granting this premise as making his job more difficult. If the world is not eternal, then it would have had to be created. If it was created then there must be a God. However, he wishes to demonstrate God's existence even if one were to maintain that the world is eternal.
The twenty-five premises, briefly, are as follows:
1) The existence of an infinite magnitude is impossible
2) The co-existence of an infinite number of finite magnitudes are impossible
3) The existence of an infinitely long series of causes and effects is impossible
4) There are four types of change a) generation and corruption of a substance b) growth and decay c) alteration d) local motion
5) Every change involves a transition for potentiality to actuality
6) Motion can be divided into two general categories, which each can be divided, in turn, into two more. Essential motion can be natural or violent. Accidental motion can be proper or as a part.
7) Everything changeable is divisible
8) All accidental motion must eventually cease
9) Any body that moves another body must itself be in motion when moving the other body
10) Anything that is said to be in a body must either a) subsists due to the body, like an accident, or b) cause the body to subsist, like a substantial form.
11) Some of the things that subsists due to the body are divisible as the body is divisible. Some of the things the cause a body to subsist are not divisible in any way.
12) Anything that is distributed through a body is finite because the body itself is finite
13) All motion save one type is discontinuous. Local motion, in particular circular motion, can be continuous.
14) All other forms of motion is based off of local motion
15) Time and Motion are correlative terms
16) Multiplicity can only exists among a) bodies, b) forces in bodies, or 3) causes and effects
17) Any motion must have an agent that caused the movement, this agent can be internal or external to the object moved
18) Everything that transitions from potentiality to actuality must have something besides itself that caused it to do so
19) Everything that has a cause possesses only possible existence - existence is not part of its essence
20) Necessary existence implies being uncaused
21) Any composite being is caused and thus only possesses potential existence
22) Every body is caused and possess accidents. Caused by matter and form and accompanied by the accidents of quantity, shape, and position
23) Everything that has potentiality, whose existence is only possible existence, will at some point not exist
24) Anything that has only potential existence must be necessarily endowed with matter
25) Compound substance is composed of matter and form. There must be an agent that caused the matter to be enformed with the form

The 26th premises that, as mentioned above, Is only admitted provisionally is that time and movement are eternal. Maimonides claims that Aristotle did not believe this premise to be demonstrated but only probable.

Chapter 1
In this chapter Maimonides runs through four major arguments for the existence, incorporeality, and unity of God. He then offers three follow-up arguments refuting God's corporeality and proving his unity.

The first argument is the argument for a first cause from the fact of motion. Maimonides ascends a chain of causes until he reaches the movement of the eternally moving outermost sphere. And then asks what the mover of that might be. He rules out a number of possibilities, including another body, an internal distributed force, and a internal indivisible force. He concludes that the mover of the outermost, eternally moving sphere must be a force not bounded by the sphere. He then concludes that this must be God who is incorporeal and one.

The second argument starts from the fact that one sees many objects which are both movers and moved as well as some objects which are only moved. Maimonides concludes from this that there must be an object which is only a mover.

The third argument centers on necessary and possible existence. Maimonides starts from the fact that things exists. Now there are three possibilities according to him. No existents have only possible existence. All existents have only possible existence. Some existents have possible existence and others have necessary existence.. The first possibility is ruled out because we see that existents do pass away, so at least some existents have possible existence. The second possibility is, according to Maimonides, impossible. Why this is so is hard to discern. It seems that what he is arguing is that if every existent had only possible existence then there would be something like a summative possibility for the entire universe to not exist. Since this is a possibility, it must at some point be an actuality. Maimonides believes that it in order for a possibility to be a possibility, it must given an infinite amount of time occur. Given that the world is eternal and that an infinite amount of time has passed, this summative possibility should have occurred. Once it would have occurred there would be nothing, and nothing in existence to make anything existed again. But we see that the universe does, in fact, exist. Therefore, the second possibility is impossible . Therefore, there must be some existents that have possible existence and some that have necessary existence. He then proceeds to show that that which has necessary existence cannot change, can have no multiplicity, cannot be a body, and thus must be one.

The fourth argument centers on the notions of actuality and potentiality. According to Maimonides, anything that moves from potentiality to actuality must have something else which is actual cause it to make that move. Thus, he sets out a chain of agents moving other agents from potentiality to actuality. At the end of this chain, since it cannot be infinite, lies a being that is always actual. Something that is always actual must posses necessary existence, be immaterial, and be one.

Maimonides then follows up with three less important arguments which refute that God is corporeal and prove his unity.

Chapter 2
Maimonides stresses that the existence, incorporeality, and unity of God can be proved whether one assumes that the world is eternal or created.
Maimonides argues that his purpose is not to do physics or metaphysics. Rather, his main purpose is to explain scripture, in particular the accounts of creation and of the chariot. It happens to be though that one needs to know these subjects in order to understand the accounts.

Chapter 19
Maimonides sets out his differences with Aristotle. Aristotle believes that the universe proceeds from God as a result of a eternal necessity. Maimonides believes that the world is created by God's will and thus is a manifestation of God's purpose. Maimonides wants to show in this chapter, by virtue of arguments approaching demonstration, that his view is correct.
Maimonides pushes the principle of sufficient reason. For every fact there must be a reason why it is one way and not the other. In effect, Maimonides aims to show that there is no rational reason why the heavens are laid out the way that they are. Aristotle cannot account for the same matter being arranged in different ways. This is especially troublesome because, according to Aristotle, the heavens are supposed to be the most uniform and orderly domain of existence.

Chapter 20
Maimonides now argues that the universe does not exist due to chance. He maintains that Aristotle would also agree with this. He then clarifies Aristotle's view that the universe proceeds from the First Cause as perfect thought proceeding necessarily from a perfect thinker.

Chapter 21
Maimonides agues against those who would try to bridge the gap between him and Aristotle. They argues that the world came to be through some eternal creating, the world has existed from eternity but it was created through purpose. Maimonides cuts off this attempted bridge by focusing on necessity. Either the world proceeds from God by necessity or not. According to Aristotle it does, according to Maimonides it does not.

Chapter 22
Maimonides presses some difficulties with Aristotle's account. First, he argues that Aristotle has no way of accounting for the emergence of diversity from the One. How can the eventual effect that necessarily comes from the First Cause be so different than the First Cause? Second, Maimonides exploits then recent developments in astronomy that showed that the heavens were not uniformly distributed. This shows, for Maimonides, that the universe is based on Will and Particularization as opposed to Eternal Necessity. In summary, Maimonides claims that Aristotle is the supreme and definitive philosopher when it comes to sub-lunar physics. However, he believes that Aristotle has not demonstrated his opinions regarding the Eternity and Necessity of the universe. Consequently, the two views must be compared, Creation and Will vs. Eternality and Necessity to see which one has more doubts.

Chapter 23
Maimonides stresses that when weighing opinions against each other one should not be blinded by habit and custom. One must work to free oneself from these traps. However, he also mentions, contradicting himself, that because of the harm that comes to the Law as a result of relinquishing the opinion that the world was created, one should not give up on this view unless its contrary is demonstrated.

Chapter 24
Maimonides returns to the problems that has been gripping his age in rationalizing the movements of the heavens. Interestingly, this debate in effect is one between empiricist astronomers and deductive philosophers. In any event, these problems serve to undercut Aristotle's claim to show that the set-up of the universe derives necessarily from a First Cause.

Chapter 25
Maimonides stresses that he does not reject the notion of the eternality of the world because of any text in the creation story. Just as he eradicated the corporeality of God through figurative interpretation, he could have done so for creation as well. There are two reasons why he has treated corporeality and creation differently. First, the impossibility of God being corporeal has, according to Maimonides, been demonstrated, the eternality of the world has not. The second reason is that the incorporeality of God does not undermine the Law, removing the notion of Will from God entirely undermines Law by making miracles and reward and punishment impossible.
Maimonides then discusses the view that he attributes to Plato, that God through an act of will formed the world out pre-existing matter. He believes that this view is acceptable because it maintains God's Will.
The crucial issue is will vs. necessity, creation and eternality are just issues that result from this opposition. Interestingly, Maimonides claims that once we affirm will we no longer have to inquire into God's reasons for anything, an event occurred or something was commanded merely because God willed it. If however we were to recognize necessity as opposed to will we would have to ask all sorts of questions regarding providence and the reasons for the commandments.

Part II
Chapter 25
After spending a number of chapters analyzing providence, Maimonides moves to a discussion of the reasons for the commandments. (The Straussian reading should be obvious from the end of the last paragraph) This discussion starts with a consideration of different types of actions divided up according to there ends. Maimonides identifies futile actions, frivolous actions, vain actions, and good and excellent actions. He discusses each and rules out all except for good and excellent actions for attribution to God. Good and excellent actions are those that are accomplished aiming at a noble end. Next, Maimonides argues that, while we cannot know God's overall purpose in creating the world (it seems that this is a corollary of it being a result of God's will instead of necessity), we can know the purposes of God's actions and commands within the world.

Chapter 26
Now Maimonides moves to consider God's commandments more directly. He notes that there are those who shy from attributing any reason to God's commands. Maimonides rejects there view. Instead, he believes that reasons can be given for all the laws, taken in their generality. The particular specifics of each law, however, may be the result of just having to decide on one way of doing things.

Chapter 27
Maimonides takes a step back and considers the general purposes of the Law taken as a whole. He claims that there are two perfections for humans, one higher than the other. The first perfection ensures bodily and social stability, it is the prevention of wrongdoing and enhancement of moral character. The satisfaction of this first perfection allows for the possibility of the second and higher perfection - intellectual perfection. This consists in having correct opinions and beliefs. According to Maimonides, the laws of the Torah work to effect both of these perfections.

Chapter 28
Maimonides focuses in on the role that the laws of the Torah play in teaching correct opinions. According to him, the law teaches two types of beliefs: those that are true and could be shown to be true through demonstration, even though the Torah does not demonstrate them, and those that are not strictly speaking true but that are necessary in order to ensure political stability. An example of the former is God's unity, while an example of the later is God's anger at those that sin. It is evident even from these examples, however, that sometimes the later conflict with the former. As Maimonides has shown in earlier parts of the God believing that God is affected by passions conflicts with a belief in his unity. Thus, there is a tension between the first perfections and the second perfections. This can be resolved by positing two different groups that are being spoken to, the masses and the elect.

Chapters 29 and 30
In this chapter Maimonides gives a historical background of idolatry that underlies the account of the reasons for the commandments that he will set out in the chapters that follow. In effect, Maimonides will explain certain commandments of the Torah that have resisted previous explanations as a response to certain idolatrous practices that were prevalent during the time that he believes the Torah was given. By describing the worship of these Sabians Maimonides attempts to make sense of certain laws of the Torah that had been traditionally ascribed merely to God's will. He explains them as outlawing certain practices that the Sabians used to engage in. This serves two goals, first it rationalize all of the commandments; second, it shows that the major concern of the Torah is to establish proper conceptions and worship of God by stamping out any traces of idolatry. This obviously connects with Maimonides view that the most important thing is to have proper beliefs about God.

Chapter 31
Maimonides now responds to those who deny that the commandments might have any reason at all. He charges them with having a disrespectful view of God. They believe that men should act with a view towards ends, but that God must act unintelligibly. Maimonides returns and restresses that all of the commandments have the end of either teaching necessary or true opinions, inculcating moral qualities , or political civic actions.

Chapter 32
Maimonides begins to explain the intentions of the law. The primary intention of the law, according to him, is to educate the people with correct beliefs about God. In order to accomplish this, however, God must take an indirect route. The laws of the Torah make allowance for human nature and recognize that people cannot abruptly change from what they are used to. This accounts for the continuation by the law of many idolatrous practices. For example, it does not make sense strictly speaking to offer sacrifices to Maimonides's God, he has no use for them. However, the Children of Israel at the time that the Torah was given lived in a culture when that was the way one worshiped deities. They would not be able to accept a purely contemplative relationship to God. Therefore, God made allowance for their weakness and permitted them sacrifices as they had been accustomed to, but switched the object of these sacrifices from many gods to one God. In bears mention that this was a very radical idea, one that many observant Jews still find difficult to accept, coming, in particular, from a master of Jewish Law who codified all of the laws, including those of sacrifices.

Chapter 33
Maimonides moves on now to discuss a number of the Law's other intentions, including, restraint of unnecessary desires, inculcating gentleness and docility, teaching sexual purity and sanctity, ensuring physical cleanliness.

Chapter 34
Maimonides explains that the focus of the law is not the individual as such, but the universal or communal. Indeed, the individual might be ill-served by the law, but that is no matter. The object of the law is the community.

Chapter 35
Maimonides now divides up the laws into fourteen classes. He will go into each class in the chapters that follow explaining how each law achieves its purpose.
1) Fundamental Opinions that are correct and those that are useful for belief in the law
2 )Laws that are aimed at eradicating idolatry and thus allowing for correct opinions to develop
3) Commandments that improve the moral qualities
4) Commandments that have social utility
5) Laws that prohibit wrongdoing and aggression
6) Laws that mandate punishments
7) Laws that regulate economic transactions
8) Laws that stipulate days of rest and holidays. The purpose of these commandments are to aid in teaching certain true or necessary beliefs and giving the body rest
9) Practices of worship that teach correct opinions
10) Commandments concerned with the sanctuary. These are connected, as discussed above, with focusing previously idolatrous worship on the one God.
11) Commandments concerned with ritual offerings. These too are connected with redirecting idolatrous impulses towards God.
12) Commandments concerning ritual purity. The purpose of these commandments are to heighten one's respect for the sanctuary.
13) Commandment that mandate dietary restrictions. The purpose of these commandments are to curb one's desires.
14) Commandments that prohibit certain sexual unions. These are commanded in order to ensure that sex does not become an end in-of-itself.

Chapter 51
The main focus of this chapter is a parable that Maimonides has written which symbolizes the various levels that one can attain in closeness to God. He describes a palace with a ruler in a special room in the center. He then describes concentric circles around the ruler and populates it with different types of individuals. The upshot is a hierarchy with those with the most perfect beliefs about God at the top, or in the center with God. Importantly, Maimonides makes the one has proper beliefs about God well superior to one who (merely?) observes the law. Maimonides concludes this chapter with advice to the aspiring young philosopher.

Meyrick Carre, Realists and Nominalists

It is very difficult to summarize a book of dense summaries. Hopefully this post is not too abbreviated to be helpful.

Preface: As it is at the very least unhistorical to jump from Greece to the Renaissance, Carre sets out to examine the investigations of 4 medieval thinkers on the status of general ideas, or universals. It is in this central debate of the medieval era that one finds the roots of modern ideas about reason and knowledge.

I. St. Augustine: 1) During a brief biography, Carre apologizes for Augustine's "lack of rigor" due to the fact that he belonged to an "intellectual period in decay." (?) In any event, Aug. is said to be unique in arguing that, even after one has faith, one must toil for understanding, which, if sought correctly, is a kind of eternal wisdom and not a temporal knowledge. It is through Aug. that Greek philosophy is united with Catholic theology.

2) Augustine understood the pursuit of wisdom as a path of ascent from the changeable to the unchangeable. Although he posits different conceptions of the stages of ascent in different texts, in all he is concerned with showing the progressive stability and goodness of each stage. We ultimately arrive at an absolute, timeless reality, provided we are not distracted by the world of impermanence.

3) To combat Pyrrhonic skepticism, Augustine grounded knowledge in two arguments: 1) Si fallor sum: even when we doubt, we are aware of ourselves as existing in a state of doubt. The mind knows itself immediately as incorporeal, outside of space and time; it knows itself indirectly through the senses. (We should remember from the Confessions that knowledge for Aug. is anamnesis, i.e. an uncovering of what is already there). 2) Even skepticism assumes the principle of non-contradiction, which we can take as evidence of the moral law within. Unlike the Greeks, Aug. is concerned with the law within and not so much the outside world. But it is crucial that the inside is not just a "subjective" realm; it is the truth, more so than knowledge gained from the senses. There is Scientia (empirical knowledge) and there is Sapentia (eternal wisdom, intelligibiles res); only the latter is necessary, immutable and real.

4) The (active) mind is a wholly different substance from the (passive) body. Though we immediately think of Descartes, Carre asks us to remember that Aug.'s view comes directly from the Neoplatonic view of the mind as vehicle of spiritual order, though the results are somewhat similar.

The question arises, if the body is completely passive, how do we sense? Aug. argues that when the body's movement is impeded, the mind feels unpleasantness, and vice versa. The total effect of the various ways in which the impingements upon the body appear to the mind is called sensation.

Another question: if sensations are made by the mind, how do we know they correspond to reality? Aug. doesn't worry about this dilemma, and says, rather interestingly, that "the question of objectivity does not arise in relation to sensibilia" (15). Only judgments, not sensations, can be true or false (a vaguely Heideggerian move...the world is there for us in a way such that it can't really be questioned).

Next, Aug. posits non-sensory perceptions that result from an interior sense more primary than the 5 senses. He gets very close to Kant when he talks about spatiality being implied in perception.

And finally, whence general ideas? They are not derived from particulars. The whole notion of Aristotelian abstraction is foreign to him, as it is not the body and physical world that act upon the mind, but the mind that acts upon the body and the world. General ideas are independent of sensible origin, come from above and are real. In scientia, we apply our reason, itself "in contact with the intelligible and immutable truth," to "handle and direct the inferior things" (18).

5) Although Aug. is often taken to disparage all questions of science, he maintains a limited respect for investigations into the natural order in so far as it is understood to be an external reflection of the immutable truth. Investigation for its own sake is nothing but vain curiosity.

One of Aug.'s more interesting ideas about nature is that of rationes seminales, seminal reasons. This concept is born from the contradiction in Genesis between "God created everything at once" and the clear temporal progression that is later described. Aug. says that God created everything at once in potentia, and that each creature evolves according to the "germs of life" appropriated to it. We cannot create anything new. At most, we can facilitate the development of new creation for which God is alone responsible.

6) Unmistakably, the intellectual cognition of eternal things is to be preferred to scientia. Augustine points to mathematics to evidence the existence of immutable forms. Though number is absolutely distinct from its empirical instantiation, mathematical propositions are formal characteristics of the perceived world. Ideas are not just intelligible systems standing over and against empirical reality but are necessary to properly understand it. Moreover, because our minds are feeble, the mutable in its imperfection aids us in our pursuit of the immutable. In art, for instance, we contemplate the natural world in its unchangeable aspect (number).

But perhaps it seems that moral wisdom and mathematics are different things. No, says Aug., for the existence of form, of truth and of beauty as formal characteristics of the world evidence a supreme form and an absolute knowledge.

Aug. often talks about the "light" by which the mind is illuminated. In some of his texts, the light is truth, beauty and goodness. The mind is understood here in its active sense. In others, the light is God, and the mind is passive. Together, the light metaphors teach that "the principles which guide experience are realities which the mind is led to accept" and at the same time "that the meaning of these realities is not finally to be appreciated by purely intellectual approach" (29).

7) For our purposes, Aug.'s key idea is that universal forms constitute the nature of things. Oh, and Aug. was very influential.

II. Peter Abaelard: 1) From Plato the idea was inherited that the criteria of the real include permanence, objectivity and coherence. The unities which underlie the world (logical principles and standards of perfection) are alone real. Carre explains the prevalence of realism in three ways: a) Since Augustine, realism had become associated with philosophy itself. b) Platonism fit very well with Christian doctrine. c) The dominance of social institutions over individuals fits with realism.

Then came Boethius, who introduced the world to Aristotle and wrote an important commentary on a Porphyry text that was itself a commentary on the Categories. Here the question of the status of universals was raised. For Aristotle, we find the truth by finding a thing's essence, what distinguished it as itself. This universal essence can only be defined in one way.

2) Boethius, explaining Aristotle, argued that universals a) are real features of sensible objects, b) are immaterial, having no existence apart from sensible things, and c) do not exist independently of bodies. His commentary raised no controversy for four centuries, until Roscelin of Compiegne (1050-1125) propounded a full-fledged nominalism: general ideas are merely names, and common nature is wholly subjective. Anselm responded that if one could not grasp the way in which many individual men were united in the real species man, one could not understand the trinity.

3) Brief biograhy of Abaelard, born in 1079. He changed careers many times, first dialectics, then theology, then a mix of both. He was always known for his ruthless methods of criticism. In a much anticipated debate with Bernard of Clairvaux, Abaelard was condemned to silence by the Pope. He died without having ever reached Rome to protest this decision.

4) Abaelard describes realism as the doctrine that says only universals are real, and that mere accidents differentiate species into particulars. Universals subsist naturally, but exist actually in physical expression. This real subsistence can only be apprehended by pure thought.

His criticism of extreme realism runs as follows: as particulars only differ with regard to their accidents, being one in substance, there is no real distinction between individuals; clear thinking becomes impossible. He charges realists with pantheism, as there cannot be for them an essential difference between divine and physical substance.

He then turns to less extreme versions, like William of Champeux's doctrine of indifference, which accepts a pluralist basis of knowledge: things that are distinct are the same not essentially but indifferently, in so far as they are not different. Abaelard says this theory tries to combine distinct and relative senses of the terms universal and particular and ends in a similar muddle.

Finally there is a third position which understands the universal as collectio, the real collection of things included within it. But this position is also confused: the universal is to the particular not as the whole is to the part.

The first part concludes: the cardinal point of realism is that particular instances are inessential features. Abaelard says no, the manifold variety of things is not an illusion. The difference between individuals cannot rest upon accidents.

5) Abaelard then turns to contemporary theories of universals, specifically Roscelin's extreme form of nominalism, which he rejects. His guiding question is: to what do universals refer? General terms cannot be merely words: man is the name given to individuals in virtue of an element which is common to many of them. But is that commonality part of the individual itself, in the mind, or both? Of course, no such entity man exists. Man is a status (a thing's nature in the order of things). He admits that there is some common nature in things that is then grouped together in the mind; Abaelard is thus something of a realist. But he expands upon this limited realism when he adds a third, intermediate layer to object and perceiver: the image. When we perceive a tower, we retain an image of it in our mind which is itself the object of thought, not the tower itself. A universal term is one that refers to a generalized, confused and composite image of a number of things (a position Berkeley would later come to refute).

6) Abaelard now turns to answer Porphyry's three questions: a) Are universals real entities existing independently of the mind? Yes, they refer to reality, but in a certain sense exist only for thought, as they embrace an abstract view of concrete things. b) Are universals material or immaterial? They refer to real discrete objects and are thus material but conceive of these real objects immaterially. c) Are universals found in sensible objects or apart from them? A universal term does not point to any sensible object but because they are elicited from them, they may be described as being in them. And then his own question d) Could universals exist without particulars? No. If that were the case, there would be no many to which a universal could refer.

Universals are neither words nor things but sermones, concepts. Universal man is not that to which individual men owe their being, but neither is it a mere word. The activity of thought isolates common features, which are are genuine aspects of objects perceived. The mind then breaks up the complex detail of the concrete and refashions it into objects of thought. Sense and thought cooperate in all experience; when the mind perceives, general ideas are already present. Abaelard follows Augustine in saying that Ideas are patterns in the divine mind, but his theory of knowledge is Aristotelian.

7) Abaelard is often described as a conceptualist, but Carre tells us that this title does not suit him. Conceptualism states that the common element of a universal is abstracted arbitrarily, but Abaelard clearly admits a minimum of realism and does not believe that universals can be pure inventions of the mind. In fact, Abaelard is an early expression of the moderate realism developed later by Aquinas.

III. St. Thomas Aquinas: 1) In the 12th century, the west was introduced to the works of Aristotle through Avicenna and Averroes. Aquinas, who rejected both the Neoplatonism of Bonaventure on the one hand and Averroes/Avicenna on the other, melded Aristotle and Christianity with "Euclidean clarity."

2) Unless we understand Aquinas' philosophy of being, it is impossible to make sense of his epistemology. Following Aristotle, reality is absolute and unchanging. It is an end, to which all aspects of the universe point teleologically. Everything in existence is both potentia, in a state of imperfection that points to something higher, and act, or completion/stability/perfection. The more self-determined a thing is, the more it is pure act.

Potency and act are co-dependent. Matter is a passive potency, and form is the realization of matter in definite structures (act). Similarly, body is a passive potency dependent upon the act of mind. All things are related through potency and act. For instance, bricks may be potency in relation to the house they comprise, but are act when viewed from the perspective of the making of the brick. Growth, ethics and aesthetics are ideas that only make sense when we understand the relation of act and potency.

The essence of an object, a universal, is that in virtue of which it is what it is. But we may know the essence of something without it being something that exists. Existence is the concrete form that essence takes, and is thus act in relation to essence's potency.

ACT POTENCY
completion incompletion
self-determination dependence
form matter
mind body
existence essence
house brick
brick clay
knowledge ignorance

3) Aquinas wants to show that objects of knowledge are material and not simply psychic entities, but also that an identity of subject and object is fundamental to experience. External objects must be shown to unite with the mind without changing their nature.

There are two ways a thing can change under the influence of form: 1) through "natural change," where form is physically transferred (for instance, when we touch something hot) and 2) through "mental change" (for instance, when we perceive the color of a thing without it changing the color of our eye). Here the mind reaches out to the object and renders it communicable in terms of likeness. Knowledge consists in the degree to which that likeness represents the object (exact opp. of Kant). The more intimately an object is known, the more it is one with the knower. The object is thus different from the subject but also a phase of its self-actualization.

4) Like Augustine, Aquinas holds that mind is incorporeal and wholly different from the body. But contra Augustine, he does not think the pure mind functions in experience. Man's mind is a mix of pure mind and body. Mind is in fact manifested at all levels of nature and finds its expression in varying degrees. The mind cannot function without its material expression, through which it comes closer to itself in act (sounds like Hegel). The mind is thus not related to the body as a pilot is to a ship; the body is a key component of knowledge because sensation is its root. Man's body and organs have very much to do with his essence.

Aquinas asserts that Plato's conception of the Ideas as creative substances is inadmissible in Christianity. But we can admit Aug.'s revision of Plato (divine Ideas) by saying that the human mind knows all things through eternal reasons because all intelligent experience is derived from God. But we have to add that there is only intelligible content to knowledge because of sensible experience. The body is not a hindrance to the mind. Only through it can the human mind gain knowledge.

5) Though the human mind has many potencies, mind is in essence act and thus constitutes a unity. Perception requires a general sensibility that is made explicit in knowledge. Sensation is the realization, or act, of the sense-organ; sensory elements are secondary. Thus, we know objects directly, and their signs indirectly. For instance, we know the hammer directly. That it has certain features we know only in reflection: "sensible images enter into consciousness when they are stripped of their sensibility" (Heidegger?).

Undeniably, there are two orders discovered in knowledge, that of thought and perception. But if the two are divided from each other, knowledge becomes impossible. Carre explains, quite succinctly, that "universality is indeed the characteristic of thought, but the objects of thought need not exist as universals" (85).

6) The active intellect (not part of the divine mind, contra Aug.) is uniquely human: its function is to make general, and thus intelligible, sensory particulars. Aquinas compares the active intellect to a light, which illuminates external reality and makes it understandable. Without its work of abstraction, we would not be able to know any particularity. The species which is abstracted serves as an "ideal intermediary which unites object and subject in an act of consciousness." The species is thus not an object but a means of thinking. Knowledge is concerned directly with reality, but it can grasp that reality only be freeing the intelligible form implicit in the particular. Truth is the conformity of the mind with the form pervading the object as mediated by the species.

7) Carre turns to an important section of the Summa where Aquinas differentiates his position from sensationalism on the one hand and Augustinian idealism on the other. There are three views on the matter of knowledge: a) Democritus: all knowledge can be reduced to impressions of sensible entities on the mind. b) Plato: thought is an immaterial power distinct from sensation, and it alone is the foundation of knowledge. c) Aristotle: a third way - sensation is not an activity of the mind alone but a complex of mind-body. Thought depends on sensation, but images themselves cannot affect the mind. They only become intelligible with the aid of the active intellect. This final position is also Aquinas's.

8) Though his interest in scientific matters was meagre, Aquinas refuted those who wished to attribute the cause of everything to God and belittle the role of natural causation. If God alone causes everything, then we would not see the effects that we do in nature. This is not to say that God is not present in the work: he is like a craftsmen with his tools. Nature is Gods instrument. Aquinas was fighting a resurgence of a Manichaen worldview that deemed matter evil. Divine goodness is the goal of all material things.

9) In sum, the progress of thought is the effort to realize the ideal unity which is the common ground of mind and objects. The mind apprehends universals, which are found in the particular and never apart from it, directly, and particulars indirectly. Because the active intellect makes sensory data intelligible by means of these universals, we cannot attain the essence of things directly, for we are dependent on perception, which compels our thought to be discursive. The modes of thought by which the mind understands the world are different from the mode of being in which nature itself exists.

IV. William of Ockham: 1) Nominalism was a sign of the disintegration of medieval philosophy. Its exposition by William of Ockham was seen as unorthodox and dangerous, and this led him into an intensely polemical life. He succumbed to the plague in 1349.

2) Aquinas died in 1274, and the remainder of the century was spent debating his ideas. A reactionary Augustinian movement broke out, and Ockham was born into this polemic. He was also the heir to Peter Abaelard and Petrus Hispanus, from whom he took the basic idea that the generality in our thinking is essentially subjective.

3) Ockham is most well-known for his razor, a rule of economy which was directed primarily against realism. For Ockham, universals are convenient mental fictions. He argues that if the universal "humanity" were indeed an entity distinct from a particular individual and at the same time part of its essence, it would be in a number of different places at the same time and thus be contradictory.

His own theory of knowledge runs something like this: the basis of all experience is intuition. Intuited knowledge is clear and certain, as opposed to abstract knowledge, which is by comparison doubtful and confused. Only intuition, a combination of sensory and intellectual factors, can produce an object, and it alone is reliable. We know reality directly, not through an intermediary like species intelligibilis.

Strangely, Ockham follows Augustine in saying that the knowledge we gain from our inner senses is more immediate than that of the outer senses, thus introducing some hesitation about his proposed certainty of the knowledge of objects. Ockham expands the category of empiricism to include many rationalist elements.

4) Ockham rejected extreme nominalism; for him, there is some kind of reality attached to general notions. Universals have a logical status of existence. A few different concepts are needed to understand his view of universals: first, he classifies the contents of thought under the heading of first and second intentions. First intentions are primary experiences, direct intuitions of things. Second intentions are signs of first intentions. He then introduces another concept, the suppositio, or substitutions, of which there are three: a) material: grammatical symbols (nouns, adjectives, etc.), b) personal: man for particular man, c) simple: man in general, refers only to concepts, not realities. Ockham is here distinguishing between real and logical meaning, between assertions about forms of discourse and assertions about things. Knowledge of reality is of a different order than logical knowledge.

Universals, then, are second intentions of the simple order. They refer to terms, not things. All previous difficulties with universals spring from the confused attempt to make them both singular and plural at the same time.

Ockham's challenge to theology is significant: for him, it is absurd to think, with Aug., that Ideas are things in the divine mind. Ockham would later come to change his view, saying that universals are not logical content formed by the mind but qualities of the mind itself.

5) Ockham's revolution can be summarized quite succinctly: existence is composed of individual items in various relations. No universal essences are required to be expressed in order for matter to become individual.

6) The relation between the provinces of faith and reason has always been a problem. Ockham denied that any of the central beliefs of of religion can be logically demonstrated. Conclusive philosophical knowledge of God cannot be attained. Scholasticism, which was inspired by the belief in the rational unity of philosophy and theology, was ruined.

7) The successors of Ockham, mainly British (Locke, Berkeley, etc.), developed his sceptical treatment of knowledge. Realism influenced Descartes and the rationalists. The end.

After God

Mark C. Taylor, 2008

Chapter One: Theorizing Religion
This book is set against what some have termed the “fourth Great Awakening.” After years of theorizing the end of religion and the advent of a new, secular world, it has become apparent that the world is growing more religious, not less. Why, Mark asks, is that?

In essence, he argues, it’s because neither critics nor supporters (neo-foundationalists) realize that secularity is an essentially religious phenomenon, with roots tracing back to the Protestant revolution of the 16th century. Likewise, neither side has an adequately broad definition of religion to allow them to see the full extent of its presence in the contemporary world.

To counter this, Mark offers his own definition of religion:
“Religion is an emergent, complex, adaptive network of symbols, myths, and rituals that, on the one hand, figure schemata of feeling, thinking, and acting in ways that lend life meaning and purpose, and, on the other, disrupt, dislocate, and disfigure every stabilizing structure.”

He then proceeds to analyze the ways in which his project of offering a definition of religion run counter to the prevailing intellectual trends of the past several decades. The main problem is the backlash against structuralism. He cites Eliade and his study of cosmogonic myths as the paradigmatic example of structuralism. In the Sacred and the Profane, Eliade attempted to trace universal, structural features that defined “the religious experience,” much in the way James attempted to do so by differentiating between the healthy-minded homo religiosus, who sees all events as a call for affirmation, and the sick soul, who sees the world as fundamentally evil and alienating. Likewise, Mark groups Tillich with the these two other ways of being religious, arguing that his distinction between “the ontological type of philosophy of religion,” which proceeds “from the thought to the being of God,” and the “cosmological version,” which follows the effect, or created world, back to its source in God, serve similar functions. In the first way, man discovers himself when meeting God, whereas in the second, God remains something fundamentally alien to man.

Mark collapses all of these distinctions into that between monism and dualism. James’s healthy soul and Tillich’s ontological version of philosophy are types of monism, whereas James’s sick soul and Tillich’s cosmological argument belong to a fundamentally dualistic worldview.

Mark clearly remains very sympathetic to the structuralist project, thinking the distinction between the sick and healthy minded souls are useful, if ultimately inadequate, tools for organizing our understanding of the various symbols in religious traditions. However, he also admits that such sympathies have long been in question by post-structuralists, who believe, for a variety of political and philosophical reasons that we know quite well, that the structuralist project is a fundamentally violent one, embedded in colonialist roots and indifferent to the lived reality of other, non Judeo-Christian traditions.

After God, then, is an effort to move beyond the impasse between structuralists and post-structuralists, as well as the division between monism and dualisms. Instead, the book attempts to conceptualize religion as the virtual field upon which all of these possibilities plays out. After God, in short, is Mark’s affair with the meta-narrative.

Chapter Two: The Protestant Revolution
However, in order to have an adequate grasp of the concepts at stake, mct next turns to the origin of modernity and our concepts of secularity, arguing that “modernity is a theological invention.” While acknowledging that modernity is a term so contested as to be almost meaningless, mct nevertheless claims that all definitions share a common belief in self-reflexivity. “To be modern, it is necessary to regard oneself as different from others who have gone before.” Modernity is about rupture.

The source of this rupture can be traced back to Luther’s turn to the subject and formulation of the divided soul, the paradox of man being “simul iustus et peccator” - simultaneously sinner and justified. Much of the analysis given is biographical information covered in Oberman’s book, but mct also gives a better sense of the influence of nominalism and Ockham. For years after the crusades brought Aristotle back to christendom, the rationalism of Aquinas dominated Christian theology. Already in Aquinas, mct sees the roots of secularism, arguing that “the Thomistic synthesis points in two opposite directions: on the one hand the natural domain is understood as distinct from but subordinate to the supernatural, and on the other hand, the natural realm in all of its manifestations is characterized by an autonomy that eventually leads to its independence from the supernatural” (51). While the Thomistic system provided meaning and stability in the High Middle ages, the late Middle Ages, marked by the Black Death and the instability of shifting social orders, no longer found it as persuasive.

Within this context, nominalism developed. While thomism stressed knowledge of God above all else and argued that God only willed what was reasonable, nominalism posited God as omnipotent will, and absolutely free. The world existed from moment to moment by God’s will, and thus was radically contingent. There was no guarantee that the cosmic order would remain stable, since God could always undo what was done.
This led to an empirical epistemology, claiming that the individual was the only thing that could be known, though all worldly knowledge was provisional, grounded as it is in the abyss of God’s will. As an extension of the provisional nature of knowledge, a new understanding of language develops, one where words are detached from things, leaving us in a ‘linguistic labyrinth’ where signs point only to other signs.

For obvious reasons, this emphasis on empiricism created the conditions for modern science. More than that, nominalism both reflected and created the sense of prevailing anxiety of Luther’s age. Luther, like many medievals, was plagued with a sense of terrible anxiety about the (im)possibility and necessity of fulfilling God’s laws. After years of torment, Luther was struck by a revelation while reading a passage of Paul in Romans 1:17 about justification by grace. He then realized that God had the power to bestow righteousness on men, without this erasing their fundamental sinfulness. Thus the protestant believer confesses, I am what I am not.

More than that, the influence of Luther also continues to the present regarding the way it replaced the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church with the decentralized, lateralized community of believers. His doctrine of a calling, the idea that all vocations, not just religious, were responses to the will of God collapsed the sacred into the profane. However, though in this respect Luther foreshadowed developments of network culture, in other respects, his hatred of money and apparent dualistic rejection of the world seem contrary to the developments of the modern world.

In those respects, Calvin was much more influential on modernity than Luther. Calvin offered a way of rationalizing belief that would provide guidance to countless Christians. As Weber noted, the belief that worldly success proved once status as saved - though not necessarily advocated by Calvin himself - in combination with Luther’s doctrine of vocation, led to a development of inner asceticism that proved essential for the development of capitalism. Most importantly, though, Calvin declared usury acceptable, almost single-handedly leading to a new conception of commerce, where money/signs can make money/signs. In this, one can see the influence of Ockham, where signs referred to signs.

Ultimately, Mark claims the real difference between Calvin and Luther came down to the way in which they conceptualized the relation between signs and signifiers. When Luther claimed that Christ was present in the eucharist, he was embedded in a medieval paradigm, where signs still referred to things, whereas when Calvin claimed the eucharist was symbolic, it was another instance of signs referring to signs.

Finally, mct ends with a discussion of the more general trends that accompanied the Protestant revolution: literacy climbs with the emphasis on each reading the scripture, mass communication spreads, and in Catholic countries where literacy is suppressed, industrialization is delayed.

Chapter 3: Subjectivity and Modernity
Chapter three begins with a discussion of the relation between revolution and modernity. Luther’s divided subject eventually became the autonomous modern subject. Coupled with the decentralization of power implicit in the priesthood of all believers, these theological results of the Protestant revolution primed Western culture for the French and American political revolutions, and democracy more generally.

The links between the American revolution and theology are perhaps more obvious. America began with the religious projects of the Puritans. Operating within Ockham’s distinction between potentia absoluta (God’s capacity to do anything) and potentia ordinata (God’s freely chosen decision to limit his power to allow a space for human action), the Puritans conceived of themselves as actualizing the “city upon the hill,” becoming a guide for all nations. Thus, the origins of American exceptionalism. These origins in utopian individualism made Americans generally wary of government; they acknowledged its necessity, due to man’s sinful nature, but nonetheless maintained a “nearly messianic belief in the benefits of liberty,” whose influence on the revolution is obvious (89).

In addition, the refusal of Church authority led Americans to place extreme importance on the literal truth of the scriptures. Yet in contrast to this extreme, rigid religiosity, there was also a strong strain of deism among the founding fathers, which mct traces back to the influence of Newton. Newton considered his scientific efforts to be supportive of Protestant Christianity; natural laws, he claimed, were imposed upon inert matter by a transcendent creator God. Such laws show the orderly nature of the world, but in no way undercut the free will of God who could nonetheless have willed otherwise.

This notion of a rationally ordered world was picked up by Locke and other deists. Locke defined the course of much later philosophy by developing 2 principles:
1. “Interpretive schemata emerge from but do not act back upon sense data.
2. “Complex ideas and systems can always be reduced to the simple units from which they are constituted.”
Locke attempted to synthesize religion with rationality, but his efforts were quickly overshadowed by other interpreters who offered entirely rational versions of religion, at the expense of revelation.

In contrast to all of these trends that led to the American Revolution, the French Revolution stemmed from a much more radical relation to religion. Oppressed by the power of the Catholic Church, the French became much more militantly atheistic, making their revolution and subsequent notion of secularism “inseparable from the negation of Christianity” (98). Ironically, though, the French constitution essentially substituted the nation for the Church, so far as power structures go. French society, then, remained rigidly hierarchical.

Next, mct turns to the relation between the French Revolution and the Kantian subject. Mct makes the claim that Kantian autonomy is inseparable from what he terms “an-archy,” literally “without beginning.” “Autonomy presupposes an-archy, which is the nonfoundational foundation or groundless ground of the law that the self-legislating subject gives to itself” (102). The Kantian subject is a moment of revolution for mct. Whereas his predecessors had conceived of universality as something internally imposed, and the relationships between heteronomy and autonomy as oppositional, Kant internalized all of those dualities, making the universal internally legislated. Recognizing the tension between these dualities, Kant develops a notion of “inner teleology” in his Third Critique, a ‘purposiveness without purpose,’ in which means an ends are reciprocally related in such a way that each becomes itself in and through the other and neither can be itself apart from itself” (109). This is the moment in which Kant discovers “the principle of constitutive relationality, in which identity is differential rather than oppositional” (110). In short, identity involves an excess which always escapes identity; identity is predicated on the other which can not be wholly incorporated.

Kant’s successors realized that inner teleology was most evident in the self-reflexive structure of self-consciousness. The subject in self-consciousness turns back on itself, becoming an object for itself through self-representation. Coming into presence (Darstellung) is predicated upon representation (Vorstellung). Specifically, mct sees this in Hegel. In Hegel, the will can only be itself through its particular instantiations; put otherwise, the universal will id “in itself” particular (117). Thus, Spirit is inescapably active and restless, and the subject can only be itself by being other.

Heidegger simply brings to fruition this train by refusing to close the loop of self-reflexivity. Heidegger locates this obscurity in the inescapable temporality of the subject. The product of a past that is never accessible to itself as a modality of the present, the subject remains adrift, incapable of accessing an inescapably open future. The past that never was returns as the future that never will be.

All of this works its ways back to the absence of the Lutheran and Calvinist God. Deus absconditus becomes subjectus absconditus; the radical alterity of the absent/transcendent God is internalized. And so we are left with the radically incomplete, open subject, who desires desire, and strives restlessly in he spirit of ceaseless creativity.

Chapter Four: Religious Secularity
Chapter four opens with an analysis of the paradigmatic theory of secularization, Peter Berger’s in The Sacred Canopy. The gist of it echoes what mct said earlier; secularization is supposed to accompany modernization. However, despite its supposed roots in a disenchanted world, such an analysis is predicated on religious notions of teleology, insofar as it posits the secularized society as its goal; it’s also normative, as it considers secularization a mark of progress, and considers the return of religion as a form of regression.

This is not a coincidence, and much of the chapter (and the book) centers around the idea that secularity and religion are co-emergent and co-dependent. Yet to speak of secularism is incorrect; rather, one should speak of secularisms. mct identifies two basics ways of the world becoming secular. First, God can become so transcendent as to be absent, or, second, religion can become so immanent as to be invisible.

The first form of secularity is unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Whereas in old, polytheistic traditions, divinity was largely immanent, Judaism broke from that tradition by appropriating the transcendent creator God as its God and the only God. With this God came creativity as we know. In the polytheistic paradigm, life was meaningful because it conformed to the patterns of mythical narratives, which, in turn, echoed the rhythm in the seasons. Yet, ultimately, this left no room for creativity, which is only possible with a Judaic God characterized as creator and origin of the world. So too does Judaism introduce the notion of contingency; only with a created world is it possible to conceive of the world as contingent. Finally, Exodus, with its narrative of bondage, desert, and Promised land, offers the first example of the tripartite conception of history that will come to characterize many versions of history, both medieval Christian narratives, and our own contemporary division between ancient, modern, and postmodern.

Once the transcendent God arrives, a series of dualisms take shape:
God/world
One/many
History/nature
Revelation/reason
Inward/outward
Chosen/not chosen
Faithful/infidel
Here we see a familiar narrative forming. The transcendent God gives universal laws that gradually become more and more autonomous, particularly as religious strictures evolved forbidding representation of God. Eventually God becomes so remote that it can no longer be conceived or represented, throwing the human mind back on its own power to abstract and represent.

In contrast to Judaism, Christianity represents, however problematically, a new immanence. Problematically, because it claims to be heir to the Judaic God of transcendence, leading to centuries of disputes about how to reconcile the claim of Christ’s divinity with the unity of God. This problem arises largely because difference and unity are conceived of as mutually exclusive at the time.

The most significant attempt to formulate a doctrine of the trinity comes with Council of Nicea in 325 AD. The council was intended to mediate between the left-wing Origenists, who claimed the Son was subordinate to the father, and the right-wing Origenists who claimed the two were identical and equal. The right-wing Origenists were technically called modalistic monarchists, because they argued that the Father and the Son were modes of the same God. However, their opponents nicknamed them patripassionists, because the logical consequence of their stance was that God the Father must have suffered when the Son was crucified.

The major left-wing Origenist, Arius, thought this a blasphemous claim, as it contradicted the notion that God was immutable. Instead, he essentially denied the incarnation. In turn, he was attacked by Alexander and Athanius, who believed that to deny the divinity of Christ and the Incarnation was to deny the possibility of salvation. It’s interesting to think that Christianity wasn’t always primarily soteriological.

Despite tentative political compromises- the claim that God is three in one - this is never really solved, because the terms of the debate, which conceptualize plurality and identity as opposites preclude the possibility of a resolution. It’s not until Hegel appropriates the trinitarian structure as the dynamic structure of all reality, and theorizes the dialectic that allows one to understand identity and difference as continuous (see above), that the trinitarian debates can truly be resolved.

Hegel’s right-wing followers appropriate Hegel’s system to defend traditional Protestantism. In contrast, the left-wing followers believe Hegel has just proved that belief and practice are epiphenomenal. Consequently, all religious experience can be understood as manifesting and responding to social and economic practices, among others.

Hegel’s absolute knowledge leads to the hermeneutics of suspicion, because it implies that reason itself has a history. If reason evolves, than our notion of things such as beauty and truth are contingent, not universal absolutes. Applied to the bible, this leads to an acceleration of biblical criticism. Secondary biblical criticism existed for centuries before Hegel, of course, but followers of Hegel used his work to conclude that the Bible was wholly historical and that religion ought to be replaced by reason.

In essence, Hegel is the source of many of the phenomena mention in chapter one. Origins become more important; the hermeneutics of suspicion invoke the difference, in some form or another, between superstructure and infrastructure, which turn out to be secularized versions of the difference between the Forms and their shadows that we see in Plato.