Acercándonos al Saber Absoluto

martes, 9 de octubre de 2012

Acercándonos al Saber Absoluto

Hegel brooding on the edge of the abyss. En la penúltima sección de la Fenomenología del Espíritu, antes de su conclusión sobre el Saber Absoluto, Hegel efectúa una interesantísma desconstrucción de la teología cristiana. Podríamos decir que es una asimilación de la misma a su sistema idealista—si se quiere, una "idealización" de la misma, una manera de preservar el dogma, aufgehoben, a la vez que pasamos a más altos pensamientos. Una cosa de nadar y guardar la ropa, vamos, y de asentar las creencias tradicionales en cimientos filosóficos más sólidos, si el idealismo es sólido—justificándolas con una artillería conceptual que deja chiquita a la escolástica.

Pero a la vez es una desconstrucción—o, como dirían Bultmann y Ebeling 150 años después, una desmitologización. Me quedo con el lado crítico del análisis de Hegel—según el cual todo lo que el cristianismo sostiene como dogmas es una especie de fábula mitológica que viene a alegorizar la fenomenología del espíritu. Alegorizar, entiéndase bien, no en el sentido de dar una representación plástica o figurativa de algo que se conoce de modo conceptual; aquí la alegoría no es transparente a sí misma, y (tristemente quizá) se queda en una interpretación literal y simplista de lo que para Hegel es una compleja relación entre fases del espíritu puramente ideales, en ningún caso trasladables a episodios de la historia humana. Aquí hay un problema: si algún sentido tienen las fases de la fenomenología del espíritu, es interpretándolas como desarrollos históricos de una espiritualidad en complejidad creciente, y abundantes elementos de la Fenomenología señalan en esta dirección, y la convierten en una obra sobre la emergencia gradual de la complejidad. A su manera. El problema es que Hegel no va a admitir que las fases espirituales del cristianismo puedan proyectarse sobre la historia humana como un desarrollo histórico centrado en la venida de Cristo; sería desautorizar la complejidad de su análisis precedente y convertirlo en un absurdo. Por tanto tiene que declarar que toda la narración cristiana es una especie de fábula inconsciente, una expresión espontánea del espíritu que todavía no es totalmente transparente a sí mismo ni al significado de su autoconocimiento. Esto, claro, desautoriza totalmente la interpretación cristiana del cristianismo, para la cual sus verdades han de ser literales, no una bella narración alegórica. Aunque habría mucho que decir sobre esta cuestión, y cada cual interpreta el cristianismo a su manera, o las palabras literales del Papa, incluyendo seguramente al Papa. El cristianismo es una ficción colosal en más de un sentido, incluyendo sus versiones supuestamente más literales como es el catolicismo entre otras.

La crítica de Hegel es, por tanto, una desconstrucción, no al modo de Derrida o de los pensadores materialistas, sino por supuesto desde sus presupuestos idealistas—pero una desconstrucción en toda regla, en la que la literalidad del pensamiento religioso dogmático e ingenuo es sometida a una crítica intelectualmente devastadora. Tras semejante desmitologización, no es preciso otra más que sea menos radical, dentro de este paradigma idealista. No se puede a la vez tener honestidad intelectual, comprender la crítica de Hegel, y seguir sosteniendo que se es cristiano, lo que se venía entendiendo por ser cristiano. Aunque quizá Hegel fuese aquí el primer pecador, no sé.

Transcribo un pasaje sobre "La Religión Revelada" en su traducción inglesa, y el comentario de J. N. Findlay; la verdad es que quien lea la traducción española que tengo yo se va a enterar de muy poco. En este pasaje Hegel interpreta en clave fenomenológica la divinidad como espíritu o pensamiento puro, el Hijo como logos o encarnación, y el Espíritu Santo como comunidad o comunicación (algo que tiene una herencia teológica larga)—comunicación que es en primer lugar, para Hegel, autoconciencia. Ya el propio pensamiento puro no puede captarse más que como externalización de sí o metapensamiento. Es especialmente brillante la manera en que Hegel describe la alteridad en el seno mismo del pensamiento puro, si lo hemos de captar como una abstracción. La Trinidad queda así subsumida, por así decirlo, a su tríada de tesis, antítesis y síntesis. Y sigue adelante Hegel para explicar la Creación, el demonio, el mal, los ángeles, etc., como fases del pensamiento puro enfrentado a sí mismo, explicando cómo su traducción a mitos o lo que aquí llama "picture-thought" es una versión ingenua de su auténtico sentido espiritual.  El español emplea el término "representación", que no acaba de quedar claro. Para Hegel, la historia del Hijo es un mito, una excursión del pensamiento a la alteridad del mundo, y la conciencia debe seguir su camino hacia el autoanálisis reflexivo, o el espíritu absolutamente transparente a sí mismo en su autoanálisis, llámesele espíritu santo o filosofía. Quedarse con la historia del Padre, el Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo en su sentido literal sería confundir la representación con el espíritu puro.... en suma, una forma de idolatría. Una posible lección a extraer, pues, del análisis de Hegel: Que toda religión es idolatría en cuanto se apega al sentido literal de sus representaciones.

Pongo en rojo, primero, mi traducción del comentario de Findlay, y a continuación en verde la traducción de Hegel que uso:

767. El espíritu es esencialmente un proceso que comienza con el pensamiento puro (lógica), pasa a la alteridad y a la representación figurativa (la Naturaleza) y vuelve de la Naturaleza para completar la autoconsciencia (el Espíritu propiamente dicho). Es también esencialmente la conexión sintética de estas tres fases.
 
767. Spirit is the content of its consciousness at first in the form of pure substance, or is the content of its pure consciousness. This element of Thought is the movement of descending into existence or into individuality. The middle term between these two is their synthetic connection, the consciousness of passing into otherness, or picture-thinking as such. The third movement is the return from picture-thinking and otherness, or the element of self-consciousness itself. These three moments constitute Spirit; its dissociation in picture-thinking consists in its existing in a specific or determinate mode; but this determinateness is nothing else than one of its moments. Its complete movement is therefore this, to diffuse its nature throughout each of its moments as in its native element; since each of these spheres completes itself within itself, this reflection of one sphere into itself is at the same time the transition into another. Picture-thinking consitutes the middle term between pure thought and self-consciousness as such, and is only one of the specific or determinate forms; at the same time, however, as we have seen, its character–that of being a synthetic connection—is diffused throughout all these elements and is their common determinateness.

768. En la conciencia desdichada y en la creyente, había una autonconciencia parcial del Espíritu. El Espíritu, sin embargo, se refería a sí mismo a una esfera más allá del sujeto consciente.

768. The content itself which we have to consider has partly been met with already as the idea of the 'unhappy' and the 'believing' consciousness; but in the former, it has the character of a content produced from consciousness for which Spirit yearns, and in which Spirit cannot be satiated or find rest, because it is not yet in itself its own content, or is not the Substance of it. In the 'believing' consciousness, on the other hand, the content was regarded as the self-less Being of the world, or as essentially an objective content of picture-thinking, of a picture-thinking that simply flees from reality and consequently is without the certainty of self-consciousness, which is separated from it partly by the conceit of knowing and partly by pure insight. The consciousness of the community, on the other hand, possesses the content for its substance, just as the content is the certainty of the community's own Spirit.

769. El Espíritu concebido en el elemento del pensamiento puro carece de sentido a menos que se haga además manifiesto en algo diferente que su puro ser, y vuelva a sí mismo a partir de dicha alteridad.

769. When Spirit is at first conceived of as substance in the element of pure thought, it is immediately simple and self-identical, eternal essence, which does not, however, have this abstract meaning of essence, but the meaning of absolute Spirit. Only Spirit is not a 'meaning', it is not what is inner, but what is actual. Therefore simple, eternal essence would be Spirit only as a form of empty words, if it went no further than the idea expressed in the phrase 'simple, eternal essence'. But simple essence, because it is an abstraction, is, in fact, the negative in its own self and, moreover, the negativity of thought, or negativity as it is in itself in essence: i.e. simple essence is absolute difference from itself, or its pure othering of itself. As essence it is only in itself or for us; but since this purity is just abstraction or negativity, it is for itself, or is the Self, the Notion. It is thus objective; and since picture-thinking interprets and expresses as a happening what has just been expressed as the necessity of the Notion, it is said that the eternal Being begets for itself and 'other'. But in this otherness it has at the same time immediately returned into itself; for the difference is the difference in itself, i.e. it is immediately distinguished only from itself and is thus the unity that has returned into itself.

770. Dios se manifiesta allí primero como la Esencia (el Padre), en segundo lugar como el Ser-para-sí para quien la esencia es (el Logos o Verbo que hizo el ámbito de la naturaleza), y en tercer lugar como el Ser-para-sí que se conoce a sí mismo en el otro (el Espíritu o principio de autoconsciencia).

770. There are thus three distinct moments: essence, being-for-self which is the otherness of essence and for which essence is, and being-for-self, or the knowledge of itself in the 'other'. Essence beholds only its own self in its being-for-self; in this externalization of itself it stays only with itself: the being-for-self that shuts itself out from essence is essence's knowledge of its own self. It is the word which, when uttered, leaves behind, externalized and emptied, him who uttered it, but which is as immediately heard, and only this hearing of its own self is the existence of the Word. Thus the distinctions made are immediately resolved as soon as they are made and are made as soon as they are resolved, and what is true and actual is precisely this immanent circular movement.

771. La religión figurativa convierte las relaciones necesarias entre momentos esenciales en el seno del absoluto, en relaciones externas generativas de paternidad y filiación.

771. This immanent movement proclaims the absolute Being as Spirit. Absolute Being that is not grasped as Spirit is merely the abstract void, just as Spirit that is not grasped as this movement is only an empty word. When its moments  are grasped in their purity, they are the restless Notions which only are, in being themselves their own opposite, and in finding their rest in the whole. But the picture-thinking of the religious community is not this speculative thinking; it has the content, but without its necessity, and instead of the form of the Notion it brings into the realm of pure consciousness the natural relationships of father and son. Since this consciousness, even in its thinking, remains at the level of picture-thinking, absolute Being is indeed revealed to it, but the moments of this Being, on account of this [empirically] synthetic presentation, partly themselves fall asunder so that they are not related to one another through their own Notion, and partly this consciousness retreats from this its pure object, relating itself to it only in an external manner. The object is revealed to it only in an external manner. The object is revealied to it by something alien, and it does not recognize itself in this thought of Spirit, does not recognize the nature of pure self-consciousness. In so far as the form of picture-thinking and of those relationships derived from Nature must be transcended, and especially also the standpoint which takes the moments of the movement which Spirit is, as isolated immovable Substances or Subjects, instead of transient moments—the transcending of this standpoint is to be regarded as a compulsion on the part of the Notion, as we pointed out earlier in connection with another aspect. But since this compulstion is instinctive, self-consciousness misunderstands its own nature, rejects the content as well as the form and, what amounts to the same thing, degrades the content into a historical pictorial idea and to a heirloom handed down by tradition. In this way, it is only the purely external element in belief that is retained and as something therefore that is dead and cannot be known; but the inner element in faith has vanished, because this would be the Notion that knows itself as a Notion.

772. La relación de los momentos del Absoluto en el puro pensamiento de lo Absolugo es una relación de puro amor en el cual los lados que distinguimos no están realmente diferenciados. Pero es propio de la esencia del espíritu no ser una mera cosa del espíritu, sino ser concreto y en acto.

772. Absolute Spirit as pictured in pure essence is not indeed abstract pure essence; for abstract essence has sunk to the level of being merely an element, just because it is only a moment in [the life of] Spirit. But the representation of Spirit in this element is charged with the same defect of form which essence as such has. Essence is an abstraction and is therefore the negation of its simple, unitary nature, is an 'other'; similarly, Spirit in the element of essence is the form of simple oneness, which therefore is essentially an othering of itself. O, what is the same thing, the relation of the eternal Being to its being-for-self is the immediately simple one of pure thought. In this simple beholding of itself in the 'other', the otherness is therefore not posited as such; it is the difference which, in pure thought, is immediately no difference ; a loving recognition in which the two sides, as regards their essence, do not stand in an antithetical relation to each other. Spirit that is expresssed in the element of pure thought is itself esentially this, to be not merely in this element, but to be actual Spirit, for in its Notion lies otherness itself, i.e. the suppression of the pure Notion that is only thought.

773. Puesto que el elemento de pensamiento puro es abstracto, necesariamente ha de pasar al ámbito del pensamiento figurativo intuitivo, es decir, al ámbito de la Naturaleza. Allí se halla una pluralidad de cosas sustanciales y una pluralidad de sujetos pensantes.

773. The element of pure thought, because it is an abstract element, is itself rather the 'other' of its simple, unitary nature, and therefore passes over into the element proper to picture-thinking—the element in which the moments of the pure Notion obtain a substantial existence relatively to one another, and also are Subjects which do not possess for a third the indifference towards each other of [mere] being but, being reflected into themselves, spontaneously part asunder and also place themselves over against each other.

774. Este pasar al mundo del pensamiento figurativo intuitivo es lo que figurativamente se denomina "creación". La universalidad absoluta requiere volverse efectiva para ser lo que es, y este requisito lógico es lo que se representa engañosamente como una necesidad temporal.

774. Thus the merely eternal or abstract Spirit becomes an 'other' to itself, or enters into existence, and directly into immediate existence. Accordingly, it creates a world. This 'creating' is picture-thinking's word for the Notion itself in its absolute movement; or to express the fact that the simple which has been asserted as absolute, or pure thought, just because it is abstract, is rather the negative, and hence the self-opposed or 'other' of itself: or because, to put the same thing into another form, that which is posited as essence is simple immediacy or being, but qua immediacy or being lacks Self, and, therefore, lacking inwardness is passive, or a being-for-another. This being-for-another is at the same time a world; Spirit, in the determination of being-for-another, is the inert subsistence of the moments formerly enclosed within pure thought, is therefore the dissolution of these simple universality and the parting asunder of them into their own particularity.

775. El Espíritu no sólo se hace efectivo en los objetos sino también en los sujetos. Al principio éstos n oson conscientes de sí mismos como espirituales, y por tanto son inocentes más bien que buenos. Su primera autoconsciencia es capaz tanto del mal como del bien. Esta autoconsciencia inicial se representa figurativamente como una "Caída" histórica.

775. But the world is not merely this Spirit cast out and dispersed into the fulness [of natural existence] and its external ordering; for since Spirit is essentially the simple Self, the Self is equally present in the world: it is the existent Spirit, which is the individual Self which has consciousness and distinguishes itself as an 'other', or as world, from itself. (Obsérvese la audacia intelectual de esta noción de Hegel que roza el solipsismo—el mundo como parte de la actividad espiritual, sujeto proyectado fuera de sí para diferenciarlo de un yo que es también una construcción por tanto). This individual Self as at first thus immediately posited, is not yet Spirit for itself: it does not exist as Spirit; it can be called 'innocent' but hardly 'good'. (Esta es la fase edénica del Espíritu, o adánica). Before it can in fact be Self and Spirit it must first become an 'other' to its own self, just as the eternal Being exhibits itself as the movement of being self-identical in its otherness. Since this Spirit is determined as at first an immediate existence, or as dispersed into the multifariousness of its consciousness, its othering of itself is the withdrawal into itself, or self-centredness, of knowing as such. Immediate existence suddenly turns into thought, or mere sense-consciousness into consciousness of thought; and, moreover, because the thought stems from immediacy or is conditioned thought, it is not pure knowledge, but thought that is charged with otherness and is, therefore, the self-opposed thought of Good and Evil. (El Pecado Original, o el origen del mal en la rebelión de Satán, mitos creados para simbolizar esta negatividad contenida en el propio pensamiento). Man is pictorially though of in this way: that it once happened, withoug any necessity, that he lost the form of being at one with himself thoufh plucking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and was expelled from the state of innocence, from Nature which yielded its fruits without toil, and from Paradise, from the garden with its creatures.

776. El mal es la primera expresión efectiva de la autoconsciencia escindida, pero es la que la autoconsciencia, al hacerse más profunda, ha de repudiar cada vez más. Figurativamente, por tanto, se remite a una fecha infinitamente remota, a la caída del cielo de Lucifer, hijo de la mañana. Las huestes celestiales entran en la escena como una pluralización valiosa del ser-para-sí del Verbo. Si las añadimos a la Trinidad, tenemos una cuaterna, y si añadimos los ángeles caídos tenemos un quinteto. El contar en teología es, no obstante, una mala práctica. (Obsérvese que Hegel incorpora el Mal a lo Absoluto).

776. Since this withdrawal into itself or self-centredness of the existent consciousness immediately makes it self-discordant, Evil appears as the primary existence of the inwardly-turned consciousness; and because the thoughts of Good and Evil are utterly opposed and this antithesis is not yet resolved, this consciousness is essentially only evil. But at the same time, on account of just this antithesis, there is also present the good consciousness opposing it, and their relation to each other. In ofar as immediate existence suddenly changes into Thought, and the being-within-self is on the one hand itself a thinking, while on the other hand the moment of the othering of essence is more precisely determined by it—[because of this double aspect] the becoming of Evil can be shifted further back out of the existent world even into the primary realm of Thought. It can therefore be said that it is the very first-born Son of Light [Lucifer] himself who fell because he withdrew into himself or became self-centred, but that in his place another one was at once created. Such a form of expression as 'fallen' which, like the expression 'Son', belongs, moreover to picture-thinking and not to the Notion, degrades the moments of the Notion to the level of picture-thinking or carries picture-thinking over into the realm of thought. Likewise it makes no difference if we co-ordinate a multiplicity of other shapes with the simple thought of otherness in the eternal Being and transfer the self-centredness into them. In fact, this co-ordination must be approved, since by means of it this moment of otherness also expresses diversity, as it should, and, moreover, not as plurality in general, but also as a specific diversity, so that one part, the Son, is that which is simple and knows itself to be essential Being, while the other part is the alienation, the externalization of being-for-self which lives only to praise that Being; to this part, then, can be assigned the taking back again of the externalized being-for-self and the withdrawal into self of the evil principle. In so far as the otherness falls into two parts, Spirit might, as regards its moments—if these are to be counted—be more exactly expressed as a quaternity in unity or, because the quantity itself again falls into two parts, viz. one part which has remained good and the other which has become evil, might even be expressed as a five-in-one. But to count the moments can be reckoned as altogether useless, since in the first place what is differentiated is itself just as much only one thing—viz. the thought of the difference which is only one thought—as it [the differentiated] is this differentiated element, the second relatively to the first. And, secondly, it is useless to count because the thought which grasps the Many in a One must be dissolved out of its universality and differentiated into more than three or four distinct components; and this universality appears, in contrast to the absolute determinateness of the abstract unit, the principle of number, as indeterminateness with respect to number as such, so that we could speak only of numbers in general, i.e. not of a specific number of differences. Here, therefore, it is quite superfluous to think of numbers and counting at all, just as in other respects the mere difference of quantity and amount has no notional significance and makes no difference.

777-778. El pensamiento religioso figurativo tiende a eliminar el mal de Dios excepto en la medida en que, con gran dificultad, atribuye a Dios un lado iracundo. La actividad de Dios no puede ser otra cosa que el acto de unir el mundo escindido con su esencia simple, al ser cada uno de estos aspectos unilateral sin el otro.

777. Good and Evil were the specific differnces yielded by the thought of Spirit as immediately existent. Since their antithesis has not yet been resolved and they are conceived of as the essence of thought, each of them having an independent existence of its own, man is a self lacking any essential being and is the synthetic ground of their existence and their conflict. But these universal powers just as much belong to the self, or the self is their actuality. In accordance with this moment, it therefore comes to pass that, just as Evil is nothing other than the self-centredness of the natural existence of Spirit, so, conversely, Good enters into actuality and appears as an existent self-consciousness. That which in the pure thought of Spirit is in general merely hinted at as the othering of the divine Being, here comes nearer to tis realization for picture-thinking: this realization consists for picture-thinking in the self-abasement of the divine Being who renounces his abstract and non-actual nature. (La Encarnación, Jesucristo, entre el Verbo neoplatónico y el mito evangélico). Picture-thinking takes the other aspect, evil, to be a happening alien to the divine Being; to grasp it in the divine Being itself as the wrath of God, this demands from picture-thinking, struggling against its limitations, its supreme and most strenuous effort, an effort which, since it lacks the notion, remains fruitless (—Y de ahí el confuso pensamiento de las diversas teodiceas).

778. The alienation of the divine Being is thus made explicit in its twofold form: the Self of Spirit and its simple thought are the two moments whose absolute unity is Spirit itself. Its alientation consists in the moments going apart from one another and in one of them having an unequal value compared with the other. This disparity is therefore twofold, and two relationships arise whose common moments are those just given. In one of them, the divine Being counts as essence, while natural existence and the Self count as the unessential aspect which is superseded. In the other, on the contrary, being-for-self counts as the essential and the simple, divine Being as unessential. Their still empty middle term is existence in general, the bare community of their two moments.

  

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