Abstract

This essay contends that Hegel should be interpreted primarily as a metaphysical theologian, whose theology has political implications. This reading of Hegel mediates between Right and Left-Hegelian positions in that the theological character of Hegel's thought is shown to underlie his interest in political praxis and human emancipation. We argue that Hegel's philosophy of Christianity finds its fullest expression in the doctrine of Absolute Spirit and that this doctrine is implicitly a theologico-political one. ;In the first chapter entitled "The Young Hegel: From Moral Critique to Metaphysics", we bring into focus the project that occupied Hegel throughout his life--that of social reform through religious regeneration. We also show how Hegel was gradually led to metaphysics and theology as the conceptual difficulties inherent in his program dawned on him. The key problem becomes the dialectic on the one hand, of alienation in all its forms, religious, social and philosophical and on the other, of reconciliation and unification. ;The second chapter entitled "Religion and its Transformation in Philosophy" traces the development of the philosophy of unification in the form of a unique blending of Aristotelean, Kantian and Christian elements that makes Hegel's philosophy essentially a philosophy of history, but as the latter has the Absolute as its beginning and end, it is transformed at the same time into a philosophy of religion. Human history is the process of appearance of divine history, the laws of whose unfolding are conceptually accessible to the intelligence of the philosopher. It follows that there can be no hidden God beyond the limits of philosophical reason, because God is self-developing Reason. ;In the third chapter entitled "Hegel's Philosophy of Christianity" we attempt to show through a study of Hegel's theology that Hegelian philosophy is dialectical because Christianity is dialectical and not the other way around. The radical transfiguration of the finite that Christianity betokens is worked into a notion of the rationality of the real and the reality of the rational. ;In a "concluding para-Hegelian postscript" we argue that the aporiai in Hegel's thought stem from the impossible task he sets himself: to "solve" the problem of God and man, eternity and time, within a rational self-conscious whole