Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. THE VITAL IDEA (BEGRIFF) OF RELIGION. Proper exposition demands amplification. Amplification means addition as well as subtraction from the text. In this chapter I add much and subtract more. I merely follow the outline given by Hegel, and do not misrepresent his thought. I develop the inferences and implications suggested to my mind, rather than give a direct exposition of the text. If it is not Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, it is Hegelian in method and spirit. Hegel begins this part of the work with the question, " What is our starting-point, and how have we won it?" In the work of the Logic, God the Absolute Idea, the vorjo-R voqrew, the Categories of categories, is found to be the ultimate reality, the thought which alone has being in itself, and which imparts whatever measure of thought and being that all else has to it. This is the ripe, concrete result of the Logic, or philosophy proper. The Philosophy of Religion is a part of a system. In his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Hegel includes the whole in three main divisions: i, Logic, or the Science of the Idea; 2, the philosophy of nature; and, 3, the philosophy of spirit. The first, as we have said, might better be called metaphysics; the third includes psychology and anthropology, the philosophy of the state, and the philosophy of Absolute Spirit. This last comprises a brief outline of the philosophy of art, the philosophy of revealed religion, and philosophy proper. All these lead to the fuller comprehension of absolute spirit. All are but parts of the one stupendous whole of this reality, which is Thought, Idea, Spirit, God. Thus his system is encyclopedic, aiming at the rational comprehension and synthesis of the totality of being. It is an attempt...
