PhilosophersGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The real is rational: Spirit realises itself in history.

German idealism1770 – 1831 GermanyGerman idealistThinker of dialecticPhilosopher of historyPhilosopher of the state and of right
Encyclopaedia, § 51 Remark and § 193 Remark (1830)

God is not a hundred thalers: Hegel defends the ontological proof against Kant

What it claims

Kant's critique does not refute the ontological proof: the passage from the thought of God to the certainty that he exists remains legitimate.

Why

Thinking of a hundred thalers does not make them exist, but God is not a finite thing: his concept unites thought and being.

Valid with an implicit premise

Kant had refuted the ontological proof (Anselm, Descartes) with an example that became famous: a hundred real thalers contain nothing more than a hundred imagined ones. Hegel, one of the few great philosophers still defending the proof after Kant, replies: the example holds for finite things, not for God. Honest classification: Hegel's God is not exactly the personal creator of classical theism (many see pantheism in it), but the argument defended here is the classical proof of God's existence, and Hegel called himself a Christian.

P1What defines every finite thing is that its existence is distinct from its concept: thinking of a hundred thalers does not make them exist. On this point Kant is right.
P2But God is not a finite thing: he is "an object of another kind" than a hundred thalers.
P3The concept of God is precisely the unity of concept and being: God is what can only be thought as existing. And being is the poorest determination: it would be strange if the concrete totality that God is did not contain it.
P4 · implicit premiseKant's critique refutes the proof only if it applies to God, that is, if God were a finite thing, or if his concept did not include being.
Therefore Kant's critique does not refute the ontological proof: the passage from the thought of God to the certainty that he exists remains legitimate.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where God is not finite, his concept includes being, and yet Kant's critique still refutes the proof: for instance because no concept, not even that one, can guarantee that a thing exists outside thought.
Valid with P4. Yet P4 is exactly what Kant disputes: for him the objection does not depend on the difference between finite and infinite. "Being" is not a real predicate of any concept, even God's. P1 is not needed for the logic; it only shows what Hegel grants Kant. Hegel himself admits a flaw in Anselm's proof: it presupposes the unity of thought and being instead of showing it. For him, only his whole Logic shows it.
Analogy. You do not prove a treasure exists by drawing it on a map: Kant is right about treasures. Hegel replies: God is not one treasure among others, he is what makes everything else real. Asking him to "prove he exists" like a treasure is to mistake him for a thing.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (earlier text) 1781 · attacks premise 4

Existence is not a real predicate of any concept: a hundred real thalers contain nothing more than a hundred possible ones. This holds for every concept, including God's. If I deny that God exists, I remove the subject with all its predicates, without any contradiction.

Hegel replies
Hegel
Hegel replies directly to Kant: calling things like a hundred thalers a "concept" is a barbarism. Everyone knows that thinking of a finite thing does not make it exist. But when we speak of God, we are dealing with an object of another kind than a hundred thalers, whose concept includes being.
The debate goes on (our summary) Kantians reply that Hegel assumes what is in question: saying God's concept "includes being" does not show that such a God exists outside our thought.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hegel refuses to apply to God the example of the hundred thalers, which holds for finite things. Kantians reply that saying God's concept includes being assumes what is in question. The basic disagreement: can being be part of a concept without already assuming the existence of what it designates?
A difficulty Hegel himself acknowledges (Encyclopaedia, § 193) attacks premise 3

In Anselm's proof (and in Descartes and Spinoza), the unity of thought and being is not demonstrated: it is only presupposed. One can always oppose their difference to it, as was done in Anselm's own time.

Hegel replies
Hegel
Hegel replies that this objection is only overcome by showing that the finite, separated from the infinite, is not true, and that thought and being, taken apart, are abstractions that pass into one another. In other words: the proof only holds together with his whole system of Logic.
The debate goes on (our summary) That is the price: to accept this defence, one must accept Hegel's entire Logic, which few philosophers today accept in full.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hegel acknowledges that Anselm's proof presupposes the unity of thought and being without showing it, and says that only his whole Logic shows it. The debate therefore concerns the value of that entire system rather than the isolated proof.
Frege and Russell: existence is not a property of things 1884 · attacks premise 3

Modern logic sharpens Kant's idea: to say "God exists" is to say that a concept applies to at least one thing. Existence therefore cannot be part of any concept, and no definition, even God's, can guarantee that it applies to something.

Hegel replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1884, after the author's death (1831).
Alvin Plantinga 1974
Plantinga does not take up Hegel's defence: he offers another, modal version of the proof. It starts not from ordinary existence but from the idea of a maximally great being, who would exist in every possible world. The debate then moves to whether such a being is possible. See the modal argument for the rest.
see the argument
Where the debate stands (our summary)Modern logic (Frege, Russell) places existence on the side of a concept's application, not its content. Present-day defenders of the proof no longer go through Hegel but through the modal version, where the discussion concerns the possibility of a maximally great being.