A conversation inside the play inside my new novel. In the year 1805, two close friends, the poet Friedrich Holderlin and the philosopher Georg Hegel, both 34-year-old Germans, discuss their views of Deity, the Field (the Infinite), consciousness, and the soul.
Act II, Scene 5
A few hours later. Holderlin and Hegel again sit facing each other. Holderlin looks his friend in the eye. “So you think my experiences of the Infinite and the Divine are too enthusiastic.”
“You are awestruck by the Light,” Hegel responds. “Your awareness becomes radiant. Your sentiments are purified. You are filled with enthusiasm – and you yearn in your heart for more such experiences.”
“But what is enthusiasm?” Holderlin queries. “Warm feelings drive our soul up, as if up a ladder. I prefer to maintain my awareness in a greater fire rather than a weaker fire.”
“Let’s not argue about your spiritual experiences, Friedrich. I do believe that you are experiencing infinite Beauty, Harmony, and Love.”
“Love, yes. I notice, Hegel, that you no longer use the word Love when you talk about your system.”
“I’m a philosopher, Holz. And a professor. I have to be credible. I have to call It the Spirit or the Absolute.”
“But Divine Love still matters to you?”
“Of course!” Hegel exclaims. “God is Love. That is literally true. God’s Love is the foundation of all reality. But I sense you mean something different by love than I do, Holz. You are talking about feelings.”
“And what are you talking about?”
“A fullness of consciousness. A full view of reality. A view that includes logic, reason, ideas, and analysis.”
“And concepts.”
“Yes, Friedrich, your dreaded concepts. Concepts are the work of the Spirit too.”
“No.”
“Yes. Conceptual thoughts articulate the structure of reality.”
“You think conceptual thoughts are superior to religious imagination?”
“Forced to make a choice, yes.”
“I can never go there with you, Wilhelm.”
Hegel holds firm. “Consider this again, dear friend. There is cognition in the Spirit. There is thinking by the Spirit. Life thinks. Love thinks. Don’t you see, Friedrich? Love has infinite potential. Reducing Love by identifying Love only with feelings robs Love of Its fuller potential.”
Holderlin thinks for a moment. “I also experience images rooted in Beauty.”
“You link imagination to the Spirit the way the evangelicals and the Romantics do. You link imagination to feelings. I link imagination to reason.”
“You now reject Romanticism, Hegel?”
“Yes.”
“I am not a Romantic either,” Holderlin claims.
“Holderlin,” claims Hegel, “you are the ultimate Romantic.”
“I do not think so. And you now reject evangelical experience and faith?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Romantics and evangelicals,” Hegel asserts, “stay trapped in emotion and images about the Infinite and the Divine.”
“Trapped?! No, Wilhelm, the realm of pure eternal Spirit enlivens us. The Spirit is rendered accessible to us by feelings and images.”
“Friedrich, the meaning of Spirit must be coherent.”
“The experience of Spirit is coherent without ascribing conceptual meaning to it.”
“Look,” Hegel counters, “most of us prefer feelings over reason. Feelings are more intense. But feeling alone, feeling in itself, feeling for itself – don’t you see how this confines our soul? How feelings can control us? Either you master your feelings or they master you.”
“You see feelings as an abyss.”
“Here is the most valid argument I can put forward, Friedrich. The meaning of infinite Love cannot be captured totally by the blissful feelings and the intuitions and the immediate inspirations of the evangelicals and the Romantics and the mystics. There are real dangers in unmediated feelings. Our awareness of the infinite Spirit must be mediated by our reason. We must rise above feelings to understanding.”
Holderlin gives this a moment’s thought. “I choose to surrender myself to the Beauty, Harmony, and Love of the Spirit. I dive deep into the waves of the Spirit’s inspirations. I ride those waves.”
“I understand why this appeals to you, Holz. Your rhapsodies take you into a fullness of Beauty. But human souls are much more than a glowing spark of beauty. We are also a fount of sensibility. Beauty is not an adequate expression of the Spirit. Beauty is the sensuous appearance of ideas. The truer reality is the realm of thought. We must go beyond feelings alone. We must mediate and order our feelings with habits of our mind that are both good and disciplined. Then we find true blessedness, serenity, and joy.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t you see, Friedrich?. Christianity is falling into little more than an emotional mystery cult. If this continues, theology and faith and even truth itself will be swallowed up by feelings.”
“Rather than?”
“Rather than the Spirit in fullness. Rather than developing constructive minds and productive souls. Rather than true piety, rather than a life lived from virtues, rather than a truly moral and ethical life. Rather than authentic life in community.”
“You make a good case, Hegel. There are dangers when our feelings have free rein.”
“When our feelings have free rein our character contracts.”
“You are talking about more than your philosophy. You are also talking about me.”
“You remain of great concern to me, Friedrich.”
“My dear Wilhelm, we have been friends for 16 years. You can speak frankly.”
“The development of our soul requires great care, Friedrich. Experiencing the Spirit should lead us to feel, habitually, at home in the world and at home in our own self. It ought to be done with total sanity.”
“You are frank,” Holderlin replies. “But you have even more to say.”
“My dear friend,” Hegel responds, “the human failure to move beyond feelings to reason is truly dangerous. When we fall entirely into subjectivity we fall into confusion. Our mind falls into disorder. Our mind malfunctions. Excessive emotion is a precondition to insanity. The real danger of excess feeling, my dearest Friedrich, is that we will fall into madness.”
Stage lights out.
Hegel above, Holderlin below
"Christianity being swallowed up by an emotional cult" So good !