2. The questions of present philosophy, the opposites, the content which occupies the attention of these modern times, are as follows: -a. The first form of the opposition which we have already touched upon in the Middle Ages is the Idea of God and His Being, and the task imposed is to deduce the existence of God, as pure spirit, from thought. Both sides must be comprehended through thought as absolute unity; the extremest opposition is apprehended as gathered into one unity. Other subjects which engage our attention are connected with the same general aim, namely, the bringing about of the inward reconciliation in the opposition which exists between knowledge and its object.
b. The second form of opposition is that of Good and Evil - the opposition of the assertion of independent will to the positive and universal; the origin of evil must be known. Evil is plainly the "other," the negation of God as Holiness; because He is, because He is wise, good, and at the same time almighty, evil is contradictory to Him; an endeavour is made to reconcile this contradiction.
c. The third form of opposition is that of the freedom of man and necessity.
i. The individual is clearly not determined in any other way than from himself, he is the absolute beginning of determination; in the 'I,' in the self, a power of decision is clearly to be found. This freedom is in opposition to the theory that God alone is really absolutely determining. Further, when that which happens is in futurity, the determining of it through God is regarded as Providence and the foreknowledge of God. In this, however, a new contradiction is involved, inasmuch as because God's knowledge is not merely subjective, that which God knows likewise is.
ii. Further still, human freedom is in opposition to necessity as the determinateness of nature; man is dependent on nature, and the external as well as the inward nature of man is his necessity as against his freedom.
iii. Considered objectively, this opposition is that between final causes and efficient causes, i.e., between the acts of freedom and the acts of necessity.
iv. This opposition between the freedom of man and natural necessity has finally likewise the further form of community of soul and body, of commercium animi cum corpore, as it has been called, wherein the soul appears as the simple, ideal, and free, and the body as the manifold, material and necessary.
These matters occupy the attention of science, and they are of a completely different nature from the interests of ancient philosophy. The difference is this, that here there is a consciousness of an opposition, which is certainly likewise contained in the subjects with which the learning of the ancients was occupied, but which had not come to consciousness. This consciousness of the opposition, this 'Fall,' is the main point of interest in the conception of the Christian religion. The bringing about in thought of the reconciliation which is accepted in belief, now constitutes the whole interest of knowledge. Implicitly it has come to pass; for knowledge considers itself qualified to bring about in itself this recognition of the reconciliation. The philosophic systems are therefore no more than modes of this absolute unity, and only the concrete unity of those opposites is the truth.
3. As regards the stages which were reached in the progress of this knowledge we have to mention three of the principal.
a. First of all we find the union of those opposites stated; and to prove it genuine attempts are made, though not yet determined in purity.
b. The second stage is the metaphysical union; and here, with Descartes, the philosophy of modern times as abstract thought properly speaking begins.
i. Thinking understanding seeks to bring to pass the union, inasmuch as it investigates with its pure thought-determinations; this is in the first place the standpoint of metaphysics as such.
ii. In the second place, we have to consider negation, the destruction of this metaphysics -the attempt to consider knowledge on its own account, and the determinations which proceed from it.
c. The third stage is that this union itself which is to be brought about, and which is the only subject of interest, comes to consciousness and becomes an object. As principle the union has the form of the relationship of knowledge to the content, and thus this question has been put: 'How is, and how can thought be identical with the objective?' With this the inward element which lies at the basis of this metaphysic is raised into explicitude and made an object; and this includes all modern philosophy in its range.
