black chevrolet

Peace and quite reigns in the grounds crew office as the entire crew is off taking finals and getting ready to leave for Christmas break.

I have a few minor chores to perform, four plant lists to finalize, an archive of plans to make.

The BMW dilemma is on the back burner for now. The owner is not in a rush to get rid of it. I'm thinking my original idea of starting out on Suzi was merited. If vehicles and the rebuilding thereof is to be part of my life, experience gained in working on a motorcycle first will be more rewarding than working on a car first.

Okay, so that differentiation stuff.

"According as the content of the notion or conception of God or consciousness is determined, so too is the attitude of the subject to him; or to put it otherwise so too is self consciousness in worship determined...."

"It was therefore a one-sided view if the natural theology of former times looked upon God as object of consciousness only...it could never in reality get beyond the idea of an essence. It was inconsistent, for if actually carried out it must have led to the other, the subjective side, that of self consciousness."

A notion defined by man determines an attitude of man; if self consciousness in worship is ignored, then does God become subjective. I'm not quite following this twist. Is it that familiarity breeds contempt; lack of respect for the notion of God leads man (who originates the conception) back to himself since lack of respect by defintion lowers the object to the same level (or lower) as oneself? Or is it simply that the presence of God as a concept (essence) only leads man who seeks to worship him back to himself (who originates the conception). Perhaps these two are not fundamentally different views.

"It is just as one sided to concieve of religion as something subjective only, thus in fact making the subjective aspect the only one. So regarded worship is absolutely sterile and empty; it's action is a movement which makes no advance, it's attitude toward God a relation to nullity, an aiming at nothing."

Reverse extrapolation from this paragraph can help me with the previous one. Advance (progress forward from one extreme to another) and relation (the being or state of advancing) are integral parts of cultus, then. So if God exists as essence, there can be no relation since 'essence' (object) is an extreme of a different kind from 'man' (subject). Advance from one to the next is then also impossible since comparison of two extremes varying in kind is impossible (apples and oranges). But I'm not sure that this is exactly what Hegel wishes to conclude in the first paragraph. There IS a Cartesian move taking place in here somewhere; I sense it.