Phenomenon and noumenon in pratial ativity

Ipse suum esse est. Essence and existence are in God identical; which means nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the species, conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The highest idea on the standpoint of religion is: God does not love, he is himself love; he does not live, he is life; he is not just, but justice itself; not a person, but personality itself, the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete existence. Because of this immediate unity of the species with individuality, this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination; whereas, the idea of humanity cheap juicy couture has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstraction; and the reality which presents itself to us in distinction from this abstraction is the multitude of separate, limited individuals. In God, on the contrary, feeling, has immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in one, , because here the species has an immediate existence,  is an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species as an allcomprehending unity. But God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians are distinguished from the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the individual with the species  that with them the individual has the significance of the species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect representative of the species  that they deify the human individual, make him the absolute being. Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity and heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the intelligence, to the understanding, to the nous.

The Christians individualised the understanding the heathens made it a universal essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the intelligence, was the essence of man; to the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To the heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the Christians, the individual, was immortal, , divine. Hence follows the further difference between heathen and Christian philosophy. The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity is Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as the totality of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person. Christ, , the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore not the central, but the terminal Juicy Couture Black Lip-gloss Pocket Daydreamer Bag point of history. The Christians expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the Bible, Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world. History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where this distinction ceases ' history ceases; the very soul of history is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contemplation and appropriation of this realised Ideal, and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence of a fixed belief,  the preaching that God has appeared, and that the end of the world is at hand. Since the immediate identity of the species and the individual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of course that this universal, ideal individual was declared to be a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the species and individual, for it is only the imagination which effects this identity, the imagination to which nothing is impossible, and which is also the creator of miracles; for the greatest of miracles is the being who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal, the species, humanity in the fullness of its perfection and infinity, , the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If the principle be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?

The. total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the universal sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation of this doctrine the demand that the individual shall Juicy Couture Brown Free Style Purse not be an individual, a demand which again is based on the presupposition that the individual by himself is  a perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation or existence of the species. It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute  in the phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single, and, as such, a finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstraction of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be. Here is entirely wanting the objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou, belongs to the perfection of the I, that men are required to constitute humanity, that only men taken together are what man should and can be. All men are sinners. Granted; but they are not all sinners in the same way; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential difference between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not; he would rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie; the third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licentiousness; while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or from the energy of his character, exhibits none of these vices.