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The Logic of Incarnation: Hegel’s Use of Plato’s Philebus in the Shorter Logic and in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion



Author(s)

Chrysantho Sholl Figueiredo

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2016.10.001

Hegel uses Plato’s classical text, Philebus, in two of his most important texts, the so called Shorter Logics, the first part of the famous Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences and in The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The aim of this article is to analyze how can this two references be read together as to form a relationship between logic and religion in the very heart of Hegelian philosophy. In the first case, Hegel analyzes Plato’s text within the context of his Doctrine of Being, specially from §§ 89 to 95, which deal with the question of determinate being. In The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, on the other hand, the reference appears in the 1824 Lectures in a particularly complex chapter called “The Transition to the Speculative Standpoint of Religion,” in which Hegel affirms not only that such a speculative standpoint is the only one in which religion can be truly grasped, but also that the Christian concept of “incarnation of God” is the “speculative midpoint” of religion. It will be argued, therefore, that the ontological question of determination and actuality, as exposed in the Shorter Logics, is fundamental to the metaphysics of Christian Religion as Hegel understands it not only in his Philosophy of Religion, but arguably in his whole philosophy.

Hegel, Logic, Philosophy of Religion, Greek Philosophy, Plato, Christianity, Incarnation of God