Hegel’s critique of reified presence inadverteny produces the immediacy it forbids

Evidence

Because it is based on the reduction of the divine presence to a present entity, a ‘thing’ (res), the Hegelian critique of a reified divine presence runs into an unavoidable paradox. For as ‘thing’, accessible in the here and now (hic et nunc), this presence would be more immediately assimilable than the Eucharistic host, understood as a symbol and promise of the body of Christ. In essence, the dialectical notion of God permits the very thing which Hegel in other respects shows to be impossible: a presentation of the divine presence as sense certainty. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 729

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to the book_so_far thesis that Hegel reduces time to presence and that total self-disclosure annuls giving (ch85); also bears on the reader’s MOC question about when the passive substrate tips into active redefinition.
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘sense certainty’ functions here as the limit-case of presence that dialectic claims to forbid yet secretly installs.

Related

• Hegel’s dialectical God paradoxically becomes more immanently present than the Eucharistic host. (similarity 0.91)
• Hegel’s critique of reified divine presence paradoxically enables a more intimate possession of God (similarity 0.91)
• Unreserved self-disclosure annuls giving, making exhaustive manifestation equivalent to total concealment (similarity 0.83)
• Hegel’s God can present itself yet never truly happen (similarity 0.82)
• Hegel’s God of absolute presence requires an original passivity foreshadowed by Origen (similarity 0.82)
• A God who is fully present may never actually happen (similarity 0.81)
• Hegel’s reason is both a priori and a posteriori in absolute unity (similarity 0.81)
• Hegel subordinates God to the necessity of the dialectic (similarity 0.80)
• Hegel inserts time rather than lack into divine subjectivity. (similarity 0.80)
• For Hegel spirit is not merely self-contained thought but essentially self-revelation and objectivity (similarity 0.80)
• Hegel’s ontology of consciousness remains framed entirely in terms of knowledge. (similarity 0.80)
• A fully self-transparent God can neither occur nor arrive, and so cannot promise (similarity 0.80)
• A God who fully reveals himself can never give himself as a gift. (similarity 0.79)
• Hegel’s God is necessarily self-revealing and incapable of envy (similarity 0.79)
• Theologians reject Hegel because concept-bound God loses transcendence and power to promise. (similarity 0.79)