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The Final Name of God
(c) David Kolb, 1991
Bates College
Hegel's system aims at thought's encompassing self-relation. There are many ways of
interpreting just what Hegel is trying to achieve in that self-relation and what kind of
closure, if any, it demands. It is also difficult to be sure how Hegel intends that self-
relation to include the myriad detail of the world. In this essay I look at two models of
how that self-relation might come to grips with the detail of the history of religions. I
argue that Hegel prefers the stronger of the two models, but that there are serious
difficulties in carrying it out.1
It seems clear from Hegel's various methodological remarks that he is working to
complete the metaphysical tradition's aim of grounding and presence, and that he
works within the Kantian notion of reason as the faculty of totality. In that Kantian vein,
Hegel argues that a relation of thought to itself is required as condition of the possibility
of conscious experience and practice.2
Interpreters disagree about what degree of closure Hegel believes is demanded in order
to achieve thought's self-relation. I have argued elsewhere that there are at least two
aspects: the logic is to encompass all categorial determinations by which any Other to
thought could be conceived, and the logic is to involve categories describing its own
self-referential structure. Hegel's closure is in the interconnection between these two: the
system is complete because its self-referential structure necessarily includes the
categories which encompass otherness.3 If the logic is in principle complete then the
grammar of thought is known as such, and the system affirms that it possesses the
categories to do justice any Other.4 There is nothing untouched by thought, though
some things are touched only by being put in their place as necessarily contingent detail
1 This essay has benefited from helpful comments an earlier version received when presented at the
Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. It was published in Hegel and the Tradition.
University of Toronto Press, 1997, 162-175.
2 For a recent discussion of Hegel's connection to Kantian self-relation, cf. Robert Pippin, Hegel's
Idealism (New York: Cambridge, 1989).
3 See my "What is Open and What is Closed in the Philosophy of Hegel," Philosophical Topics, vol. 19,
no. 2, Fall 1991, and The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger and After (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1987).
4 Hegel speaks of "the entire course [of the science of logic], in which all possible shapes of a given
content and of objects came up for consideration." (Science of Logic 12.237/826; references are to the
Gesammelte Werke volume:page and to the Miller translation page.)
that thought cannot penetrate.
But the world must, for logical reasons, contain more than logic. How does the system
deal with the detail of history and life? How does it deal with the history and variety of
religions? For religion is a special case. It is one of the historical phenomena Hegel
studies, but it is also one of the ways spirit finally comes to know itself as encompassing
all otherness. Since religion is a form of absolute spirit, the systematic demand for self-
relationship and completeness will be more stringent in the case of religion than in
nature or politics. Hegel demands that there be a final religion and a developmental
story that demonstrates that finality. I will argue that such a story cannot be written.
The Need for Completeness in Logic and Religion
Hegel would say that the only way to appreciate the necessity of the system is to
actually follow its development. Here I will only point out a connection Hegel makes
between the claim to self-relation and the need for completeness.
Hegel argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit that knowledge, conscious experience, and
action ultimately require as their condition of possibility full self-relation. The
philosophical system activates that self-relation. But the self- consciousness of spirit
achieved through the system has to be complete. It cannot itself be a theoretical
knowledge that stands off from the world across some gulf that is outside the system's
own self-relation. There cannot be some duality which locates the self-presence of spirit
to itself but is not overcome in spirit's self-relation. The final epistemological and
ontological condition on the meaning of being is self-presence; it makes no sense to
speak of a partial self-presence as somehow ultimate (as Hegel thinks was done by Kant
and even Fichte).
In the Logic there can be no final bad infinity, no endless sequence of as yet unknown
categories, since this would prohibit full self-relation. If the self-relation to be achieved
in the Logic included some infinite task of self-discovery involving endless categorial
novelty, either the self-relation would fail, or it would move to a higher level.5 Any
supposed endless sequence of categories would mean that spirit was moving towards
an state of comprehension that was not yet actual. And the distance from that state
would express a duality spirit was on one side of.6 On the other hand, if spirit possessed
5 Also, since we are speaking of categories that are the essential determinations of what it means to be, if
there were uncomprehended categories in endless novelty, the source of their determination (their being)
would remain mysterious, and thought would not yet be self-determining in its relation to itself.
6 In such a case, there would be built in to the basic epistemological and ontological "action" a gap
between its concept and its actualization. But (in an argument reminiscent of Aristotle's argument for the
primacy of actuality over potentiality) Hegel would deny that it could be possible for such to be the case
on the primal level. Correspondingly, post- structuralist attacks on Hegel and on metaphysics generally
at least a sketch of this ideal future state, the endless sequence of novel categories
would then be encompassed within a higher level self-relation that in its own way
included a set of final categories. In this volume, John Burbidge and George di Giovanni
make the Logic into a higher level self-relation. a similar position can be found in Robert
Pippin's book cited earlier. Burbidge would not characterize his position as involving a
final set of logical categories, but he does regard the logic's method as final, and so
provides a kind of higher level cloure.7
How does all this affect religion? What is its situation with regard to self-relation and
closure? Hegel's general definition of religion is that it is the relation of the subjective
consciousness to God, who is Spirit. "In the philosophy of religion we have the absolute
for our object, not only in the form of thought, but also in its manifestation as of the
absolute."8 Taken speculatively (in Hegel's special sense of that word), religion is spirit
that is conscious of its own essence, its own be-ing (Wesen). Spirit is not abstract
can be seen as a reaffirmation of the primacy of potentiality, though more in pre-Socratic than Megarian
terms.
7 A similar position can be found in Robert Pippin's book cited above. John Burbidge would not
characterize his position as involving a final set of logical categories, but he does regard the logic's
method as final, and so provides a kind of higher level closure around the categories that describe that
method. Either the future logical novelty is not foreseen, in which case thought's self-relation is not
complete or truthful, or it is foreseen, and the "place" of that novelty is described by a set of categories
which are, in effect, the final categories of thought. In a note to his present essay Burbidge employs some
of his final categories when he distinguishes formal from real possibility. (See my discussion of his
position in "What is Open and What is Closed," cited earlier.) In his note Burbidge argues that for Hegel
possibility is derived from actuality, so that the novel to-be-created categories are not yet "possible." (This
raises the problem mentioned in note 5 above.) As I read him, Hegel is much more Aristotelian than
Peircean about the primacy of actuality, and the completion of the system is more akin to the self-
transparency and completeness of "thought thinking itself" in Aristotle (which is quoted at the close of the
Encyclopedia). Nor is this an undue emphasis on the Kantian influence of the first Critique, as Burbidge
charges, since the aim of complete architectonic and system runs all through Kant's works, and Kant
claims that it is only by its self-established and self-referential completeness that the transcendental
philosophy is proven to be correct. I would grant that there are aspects of the third Critique that threaten
to undermine Kant's project, but the same is true of Hegel. It seems to me best to interpret Hegel
according to his own programmatic assertions and
then show how these may not succeed. Otherwise we run the risk of reading back current favorite ideas
into Hegel, which can ultimately reduce our confrontation with novelty and our need to question
ourselves.
8 The quotation is from the Lasson edition of Begriff der Religion (Hamburg: Meiner, 1966), 32. Cf. also
Hegel's comments in the same edition that spirit that does not appear is not (33). Spirit must be the
encompassing negative of all finite forms, and appear as such to itself. (References to the one-volume
English translation of the 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion will be abbreviated LPR.)
subjectivity; it is concrete by being for itself as including its other. Religion actualizes
spirit's self-relation.
In the Absolute Idea that concludes the Logic, finite determinations are taken up into
comprehensive unity. Thought achieves self-relation by thinking all finite categorial
determinations of objects as held within the moving self-referential unity of the Idea.
That final category includes a structured recapitulation of the prior sequence, now
thought as the subordinate moments of the final unity. By enacting in thought the
dialectical process that includes the major categorial determinations of any being, the
Logic shows how they all can be contained in the unity of pure thought knowing itself.
But this achievement remains in the medium of pure thought. It is not yet exhibited to
spirit self-consciously as an overcoming in the medium of otherness, space and time. So
the encompassing of otherness has not yet really been performed for spirit. That is, spirit
is not yet actually itself, since its being is to exhibit its being to itself. For that there must
be actual otherness and a actual comprehensive return from otherness to inclusive unity.
The historical religions record the changing degrees to which this overarching action
and purpose are "revealed" to different communities. Studying these religions the
philosopher can see how the particular distinctions and determinations constitutive of
the various religious traditions are arranged into a developmental process that leads to
the full revelation of spirit's self-relation with itself through nature and society. To use
the Aristotelian language of the closing words of the Encyclopedia, the philosopher can
study history as an entelechia, a process with a goal; but at that goal the philosopher
discovers that history is an energeia, an action that has its goal within itself and is the
eternal coming to itself of spirit.9 This is closure, für sich.
There is an analogue here to Hegel's famous claim that philosophy is its own age
comprehended in thought. Religion also expresses its age. However, it is only in the
modern age that we are in a position to affirm that philosophy and religion express the
spirit of their times. The principle that each religion expresses the spirit of its time must
be the result of self-consciousness about the structure of the process of having religions
at all. That self-consciousness is a modern achievement. It is our comprehensive
philosophy and final religion that allow us to affirm that philosophy and religion
express their time. In affirming this, our own philosophy and religion express our
special time in a way which was not achieved before.10
9 I owe this way of putting the point to a remark of Mark Okrent in conversation.
10 Earlier philosophies and religions comprehended their own time in thought, but they did so only
because they articulated the leading principles or categories of their ages; they did not describe
themselves as doing so, nor recapitulate the self-knowing circle that understands its own nature. Their
Self-relation and Historical Detail
Hegel is careful to distinguish between categories which tell us what it is to be this or
that kind of being, and empirical concepts which fill in the details about the various
kinds of being.11 Logic is to provide an essential skeleton for the world, but the details
are purely contingent. Such contingency is itself a categorically necessary feature of any
world. When the categories appear in time and space, the media of otherness, they must
appear embodied in detail that can be understood only through contingent empirical
generalizations. For instance, the number and anatomical details of animal species are
contingent, but the general hierarchy from matter through organisms to consciousness
is for Hegel essential and necessary.
There is some trouble, though, in determining just what is to count as essential structure
and what as contingent detail. Likewise it is difficult to determine what aspects of the
historical record should be highlighted in the developmental story of spirit's self-return.
As we will see, it is not easy to decide which aspects of the historical religions should be
taken as the keys to their places in a developmental sequence.
It is also difficult to determine to what degree the finality of the logical categories limits
future history. Since forms of life take their unity from logical categories, if the logic is
complete then on some level no new shapes of life are to be possible. But that level
could be quite general; Hegel certainly seems to believe that new nations and peoples
will continually arise and have their conflicts, though their political arrangements will
tend toward the rationally complete constitution he sees developing in modern times.
No one nation is final.
But does this mean there can also be a continual series of new religions? On the contrary
Hegel believes that in some sense we have achieved the final religion. Undoubtedly he
expects that there will be new religious details, but they will not represent basic
improvements on Christianity's set of representations of the absolute.
Representations and their Key
self-conception of was different from what philosophers can do now, and the new self-conception is the
new self-relation.
11 For example, in the Logic he insists that "Philosophy must know how to distinguish what is according
to its nature a self-external matter (Stoff); in such a case the progress (Fortgang) of the concept occurs
only in an external manner, and its moments can exist only in the proper form of externality . . . . It is an
essential requirement when philosophizing about real objects to distinguish those spheres to which a
specific form of the concept belongs (i.e., is present as existence), so as not to confuse through Ideas the
peculiar nature of what is external and contingent, and have the incommensurability of the matter distort
the Ideas and make them merely formal" (Science of Logic 21:203/212).
Here we need to pause and consider how religion structures the awareness it offers the
community. In religion we are filled with the absolute and know ourselves as so filled.
In worship and in action we relate the absolute to ourselves as subjects and we "enjoy"
that unity.12
The unity is not a blank feeling of closeness; it has content that is provided by
"representations" (Vorstellungen). These are necessary as the objective side of what is,
subjectively, immediate faith and belief (LPR 144). Faith occurs
when the representations and feelings connect immediately with our sense of ourselves
as individuals. We need faith if our self-awareness is to be directly affected.«FN1. Hegel
argues that "only by means of this faith that reconciliation is accomplished with
certainty and in and for itself is the subject able and indeed in a position to posit itself in
this unity." But he also insists on the necessity of content and doctrine as the mediation
that goes beyond the immediacy of faith (LPR 474f).» But we need content if religious
experience is to be more than that inarticulate self-feeling which Hegel condemned in
contemporary theologians. In his thinking about religion, one of Hegel's main targets
was the claim that we cannot know God but can only intuit or feel him (Schleiermacher
and pietism). Hegel's treatment of representation is often taken as downgrading religion
for dealing with pictures instead of concepts. But in his eyes he was defending cognitive
content in religion against those who would make faith into dog-like feeling.
Hegel lists three sorts of religious representations. The most common are pictures; the
examples Hegel gives are interpreted as involving analogies, simile, and allegory. This
is a wide category; it includes, for instance, the notion that God has a son, the story of
the Fall, the images of the tree of knowledge and of the wrath of God. Actual historical
events can also be used as representations, especially the person of Jesus (LPR 147).
Finally, non-sensible events can be representations, for example the relation between God
and the world, or creation represented as a special act from which the world arises.
Though creation can be a theoretical concept, it is not truly philosophical; it remains a
representation because the coherence of the sides (God and world) is not seen as
necessary; instead we get a picture of a special external relation between separate
entities.«FN1. Creation is a representation rather than a philosophical concept because it
talks of one being making another separate being, as opposed to the speculative truth
finding objectivity and being in the concept. Similarly most other concepts used in
theology are representations; Hegel speaks frequently about the way the attributes of
God are kept separate from one another (cf. LPR 421).» In this sense representations at
times overlap with what Hegel calls concepts of the understanding. In theology (and in
12 Religion is spirit that realizes (actualizes) itself in our consciousness (LPR 104; cf. the discussion of the
necessity of religion on 132n47, and the discussion of explicit consummation on 191).
understanding) the concepts used to describe God and his relations are affirmed
alongside each other, free and independent in their identity and meaning, with a
contingent relation to one another that lacks speculative unification.
Thus, representation is not just pictural; it can involve concepts, but these are treated as
discrete items like images. The form of representation is that things are related simply to
themselves, as if independent (LPR 149n85). This isolated determinacy (LPR 152)
contrasts with the form of thought, which is an inner manifold that embraces
connection, contradiction, and necessity (LPR 154).
For Hegel the content of representations can ultimately be separated from their form
(LPR 145). In so doing we can get beyond the separations and isolations inherent in the
form of representation.
How is this done? Hegel employs the traditional hermeneutic gesture of distinguishing
outer and inner; there is some inner content that can be freed from its outer
presentation. The inner makes itself manifest because there is a key for interpreting
religious representations. That key is provided in advance by the philosophical system,
in particular by the logic.13
The Bible is for Christians the basis . . . which strikes a chord within them, and gives
firmness to their convictions. Beyond this, however, human beings, since they are
able to think, do not remain in the immediacy of assent and testimony, but also
indulge in thoughts, in deliberations, in considerations concerning this immediate
witness. . . . But just as soon as religion is no longer simply the reading and
repetition of passages, as soon as what is called . . . interpretation begins . . . . certain
presuppositions are made with regard to this content, and with these one enters into
the process of interpretation. . . . The interpretation of the Bible exhibits its content,
however, in the form of a particular age; the interpretation of a thousand years ago
13 This hermeneutical relation is one-sided. Cf. Peter Hodgson's introductory discussion about the logic as
hermeneutic key (LPR 12, 14).
was wholly different from that of today. . . . So everything depends on whether this
content [the presupposed forms of thought and propositions which we bring to the
reading] is true. . . . If [theology] uses these forms [of thought] haphazardly, because
one has presuppositions and prejudices, the result is something contingent and
arbitrary. [What is pertinent here] can only be forms that are genuine and logically
developed in terms of necessity. But the investigation of these forms of thought falls
to philosophy alone. (LPR 399-402)14
The forms of thought developed by necessity are not for Hegel a clue taken from
outside. The logic has already taught us that its categories are the essential structure of
thought and spirit.15
The Final Religion
One effect of the philosophical interpretation of religious representations will be, as
Hegel says, to "reduce the infinite names of God to a restricted set" (LPR 153). This
happens in philosophy, but does it also happen in religion? Do we arrive at a final
religion with privileged names and representations for God?
There is no final species of plant, no perfect arrangement of the continents, no
culminating number of legs for animals. Why not say that religious representations are
another instance of empirical detail that is noted but judged contingent by the system?
Why not have one set of logical categories, but an endless series of new religious
representations? Hegel does largely treat the Hindu gods this way: he discards detail
which is not important as long as we understand the conceptual point, which has to do
with the multiplicity of gods and the unity of Brahman. For the most part, what
particular representations and gods show up in the Indian multiplicity doesn't seem
philosophically significant to him (though he finds the Trimurti a foreshadowing of the
trinity). Why not treat all religions this way? Even if the philosophical self-relation of
spirit achieves a final stage, could that not have many different religious self-
14 Cf. also the remarks on history and theology (LPR 472) and the claim (98n59) that only with the closure
of the logic as a guide can one move freely among the determinations of the world of actuality.
15 John Burbidge argues in a note to his essay in this volume that as presented in the Phenomenology and
the Encyclopedia the relation is different, that religion "provides a necessary condition for absolute
knowing or philosophy--it justifies the truth claims of the logic." However, even if one grants the claim
that religion is a necessary condition, it does not follow that the relation is one of justification (nor is it
clear that the logic makes "truth claims" in any straightforward sense). There are several senses in which
religion is seen as necessary for the full self-return of spirit and for the historical development of absolute
knowing, but, given Hegel's insistence on the independence of pure thought, their relation is not one of a
fact or activity (religion) justifying another (pure thought). Nor are they the same activity, as I have
argued in this essay. And in their dialectical relation it is logic that has the primacy in its fuller self-
relation.
representations?
For Hegel, religion is not a contingent social phenomenon. It is absolute spirit coming to
itself. Spirit cannot come to itself across an infinite series of logical categories; there must
be a self-related grasp of its own structure. Still, we might imagine that the logic could
provide a key for interpreting an indefinite series of religious representations. The Logic
would provide a step back or above religion, which could then vary contingently. John
Burbidge argues for a position similar to this in the essay included in this volume. I
want to argue that such a position is not Hegel's intention, though it is in fact the best he
can achieve with the history of religion.
Religion, as well as philosophy, is the being-for-itself of spirit. If there were an indefinite
series of religious representations juxtaposed to a completed logic of categories, then
any particular religious representation would become unessential to spirit's self-
relation, since it could change without affecting that self-relation in any essential way.
But religion is a revelation of spirit's nature to itself; its representations have the same
content as philosophy. If there is closure in philosophy there should be at least some
limitation on the variation of religious representations.
Religious representations include concepts as well as pictures and images. The
theological concepts used in the doctrines of the trinity and the incarnation are, in
Hegel's sense of the term, representations. What they represent is the speculative
coming together of universal, particular, and individual, the self-relation of the absolute
through otherness, and the presentation of spirit's nature to itself in the community.
These speculative motions are themselves represented; they are not merely a logical key
for interpreting indefinitely many religious representations.
We might imagine that many particular figures other than Christ could be interpreted as
dying and rising again in the community, and as manifesting the union of the moments
of the absolute idea. But any religion that did represent these speculative truths would
have to be structurally similar to Christianity.16 By analogy, these other representations
would be variations on the final religion in a way similar to how Hegel sees the
constitutions of the various European states as variations on a final rational
constitution.17
16 John Burbidge's candidates for new religious representations maintain such structural similarity to
Christianity. Cf. his presidential address to the Hegel Society of America, "Is Hegel a Christian?" in New
Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
17 This raises, of course, the issue of the uniqueness of Christ, which Henry Harris has explored. Cf. John
Burbidge's contribution to this volume for a position on this issue which seems to me to allow too many
kinds of individuals to play the Christ-role, because it defines that which must be incarnated too loosely
as "a framework for life in a community . . . the way the world really is--its ultimate determinate
This conclusion can be strengthened. Hegel finds that in the modern age institutions
have become self-aware of their own structure and operation. Democratic governance is
politics become self-aware. Art becomes so self-aware that its traditional function is
ended. Philosophy completes itself as it becomes aware of its own motions and history.
When spirit comes to itself, religion as such should also become self-aware.
That is what Hegel claims. Christianity is not just a better religion; it is religion as such
become self-aware of its own nature. The very concept of religion (its function as the
living concrete unity of god and finite subjectivity, as the reconciliation through
absolute unity of absolute opposites without denying either one) has become the
content of Christian representations (the trinity and the incarnation: God is become
finite and takes on death, but rises to spiritual unity in the community). The doctrines of
the trinity and incarnation are not replaceable. Christianity is not just another religion;
its representations are religion knowing itself for what it is.
The Need for a Developmental Story
If it is the final religion, how does Christianity deal with earlier forms of religion? Any
religion, in accord with its nature, represents its relation to other religions. The guiding
structure of religious representation is separateness and independence. In this mode,
religions exist side by side and can be judged by the criteria of representation and
understanding. So religions represent their own individual histories as the replacement
of inadequate gods by a fuller revelation.
Each religion has its own way of representing this; Hinduism, for example, uses its basic
conceptual structure (the indefinite one with indifferently many determinate
manifestations) to encompass other religions within its own fold. A monotheistic
religion like Judaism or Islam will use its basic representations (single subjectivity) to
represent its relation to history in more jealous and possessive terms. Christianity can
measure others by the incarnation and the trinity, representing other religions as
deficient aspects of this full revelation of inner multiplicity in the absolute. The former
incomplete revelations are harmonized in the paradoxical representations available to
Christianity. Thus Christianity can understand itself as the final reconciliation of the
partial doctrines in other religions.
On the other hand philosophy thinks the history of religion according to the concept and
absolute idea. It unites what representation keeps separate and it denies the
character . . . [that] sets the standard for action and behaviour." This seems to confuse a trinitarian
description of the method of incarnation with the incarnation of the trinity itself. But the uniqueness of
Christian religion for Hegel is that the concept of religion and the speculative trinitarian unities are
themselves represented, not merely that they provide a framework for representing whatever framework
or values are deemed ultimate.
independence of the historical religions; what Christianity represents as a replacement it
knows as a self-development.
Spirit has its own actualization and self-grasp for its purpose. This ultimate
encompassing being-for-itself can have no goal outside itself. Nor can it leave anything
outside itself; everything must be touched or accounted for, even if only by being
consigned to the space of those things that do not need a philosophical account.
But spirit's past forms are not contingent details, they are the record of spirit's self-
return, and since spirit is the revelation of its own self-return to itself, the core features
of its past forms have to be exhibited as having an inner necessity that correlates with
the stages of spirit's externalization and self-return. The successive earlier forms will be
encompassed within the final form. By traversing its history as a record of its own
necessary movement towards itself, spirit will become itself. Hegel is committed to a
strong story of developmental culmination in religion.
We could, though, imagine a weaker relation of philosophy to the history of religion. It
was suggested above: philosophical understanding might see each religion as
embodying structures of spirit, but not demand a final religion or a story leading to a
culmination. Philosophy might step back from the particular religions and use the
logical key to interpret their representations. There would be no incorporation of earlier
forms, only a vision that placed them--not in a developmental narrative but in relation
to the general logical preconditions that make possible any religion.
Hegel demands the stronger model. It is important that in its self-return, spirit catch up
and redeem the particularities of finite spirit, and not just surpass them by a step back
into their conditions of possibility. It is this inclusive closure which helps establish the
absoluteness of absolute spirit.
Difficulties with the Developmental Story
In the stronger model the developmental story redeems the earlier forms of religion by
seeing them as stages leading up to the final religion. This demands an ascending series
of essential types of religion each of which has room for varying contingent detail. In his
lectures Hegel attempts such a story.
However this task turns out to be extraordinarily difficult. Religions are many-faceted
phenomena; it is not obvious what is the essence of each religion, or whether there is
anything essential about the bricolage of practices, representations, and doctrines in the
historical religions. Further, religions are not just objects; they are modes of self-
consciousness. So the analyst has to take into account what they say about themselves,
and they say many different things. Amid all this, how does the philosopher pick what
is to be the essential nature of each religion? Presumably he attempts to correlate
essential representations with stages discussed in the Logic. But which representations
and which stages? Faced with the internal multiplicity of religion Hegel waffled in his
analyses of various religions and their placement in the developmental story.18
In this regard the varying positions of Greek, Roman, and Jewish religion are especially
significant. As Louis Dupré points out, Hegel is unable to decide which logical pattern
he should use to order their relations.19
The deep problem here is that the axes around which one might order a developmental
sequence are not parallel to one another. If you order the religions according to the
ascending universal unity of the godhead you get an ambiguous order (monotheistic
Jews over polytheistic Greeks and Romans, but also universalistic Romans over
particularistic Jews and Greeks); the axis of deepening subjectivity and interiority gives
another ordering (ethical Jews over externalist Romans), while detachment from nature
into spirit gives a third (poetic Greeks over Jewish minutiae of daily life), and so on.
According to the system these axes should be parallel but in actual religious history
they are not.
So we are forced to wonder: is there a right way to assemble religions into a
developmental story? Given the way the Logic has developed its enclosure of
particularity, and the essentialism involved in that claim, for Hegel there should be a
right way but he has not found it. He keeps trying, despite the difficulty of deciding on
the essence of historical forms, not to mention the problems of making all this fit into a
dialectical pattern of determinate negation.
Do we really need a single axis and a single teleology? Think perhaps of the multiple
18 The various versions of the developmental story are summarized by Peter Hodgson (LPR 498-499);
they are discussed in Walter Jaeschke: "Zur Logik der bestimmten Religion" in Hegels Logik der
Philosophie, edd. Dieter Henrich and Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 172-188. Cf.
also Jaeschke's Reason in Religion: The Foundations of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, trans. Peter C.
Hodgson and Michael Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 230ff, and the article by
Louis Dupré cited in the next note.
19 "Until the final series of lectures delivered in the year of his death (1831) he kept changing the order
and, more significantly, the principle of classification. . . . Which one was religiously superior? The free
form but internal necessity of the Greeks, or God's sovereign freedom, subject to no formal necessity yet
dominating life with divine commands? . . . The succession of particular religions follows a pattern of
increasing internalization and universalization. Those two principles do not always follow an identical
development, however, as Hegel's continuing hesitation about the place of the Jewish religion--internal
but not universal-- indicates." (Louis Dupré, "Transitions and Tensions in Hegel's Treatment of
Determinate Religion" [in New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion (Albany: SUNY Press,
1992).
ways Ricoeur discusses for narrative to emplot events.20 Unfortunately, that won't do for
Hegel's self-comprehension as outlined in the Logic. It is crucial that spirit be able to
posit its own motion as "the content of the finite" (LPR 412). Otherwise a foreign
purpose is being categorized, and not pure being-for-itself. For Hegel, that was a flaw in
the determinate historical religions. The final religion and philosophy should do better.
But it looks as if for religion, the weaker model may be the best philosophy can do: to
present a formal self-awareness of the nature of spirit, while on the empirical level there
is endless detail that does not get picked up into a unified teleology. Spirit's self-return
would then be at best a step back from any religion to the (a?) concept behind it, not a
step along a sequence of religions to a culminating self-consciousness in a final religion.
The names of God would remain infinite.
It might seem that with this we have arrived at a form of "open" Hegelianism. But
because the axes of evaluation are not parallel, the step back model cannot provide a
hierarchical ordering of religions. At best the model gives a move from any content to
its categorial structure and conditions of possibility; this does not allow any necessary
connections between different contents. This in turn casts doubt on the applicability of
determinate negation, without which it would be difficult to call any position Hegelian,
open or closed
All this could have some far-reaching implications. If religions, at least, are organized
with only typology and geography but no unique axial history, could that suggest that
worldly history and the state might also lose their teleological finality? The situation is
quite different with such institutional structures than with religious representations, but
the cases might turn out to be more similar than Hegel expects. If there were no
teleological story of development to be told concerning religion and these other areas of
particularity, and yet the logic remained self-enclosing and complete, what would
happen to the fit between logic and world? Would it become optional or pragmatic
which categories fit which collections? Of course, if the logic itself became a multiply
connected affair with many axes, then pure self-return would be threatened. Following
considerations like these, many critics today substitute spatial for temporal metaphors,
so we get dissemination instead of development. But even if chastened, Hegel's
questions still remain: who are the We that know all this? What kind of self-criticism
and self-knowledge is involved here? Can it be institutionalized and made common
property? In such discussion all the sins and splits of modernity come home to roost,
20 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Religious
representation remains recalcitrant because Hegel has conceived the nature of religious images and
representations too simply.
splits Hegel can still help us avoid making into our own absolutes.