Hegel and Ancient Philosophy: A Re-Examination, ed. Glenn A. Magee (New York: Routledge, 2018): 186-202., 2018
In Metaphysics Lambda, Aristotle describes god as a simple, unchanging being whose ousia is energ... more In Metaphysics Lambda, Aristotle describes god as a simple, unchanging being whose ousia is energeia, a motionless source of all motion, a self-enclosed thinking of thinking. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, however, Hegel proceeds to import change, potentiality and movement into Aristotle’s god, thus seemingly transforming it into a precursor of Hegelian Absolute Spirit. This interpretation has been attacked from all quarters, beginning with Schelling’s remark that Hegel’s divinity is a God that has no Sabbath.
In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s interpretation cannot be judged (and certainly not condemned) solely on grounds of philological inaccuracy or because it purportedly represents an anachronistic assimilation of Aristotle into the categories of Hegelian thought. It must be judged on how well it can illuminate what Aristotle meant by saying that “Life belongs it [God] too, for the energeia of nous is life” (Λ, 7, 1072b26-27).
For Hegel, I will show, the whole account of god in Metaphysics Λ, 7-9 essentially turns on this identification of divinity with thought and life. In the Science of Logic, the structure of life (and of essential being) is contradiction. If God is alive, for Hegel that means he necessarily shares in the contradictory structure of living beings, and specifically of conscious beings. Therefore, Aristotle’s description of the simple self-identity of the divine, and of divine thinking, must be understood dialectically. Is this a completely alien imposition on Aristotle? In fact, it is not, because Hegel’s explication of the structure of Lebendigkeit does enable us to understand Aristotle’s account (in the Metaphysics and the De Anima) on its own terms. Specifically, Hegel helps us see why the impetus of Aristotle’s whole inquiry into “being qua being” requires that divine being, above all, must partake of the internally complex nature of life and consciousness.
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While Rosen undertakes a close examination of Heidegger’s engagement with Plato, exposing some ways in which that engagement constitutes a misreading, the goals of his study are not exclusively critical. In arguing against the claim that Plato stands at the beginning of Western metaphysical history which culminates in late modern nihilism, Rosen also points out how close Plato is to some characteristically Heideggerean themes and formulations. Heidegger is critiqued from the standpoint of Plato, but it is equally true that Platonic themes (such as the hypothesis of the Forms) are read anew in light of the questions raised by Heidegger. In keeping with the overarching theme of the Gilson Lectures, Rosen’s six talks, and the introduction by the volume’s editor aim to demonstrate that metaphysics is always possible, indeed inescapable, by meditating on the two philosophers whose thinking, especially where it diverges, centers on that very point.
While Platonic Productions takes up some of the most contentious issues in the Heidegger-Plato relationship, issues which are addressed in the always expanding scholarly literature and in Rosen’s own earlier work, it is not at all intended exclusively for specialists in Plato or Heidegger. Rather, it is hoped that this volume will appeal to all who are interested in Greek and German thought and in the foundational questions which underlie the history of philosophy as a whole, both ancient and modern.
previous theological and philosophical groundings for the sheer value of existence – had made the question of that value inescapable
for modern man. Through his doctrine of the eternal return of the same, Nietzsche believed himself to have given a definitively
modern grounding to the value of existence, free of any taint of “Platonism.” My paper investigates whether this is true – whether
Nietzsche did, in fact, find a new way to say “Yes” to being or whether he, like everyone else, must ultimately “Platonize” to some
degree as soon as we ask why it is good to be and to think.
consist in? Any successful answer will require going beyond the intermediates themselves to another aspect of Plato’s mathematical
thought - his attribution of a quasi-numerical structure to Forms (the ‘eidetic numbers’). For our purposes, the most penetrating account
of eidetic numbers is Jacob Klein’s, who saw clearly that eidetic numbers are part of Plato’s inquiry into the ontological basis for all counting:
the existence of a plurality of formal elements, distinct yet combinable into internally articulate unities. However, Klein’s study of the Sophist
reveals such articulate unities as imperfectly countable and therefore opaque to διάνοια. Only this opacity, I argue, successfully explains
the relationship of intermediates to Forms.
In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s interpretation cannot be judged (and certainly not condemned) solely on grounds of philological inaccuracy or because it purportedly represents an anachronistic assimilation of Aristotle into the categories of Hegelian thought. It must be judged on how well it can illuminate what Aristotle meant by saying that “Life belongs it [God] too, for the energeia of nous is life” (Λ, 7, 1072b26-27).
For Hegel, I will show, the whole account of god in Metaphysics Λ, 7-9 essentially turns on this identification of divinity with thought and life. In the Science of Logic, the structure of life (and of essential being) is contradiction. If God is alive, for Hegel that means he necessarily shares in the contradictory structure of living beings, and specifically of conscious beings. Therefore, Aristotle’s description of the simple self-identity of the divine, and of divine thinking, must be understood dialectically. Is this a completely alien imposition on Aristotle? In fact, it is not, because Hegel’s explication of the structure of Lebendigkeit does enable us to understand Aristotle’s account (in the Metaphysics and the De Anima) on its own terms. Specifically, Hegel helps us see why the impetus of Aristotle’s whole inquiry into “being qua being” requires that divine being, above all, must partake of the internally complex nature of life and consciousness.
While Rosen undertakes a close examination of Heidegger’s engagement with Plato, exposing some ways in which that engagement constitutes a misreading, the goals of his study are not exclusively critical. In arguing against the claim that Plato stands at the beginning of Western metaphysical history which culminates in late modern nihilism, Rosen also points out how close Plato is to some characteristically Heideggerean themes and formulations. Heidegger is critiqued from the standpoint of Plato, but it is equally true that Platonic themes (such as the hypothesis of the Forms) are read anew in light of the questions raised by Heidegger. In keeping with the overarching theme of the Gilson Lectures, Rosen’s six talks, and the introduction by the volume’s editor aim to demonstrate that metaphysics is always possible, indeed inescapable, by meditating on the two philosophers whose thinking, especially where it diverges, centers on that very point.
While Platonic Productions takes up some of the most contentious issues in the Heidegger-Plato relationship, issues which are addressed in the always expanding scholarly literature and in Rosen’s own earlier work, it is not at all intended exclusively for specialists in Plato or Heidegger. Rather, it is hoped that this volume will appeal to all who are interested in Greek and German thought and in the foundational questions which underlie the history of philosophy as a whole, both ancient and modern.
previous theological and philosophical groundings for the sheer value of existence – had made the question of that value inescapable
for modern man. Through his doctrine of the eternal return of the same, Nietzsche believed himself to have given a definitively
modern grounding to the value of existence, free of any taint of “Platonism.” My paper investigates whether this is true – whether
Nietzsche did, in fact, find a new way to say “Yes” to being or whether he, like everyone else, must ultimately “Platonize” to some
degree as soon as we ask why it is good to be and to think.
consist in? Any successful answer will require going beyond the intermediates themselves to another aspect of Plato’s mathematical
thought - his attribution of a quasi-numerical structure to Forms (the ‘eidetic numbers’). For our purposes, the most penetrating account
of eidetic numbers is Jacob Klein’s, who saw clearly that eidetic numbers are part of Plato’s inquiry into the ontological basis for all counting:
the existence of a plurality of formal elements, distinct yet combinable into internally articulate unities. However, Klein’s study of the Sophist
reveals such articulate unities as imperfectly countable and therefore opaque to διάνοια. Only this opacity, I argue, successfully explains
the relationship of intermediates to Forms.
In this paper, I argue that Hegel’s interpretation cannot be judged (and certainly not condemned) solely on grounds of philological inaccuracy or because it purportedly represents an anachronistic assimilation of Aristotle into the categories of Hegelian thought. It must be judged on how well it can illuminate what Aristotle meant by saying that “Life belongs it [God] too, for the energeia of nous is life” (Λ, 7, 1072b26-27).
For Hegel, I will show, the whole account of god in Metaphysics Λ, 7-9 essentially turns on this identification of divinity with thought and life. In the Science of Logic, the structure of life (and of essential being) is contradiction. If God is alive, for Hegel that means he necessarily shares in the contradictory structure of living beings, and specifically of conscious beings. Therefore, Aristotle’s description of the simple self-identity of the divine, and of divine thinking, must be understood dialectically. Is this a completely alien imposition on Aristotle? In fact, it is not, because Hegel’s explication of the structure of Lebendigkeit does enable us to understand Aristotle’s account (in the Metaphysics and the De Anima) on its own terms. Specifically, Hegel helps us see why the impetus of Aristotle’s whole inquiry into “being qua being” requires that divine being, above all, must partake of the internally complex nature of life and consciousness.
For Henrich, self-consciousness attains a new philosophic status in modernity. For the first time, man is understood from within his particular existence, apart from any naturally determined goals or species perfection. But this “inward path” is not a promethean assertion of the unlimited power of the subject but a deepened awareness of its irremovable obscurities. First, Henrich shows convincingly that self-consciousness is primordial and non-objectifiable: all analyses or deductions of it are circular. Second, while we experience ourselves as subjects prior to any involvement in the world (the use of indexicals, for example, already implies unified self-consciousness) we are also embodied individuals in the spatio-temporal world. We inhabit competing ontologies – as “Subjects” and as “Persons” – which no scientific, historical or linguistic reduction will ever eliminate. Our peculiar essence as humans remains obscure, which explains the restless dynamism of modernity: absent a given telos, what Henrich calls Bewusstes Leben (“conscious life”) must constantly determine and validate itself in an open horizon of possibilities.
The additional fact that conscious life cannot exist without conceptual self-understanding explains the necessity of metaphysics, though not as an axiomatic science of first principles. Instead, metaphysics has two basic tasks: (i) integrating the competing realms we inhabit by means of what Henrich calls “thoughts of closure” which, like Kantian regulative ideals, are images of the whole as a unity-within-difference in which those realms find an intelligible, non-reductive, relation; and (ii) critically exposing the falsifications or disguises by which we try to escape the unavoidable obscurities in our self-understanding. Metaphysics is thus maximally articulate awareness of the fundamental, unresolved problems precisely as unresolved; a never-completed interpretative enterprise that, for Henrich, constitutes the highest expression of freedom.
But what entitles us to this rank-order of psychic drives and faculties with reason as “highest”? And if conscious life is always re-interpreting itself, in light of what are interpretations to be revised? Here a tension emerges in Henrich’s thought: He grants no access to a natural order of ends. Yet he follows Kant in calling moral insight into the reality of the Good an immediate “fact of reason”, the presupposition of any account of subjectivity. An integrative and critical modern metaphysics thus still requires an intelligible whole which answers to our desire to know and act in it. Otherwise, I argue, Bewusstes Leben is not merely problematic and open, but inexplicable and empty. However radically different its premises, post-Kantian metaphysics must ultimately re-articulate Socrates’ insight that the soul is not the Good, but “Good-like” (agathoeidē). Stated differently, while we cannot deduce the nature of psychē from the Good as archē, we cannot avoid describing it as moved by the Good and sharing its illuminative power.