Logic, History, And Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions. Hodgson

8/2/2019 Logic, History, And Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions. Hodgson

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Logic, History, and Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the

Religions

Peter C. Hodgson

The Journal of Religion, Vol. 68, No. 1. (Jan., 1988), pp. 1-20.

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Logic, History, and Alternative Paradigmsin Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions*Peter C. Hodgson / V a n d e r b i l t U n i u e r s i ~

Hegel's interpretation of the history of religions in the second part of hisLectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Determinate Religion, has generallybeen neglected, a neglect attributable both to the length and difficultyof the material and to the unsatisfactory character of the older editions,which amalgamated quite distinct lectures into an editorially con-structed scheme. The new edition, published by the University of Cali-fornia Press, separates for the first time Hegel's four series of lectureson the philosophy of religion- 1821, 1824, 1827, and (in the excerptedform provided by D. I?. Strauss) 1831 -publishing them as indepen-dent texts on the basis of a complete reediting of the available sources. 1When the lectures are read in sequence as originally delivered, it is pos-sible to trace Hegel's unrelenting efforts to work out an adequate philo-sophical conceptualization of the history of religions.2

Several factors account for the sweeping changes introduced byHegel into his successive lectures on religion: the fact that philosophyof religion was a novel discipline at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, the influence of his concurrent lectures on other disciplines

* This paper was presented to the Nineteenth Century Theology Group at the meeting of theAmerican Academy of Religion in Boston, December 1987, and appeared in the preprintedpapers distributed to members of the group.

' G . W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans.R . F . Brown, P. C . Hodgson, and J . M . Stewart, 3 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1984-87). This is a translation of the new German edition by WalterJaeschke, Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Relision, vols. 3-5 of Vorlesungen; AusgewahlteNachschriften und Manutkripte (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983-85). Page references in thetext are to vol. 2 of this translation. Some of the material in this article is derived from my edi-torial introductions to vol. 2 and to the paperback edition of the lectures of 1827 (Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), in press, the use of which is with the permis-sion of the publisher. Table 1 is reprinted with permission from pp . 88-89 of vol. 2 .

ASJaeschke points out in the preface to vol. 2 of the German edition, when the materials arestudied in this way it is unmistakably clear that "nothing is more alien to Hegel's procedure thanthe customary picture of the pontificating philosopher who sets out to reduce the colorful array ofhistorical actuality to pallid reason through a prefabricated net of abstract categoriesn (Jaeschke,ed. , 4a:ix).

e 1988 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/88/6801-0001)01.00


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T h e Journal of Religion(especially logic), engagement in disputes with contemporary theologyand with criticisms of his own work, and (of particular importance forDeterminate Religion), his continual assimilation of new historical mate-rials as they became available and as he became familiar with them.Hegel probably knew more as a philosopher about the history of worldreligions than any of his contemporaries, and by the end of his careerhe had a broad mastery of the available materials, a mastery won byextensive study during the 1820s. At the beginning of the decade hisprimary competence was in Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Christianreligion, based on earlier studies; the significant changes occurred inhis knowledge of the non-Western religions: the "religion of magic"(African and Eskimo), Chinese religion (including Zhou religion,Daoism, Confucianism), Buddhism, Lamaism, Hinduism, and Per-sian religion (Zoroastrianism). Significant changes also occurred in hisassessment of Judaism, but that is a topic I cannot touch on in thispaper.3 Islam remained a major lacuna in his knowledge and treatment.

The fact is that Hegel never did arrive at a satisfactory arrangementfor Determinate Religion. For part 3 (The Consummate Religion) he arrivedat his mature conceptualization in 1824, while for part 1 (The Concept oReligion) he achieved it in 1827. But in the case of part 2, he introducedsignificant structural changes in 1831, which offered a quite differentcontext for interpreting the Oriental and Near Eastern religions(including Judaism). While we of course do not know whether Hegelwould have reorganized Determinate Religion yet again on a subsequentoffering, it is evident that 1831 does not provide a fully satisfactoryarrangement, especially with regard to Jewish and Roman religion. Atthe same time, one senses a growing fascination with the history of reli-gions, and it is fair to say that this topic, rather than the concept ofreligion or the Christian religion, was at the cutting edge of his interestwhen he died in the fall of 1831.

Hegel's evident willingness to incorporate new data and experimentwith new schemes suggests the following hypothesis: that for him spec-ulative philosophy was a kind of "conceptual play" based on imagina-tive variation of the logical "deep structure" in order to arrive at newinsights with respect to the myriad, inexhaustible details of nature,history, and human experience. My purpose in the remainder of thispaper is to test this hypothesis by inquiring first into the dialectic oflogic and history in Hegel's system and then to look at the alternativeparadigms that emerge in Hegel's interpretation of the religions, with afocus on the non-Western religions.

See my article, "The Metamorphosis of Judaism in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion," Owl ofMinerua 19 (Fall 1987): 41-52.


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Hegel's Interp retati on of the ReligionsTHE DIALECTIC OF LOGIC AND HISTORY I N HEGEL'S SYSTEMWhat is the nucleus of Hegel's system? G . R. G . Mure describes it asfollows: "Hegel holds, and believes it to be the single task of philosophyto show, that reality is not a contingent aggregate, nor an endless gen-eration and evanescence, but a necessarily ordered whole wherein theelements ordered are the phases of a single timelessly self-constitutingactivity which is mind or spirit [Geist]." This self-constituting activitytakes the form of self-manifestation in and through the dialectic of thought-"a progressive cycle of unreserved self-definition by thesis, antithesis,and synthesis, wherein each antithesis is the completely mediating anddeterminant negation, at once the contrary and the contradictoryopposite, of its thesis, and each synthesis is the coincidence of theseopposites in a fuller definition." This process comprises not only thelogic but the whole of nature and concrete (finite) spirit, and it is com-pleted only by the "supertriad" (logic-nature-spirit) that is the whole ofHegel's system; prior to this whole, we encounter only open spirals, notself-completing circles 4

Within the system, the logic can be understood as the categorial"deep structure" out of which Hegel's interpretation of the domains ofnature and historical-cultural experience is generated. In this respect, Ibelieve that Alan White (following Klaus Hartmann) is correct in stat-ing that Hegel's logic is a transcendental ontology. "To say that [it] is onto-logical is to say that it is a doctrine of categories rather than of super-sensible entities;. . . to say that it is transcendental is to say that it presentsconditions of possibility of experience, and that the conditions are dis-covered through philosophical refle~tion."~But it is a Hegelian asopposed to a Kantian transcendental ontology, for it grounds morethan empirical, sense-based knowledge. It makes the claim to groundnot only theoretical knowledge (reflection on the conditions of possibilityfor sensible knowledge) but also practical knowledge (reflection on theconditions of possibility for ethical action) and the whole of aesthetic,religious, and historical experience as well. It is reflection on reflection,for which Hegel used the term "speculative" in order to distinguish histhought from the merely "reflective" philosophy of Kant and otherEnlightenment thinkers.

We must insist, I think, that Hegel's transcendental ontology is con-stitutive of the experienced reality that it grounds; it does not havemerely a heuristic or legislative function vis-8-vis an independently

G. R. G. Mure, A Study ofHegel's Logic(0xford:Clarendon Press, 1950), pp . 296-99. Thi s isundoubtedly the finest study o f Hegel's logic in English, and I shall rely on it heavily.Alan White, Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem ofMetaphysics (At hens: Ohio UniversityPress, 1983), pp. 3-6.


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T h e Journal of Religiongrounded reality. Moreover, the logical categories do not subsist insome ideal supersensible realm but are ingredient in the actuality theyground; the categories are wirklich, active, actual, ideal-real, notmerely ideal. Finally, the mode of their constitutive activity is herme-neutical, not physical or metaphysical. The logical categories "workonly in and through the interplay of consciousness and object, and thisinterplay is precisely hermeneutical. Consciousness recognizes that thelogical structure of reason is antecedently present in its objects, yetapart from the recognition this structure has no reality, it is not "there."We must avoid the misimpression that for Hegel reason is a kind of-supernatural agent that works out its purposes in history in accord withits own inexorable logic. Rather, the ontological status of the categoriesof reason is hermeneutical, and hermeneutics itself (as H.-G. Gadamerargues) is ontological, constitutive of reality as humanly experienced, notmerely heuristic. Although Hegel himself does not use the term"hermeneutics," this interpretation is supported by his actual way ofcorrelating the logical deep structure and the concrete configurations ofconsciousness in the history of religions, as I shall attempt to show.

This interpretation suggests that Hegel's transcendental ontologyyields a postmetaphysical, transcendental theology. Hegel's God is not asupersensible entity, a "supreme being," a "transcendent" object (whichwould in his view simply be a form of the "spurious infinite"); rather,God is "transcendental" in the sense of being the ultimate condition ofpossibility for the totality of experience in general and for religiousexperience in particular, the experience of the "religious relationship" offinite and infinite. In this sense, the philosophical first principle and thetheological first principle are one and the same: "God" ="absoluteidea."6 But to say that Hegel's God is not a supersensible entity is not tosay that God is not actual (wirklich). God is actual, "absolute actuality"(absolute Wirklichkeit), "actual being in and for itself' (das Anundfiirsich-~eiende)~but only in and through the reality of the world, not as aseparated, supersensible entity. Apart from the world, God is not anactual God; in and through the world, of which God is the ideal con-dition of possibility, God becomes concrete, living, true actuality-absolute spirit.

If this interpretation is correct, then in the final analysis we must saythat Hegel's system as a whole (if not the logic alone) is a form of "onto-theology," but, against the criticism of Heidegger and others, this is anontotheology in which theos has been radically revisioned by Hegel'stranscendental ontology. The true infinite, the divine God, "over-

s As Mure puts it, God "is Hegel's proximate metaphor for the Absolute" (p. 298) Hodgson, ed . , 1:369, 373, 419.


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Hegel's Inte rpretation of the Religionsreaches" and encompasses the finite, includes finitude, difference,otherness within godself. God is not "a (highest) being" but "socialbeing" in the most radical sense of having being in communion with theinexhaustible plurality of human and natural being and taking thatplurality up into the divine life. In virtue of the triadic categorial processthat is at the heart of Hegel's logical deep structure, universal substanceis rendered concrete and is enriched, becomes genuinely "individual" or"subjective" (more properly, "intersubjective") by its determinations inand through natural and historical particularity.

What is this triadic categorial process? Its most strictly logical orrational articulation is found in the dialectic of the syllogism, which isthe basic movement of thought itself, the essence of the concept assuch.8 The three moments or figures of any syllogism, according toHegel, are (1) universality (Allgemeinheit), that is, the universal sub-stance or rational principle of a statement; (2) particularity (Besonder-heit), the particular quality or determinate modification of the universalin the case at hand; and (3) individuality (Einzelheit), the subject aboutwhich the statement makes a predication. Now, this syllogistic struc-ture is mirrored in every aspect of Hegel's philosophical system: in thesystem as a whole (logical idea, nature, spirit); in the science of logic(being [immediacy], essence [reflection], concept [subjectivity]) and itsmany subdivisions; in the dialectics of consciousness (immediacy,differentiation, return, or identity, cleavage, reunification); in thedoctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit); and in the philosophies ofnature, spirit, right, art, religion, and world history. The threefolddivision of the philosophy of religion reflects this logical structure (con-cept of religion, determinate religion, consummate religion), as do thesubdivisions of each of these main parts. As we approach the specificphilosophies of the real, however, it becomes apparent that this "mir-roring" of the deep structure is by no means an exact, monotonous,mechanical replication.

This leads to my primary thesis: an element of incommensurability neces-sarily exists between the logical deep structure and the various conjgurations ofnature, history, and human experience. Hegel's interpretations of the latter,while generated out of the logical deep structure, are by no meanssimply read off from that structure. Rather, experience as it actuallypresents itself in the realms of history, art, religion, ethics, politics,anthropology, psychology, and so forth, is determinative of the way inwhich the deep structure concretely appears-and it appears in a

Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, pt. 1, The Logic ofHegel, trans. William Wallace(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), secs. 181-92, and Science of lo gi c, trans. A. V .Miller (London:Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp . 664-704.


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T h e Journal of Religionbewildering variety of forms, shapes, and variations. The basic move-ment of Hegel's philosophy is from the empirical or experiential(experience as it presents itself to consciousness) to the rational or log-ical, then back to experience as speculatively interpreted or recon-figured. In this movement there always remains, as Mure shows, animpelfect sublation of the empirical in the rational. Mure attributes this to abasic contradiction or duality in human experience that cannot be com-pletely surmounted by any philosophy- the duality between the uni-versal and the particular, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and thetemporal, the necessary and the contingent, the intelligible and thesensuous, or (in its most basic form) the a priori (the rational) and theempirical.9 Both the a priori and the empirical require each other as another. There is no sheerly empirical experience but only experienceconstrued categorially in and by thought; conversely, there is no purethought subsisting in distinctionless self-identity but only thoughtapplied to an "other" that is beyond pure thought, even if this "other" isnot finally an alien other but is contained as a moment within theabsolute. In being thus contained, the other cannot be utterly sublatedor annulled; for the absolute, the rational, in order precisely to be theabsolute, must be related to the nonabsolute- the finite, the empirical,the sensuous, the particular, the contingent, the nonrational. 0

Thus the analysis of the dialectic of thought requires the empirical asconstituting the necessary other of thought. Yet Hegel never, accordingto Mure, unambiguously solves the problem of how thought both sub-lates sense experience and remains in reciprocal relation with experi-ence. Rather he wavers between two positions.ll O n the one hand, hisconviction that thought and sense have a single source, and that formand content are inseparable, lead him sometimes to "the mechanicalimposition of the triadic rhythm upon material which can by no stretchof anyone's imagination but Hegel's be conceived as the indubitablecontent of that form."12 But on the other hand Hegel clearly recognizesthat empirically and historically based experience presents an endlesslynovel and to some degree unexpected temporal flow, which can neverbe predicted a priori. "In the Philosophy of Art the empirical and his-torical factor is very conspicuously not, and could not be, sublated inthe philosophical interpretation without a residue which at once lames

9 Mure, pp. 300-301, 332. Mur e believes that Hegel himself recognized this by showing thatthe contradictions expressed in the coupled categories of the doctrine of essence ("his most bril-liant achievement in logic") could never be resolved within essence itself (p. 342).l o Ibid., pp. 315-16, 319-21, 329, 332." Ibid. , pp. 322-28.l 2 Ibid., p. 325.


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Hegel's Inte rpre tation of the Religionsand sustains the interpretation. . . .Of his Philosophy of Religion thesame is true."l3 More true, in fact, than Mure could have known: thesewords, written nearly forty years ago, are thoroughly confirmed by thenew edition of the philosophy of religion. Beyond this, evidence canbe adduced to show that Hegel did not regard his own philosophy asthe final philosophy but only as the philosophy in which the thoughts ofhis own age were most adequately apprehended. In fact, according toMure, Hegelianism "knows as a conclusion from its own premisses thatit is destined to be superseded, that it is itself a thesis which must begetits own antithesis."l*

The lack of finality is underscored by Hegel's preferred medium ofpresentation, that of oral lectures. Duncan Forbes claims, in his intro-duction to the Lectures on the Philosophy o f World History, that Hegel'sphilosophy "is best approached in the spirit of Plato's, as something thatis in danger of being destroyed or distorted if it is written down."15Forbes points out that Hegel in fact was extremely reluctant to publishand that if one views the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and theOutline of the Philosophy o f Right as Hegel viewed them- namely, ascompendia for courses of lectures- then he published only two books inthe proper sense, the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic.These are of course among the greatest books of philosophical litera-ture, but to give them a definitive priority over Hegel's spoken lectures(with which he was almost exclusively occupied during the last decadeof his career) is to treat his philosophy as a closed book, whereas it wasan attempt to "think life" dialectically yet concretely, holistically yetwith shrewd insight into detail. The only way to appreciate this kind ofthinking, says Forbes, is to "watch i t at work." One watches it at workon the podium. Once it ceases to be thinking and becomes thought,once it stops speaking and is reduced to an editorial amalgam, it ceasesto be a living process and becomes a system. The primacy of speakingon Hegel's part did not entail any sort of romantic attachment to hisown subjectivity or intentionality; rather, it permitted the process ofthinking to remain open, fluid, and continuous. Jacques Derrida'sinsight is a shrewd one, that Hegel was "the last philosopher of the book

l 3 Ibid., pp. 331, 363.l 4 Ib id ., pp. 296, 323-24, 332, 367. Hegel may have thought his own Logic to be final (eventhough it is but a "realm of shadowsn) but certainly not his philosophies of the real. Mure makes

this acute observation: "That Hegel, for whom the speculative problem arose and long continuedas a religious problem, came to subordinate religion to philosophy is perhaps further evidencethat he believed his Logic finaln (pp. 327-28, 365).

l 5 Duncan Forbes, int roduction to Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Worl d History, Introduction:Reason in Hislory, trans. H . B . Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975),pp. xiii-xiv.


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T h e Journal of Religionand the first thinker of writing," except that for Hegel "endless writing"was in fact an endless speaking.16

All of this brings us back to the hypothesis stated earlier, namely,that for Hegel speculative philosophy is a kind of "conceptual play"based on imaginative variation of the logical "deep structure" in orderto arrive at new insights with respect to the inexhaustible wealth ofnature, history, and human experience. The deep structure of the logicfunctions as a hermeneutical key for reading and interpreting experi-ence, but i t is a key that must be used experimentally and imagina-tively, and the constructions it generates have an aesthetic, "poetic"quality. Hayden White in his brilliant book, Metahis tory , shows howHegel's logical deep structure can be reformulated in terms of theprincipal tropes of poetic discourse.17 Hegel's favored trope, thesynecdochic, or integrative, by incorporating the other tropes, generatesan emplotment of history that is tragic on the microcosmic level (byshowing the recurring, irresolvable conflicts and negations engenderedby historical action) but comic on the macrocosmic level (by envision-ing a final encompassing reconciliation), thus enabling Hegel to find a"way beyond irony." White's primary point is that every work of histor-ical interpretation, whether produced by a scientific historian or a spec-ulative philosopher, is an imaginative construct that articulates a pre-siding paradigm based on conceptual decisions with respect to style andmodes of emplotment, argument, and ideological implication. I acceptthis point and will not pursue it further here; rather, I want to showthat, within Hegel's presiding paradigm, a number of alternative sub-sidiary paradigms are experimented with almost playfully as heattempts to make sense of the vast tapestry of world religions.

While providing an overview of the whole of Determina te R e l ig ion in eachof the lecture series, I shall focus the analysis on those parts concernedwith the non-Western religions. Table 1 , which compares the structureof the four versions of Determinate Rel ig ion , will be of help in followingthe analysis.

Jacques Derrida, O Grammtology , trans. G. C . Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press, 1976), p. 26. The "primary writing-" that Derrida has in mind includes speaking as wellas writing (see pp. 7, 44, 46, 56).Hayden White, Metahistory: Th e Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). See esp. the introduction and chap . 2. William Desmondoffers valuable insights into the relation between art and history in Hegel's thought; see his Art andthe Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986),chap. 4


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Hegel's Interpre tation of the ReligionsHegel's Lecture ManuscriptThe manuscript prepared for Hegel's first offering of philosophy of reli-gion, in the summer semester of 1821 , arranges Determinate Religion intoa triad corresponding to the fundamental moments of logic, namely,being, essence, and concept (pp. 95-97). But in the case of the reli-gions, these categories are applied in the mode of determinateness andfinitude; hence, the operative triad is one of prereflective immediacy orsimple undifferentiated being (the Oriental religions of nature), differ-entiation (the positing of essence) in the form of power (Jewish religion)or necessity (Greek religion), and external purposiveness (the conceptasf ini te) in the form of a religion that is universal but utterly prosaic andutilitarian in its purposes, namely Roman religion. Thus in terms of itsexternal arrangement the manuscript remains quite close to the triad ofthe logic, but the correlations are forced, as Hegel himself soonrealized. It is scarcely possible to treat the Oriental religions under thecategory of immediacy. In fact Hegel does not discuss them directly atall but, rather, constructs a brief phenomenology of religious immediacy(some seven manuscript sheets or less than 20 percent of the whole ofDeterminate Religion [pp. 98-122]), with vague allusions to Chinese,Hindu, Persian, and Egyptian religion. No mention is made of the reli-gion of magic, and little if any new study of any of these religions is evi-denced. By contrast with the brevity of this section, Hegel devotes aninordinate amount of attention to Roman religion, but it is solely forthe purpose of showing that Roman religion represents the apotheosisof finitude and the demise of all the finite religions. There is no progres-sive development toward Christianity but a cycling of finite religionback on itself, a regression to the primitive at a higher stage of culture(pp. 226-31).

T h e Lectures of 1824Hegel originally envisioned a threefold division of Determinate Religion in1824 as well (pp. 234-37), but in the course of execution it was alteredinto a twofold division, nature religion and the religions of spiritualindividuality (or of finite spirit); on this arrangement, the triad wouldbe completed only by the third main part of the lectures, the consum-mate or Christian religion (the religion of infinite spirit). Hegel usedthis arrangement only once, in 1824, but it is the structure adopted bythe Werke for its version of part 2.

Because the power of spiritual individuality or subjectivity is wiseand purposive power, the religions constituting the second main part ofDeterminate Religion are arranged according to three stages in the actuali-


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TABLE 1C O M I ' A K A T I V L A N A L Y S I S OFTHE S T R U C T U R E OF "DETERMINATE RE1.IGIONn

Mi~tt~rscr~pt 1x24 Lccrtrrrsl n r rod u c t~ on 3 a ) In r ro d uc t ~o nA. Im~ i ic d~n rcel lgon (322) A. I~ i i rned~arerllglon, or

a . T hr Mer .~phys lca lColicrpt of God ( I Z h ) [ T h e C o s ~ n o l o g ~ c a l roof]b. Concrete Representarlon (34 3)c . T he S ~ d e f Self -Consc~ousness: Su b l ec t ~v ~ t y . u l tus (373) B r ~e fRef lec t~on n the Sta te , Freedom, Reason (393)

B. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf Subllrnlry and Beaury- B(393)a . Metaphys~calConcept (412) [The Cormolog~calProofi

b. Concre te Represe n ta t~on , Form of the Idea (433) of Subllmlry (433)7'. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n a . G o d a s th e O n eof Necess~ry 44b) Self-5. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n b . T h e F o rm of D ~ v ~ n ec. Culrus (4 7 3) D e t c r m ~ n a t ~ o n

N at ur e R r l ~ g ~ o n lntroductlon a. T h e O r ~ g ~ n a lo n d ~ t ~ o nb . lmnicd~nreR r l ~ p o nn (;enern1(n) Th e Mrtaphys~c.il Coliccpr of (;od:t h e C o s m o l o g ~c .~ l r ~ n ~ f ((0 h e R e p r e \ r ~ i t ~ r ~ o n f C o d

(y) The F11rms o f Nature Re l~ g~ onI . T h e R e l ~ p o n f M a g ~ ca. S111gularSelf -Co~isc~ousnesss Power over Nature b. F or ma l O h l e c r ~ f i c ~ t ~ o nf the D ~ v ~ n e blectc. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf Anc~enrChlnad . T h e R e l~ g lo n f B e ~ n g - W ~ r h ~ n - Self (BuJJhlsm. Lanialsm) 2 . T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf Ph ~n t a s y H l n du l sm )a . The Represenra t~on f Codb. Th e Cultus3. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf the Go ad or of 1.1ght (Persian R r l ~g l o n ) 4 . T r a n s ~ t ~ o nr om N ~ t u r e e ll gl on t o Sp1r1ru31R e l l g l o n : T h c R r l ~g ~o n o f the En~ gm a Eg\ ,p tl .in R el ~g ~o n) a . T h e R e p r e s r n t ~ r ~ o nf Godb. Cultu s In the Form of ArtTh e Re llg~ ons f Splr lrudll n d ~ v ~ d u a l ~ r yl n t r o d u c t ~ o na. D ~ v ~ s ~ o nf the Sublect

b. T h e M e t ap h y s ~ca lConcept of God:Cosn io log~calti Teleolog~cal roofs-. T h e M o r e C o nc re t e D e f i n ~ t ~ o n / C o d of 1. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf Subl~mlry U e w ~ s hR e l ~ g ~ o n ) >. T he R e l ~ g ~ o nf Sub l lm~ ry 473)p. T he R e l ~ g ~ o nf Beauty (493)a . S p ~ r ~ tf the Cul tus ;Sel f -Consc~ousness 493 )fl. Th e Cultus I tself (513 ) c . Th e Cultus(Greek Rel~g lon)a. Th e Conc ept In Generalb. The Con ten t and Shape o fDlvlne Renresenrarlon'. Th e Cultu;C. The Rcllglon of Expediency o r - 3 . T h e R e l l p o n o f ErprdlencyU n d e r \ t a n d ~ n g 5 9 3 )a. Ahstrac t Concept (613 ) 7'

h e T e l ed o g ~ ca l r oo f ( 6 2 h )h . C o n f i p u r a r ~o n r R cp r c~e n r an o n fthe Dyvlne Essence (k4h)c . The Mo re Spec~f ic a tu re of theseI 'owers a nd De~ tl es n General (66b)

( R om a n R e l ~ g ~ o n )a . T he Concept of Nr ie \ s~ ry nd

tx t r rn al I 'u rporcb. Th e C


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1827 Lcrtr,resl n r r o d u c t ~o n- A. l m m edl a t e R e l ~g ~o n ,r N a t u r eR e l ~ g ~ o nl n r r o d u c t ~o na . Th e O r ~ g ~ n a lo n d t r ~ o n 183 1 Lecftrresl n t r o d u c t ~ o nD ~ v ~ s ~ o nf t he Suhlect1. N a t u r a l R e l ~ g ~ o nI . R a t ~ o ~ i a le l ~g to n :D e ~ s m2. P r ~ t n ~ t t v ee l ~ p o nb . Th e Form5 of Nature Re l~ po n

I . T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf M a g ~ c 3. T he R e l ~ g ~ o nf M a g ~ ca. Th e Concep t o f M q r c B. The In ternal Rupture o fb. Less Developrd R elig ~on s f Rel~g io us onsc~ousncss M a g ~ c l n tr o du c t~ o n c. T h e State R e l ~ g ~ o n lCosm olog~calProof, Panrhe~sm ]f the C h ~ n e s e m p ~ r e nd t h e Da o 1 . C h ~ n e s e e l ~ g ~ o n : h e2. T he R e l ~ g ~ o nf B e ~ n g - W ~ t h ~ n - R e l ~ g ~ o nf M e as ur eSelf ( B u d d h ~s m . am a~ s m ) 2. H ~ n d u e li g~ on :The Rel~g iona . T h e O n eR e l ~ g ~ o n B u d d h ~ s m Unity. T h e H ~ n d u S u bs ta nc e-2. of Abstract nd Lama~sm:T h eb. T h e M u l r ~ p l ~ c ~ r yf Powersc . T h e C u l tu sd . T r an s l r ~o n o t h e N ex t S t ag e4. T h e R e l ~ g ~ o n sf T r a n s ~ r ~ o na . T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf L ~ g h t( I' er s~an R e l ~ g ~ o n )Tra ns ~r lo nro rhe Nexr Stageb . E g y p t ~anRellglon-B. The Elevat ion o f the S p ~ r ~ t u a lbovet h e N a t u r a l : T h e R e l l g ~o n f t h eGreeks and the Jews

I . The Rel lg~ on f beau ty, o r Gr rek/ R e l ~ g ~ o na . T h e D l v ~ n e o n t e ntb The Cul tus2. T he R e l ~ g ~ o n o rf S u b l ~ m ~ t y ,J r w ~ s h e l i g ~ o na. T he Unity of Godb . D i vi ne Se l f - D e t e r m ~n a t ~ o nndRepresentarlonc . T he Cul tusThe Rellglon of Expedlrncy:R om an R r l ~ g ~ o nI . The Co nce pt of I 'urpor~venes,2. T h e Configuration of rhr God,3. T h e C u l ru s

R e l ~ g ~ o nf A n n i h ~ l a t ~ o nC . T h e R e l ~ g ~ o nf Freedom

1. T r a n s ~ t ~o n a lo r m sa . Th e R e l ~ g ~ o nf the Good( 1 ) Pe r s ~anR e l ~ g ~ o n(2) J e w ~ s hR e l ~ g ~ o nc. Egypt tan Rel~g~on:h eR e l~ g~ onf Fermenr

G re ek R e l ~ g ~ o na. Summaryb. T he Teleolog~cal roofc. The Relig~on f Freedomand Brnu ty- 3. Roman Rel~g lon :T h eR e l~ g~ o nf Expedlrncy


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T h e Journal of Religionzation of divine purposiveness (pp. 382-89): in the religion of sublimity(Jewish religion), the purpose of God is unitary and infinite but limited toa particular people; in the religion of beauty (Greek religion), the godsrepresent a plurality of limited (though beneficent, friendly) purposes, allsubject, however, to inscrutable, implacable necessity; and in the reli-gion of expediency (Roman religion), the purposiveness encountered isuniversal but external, utilitarian, and oriented to the one overridingend of world empire. This arrangement has the disadvantage of treat-ing Roman religion under the category of spiritual individuality, whereit does not properly belong because the Roman deities are abstractfunctions, not spiritual subjects. But it enables Hegel to advance theintriguing proposal that these religions correspond to three of the reli-gions of nature "in inverse order" (pp. 389-90): Jewish monotheismcorresponds to Persian dualism in the sense that both identify thedivine with a single, highest, inward purpose that is both wise andgood; Greek polytheism corresponds to Hindu pantheism; and Romanpolitical religion corresponds to ancient Chinese emperor worship.Whereas in the natural religions we have a gradual "withdrawal" of thenatural manifold into the simple naturalness of light, in the spiritualreligions we have an "unfolding" of the singular divine subject intoempirical universality-but in such a way that it becomes cold,destructive, empty, and capricious, the power of death rather than oflife (pp. 510-12). This is Hegel's way of suggesting in 1824, as he didalso in the lecture manuscript by his sustained critique of Roman reli-gion, that determinate or finite religion cycles back on itself. Clearlythis whole dialectical structure resists any monolithic, linear theory ofprogress: the history of the determinate religions is tragic, not comic.Contrary to widespread opinion, Hegel's philosophical history of reli-gion is not evolutionary or developmental but typological; it does notshow a progressive historical evolution to the consummate religion,Christianity. We might also note that, on the hypothesis of "inversecorrespondence," Judaism (not Greek or Roman religion) is the highestof the finite religions.

Returning now to the 1824 section on nature religion, the first thingto notice is that it has grown to more than half of Determinate Religionand has a wealth of detail lacking in 1821, acquired by extensive read-ing on Hegel's part during the intervening years (see pp. 3-12). The1824 lectures are the most experimental throughout, and this is espe-cially true of the section now in view since Hegel plays with threearrangements of it, one summarized toward the beginning of the sec-tion, one following the discussion of Hinduism, and one (briefly) at theend (pp. 268-71, 350-52, 380-81). To avoid confusion, I will follow


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Hegel's Interpretation of the Religionsthe second arrangement, which is more suggestive and reasonably closeto the actual execution. Nature religion (on this version) is composed offive sections, the first of which is prolegomenary and the last of which istransitional, leaving three central sections.1. Th e religion o f magic. -The religion of magic (primitive religion) ismerely prolegomenon, not yet properly religion. This is not to suggestthat it is unimportant, for it is the essential matrix out of which prop-erly religious consciousness emerges. Spirit initially exists in theimmediate, empirical form of singular self-consciousness (that of ashaman or sorcerer), which knows nothing higher than itself and exer-cises direct power over nature by words and gestures (pp. 272 ff.), butat the same time there are the beginnings of a process of objectificationof the divine object vis-8-vis consciousness (pp. 278 ff.). These con-stitute the two main stages of magic, and Hegel provides a finelydetailed description of the second in terms of a phenomenology of fourphases of "formal objectification" (drawing his materials primarily fromAfrican religion): the use of media such as fetishes, representation ofthe divine in the form of the "great elemental objects" of nature (sun,sky, sea, river, mountain), embodiment of the divine in living things(plants and animals), and finally its appearance in the form of singlehuman beings (holy men, emperors, dead spirits). This final phase isexemplified for Hegel by the religion of the Zhou dynasty in ancientChina: the emperor is the divine power and rules on behalf of heaven(Tian) by means of dead spirits (Shen) (pp. 299 ff.).

2. The self-containment (Insichsein) o f divine essence. -Religion in theproper sense appears with the "actual" (as distinct from "formal")objectification of the divine object, which now has its being preciselywithin itself. This is Buddhism, the religion of "being-within-self' or"self-containment,)) nd it occupies a key stage in Hegel's phenomen-ology of religious consciousness since it provides the "axial shift" fromprimitive religion to the high religions (pp. 303-7).18 Unfortunately,Hegel's sources and his knowledge of Buddhism were not adequate tothe importance assigned to this religion-an importance assignedalmost intuitively, perhaps, through a recognition of the speculativesignificance of the concept of nirvana, which is, however, only brieflydiscussed in 1824 (pp. 3 12- 13). The important thing for us to appreci-ate is that the transition from being to essence, from immediacy to

l 8 As transitional it can be treated as the concluding phase of the religion of magic or as anautonomous s tage. As he lectured, Hegel chose the first alternative in 1824, which obscures thepivotal character of Buddhism, but in his second outline of the section, sketched after he had dis-cussed both Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in the subsequent lectures, it occupies a separateand higher stage. Hegel of course did not use the expression "axial shift."


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T h e Journal of Religionintroreflection (Rejlexion i n sich), now occurs for Hegel, not at the stageof Judaismig and Greek religion (as in the manuscript), but muchearlier, with what he takes to be the oldest of the Oriental religions,Buddhism. The Oriental religions are all religions of essence or sub-stance, not of prereflective immediacy.

3 . The self-dzferentiation o f divine essence.-Essence must not onlywithdraw into itself in the rest of inner contemplation, it must also goforth from itself, differentiate itself into a multiplicity of mutually inde-pendent finite shapes, both animal and human, constituting a varie-gated, fanciful world, the representation of which is the uniqueachievement of Hinduism (pp. 3 16-18). Hindu mythology expressesthis dialectic of self-containment and self-differentiation in the form ofthe Trimurti- the one, absolute unity of Brahman, which appears inthree figures: Brahm2 (the active, generative father), Vishnu (mani-festation, appearance, incarnation), and Shiva (mutability, creation,and destruction) (pp. 327 ff.). Hegel discusses Hinduism at length, andhis sources are more adequate than for any other Oriental religion, buthis assessment of it remains consistently negative, both because of thebias present in the sources and because of his deliberate attempt tocounteract the romantic attachment to India that had been prevalent inGermany during his formative years (see p. 40).

4 . The reJEection back into itself o f divine essence. -The good is both deter-mined within itself and essence present within things-but onlyabstractly so, and it confronts an antithesis external to it, evil, withwhich it struggles endlessly. Light is the natural shape of the good:although itself invisible, it is the essentiality of all particular things,and, as the universal medium of reflection and reflexivity, it has the rootof subjectivity within itself. The religion of the good and of light,Persian religion (Zoroastrianism), thus constitutes the final moment inthe triad of high nature religions (pp. 352-55).

5. The transition from natural to spiritual religion. -Spiritual subjec-tivity is a being-within-self that both constitutes itself in relationship toan other and negates this differentiation, maintaining itself in what ithas distinguished, maintaining the other as a moment of itself(pp. 361-62). In other words, the elements that are externally relatedboth temporally and spatially in natural process-prereflective immed-iacy, being-within-self or self-containment, self-differentiation, reflec-tion back into self- are inwardized and temporally-spatially integrated

l9 Judaism retains its distinctive religiohistorical role in that the true idea of God as infinitelyone and sublime first appears in it. In 1824 Hegel's assessment of Judaism undergoes a strikingmetamorphosis: rather than being portrayed as a religion of dependence and servitude, it is nowviewed as the first of the.religions of freedom.


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Hegel's Interpreta tion of the Religionsby subjectivity. We see this beginning to happen in Egyptian religion(pp. 365 f f . ) : the negative moment no longer falls outside the god, as inPersian religion (Osiris himself undergoes death), nor does it simplydisappear into the One, as in Brahmanism (the reborn god is simul-taneously represented as deceased, as the god of the underworld). Thisquasi-natural representation of spiritual reintegration is underscoredby the fact that the. history of the divine subject coincides with thehistory of natural objects (the history of the sun, the Nile, the waxingand waning of the year, the natural cycle of birth, growth, death, andrebirth). Thus Egyptian religion is "shot through with inconsistenciesn;it is an "enigmatic, confused mixture" of heterogeneous elements,natural and spiritual (pp. 364-65). Thus it provides the transition (nota historical, evolutionary transition but a logical, typological one) fromthe natural religions of the East to the spiritual religions of the West.

The Lectures of 1827The substance of Hegel's interpretation of the religions was establishedin 1824. Hence it will not be necessary to provide an equally detailedsynopsis of the remaining lectures, and I shall focus instead on shifts inemphasis, organization, and argument. In 1827, Determinate Religion isconsiderably shorter, and the argument is presented not only withgreater clarity and simplicity but also with more concrete references toreligious practices.

The overall structure reverts to the triadic arrangement of the lecturemanuscript by contrast with the twofold division of 1824. The threestages are religion as the natural unity of the spiritual and the natural(nature religion), the elevation of the spiritual above the natural (Greekand Jewish religion), and the religion in which purposiveness is not yetspiritual (Roman religion, which is a religion of fate or destiny becauseit is devoid of spirit) (pp. 5 19-2 1). While this arrangement is triadic, itshould be noted that it is based on the dialectics of nature, spirit, andpurposiveness (or teleology), not on the syllogistic or logical triads.There are, to be sure, correspondences with these more formal triads,but the correspondences are of a nondeductive, hermeneutical character.

The primary (and significant) innovation in the middle stage is thereversal in order with which its two religions are dealt, so that nowGreek religion is considered first and Jewish religion second. Thisreflects the fact that the problematic of this stage is now viewed as the"elevation" of the spiritual above the natural: from this point of viewJudaism is the higher religion because in it the sensible element isentirely annulled in a pure and sublime monotheism. This follows in


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T h e Journal of Religionpart from Hegel's continuing and increasingly favorable reassessmentof Judaism, but it may also be related to the polemical context of the1827 lectures, namely Hegel's defense against the charge of pantheismand atheism. In other respects, however, Judaism is still "one-sided," asis Greek religion, and their respective one-sidednesses are overcome,not in Roman religion, which merely "homogenizes" them, but in theChristian religion, which is a religion of both transcendence andimmanence, divinity and humanity, trinity and incarnation (pp. 640-42,669, 688).

In 1827 the section on nature religion constitutes nearly 65 percent ofthe whole of Determinate Religion, an extraordinary shift from the sparseattention it received just six years earlier. The section is now dividedinto four subsections (rather than three, four, or five, depending onwhich of Hegel's structural schemas for 1824 is adopted). As to the first ofthese, the religion of magic, Hegel now says that all the "less developed"religions of magic involve a more or less direct power over nature (pp.539-41), and the phenomenology of.stages of "formal objectification ofthe divine object" found in 1824 is gone. Only the religion of ancientChina is distinguished from direct magic as a "developed" religion ofmagic. Despite this classification, Hegel's treatment has advanced con-siderably beyond that found in 1824. He now recognizes that what isinvolved is not simply emperor worship but a higher religious symbol,that of heaven, or Tian, which has moral qualities as well as naturalpower, and for the first time he alludes to Daoism, the "religion ofreason (the way)," which evolved out of the religion of heaven and istransitional to the next stage of nature religion, that of being-within-self (pp. 556-60).

Buddhism is now a distinct stage, as warranted by its religio-histor-ical significance as an axial religion, and Hegel in 1827 directs moreattention to its fundamental conception of ultimate reality as "nothing,"or nirvana. To say that God is nothing does not mean that God is notbut rather that God is nothing determinate, the negation of everythingparticular, the unitary universal, "the empty": thereby an importantdimension of the truth about God is expressed. This is the truthgrasped by Oriental pantheism in contrast to the Western preoccupa-tion with individuality (pp. 565-68, 572-75). The claim is not that "allis God" (alles Gott sei) but that "the All is God," "the All that remainsutterly one" (das All, das schlechthin eins bleibt) and thus is the negativity offinite things. The "pan" of pantheism is to be taken as universality(Allgemeinheit), not as totality (Allheit)- a distinction worth keeping inmind in light of poststructuralist critiques of "totality," a concept often


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Hegel's Inte rpre tation of the Religionstraced to Hegel.20 By contrast with Buddhism, Hegel's analysis ofHinduism in 1827 is basically unchanged.

The religions of transition now include Persian as well as Egyptianreligion, which together constitute the fourth stage of nature religion.In this stage, the Buddhist-Hindu distinction between the abstract uni-versal and immediate subjects reverts to a concrete, implicitly spiritualunity, and there occurs a separation of empirical self-consciousnessfrom absolute self-consciousness, "so that here God attains properobjectivity for the first time" (pp. 604-9). This suggests that Hegel isbeginning to perceive a sharper distinction between the Far Easternand Near Eastern religions, anticipating the major structural revisionof 1831 that assigns them to separate stages. The Near Eastern reli-gions as a whole are beginning to be viewed as transitional from thecleavage of consciousness to its reunification-"the resumption of themanifold. . .into concrete unity" (p. 621), a unity that includes sub-jectivity within itself. In Persian religion this resumption remains trun-cated because it is external and natural, while in Egyptian religionuniversal substance is grasped as subjectivity for the first time, althoughstill represented by an enigmatic mixture of natural and religioussymbols (p. 638).

The Lectures o 1831For the last lectures, Hegel undertook a major reorganization of Deter-minate Religion and drew on new resources for his treatment of Chinese,Indian, Persian, and Egyptian religion in particular. The division istriadic, as in 1827 and 1821, but the actual structure is quite differentfrom anything preceding. The relation of immediacy between conscious-ness and its object, which characterizes primitive religious conscious-ness, is now restricted to magic, which is not yet properly religious(pp. 724-25). Religion emerges with the inward cleavage or rupture(Entzweiung) of consciousness, such that consciousness recognizes a dis-tinction between itself "as transitory accident" and "God as absolutepower." This cleavage permits an elevation of the spiritual above thenatural, and Hegel now locates the beginning of this process at a muchearlier point than in 1827. The second stage has its historical existencein what are now described as "the three Oriental religions of

20 See Martin Jay, Marxism and Tota lip: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to H a b m(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); and Emmanuel Levinas,Totality and Znjnity: An Essay on Exteriorip, trans . Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univer-sity Press, 1961).


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T h e Journ al of Religionsubstance," namely, Chinese religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism1Lamaism (pp. 725-29).

The third stage entails the overcoming of the cleavage through areconciliation of consciousness and its object at a higher, mediatedlevel, where freedom becomes actual for the first time (both divine andhuman freedom). This occurs in three phases. The first phase is a tran-sitional one in which, in reaction against the confusion of the naturaland the spiritual in the preceding stage, subjectivity seeks to establishitself in its unity and universality. This struggle appears in three transi-tional religions: the religion of the good (Persian and Jewish), the reli-gion of anguish, and the religion of ferment (Egyptian) (pp. 737-47).In the second phase, the subject knows itself to be free in relation to thedivine object. This is the religion of freedom proper, or Greek religion.But since the subject has not yet passed through the infinite antithesisof good and evil, and since the gods are not yet infinite spirit, thereconciliation that occurs in this phase is not complete (pp. 752-53).Nor is it completed in the final phase, that of Roman religion, whichissues instead in the infinite unhappiness and pain that serve as thebirth pangs of the religion of truth ( p p 758-60).

Of the many comments that could be offered about this innovativeconstruction, I limit myself to the following. First, it reestablishes amore clearly logical basis for the division of Determinate Religion, and inthis respect it approximates the original lecture manuscript moreclosely than the lectures of 1824 and 1827, which are shaped by theinterplay of nature and spirit. It is not, however, the dialectic of being,essence, and concept that is at work here but, rather, that of immediacy,rupture, and reconciliation, and the third moment is no longer simplyidentified with Roman religion but with a plurality of "religions of free-dom." These are not so much strictly logical categories as they aredescriptive of the general life of the concept and of the dialectic of con-sciousness- a dialectic that is taken into the divine life and becomesgenuinely trinitarian in the Christian religion.

Second, the clear distinction of the Oriental religions from the overlyloose category of nature is a great improvement, and it is evident thatHegel has deepened his study of both Chinese and Indian religion.Chinese religion is no longer the final phase of magic but the religion of"measure." Measure (Mass) is the final category of the logic of being,designating the point of equivalence or indifference of quality andquantity; thus, it anticipates but does not yet achieve the true differ-entiation of essence-and this is true of the religion of measure, as evi-denced (for Hegel) by the laws of the Dao and their signs, the Gua,based on the simple distinction between being and nonbeing, one and


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Hegel's Inte rpretation of the Religionstwo, yes and no, yang and yin (pp. 550n-552n). Noteworthy also isthe reversal of order in which Hinduism and Buddhism are discussed.Whatever the reasons for this, whether historical or schematic, Hindu-ism now provides the conceptual advance to unitary substance insteadof Buddhism, and the latter (if Strauss's excerpts are reliable) receivesscant attention indeed.

The grouping together of the Near Eastern religions as transitionalforms at the beginning of the third and final stage of determinatereligion accords them a higher status. Judaism both gains and loses bythis arrangement. It gains in the sense of being given its proper religio-cultural setting rather than simply being viewed as preparatory toWestern Christian consciousness, and its distinctive, more profoundunderstanding of evil is thematized (pp. 740-41), but it loses in thesense of being found wanting when measured against the criterion of afree religion that can serve as the foundation of a free state, namely,Greek religion (pp. 741-42).

The distinctive leitmotif of the 1831 lectures is the role played by reli-gion in the history of the consciousness of freedom (reflecting Hegel'spolitical concerns during the last year of his 1ife)Zl- the emergence offreedom out of nature, first through the cleavage of consciousness (theOriental religions), then through the idea of God as free subject whoreleases the created world to exist independently of God as God's image(Judaism), then through the process of divine self-divestment and self-return, so that finitude is taken up into infinitude and reconciled with it(the religion of anguish and Egyptian religion), finally through the con-stitution of free ethical and political institutions based on free religion(Greek religion) (pp. 747-48). The dominant problem is no longer thatof theism versus atheism, as in 1827, but reconciliation and emancipa-tion.The order in which the determinate religions are treated in 1831(and only in 1831) permits a geographical plotting of the odyssey ofspirit as it moves from East to West-from China, to India and theIndia-born religions, to Persia, to Israel, to Egypt, to Greece, to Rome,to Europe. Whither next?

2 1 See Walter Jaeschke, "Hegel's Last Year in Berlin," in Hegel's Philosophy of Action, ed .Lawrence S. Stepelevich and David Lamb (Atlantic Highlands, N.J . : Humanities Press, 1983),p p . 31-48.


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T h e Journal of ReligionIs Hegel's philosophical configuration of the history of religions a

success or a failure? The answer depends partly on the construal of theterms "success" and "failure." If the criterion of success is, on the onehand, the logical construction of a unitary history of religion, then theproject clearly is a failure; indeed, it must fail if it is the case, as I haveargued, that an element of incommensurability necessarily existsbetween any categorial deep structure and the various configurations ofnature, history, and human experience. There simply is no single,unified history of religion and, for that matter, no single history ofhuman spirit. But I have already pointed out that Hegel's philosophicalhistory of religion is not evolutionary or developmental; rather, it istypological. Walter Jaeschke suggests that what Hegel offers is less ahistory of religion than a geography ofreligion. 22 That is, the various shapesof religious consciousness are identified either typologically by distinc-tive phenomenological categories (the religions of being-within-self,phantasy (Phantmie), good or light, enigma, sublimity, beauty,expediency, etc.) or geographically with locales and peoples (the reli-gions of China, India, Persia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, etc.).These types and locales are not successfully linked into a n overarchinghistoricoevolutionary schema, even if Hegel sometimes gives theimpression of wanting to do so (thus reflecting the inner tension in histhought to which Mure calls attention).

If the criterion of success, on the other hand, is the hermeneuticallyproductive deployment of logical categories, presiding paradigms,modes of ernplotment and argument, and so on, in order to makepartial sense of the vast tapestry of world religions in terms of theirfundamental presuppositions and principles, similarities and differ-ences, possibilities and limits, even their mutual transformations, thenwe must conclude that Hegel was eminently successful-not once, buton four occasions and in strikingly different ways. The different waysdeconstruct any claim to a unitary logical construction and release thehermeneutical potential of Hegel's inexhaustible speculative genius.

22 Walter Jaeschke, D i e V e r n u n j i n d er R e li gi o n (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog Verlag, 1986),pp. 288-95.

Logic, History, And Alternative Paradigms in Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions. Hodgson

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