His viewpoint is neither traditionally Christian and therefore subject to Church doctrine, nor strictly pagan and therefore subject to strict rationality. Hegel's working out of the thesis and antithesis of life and death, and the synthesis, which is love, is a kind of mystical interpretation of the Christian mysteries. What Hegel could not understand in light of objectivity destroyed, he attempts to explain in light of Love as the synthesis of life and death. Again, it is the crowning of passion as ultimate arbiter. Love cannot be explained except as it is accountable only to itself. Thus, Hegel may say that God is Love without risk of corrupting his doctrine. What Hegel fails to do, however, is unite it with reason, as Gardner states is necessary for a complete picture. Passion, according to Hegel, is still the de facto ruler. Passion, since it is essentially God-like, cannot be ruled. Therefore, Love cannot fully be explained but only yielded and submitted to. The effects of such a line of thought are, of course, full of ramifications.
Nonetheless, Hegel attempts to redirect such ramifications by rationalizing passion's power, especially in the Christian mysteries -- mysteries, which in the old world, had well enough shown the necessity of curbing passion under the direction of the will of God, which was both reasonable and good. Hegel, however, is left to let passion direct itself and explain why such is necessary through the use of reason. He does so using Mary Magdalene as an example, the sinner whose grief over her sin contradicts her joy at being forgiven. This sense of contradiction is her love, which extinguishes her guilt and manifests itself as 'this bliss of love drinking reconciliation from its effusion'" (Bjerke 2011:78). Hegel's reasoning is obviously more a romantic ode to the power of love and less a rational meditation on the Christian essence of forgiveness and gratitude.
However, Hegel is not long to fall out of love with Love: since his emotions govern his intellect instead of his intellect governing his emotions, Hegel cannot fail to do so: "He shifts his attention from love to what he calls the Concept, ostensibly because love falls apart when it reflects on itself whereas the Concept achieves a higher synthesis. In retrospect, however, what appeared as love's failure to reflect on itself was actually the failure of Hegel's identity philosophy more generally" (Bjerke 2011:79).
The introduction of the Concept allows Hegel to assert a kind of objectivity into the equation. But his Concept leads him, however, to a kind of idealism.
Hegel and the Family
Hegel's Concept is Love given an objective standard. As Bjerke identifies: "Hegel continually praises love when it attains its rational shape and criticizes faulty versions of love in which love's particular and universal moments are not reconciled" (Bjerke 2011:82). By identifying Love with a Concept (even if it is idealistic), Hegel is able to reconcile what was previously irreconcilable. Hegel takes Love out of the abstract and gives it an object, much in the same vein as the medieval world gave man a final end. The purpose becomes rooted, not in itself, but in the family -- which is, in a sense, the root of love. As lovers grow old and die, their love is continued in the new life that comes from those lovers. The family is a unit that perpetuates love, and love vice versa perpetuates the family. Life and death are not part of one unifying system unless that system understands Love within the framework of a higher concept. Thus, Bjerke states, Hegel
repeatedly faults Schlegel, for example, for exalting the particular drives of the individual over the rational shape of marriage. He also attacks those understandings of love that err on the side of the abstract universal. This includes the view of marriage as contract, various religious abstractions, and the 'monastic attitude' that is characteristic of Platonic love or philosophical contemplation.22 These attitudes are hostile to the moment of natural life, whereas love in its reflected form harmonizes the particular and the universal. (Bjerke 2011:82)
Here, Hegel follows Rousseau. By elevating passion he again undermines that which he wishes to create: the perpetuation of love. Yet, he insists that such love be existent without vows. Vows, it is assumed, are of the rational societal order, and impinge upon the freedom of the passions to pursue their own end. Hegel fails to realize that the end of passion is diametrically opposed to the end of reason, at least according to the...
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