Sobre a Interpretação do Neoplatonismo por Hegel

Abstract

This article shows that Hegel was a pioneer in the rediscovery of Neoplatonism, and that this rediscovery was an important influence on his thought. The importance of Neoplatonism in the early period of Hegel’s thought is addressed, when the Neoplatonic influence is apparent in themes such as the absolute as an original unity, the oppositions produced by the reflective thought, love as synthesis of the finite and the infinite, the importance of the first two hypotheses of Plato’s Parmenides, the concept of a “trinitarian” process of separation and return from the finite into the absolute, and the need of a via negationis for the thought of the absolute. The interpretations of Plotinus and Proclus in Hegel’s Lessons on the History of Philosophy are thereupon studied. Proclus is understood as the culmination of ancient philosophy, as he both anticipates and influences Hegel on issues such as the relationship between the negative-rational and the positive-rational or speculative moment of the Hegelian method, the categories as an expression of the absolute or the nous as a third moment that develops the determinations of the absolute and prepares the return to it. Finally, Hegel emphasizes that other main philosophical elements for the understanding of Modernity, which were inaccessible to Neoplatonism, are a contribution of Christianism.