[...] This connection between freedom and love will come as a surprise to some of the self-described admirers of freedom. But it’s easy enough to see in everyday life that people who think of themselves as having ‘enemies’ seldom manage to be very free, internally. Plato and Hegel aren’t saying that we must agree with others about everything, or endorse everything that they do. Rather, they’re saying that we need to be able to see something in others that we can identify with, so as not to be confronted by something completely alien, which will define us (always) by this relationship rather than by ourselves. This intimate connection between inner freedom and love must also operate, obviously, on the level of God. The God who is fully self-determining because he (she, it) isn’t defined by ‘not being’ anything else, is intimately involved in every living thing, as its capacity for self-determination. Hegel describes this involvement as “free love and boundless blessedness,” just because of its universal inclusiveness. Thus Hegel’s God exhibits the combination of justice and nurturing love that we see in the more inspiring documents of the Abrahamic religions. Justice, because all are included, and love for the same reason. https://philosophynow.org/issues/86/Hegels_God
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 19:54:13 +0000