“The Power to Empty Oneself”: Hegel, Kenosis, and Intellectual Virtue

Abstract

This article considers Hegel's idea of Entäußerung, or kenosis, as a model for an intellectual virtue that enables people to confront difference and disagreement without domination. According to Hegel, Entäußerung involves a refusal to use one's epistemic status – of being one among many reciprocally recognized loci of authority – as a basis for dominating others. The article considers the development of this idea in Hegel's work, addresses affinities between Hegel's idea of Entäußerung and recent feminist theology, and suggests its relevance for thinking about political and ethical conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Hegel
• kenotic theology
• feminist theology
• humility
• contestation

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Anna F. Bialek, Shira Billet, Stephen Bush, Louis Ruprecht, Jeffrey Stout, and James Wetzel for their generosity in reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article.

ORCiD

Molly Farneth http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2344-220X

Notes

1 For a full treatment of these issues, see Farneth, Hegel's Social Ethics. For an excellent overview of recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly with respect to his philosophy of religion, see Lewis, “Beyond the Totalitarian,” 556–574.

2 Here and below, I have taken the liberty of translating Luther's German in order to capture the language with which Hegel would have been familiar. For example, I have rendered Knechtgestalt as “form of a servant,” in order to preserve the distinction between Knecht and Sklave; most English translations use “form of a slave.” In addition, Luther's rendering of the final clause of the passage is more complex than some of the standard English translations. I am grateful to Shira Billet for her advice on this translation.

3 Coakley, Powers and Submissions, 11.

4 Ibid., 14.

5 Ibid., 19.

6 Ibid., 31. Anna Mercedes raises questions about Coakley's emphasis on human weakness here: “could not strength in weakness be characteristic of divine strength, not just human strength? In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul is recounting a revelatory conversation with the divine, who says to Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ The NSRV includes the note that ‘other ancient authorities read my power.’ Surely the passage itself does not rule out the possibility that weakness may be perfect divine, and not only human, power” (32). I return to this disagreement briefly at the end of the essay. See Mercedes, Power For, 32ff.

7 In-text references to the “Tübingen Essay” include the page number of the English translation in Hegel, Three Essays 1793–1795, 30–58; followed by the page number in the following German edition: Hegel, Werke I.

8 Hegel goes on to say that “an idea of sacrifice as crass as this has never really gained ascendancy anywhere (except perhaps in the Christian Church)” (TE 53/38). Whereas Hegel later views the Christian idea of kenosis as the most perfect instantiation of sacrifice, in the “Tübingen Essay,” he maintains a strong sense of the diversity and ambiguity of Christian sacrificial practices.

9 In-text references to the Phenomenology of Spirit include the paragraph number in Terry Pinkard's translation: Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit.

10 Variations on this form of sacrifice appear several times in the Phenomenology of Spirit. See, for example, Hegel's discussion of the unhappy consciousness, which tries to overcome its alienation from the absolute by relinquishing its desires and will; his discussion of the noble consciousness who sacrifices (or risks sacrificing) his life for state-power; and his discussion of faith, which renounces “possessions and the consumption of them,” in an attempt to reconcile with God (PS §569).

11 Pinkard, “Semantic Self-Consciousness,” 12.

12 Ibid., 12.

13 Hegel refers to the judging consciousness as “hard hearted.” Before the judging consciousness is able to forgive the formerly wicked consciousness, his heart must break. The language of “hard heartedness” echoes similar passages on confession and forgiveness in Luther's work and, of course, the Exodus narrative with its hard-hearted Pharaoh.

14 In his analysis of sacrifice in Hegel's work, Paolo Diego Bubbio refers to the first form of sacrifice as “external sacrifice” and the second (kenotic) form of sacrifice as “internal sacrifice.” While I am sympathetic with much of Bubbio's argument about the forms and functions of sacrifice in the Phenomenology of Spirit, it lacks an account of Hegel's use of the word Entäußerung or the paragraphs in which that word appears. As I suggest, Hegel's particular view of kenosis is laid bare in these paragraphs. Whereas Bubbio suggests that, for Hegel, kenosis focuses primarily on Christ's divestment of his divine attributes, I argue that it emphasizes the incarnate Christ's refusal to grasp at equality with God. The distinction may appear subtle, but these two views draw on different theological interpretations of kenosis and, I believe, have distinct implications for Hegel's epistemology. See Bubbio, Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition, 61–85.

15 Lewis, Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel, 176.

16 Whereas my analysis focuses on Hegel's discussion of self-emptying as it appears in the practices of human beings in community, Cyril O'Regan focuses on Hegel's description of Christian doctrine (particularly his relation of the incarnation and passion narratives). As a result, O'Regan focuses on the details of Hegel's Christology and its relationship to orthodox, and heterodox, Lutheran theology. He argues that Hegel's Christology has a Lutheran frame, but that it departs from Luther and orthodox Lutheran theology in several respects. O'Regan argues that Hegel rejects the orthodox view that Christ has two natures, human and divine, that are unified in one person, and instead holds the view that Christ has a single nature that is at once human and divine. This has repercussions for Hegel's retelling of the incarnation and passion narratives. O'Regan writes: “Given its monophysite background or commitment, Hegelian kenosis is radical in a way that it is not in Luther. And radical kenosis implies deipassionism. No more than Luther is Hegel prepared to insinuate suffering and death into the immanent divine. But, for Hegel, the divine is not sequestered in a pure infinity. The divine is as present, indeed more present, though in disguised form, in the radical finitude of suffering and death” (221). There is much at stake in these debates and distinctions, although perhaps not for my purposes here. See O'Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, esp. 189–234.

17 Andolsen, “Agape in Feminist Ethics,” 79. Coakley's work responds to Daphne Hampson's challenge to kenotic theology in Theology and Feminism.

18 See also Frascoti-Lochhead, Kenosis and Feminist Theology; Groenhout, “Kenosis and Feminist Theory,” 291–312.

19 Mercedes, Power For, 7.

20 On this point, Mercedes contrasts her account of God with Coakley's: “In Coakley's formulation, human power can be perfected in weakness, while for the divine, the patriarchal rules still apply, with the important caveat that the divine is gentle and nonabusive. But to put it bluntly, a nice man in power is still a man in power – power over everyone else – and this is not a transformation of patriarchy”; Mercedes, Power For, 37.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Molly Farneth

Molly Farneth is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. Her research focuses on religious and philosophical ethics, ritual studies, feminist and gender studies in religion, and the relationship between religion and democratic politics. She is author of Hegel's Social Ethics, forthcoming with Princeton University Press.