God is commonly described as a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth. Hegel says this is already a mistake. If God is to be truly infinite, truly unlimited, then God cannot be ‘a being’, because ‘a being’, that is, one being (however powerful) among others, is already limited by its relations to the others. It’s limited by not being X, not being Y, and so forth. But then it’s clearly not unlimited, not infinite! To think of God as ‘a being’ is to render God finite.
But if God isn’t ‘a being’, what is God? Here Hegel makes two main points. The first is that there’s a sense in which finite things like you and me fail to be as real as we could be, because what we are depends to a large extent on our relations to other finite things. If there were something that depended only on itself to make it what it is, then that something would evidently be more fully itself than we are, and more fully real, as itself. This is why it’s important for God to be infinite: because this makes God more himself (herself, itself) and more fully real, as himself (herself, itself), than anything else is.
Food and Ethics Movie and Discussion
Who decides what you eat?
Free movie followed by a food and ethics discussion. 4:30pm, Tuesday March 3 AGRS 101. Hosted by our own Dr Holberg!
Click here for a flier and more info on the film: fed up flyer
Calling all honorable humans!
If you are interested in joining Phi Sigma Tau (national honor society in philosophy), please tell Dr. Kleiner or me. We will be having our annual initiation dinner this spring. To find out more about PST, click here.
Poe vs Enlightenment by Alex Tarbet
One of our students, Alex Tarbet, wished to share some interesting reflections on Poe and the Enlightenment. Here is his brief write up of what is a larger paper:
Dr. Crumbley’s Poe class this semester is philosophically fascinating. At the end of his life, Poe wrote an enormous treatise called Eureka! It claims to explain the nature of God, the origin of the cosmos and, well, everything else. Some say it’s evidence of Poe losing his mind to alcoholism (I think they’re wrong) while others say it’s a massive satire mocking encyclopedia-writing Enlightenment geniuses who may have reduced knowledge to naturalism and, therefore, poetry to simian apings or fowl drippings. Quoth the Raven, nevermore. So, is it a satire? Continue reading “Poe vs Enlightenment by Alex Tarbet”
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