Abstract
Feuerbach’s judgment of Hegel’s philosophy was that it was not philosophy at all but only religion in disguise. Since that time more than one effort has been made, by friends and enemies of Hegel alike, to show that Hegel’s thought was not religious at all but rather the culmination of a process of secularizing philosophy which began with Bacon and Descartes. When dealing with a thought so complex — and even tortuous — as Hegel’s, it would, of course, be difficult to prove that either side is in error, but no conscientious interpreter can gloss over the fact not only that Hegel constantly speaks of God and of religion — more, perhaps, than any modern philosopher — but also that the consciousness of the absolute which he calls religious consciousness is for him integral to the process of thought which he calls Wissenschaft.1
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Notes
Wissenschaft, which, for Hegel, is not a characteristic of philosophy but rather identical with it, is the totality of the process whereby man comes to Wissen. That process is described in detail in the Phän, whose original title was Wissenschaft der Erfahrung des Bewußtseins. Therein the stage of consciousness immediately preceding knowledge in the fullest sense is the stage revealed (Christian) religion, and nowhere in his writings does Hegel alter this.
Cf. “Volksreligion und Christentum,” in HU, pp. 3-71. Here Hegel agrees pretty much with Kant that religion stands in the service of morality. Still, Theodor Häring, in his Hegel, sein Wollen und sein Werk (Leipzig and Berlin, 1929, 1938), makes it abundantly clear that even at this early stage Hegel did not accept fully the Kantian subordination of religion to morality (cf. I, pp. 66, 188-89).
Hegel did, of course, know Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus and Lessing’s efforts at biblical interpretation, but Kant and Fichte opened up to him a new world of rational religion.
RiGbV, p. 3.
RiGbV, p. 8. Cf. Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten, ed. Klaus Reich (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959), p. 74: “Er fühlt sich für ein anderes Reich geschaffen als für das Reich der Sinne und des Verstandes, — nämlich für ein moralisches Reich, für ein Reich Gottes. Er erkennt nur seine Pflichten zugleich als göttliche Gebote, und es entsteht in ihm eine neue Erkenntnis, ein neues Gefühl, nämlich Religion.”
Cf. RiGbV, p. 10; Der Streit der Fakultäten, p. 31.
Cf. RiGbV, p. 63.
RiGbV, p. 92.
RiGbV, p. 170.
Cf. RiGbV, p. 105.
RiGbV, pp. 106-107.
Cf. RiGbV, p. 111.
RiGbV, p. 114.
RiGbV, p. 143.
Der Streit der Fakultäten, p. 31.
RiGbV, p. 187.
Cf. Emil Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegels Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 206.
Phän, p. 559.
Phän, p. 473.
Cf. Phän, p. 480. The term which we here translate by “representation” is Vorstellung. It is impossible to find on English term which will adequately translate the German term in each of its occurrences. The notion that Hegel seeks to get across in using it is that in a Vorstellung the object of thought is not itself present to thought but is represented by a subjective medium which stands in its place (its “representative,” i.e. Stellvertreter). “Die Vorstellung ist als die erinnerte Anschauung die Mitte zwischen dem unmittelbaren Bestimmt-sich-finden der Intelligenz und zwischen derselben in ihrer Freiheit, dem Denken. Die Vorstellung ist das Ihrige der Intelligenz noch mit einseitiger Subjektivität, indem das Ihrige noch bedingt durch die Unmittelbarkeit, nicht an ihm selbst das Sein ist. Der Weg der Intelligenz in den Vorstellungen ist, die Unmittelbarkeit ebenso innerlich zu machen, sich in sich selbst anschauund zu setzen, als die Subjektivität der Innerlichkeit aufzuheben, in ihr selbst ihrer sich zu entäussern und in ihrer eigenen Äuberlichkeit in sich zu sein.” EdpW, sec. 451.
EdpW, sec. 552.
EdpW, sec. 1.
EdpW, sec. 5.
EdpW, sec. 6.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, the third (abreviated) ed. by Friedhelm Nicolin of the work as contained in Band 166 of the Philosophische Bibliothek, ed. by Hoffmeister in 1940 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959), pp. 38f.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., p. 46.
Ibid., p. 48.
Ibid., p. 52.
Cf. the section in Phän on “Beobachtende Vernunft.”
EdpW, sec. 248.
Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, p. 57.
Ibid., pp. 55-56.
Ibid., p. 167.
Ibid., p. 168.
Cf. Ibid., pp. 173-74.
Ibid., p. 175.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 176.
Ibid., p. 178.
Ibid., p. 179.
Ibid., p. 180.
Ibid., pp. 182-83.
Ibid., p. 184.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 186.
Ibid., p. 185. Cf. WdL, I, p. 30: “Das absolute Wissen ist die Wahrheit aller Weisen des Bewußtseins weil, wie jener Gang deselben es hervorbrachte, nur in dem absoluten Wissen die Trennung des Gegenstandes von der Gewißheit seiner selbst vollkommen sich aufgelöst hat und die Wahrheit, dieser Gewißheit, sowie diese Gewißheit, der Wahrheit gleich geworden ist.”
Cf. Phän, pp. 187-91.
Phän, p. 191. It should be mentioned that, in Hegel’s view, rationalism is also the enemy of philosophy: “Dieser Rationalismus ist der Philosophie dem Inhalte und der Form nach entgegengesetzt.”
Phän, p. 391.
Fackenheim, op. cit., p. 209.
Ibid., p. 112.
Cf. EdpW, sec. 552, where he comes back to the same complaint. By putting the infinite out of reach of reason and handing it over to faith, Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi are simply settling for a reason which is not reason but understanding. When Hegel makes reason capable of the infinite (in fact that is what distinguishes it as reason) he is making it an infinite capacity. This it cannot be if it is merely the function of the individual (even the universalized individual).
Phän, p. 556.
VdL, I, 31.
VdL, p. 126.
VdL.
VdL, p. 125.
VPR, II, p. 496.
VPR, p. 225.
VPR, I (Glockner, vol. 15), p. 40.
VPR, p. 50.
VPR.
This notion of “external history” (äusserliche Geschichte) is familiar to us from Phän. It designates an account of the events of history, which, as the work of the historian, is external to the events themselves, which have in themselves an internal relationship constituting the historical process.
VPR, II, pp. 191-92.
Phän, p. 557.
This same theme we find as early as “Das Leben Jesu,” HtJ, p. 75.
Cf. WdL, II, p. 502; also EdpW, sec. 213, where he says in a slightly different vein that only as Idea is the concept fully defined, because only thus is it explicitly identified with the totality of reality.
Philosophy is “der denkend erkannte Begriff der Kunst und Religion, in welchem das in dem Inhalte Verschiedene als notwendig und dies Notwendige als frei erkannt ist.” EdpW, ed. by Nicolin and Pöggeler (Hamburg, 1959) Section 572, p. 450. Art and religion are not absorbed into philosophy in this process but rather their necessity is established: “Die Philosophie bestimmt sich hienach zu einem Erkennen von der Notwendigkeit des Inhalts der absoluten Vorstellung sowie von der Notwendigkeit der beiden Formen, einerseits der unmittelbaren Anschauung und ihrer Poesie und der voraussetzenden Vorstellung, der objektiven und äusserlichen Offenbarung, andererseits zuerst des subjektiven insichgehens, dann der subjektiven Hinbewegung und des Identifizierens des Glaubens mit der Voraussetzung.” That art and religion are necessary forms results from the primary insight of the Hegelian philosophy — that the Begriff is not immediate but mediated by Being and Reflection. The proof therefore can only be “der ganze Verlauf der Philosophie und der Logik inbesondere, welcher diesen Unterschied (sc. of speculative thought from Vorstellung and the reflective understanding) nicht nur zu erkennen gegeben, sondern auch beurteilt oder vielmehr die Natur derselben an diesen Kategorien selbst sich hat entwickeln und richten lassen” (Ibid.)
As the following from Aquinas illustrates: “… radius divinae revelationis non destruitur propter figuras sensibiles quibus circumvelatur … sed remanet in sua veritate; ut mentes quibus fit revelatio, non permittat in similitudinibus permanere, sed elevet eas ad cognitionem intelligibilium …” (Summa Theologiae 1, 1, 9 ad secundum; ed. Ottawensis, 1941). So Hegel writes that the finite form “hindert nicht, dass der Geist seinen Inhalt, der als religios wesentlich spekulativ ist, selbst im Gebrauche sinnlichen Vorstellungen und der endlichen Kategorien des Denkens gegen dieselbe festhalte, ihnen Gewalt antue und inkonsequent gegen sie sei” EdpW, Nicholin and Pöggeler, section 573.
Phän is directed against unreflecting empiricism but more especially against the supposedly critical method of Kant. The Einleitung makes this clear; for example, “Der sich auf den ganzen Umfang des erscheinenden Bewußtseins richtende Skeptizismus macht dagegen den Geist erst geschicht zu prüfen, was Wahrheit ist, indem er eine Verzweiflung an den sogenannten natürlichen Vorstellungen, Gedanken und Meinungen zustande bringt, welche es gleichgültig ist, eigene oder fremde zu nennen, und mit welchen das Bewusstsein, das geradezu aus Prüfen geht, noch erfüllt und behaftet, dadurch aber in der Tat dessen unfähig ist, was es unternehmen will.” Phän, p. 68.
The argument of Phän ends at the point where both the receptivity of the religious attitude and the self-certainty of the moral attitude are destroyed in their independence of each other. From the side of Erfahrung this is the point of complete despair; from the side of Wissenschaft it is the point of reconciliation. Phän, pp. 554f. It thus ends with an anticipatory sketch of the Wissenschaft. But its proper result is only the collapse of the standpoint of experience.
It seems strange that Father Lauer should say that Hegel’s sixteen lectures on the proofs for the existence of God are on the ontological argument. They treat also of other, if not all, arguments, as do the two Logics. Hegel distinguishes the ontological argument very sharply and gives it its place in the Logic at the transition from subjectivity to objectivity in WdL. see, “Die Objektivität,” pp. 353-8. The ontological argument is not presupposed by the Logic but included within it.
A brief statement of the meaning of the Logic is given in Phän, pp. 561-2. The scepticism which Phän produces is overcome in that “bestimmte Begriffe” take the place of “bestimmte Gestalten des Bewußtseins.”
“In der Philosophie, welche Theologie ist (sc. philosophy of religion), ist es einzig nur darum zu tun, die Vernunft der Religion zu zeigen.’” Hegel, Werke, Berlin 1840, XII, p. 353). The purpose is not to replace religious feeling and imaginative thought but to secure for them their true content: “Die Philosophie denkt, was das Subject als solcher fühlt und überlässt es demselben, sich mit seinem Gefühl darüber abzufinden. Das Gefühl ist so nicht durch die Philosophie verworfen, sondern es wird ihm durch dieselbe nur der wahrhafte Inhalt gegeben” (ibid., pp. 353f.)
The collision of faith and reason in modern Christendom attains the form of the “inneren Zweispalt des Geistes und Gemüts in sich selbst”; the two sides “die in Widerspruch kommen, die Tiefe des Geistes als ihre eine und gemeinschaftliche Wurzel gewinnen, und in dieser Stelle in ihrem Widerspruche zusammengebunden, diese Stelle selbst, den Geist, in seinem Innersten zu zerüttern vermögen.” Ibid., p. 361.
Ibid., pp. 363-66 and pp. 345-49.
On supranaturalism, see Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1959, pp. 191-2. On what follows practically when the Church gives up its claim to knowledge, e.g., the fourth lecture Uber die Beweise für das Dasein Gottes (Werke XII, p. 384 seq.)
Ibid., p. 354.
Ibid., p. 355.
That Hegel’s philosophical theology presents truly the profoundest in Luther’s teaching is recognized by Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Darmstadt, 1959, vol. 4, pt. 1, p. 463, n. 1; p. 475, n. 1.
S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. by D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 494.
Cf. Karl Barth: “for Hegel … the human subject … stands by no means apart as if it were not concerned.… It is in his looking and only in his looking that the something seen is produced as the thing seen in the looking of the human subject. Man cannot participate more energetically (within the framework of theoretical possibility), he cannot be more forcefully transferred from the floor of the theatre on to the stage than in this theory.” Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl, tr. by B. Cozens (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), p. 285.
E. L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 19. Cf. D. Henrich, “Hegel’s Theorie Uber den Zufall,” Kantstudien, 50 (1958-9), pp. 131ff.
I am indebted to Professor Fackenheim for this insight. See op. cit., p. 102n.
See op. cit., p. 268.
Op. cit., p. 19. Cf. Ibid., p. 204.
Ibid., pp. 205f.
Editor’s note: Revision to eliminate ambiguity may have violated the questioner’s intended meaning at this point.
Abstracts of this and several other papers were distributed at the Symposium.
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Quentin Lauer, S.J., Doull, J., Barrett, C.D. (1970). Hegel on the Identity of Content in Religion and Philosophy. In: Christensen, D.E. (eds) Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9152-4_9
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