unit(y

   

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When we say, ‘God is love’, we are saying something very great and true. But it would be senseless to grasp this saying in a simple-minded way as a simple definition, without analyzing what love is. For love is a distinguishing of two, who nevertheless are absolutely not distinguished for each other. 

The consciousness or feeling of the identity of the two—to be outside of myself and in the other—this is love.  

I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other— and I am only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it, then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. 

This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me, and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling and knowledge of our unity.


[…]


For sense experience, two things cannot be in one and the same place; they exclude each other. But in the idea, distinctions are not posited as exclusive of each other; rather they are found only in this mutual inclusion of the one with the other. This is the truly supersensible [realm]…


—Hegel 
The Philosophy of Religion

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