Faith and Knowledge

The original title in German is "Glauben und Wissen oder die Reflexionsphilosophie der Subjektivität in der Vollständigkeit ihrer Formen als Kantische, Jacobische und Fichtesche Philosophie". This essay was first published in the "Kritisches Journal der Philosophie," which was edited by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It appeared in the 2nd volume, 1st installment of the journal in Tübingen, published by Cotta in 1802. In it, Hegel discusses how various philosophers like Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte have dealt with the concept of the Absolute, indicating that it is beyond reason's grasp. Hementions the limitations of reason in understanding the Absolute and how philosophers have turned to faith when faced with the unknowable. Hegel suggests that the idea that reason is subordinate to faith, as expressed in older times, and against which philosophy vehemently asserted its absolute autonomy, has disappeared. Reason has asserted itself within positive religion, and there is now a sense that the conflict between philosophy and the positive aspects of religion, such as miracles, is considered obsolete and obscure.<br/><br/>Heidegger mentions this book to argue that the "death of god" comes from Hegel, not Nietzsche:<br/><br/>The alienating thought of the death of a god and the death of the gods was already familiar to the young Nietzsche. In a note from the time of the elaboration of his first writing "The Birth of Tragedy" Nietzsche writes (1870): "I believe in the Ur-Germanic word: all gods must die". The young Hegel names at the end of the treatise "Faith and Knowledge" (1802) the "feeling on which the religion of the new time is based -the feeling: God himself is dead ..." Hegel's word thinks Other than Nietzsche in his. Nevertheless, there is an essential connection between the two, which is hidden in the essence of all metaphysics. The word of Pascal taken from Plutarch: "Le grand Pan est mort" (Pensées, 695) belongs, although for opposite reasons, to the same area.<br/>In the wake of Kant's revolutionary philosophy, Hegel penned this scathing critique of what he perceived as the shallow rationalism that pervaded contemporary thought. Published in the Critical Journal of Philosophy, which he edited with Schelling, the text took aim at the philosophies of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte, whom Hegel saw as embodying the deficiencies of Enlightenment thought. In the intellectual ferment of Jena, where competing philosophical visions clashed and morphed, this work marked Hegel's growing independence from both the Kantian framework and the immediate post-Kantian solutions offered by his contemporaries.<br/><br/>The treatise reveals how these thinkers, despite their differences, shared a common failure: they placed the Absolute beyond the reach of reason, relegating it to the realm of faith or feeling. Through an intricate analysis, Hegel shows how Kant's critical philosophy, Jacobi's faith-based immediacy, and Fichte's subjective idealism all ultimately rested on an unbridgeable gap between finite human knowledge and infinite truth. Their sophisticated systems, he argued, merely masked a deeper capitulation to the fixed oppositions of understanding - between subject and object, finite and infinite, faith and knowledge. These philosophies thus embodied the culmination of what Hegel called "the principle of the North"-a mode of thought that had reached its apogee in Protestant culture and Enlightenment reflection.<br/><br/>This modern translation contains an afterword explaining this work's place in his larger body of works, the historical background, and a timeline of his life and works. The modern language of the translation and scholarly apparatus are designed to orient the modern reader to Hegel's world in his time, and highlight the continued influence of Hegel in our day.