I'll take a stab at the paragraph about "love disporting with itself".

The line is from parapgraph 19 of the Preface to the Phenomenology as it appears on Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm

Hegel thinks philosophy should be "science". So a view of philosophy that sinks into "mere edification" is falling short of what philosophy should be.

He might be rebutting a certain current of opinion.

I'll try to interpret the idea of "love disporting with itself". Aristotle has a view that the highest experience was "theoria" which means "contemplation".

To Aristotle, God is eternally contemplating Godself. This divine navel gazing played a role in his system and partly explained the motion of heavenly bodies.

So "love disporting with itself" sounds to me like a reinterpretation of that Aristotelian idea.

But I think what Hegel is saying is that in order to avoid sinking to the level of "mere edification" this has to incorporate the "negative".

Thanks for your response Vera. I'm interested in what your interpretation of the passage would be. Maybe it's so unclear that you can't even imagine? Then take a wild guess! No wrong answers.



I have a similar background. I started with Marx but now I've pivoted more into the religious side. I go to Quakers and their method of worship is silent prayer. So I guess I'm more directed towards the immediate nowadays.