"Religion expresses what spirit is earlier in time than science." (Part Two)

Church carving of Christ's crucifixion, in Stuttgart Landesmuseum

This and the previous post are a reading of the section of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) on Christianity. In this post, I deal with the final section on the doctrine of the church.

Jean Wahl and Hegel-scholarship in the Age of Existentialism (Part One)

The first edition of Wahl's book on Hegel.

This is the first of two posts on French Hegel-scholar Jean Wahl's work on Hegel in which he presents religion as more influential than political or economic struggle in Hegel's account of the development of self-conscious life.

Wilhelm Dilthey's Hegel as seen by György Lukács

Statue of György Lukács by Imre Varga in Budapest.

This post considers Hungarian critic György Lukács’ (1885-1971) reading of Wilhelm Dilthey on Hegel’s Frankfurt period. Lukács’ trenchant materialist analysis of Hegel is at odds with Dilthey’s predominantly religious interpretation, so his concessions to it are worth considering.

Wilhelm Dilthey on the content of Hegel's "objective idealism"

Dilthey's Life of Schleiermacher (1870).

This post is a summary with extensive direct citations of Wilhelm Dilthey's interpretation of Hegel's religious views in his Frankfurt period, which Dilthey regarded as decisive for Hegel's later development.

Wilhelm Dilthey on Hegel's "Grundfragment"

Hegels Theologische Jugendschriften (1907)

This post analyses a manuscript sketch by Hegel for his early essay The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, based on the account Wilhelm Dilthey gives of it. The subjects covered include the origins of Christianity and some criticisms of Kant's philosophy.

Wilhelm Dilthey's Hegel-scholarship

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)

This post comments on and summarizes the illuminating introduction to Hegel-scholar Wilhelm Dilthey's path-breaking book Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels [The History of Hegel’s Youth] (1905) in the French translation by Jean-Christophe Merle.

Herbart's Philosophy of Religion

This post discusses Herbart's religious philosophy. We use Marcel Mauxion's La Métaphysique de Herbart (1894). The above picture shows the old university of Königsberg with the Cathedral in the background of the Dominsel (Cathedral island).

Hegel's late critical essays

This post summarises Hegel's part in the founding of the Annual for Scientific Criticism in Berlin and the articles he wrote for it. The first of these (English translation above) addressed the story of Arjuna from the Indian dialogue in the Bhagavad Gita. The material is drawn principally from Karl Rosenkranz's Hegels Leben (1844).

Schleiermacher and the polemic against the theology of feeling

This post discusses Hegel's relations with the Berlin theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834, above), author of Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers (1799). This is based on the information in Karl Rosenkranz's Hegels Leben (1844), the first full length biography of Hegel.

Hegel and John Macmurray on Personhood and Society

There follows my review from the John Macmurray Newsletter 30, Autumn 2012, of Esther McIntosh's book John Macmurray's Religious Philosophy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). In my view Macmurray's thought contains some views deriving ultimately from Hegel, in particular the Form of the Personal, whilst other ideas are adopted from French phenomenology and the British idealist tradition. The review follows the structure of the book and addresses in turn: the nature of persons; child development; society and politics; and religion.

The John Macmurray Fellowship can be found here.

Hegel's early views of Religion

Here is a further summary of my reading of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel (1844), the first biography of Hegel from whom later biographers draw extensively. This post covers the end of Part One and briefly describes Hegel's system of ethical life and philosophy of religion prior to publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.

Laurence Dickey's 'Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit'

To give an idea of my interest in Hegel, I am reproducing below a summary of Laurence Dickey's book Hegel: Religion, economics and the Politics of Spirit 1770-1807 (Cambridge: UP, 1987).