As the title indicates, Faith and Knowledge deals with the relation between religious faith and cognitive beliefs, between the truth of religion and the truths of philosophy and science. Hegel is guided by his understanding of the historical situation: the individual alienated from God, nature, and community; and he is influenced by the new philosophy of Schelling, the Spinozistic Philosophy of Identity with its superb vision of the inner unity of God, nature, and rational man. Through a brilliant discussion of (...) the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and other luminaries of the period, Hegel shows that the time has finally come to give philosophy the authentic shape it has always been trying to reach, a shape in which philosophy’s old conflicts with religion on the one hand and with the sciences on the other are suspended once for all. This is the first English translation of this important essay. Professor H. S. Harris offers a historical and analytic commentary to the text and Professor Cerf offers an introduction to the general reader which focuses on the concept of intellectual intuition and on the difference between authentic and inauthentic philosophy. (shrink)

_In this essay, Hegel attempted to show how Fichte’s Science of Knowledge was an advance from the position of Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, and how Schelling had made a further advance from the position of Fichte._.

As the title indicates, Faith and Knowledge deals with the relation between religious faith and cognitive beliefs, between the truth of religion and the truths of philosophy and science. Hegel is guided by his understanding of the historical situation: the individual alienated from God, nature, and community; and he is influenced by the new philosophy of Schelling, the Spinozistic Philosophy of Identity with its superb vision of the inner unity of God, nature, and rational man. Through a brilliant discussion of (...) the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and other luminaries of the period, Hegel shows that the time has finally come to give philosophy the authentic shape it has always been trying to reach, a shape in which philosophy’s old conflicts with religion on the one hand and with the sciences on the other are suspended once for all. This is the first English translation of this important essay. Professor H. S. Harris offers a historical and analytic commentary to the text and Professor Cerf offers an introduction to the general reader which focuses on the concept of intellectual intuition and on the difference between authentic and inauthentic philosophy. (shrink)

Science has become independent of its possible applications and misapplications to human welfare. In so far as the practical application of his theories has created, and is creating instruments of war more devastating than man has ever known, the scientist might perhaps feel responsible for the fate of our world. However, this pernicious application of science is purely incidental—just as incidental as the beneficial uses to which science can be put. Science and the pursuit of theoretical truth should be unaffected (...) by world events even of the most catastrophic nature. Yet this conviction, however natural we may deem it, is not unchallenged. On the contrary, this war is being waged between two groups of powers, one of which frankly declares science to be solely in the service of the race and the state, while the other group still holds to a science for truth's sake. (shrink)