Logic, History, and Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions Peter C. Hodgson The Journal of Religion, Vol.

68, No. 1. (Jan., 1988), pp. 1-20.

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Logic, History, and Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions* Peter C. Hodgson /
Vanderbilt U n i u e r s i ~

Hegel's interpretation of the history of religions in the second part of his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Determinate Religion, has generally been neglected, a neglect attributable both to the length and difficulty of the material and to the unsatisfactory character of the older editions, which amalgamated quite distinct lectures into an editorially constructed scheme. The new edition, published by the University of California Press, separates for the first time Hegel's four series of lectures on the philosophy of religion- 1821, 1824, 1827, and (in the excerpted form provided by D. I?. Strauss) 1831-publishing them as independent texts on the basis of a complete reediting of the available sources. 1 When the lectures are read in sequence as originally delivered, it is possible to trace Hegel's unrelenting efforts to work out an adequate philosophical conceptualization of the history of religions.2 Several factors account for the sweeping changes introduced by Hegel into his successive lectures on religion: the fact that philosophy of religion was a novel discipline at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the influence of his concurrent lectures on other disciplines
* This paper was presented to the Nineteenth Century Theology Group at the meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Boston, December 1987, and appeared in the preprinted papers distributed to members of the group. ' G. W . F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R . F. Brown, P. C . Hodgson, and J . M . Stewart, 3 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984-87). This is a translation of the new German edition by Walter Jaeschke, Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Relision, vols. 3-5 of Vorlesungen; Ausgewahlte Nachschriften und Manutkripte (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983-85). Page references in the text are to vol. 2 of this translation. Some of the material in this article is derived from my editorial introductions to vol. 2 and to the paperback edition of the lectures of 1827 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), in press, the use of which is with the permission of the publisher. Table 1 is reprinted with permission from pp. 88-89 of vol. 2 . ASJaeschke points out in the preface to vol. 2 of the German edition, when the materials are studied in this way it is unmistakably clear that "nothing is more alien to Hegel's procedure than the customary picture of the pontificating philosopher who sets out to reduce the colorful array of historical actuality to pallid reason through a prefabricated net of abstract categoriesn (Jaeschke, ed., 4a:ix). e 1988 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/88/6801-0001)01.00

T h e Journal of Religion (especially logic), engagement in disputes with contemporary theology and with criticisms of his own work, and (of particular importance for Determinate Religion), his continual assimilation of new historical materials as they became available and as he became familiar with them. Hegel probably knew more as a philosopher about the history of world religions than any of his contemporaries, and by the end of his career he had a broad mastery of the available materials, a mastery won by extensive study during the 1820s. At the beginning of the decade his primary competence was in Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Christian religion, based on earlier studies; the significant changes occurred in his knowledge of the non-Western religions: the "religion of magic" (African and Eskimo), Chinese religion (including Zhou religion, Daoism, Confucianism), Buddhism, Lamaism, Hinduism, and Persian religion (Zoroastrianism). Significant changes also occurred in his assessment of Judaism, but that is a topic I cannot touch on in this paper.3 Islam remained a major lacuna in his knowledge and treatment. The fact is that Hegel never did arrive at a satisfactory arrangement for Determinate Religion. For part 3 (The Consummate Religion) he arrived at his mature conceptualization in 1824, while for part 1 (The Concept o f Religion) he achieved it in 1827. But in the case of part 2, he introduced significant structural changes in 1831, which offered a quite different context for interpreting the Oriental and Near Eastern religions (including Judaism). While we of course do not know whether Hegel would have reorganized Determinate Religion yet again on a subsequent offering, it is evident that 1831 does not provide a fully satisfactory arrangement, especially with regard to Jewish and Roman religion. At the same time, one senses a growing fascination with the history of religions, and it is fair to say that this topic, rather than the concept of religion or the Christian religion, was at the cutting edge of his interest when he died in the fall of 1831. Hegel's evident willingness to incorporate new data and experiment with new schemes suggests the following hypothesis: that for him speculative philosophy was a kind of "conceptual play" based on imaginative variation of the logical "deep structure" in order to arrive at new insights with respect to the myriad, inexhaustible details of nature, history, and human experience. My purpose in the remainder of this paper is to test this hypothesis by inquiring first into the dialectic of logic and history in Hegel's system and then to look at the alternative paradigms that emerge in Hegel's interpretation of the religions, with a focus on the non-Western religions.
See my article, "The Metamorphosis of Judaism in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion," Owl Minerua 19 (Fall 1987): 41-52.

of

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions

THE DIALECTIC OF LOGIC AND HISTORY I N HEGEL'S SYSTEM

What is the nucleus of Hegel's system? G. R. G. Mure describes it as follows: "Hegel holds, and believes it to be the single task of philosophy to show, that reality is not a contingent aggregate, nor an endless generation and evanescence, but a necessarily ordered whole wherein the elements ordered are the phases of a single timelessly self-constituting activity which is mind or spirit [Geist]." This self-constituting activity takes the form of self-manifestation in and through the dialectic of thought -"a progressive cycle of unreserved self-definition by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, wherein each antithesis is the completely mediating and determinant negation, at once the contrary and the contradictory opposite, of its thesis, and each synthesis is the coincidence of these opposites in a fuller definition." This process comprises not only the logic but the whole of nature and concrete (finite) spirit, and it is completed only by the "supertriad" (logic-nature-spirit) that is the whole of Hegel's system; prior to this whole, we encounter only open spirals, not self-completing circles . 4 Within the system, the logic can be understood as the categorial "deep structure" out of which Hegel's interpretation of the domains of nature and historical-cultural experience is generated. In this respect, I believe that Alan White (following Klaus Hartmann) is correct in stating that Hegel's logic is a transcendental ontology. "To say that [it] is ontological is to say that it is a doctrine of categories rather than of supersensible entities;. . . to say that it is transcendental is to say that it presents conditions of possibility of experience, and that the conditions are discovered through philosophical refle~tion."~ ut it is a Hegelian as B opposed to a Kantian transcendental ontology, for it grounds more than empirical, sense-based knowledge. It makes the claim to ground not only theoretical knowledge (reflection on the conditions of possibility for sensible knowledge) but also practical knowledge (reflection on the conditions of possibility for ethical action) and the whole of aesthetic, religious, and historical experience as well. It is reflection on reflection, for which Hegel used the term "speculative" in order to distinguish his thought from the merely "reflective" philosophy of Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers. We must insist, I think, that Hegel's transcendental ontology is constitutive of the experienced reality that it grounds; it does not have merely a heuristic or legislative function vis-8-vis an independently
G . R. G . Mure, A Study ofHegel's Logic(0xford:Clarendon Press, 1950), pp. 296-99. This is undoubtedly the finest study o f Hegel's logic in English, and I shall rely on it heavily. Alan White, Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem ofMetaphysics (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983), pp. 3-6.

T h e Journal of Religion grounded reality. Moreover, the logical categories do not subsist in some ideal supersensible realm but are ingredient in the actuality they ground; the categories are wirklich, active, actual, ideal-real, not merely ideal. Finally, the mode of their constitutive activity is hermeneutical, not physical or metaphysical. The logical categories "work only in and through the interplay of consciousness and object, and this interplay is precisely hermeneutical. Consciousness recognizes that the logical structure of reason is antecedently present in its objects, yet apart from the recognition this structure has no reality, it is not "there." We must avoid the misimpression that for Hegel reason is a kind of supernatural agent that works out its purposes in history in accord with its own inexorable logic. Rather, the ontological status of the categories of reason is hermeneutical, and hermeneutics itself (as H.-G. Gadamer argues) is ontological, constitutive of reality as humanly experienced, not merely heuristic. Although Hegel himself does not use the term "hermeneutics," this interpretation is supported by his actual way of correlating the logical deep structure and the concrete configurations of consciousness in the history of religions, as I shall attempt to show. This interpretation suggests that Hegel's transcendental ontology yields a postmetaphysical, transcendental theology. Hegel's God is not a supersensible entity, a "supreme being," a "transcendent" object (which would in his view simply be a form of the "spurious infinite"); rather, God is "transcendental" in the sense of being the ultimate condition of possibility for the totality of experience in general and for religious experience in particular, the experience of the "religious relationship" of finite and infinite. In this sense, the philosophical first principle and the theological first principle are one and the same: "God" ="absolute idea."6 But to say that Hegel's God is not a supersensible entity is not to say that God is not actual (wirklich). God is actual, "absolute actuality" (absolute Wirklichkeit), "actual being in and for itself' (das Anundfiirsich~eiende)~but only in and through the reality of the world, not as a separated, supersensible entity. Apart from the world, God is not an actual God; in and through the world, of which God is the ideal condition of possibility, God becomes concrete, living, true actualityabsolute spirit. If this interpretation is correct, then in the final analysis we must say that Hegel's system as a whole (if not the logic alone) is a form of "ontotheology," but, against the criticism of Heidegger and others, this is an ontotheology in which theos has been radically revisioned by Hegel's transcendental ontology. The true infinite, the divine God, "overs As

Mure puts it, God "is Hegel's proximate metaphor for the Absolute" (p. 298)
Hodgson, ed., 1:369, 373, 419.

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions reaches" and encompasses the finite, includes finitude, difference, otherness within godself. God is not "a (highest) being" but "social being" in the most radical sense of having being in communion with the inexhaustible plurality of human and natural being and taking that plurality up into the divine life. In virtue of the triadic categorial process that is at the heart of Hegel's logical deep structure, universal substance is rendered concrete and is enriched, becomes genuinely "individual" or "subjective" (more properly, "intersubjective") by its determinations in and through natural and historical particularity. What is this triadic categorial process? Its most strictly logical or rational articulation is found in the dialectic of the syllogism, which is the basic movement of thought itself, the essence of the concept as such.8 The three moments or figures of any syllogism, according to Hegel, are (1) universality (Allgemeinheit), that is, the universal substance or rational principle of a statement; (2) particularity (Besonderheit), the particular quality or determinate modification of the universal in the case at hand; and (3) individuality (Einzelheit), the subject about which the statement makes a predication. Now, this syllogistic structure is mirrored in every aspect of Hegel's philosophical system: in the system as a whole (logical idea, nature, spirit); in the science of logic (being [immediacy], essence [reflection], concept [subjectivity]) and its many subdivisions; in the dialectics of consciousness (immediacy, differentiation, return, or identity, cleavage, reunification); in the doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit); and in the philosophies of nature, spirit, right, art, religion, and world history. The threefold division of the philosophy of religion reflects this logical structure (concept of religion, determinate religion, consummate religion), as do the subdivisions of each of these main parts. As we approach the specific philosophies of the real, however, it becomes apparent that this "mirroring" of the deep structure is by no means an exact, monotonous, mechanical replication. This leads to my primary thesis: an element of incommensurability necessarily exists between the logical deep structure and the various conjgurations of nature, history, and human experience. Hegel's interpretations of the latter, while generated out of the logical deep structure, are by no means simply read off from that structure. Rather, experience as it actually presents itself in the realms of history, art, religion, ethics, politics, anthropology, psychology, and so forth, is determinative of the way in which the deep structure concretely appears-and it appears in a
Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, pt. 1, The Logic ofHegel, trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), secs. 181-92, and Science oflogic, trans. A. V . Miller (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 664-704.

The Journal of Religion

bewildering variety of forms, shapes, and variations. The basic movement of Hegel's philosophy is from the empirical or experiential (experience as it presents itself to consciousness) to the rational or logical, then back to experience as speculatively interpreted or reconfigured. In this movement there always remains, as Mure shows, an impelfect sublation of the empirical in the rational. Mure attributes this to a basic contradiction or duality in human experience that cannot be completely surmounted by any philosophy- the duality between the universal and the particular, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, the necessary and the contingent, the intelligible and the sensuous, or (in its most basic form) the a priori (the rational) and the empirical.9 Both the a priori and the empirical require each other as an other. There is no sheerly empirical experience but only experience construed categorially in and by thought; conversely, there is no pure thought subsisting in distinctionless self-identity but only thought applied to an "other" that is beyond pure thought, even if this "other" is not finally an alien other but is contained as a moment within the absolute. In being thus contained, the other cannot be utterly sublated or annulled; for the absolute, the rational, in order precisely to be the absolute, must be related to the nonabsolute- the finite, the empirical, the sensuous, the particular, the contingent, the nonrational. '0 Thus the analysis of the dialectic of thought requires the empirical as constituting the necessary other of thought. Yet Hegel never, according to Mure, unambiguously solves the problem of how thought both sublates sense experience and remains in reciprocal relation with experience. Rather he wavers between two positions.ll O n the one hand, his conviction that thought and sense have a single source, and that form and content are inseparable, lead him sometimes to "the mechanical imposition of the triadic rhythm upon material which can by no stretch of anyone's imagination but Hegel's be conceived as the indubitable content of that form."12 But on the other hand Hegel clearly recognizes that empirically and historically based experience presents an endlessly novel and to some degree unexpected temporal flow, which can never be predicted a priori. "In the Philosophy of Art the empirical and historical factor is very conspicuously not, and could not be, sublated in the philosophical interpretation without a residue which at once lames

9 Mure, pp. 300-301, 332. Mure believes that Hegel himself recognized this by showing that the contradictions expressed in the coupled categories of the doctrine of essence ("his most brilliant achievement in logic") could never be resolved within essence itself (p. 342). l o Ibid., pp. 315-16, 319-21, 329, 332. " Ibid., pp. 322-28. l 2 Ibid., p. 325.

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions and sustains the interpretation. . . .Of his Philosophy of Religion the same is true."l3 More true, in fact, than Mure could have known: these words, written nearly forty years ago, are thoroughly confirmed by the new edition of the philosophy of religion. Beyond this, evidence can be adduced to show that Hegel did not regard his own philosophy as the final philosophy but only as the philosophy in which the thoughts of his own age were most adequately apprehended. In fact, according to Mure, Hegelianism "knows as a conclusion from its own premisses that it is destined to be superseded, that it is itself a thesis which must beget its own antithesis."l* The lack of finality is underscored by Hegel's preferred medium of presentation, that of oral lectures. Duncan Forbes claims, in his introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, that Hegel's philosophy "is best approached in the spirit of Plato's, as something that is in danger of being destroyed or distorted if it is written down."15 Forbes points out that Hegel in fact was extremely reluctant to publish and that if one views the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and the Outline of the Philosophy of Right as Hegel viewed them- namely, as compendia for courses of lectures - then he published only two books in the proper sense, the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. These are of course among the greatest books of philosophical literature, but to give them a definitive priority over Hegel's spoken lectures (with which he was almost exclusively occupied during the last decade of his career) is to treat his philosophy as a closed book, whereas it was an attempt to "think life" dialectically yet concretely, holistically yet with shrewd insight into detail. The only way to appreciate this kind of thinking, says Forbes, is to "watch it at work." One watches it at work on the podium. Once it ceases to be thinking and becomes thought, once it stops speaking and is reduced to an editorial amalgam, it ceases to be a living process and becomes a system. The primacy of speaking on Hegel's part did not entail any sort of romantic attachment to his own subjectivity or intentionality; rather, it permitted the process of thinking to remain open, fluid, and continuous. Jacques Derrida's insight is a shrewd one, that Hegel was "the last philosopher of the book

Ibid., pp. 331, 363. Ibid., pp. 296, 323-24, 332, 367. Hegel may have thought his own Logic to be final (even though it is but a "realm of shadowsn) but certainly not his philosophies of the real. Mure makes this acute observation: "That Hegel, for whom the speculative problem arose and long continued as a religious problem, came to subordinate religion to philosophy is perhaps further evidence that he believed his Logic finaln (pp. 327-28, 365). l 5 Duncan Forbes, introduction to Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in Hislory, trans. H . B . Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. xiii-xiv.
l3
l4

The Journal of Religion

and the first thinker of writing," except that for Hegel "endless writing" was in fact an endless speaking.16 All of this brings us back to the hypothesis stated earlier, namely, that for Hegel speculative philosophy is a kind of "conceptual play" based on imaginative variation of the logical "deep structure" in order to arrive at new insights with respect to the inexhaustible wealth of nature, history, and human experience. The deep structure of the logic functions as a hermeneutical key for reading and interpreting experience, but it is a key that must be used experimentally and imaginatively, and the constructions it generates have an aesthetic, "poetic" quality. Hayden White in his brilliant book, Metahistory, shows how Hegel's logical deep structure can be reformulated in terms of the principal tropes of poetic discourse.17 Hegel's favored trope, the synecdochic, or integrative, by incorporating the other tropes, generates an emplotment of history that is tragic on the microcosmic level (by showing the recurring, irresolvable conflicts and negations engendered by historical action) but comic on the macrocosmic level (by envisioning a final encompassing reconciliation), thus enabling Hegel to find a "way beyond irony." White's primary point is that every work of historical interpretation, whether produced by a scientific historian or a speculative philosopher, is an imaginative construct that articulates a presiding paradigm based on conceptual decisions with respect to style and modes of emplotment, argument, and ideological implication. I accept this point and will not pursue it further here; rather, I want to show that, within Hegel's presiding paradigm, a number of alternative subsidiary paradigms are experimented with almost playfully as he attempts to make sense of the vast tapestry of world religions.

While providing an overview of the whole of Determinate Religion in each of the lecture series, I shall focus the analysis on those parts concerned with the non-Western religions. Table 1, which compares the structure of the four versions of Determinate Religion, will be of help in following the analysis.
Jacques Derrida, O Grammtology, trans. G . C . Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univerf sity Press, 1976), p. 26. The "primary writing-" that Derrida has in mind includes speaking as well as writing (see pp. 7, 44, 46, 56). Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). See esp. the introduction and chap. 2. William Desmond offers valuable insights into the relation between art and history in Hegel's thought; see his Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), chap. 4

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions

Hegel's Lecture Manuscript

The manuscript prepared for Hegel's first offering of philosophy of religion, in the summer semester of 1821, arranges Determinate Religion into a triad corresponding to the fundamental moments of logic, namely, being, essence, and concept (pp. 95-97). But in the case of the religions, these categories are applied in the mode of determinateness and finitude; hence, the operative triad is one of prereflective immediacy or simple undifferentiated being (the Oriental religions of nature), differentiation (the positing of essence) in the form of power (Jewish religion) or necessity (Greek religion), and external purposiveness (the concept asfinite) in the form of a religion that is universal but utterly prosaic and utilitarian in its purposes, namely Roman religion. Thus in terms of its external arrangement the manuscript remains quite close to the triad of the logic, but the correlations are forced, as Hegel himself soon realized. It is scarcely possible to treat the Oriental religions under the category of immediacy. In fact Hegel does not discuss them directly at all but, rather, constructs a brief phenomenology of religious immediacy (some seven manuscript sheets or less than 20 percent of the whole of Determinate Religion [pp. 98-122]), with vague allusions to Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Egyptian religion. No mention is made of the religion of magic, and little if any new study of any of these religions is evidenced. By contrast with the brevity of this section, Hegel devotes an inordinate amount of attention to Roman religion, but it is solely for the purpose of showing that Roman religion represents the apotheosis of finitude and the demise of all the finite religions. There is no progressive development toward Christianity but a cycling of finite religion back on itself, a regression to the primitive at a higher stage of culture (pp. 226-31).

T h e Lectures of 1824
Hegel originally envisioned a threefold division of Determinate Religion in 1824 as well (pp. 234-37), but in the course of execution it was altered into a twofold division, nature religion and the religions of spiritual individuality (or of finite spirit); on this arrangement, the triad would be completed only by the third main part of the lectures, the consummate or Christian religion (the religion of infinite spirit). Hegel used this arrangement only once, in 1824, but it is the structure adopted by the Werke for its version of part 2. Because the power of spiritual individuality or subjectivity is wise and purposive power, the religions constituting the second main part of Determinate Religion are arranged according to three stages in the actuali-

TABLE 1
C O M I ' A K A T I V L A N A L Y S I S OF

THE S T R U C T U R E OF "DETERMINATE RE1.IGIONn

Mi~tt~rscr~pt

1x24 Lccrtrrrs

lnrroduct~on( 3 l a ) A. I m ~ i i c d ~ n r c Rellgon (322)

a. T h r Mer.~physlcalColicrpt of God
( I Z h ) [ T h e C o s ~ n o l o g ~ c Proof] al
b. Concrete Representarlon (343) c . T h e S ~ d of Self-Consc~ousness:
e Sublect~v~ty.
Cultus (373)
Br~efReflect~ono n the State,
Freedom, Reason (393)

B. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Subllrnlry and Beaury of (393) a. Metaphys~calConcept (412)

[The Cormolog~calProofi

b. Concrete Representat~on,
Form of the Idea (433)
a. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Subllmlry (433) of (5. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Necess~ry(44b) of c. Culrus (473) a. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Subllm~ry(473) of p. T h e R e l ~ g ~ oof Beauty (493) n a. S p ~ r of t the Cultus; ~ Self-Consc~ousness(493) fl. T h e Cultus Itself (513) C. T h e Rcllglon o f Expediency o r U n d e r \ t a n d ~ n g(593) a. Ahstract Concept (613) T h e T e l e d o g ~ c a lProof (62h) h. Confipurar~ono r R c p r c ~ e n r a n o nof the Dyvlne Essence (k4h) c . T h e M o r e Spec~fic Nature of these I'owers a n d D e ~ t l e sIn General (66b)

7 '

Inrroduct~on Rrllglon, or A. I~iirned~are Nature R r l ~ g ~ o n

lntroductlon
a. T h e O r ~ g ~ n C lo n d ~ t ~ o n a b. lmnicd~nreR r l ~ p o nIn (;enern1 (n) The Mrtaphys~c.il Coliccpr of (;od: t T h e Cosmolog~c.~l r ~ n ~ f

P ((0 R e p r e \ r ~ i t ~ r ~of nC o d The o
(y) The F11rms of Nature R e l ~ g ~ o n I. T h e R e l ~ p o nof M a g ~ c as a. S111gularSelf-Co~isc~ousness
Power over Nature
of the b. Formal O h l e c r ~ f i c ~ t ~ o n
Oblect D~v~ne
c. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Anc~enrChlna of d. T h e Rel~glon B e ~ n g - W ~ r h ~ n -
of Self (BuJJhlsm. Lanialsm)
2. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n P h ~ n t a s y(Hlndulsm) of a. T h e Represenrat~onof C o d b. T h e Cultus 3. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n the G o a d o r of
of 1.1ght (Persian Rrl~glon)
4. T r a n s ~ t ~ o n N ~ t u r eRellglon t o
from Sp1r1ru31 Rellglon: Thc R r l ~ g ~ o n
of the E n ~ g m a(Eg\,ptl.in R e l ~ g ~ o n )
a . T h e R e p r e s r n t ~ r ~ oof G o d n b. Cultus In the Form of Art B T h e Rellg~ons Splrlrudl of lnd~v~dual~ry lntroduct~on a. D ~ v ~ s ~ o the Sublect of n b. T h e Metaphys~calConcept of God: i Cosniolog~calt Teleolog~calProofs c. T h e M o r e Concrete D e f i n ~ t ~ o n

of Cod 1. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Subl~mlry
of U e w ~ s hR e l ~ g ~ o n )
a. G o d a s the O n e b. T h e Form of D ~ v ~ n e SelfDetcrm~nat~on c. T h e Cultus

7 '

' -

(Greek Rel~glon) a. T h e Concept In General b. T h e Content and Shape of Dlvlne Renresenrarlon c. T h e Cultu; 3. T h e Rellpon of Erprdlency (Roman R e l ~ g ~ o n ) a. T h e Concept of N r i e \ s ~ r yand t x t r r n a l I'urporc b. T h e C<1nfirur3t1<1ri rhc God\ 01 c. T h r ~ u l r u ;

>

1827 Lcrtr,res lnrroduct~on A. lmmedlate R e l ~ g ~ o n ,r Nature o Rel~g~on lnrroduct~on a. T h e O r ~ g ~ n C lo n d t r ~ o n a b. T h e Form5 of Nature R e l ~ p o n

183 1 Lecftrres lntroduct~on D ~ v ~ s ~ o the Suhlect of n A. Natural R e l ~ g ~ o n I . Rat~o~ial Rel~gton:D e ~ s m 2. P r ~ t n ~ t t v ee l ~ p o n R

I . The R e l ~ g ~ o n M a g ~ c of a. T h e Concept of M q r c b. Less Developrd Relig~ons of Mag~c c. T h e State R e l ~ g ~ o n the

of Ch~nese mp~re E and the Dao 2. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n B e ~ n g - W ~ t h ~ n of Self ( B u d d h ~ s m L a m a ~ s m ) . 3. T h e He~O n eR e l ~ g ~ o n a. T h n d u Substance

b. T h e M u l r ~ p l ~ c ~ r yPowers of c . T h e Cultus d . T r a n s l r ~ o nt o the Next Stage 4. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n s T r a n s ~ r ~ o n of a. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n L ~ g h t of (I'ers~an R e l ~ g ~ o n ) T r a n s ~ r l o nro rhe Nexr Stage b. E g y p t ~ a nRellglon B. The Elevation of the S p ~ r ~ t uAbove al the Natural: T h e Rellg~onof the Greeks and the Jews

2
-

3. The R e l ~ g ~ o n M a g ~ c of B. T h e Internal Rupture of Rel~gious Consc~ousncss

lntroduct~on
lCosmolog~calProof, Panrhe~sm] 1. C h ~ n e s e e l ~ g ~ o T :h e R n
R e l ~ g ~ o n Measure of 2. H ~ n d uRelig~on:T h e Rel~gion 3. ofuAbstractand Lama~sm:T h e B d d h ~ s m Unity R e l ~ g ~ o n Annih~lat~on of

C. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n Freedom of 1. T r a n s ~ t ~ o n a l Forms of a. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n the Good (1) Pers~anR e l ~ g ~ o n (2) J e w ~ s hR e l ~ g ~ o n c. Egypttan R e l ~ g ~ o n :h e T of R e l ~ g ~ o n Fermenr

I . T h e Rellg~onof beauty, o r Grrek Rel~g~on a. T h e D l v ~ n e Content b T h e Cultus

2. The R e l ~ g ~ o n S u b l ~ m ~ t o r of y, J r w ~ s hRelig~on a. T h e Unity of God and b. Divine S e l f - D e t e r m ~ n a t ~ o n Representarlon c. T h e Cultus T h e Rellglon of Expedlrncy: Roman R r l ~ g ~ o n I. The Concept of I'urpor~venes, 2. T h e Configuration of rhr God, 3. T h e Culrus

Greek R e l ~ g ~ o n a. Summary b. T h e Teleolog~calProof c. T h e Relig~onof Freedom a n d Brnuty 3. Roman Rel~glon:The of R e l ~ g ~ o n Expedlrncy

The Journal of Religion

zation of divine purposiveness (pp. 382-89): in the religion of sublimity (Jewish religion), the purpose of God is unitary and infinite but limited to a particular people; in the religion of beauty (Greek religion), the gods represent a plurality of limited (though beneficent, friendly) purposes, all subject, however, to inscrutable, implacable necessity; and in the religion of expediency (Roman religion), the purposiveness encountered is universal but external, utilitarian, and oriented to the one overriding end of world empire. This arrangement has the disadvantage of treating Roman religion under the category of spiritual individuality, where it does not properly belong because the Roman deities are abstract functions, not spiritual subjects. But it enables Hegel to advance the intriguing proposal that these religions correspond to three of the religions of nature "in inverse order" (pp. 389-90): Jewish monotheism corresponds to Persian dualism in the sense that both identify the divine with a single, highest, inward purpose that is both wise and good; Greek polytheism corresponds to Hindu pantheism; and Roman political religion corresponds to ancient Chinese emperor worship. Whereas in the natural religions we have a gradual "withdrawal" of the natural manifold into the simple naturalness of light, in the spiritual religions we have an "unfolding" of the singular divine subject into empirical universality-but in such a way that it becomes cold, destructive, empty, and capricious, the power of death rather than of life (pp. 510-12). This is Hegel's way of suggesting in 1824, as he did also in the lecture manuscript by his sustained critique of Roman religion, that determinate or finite religion cycles back on itself. Clearly this whole dialectical structure resists any monolithic, linear theory of progress: the history of the determinate religions is tragic, not comic. Contrary to widespread opinion, Hegel's philosophical history of religion is not evolutionary or developmental but typological; it does not show a progressive historical evolution to the consummate religion, Christianity. We might also note that, on the hypothesis of "inverse correspondence," Judaism (not Greek or Roman religion) is the highest of the finite religions. Returning now to the 1824 section on nature religion, the first thing to notice is that it has grown to more than half of Determinate Religion and has a wealth of detail lacking in 1821, acquired by extensive reading on Hegel's part during the intervening years (see pp. 3-12). The 1824 lectures are the most experimental throughout, and this is especially true of the section now in view since Hegel plays with three arrangements of it, one summarized toward the beginning of the section, one following the discussion of Hinduism, and one (briefly) at the end (pp. 268-71, 350-52, 380-81). T o avoid confusion, I will follow

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions

the second arrangement, which is more suggestive and reasonably close to the actual execution. Nature religion (on this version) is composed of five sections, the first of which is prolegomenary and the last of which is transitional, leaving three central sections. 1. The religion o f magic. -The religion of magic (primitive religion) is merely prolegomenon, not yet properly religion. This is not to suggest that it is unimportant, for it is the essential matrix out of which properly religious consciousness emerges. Spirit initially exists in the immediate, empirical form of singular self-consciousness (that of a shaman or sorcerer), which knows nothing higher than itself and exercises direct power over nature by words and gestures (pp. 272 ff.), but at the same time there are the beginnings of a process of objectification of the divine object vis-8-vis consciousness (pp. 278 ff.). These constitute the two main stages of magic, and Hegel provides a finely detailed description of the second in terms of a phenomenology of four phases of "formal objectification" (drawing his materials primarily from African religion): the use of media such as fetishes, representation of the divine in the form of the "great elemental objects" of nature (sun, sky, sea, river, mountain), embodiment of the divine in living things (plants and animals), and finally its appearance in the form of single human beings (holy men, emperors, dead spirits). This final phase is exemplified for Hegel by the religion of the Zhou dynasty in ancient China: the emperor is the divine power and rules on behalf of heaven (Tian) by means of dead spirits (Shen) (pp. 299 ff.). 2. The self-containment (Insichsein) o f divine essence. -Religion in the proper sense appears with the "actual" (as distinct from "formal") objectification of the divine object, which now has its being precisely within itself. This is Buddhism, the religion of "being-within-self' or "self-containment,))and it occupies a key stage in Hegel's phenomenology of religious consciousness since it provides the "axial shift" from primitive religion to the high religions (pp. 303-7).18 Unfortunately, Hegel's sources and his knowledge of Buddhism were not adequate to the importance assigned to this religion-an importance assigned almost intuitively, perhaps, through a recognition of the speculative significance of the concept of nirvana, which is, however, only briefly discussed in 1824 (pp. 3 12- 13). The important thing for us to appreciate is that the transition from being to essence, from immediacy to
l 8 As transitional it can be treated as the concluding phase of the religion of magic or as an autonomous stage. As he lectured, Hegel chose the first alternative in 1824, which obscures the pivotal character of Buddhism, but in his second outline of the section, sketched after he had discussed both Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in the subsequent lectures, it occupies a separate and higher stage. Hegel of course did not use the expression "axial shift."

The Journal of Religion

introreflection (Rejlexion in sich), now occurs for Hegel, not at the stage of Judaismig and Greek religion (as in the manuscript), but much earlier, with what he takes to be the oldest of the Oriental religions, Buddhism. The Oriental religions are all religions of essence or substance, not of prereflective immediacy. 3. The self-dzferentiation o f divine essence. - Essence must not only withdraw into itself in the rest of inner contemplation, it must also go forth from itself, differentiate itself into a multiplicity of mutually independent finite shapes, both animal and human, constituting a variegated, fanciful world, the representation of which is the unique achievement of Hinduism (pp. 3 16-18). Hindu mythology expresses this dialectic of self-containment and self-differentiation in the form of the Trimurti- the one, absolute unity of Brahman, which appears in three figures: Brahm2 (the active, generative father), Vishnu (manifestation, appearance, incarnation), and Shiva (mutability, creation, and destruction) (pp. 327 ff.). Hegel discusses Hinduism at length, and his sources are more adequate than for any other Oriental religion, but his assessment of it remains consistently negative, both because of the bias present in the sources and because of his deliberate attempt to counteract the romantic attachment to India that had been prevalent in Germany during his formative years (see p. 40). 4. The reJEection back into itself o f divine essence. -The good is both determined within itself and essence present within things - but only abstractly so, and it confronts an antithesis external to it, evil, with which it struggles endlessly. Light is the natural shape of the good: although itself invisible, it is the essentiality of all particular things, and, as the universal medium of reflection and reflexivity, it has the root of subjectivity within itself. The religion of the good and of light, Persian religion (Zoroastrianism), thus constitutes the final moment in the triad of high nature religions (pp. 352-55). 5. The transition from natural to spiritual religion. -Spiritual subjectivity is a being-within-self that both constitutes itself in relationship to an other and negates this differentiation, maintaining itself in what it has distinguished, maintaining the other as a moment of itself (pp. 361-62). In other words, the elements that are externally related both temporally and spatially in natural process - prereflective immediacy, being-within-self or self-containment, self-differentiation, reflection back into self- are inwardized and temporally-spatially integrated
l9 Judaism retains its distinctive religiohistorical role in that the true idea of God as infinitely one and sublime first appears in it. In 1824 Hegel's assessment of Judaism undergoes a striking metamorphosis: rather than being portrayed as a religion of dependence and servitude, it is now viewed as the first of the.religions of freedom.

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions by subjectivity. We see this beginning to happen in Egyptian religion (pp. 365 ff.): the negative moment no longer falls outside the god, as in Persian religion (Osiris himself undergoes death), nor does it simply disappear into the One, as in Brahmanism (the reborn god is simultaneously represented as deceased, as the god of the underworld). This quasi-natural representation of spiritual reintegration is underscored by the fact that the. history of the divine subject coincides with the history of natural objects (the history of the sun, the Nile, the waxing and waning of the year, the natural cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth). Thus Egyptian religion is "shot through with inconsistenciesn; it is an "enigmatic, confused mixture" of heterogeneous elements, natural and spiritual (pp. 364-65). Thus it provides the transition (not a historical, evolutionary transition but a logical, typological one) from the natural religions of the East to the spiritual religions of the West.

The Lectures

of 1827

The substance of Hegel's interpretation of the religions was established in 1824. Hence it will not be necessary to provide an equally detailed synopsis of the remaining lectures, and I shall focus instead on shifts in emphasis, organization, and argument. In 1827, Determinate Religion is considerably shorter, and the argument is presented not only with greater clarity and simplicity but also with more concrete references to religious practices. The overall structure reverts to the triadic arrangement of the lecture manuscript by contrast with the twofold division of 1824. The three stages are religion as the natural unity of the spiritual and the natural (nature religion), the elevation of the spiritual above the natural (Greek and Jewish religion), and the religion in which purposiveness is not yet spiritual (Roman religion, which is a religion of fate or destiny because it is devoid of spirit) (pp. 5 19-2 1). While this arrangement is triadic, it should be noted that it is based on the dialectics of nature, spirit, and purposiveness (or teleology), not on the syllogistic or logical triads. There are, to be sure, correspondences with these more formal triads, but the correspondences are of a nondeductive, hermeneutical character. The primary (and significant) innovation in the middle stage is the reversal in order with which its two religions are dealt, so that now Greek religion is considered first and Jewish religion second. This reflects the fact that the problematic of this stage is now viewed as the "elevation" of the spiritual above the natural: from this point of view Judaism is the higher religion because in it the sensible element is entirely annulled in a pure and sublime monotheism. This follows in

The Journal of Religion

part from Hegel's continuing and increasingly favorable reassessment of Judaism, but it may also be related to the polemical context of the 1827 lectures, namely Hegel's defense against the charge of pantheism and atheism. In other respects, however, Judaism is still "one-sided," as is Greek religion, and their respective one-sidednesses are overcome, not in Roman religion, which merely "homogenizes" them, but in the Christian religion, which is a religion of both transcendence and immanence, divinity and humanity, trinity and incarnation (pp. 640-42, 669, 688). In 1827 the section on nature religion constitutes nearly 65 percent of the whole of Determinate Religion, an extraordinary shift from the sparse attention it received just six years earlier. The section is now divided into four subsections (rather than three, four, or five, depending on which of Hegel's structural schemas for 1824 is adopted). As to the first of these, the religion of magic, Hegel now says that all the "less developed" religions of magic involve a more or less direct power over nature (pp. 539-41), and the phenomenology of.stages of "formal objectification of the divine object" found in 1824 is gone. Only the religion of ancient China is distinguished from direct magic as a "developed" religion of magic. Despite this classification, Hegel's treatment has advanced considerably beyond that found in 1824. He now recognizes that what is involved is not simply emperor worship but a higher religious symbol, that of heaven, or Tian, which has moral qualities as well as natural power, and for the first time he alludes to Daoism, the "religion of reason (the way)," which evolved out of the religion of heaven and is transitional to the next stage of nature religion, that of being-withinself (pp. 556-60). Buddhism is now a distinct stage, as warranted by its religio-historical significance as an axial religion, and Hegel in 1827 directs more attention to its fundamental conception of ultimate reality as "nothing," or nirvana. To say that God is nothing does not mean that God is not but rather that God is nothing determinate, the negation of everything particular, the unitary universal, "the empty": thereby an important dimension of the truth about God is expressed. This is the truth grasped by Oriental pantheism in contrast to the Western preoccupation with individuality (pp. 565-68, 572-75). The claim is not that "all is God" (alles Gott sei) but that "the All is God," "the All that remains utterly one" (das All, das schlechthin eins bleibt) and thus is the negativity of finite things. The "pan" of pantheism is to be taken as universality (Allgemeinheit), not as totality (Allheit) - a distinction worth keeping in mind in light of poststructuralist critiques of "totality," a concept often

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions traced to Hegel.20 By contrast with Buddhism, Hegel's analysis of Hinduism in 1827 is basically unchanged. The religions of transition now include Persian as well as Egyptian religion, which together constitute the fourth stage of nature religion. In this stage, the Buddhist-Hindu distinction between the abstract universal and immediate subjects reverts to a concrete, implicitly spiritual unity, and there occurs a separation of empirical self-consciousness from absolute self-consciousness, "so that here God attains proper objectivity for the first time" (pp. 604-9). This suggests that Hegel is beginning to perceive a sharper distinction between the Far Eastern and Near Eastern religions, anticipating the major structural revision of 1831 that assigns them to separate stages. The Near Eastern religions as a whole are beginning to be viewed as transitional from the cleavage of consciousness to its reunification-"the resumption of the manifold. . .into concrete unity" (p. 621), a unity that includes subjectivity within itself. In Persian religion this resumption remains truncated because it is external and natural, while in Egyptian religion universal substance is grasped as subjectivity for the first time, although still represented by an enigmatic mixture of natural and religious symbols (p. 638).
f The Lectures o 1831

For the last lectures, Hegel undertook a major reorganization of Determinate Religion and drew on new resources for his treatment of Chinese, Indian, Persian, and Egyptian religion in particular. The division is triadic, as in 1827 and 1821, but the actual structure is quite different from anything preceding. The relation of immediacy between consciousness and its object, which characterizes primitive religious consciousness, is now restricted to magic, which is not yet properly religious (pp. 724-25). Religion emerges with the inward cleavage or rupture (Entzweiung) of consciousness, such that consciousness recognizes a distinction between itself "as transitory accident" and "God as absolute power." This cleavage permits an elevation of the spiritual above the natural, and Hegel now locates the beginning of this process at a much earlier point than in 1827. The second stage has its historical existence in what are now described as "the three Oriental religions of
20 See Martin Jay, Marxism and Totalip: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to H a b m (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); and Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Znjnity: An Essay on Exteriorip, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961).

T h e Journal of Religion substance," namely, Chinese religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism1 Lamaism (pp. 725-29). The third stage entails the overcoming of the cleavage through a reconciliation of consciousness and its object at a higher, mediated level, where freedom becomes actual for the first time (both divine and human freedom). This occurs in three phases. The first phase is a transitional one in which, in reaction against the confusion of the natural and the spiritual in the preceding stage, subjectivity seeks to establish itself in its unity and universality. This struggle appears in three transitional religions: the religion of the good (Persian and Jewish), the religion of anguish, and the religion of ferment (Egyptian) (pp. 737-47). In the second phase, the subject knows itself to be free in relation to the divine object. This is the religion of freedom proper, or Greek religion. But since the subject has not yet passed through the infinite antithesis of good and evil, and since the gods are not yet infinite spirit, the reconciliation that occurs in this phase is not complete (pp. 752-53). Nor is it completed in the final phase, that of Roman religion, which issues instead in the infinite unhappiness and pain that serve as the birth pangs of the religion of truth ( p p 758-60). Of the many comments that could be offered about this innovative construction, I limit myself to the following. First, it reestablishes a more clearly logical basis for the division of Determinate Religion, and in this respect it approximates the original lecture manuscript more closely than the lectures of 1824 and 1827, which are shaped by the interplay of nature and spirit. It is not, however, the dialectic of being, essence, and concept that is at work here but, rather, that of immediacy, rupture, and reconciliation, and the third moment is no longer simply identified with Roman religion but with a plurality of "religions of freedom." These are not so much strictly logical categories as they are descriptive of the general life of the concept and of the dialectic of consciousness- a dialectic that is taken into the divine life and becomes genuinely trinitarian in the Christian religion. Second, the clear distinction of the Oriental religions from the overly loose category of nature is a great improvement, and it is evident that Hegel has deepened his study of both Chinese and Indian religion. Chinese religion is no longer the final phase of magic but the religion of "measure." Measure (Mass) is the final category of the logic of being, designating the point of equivalence or indifference of quality and quantity; thus, it anticipates but does not yet achieve the true differentiation of essence-and this is true of the religion of measure, as evidenced (for Hegel) by the laws of the Dao and their signs, the Gua, based on the simple distinction between being and nonbeing, one and

Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions two, yes and no, yang and yin (pp. 550n-552n). Noteworthy also is the reversal of order in which Hinduism and Buddhism are discussed. Whatever the reasons for this, whether historical or schematic, Hinduism now provides the conceptual advance to unitary substance instead of Buddhism, and the latter (if Strauss's excerpts are reliable) receives scant attention indeed. The grouping together of the Near Eastern religions as transitional forms at the beginning of the third and final stage of determinate religion accords them a higher status. Judaism both gains and loses by this arrangement. It gains in the sense of being given its proper religiocultural setting rather than simply being viewed as preparatory to Western Christian consciousness, and its distinctive, more profound understanding of evil is thematized (pp. 740-41), but it loses in the sense of being found wanting when measured against the criterion of a free religion that can serve as the foundation of a free state, namely, Greek religion (pp. 741-42). The distinctive leitmotif of the 1831 lectures is the role played by religion in the history of the consciousness of freedom (reflecting Hegel's political concerns during the last year of his 1ife)Zl- the emergence of freedom out of nature, first through the cleavage of consciousness (the Oriental religions), then through the idea of God as free subject who releases the created world to exist independently of God as God's image (Judaism), then through the process of divine self-divestment and selfreturn, so that finitude is taken up into infinitude and reconciled with it (the religion of anguish and Egyptian religion), finally through the constitution of free ethical and political institutions based on free religion (Greek religion) (pp. 747-48). The dominant problem is no longer that of theism versus atheism, as in 1827, but reconciliation and emancipation. The order in which the determinate religions are treated in 1831 (and only in 1831) permits a geographical plotting of the odyssey of spirit as it moves from East to West-from China, to India and the India-born religions, to Persia, to Israel, to Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to Europe. Whither next?

2 1 See Walter Jaeschke, "Hegel's Last Year in Berlin," in Hegel's Philosophy of Action, ed. Lawrence S. Stepelevich and David Lamb (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 31-48.

The Journal of Religion

Is Hegel's philosophical configuration of the history of religions a success or a failure? The answer depends partly on the construal of the terms "success" and "failure." If the criterion of success is, on the one hand, the logical construction of a unitary history of religion, then the project clearly is a failure; indeed, it must fail if it is the case, as I have argued, that an element of incommensurability necessarily exists between any categorial deep structure and the various configurations of nature, history, and human experience. There simply is no single, unified history of religion and, for that matter, no single history of human spirit. But I have already pointed out that Hegel's philosophical history of religion is not evolutionary or developmental; rather, it is typological. Walter Jaeschke suggests that what Hegel offers is less a history of religion than a geography ofreligion. 22 That is, the various shapes of religious consciousness are identified either typologically by distinctive phenomenological categories (the religions of being-within-self, phantasy (Phantmie), good or light, enigma, sublimity, beauty, expediency, etc.) or geographically with locales and peoples (the religions of China, India, Persia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, etc.). These types and locales are not successfully linked into an overarching historicoevolutionary schema, even if Hegel sometimes gives the impression of wanting to do so (thus reflecting the inner tension in his thought to which Mure calls attention). If the criterion of success, on the other hand, is the hermeneutically productive deployment of logical categories, presiding paradigms, modes of ernplotment and argument, and so on, in order to make partial sense of the vast tapestry of world religions in terms of their fundamental presuppositions and principles, similarities and differences, possibilities and limits, even their mutual transformations, then we must conclude that Hegel was eminently successful - not once, but on four occasions and in strikingly different ways. The different ways deconstruct any claim to a unitary logical construction and release the hermeneutical potential of Hegel's inexhaustible speculative genius.
22

Walter Jaeschke, Die Vernunj in der Religion (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog Verlag, 1986),

pp. 288-95.