The Incarnation and Christ’s death are Hegel’s model for God’s genuine self-alienation as otherness

Evidence

Recalling Luther, the concept of Entäußerung in Hegel continues to designate the ‘divine sacrifice’. However, he interprets this sacrifice as God’s genuine ‘becoming other’, and this justifies the French translation of this concept by ‘aliénation’. In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel indicates that the act whereby the Son, ‘having come into the world’, acquiring his determination as ‘Other’ – an act brought to its fulfilment by his death –, is understood as the work of Entäußerung. The Incarnation is ‘the alienation of the divine (Entäußerung des Göttlichen)’, and Death, the ‘alterity of the divine (Anderswerden des Göttlichen)’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 682

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely specifies what Entäußerung means for Hegel: God genuinely becoming other, not merely sacrificing — the theological etymology driving Malabou’s plasticity concept.
• XREF: This is the theological root of plasticity: God being able to give form to himself and receive it back, extended later to the brain’s self-alienation in work on neural plasticity. — connects to: Neither classical art nor Christological incarnation fully embodies spirit for Hegel; Hegel maps Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection onto the S-P-U syllogism of determinate being. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 670; Christ’s death is the painful negative identification of sensuous existence with divine universality. (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• For Hegel the death of God lodges negation within God’s own being #corroborates (0.92) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 154
• For Hegel, God’s death is an internal moment of God’s own development. #corroborates (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 774
• Hegel was the first to philosophize the Death of God as God’s self-negation #corroborates (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 765
• Hegel uniquely read the Death of God as divine self-negation #corroborates (0.82)
• Hegel makes negativity intrinsic to God’s self-production, implying an originary lack #expands (0.80)
• For Hegel God’s essence includes self-representation and being-for-itself #expands (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 815
• Hegel positioned modern God’s-death feeling as a moment of the Idea #expands (0.74) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 766