Hegel read the animal organism as a syllogism of self-relation, assimilation, and generic process

Evidence

A God conceived as something to be consumed is in Balthasar’s view an unacceptable concept of God. These ‘mysteries of the act of eating’ extend their darkness in every direction, embracing not only the Entäußerung, the divine self-abasement, but also the Erhebung, the elevation of man to God. Could it not be claimed that Hegel’s way of conceptualizing self-revelation must make religion the site of the mutual devouring of God and man, each attracted to the other by their respective hunger for being? It is worth remembering the arguments of the Philosophy of Nature, which maintained that ‘in every process, organic and spiritual, assimilation (Assimilation) is the most essential factor’. Not even God will escape from the rule prescribing ingestion and digestion; even He finds himself submitted to the ‘substantial change, i.e. the general immediate transformation of one external or particular material into another’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 722 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Hegel applies the metabolic rule of assimilation even to God’s self-revelation — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 722; The syllogism defines the living organism through three self-relations; Hegel maps Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection onto the S-P-U syllogism of determinate being. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 670

Broader Connections