Contents

Preface

Epigraphs

Introduction

1. Hegel and capitalist ideology

1.1 Hegel and Western supremacism

1.2 Paul Redding and Hegel’s Neoplatonism

2. The criticism by Hegel and Plotinus of their societies

3. Hegel and subjectivity

4. Hegel’s Reason

5. Hegel’s Neoplatonic world of God the self

6. Key elements in the Neoplatonism of Hegel and Plotinus

6.1 Plotinus’ phenomenology of spirit

6.2 Movement and rest

6.3 A life of creative dynamism

6.4 Plotinus’ sculptor

6.5 Emanation and return

7. Hegel conflated the Neoplatonic hypostases

7.1 in the philosophy of Plotinus

7.2 in the philosophy of Proclus

7.3 and in his own philosophy

8a/8. Subject and object

8.1 What is Neoplatonic thinking?

8.2 In knowing its objects, subject knows itself

8.3 How is the subject to know itself? Distinction, desire and possession

8.4 Hegel’s application of this Neoplatonic distinction

8.4.1 consciousness and its other, self-consciousness

8.4.2 The ‘I’ and its other, ‘Not-I’

8.4.3 God and his other, Christ

8.4.4 ‘Mind’ and its other, itself

8.4.5 being and its other, nothing

8b/8.5 Hegel’s recognitive theory of Spirit and his Neoplatonic cultus

8.6 God loves himself in his collective other

9a/9. Hegel’s cognition of God

9.1 What is cognised?

9.2 God is a Neoplatonic process

9.3 Plotinus and Cusanus: impressions become concepts

9b/9.4 Hegel’s Intuition

9c/9.5 God is cognised in a perspectival community

9.6 Hegel’s perspectival community – the kingdom of God

9.7 The cultus is the site of freedom

9.8 Flight of the alone to the Alone – a priesthood of philosophers

10a/10. Concepts, propositions, predication and the speculative sentence

10.1 Hegel, philosopher of concrete concepts

10.2 Hegel’s concepts are spiritual, religious and open

10.3 Speculative exposition preserves the dialectical form

10.4 Neoplatonic concepts are always dynamic

10.5 The importance of negation

10.6 Hegel used his concepts mytho-poetically

10b/10.7 Hegel and Plotinus rejected propositions of the understanding from their speculative philosophy

10.8 Proclus and Cusanus on propositions

10.9 Hegel’s ultimate concepts – beyond predication

10.9.1 God

10.9.2 Absolute

10.9.3 Spirit

10.9.4 Concept/Notion

10.9.5 Absolute Idea

11a/11. Hegel, prose poet

11.1 Language is the ‘mind’s’ perfect expression

11.1.1 The German language has many advantages

11.1.2 The sound of speech

11.2 On the importance of feeling to philosophy

11b/11.3 Hegel’s speculative thinking and his poetic imagination

11.3.1 Speculative philosophy and metaphor

11.3.2 Hegel and metaphor

11c/11.3.3 Hegel’s ‘Trinity’ – symbolism and allegory within a Neoplatonic metaphor

11.3.4 The Christian Trinity and Neoplatonism

11.3.5 Proclus’ triad: Being, Life and Intelligence

11.3.6 Hegel on Proclus’ triad

11.3.7 Hegel’s Neoplatonic Trinity

11.3.8 The Trinity is a metaphor that points to a truth beyond itself

11d/11.3.9 Core Neoplatonic metaphors Hegel used

11.3.9.1 Emanation and return (including elevation and introversion)

11.3.9.2 Light

11.3.9.3 Mirror

11.3.9.4 Sight

11e/11.3.10 Hegel infused the Trinity with Neoplatonic symbolism

11.3.10.1 God as a symbol for unity and difference

11.3.10.2 Christ as a symbol for unity in difference

11.3.10.3 Christ as a symbol for emanation

11.3.10.4 Christ as a symbol for mystery

11.3.10.5 Christ as a symbol for the unity of divine and human

11.3.10.6 Christ as a symbol for the unity of infinite and finite

11.3.10.7 Christ as a symbol for the unity of eternal and in time

11.3.10.8 Christ as a symbol for the journey of the soul

11.3.10.9 Christ as a symbol for the process of spirit and self-cognition

11.3.10.10 Christ as a symbol for contradiction

11.3.10.11 Christ as a symbol for the process of negation

11.3.10.12 Christ as a symbol for recollection

11.3.10.13 Christ as a symbol for the means of return and unification

11.3.10.14 The Holy Spirit as a symbol for the return to unity in knowledge

11.3.10.15 The rose and the owl face each other

11f/11.3.11 The Phenomenology of Spirit and the Logic unite in the Enneads

11g/11.3.11.1 The Phenomenology of Spirit and the Enneads

11.3.11.2 The Phenomenology of Spirit: theatre of the ‘mind’

11h/11.3.11.3 The Science of Logic and Neoplatonism

11i/11.3.11.4 The Science of Logic is a theology

11j/11.3.11.5 With what does the Science of Logic begin?

11k/11.3.11.6 Being, being and nothing

11l/11.3.11.7 God: conceptual and categorial

11m/11.3.11.8 Metaphor and prose poetry

12a/12. Hegel and Proclus

12.1 Academics on Hegel, Neoplatonism and Proclus

12.2 Hegel on Neoplatonism and Proclus

12b/12.3 The philosophies of Hegel and Proclus

12.3.1 Neoplatonists are not philosophers

12c/12.3.2 The reconciliation of faith and ‘reason’

12d/12.3.3 The retreat into a philosophy of subjectivity – ‘ancient’ becomes ‘modern’

13a/13. Hegel and Nicholas of Cusa

13.1 The use of Neoplatonism

13.2 Philosophers who didn’t acknowledge those who influenced them

13b/13.3 ‘Cusa’s direct influence on Modern thought is small; an immediate common-bond is scarcely confirmable.’

13c/13.4 A Neoplatonist must never be acknowledged as the initiator of modern Western philosophy

13d/13.4.1 Hegel knew of Cusanus, in detail

13e/13.4.2 Some more writing on Cusanus that Hegel read

13f/13.5 What the academics refuse to acknowledge in Hegel they incorrectly attribute in Cusanus

13.6 Parallels between Hegel and Cusanus

13g/13.6.1 Both Hegel and Cusanus sought to reconstruct the grounds of philosophy and theology and the relationship between them

13h/13.6.2 Hegel followed Cusanus in structuring his Neoplatonism on Proclus’ triad of triads

13.6.2.1 Further discussion of Proclus’ triad

13.6.2.2 Proclus and Cusanus

13.6.2.3 Cusanus and Hegel overlaid the Christian Trinity on Proclus’ triad, exploring its theological and philosophical potential

13.6.2.4 How successful were both in bringing their treatment of the Trinity into sync with Proclus’ triad?

13i/13.6.3 Their philosophies are the world-valuing, intellectual mysticism of Neoplatonism

13j/13.6.4 The God of Hegel and Cusanus

13k/13.6.5 Infinity and the finite

13l/13.6.5.1 ‘Understanding’, ‘reason’, finitude and infinity

13m/13.6.5.2 The fundamental notion in philosophy, conflation and the Proclean triad

13n/13.6.5.3 Measure, circles, spheres and God

13o/13.6.5.4 The use to an absolute idealist of the historical Christ and of Christianity

13p/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’

13q/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13r/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13s/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13t/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13u/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13v/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (continued)

13w/13.6.6 The cognition of absolute truth – God is a Proclean ‘syllogism’ (concluded)

14a/14. Magee on Hermeticism, Böhme and Hegel

14.1 Magee’s misrepresentation of the Hermetica

14b/14.2 But wait! Shockingly, there’s more!

14c/14.2 But wait! Shockingly, there’s more! (continued)

14d/14.2 But wait! Shockingly, there’s more! (continued)

14e/14.2 But wait! Shockingly, there’s more! (continued)

14f/14.3 The influence of Neoplatonism

14g/14.4  If not the Hermetica, what is the source for God as process?

14h/14.4 If not the Hermetica, what is the source for God as process? (concluded)

15a/15. Conclusion

15b/15. Conclusion (continued)

15c/15. Conclusion (continued)

15d/15. Conclusion (continued)

15e/15. Conclusion (concluded)

Complete thesis with choice of colours for the title page:

‘Hegel the consummate Neoplatonist’ A

‘Hegel the consummate Neoplatonist’ B