ヘーゲルにおける現實的なものと理性的なもの

Abstract

1. Hegel's saying : What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational, has been variously misinterpreted. Some people regard it as a watchword of conservatism and others as an evidence of his shallow rationalism ; some find in it a tautology, and others a coincidentia oppositorum. We however, find here, in reference to his metaphor of “the Cross and the rose ”, a fundamental problem of philosophy, which should be considered from both the epistemological and the metaphysical points of view. 2. From the epistemological point of view, the saying of Hegel may be regarded as a variation of the time-honoured definition of truth : adaequatio rei et intellectus. The adequation theory required the Kantian theory of transcendental apperception. With some modifications brought upon this Kantian theory with regard to both the subject and the object of cognition, we get the above saying of Hegel, at least in so far as it is viewed in its epistemological phase. 3. Metaphysically, the saying means that what is rational exists as the substance of what is actual. We may conceive it as the incarnation of logos in accordance with his metaphor of “the Cross and the rose”. And it may be noted that this metaphor will be rightly understood only in connection with Luther and also with Dante, and even more rightly in reference to the doctrines of Shinran, a Japanese Buddhist saint and thinker. The relationship in Hegel between God and individuals has been usually interpreted either pantheistic or mystical, neither of which is exactly the case. Neither will it help us to characterize Hegelianism as a mystical pantheism. Only by recognizing the actual character of logos as being and cognition, we may appreciate the saying better than ever. 4. We see that in Hegel being and cognition become concrete by interrelation, and that the identity of what is actual and what is rational is the ultimate entelechy of this concretion. From this view-point some misinterpretations are rejected: the saying is not a reasoning in the circle; it does not necessarily embody conservative absolutism or sceptical relativism. We find here rather a synthesis of the Kantian criticism and the Christian metaphysics, comprising in itself an echo of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.