The Readiness Is All

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 492.

2. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 54–55. Kant writes in the Critique of Practical Reason that “such a commandment as Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself agrees with” the holy law of the categorical imperative “very well. For, as a commandment it requires respect for a law that commands love…. It is, therefore, only practical love that is understood in that kernel of all laws” (207).

3. Also see Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 44 and 53.

4. Buber, I and Thou, 69.

5. See Matthew 10.29; See Matthew 24.44: “Therefore, you must also be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour”; I parse this sentence: Since no man knows anything whatsoever of that which he leaves, what is it to leave in good time (early)?

6. In calling upon Kierkegaard’s never-ending criticism of Hegel as finitely totalizing reality, which has remained the conventional view of “Hegelianism” down to the present, Taylor does not clearly distinguish between Hegelianism and the Hegel who, in fundamental agreement with Kierkegaard, made the process of mutual recognition, of spirit infinitely recognizing spirit, central to his conception of art, religion, and philosophy and thus of history as the story of freedom (liberation). We remember that it is the slave (like the ancient Israelites in Egypt), and not the master (the Egyptian pharaoh), who initiates Hegel’s master-slave dialectic whereby one becomes free solely when all (others) are free(d). Indeed, it is surprising that, in a book dealing with the impact of theology on modern philosophy, Taylor ignores Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.