Eleonora Caramelli

Abstract

The paper focuses on the first shape of natural religion in the Phenomenology of spirit and seeks to define its historical reference, usually identified in Zoroastrianism. Using linguistic textual evidence and some closely linked extracts from the Lectures on Aesthetics and on Philosophy of Religion,  I wish to interpret the paradox involved in the “Shape of shapelessness”, i.e. light essence, as tied to the problematic relation between the essence and its linguistic manifestation. If the element which allows the Lichtwesen to be a paradoxical manifestation of the sublime is the pneumatic substance of the word, then Hegel’s topic could be the Talmudic reflection on the name of God in this paragraph. I wish to show that the argument draws on also the relation between language and Meynung, in order to read in the first section of natural religion the problem of the ambiguous status of the δόξα on the background of a theological duplicity of the Word, between  φωνή σημαντική and εἰκών.

Eleonora Caramelli studied Philosophy at the University of Florence and Bologna, where she graduated in Aesthetics (subject of the thesis: Hegel). She is now PhD Student at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane – didactic location at the Department of Philosophy, Bologna University. She has published a paper in «Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia» of the Florence University (XVI, 2010): Destino e rappresentazione. Il linguaggio tragico nella Fenomenologia dello spirito di Hegel.