THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

clarification. First, we must distinguish between transcendent and immanent
metaphysics. The term “metaphysics” often designates the study of things that transcend
human experience and the material world, things such as a transcendent God, the creation
of the world, and the immortality of the soul. In this sense, Hegel is not a metaphysician.
He explicitly rejects transcendent metaphysics. In his rejection of transcendent
metaphysics, Hegel is closer to Aristotle and Spinoza than he is to Plato, Plotinus, or
Leibniz. 6
Sometimes, however, the term “metaphysics” is used as a synonym for ontology,
as a term that designates the study of the most basic things, kinds, or categories. In this
sense, Hegel is a metaphysician, one who believes that the most basic things, kinds, or
categories are immanent in experience. 7 Thus Hegel’s philosophy develops a kind
emphasis on the theological aspects of Hegel’s system, and where it is relevant for this dissertation, I tend
to take a relatively deflationary view of “Geist.” Beiser, for instance, sees Hegel’s metaphysics and his
theology as inextricably linked. He says: “Much traditional scholarship has put forward a straightforward
metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s thought, stressing the central role religion plays in it. According to
this interpretation, Hegel’s philosophy was an attempt to justify through reason some fundamental
Christian beliefs, such as the existence of God, providence, and the trinity” (Hegel, 53). Beiser then goes
on to contrast this religious-metaphysical interpretation with other non-metaphysical and non-religious
interpretations. Beiser equates a metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy with one that
emphasizes Hegel’s theological claims. In contrast to this, I believe we must strongly distinguish the
metaphysical or ontological aspects of Hegel’s system from the religious aspects. With regards to religion,
I believe Hegel remained true to the conception of religion he develops in his early writings on the subject,
in works such as the “Fragment on Folk Religion and Christianity,” “The Positivity of the Christian
Religion,” the “Bern Fragment,” and “The Life of Jesus.” In all of these writings, religion is portrayed as
an insufficiently reflexive form of human awareness of self and society. Thus religion presents an
important historical phenomenon insofar as it provides clues about how the people of various epochs have
conceived themselves, but it doesn’t have significance in any traditionally theological sense. To put the
point differently, Hegel emphasizes the relation between religion and art. He sees both of them as selfexpressive
human phenomena.
6 Of course, Hegel goes even farther than Aristotle in his instance upon immanence. Although
there are many important similarities between Aristotle and Hegel, it should be noted that Hegel would
reject Aristotle’s unmoved mover. At the other end of the form/matter spectrum, he would also reject the
intelligibility of prime matter. Hegel’s discussion of being at the beginning of the Science of Logic presents
his rejection of prime matter in complete isolation from all form.
7 Beiser states all of this quite clearly, and I fully agree with him on this point. He says: “For
Hegel, the problem with traditional metaphysics is not that it attempted to know the infinite, but that it had
a false interpretation of the infinite as something transcending the finite world of ordinary experience. It is
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