No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2013
G. W. F. Hegel's greatest contributions regarding religion and politics stem from his abiding concern with social cohesion. While Hegel was interested in now classic questions regarding the role of religion in government, the focal point of his engagement with religion and politics lay in his view of religion's role in binding together a complex society in which a more traditional social order had been fragmented by interrelated economic, social, political, and intellectual transformations. He was less concerned with the role of religious reasons and language in policy debates or elections than with politics in a broader sense—specifically, the way that religion enables the population as a whole to identify with the society's defining social and political institutions, including the family, the economic order, and other legal institutions. In this image, religion reconciles the population with the existing practices and institutions. Without significant degrees of such identification and reconciliation, even the best of laws will be insufficient to sustain a polity. Though reconciliation is one of Hegel's principal terms for this relationship, it in no sense implies “making do,” settling for, or simply accepting the status quo because it happens to exist. Rather, he is ultimately concerned with religion's ability—or inability—to enable us to find ourselves at home in a just and rational social order that promotes freedom.
1 See, for instance, Staat und Religion in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie (ed. Arndt, Andreas, Iber, Christian, and Kruck, Günter; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hegel-Jahrbuch 2003: Glauben und Wissen. Erster Teil (ed. Arndt, Andreas, Bal, Karol, and Ottmann, Henning; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003)Google Scholar. Alvarez-Gomez, Mariano, “Zu Hegels Theorie des Verhältnisses von Staat und Religion,” in Hegels enzyklopädisches System der Philosophie. Von der “Wissenschaft der Logik” zur Philosophie des absoluten Geistes (ed. Lucas, Hans-Christian, Tuschling, Burkhard, and Vogel, Ulrich; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2004) 411–20Google Scholar; Hodgson, Peter Crafts, Hegel and Christian Theology: A Reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) esp. 193–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jaeschke, Walter, “Hegels Begriff des Protestantismus,” in Der Protestantismus—Ideologie, Konfession oder Kultur? (ed. Faber, Richard and Palmer, Gesine; Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003) 77–91Google Scholar; Moked, Oran, “The Relationship Between Religion and State in Hegel's Thought,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 49–50 (2004)Google Scholar 96–112; and Lewis, Thomas A., Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 232–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For particularly noteworthy earlier treatments, see Jaeschke, Walter, “Christianity and Secularity in Hegel's Concept of the State,” JR 61 (1981) 127–45Google Scholar; Franco, Paul, Hegel's Philosophy of Freedom (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999) 296–306Google Scholar; Dickey, Laurence, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (ed. Beiser, Frederick C.; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 301–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fackenheim, Emil L., The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967) 270–72Google Scholar.
2 For important examples, each of which draws a distinct conclusion, see Desmond, William, Hegel's God: A Counterfeit Double? (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003)Google Scholar; Dierken, Jörg, Glaube und Lehre im modernen Protestantismus. Studien zum Verhältnis von religiösem Vollzug und theologischer Bestimmtheit bei Barth und Bultmann sowie Hegel und Schleiermacher (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996)Google Scholar; Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology; O’Regan, Cyril, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Wendte, Martin, Gottmenschliche Einheit bei Hegel. Eine logische und theologische Untersuchung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 For a concise and insightful treatment of early conflicts over the interpretation of Hegel on these issues, see Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy.”
4 Brief notes regarding the shifts in Hegel's conclusions to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion can be found in Jaeschke, Walter, Reason in Religion: The Foundations of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion (trans. Michael Stewart, J. and Hodgson, Peter C.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 344–46Google Scholar; Jaeschke, Walter, Hegel-Handbuch. Leben-Werk-Schule (Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 2003) 476CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heidt, Sarah Lilly, “Community in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion: From Bestimmung to Verstimmung,” in New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion (ed. Kolb, David; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 184–88Google Scholar; Dierken, Glaube und Lehre im modernen Protestantismus, 298; Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 193–204; and Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy.” Lu De Vos provides a valuable discussion of Hegel's shifts from 1827 to 1831 but engages the 1827 lectures on religion only very briefly; see De Vos, Lu, “Religion-Staat-Geschichte bei Hegel (1827–1831),” in Staat und Religion in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie (ed. Arndt, Andreas, Iber, Christian, and Kruck, Günter; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009) 37–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other treatments of developments in Hegel's thinking on religion which nonetheless do not engage significantly with the topic at hand, see Mariano Alvarez-Gomez, “Zu Hegels Theorie des Verhältnisses von Staat und Religion”; Cruysberghs, Paul, “Braucht der Staat eine Volksreligion? Über die Religion als Grundlage des Staates bei Hegel,” in Hegel-Jahrbuch 2003: Glauben und Wissen. Erster Teil (ed. Arndt, Andreas, Bal, Karol, and Ottmann, Henning; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003) 290–94Google Scholar; and Merklinger, Philip M., Philosophy, Theology, and Hegel's Berlin Philosophy of Religion, 1821–1827 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
5 Hegel lectured on philosophy of religion four times during his tenure at the University of Berlin: in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. From the 1821 lectures, we have Hegel's draft lecture manuscript, along with subsequent annotations. From 1824 and 1827, we have relatively complete student transcriptions of the lectures. From 1831, no known transcriptions survive, though we do have David Friedrich Strauss's notes on the lectures as a whole as well as a new final section of Part I. Thanks to the editorial work of Walter Jaeschke as well as of the team of translators led by Peter Hodgson, these materials are now widely accessible; see VPR in note 7 below. On the sources for these authoritative editions, see Jaeschke, Walter, “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” in Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Teil 1 (vol. 3 of Vorlesungen); Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983)Google Scholar 3:ix–lxxxvi and Hodgson, Peter C., “Editorial Introduction,” in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, by G. W. F. Hegel (ed. Hodgson, Peter C.; trans. Brown, R. F.et al.; 3 vols.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 1:8–40Google Scholar. Jaeschke has also made a convincing case for the authority of these materials vis-à-vis Hegel's brief treatments of religion in his published writings from this period, principally the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences; see Reason in Religion, 209–12. Although Hegel wrote and lectured on religion and the state in several other contexts during this period, focusing exclusively on the conclusions to the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion provides a manageable scope as well as a particularly clear lens through which to examine the shifts in Hegel's view.
6 Hegel presupposes neither a completely religiously homogeneous society nor anything like today's diversity. His final account presumes that the majority of the population—though not everyone—accepts a religion that, like Lutheranism as he interprets it, places a premium on subjectivity and individual freedom.
7 References to Hegel's writings and lectures are abbreviated as follows. In citing Hegel, I have made use of previously published translations when available yet have altered these as I have deemed appropriate. Texts are generally cited by the page number in the German text followed by a slash and the page number in the English translation, if available. Where published translations are not available, the translations are my own. Within quotations, italics are Hegel's unless otherwise noted.
Werke (ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel; 20 vols.; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–1971).
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830) (vol. 8–10 of Werke, 1970).
Hegel's Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the “Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences” (1830) (trans. William Wallace and Arnold V. Miller; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
Early Theological Writings (trans. Thomas M. Knox; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).
Glauben und Wissen oder Reflexionsphilosophie der Subjektivität in der Vollständigkeit ihrer Formen als Kantische, Jacobische und Fichtesche Philosophie, in Jenaer Schriften 1801–1807 (vol. 2 of Werke; 1970) 287–433.
Faith and Knowledge (trans. Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977).
Phänomenologie des Geistes (vol. 3 of Werke; 1970).
Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. Arnold V. Miller; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (vol. 7 of Werke; 1970).
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (ed. Allen Wood; trans. Hugh B. Nisbet; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie: 1818–1831 (ed. Karl-Heinz Ilting; vol. 3; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974).
Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie: 1818–1831 (ed. Karl-Heinz Ilting; vol. 4; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974).
“Fragmente uber Volksreligion und Christentum,” in Frühe Schriften (vol. 1 of Werke; 1971) 9–44.
“The Tübingen Essay,” in Three Essays, 1793–1795 (trans. Peter Fuss and John Dobbins; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) 30–58.
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie. der Geschichte (vol. 12 of Werke; 1970).
Philosophy of History (trans. J. Sibree; rev. ed; New York: Willey, 1944).
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des Geistes (ed. Franz Hespe and Burkhard Tuschling; Vorlesungen 13; Hamburg: Meiner, 1994).
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (ed. Walter Jaeschke; 3 vols.; Vorlesungen 3–5; Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983–1985). Cited by the German page number, which is included in the margin of the English translation.
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (ed. Peter C. Hodgson; trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart; 3 vols; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984–1987).
8 For a classic treatment of this historical context, see Sheehan, James J., German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford History of Modern Europe; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 11–206Google Scholar.
9 Although in this essay Hegel largely presupposes the inadequacy of Christianity as a civil religion, subsequent writings from the 1790s repeatedly probe the roots of this failure. For excellent treatments of Hegel's life and work during this early period, see Crites, Stephen, Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel's Thinking (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Pinkard, Terry, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Dickey, Laurence W., Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807 (Ideas in Context 6; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harris, Henry S., Hegel's Development: Toward the Sunlight, 1770–1801 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)Google Scholar.
10 Although many of Hegel's writings from this decade are collected into a volume entitled Early Theological Writings, none of them conclude that Christianity can function as a Volksreligion today (ETW); for the German texts, see Werke 1. On these materials, see Lewis, Thomas A., Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 25–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 For Hegel's most developed accounts of representation, see VPR 1:291–98; Enz. §§451–64; and VPGst 195–223.
12 To examine fully these elements of Hegel's account would take us far beyond the bounds of the present article. My goal here is to trace the elements of Hegel's account that constitute necessary background for the interpretation of the texts on which I focus below.
13 This is only one of several important questions raised by Hegel's account of religious representations. Perhaps most significantly, Hegel's strategy generates a major challenge for the interpretation of his philosophy of religion as a whole: is the otherness intrinsic to representation preserved in the transition to thought (such that the philosophy of religion is determinative for the reading of his philosophy as a whole), or is that otherness specific to the representational form and therefore left behind in the transition to philosophy (such that the larger philosophical project is determinative for the reading of his philosophy of religion)? If (but only if) the former, then Hegel's philosophy of religion can be understood as preserving a theistic conception in which God is fundamentally other to human beings; if the latter, then Hegel's mature philosophy of religion is much closer to Feuerbach than is usually thought. Emil Fackenheim frames this issue powerfully; see his The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought. See also Lewis, Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel; Jaeschke, Reason in Religion; Desmond, Hegel's God: A Counterfeit Double?; Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology; and O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel. To make progress on the issue of social cohesion and reconciliation, however, the present context requires a careful focus on this issue and a bracketing of other concerns.
14 On this aspect of the Phenomenology of Spirit, see Lewis, Thomas A., “Religion and Demythologization in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,” in Hegel's “Phenomenology of Spirit”: A Critical Guide (ed. Moyar, Dean and Quante, Michael; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 205–6.Google Scholar
15 See VPR 1:237–64, 1:330–38, 3:69–97, 3:153–76, and 3:251–70.
16 On this aspect of Hegel's philosophy of religion, see Lewis, Thomas A., Freedom and Tradition in Hegel: Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) 191–94Google Scholar.
17 See Lewis, Thomas A., “Cultivating Our Intuitions: Hegel on Religion, Politics, and Public Discourse,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 27 (2007) 205–24Google Scholar. See also De Vos, “Religion-Staat-Geschichte bei Hegel (1827–1831)”; Walter Jaeschke, “Es ist ein Begriff der Freiheit in Religion und Staat,” in Staat und Religion in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie (ed. Andreas Arndt, Christian Iber, and Günter Kruck; Hegel-Forschungen; Berlin: Akademie, 2009) 9–22; Moked, “The Relationship between Religion and the State in Hegel's Thought.”
18 See also PR §§266–70, esp. 270 A; Rph V 230–36; and Rph VI 646. It is noteworthy that Hegel had already articulated this ideal conception of the way that religion could support political life before he was in a position to argue that the Protestantism existing in his day was capable of doing so.
19 Regarding this overall stability of Part 3, see Jaeschke, Reason in Religion, 292–97 and Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 206.
20 See, for instance, VPR 1:159.
21 On the Decrees and their significance for Hegel, see Pinkard, Hegel, 419–68 and Peperzak, Adriaan Theodoor, Philosophy and Politics: A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 113; Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff, 1987)Google Scholar.
22 See, in particular, GuW. See also Enz. §§44–61 and 467.
23 GuW. That work as a whole focuses on this issue. See Lewis, Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel, 68–78.
24 For examples of Hegel's rejection of monasticism, see Enz. §410 A and VPG 409/338, as well as his treatment of it in the 1827 lectures on religion, discussed below.
25 See VPG 409/338.
26 In connection with the point that this moment cannot recognize the concrete content of Christian doctrine, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, Hegel here inserts one of his relatively few discussions of Islam. Although Islam is, for Hegel, like Christianity in rising above the national particularity of Judaism, “the religion of Islam … hates and proscribes everything concrete; its God is the absolute One” (VPR 3:172). As in his treatment of most other religions, Hegel treats Islam as possessing only one essential form, whereas Christianity contains several distinct moments.
27 “For since all content and all truth perish in this subjectivity that inwardly knows itself as infinite yet remains private, the principle of subjective freedom thereby comes to consciousness in it” (VPR 3:173–74).
28 On subjective freedom, see Neuhouser, Frederick, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) 82–113Google Scholar and Lewis, Freedom and Tradition in Hegel, 146–61 and 178–82. On the connection to the Reformation, see VPR 1:344, as well as Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory, 232–35, and Walter Jaeschke, “Christianity and Secularity in Hegel's Concept of the State,” 262.
29 “Once reflection has invaded the sphere of religion, thinking or reflection assumes a hostile attitude toward the representational form in religion and toward its concrete content. And once thinking has begun in this way, it does not stop; it carries through, it empties heart and heaven; cognitive spirit and religious content then take refuge in the concept. Here they must find their justification” (VPR 3:174).
30 “Thus the task of philosophy is to show forth the rational content of religion. That was the purpose of these lectures, to reconcile reason with religion in its manifold forms, and to recognize them as at least necessary” (VPR 3:175).
31 Hegel presents this third moment as mediating the previous two. It shares with the second a rejection of the ultimacy of representation as such. For this reason, this moment can appear in opposition to the church. Yet “it [advances to the point] of comprehending [the truth] in thoughts; and in the process it also recognizes the necessity of the form of representation…. So this opposition to the church is only a formal one” (VPR 3:175). Over against the second moment, which Hegel here identifies as the Enlightenment, “[p]hilosophy is opposed to the [attitude of] indifference toward the content, it is opposed to mere opinion, to the despair involved in its renunciation of truth, and to the view that it does not matter what content is intended” (VPR 3:175). Whereas the second moment evaporates all determinate content into pure subjectivity, this third moment—genuine philosophy—shares with the first, immediate form of realization that it preserves determinate content.
32 Jaeschke also highlights the importance of this step forward (Reason in Religion, 344 and 346). In partial contrast, De Vos locates a key shift in Hegel's thinking on these matters between 1827 and 1831; see “Religion-Staat-Geschichte bei Hegel (1827–1831),” 37–55. With Jaeschke, I see Hegel having already achieved the crucial step by 1827, which is emphatically not to say his thought was simply static after that time. Moving in the other direction historically, Hodgson treats the 1824 and 1827 lectures largely together, then turns to the 1821 manuscript. This strategy also downplays the “solution” at which Hegel had arrived by 1827. Nonetheless, Hodgson's presentation effectively highlights the important point that the 1821 lectures demonstrate that Hegel was not “naively optimistic about the modern world” (Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 203).
33 Regarding Hegel's more positive appraisal of contemporary developments, see Pinkard, Hegel, 561, 605–606, and Jaeschke, “Hegels Begriff des Protestantismus,” 89–90. See also Lewis, Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel, 97–106.
34 Jaeschke, “Es ist ein Begriff,” 15.
35 Hegel's expansion of this section thus represents a more significant shift than Hodgson implies (Hegel and Christian Theology, 193–97).
36 On Charlemagne in relation to this point, see VPG 418/437.
37 This increasing stress on the distinctiveness of Protestantism vis-à-vis earlier Christian history corresponds to a shift highlighted by Jaeschke. Jaeschke argues that Hegel makes a major shift from arguing in the Philosophy of Right that attending any church will suffice to arguing by the late 1820s for the exclusive appropriateness of Protestantism to modern society (“Es ist ein Begriff,” 18). Although Hegel does become more explicit, Jaeschke arguably overstates the degree of substantive shift in Hegel's view: Hegel already associated Protestantism with subjectivity and made the latter central to his conception of modernity. Moreover, even earlier treatments deal with the presence of other religions in the modern state largely in terms of tolerance rather than as an alternative basis for cohesion and reconciliation. See, for instance, Hegel's discussion of Quakers in PR §270 A.
38 For a powerful recent interpretation in this tradition, see Kallscheuer, Otto, “Hegels Theorie der Säkularisierung: Rechtsstaat als protestantisches Prinzip?,” in Staat und Religion in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie (ed. Arndt, Andreas, Iber, Christian, and Kruck, Günter; Berlin: Akademie, 2009) 109–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Hegel here presumably has in mind F. A. G. Tholuck, a neo-Pietist who had accused Hegel of pantheism. Hegel is thus positioning himself as the defender of authentic orthodoxy over against Tholuck. On Tholuck's critique and its impact on Hegel's 1827 lectures, see Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 49 and Merklinger, Philosophy, Theology, and Hegel's Berlin Philosophy of Religion, 1821–1827, 141–44.
40 See Pinkard, Hegel, 637–40.
41 Regarding Hegel's increasingly critical attitude toward Catholicism during this period, see De Vos, “Religion-Staat-Geschichte bei Hegel (1827–1831),” 47–55 and Jaeschke, “Es ist ein Begriff,” 17–9. Whereas Jaeschke argues this exclusive focus on Protestantism represents a major shift from the time of the Philosophy of Right, I see more continuity in Hegel's position. See n. 37 above.
42 For important discussions of subsequent intellectual developments, see Jaeschke, Hegel-Handbuch, 476; Dickey, “Hegel on Religion and Philosophy,” 321–34; and Toews, John Edward, Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.