Hello Phil55,

So are you one of those people lucky enough to be born in Australia and thus with a built-in bullshit detector? If so, I congratulate you on your good fortune.

 I wrote:

 As to whether "anyone can take seriously" Hegel's remark about the presentation of God as he is in his eternal essence: _I_ can take it seriously, to the extent of writing a book about it (_Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God_ [Cambridge U. Press, 2005])Need I explain that Hegel is speaking figuratively, here, since time and thus the normal sense of "before" is not present in his Logic?

You replied:

I'm sorry for having touched a nerve, but I have to confess I'm completely at a loss because I cannot begin to understand how anyone can intelligibly use the words "before" or "after" or "prior to" without their temporal sense in talking about (alleged) events like the Creation .
I agree that Plato is equally naive on this issue (it is false that he coined the term "philosophy", as Diogenes Laertius attributes this to Pythagoras),  but to that extent he is a mystic. However, the thoughts of mystics are excluded from the scope of philosophy provided you are willing to use the word "philosophy" with the quite reasonable presupposition that any philosophical discussion is conducted with at least a minimum of rationality and with the use of concepts that are potentially available to everyone for grasping. 

I reply:

Thanks for the correction about the term "philosophy." I explained that by "before," Hegel means logically prior, by which I mean presupposed by, necessary for the intelligibility of. He does not have in mind a creation that precedes the world in time. Neither (probably) did Plato. How do you know that Hegel's Logic or Plato's doctrine of the Forms are not "conducted with a minimum of rationality or with concepts that are potentially available to everyone for grasping"? It seems to me that both Plato and Hegel go to great lengths to achieve precisely those goals. For details on Hegel, see my book. But if you tell me you don't need to read it, because your innate detector has told you that certain sentences of Hegel's are clearly bullshit, I will suggest that you aren't measuring up to your own stated standards of philosophical discussion. For a "minimum of rationality" surely involves being willing to reconsider the deliverences of supposedly infallible "detectors."

Best, Bob