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Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Volume II: Determinate Religion
The Hegel Lectures Series
Series Peter C. Hodgson
Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and manuscripts. The original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources.
Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of his entire philosophical system. His conception and execution of the lectures differed significantly on each of the occasions he delivered them, in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. The older editions introduced insoluble problems by conflating these materials into an editorially constructed text. The present volumes establish a critical edition by separating the series of lectures and presenting them as independent units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources by Walter Jaeschke. The English translation has been prepared by a team consisting of Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson, and J. Michael Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Now widely recognized as the definitive English edition, it is being reissued by Oxford in the Hegel Lectures Series. The three volumes include editorial introductions, critical annotations on the text, textual variants, and tables,
bibliography, and glossary.
"Determinate Religion" comprises Hegel's treatment of world religions, starting with indigeneous or nature religions, moving on to religions of the Far East (Hinduism, Buddhism, Lamaism), the Near East (Persian, Egyptian, and Jewish religions), and the West (Greek and Roman religions). What Hegel succeeded in offering is not so much a history as a geography of religions, as demonstrated by the different schematic structures adopted in successive years.
Series Peter C. Hodgson
Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and manuscripts. The original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources.
Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of his entire philosophical system. His conception and execution of the lectures differed significantly on each of the occasions he delivered them, in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. The older editions introduced insoluble problems by conflating these materials into an editorially constructed text. The present volumes establish a critical edition by separating the series of lectures and presenting them as independent units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources by Walter Jaeschke. The English translation has been prepared by a team consisting of Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson, and J. Michael Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Now widely recognized as the definitive English edition, it is being reissued by Oxford in the Hegel Lectures Series. The three volumes include editorial introductions, critical annotations on the text, textual variants, and tables,
bibliography, and glossary.
"Determinate Religion" comprises Hegel's treatment of world religions, starting with indigeneous or nature religions, moving on to religions of the Far East (Hinduism, Buddhism, Lamaism), the Near East (Persian, Egyptian, and Jewish religions), and the West (Greek and Roman religions). What Hegel succeeded in offering is not so much a history as a geography of religions, as demonstrated by the different schematic structures adopted in successive years.
- GenresPhilosophy
824 pages, Paperback
First published March 20, 2008
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About the author
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2,212 books2,601 followersGeorg 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.
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July 10, 2024
THE SECOND VOLUME OF HEGEL’S LECTURES ON THIS TOPIC
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German Idealist philosopher, who was very influential on later Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion, and even Existentialism [e.g., Sartre's Being and Nothingness].
In his “Lecture Manuscript,” Hegel states, “just as the Christian religion is the most spiritual, so a religion that worships God in a living person is the most spiritless, the most unspiritual, the most vulgar. To worship an animal is necessarily contemptible in our eyes, and to worship THIS presently extant human being is similarly degrading in the highest degree. We do not judge the sun worship of the Parsees, Medes, and Peruvians to be as bad as the worship of animals or an extant human being as God.” (Pg. 107)
He states, “There is only one God. This way of characterizing God is initially directed only against polytheism in general, and to this extent also against the other form, which we regard as more concrete… There is only one god, and he is a jealous God who will have no other gods before him… This is the great thesis of Jewish and of Arab religion generally…” (Pg. 129)
He suggests, “God is the essence that acts in accordance with a purpose, so he has definite purposes in the world. What God purposes and wills are finite things and states. God is what is WISE, but not yet absolute wisdom. This offers us a TELEOLOGICAL way of regarding the world and a teleological proof of God’s existence… It also affords us a way of recognizing God in the wise ordering of nature, a proof of God’s existence from this purposive relationship.” (Pg. 194-195)
In the Lectures of 1824, he outlines, “These then are the forms of determinate religion” 1. Nature religion in general, to which the Oriental religions all belong, wholly consisting as they do in this unity of nature and spirit and the mingling of them both. 2. The religion of the spiritual for itself, as subjectivity in general that has being abstractly on its own account, the religion of pure thought and of the spiritual corporeality that is set apart and determined in itself, namely Jewish and Greek religion. 3. The religion of external conformity to purpose or expediency, namely, ROMAN religion, forming the transition to the absolute religion.” (Pg. 236-237)
He contends, “We must grasp quite definitely that this region [India, etc.] is something devoid of spirit. This becomes clearer if we compare the Hindu religion with others where this is not the case. Where consciousness of the universal in general, of what is essential, shines through into the particular, is active in it and delimits it, there freedom of spirit comes into being in some form; and the legal and ethical realms depend upon the particular being delimited in this way by the universal.” (Pg. 347)
He says, “the One IS GOD, in such a way that the One exhausts the whole essence of God… ‘The One’ is not yet posited as concept, does not occur for us as concept; the true or what is concretely posited within itself, as we find it in the Christian religion, is not yet present at this stage.” (Pg. 394-395)
In the Lectures of 1827, he states, “It is in determinate religion that determinations first enter into that universal essence; this is where cognition of God begins. By means of thoroughgoing determination, the thought of God first comes to be the concept. Even as the content, God, determines itself, so on the other side the subjective human spirit that has this knowledge determines itself too… In determinate religion, spirit if determinate both as absolute spirit or object and as the subjective spirit that has its essence or absoluteness as its object. Here both sides first achieve their determinateness.” (Pg. 515)
He comments on the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “It was the serpent who said: ‘You will be like God.’ … The other aspect… is expressed in the speech of God: ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’ So what the serpent said was no lie; on the contrary, even God himself corroborated it. But this verse is usually overlooked, or else nothing is said about it. So we can say that it is the eternal story of human freedom that we do go forth out of this stupor, in which we are in our earliest years, and come to the light of consciousness, or… that there is good for us and also evil. So far as we apprehend what is actually there in the portrayal, it is the same as what appeared again later in the Christian religion, namely that human beings, as spirit, must come to reconciliation. This is the genuine idea in contrast with the mere image of paradise, or this stupefied innocence devoid of consciousness and will.” (Pg. 529)
After a discussion of Pantheism, he observes, “We say, ‘God is the absolute power, all actual being is only idea within the absolute power of God.’ Everything that ventures to say of itself that it is, that it has actuality, is only a moment in the absolute power of the absolute God. Only God is, only God is the one, genuine actuality.” (Pg. 573)
He points out, “We shall discuss negation in a still higher and more spiritual form later on. For in another perspective, negation is something posited by spirit. Thus God is spirit in that God begets his Son or his own other, posits what is other than himself; but in this other, God is present to himself. There the negation is something vanishing as well, and therefore negation in God is this determinate essential moment.” (Pg. 623)
This is definitely a “scholarly” edition; the footnotes on a given page are frequently longer than the text on the page. The sequential presentation of the various sets of lectures makes Hegel’s change and development very clear. This will be “must reading” for anyone who wants to seriously study Hegel’s ideas on religion.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German Idealist philosopher, who was very influential on later Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Religion, and even Existentialism [e.g., Sartre's Being and Nothingness].
In his “Lecture Manuscript,” Hegel states, “just as the Christian religion is the most spiritual, so a religion that worships God in a living person is the most spiritless, the most unspiritual, the most vulgar. To worship an animal is necessarily contemptible in our eyes, and to worship THIS presently extant human being is similarly degrading in the highest degree. We do not judge the sun worship of the Parsees, Medes, and Peruvians to be as bad as the worship of animals or an extant human being as God.” (Pg. 107)
He states, “There is only one God. This way of characterizing God is initially directed only against polytheism in general, and to this extent also against the other form, which we regard as more concrete… There is only one god, and he is a jealous God who will have no other gods before him… This is the great thesis of Jewish and of Arab religion generally…” (Pg. 129)
He suggests, “God is the essence that acts in accordance with a purpose, so he has definite purposes in the world. What God purposes and wills are finite things and states. God is what is WISE, but not yet absolute wisdom. This offers us a TELEOLOGICAL way of regarding the world and a teleological proof of God’s existence… It also affords us a way of recognizing God in the wise ordering of nature, a proof of God’s existence from this purposive relationship.” (Pg. 194-195)
In the Lectures of 1824, he outlines, “These then are the forms of determinate religion” 1. Nature religion in general, to which the Oriental religions all belong, wholly consisting as they do in this unity of nature and spirit and the mingling of them both. 2. The religion of the spiritual for itself, as subjectivity in general that has being abstractly on its own account, the religion of pure thought and of the spiritual corporeality that is set apart and determined in itself, namely Jewish and Greek religion. 3. The religion of external conformity to purpose or expediency, namely, ROMAN religion, forming the transition to the absolute religion.” (Pg. 236-237)
He contends, “We must grasp quite definitely that this region [India, etc.] is something devoid of spirit. This becomes clearer if we compare the Hindu religion with others where this is not the case. Where consciousness of the universal in general, of what is essential, shines through into the particular, is active in it and delimits it, there freedom of spirit comes into being in some form; and the legal and ethical realms depend upon the particular being delimited in this way by the universal.” (Pg. 347)
He says, “the One IS GOD, in such a way that the One exhausts the whole essence of God… ‘The One’ is not yet posited as concept, does not occur for us as concept; the true or what is concretely posited within itself, as we find it in the Christian religion, is not yet present at this stage.” (Pg. 394-395)
In the Lectures of 1827, he states, “It is in determinate religion that determinations first enter into that universal essence; this is where cognition of God begins. By means of thoroughgoing determination, the thought of God first comes to be the concept. Even as the content, God, determines itself, so on the other side the subjective human spirit that has this knowledge determines itself too… In determinate religion, spirit if determinate both as absolute spirit or object and as the subjective spirit that has its essence or absoluteness as its object. Here both sides first achieve their determinateness.” (Pg. 515)
He comments on the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “It was the serpent who said: ‘You will be like God.’ … The other aspect… is expressed in the speech of God: ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’ So what the serpent said was no lie; on the contrary, even God himself corroborated it. But this verse is usually overlooked, or else nothing is said about it. So we can say that it is the eternal story of human freedom that we do go forth out of this stupor, in which we are in our earliest years, and come to the light of consciousness, or… that there is good for us and also evil. So far as we apprehend what is actually there in the portrayal, it is the same as what appeared again later in the Christian religion, namely that human beings, as spirit, must come to reconciliation. This is the genuine idea in contrast with the mere image of paradise, or this stupefied innocence devoid of consciousness and will.” (Pg. 529)
After a discussion of Pantheism, he observes, “We say, ‘God is the absolute power, all actual being is only idea within the absolute power of God.’ Everything that ventures to say of itself that it is, that it has actuality, is only a moment in the absolute power of the absolute God. Only God is, only God is the one, genuine actuality.” (Pg. 573)
He points out, “We shall discuss negation in a still higher and more spiritual form later on. For in another perspective, negation is something posited by spirit. Thus God is spirit in that God begets his Son or his own other, posits what is other than himself; but in this other, God is present to himself. There the negation is something vanishing as well, and therefore negation in God is this determinate essential moment.” (Pg. 623)
This is definitely a “scholarly” edition; the footnotes on a given page are frequently longer than the text on the page. The sequential presentation of the various sets of lectures makes Hegel’s change and development very clear. This will be “must reading” for anyone who wants to seriously study Hegel’s ideas on religion.
Displaying 1 of 1 review