HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION General Editor: John Hick, H. G. Wood Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham This new series of books will explore contemporary religious understand ings of man and the universe. The books will be contributions to various aspects of the continuing dialogues between religion and philosophy, between scepticism and faith, and between the different religions and ideologies. The authors will represent a correspondingly wide range I of viewpoints. Some of the books in the series will be written for the general educated public and others for a more specialised philosophical or theo logical readership. Already published William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH Ramchandra Gandhi THE AVAILABILITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD LONERGAN Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE Bernard M. G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION John J. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND GOD Robert Yong FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND GOD Patrick Sherry RELIGION, TRUTH AND LANGUAGE- GAMES Further titles in preparation HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Bernard M. G. Reardon ©Bernard M. G. Reardon 197 7 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1977 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras ISBN 978-1-349-02689-0 ISBN 978-1-349-02687-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02687-6 Typeset by SANTYPE LTD (COLDTYPE DIVISION) Salisbury, Wiltshire This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement In Memory of My Mother Contents Preface ix Biographical Note xi Introduction xiii 1 The Early Theological Writings 1 (i) The Greek Ideal 1 (ii) Jesus and Kant 4 (iii) 'The Spirit of Christianity' 12 2 What Is ~eligion? 24 (i) The Marks of the Religious Consciousness 24 (ii) Religion and the Secular World 29 (iii) Religion and Philosophy 31 (iv) Philosophy as 'Understanding' and as 'Speculation' 35 Appended Note on the Relation of Religion to Art 37 3 The Main Types of Religion 38 (i) Religions of Nature 38 (ii) The Religion of Spiritual Individuality 50 4 The Absolute Religion: Christianity 58 (i) The Meaning of Revelation 58 (ii) Christian Dogma 65 (iii) The Church 71 5 Man's Knowledge of God 77 (i) The Question of Intuition 77 (ii) Hegel's Criticism of Jacobi and Schleiermacher 82 (iii) Can God's Existence be Proved? 88 6 Some Problems of Interpretation 100 (i) Theism or Pantheism? 100 (ii) Necessary Truth and Contingent Events 104 (iii) The 'Speculative' Treatment of Doctrine 113 (iv) The Diversity of Religions 119 References and Notes 123 Select Bibliography 142 Index 145 Preface After long eclipse - in the English speaking world certainly - Hegel has today become a focus of attention on the part of both philosophers and historians of ideas, as the continuing flow of books and articles about him well testifies. Indeed a full bibliography of only the more recent publications would run to over a thousand titles. The basic reason for this is that the great German idealist, as is now justly realised, stands out as a key-figure in modem thought, upon which his influence, whether direct or indirect, whether through committed disciple ship or from antipathy and hostility, is seen as pervasive. But Hegel is also very difficult to interpret, even indeed to under stand; ambiguity permeates his thinking: 'Sein Wesen', it has been said, 'war Zweideutigkeit', Moreover his attitude is polemi cal; he did not shrink from controversy and his often cryptic utterances have not ceased to provoke it. Finally there is the religious dimension of his philosophy which, in any serious study of him, cannot be ignored. On the contrary, it has to be faced even if, in a secularising age, it presents a stumbling-block. My aim in the present volume is restricted to an account of Hegel's express treatment of the religious issue, mainly as comprised in the Berlin lecture-courses. These, it has to be remembered, Hegel never wrote out for publication and they do not make easy reading, being prolix, obscure and repetitious. To cope with them the student needs a guide, and this function I have endeavoured, within the space allotted to me, to provide. In particular I have sought to specify some of the main problems of interpretation and to indicate how hard it is to say definitively what Hegel's meaning truly was. The reader who, X Preface fairly enough, expects of philosophers that they should be always clear and as far as possible concise, will most probably be deterred as soon as he is made aware of what faces him; yet it is this very element of ambivalence in Hegel - the longueurs have to be admitted - which renders the study of his works, for some minds at least, so fascinating. His merit, his admirers would say, lies not in the system itself, with its over-elaborate patterns, or in the train of his reasoning, which frequently lacks rigour, or for that matter in the soundness of his erudition, which can readily be faulted, but in the extraordinary perceptiveness of his insights. For what interested Hegel was, in the largest sense, the historic destiny of man, and upon this presiding theme he seldom fails to cast significant light. BERNARD M.G. REARDON Biographical Note The son of a minor civil servant in the Duchy of Wiirttemberg, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart, 27 August, 1770. Schooled at the local gymnasium, he entered the Protestant seminary at Tiibingen University in 1788, ostensibly with a view to the Lutheran ministry. But on leaving he took up work as a private tutor at Berne in Switzerland, where he stayed until 1 796, after which he moved to a similar post at Frankfurt. In 1800 he was appointed Privatdozent, or unsalaried lecturer, at the university of J ena - fortunately by the death of his father he had inherited some small private means - where he had for a colleague his Tiibingen contemporary and personal friend F. W.J. von Schelling, who by this time had already made his name as a philosopher. Hegel indeed reckoned himself a disciple of Schelling's, although it was not long before the divergence of his own views became increasingly apparent. His final break with Schelling came with the publication of his first major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, in 1807. His flight from J ena following Napoleon's victory and the occupation of the town by the French troops left him professionally un employed until, through the good offices of his friend F. I. Niethammer, an official of the Bavarian ministry of education, he was appointed director of the Nuremberg gymnasium, although in the interval he was able to make a living for himself by editing a newspaper, the Bambergerzeitung. His Nuremberg post he held from 1808 to 1816, carrying out his headmaster's duties with signal conscientiousness and competence. In 1811 he married Marie von Tucher, of an upper-class Nuremberg family, by whom he had two sons and a daughter. The