For Hegel the death of God lodges negation within God’s own being

Evidence

At the very moment when she shows that according to Hegel, ‘the death of God appears as a moment within God’s Being’ and the ‘advent of the “metaphysics of subjectivity”’ (a proposition which, taken on its own, Heidegger would probably not have repudiated), Malabou follows a path whose very necessity is marked by this reflexivity of the farewell of God to his own self, an infinite reflexivity of the infinite farewell to one’s self which does not by some chance end in finitude, in the ‘situation of an absolute finitude characterized by modern philosophy’. Inasmuch as the death of Christ is the Mittelpunkt around which all turns and according to which begins the ‘conversion of conscience’ and the true ‘faith’ (the ‘apprehension by Spirit, as the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit’), we arrive at this thought, which is at the same time a philosophical and religious thought: the negation is in God. And more so, fatal doubling, this negation in God passes by the experience of a farewell to salvation, ‘the loss of all salvation’, the ‘feeling of complete irretrievability’, the very salutation to salvation or the farewell to all and any farewell. … God has died (Gott ist gestorben), God is dead (Gott ist tot) – this is the most frightful of all thoughts (der fürchterlichste Gedanke) that everything eternal and true is not, that negation itself is found in God. The deepest anguish, the feeling of complete irretrievability, the annulling that everything that is elevated are bound up with this thought. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 154

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the core Hegelian move: divine negativity as immanent to God rather than a negation from outside.
• XREF: Malabou drives here at the plasticity of God — connects to the reader’s project of founding plasticity via Hegel. — connects to: Icon worshipers unknowingly enacted God’s death through representation — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 15; Reading Hegel without Luther leaves one blind to the phrase God himself is dead — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 153; Thinking the negation of negation requires passing through the death of God — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 156 (+23 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 154

Broader Connections

• Hegel uniquely read the Death of God as divine self-negation #corroborates (0.95)
• For Hegel, God’s death is an internal moment of God’s own development. #corroborates (0.93) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 774
• Hegel makes negativity intrinsic to God’s self-production, implying an originary lack #expands (0.88)
• Hegel positioned modern God’s-death feeling as a moment of the Idea #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 766
• God’s self-emptying is a founding and not merely a diminishment for Hegel #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1258