Abstract

The discussion over Hegel's role as either a Christian theologian or as an atheistic enemy of Christianity is as old as Hegel's tenure as professor of philosophy in Berlin during the final decade of his life. In recent years a new debate on Hegel's attitude toward religion has arisen in English-speaking circles. This debate, which might be called the existentialist-rationalist debate, is represented by the interpretations of Hegel's philosophy of religion lectures given by Emil Fackenheim and Richard Kroner and P. C. Smith . ;This dissertation argues that the modern debate can be most successfully mediated by looking at Hegel's Berlin philosophy of religion lectures in the light of the program outlined in the 1807 Phenomenology. In this earlier work Hegel developed a philosophical perspective based on the struggle of consciousness to attain an absolute standpoint in its self-understanding. On the journey to this standpoint it rejects ways of viewing itself which are so objective that the assumption of a subjective knower is lost , or, alternately, so subjective that the abstract act of consciousness' self-reflection becomes a trivial feature of the description of consciousness. The Phenomenology outlines a path toward the absolute standpoint where forms of awareness and self-awareness are taken up, understood, and criticized as earlier "mirrors" of the full subjectivity of the absolute standpoint. ;The philosophy of religion lectures perform within the context of religious understanding what the Phenomenology attempted for consciousness in general: they try to encompass the variety of expressions of the religious life from the perspective of the absolute standpoint. The most explicit statement of the role of the absolute standpoint in religious understanding is in the first third of the 1821 lectures on the philosophy of religion. Hegel employs the ideas of representation and necessity to uncover a "spiritual procession" which religion incites in the believer. This process turns out to be a statement in the language of religion about a journey toward complete self-consciousness, providing a conceptual matrix within Western culture which self-consciousness uses to express the story of its own development. ;What this approach to religion means for the Christianity of Hegel's own day is worked out in the last third of Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of religion. In this part of the lectures Hegel sketches in increasing detail a picture of the absolute standpoint discovering itself at the level of abstract thought , in the progression of doctrine, and in the worship of the Christian community. ;Juxtaposing Hegel's 1807 project of the discovery of an absolute standpoint with his 1821 writings on the philosophy of religion suggests that the debate described earlier falls somewhere between the rational and existential frameworks imposed on Hegel's writings on religion. The emphasis on the radical "openness" of Hegel's philosophy toward religion overlooks the programmatic character of Hegel's search for the absolute standpoint. Equally, the emphasis on Hegel's "ontologizing" of Christian belief and experience fails to perceive the specific debt to a Christian cultural milieu which Hegel charges to the account of modern philosophy. ;Three appendixes to the dissertation present an account of the German sources for Hegel's philosophy of religion lectures; an outline of the first third of Hegel's 1821 lectures keyed to Lasson's critical edition; and a translation of Hegel's Foreword to Hinrichs' 1822 book. A selected bibliography of about 150 books and articles is included