Hegels Interpretation on Universal Love - Research Paper Example

 Hegel’s Essay on Love (1798) 2007 Love seems to be one of the major concepts in Hegel’s philosophical system. Hegel treated love as the most natural feeling of the mankind, the only way to getting self whole and freedom. The concept of love plays a significant role in philosopher’s explanations of the relationships of the man with God, himself and the world. The fragment on study presents the early views of Hegel, conveying the major postulates of the philosopher as to the meaning and role of love in the life of human beings. Those basic postulates of young Hegel mirror the modern perception of the concept of love and its function in the universe and humankind. As we learn from the commentary preceding the fragment, during the creation of this piece of writing Hegel’s thought must have been turning around the themes he was preoccupied with, those being the oppositions within man and between man and the world and the role of religion in this alienation of man. Hegel believed that the positive or authoritative religion of Christianity made people feel alone and opposed to the rest of the universe. This happened while the man was put into the subordinate position to Lord, into the master and servant opposition, claimed to be inferior to God. Having little or no share in the universal end, the man felt a tiny piece, torn from the rest of the world, the unity of his life and whole being broken by the subordination. This disunity causes the discords within the man and between the man and the world. Love is the only way to find the lost unity. The fragment starts with the author’s reasoning on the equality. These contemplations of the equality of man in front of Lord must have been aroused in Hegel by the events and ideas of the French revolution. In this fragment Hegel states that the equality of right brings on dependence of people. As a result, the man loses his domination over objects, and thus he loses his worth, whereas humans are used to measure their worth by the degree of their influence over the objective world. Feeling himself only a tiny part of the universe, the man starts despising himself, thus injuring his self and coming to ever greater discord. Whereas “the object, severed from the subject, is dead”, the only kind of love he can experience towards Lord and the universe is the love to the dead objects. The living union between the man and the world is not possible, while love towards the dead object is unrequited. The individual finds himself opposed to the external world, entirely independent of it. The man loses the sense of life and does not see the essence of his existence. These passages in fact describe the state of many modern people. We spend our lives attempting to overcome our loneliness and seeking help outside, we are not able to bear responsibility for our acts. Feeling detached from the external world we doom ourselves for constant struggle with the opposed world, which often seems to be hostile to us. Not realizing that we are the part of the universe, just as our arms and legs are parts of our body, we are not able to hear the voice of God in us and understand his intentions. We lose ourselves following the wrong teachings and ideals, and only love has the power to make us whole, able to understand the divine plans and feel the way the universe moves. Hegel explains that it is so difficult for the man to bear this nullity, while our necessity is always relative, “the one exists only for the other” (p.304). This passage is also interesting in regards to democracy, which is declared to be the best approach to the social system. Patriotism in fact represents the relationships of the living subject with the dead object, while it the notions of the nation and the native country are detached from the individual. As the right to decide is shared by all the members of the society, it often leads to the loss of love and sense of responsibility, conflicts and civil wars. Hegel seems to have not supported the revolutionary movement and ideals spread in France and Europe of the 1790s. These contemplations of Hegel also concern the “universal Love” preached by the Church. The author shows that the love expressed in Christianity cannot be called the true one, while the true love should give basis for true union of the subject and object and thus it is possible only “between living beings, who are alike in power and thus in one another’s eyes living beings from every point of view” (p.304). Hegel contrasted the orthodox, positive church to the religion of Christ, who taught humankind the science of true love. He was one of us, a human being experiencing the same feelings and desires. He never detached or isolated himself from people or their needs. Let us remember that even his first wonder was the transformation of water into wine, just because the masters ran out of it. Christ descended to human level of perception and relationships, and represented the living object for love. The mission of that great man was to tell people of true love and his whole life was an example of it. It is also interesting that Christ taught his disciples that real faith, based on true love, made anyone equal to God. The idea was spoilt by the Orthodox Church and revived first during Renaissance and then in our days. Today we speak again of the man being a part of the universe, which is itself “parvus mundus”, a small universe, so that nobody is able to punish us except ourselves, and the hell and paradise are created by people themselves. However, most of us are unable to accept this simple truth, while to see it one is to cognize the true love. True love bears no oppositions. Hegel contrasts love to understanding and reason, whereas the relation of the former “always leave the manifold of related terms as a manifold” and its “unity is always the unity of opposites”, while the latter “sharply opposes its determining power to what is determined” (p.304). Love for Hegel is the feeling leading the individual to absolute, endless freedom knowing no restrictions. Love is not a single feeling in the manifold of single feelings. It’s peculiar, while only “in love, life is present as a duplicate of itself and as a single and unified self” (p.305). True love leads the individual to maturity, which can be achieved only through love. The maturity is characterized by irreversibility of the unity. The individual in love never feels alone and opposed to the world. This way the man achieves wholeness within his self and unites with the world. Though lovers are mirrored in the souls of the beloved and see the reflection of selves in each other, though they feel unity, this is the unity of two separate parts that transform under the influence of love. “In love the separate does still remain, but as something united and no longer as something separate; life in the subject sense life in the object” (p.305). The only distinction between lovers is caused by their mortality. Hegel wants to say that it is impossible to grasp the essence of love by the means of reason. “The living whole” formed by the lovers gives birth to a quite new unity, which is not a mere sum of the two separate and independent individuals. Lovers comprise the unity tighter than that between the organs of the body. This unity bears a divine, immortal character. The presence of a separate element within the lovers distorts the completeness and wholeness causing the division within each of them. True love requires absolute transmission of the individual being to his beloved. As an individual wants to preserve some part of himself as a private property, he injures himself and feels shame. This shame had nothing to do with the mortal body. It is a kind of rage, indignation about the individual’s attempts to defend his mortal body, injuring the immortal part of self. In this passage Hegel seems to speak of the Greek Agape, the pure love knowing neither shame for itself, nor fear of itself. Agape is the absolute, all-embracing love, the love that Christ felt toward people. Those, who experience Agape grasp the basic truths of the universe. This love is “a mutual giving and taking” (p.307). The lover who takes does not become richer, while “the giver does not make himself poorer” (p.307). This kind of love is present in both Eros (sexual attraction) and Philo (love-friendship). The combination of Eros and Agape is believed to give birth to a new unity, which is a child, who gains the features of both of his parents. This is what Hegel speaks of: “the individual’s own is united into the whole in the lovers’ touch and contacts; consciousness of a separate self disappears, and all distinction between the lovers is annulled. The mortal element, the body, has lost the character of reparability, and a living child, a seed of immortality, of the eternally self-developing and self generating race, has come into existence. What has been united in the child is not divided again; in love and through love God has acted and created” (p.307). It is interesting that the sited lines reveal ideas of the modern and traditional esoteric teaching. Love is viewed as a universal container and engine. The world, which is in constant process of evolution and development, needs space for growth. Nothing can appear if there is no room for it. Thus the new things and life require vacuum, which they are to fill. Love creates this vacuum. Love is also the only method of alchemic transformation of old qualities into the new ones. Where there is no love, there is no place for anything new. That is why a child cannot appear without true love between the parents. Tantra, the teaching based on the belief in reincarnation, explains that males are born with the inner females – this way they know everything about beauty, but have to develop male qualities, which is done through love. Females are born with the inner males, thus they know everything about how the world functions, their task being to learn how to be beautiful. If males and females love they are able to understand their inner voice. Men and women are looking for partners, who have those qualities they lack. Having sex with the person you love, you automatically copy his matrix on yourself and get the qualities of your partner that make him or her so attractive for you. This way we develop, creating the new life. Love creates space for the new images and qualities inside our consciousness. As people fall in love and have sex, they create an energetic column, a whirlwind, capturing the souls from the astral. The more people love each other, the stronger and the higher this whirlwind is. This allows capturing the better, purified monads from the upper levels of the astral. As the monad is captured it gets the mixture of the qualities the man and woman love in each other. This is what Hegel writes about saying: “The child is the parents themselves” (p.308). “Everything which gives the newly begotten child a manifold life and a specific existence, it must draw into itself, set over against itself, and unify with itself” (p.307). However, the child, “the seed breaks free from its original unity, turns ever more and more to opposition and begins to develop. Each stage of its development is a separation, and its aim in each is to regain itself the full riches of life enjoyed by his parents” (p.307). Hegel traces the entire process of the human development. The philosopher conveys the law of homeostasis functioning in the universe and making all the systems, open and close, strive for balance, evolving, adapting, finding new solutions. The man develops in his urge towards wholeness and as he acquires it, love serves to melt and transform his immature images and qualities into mature ones. There are certain processes in the society bringing the man into misbalance again, thus making him continue his evolution. One of those is the human sense of possession. “Since possession and property make up such an important part of men’s life, cares and thoughts, even lovers cannot refrain from reflection on this aspect of their relations. Even if the use of the property is common to both, the right to its possession would remain undecided, and the thought of this right would never be forgotten, because everything which men possess has the legal form of property” (p.308). By the end of the fragment Hegel demonstrates that relationships and notions of equality and love must always be studied in the social context. The idea of this paper was to show that Hegel’s early contemplations on love are concordant with the philosophic views of the nowadays, as well as have much in common with the traditional oriented philosophy. The philosopher’s interpretation of love acquires new meanings today, proving that Hegel captured the very essence of such a complex notion as love. Read More