Early Theological Writings

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Richard Kroner (translator), T.M. Knox (translator)

This volume includes Hegel's most important early theological writings, though not all of the materials collected by Herman Nohl in his definitive Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (Tuebingen, 1907). The most significant omissions are a series of fragments to which Nohl give the general title "National Religion and Christianity" and the essay "Life of Jesus."

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, 19th Century

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of German Idealism. Influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism and Rousseau's politics, Hegel formulated an elaborate system of historical development of ethics, government, and religion through the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute. Hegel was one of the most well-known historicist philosopher, and his thought presaged continental philosophy, including postmodernism. His system was inverted into a materialist ideology by Karl Marx, originally a member of the Young Hegelian faction.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enrolled in Loyola University Chicago's MA/PhD program in philosophy in order to continue the work I'd started at Union Theological Seminary in the field. Most particularly, I wanted to expand the book on the philosophical bases of C.G. Jung's thought to go beyond just Kant to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and possibly Dilthey and others. More generally, I wanted to read all the classics in philosophy to get clearer on, as Kant had it, what I could know, what I ought do and what I might believe.

Although Jung had only a glancing familiarity with, and rather low opinion of, G.W.F. Hegel, I had been mightily impressed by the Phenomenology in seminary and wanted to read more. An opportunity afforded itself with A. Collins' announced Hegel course in the second semester of 1981/82. Although she was concentrating on the new Miller translation of the Phenomenology, I went ahead during the Christmas break to get as much Hegel under my belt as possible, reading five of his books during that period including the University of Chicago hardcover edition entitled Early Theological Writings.

As it turned out, everything I knew about Hegel from reading most of his writings before even enrolling in Collins' class turned out to be irrelevant. Instead of contextualizing the Phenomenology in terms of his historical and intellectual context, she was intent on only a very focused reading of short sections taken out of context. From her talk it was unclear if she really even knew very much about her ostensible subject. If she did, her take was wierd, hard to reconcile to the bulk of his writings or his biography. In addition, Collins had absurdly demanding writing requirements. Not only were we to write a twenty page paper weekly, but we were to hand it in twice, first as a rough draft. What with the other classes I was in plus my job, plus my assistantship, this was crazy. In any case, the class revolted, took our complaints to the graduate director of the department and got her to cut back on the writing assignments. Meanwhile, however, most of the students had dropped and a few, like myself, switched to audit credit, not trusting this person with the power to sit in judgment.

For what it's worth, my roommate, Michael, knew Collins from his job as departmental secretary. He said she was a decent enough person from his perspective, though he didn't take courses with her. Maybe so and maybe she'd be good in some think-tank or bureaucracy somewhere, but she certainly was terrible as a teacher in that class, the worst I've ever attended.

[Timothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate this book. Hegel's such an asshole.

[Neal Spadafora]

I don't have it in me at the moment to shape my notes into a proper review, but it's remarkable how you can see the acorn of the later Hegel in these writings. Which is to say, the logic of supersession, latent though not quite developed in these writings, carries Hegel through the ages. Fascinating enough, however, is Hegel's inability to purge the Jewish remainder, which I take to be different than a negative, from his philosophy. The supersession of the figural Jew and its impression upon Christianity is the structuring logic behind a system that wanted to purify knowledge and history of its Jewishness.

[blank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable.

"The glorification of the son of man in this downfall is not negative (does not consist in a renunciation of all his relations with the world) but positive (his nature has forgone the unnatural world, has preferred to save it in battle and defeat rather than consciously submit to its corruption or else unconsciously and increasingly succumb to corruption's stealthy advance). Jesus was conscious that it was necessary for his individual self to perish, and he tried to convince his disciples also of this necessity. But they could not separate his essence from his person; they were still only believers. When Peter recognised the divine in the son of man, Jesus expected his friends to be able to realise and bear the thought of their parting from him. Hence he speaks of it to them immediately after he had heard Peter utter his faith. But Peter's terror of it showed how far his faith was from the culmination of faith. Only after the departure of Jesus' individual self could their dependence on him cease; only then could a spirit of their own or the divine spirit subsist in them. 'It is expedient for you that I go away.' Jesus says (John xvi. 7), 'for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you'--the Comforter (John xiv. 16 ff.), 'the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it knoweth him not; I will not leave you behind as orphans; I come to you and ye shall see me, because I live and ye shall live also.' When ye cease merely to see the divine in me and outside yourselves, when ye have life in yourselves, then will the divine come to consciousness in you also (John xv. 27), because ye have been with me from the beginning, because our natures are one in love and in God. 'The spirit will guide you into all truth' (John xvi. 13), and will put you in mind of all things that I have said unto you. He is a Comforter. To give comfort means to give the expectation of a good like the one lost or greater than the one lost; so shall ye not be left behind as orphans, (318) since as much as ye think to lose in losing me, so much shall ye receive in yourselves." (272)

[Kelly Head · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hegel's Early Theological Writings

This book was translated from Hegel's Theologische Jugendschriften, which was edited by Herman Nohl and published in Tübingen in 1907. According to the editor, T.M. Knox, it "contains all of Hegel's important early theological writings" save for Hegel’s “Life of Jesus” because it is “little more than a forced attempt to depict Jesus as a teacher of what is in substance Kant’s ethics.” Knox is much more pleased with “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” which he has translated into English for the first time, as it contains Hegel’s assessment of how Jesus’s ethic of love, a living ethic, transcends Kant’s categorical imperative. Manuscripts were given titles by Nohl because they were originally unpublished and untitled. Nohl also reproduces some of the crossed out passages of the manuscripts.

Brief Outline of Hegel’s Life

Hegel born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1750

The Positivity of the Christian Religion (Parts 1 and 2 written 1775-76 when Hegel is 25 and living in Bern) moves to Frankfurt in 1776 (Part 3 written in 1800 when Hegel is 30 and living in Frankfurt)

The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate (1778-79 when Hegel is 28 and living in Frankfurt)

Hegel entered seminary (Stiff) at Tübingen in Fall of 1788, leaves 1793
Hegel moves from Frankfurt to Bern in 1796

Fragment on Love (1797)

Fragment of a System (1800)

[Not published here] The Difference Between the Systems of Fichte and Schelling (1801)
Hegel moves from Frankfurt to Bern in 1796

[Not published here] Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
Hegel lives in Nuremberg as rector of Gymnasium 1808-1816

On Classical Studies (Delivered at the Gymnasium, or high school, where he is rector in 1809, when Hegel is 39 and living in Nuremberg)

[Not published here] The Science of Logic (Published in three volumes: 1811, 1812, and 1816)
Hegel becomes lecturer at University of Heidelberg 1816

[Not published here]The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816)
[Not published here] Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)


"It is no exaggeration to say that German speculative idealism is Spinozism worked out on the level of Kant's critical philosophy" – T.M. Knox

On Panentheism

"Hence, faith in the divine grows out of the divinity of the believers own nature; only a modification of the Godhead can know the Godhead." - The Spirit of Christianity

On the Reception of the Holy Spirit

"...Peter's consciousness of the divinity of his teacher at once assumes the character of faith only; the faith which senses the divine but which is not yet a filling of his whole being with the divine, not yet a reception of the Holy Spirit." - Spirit of Christianity

On Matthew 18:1
"Whoever is capable of sensing in the child the child's pure life, of recognizing the holiness of the child's nature, has sensed my essence."- Spirit of Christianity

"To consider the resurrection of Jesus as an event is to adopt the outlook of the historian, and this has nothing to do with religion." - Spirit of Christianity

"...the outlook of Jesus and his friends was of such a type that it could not be more opposed to anything than to that point of view which takes everything for a machine, a tool, or an instrument; their outlook was rather a supreme faith in spirit." - Spirit of Christianity

The Dialectic of Unity and Diversity Found Throughout Hegel's Work

"The concept of individuality includes opposition to infinite variety and also inner association with it. A human being is an individual life in so far as he is to be distinguished from all the elements and from the infinity of individual beings outside himself. But he is only an individual life in so far as he is at one with all the elements, with the infinity of lives outside himself. He exists only inasmuch as the totality of life is divided into parts, he himself being one part and all the rest the other part; and again he exists only inasmuch as he is no part at all and inasmuch as nothing is separated from him. If we presuppose life undivided as fixed, then we can regard living beings as expressions or manifestations of that life. Precisely because these manifestations are posited, the infinite multiplicity of living beings is posited simultaneously, but reflection then crystallizes this multiplicity into stable, subsistent, and fixed points, i.e., into individuals." - Fragment on Love

On Worship of God

"When he takes the infinite life as the spirit of the whole and at the same time as a living [being] outside himself (since he himself is restricted), and when he puts himself at the same time outside his restricted self in rising toward the living being and intimately uniting himself with him, then he worships God." - Fragment on Love

On the Union of Union and Nonunion

"If I say that life is the union of opposition and relation, this union may be isolated again, and it may be argued that union is opposed to nonunion. Consequently, I would have to say: Life is the union of union and nonunion." - Fragment on Love

Editors note: "This statement, almost as dialectical as Hegel's later method, forecasts what Hutchison Stirling calls ‘the secret of Hegel’—the reconciliation of understanding with life."

Hegel’s Anti-semitism (there is much more of it beyond the following!)

"The Jewish multitude was bound to wreck his attempt to give them the consciousness of something divine, for faith in something divine, something great, cannot make its home in a dunghill. The lion has no room in a nest, the infinite spirit none in the prison of a Jewish soul, the whole of life none in a whithering leaf. The hill and the eye which sees it are object and subject, but between man and God, between spirit and spirit, there is no such cleft as objectivity and subjectivity." - Spirit of Christianity

[Reviewer’s Note: One wants to ask Hegel if he has read the account of God breathing the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam in Genesis!?! Of course it is a relationship between I and Thou, spirit and spirit. This was never a question in Judaism (religion of the great "I AM"). Hegel’s anti-semitism makes this book very hard to digest. However, it’s important to expose him, just as we expose Heidegger and Luther for their anti-semitism.]

"Jesus himself was sacrificed to the hatred of the priesthood and the mortified national vanity of the Jews." - Spirit of Christianity

"To propose to appeal to reason alone would have meant the same thing as preaching to fish, because the Jews had no means of apprehending a challenge of that kind." - Spirit of Christianity

"As for almsgiving, even a poor Jewish beggar is not chased away from the doors of the charitable." – SoC

"Against the Jews, finally, who are making their homes among us to an ever increasing extent, there rises no more than a cry that "Gentleness will conquer," and even so, only small numbers of people are roused to join in that crusade." -SoC

"In this plight of the Jewish people there must have been men of finer clay who could not deny their feeling of selfhood or stoop to become lifeless machines or men of a maniacally servile disposition; and there must inevitably have been aroused in them a need for a freer activity and a purer independence than an existence with no self-consciousness, than a life spent in a monkish preoccupation with petty, mechanical, spiritless, and trivial usages, a need for a nobler pleasure than pride in this mechanical slavery and frenzy in fulfilling its demands." - SoC

"This religious purity [of Jesus] if of course extremely remarkable in a Jew." - SoC

"But the Jewish culture, which was so poor in spiritual relationships..." – SoC
[Reviewer’s Note: I am prepared to dismiss an author’s entire body of work if they express anti-semitic views. After reading Luther’s statements on inflicting violence on Jews, one wonders how he is still regarded so highly all over the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_L...). Hegel is undoubtedly a product of his times, and Germany was anti-Semitic before Luther no doubt, but I still hold him responsible and thus dismiss him as a worthy philosopher.]

[Petra · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars.

Look, it has its moments. First, the good:

Hegel's critique of Judaism in The Spirit of Christianity is one of the funniest things I've ever read, and really cuts to the heart of what I dislike in the Hebrew scriptures.

Likewise, Hegel's distinction between Law as an alien power trying to stand above and outside society, and Fate as organic reaction, natural opposition and mob justice is both useful and eloquent. His concept of righteous fury is inspiring in a very Nietzschean way.

But he is let down in the present day by advances beyond his time: he never conceives of law as anything other than retributive. It is designed to cause suffering to render a crude equality, and perhaps maybe to disincentivise crime. Reconstructive or rehabilitative justice and how that could be a form of law is simply beyond him.

He says it in extremely stark terms too, this isn't an inference:

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, say the laws. Retribution and its equivalence with crime is the sacred principle of all justice, the principle on which any political order must rest."

His conception of love is also pathological in a parochial, 19th century sort of way. Again here I see what he's going for and there is something useful in it: his definition of love as the conjunction of duty and desire, the overcoming of the contradiction of the alien power of law in motivation.

But in the same breath he declares that the stronger love is the more it excludes all else *sui generis*. This is the definition of codependency, not love. He also somehow claims that divorce is against the concept of love, despite, you know, the love being gone, meaning it's just alien law again.

It's likewise painful, given Hegel's intelligence and his nascent and subconscious pantheism (eg p. 229, 254), how much of a boring, Nicene Trinitarian he is. He capitulates to the faith alone "any explanation of the Trinity is a heresy" and just sorta claims "spirit recognises spirit" in a way that is utterly empty of real argumentation.

And then in the midst of all of these interesting, flawed conceptions, he goes on a tangent about virtue ethics and basically single-handedly solves virtue ethics??? When that wasn't even what he was trying to do?

Hegel has a strange, strange mind.

Additionally, the final text, Fragments of a System really is a beautiful embryo of much of what would come later in miniature.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been told that this book is a good place to start to understand the later Hegel writings, and I guess that is true to some extent. Some of this stuff were written when he was 25, so it's impressive stuff! Many of the terminologies and themes came up in later writings e.g. clash between thesis and antithesis, the synthesis between two vastly different universals, his borrowings of christianity but reinterpreted with his own slant. I feel like at this point Hegel doesn't seem to believe the traditional claims of christianity anymore (e.g. Jesus rose from the dead or he did the miracles), but he is more from the mold of the liberals. He emphasized that christianity is a moral religion as opposed to positive (legal) religion, and that the miracles are allegorical/psychological. There is also another essay dealing with love which is kinda obscure stylistically and another on the importance of classical learning (studying greek and latin) as foundation of higher learning. How times have changed.

[Fernando Guerra · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't know what i expected. it's a dense and boring read. there are some ideas i could relate to, but, being optimistic, i think i understood 30% of what i read. the phrasing is obscure and completely unfriendly, but i guess that's the 'hegelian' part of it.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

No wonder he wound up a history teacher rather than a theologian. It’s good though.

[Phoebe ‎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s either deeply profound or a kind of metaphysical stalling. Possibly both.
He wants theology to think at the scale of the universe. I just wish he’d stop using twelve clauses to say a simple sentence.

[c · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Hegel tries to forge a new understanding of Christianity insofar as it is both anti-Nature (this is a desirable quality, contra Nietzsche), and a synthesis of Kantian law and desire. All of this is understood in opposition to, in a strange but ultimately satisfying rhetorical turn, the Greek idea of Fate whereby Jesus prophecies the battle between the Holy and Unholy which ultimately must end in a synthesis of its own, hence destroying the Holy. It is because of this that Jesus must sever himself, in the NT, from society and ultimately his own disciples. Hegel is here attempting to present Christianity from a very Greek perspective, representing both Eastern religions and traditional conceptions of Christianity in the West as extremes which surround the moderate Greek worldview.

A lot of this is conceptually stimulating but, as it so often happens with Hegel, stems from really laughably bad misunderstandings/-readings of particular material, in this case NT Greek, which is ironic given Hegel's rector speech on the general awesomeness of classical philology presented later in this collection. Not to mention this is hard to ground, but damn when you're talking about the ultimate ablation of all contradiction in the Absolute Spirit, with the impetus for this found in Love, with Life defined as "the union of union and nonunion" how are you going to propositionalize this?

———


"The necessary consequences of proposing to command feelings were, and were bound to be, these: (a) self-deception i.e., the belief that one has the prescribed feeling…(b) The result of this self-deception is a false tranquility which sets a high value on these feelings manufactured in a spiritual hothouse and thinks of itself on the strength of these…he sinks into helplessness, anxiety [angst cf. Kierkegaard], and self-distrust…he falls into despair…" pg. 141

"This spirit appears in a different guise after every one of its battles against different forces or after becoming sullied by adopting an alien nature as a result of succumbing to might or seduction. Thus it appears in a different form either as arms and conflict or else as submission to the fetters of the stronger; this latter form is called "fate." pg 182

"religious practice is the most holy, the most beautiful, of all things; it is our endearvor to unify the discords necessitated by our development and our attempt to exhibit the unification in the ideal as fully existent, as no longer opposed to reality, and thus to express and confirm it in a deed." pg. 206

"Since laws are unifications of opposites in a concept, which thus leaves them as opposites while it exists itself in opposition to reality, it follows that the concept expresses an ought." pg. 209

"Jesus chose the latter fate, the severance of his nature from the world, and he required the same from his friends…But the more deeply he felt this severance, the less could he bear it calmly, and his actions issued from his nature's spirited reaction against the world; his fight was pure and sublime because he knew the fate in its entire range and had set himself against it…The struggle of the pure against the impure is a sublime sight, but it soon changes into a horrible one when holiness itself is impaired by unholiness, and when an amalgamation of the two, with the pretension of being pure, rages against fate, because in these circumstances holiness itself is caught in the fate and subject to it.
Jesus foresaw the full horror of this destruction: "[Matt. 10:34-35]"…With the consequences before his eyes, Jesus did not think of checking his activity in order to spare the world its fate…Thus the earthly life of Jesus was separation from the world and flight from it into heaven; restoration of the ideal world, of the life which was becoming dissipated into the void…" pp. 286-7

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, surprisingly enough. The notion of love is quite helpful in understanding the master/slave dialectic in the Phen. Brilliant, rich insights into an emerging subject's relation to nature and to god. Relatively clear. Also, there are rather effective arguments against the categorical imperative of Kant. Very highly recommended, allowed me a better understanding of Hegel's thought.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Krone is the most overlooked genius of the 2oth century.