Lectures on the Philosophy of ReligionG.W.F. Hegel

Hegel lectured on the philosophy of religion four times at Berlin between 1821 and 1831. Like the aesthetics lectures, these were published posthumously from student transcripts, and the different versions show a thinker revising his system under pressure.

The structure follows a dialectical progression through the forms of religion. Hegel begins with the concept of religion itself: the relation of finite spirit to the absolute. He then traces determinate religion through its historical shapes, from the religions of nature (Chinese, Indian, Egyptian) through the religions of spiritual individuality (Jewish, Greek, Roman), arriving at the "consummate religion," Christianity. Christianity, for Hegel, is not simply one religion among many. It is the religion in which the content of the absolute is fully revealed: God becomes human, dies, and is taken up into the community of Spirit. The Trinity is not a mystery to be accepted on faith but a speculative truth to be comprehended.

This is also what makes the lectures controversial. Hegel claims that philosophy grasps in conceptual form what religion presents in the mode of representation (Vorstellung). The content is the same; the form differs. Whether this elevates religion or dissolves it into philosophy was disputed among Hegel's students within a decade of his death, splitting them into right and left Hegelians, and the question has not been settled since.