HEGEL AND HUMAN RECONCILIATION
The struggle to live together as human from diverse walks of life and origins, has never ceased to occupy the keen interest of men and beasts alike. The pages of scripture redound with attempts to put a seeming glue into the various divides of human species, to see how people, only because they breathe in and breathe out same components of air can live together without being at each other’s throats always. But very interestingly, beyond scriptures, thinkers of all eras have taken to heart the salience of such endeavour. So that both theists and atheists alike, at least converge on this point. And the rational conclusion that both worlds (religion and philosophy), have arrived at is that, the battle for reconciliation must begin from the self; the individual human heart. The war must be fought within.
At the peak of the problem of the nature of reason and reality; thought and being, the world within and the world without, would be the monstrous fracas between rationalists and empiricists. David Hume, the very spirited Scottish skeptic, the one for whom the consummation of the empiricists’ experiment would be reserved, would deal the fatal blow by stating categorically, that no nexus whatsoever exists between our inner world (reason), and the outer world (reality). The monumental implication of Hume’s conclusion would be that ‘between what goes on in our mind, and what is out there before us,’ there can never be any reconciliation. In other words, the divides we find in reality, cannot be approached using the instrumentality of the powers of reason. Because for him, an insurmountable gulf exists between our thoughts and what exists outside of us.
The phenomenal response to the damage which Hume had done would be the birth of German Idealism. The burden for these idealists, would be to state clearly the nature of the relation between thought and being; in what is this world known as it is. In other words, to rally round to see if the gulf placed by Hume between our outer reality and our inner world can be bridged. Beginning with Immanuel Kant, through Fichte, and Schelling, the workings of the mind and our world would eventually be said to converge at various spots. These spots ranged from Ethics to Aesthetics; morality and the appreciation of beauty. For them, the mind can recognize in its fullest categories, the values of morals and beauty wherever they exist in the world. Although these spots offered man a possible way out of the many internal conflicts, they never ended the crippling voices that silently took man’s life from him. A gap, no matter how little still remained. Because, the considerations of ethics and aesthetics, were still in lack of objectivity. So that one could still ask; whose judgment is objective? And due to this fracas, subjectivity prevailed.
Hegel, in thinking through the matter neatly and incorporating all the thoughts of his predecessors, arrives at the point of absolute unity between man and his world. That point of absolute identity between the workings of logic and the fundamental concepts of reality. The point where he unmasks the Absolute and announces in his Phenomenology of Spirit thus: “Glory to man in the highest! for man is master of things.” Thought can reach this point because its nature is dynamic, objective and elastic. Hegel’s arrival at absolute unity between man and reality, could very well be termed speculative. But beyond his speculative idealism, Hegel has left us certain armory to put into use if we really want to deal with the divides that put humans asunder on a daily basis. So that the question; “of what use is all these speculations without any change in human life,”? is answered. It only has to do with grasping Hegel’s elasticity of thought.
In Matthew 18: 15-20, the elasticity of thought which Hegel describes, is transcribed into an elasticity of character and behaviour by Jesus Christ. The question that boggles our mind whenever we find ourselves in a quarrel with another individual is: who was right? The average individual ends in saying “I was right, he should be the one to ask for mercy.” But only a keen mind, and of course a strong will that goes further to ask: “what actually happened.”? The end point of such reflection is what is at issue here. For Jesus, these reflections ought to be followed by an act of reconciliation, or better still, fraternal correction.
The resemblance of Jesus’ model, and Hegel’s logic of the mind, lies in their proposed procedures. Quite beautifully, Jesus tells us to go ‘alone’ first to the brother who has sinned. If the matter resolves itself, we have won back our brother. But knowing full well that matters often do not settle themselves at first attempts, he broadens the horizon by suggesting what we should do next. The resilience described by Hegel in his dynamicity of thought through his thesis, antithesis and synthesis, has much to say in Jesus’ teachings of making relentless efforts in seeking reconciliation. Hegel says, thought must overcome its present stage, and continue to seek its ideal, till it rests in the absolute idea. But even at that point of absolute idea, there is still an antithesis, which would eventually become a synthesis when it matures.
The parallel line evident in the paradigms of both figures is the attitude of perfect unity, both in the internal world and external reality. And the former informs the later, given that the later cannot be achieved without the former. Murray Bodo, captures this in a fascinating way thus: “the gospel of Jesus Christ is eternal, and when it is no longer applicable, the fault is in us who have not made the painful journey into ourselves and into our times to rediscover God’s present incarnation.”
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