Hegel on Religion and the Gif

8/3/2019 Hegel on Religion and the Gif

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Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156916411X594459

Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 374395 brill.nl/rp

R e s ea r chin

Ph enomeno l ogy

Sovereign Gratitude: Hegel on Religion and the Git

Christopher LauerUniversity o Hawaii-Hilo

AbstractIn this paper I argue that one o the most important impulses that structure Hegels account oreligion is the need to show gratitude or the git o creation. Beginning with the Love rag-ment and 18056 Realphilosophie, I frst explore what it means to see Gods relationship to spiritas one o externalization or divestment (Entusserung). Ten, relying on the Berlin Lectures onthe Philosophy o Religion, I argue that Hegel takes Christianity to be the Consummate Reli-gion because it not only oers its own divestment to match Gods, but actually takes itsel toparticipate in Gods own divestment. Tis leads to a discussion o revealed religion in the Phe-nomenology, which, in contrast to simpler orms o religion such as the worship o luminousbeing (Lichtwesen), is able to conceive o a divine generativity in which spirit actively partici-

pates. I conclude by identiying two political implications o the centrality o divestment inHegels account. First, it means that, since Hegel takes Christianity to be unique in its represen-tation o divine divestment, he cannot be a simple pluralist on religious truth. Second, Hegelsemphasis on divestment in his various accounts o religion helps set up his critique o sovereigntyrom the standpoint o philosophy or absolute knowing. While religion still clings to a vision ohumanity as sovereign over nature, its origin in gratitude or creation proves to be incompatiblewith this vision.

Keywords

Hegel, Philosophy o Religion, git, sovereignty, Entusserung

In aZusatzto the Encyclopedia Philosophy o Spirit, Hegel is reported to havecalled spirits release rom nature an act o sovereign ingratitude [souverneUndankbarkeit] (381z).1 In its depiction o spirits unquestioning conf-dence in its own integrity and ignorance o every underlying orce that madeit what it is, this characterization seems to capture perectly the insouciantblindness that Hegel is so oten accused o turning toward anything outside

1) Hegel, Werke in 20 Bnden, Bd. 10: Enzyklopdie der philosophischen Wissenschaten im Grun-drisse (1830), Dritter eil(Frankurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), 25.


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C. Lauer / Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 374395 375

the realm o spirit. Te rest o the doctrines o Subjective and Objective Spiritcan be read as giving lie to this ingratitude, as spirit gradually comes to know

its own reedom by suspending the particularizing urges o animal embodi-ment, the solipsistic leanings o phenomenal consciousness, and the bewilder-ing oreignness o cognitive psychology. While Hegel repeatedly arms thatspirit is driven in this movement by the Delphic imperative to know itsel,2this drive or sel-knowledge tends to turn away rom the conditions o spiritsexistence in avor o exploring the breadth o its possibilities or sel-actualization. Whenever spirit catches a momentary reminder o its naturalorigins, as in the mothers womb or the nuclear amily,3 its impulse is to turnaway in embarrassed ingratitude.4

What is oten overlooked in this caricature o an ungrateul spirit is thatHegel calls or a suspension o this ingratitude in his various ormulations o aphilosophy o religion. I the doctrine o Subjective Spirit is organized aroundspirits progressive release rom the conditions o its existence, then the phi-losophy o religion is organized around spirits progressive ability to appreciatethese conditions as gits. In religion (regardless o the determinate orm ittakes), spirit grasps the world as a git and gradually learns to identiy itselwith God, not by usurping his place as the ultimate creator, but by deepening

its grasp o its own role in this process o git-giving. In its highest or consum-mate orm, religion does not just take God as a generativity into nothingness(as or instance the Phenomenologys religion o light does) but works to developits own institutions o gratitude to meet and reciprocate divine benefcence.Tis move is particularly interesting in light o twentieth-century phenome-nology, since Hegel rames Christianitys insight as a move away rom a

2) Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie des Geistes, vol. 13 oVorlesungen (Hamburg: Meiner,1994), 7.3)

In his consideration o the Anthropologys moment o the genius o the mothers womb, Jean-Luc Nancy explains how subjective spirits willul ignorance o its natural conditions ollowsrom the character o its relation to nature: Consciousness is knowing that there is no knowl-edge o this genius, not because it would be out o reach, the object o a worship beyond reason,but because this nature is never a nature. It is nothing given or already given; it is not past andpassed over. It is the git, which cannot be given; the oering, which cannot itsel be oered(Identity and rembling, in Te Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes [Stanord UniversityPress, 1993], 34). Qua Subjective Spirit, spirit cannot acknowledge its natural givenness becauseit cannot oresee how the two could ever be reconciled.4) Earlier in the sameZusatz, Hegel has already begun to distinguish the ingratitude o merelysubjective spirit rom the more broadminded approach o religious spirit. Whereas fnite spiritbrings its world into its interior realm o ideas and thus treats its objects merely as external, thereligious consciousness grasps this externality as belonging to Gods infnite power (381z, 22).


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376 C. Lauer / Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 374395

conception o divestment as a pure git and toward a more interactive under-standing o git-giving and -receiving.5 Whereas twentieth-century philosophy

sought ever purer orms o givenness, rom Husserls Gegebenheitto Heide-ggers Schicken to Marions donation, Hegel fnds in Christianity a greater live-liness in its willingness to corrupt the git. For Hegel, an appreciation ogivenness entails not merely making way or an as yet unknowable git butusing divine givenness as an opportunity to revel in communion with God.

Te frst our sections o this essay will explore Hegels account o the logico the git. Beore turning to the religious uses to which Hegel puts the git, Iwill frst examine a ew orienting passages on the unction o the git in ordi-nary ethical lie. Ten, beginning with his early conception o divine divest-

ment in the 18056 Realphilosophie, I will show why he thinks spirit must beinvolved even in the sel-sundering by which God gives lie to creation. In thethird section, I will use the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy o Religion as ageneral ramework to show the place o the git in Hegels thinking on religionand why he takes Christianitys appreciation o Christs human embodimentand suering as a paradigm o active engagement with divine givenness. Ten,in the ourth section, I will return to the Jena Phenomenologyto show whyHegel thinks Christianitys engagement with the git is qualitatively dierent

rom that o other religions. Tis background will allow me to conclude withtwo important political implications o Hegels conception o religion as grat-itude. First, I will argue that, while conceiving nature as a divine git requiresa substantial level o tolerance rom the religious community, it is incompati-ble with the thoroughgoing religious pluralism that Peter Hodgson fnds inHegels philosophy o religion. Hegel does indeed advocate more ecumenicalopenness than he is oten given credit or, but his exclusive praise or pecu-liarly Christian ways o conceiving Gods git assumes that Christianity isunique in its ability to participate in the giving o the world. And second, I

will argue that Hegels conception o Gods git as a divestment expands on acritique o sovereignty that he had begun developing as early as the

5) William Desmond has argued that Hegels eorts to integrate spirit into divine giving haveobscured the transcendence that is crucial to the the Christian conception oagapeas pure giving(Desmond, Hegels God: A Countereit Double? [Burlington, V: Ashgate Publishing, 2003],184). While I do not take a stand in this paper on whether Hegel accurately presents the earlyChristian understanding o agape, I will argue that he does present a coherent and ruitulaccount o what it means or spirit to be intimate with God, regardless o whether it conormsto Christian dogma.


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Diferenzschrit. Christianitys embrace o Gods dissemination,6 I hope toshow, ultimately implies a politics o radical openness to nature. What the

representative thinking o religion ails to grasp is that its assumption o spiritsdominion is incompatible with the lessons o revelatory religion. Tough spir-its sovereign ingratitude has been replaced in religion with what might becalled a sovereign gratitude, this is only a transitional stage to a orm o grati-tude that does not appeal to a git at all. It is not just ingratitude that spiritmust learn to reject but the very sovereignty that initially makes religious grat-itude so appealing.

Hegel on Git-Giving in Ethical Lie

While in the social sciences the twentieth century saw works like those oMarcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu that argued there is no such thing as apure git isolated rom economies o exchange and sel-interestedconsiderations,7 much o twentieth-century phenomenology looked to doubledown on the git and fnd a way to identiy phenomena in their pure given-ness. Jean-Luc Marion, or instance, has responded to Derridas suspicionsthat there might be no git that meets the conditions o pure generosity8 by

arguing that a git could be identifed in its pure givenness only i thephenomenologist could posit cases in which the donor, recipient, and git

6) Tough in Derridas Glas(trans. J. P. Leavey and R. Rand [Lincoln: University o NebraskaPress, 1990], 31a), Derrida depicts Hegels account o the relation between God the Father andGod the Son as one in which all dissemination is reintegrated into the Father, I argue below thatone o the defning characteristics o religion is its appeal to a divine generosity without return;and though the Christian religion attempts to fnd Father and Son reunifed in this giving, evenhere there remains a sense in which spirit has not been ully reconciled with the divine.7)

Mauss, Te Git: Te Form and Reason or Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls(New York: Norton, 1990). Pierre Bourdieu, Te Logic o Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanord,Caliornia: Stanord University Press, 1990).8) o the extent that every git intends to have at least some eect on the recipient, Derrida argues,a git that does not seek at least some return or the donor would be im-possible. Even i the donorexpects her git to be met with hostility or indierence, either o these is still a recognition that agit has been given. Tis is not to say, Derrida is careul to note, that no gits are ever given butmerely that we cannot observe phenomenologically a git that meets all the conditions or being agit. A git would thus always be a surprise, incomprehensible in advance and unexpected (Donnerle temps: 1. La ausse monnaie[Paris: Galile, 1991]). See also On the Git: A Discussion betweenJacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, Moderated by Richard Kearney, in John D. Caputo andMichael J. Scanlon, eds. God, the Git and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1999), 5478 and Caputo and Scanlons Introduction to the exchange, p. 4.


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itsel were each absent or put out o action.9 Anticipations o this approachcan be ound as ar back as Husserl, who intimates in Te Idea o Phenomenol-

ogy that the task o the phenomenological reduction is to isolate the baregivenness (Gegebenheit) o phenomena rom what has been given and the pro-cess o giving itsel.10 And as is well known, Heidegger emphasizes in severalplaces11 that we will misunderstand the Eso Es gibt sein so long as we sup-pose that there is something which does the giving o being. As Derrida arguesin an exchange with Marion, this entire line o thinking supposes that a gitgiven in active consultation with the recipient is no git at all.12

9) Very briey, these reductions imply that in order to show that a git is phenomenologicallypossible, a git must be posited that 1) is unnoticed or misinterpreted by the recipient, 2) isunconscious or orgotten immediately by the donor, and 3) involves a git that ails to appear.According to Marion, it is not necessary to posit that all three conditions be met in a single git,since it is enough to show that each o these three reductions can be accomplished (Being Given:oward a Phenomenology o Givenness, trans. J. L. Kosky [Stanord: Stanord University Press,2002], 79113). See also Robyn Horner,Rethinking God as Git(New York: Fordham UniversityPress, 2001), 12341, and Russell W. Belk, Te Perect Git, in C. Otnees and R. F. Bel-

tramini, eds. Git-Giving: A Research Anthology(Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State Uni-versity Popular Press, 1996), 61. Clearly there is much more to be said here regarding thecontrasts with Hegels conception o the divine git not only in Marions ostensibly phenomeno-logical work but also in his explicitly theological work. In God Without Being, or instance,Marion argues that seeing creation as a git emphasizes Gods distance rom, rather than close-ness to, creation (God Without Being, trans. . A. Carlson [Chicago: University o Chicago Press,1991], 104).10) Husserl, Te Idea o Phenomenology, trans. W. Alston and G. Nakhnikian (Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1990), 34.11) Heidegger, Brie ber den Humanismus, in Wegmarken, Bd. 9oGesamtausgabe(Frank-

urt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), 165. Heidegger, On ime and Being, trans. J. Stam-baugh (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 2002), 8.12) Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Git and Postmodernism 5859. In the same passage, it shouldbe noted, Derrida also questions whether any defnitive connection can be drawn between thestructure o the git and Husserls Gegebenheitor Heideggers es gibt. All the same, Derrida agreesthat his own project in Given imeengages, as Marions own work does, with the questions ohow and to what extent the git should be secured as a concept. Such a securing, or Derrida asor Marion, would involve a careul restriction on the conditions under which a git couldappear. Indeed, once the concept o the git has been purifed to the point where, in Caputoswords, no one intends to give anything to anyone and no one is intentionally conscious oreceiving anything, there is a temptation to reject these Grinch-like conditions in avor o amore accommodating concept ( John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversationwith Jacques Derrida [New York: Fordham University Press, 1996], 143).


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For the mature Hegel, on the other hand, a git in the most ordinary senseis a type o contract,13 and thus its success or ailure is not a matter o indi-

vidual conscience but o collaboration in the sphere o objective spirit. In thePhilosophy o Right, Hegel defnes a contract as a orm o relation to thingssuch that they become not merely things but, through the agreement o twoor more parties, objects o will (72).14 Gits are the simplest orm o contractin that they do not require even a nominal reciprocity, but they are still mutualin that the git cannot be accomplished without the consent o both parties(76). Presumably this would mean that i I surreptitiously slipped a banknoteinto my riends pocket, and he never noticed that his unds had increased,then this would not be a git, or there would not even be implicit participa-

tion in the git on his part. I would have voluntarily alienated my property,but this alienation would not have been recognized by my riend. Te git thusgains its meaning rom its mutuality, rom the commitment o both parties toparticipate in the transaction.

Yet because gits are mere things or external services, they can only everachieve a partial unifcation o wills. Te limitation o such a fxation on thingsis part o what motivates the transition in the Philosophy o Rightrom AbstractRight to Morality, that is, rom questions o property to questions o con-

science, but we fnd a more specifc account o the limitations o the git in adeleted passage rom the early Love ragment (1797/98): Gits are external-izations [Entusserungen] o a thing that nevertheless cannot lose the charactero an object. Only the eeling o love, o enjoyment, is mutual. What is ameans o enjoyment is dead, is property. And because love does nothing one-sidedly, it cannot subsume anything that maintains through appropriation ormastery the character o a means, o property.15 While gits can be spurs tointimacy or even commemorations o it, they do not participate in the move-ment o love itsel. Te git externalizes the love, but only in the orm o

something lieless. When, or instance, my partner and I endeavor to expressour love through gits, we may be successul in expressing our selessness oreven sensitivity to each others personality and desires, but the gits themselves

13) John Milbank has observed that in contemporary English, we oten think o contractual andgenerous exchanges as antithetical. A git, ater all, is something that is never required (JohnMilbank, Can a Git be Given? Prolegomena to a Future rinitarian Metaphysic, ModernTeology 11, no. 1 [1995]: 122). But Hegels inclusion o gits under the category o contractsreects a broader understanding o the contractual. Strictly speaking, contracts are not coercivebut reect a specifed ground o mutual agreement.14) Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts(Hamburg: Meiner, 1995).15) Hegel, Werke in 20 Bnden, Bd. 1: Frhe Schriten (Frankurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), 249n.


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remain dull, dead thingswhose value consists mainly in the (now past) act ogiving. I later the relationship should sour, these gits will grow obtrusive as

evidence that, even in our moments o greatest mutuality, we still did notachieve any real unity o wills. In the ethical sphere, git-giving or Hegel is atransaction that achieves a limited concord between the donor and recipient butwhich leaves a barrier to their ultimate unity. Tis would seem to imply, andindeed this is what we fnd in Hegels later writings on religion, that insoar asreligious consciousness strives to receive nature as a git, it will be increasinglysuccessul in doing so the greater it takes its own role to be in the act o giving.I such a git should ail to bring God and spirit together, it would not be becauseit was given or received with ambivalent intentions but because gits as such are

fxed externalizations o what must remain a dynamic interplay.

Entusserungin the JenaRealphilosophie

As ar as I can tell, Hegel frst develops his conception o creation as a divinegit in the 18056 Realphilosophie.16 In this early text, Hegel has not yet devel-oped his later distinction between the philosophical studies o the concept oreligion, the various determinate religions, and Christianitys status as the con-

summate religion, but he has already begun to explore what it means to thinko the world and a religious community asgiven by God. Here God is the selo all, he is essence, pure thought; but, divested [entussert] o this abstraction,he is actual sel, he is a human being who has common spatial and temporalexistenceand thisindividual human being is allindividual human beings(GW8: 280). God makes himsel actual through a process that Hegel herecalls an Entusserungo his essence. Variously translated as externalization17and divestment,18Entusserungcan signiy either the sacrifces that individu-als and communities make to show their aith or the process by which Godsuspends his simple sel-presence and makes himsel available to spirit in theorm o his Son. Unlike in the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy o Religion,

16) Tis work appears as Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes, vol. 3 o Jenaer Syste-mentwre, in vol. 8 oGesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1976); hereater cited as GW,ollowed by volume and page numbers.17) Tis is the usual translation or Baillie (Hegel, Te Phenomenology o Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie[New York: Dover, 2003]) and Miller (Hegel, Phenomenology o Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller[Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1979]) in their respective translations o the Phenomenology oSpirit.18) For the most part in Hodgsons translation o the Lectures on the Philosophy o Religion.


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the Son is here identifed with the community o believers.19 He is the sidethat God has divested o himsel in an act o pure generosity. Te religious

spirit thus recognizes the world as a divine git, but a git o a peculiar kind. Itis not a git intended to establish or strengthen a relationship between twopartisans, but an externalization that at once releases Gods love into an outermaniestation and transorms a mere abstraction o otherness into a beingwith the potential or real growth.

Yet this is not a mutual giving o actuality, as when two riends help eachother grow through mutual love and recognition. Instead, religion frst acceptsGods git through a denial o its own actuality. When a religious communityestablishes itsel by withdrawing rom the state, religion is what lacks actual-

ity [das Wirklichkeitslose], having its selhood in the actual spirit, [and] thus isas suspended [als augehobenes] (GW8: 284). Te initial move o the religiousspirits sel-divestment is a renunciation o the actual world and thus o its ownspiritual conditions. In its withdrawal into itsel, it reuses its conditions ogrowth as mere externalities and thus either withdraws rom the broader com-munity entirely or pulls it down into nihilistic anaticism. Te promise o Godsgit is emptied, and even the promise o heaven comes to be rejected as spiritualvanity: Heaven ees rom religion in the actual consciousnessman alls to

earth and fnds the religious only in the imagination. Tat is, religion is sointrinsically seless that it is the spirit merely representing itsel (GW 8: 285).Religion as such directly mirrors Gods divestment. Just as God opens the pos-sibility o genuine alterity by externalizing himsel into the world, the religiousconsciousness prepares or a reunion with God by divesting itsel o its particu-larity. In both cases, it is precisely through a suspension o sel-seeking that bothsides come to actualize themselves in one another.

Sufering and the Divine Git in the Lectures on the Philosophyof Religion

Tus we fnd already in the 18056 Realphilosophiethe general structure oHegels later account o revelatory religion. In representing itsel as unitedwith the divine, the religious spirit divests itsel o its fnitude in order torestore its connection to God. But what is not yet clear in the Realphilosophie

19) In the Lectures, the Son represents a distinct moment o the divine trinity rom the com-munity o believers, and the logical necessity o the trinitarian division is distinct rom Gods reeact o sel-divestment. See Peter Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Teology(Oxord: Oxord Uni-versity Press, 2005), 143. Hereater cited as HC, ollowed by page.


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is whether this movement belongs to religion in general or merely to theChristian religion. Hegels answer in the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy o

Religion20 (which I will argue below is broadly in accord with his approach inthe 1807 Phenomenology) is that all the worlds religions have recognized somedegree o divine divestment, but only the Christian religion ully appreciatesits own role in receiving Gods generosity. In particular, Hegel takes Christian-ity to be unique in its sel-understanding as the revealed (geofenbarte) reli-gion. Religion distinguishes itsel rom prior moments o spirit by thearmative relation it takes to its content, by its realization that the world isnot an alien realm or spirit but has been given to it as its home (LPR1: 315),21but only Christianity grasps that this git is something that spirit itsel helps to

make possible.22 For God to reveal himsel ully entails that everything thatGod isbe accessible to the human spirit. God must give himsel over to spiritwithout remainder. Among the Athenians, Hegel (rather credulously) asserts,the death penalty was exacted i one did not allow another person to light hislamp rom ones own, or one lost nothing by doing so. In the same way Godloses nothing when he communicates himsel (LPR 1: 38283). For therevealed religion, creation is not so much transerred rom God to humanityas it is shared between them.

Yet, insoar as all religions take themselves to be divine gits, a revealed reli-gion cannot assume an immediate knowledge o God, as i the git o creationwere really nothing, or this would imply that God does not actually give ohimsel. In order to walk this narrow line between taking creation to be a gitrom beyond and dismissing Gods generosity as necessary, revealed religion

20) While there are a number o signifcant dierences between Hegels our Berlin courses onreligion, particularly concerning the Concept o Religion and the order and relation o the deter-minate relations, I have encountered no signifcant dierences among the courses concerning my

thesis on the place o the git in consummate religion. Tus while I will reer most requently tothe 1827 lectures, o which we have the most complete transcripts, I will also reer liberallyto the other three courses.21) Following recent convention, reerences to the Berlin lectures ollow the English paginationin the three-volume edition o Hodgsons translation: Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy o Reli-gion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, 3 vols. (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2008).22) Tis claim o Hegels calls out or much more comparative theological work than I amequipped here to do. o take only one set o examples, it is not clear at frst glance why variousJewish rituals, meant to establish and demonstrate the peace among humankind necessary orthe coming o the messiah, would not count as the same sort o participation in the divine gitthat Hegel fnds in Christianity. But my aim in this paper is not to determine whether Hegel isrightabout Christianity or any o the other determinate religions he considers but to examineand evaluate the systematic role o his conception o a divine git.


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takes Gods git to be infnitely dicult even as it is complete and unwithhold-ing, which entails in return that the religious community make an infnite

divestment o its own in order to receive this total git. In the 1821 manuscripto his religion lectures, Hegel insists that the Egyptian and ibetan representa-tions o divine presence ail to grasp the truth o this divestment, and it is onlythe fgure o Jesus on the cross that adequately presents the unity o infnitelove and infnite anguish (LPR3: 137). Where other religions may ask or adivestment o worldly goods or even relationships to secure ones connectionto the divine, Christianity asks its adherents to divest themselves o socialityitsel. While his contemporaries had noted the peculiarity that the Jesus o theGospels seemed to disparage both riendship and sexual love among his ol-

lowers, Hegel argues that this was entirely consistent with his teaching becauseriendship is inevitably burdened by subjective particularity (LPR3: 139).As such, riendship and sexual love may indeed endure, but they are secondaryor Christians, as the bond o the disciples is not attraction as such but liesin the intuition o the speculative, the infnite love that comes rom infniteanguish, i.e., rom the worthlessness o particularity and the mediation o lovethrough it (LPR3: 139). In this call or a sacrifce o particularity to matchGods own divestment, Christianity allows itsel to accept a divine divestment

that infnitely exceeds the world without assuming an unbearable debt.Humanity may eel guilty at its inability to match Gods sacrifce, but to theextent that it recognizes the worthlessness o its own particularizing desires, itneed not worry that it has ailed to match Gods grace. By promising to divestthe community o the subjective particularity o interpersonal relations, itleaves no fxed community to accrue a debt.

Unlike in the Realphilosophie, in the Berlin Lectures Hegel marks a sharpdistinction between this love that is possible only in anguish and divine sel-love. In each version o the lectures, Hegel is careul to distinguish Gods inter-

nal dierentiation into a trinity rom the externalization that creates the worldand its religious community. Beore there is any world at all, Gods infnitebenefcence requires him to divide himsel into Father and Son so that thisbenefcence might give itsel someone to serve.23 But the very necessity o this

23) Somewhat conusingly, in David Strausss transcription o the 1831 lectures (as in the anony-mous student notes rom the 1831 course compiled in Hegels Werke), Hegel identifes Godsinternal dierentiation into Father and Son with the kingdom o the Father and the actualdierentiation rom the world and subsequent reconciliation in Christ with the kingdom o theSon (LPR3: 36368). Te trinity thus has at least two distinct meanings: it reers both to theinternal dierentiation that ollows rom Gods nature and to the release rom this naturerequired or a ull enactment o spirits reedom.


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division gives it an introverted playulness. Because this process o divisionoccurs solely within God, distinction in the process [is] already in and or

itsel a show, a game, just as reassurance and enjoyment [are] only the abstractorm o movement in the reciprocity o love (LPR3: 83). Just as the closedstructure o arithmetic (pre-Gdel) allows children to fnd pleasure in calcula-tions that present diversity without ever presenting a real challenge to thesystem, lovers can fnd pleasure in positing distinctionsWould you stilllove me i I lost all my teeth?that pose no real threat to the bond. Godsinitial sel-division is structured by such playulness. Father and Son partakein a single enjoyment, but not one that opens either to a ree relation.

Tus this Urteilis only the initial step; God must also release (Entlassen) a

world really distinct rom himsel, as the 1827 lectures explain more ully:Te act o dierentiation is only a movement, a play o love with itsel, whichdoes not arrive at the seriousness o other-being, o separation and rupture(LPR3: 292). By recalling the language o the Phenomenology o Spirits cri-tique o the Spinozist and Schellingian systems (GW9: 18; PhG19),24 Hegelshows how his account o God seeks to avoid pantheism. Any eort to under-stand Gods relation to creation must not simply posit a fnite world as inher-ing in the infnite but must attempt to capture the actual labor involved in this

release. Gods love does not merely play with itsel but works to establish agenuine relationship with creation, which the spiritual community must learnto reciprocate.25 For revealed religion, creation is more than a simple outow-ing rom God. It consists in a relationship between spirit and God, whichentails a separation o the two and subsequent reconciliation (LPR1: 323).

But i an adequate account o divine reedom needs to observe the distinct-ness o creation rom God, it is equally important not to ocus solely on thecreated world. Considered in isolation, the being o the world is negligible:For the world, to be means to have being only or an instant, so to speak, but

also to suspend [auheben] its separation or estrangement rom God(LPR3: 293). Te value o the divine git is ound not just in the product butin the ceaseless generosity that gives rise to it, or a creation entirely abstractedrom its relation to God would be a mere thing. I the religious spirit were to

24) Reerences to the Phenomenologygive page numbers rom volume 9 o the Gesammelte Werke(Hamburg: Meiner, 1980) and the paragraph numbers ound in the Miller translation (hereaterPhG). For an argument that Spinoza is Hegels primary target in this passage, see H. S. Harris,Hegels Ladder I: Te Pilgrimage o Reason (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 56.25) Hegel makes a similar point in the Phenomenologys discussion o Revelatory Religion. Whileinitially absolute spirit reveals its subjectivity only in its inwardness and thus appears as a lovingrecognition (ein Anerkennen der Liebe) o itsel, it must step out o pure essence and reveal itselto a genuine other (GW9: 411; PhG772).


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ocus its gratitude entirely on the created world itsel, its relationship withGod would be a mere etishism with none o the grace and gratitude necessary

or a dynamic relationship. Te created world is thus inseparable rom the evilinhering in its separation rom God and the ulfllment o reconciliation withGod. It fnds itsel ree to restore its connection to God, but its reedom doesnot extend to the divine essence, since to dissolve its relation to God entirelywould amount to putting itsel in Gods place.

Gods role in this relation, on the other hand, is completely ree, or it is pre-cisely Gods reedom that allows him to release the world as a genuine other andnot cling to it as necessary or his own constitution (LPR3: 292).26 Whereas Godsown nature necessitates his original division into Father and Son, the creation o

the world arises solely rom his limitless generosity. Tus while the endless task orestoring creation to unity with the divine can seem like the assignment o ademanding God, it is airer to say that divine creation appears simply as a git. InHodgsons memorable turn o phrase, God is an inexhaustible ount that releasesits ecundity into that which is not-God (HC144). But in this release, Godsuspends the sharp distinction between himsel and his creation and thus, again inHodgsons words, becomes involved in the brokenness o the world process(HC263). Gods generosity is thus ar rom one-sided. Te git o creation is not

shipped rom aar but emerges in actual consultation with spirit.A ully realized religion must thus be able to represent the participation ospirit in the divine git. While Lamaism, Egyptian religion, and others haveound ways to represent the presence o the divine on earth, Hegel argues thatonly the Christian conception o the Passion adequately represents both theagony o divine divestment and the reedom that it yields to spirit. Humanbeings share Christs suering with God, and it is precisely through this shar-ing that it becomes possible to represent spirits release rom and reconciliation with God.27 Tough suering can isolate the individual by drowning out

everything outside her private pain, the very intensity o this internalizationallows Christianity to represent Gods act o divestment without imagining itas a stark separation.28 Because death is the highest orm o fnitude, and

26) Here Hodgsons explanation is especially helpul (HC144).27) As Robert Williams has argued, the appearance o Jesus as a suering human being mustappear in history and not just as a metaphysical separation o the creator rom his creation; Su-ering is not ontological, but gratuitous, i.e., or the sake o an other (Robert R. Williams,Teology and ragedy, in New Perspectives on Hegels Philosophy o Religion, ed. David Kolb,

[Albany: SUNY Press, 1992], 51) (hereater ).28) Williams helpully clarifes, Te death o Jesus is Gods highest sel-divestment (Entusse-rung): in it God has died, God himsel is dead. Tis earul picture brings beore the imaginationthe deepest abyss o alienation (, 4849).


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anguish the most extreme example o interiority, the image (Vorstellung)oChrists death is the most complete representation o divine divestment that

still admits the possibility o human participation in divinity (LPR3: 125).It is not just the extremity o this anguish that allows Christianity to imag-

ine this divestment; it is also the very structure o the sacrifce. Christianitygrasps that Christs sacrifce is not just a git given to loyal or avorite childrenbut has occurred in and or itsel. It is not an extrinsic sacrifce that is per-ormed (LPR3: 128). Rather, it occurs out o the very necessity o divinedivestment. Simultaneously infnitely distant and infnitely near to Christsanguish (LPR3: 140), Christianity takes this anguish not as a git to be repaid,but as a condition o possibility or the mutual love o God and humanity. By

commemorating Gods externalization, the Christian community takes part init and thus recognizes its own reedom in relation to the divine.

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude rom this that the community ormsitsel as a proper receptacle or divine benefcence. While we might be temptedto view religious ritual as both a solicitation o and expression o gratitude orGods gits, Hegel argues that tradition is not an autonomous git to repay agracious God, or it, too, is something given, not created rom itsel. It is thespirit o the community as a whole [berhaupt] (LPR3: 151). Te giving and

receiving o the world are not two separate acts, but help to establish eachother.29 As such, Christianity has learned to emphasize the aith o the com-munity above that o the individual. Whereas individual aith can arise romall sorts o accidental occurrences, the aith o the community resists suchcontingencies and represents instead a sharing o the image o God (LPR3:150). Community itsel is a git, but this means reciprocally that this git mustbe met with a parallel divestment. Since religious consciousness in generalassumes that the spiritual substance o any particular age is nothing but Godsobjectifcation o himsel (LPR3: 144), history is the externalization o sel-

consciousness so that it might meet Gods generosity. Christianitys reconcili-ation with God is thus one that posits its own participation in their veryseparation. Rather than taking its alling away rom the divine as orced uponit and their reconciliation as an event simply to be awaited, it takes both thesuering o separation and the work o reconciliation to be the responsibilityo both God and spirit. Tough God has divested himsel o creation as a git,this git occurs with spirits ull participation.

29) In the 1824 lectures, Hegel adds that aith and the community are mutually constituting: Itis the community as it begins rom aith; but on the other hand, it is the aith that is broughtorth as spirit, so aith is at the same time the result (LPR3: 226).


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Reciprocating the Divine Git in the Phenomenology of Spirit

But this ormulation explains neither how Christianity is related to the variousdeterminate religions nor how Christianitys reception o Gods externaliza-tion qualifes it as the Consummate Religion. While Hegel expounds uponthe religious communitys role in receiving the divine git in each o the ourBerlin lecture courses, the reasons or Hegels preerence or Christian ritualscan be seen more clearly in the Jena Phenomenology o Spirit, where he consid-ers revelation primarily rom the side o spirit rather than rom that o God.In the Phenomenology, Hegel rames Gods externalization as a rebundling othe previous shapes o spirit. Whereas consciousness, sel-consciousness, and

so on, present merely single aspects o the totality o spirit and thus progressin a more or less linear ashion, in religion the sequence o spiritual shapes isnow, as it were, broken at these nodes, at these universal moments, and allsapart into many lines which, gathered up into a single bundle, at the sametime combine symmetrically so that the similar dierences in which eachparticular moment took shape within itsel meet together (GW 9: 367;PhG681). In religion, the development o spirit is no longer simply anunolding o the various abstract shapes that spirit can take but, in reectingon the various ways these shapes can combine and mutually implicate one

another, spirit releases itsel into the concrete human orms in which theseshapes maniest themselves.

And since religion is spirit that knows itsel as such, this release is not justin-itsel, but constitutes a key part o the contento religious representation.Tus in its frst determinate shape in the Phenomenology, God is nothing butpure externalization. In the section titled Das Lichtwesen, God is identifedwith the simple outowing o light, and the movements o its own external-ization [Entusserung], its creations in the unresting element o its othernessare ows o light; they are in their simplicity at once its being-or-sel and itsturning back rom its existence [Dasein], the fre streams that destroy all con-crete shapes (GW9: 371; PhG686). Here Hegel echoes Schellings Von derWeltseelein representing God as pure and constant divestment, an immediatesel-presence o spirit that nonetheless releases itsel into otherness.30 For

30) Walter Jaeschke has noted the obscurity o the term Lichtwesen and argued that while it seemsindebted to Schellings Von der Weltseele, the orm o religion it describes seems to have little todo with Schellingian physics and thus probably represents either early Iranian religion or, morelikely, the Jewish God (Jaeschke, Vernunt in der Religion. Studien zur Grundlegung der Religion-sphilosophie Hegels [Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1986], 20915) (hereater VR). I fndmuch that is persuasive in Jaeschkes account, but I also think the link to Schelling is closer thanhe lets on. Harris, on the other hand, unproblematically identifes this stage o religion with


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Schelling in Weltseele, the Lichtwesen is the primary natural orce that seeksuniormity by spreading itsel throughout all o nature.31 It is divestment pure

and simple and thus corresponds quite neatly to the movement o this frstshape o the divine. For Hegel, while this orm does express the basic external-izing structure o the divine, its activity is an essenceless playing-away [wesen-loses Beiherspielen] which merelyascendswithout descendinginto its depths tobecome a subject and through the sel to consolidate its distinct moments(GW 9: 371; PhG687). As pure revelry (aumel), it is incapable o anygenuine revelation, since it leaves no space or spirit to arise and receive Godsinfnite abundance. Like the pure loss that Bataille describes in Te AccursedShare, it is a ecundity without ospring, a productivity without return.32

Tus spirit gradually learns to mobilize more o this excess, and this rever-ence or Gods pure generosity is transormed through sacrifce (zum Oper)into a worship o plants and animals (GW9: 372; PhG688). Ater variousnatural orms o worship give way to a reverence or artistic productivity, spiriteventually fnds that even the ever new gits o the Muses leave it cold. Hegelwrites: Te works o the Muse now lack the power o the spirit. . . . Tey havebecome what they are or us nowbeautiul ruit already picked rom thetree, which a riendly ate has oered us, as a girl might set the ruit beore

us. . . . Our act o enjoying them is thereore not one in the service o Godthrough which our consciousness might come to its perect truth and ulfll-ment; it is an external activity (GW9: 402; PhG753). o judge onesel amere recipient o divine gits, even ones as spiritual as artistic gits, is to removeonesel rom the lie o their production. Tus a properly revelatory religionwould need to see Gods gits as given not simply through divine inspirationbut through spiritual divination.

o grasp how Gods externalizing generosity can be identical with the indi-vidual sel, spirit must learn to picture this generosity as both ongoing and

mediated through spirits own activity. Religion becomes maniest or revela-tory (ofenbar) when it grasps Gods externalization as speech. While speech isexternal in the sense that it escapes the pure sel-relation o the speaker, itmaintains a uidity that even the most perect works o the Muses ail to

Zoroastrianism, hedging only by saying that Hegels account is oversimplifed (H. S. Harris,Hegels Ladder II: Te Odyssey o Spirit[Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1997], 549).31) F. W. J. Schelling, Schellings smmtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stuttgart-Augsburg:J. G. Cotta, 18561861), 2: 369. See also Joseph Esposito,Schellings Idealism and Philosophy oNature(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1977), 8889.32) Georges Bataille, Te Accursed Share,trans. Robert Hurley, vol. 1 (New York: Zone Books,1989).


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equal. A spoken word is given to the listener to interpret, and yet it also carrieswith it the promise o uture speech. By placing his essence into an external-

ized word, God commits himsel to presence beore spirit, should his wordever need clarifcation (GW9: 410; PhG770).33 And because speech needs ahearer to be ully actual, the git o divine speech is not just a git to spirit buta git in concert with spirit. Hegels point here is subtle, and it can perhaps beelucidated by comparing the divine logoswith more tangible gits. As Derridahas observed, When I give something to someone, in the classical semantic othe gitbe it money, a book, or be it simply a promise or a wordI alreadypromise to confrm it, to repeat it, even i I do not repeat it.34 One o the ac-tors that distinguishes a git rom a mere divestment is the donors implicit

promise that the act o giving, even i it is without any other motive thangenerosity, at least attempts to establish a relationship. Here I take Hegel to bearguing that when creation is understood as the Word, this promissory struc-ture o the git is brought to the ore and divine benefcence is taken to besomething in which spirit participates. As Hegel recalls rom the book o Jobin the Berlin lectures, when God thunders with his thundering voice, he isnot recognized.35 Only insoar as the religious spirit takes God to be some-thing with which it can share language does it begin to recognize nature as a

git rather than an alien presence.Tus revelatory religion fnds God not in any o his particular gits but inthe creation o the world itsel. When God gives birth to the world in speech,he externalizes himsel into a world that is at once a collection o inert, exter-nally related objects and an existing reection o God himsel (GW9: 412;PhG77475). Te divine act o giving the world is one in which spiritactively participates. While the representative (vorstellendes) structure o reli-gious cognition can lead spirit to take either God or the fnite sel as the essen-tial side o this relation (GW9: 414; PhG778), in the end the relation is only

intelligible as a ree and mutual act o giving. Yet because the religious con-sciousness does not grasp the act that this depth o the pure sel is the powerby which the abstract divine being is drawn down rom its abstraction andraised to a sel by the power o this pure devotion (GW 9: 420; PhG787)because, that is, it does not ully grasp that its receipt o Gods git is,

33) See Harris, Hegels Ladder II, 678, or a helpul elucidation o this point.34) Derrida, On the Git: A Discussion Between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, inGod, the Git, and Postmodernism, 67.35) Job 37:5; LPR3: 295n, 3: 365.


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taken rom the standpoint o the concept, the very same actas the git itselitstill sees its natural side as something that it must divest rom itsel.36

Te primary act o Christian worship is thus one o grateul divestmentmeant to reciprocate Gods own divestment. Such acts are, o course, commonto religion in general, rom pagan sacrifces meant to thank the gods by divest-ing personal property to Hesiods repeated thanking o the Muses or the abil-ity to produce an external commemoration o the origin o the gods.37 But inChristianity we see a unique unity o internalization and externalization in theexpression o gratitude. Because Gods externalization is represented as theWord, the reciprocal externalization o the community is taken to be a sen-tence (Satz). In the speculative proposition, the revelatory religion raises itsel

above the binary logic o representative thinking by declaring that God bothis and is not nature, that the principle o all goodness both is and is not evil(GW9: 416; PhG780). Regardless o whether it is externalized in the ormalprocess o conession or remains internal in private prayer, the asking andgranting o orgiveness reveals the essential unity o God and spirit and allowsor a kind o gratitude that does not posit any absolute distinction betweenbeneactor and benefciary. Christian prayer thanks God in a manner thatcomes rom both an individual and a community and speaks to a God who

both is and is not separate rom the individual sel.

Gods Divestment and Religious Pluralism

Tus in both the Berlin lectures and the Phenomenology, Hegel makes explicitwhat he had not yet specifed in the Jena Realphilosophie: frst, that religiononly reaches its developed orm when it fnds a means o sel-divestment thatis not just opposite and equal to Gods own divestment, but that takes itsel tobe participating in Gods divestment, and second, that Christianity is the only

36) In absolute knowing, on the other hand, sel-consciousness reects that since it has external-ized itsel into objects, not only is it capable o being an object, but objects are capable o beingspiritual (GW9: 422; PhG788). As Hegel puts it in the 1827 lectures, philosophy presents thereconciliation o God with himsel and with nature, showing that nature, otherness, is implicitlydivine, and that the raising o itsel to reconciliation is on the one hand what fnite spirit implic-itly is, while on the other hand it arrives at this reconciliation, or brings it orth, in world history(LPR3: 347). Philosophy grasps that natures externalization is no disavowal o its divinity butreects its participation in divine git-giving.37) Hesiod, Teogony. Works and Days. estimonia, trans. Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), lines 1115.


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religion that has achieved this sel-representation. Given Hegels requentinsensitivity to non-Western cultures, we would do well to examine these

claims closely beore jumping to the conclusion that Hegel advocates a kind oreligious imperialism. In this vein, Peter Hodgson has argued that the release(Entlassen) o the spiritual community that makes religion possible in the frstplace is already a release o any particular doctrine and thus is incompatiblewith a position that holds Christianity as the sole culmination o religiousdevelopment. Indeed, no single religion could be the consummate religion,since a truly ree religion would have to oster and beneft rom a productivedialogue o existing world religions, in the process o which each will change(HC24243). Moreover, it seems unlikely that Hegel would remain stub-

bornly insistent on an exclusive claim to truth or Christianity when his vari-ous versions o the history o religious consciousness vary so widely and seemto lack any governing principle.38 While Hegel may at times argue or implythat the historical religions are developing into a single consummate orm,39 itwould seem that his philosophical heart was not in this claim.

Tough the pluralism o this reading is undoubtedly appealing rom a geo-political perspective, it conicts with Hegels largely consistent claims thatChristianity is the Consummate Religion because it alone comes to terms with

Gods divestment. As Jaeschke helpully observes, Christianity is the Consum-mate Religion not because it stands at the endpoint o the various determinatereligions or because it incorporates their content into a complete relation toGod. Its consummateness consists, rather, in its incorporation o the momentso the Concept o Religion (VR, 295). Specifcally, it meets the conceptsdemand that God be distinct rom spirit and nevertheless entirely revealed toit (LPR1: 38283). For Christianity, revelation itsel is reciprocal: God andthe community come together in their mutual embrace o Christs suering.

Tis reciprocity explains why the religious pluralism that Hodgson advo-

cates is only partially compatible with Hegels position. On the one hand,Hodgson is right that Gods release into the world requires that he be knownin the mode o dispersal rather than o fnality (HC219). Te centrality oGods divestment in Hegels account o religion means that there can be no

38) See Jaeschke, VR, 28889. Further evidence o this resistance to a single narrative is Hegelsclaim in the 1824 Lectures that [w]hat spirit does is no history [Historie] (LPR3: 232).39) In the 1824 lectures, or instance, he argues that the path o determinate religions must betraversed because something cannot be perect rom the very beginning, but only when it attains

itsel, attains its goal (LPR1: 143).


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such thing as a fnal religion and that Christianity does not so much close othe possibility o any other possible revelation as grasp the anguish o divine

separation at its greatest depth.40 But because this divestment is reciprocal, wecannot simply say that every community has been given an equal allotment ograce, i such an idea is even conceivable. Divestment o sel-consciousness isnot an entreaty or a making way or God, but it is nevertheless a condition orGods presence, and in Hegels account it appears most saliently in Christiancommunities. Tis o course does not rule out the possibility that anotherreligion couldfnd a way to represent the unity o spirit and God in a mutualact o interiorizing divestment; and given the limitations o the anthropologi-cal resources to which Hegel had access, it is quite plausible that he overlooked

some important convergences in world religions. But to assume with Hodg-son that i Hegel were alive today he would be a religious pluralist (HC243)requires us to unduly emphasize Hegels open and experimental readings othe worlds determinate religions over his largely consistent accounts o Chris-tianity as the Consummate Religion.

However, this rejection o a thoroughgoing religious pluralism does notimply that Christianity ully captures the unity o God and spirit. As Hegelrepeatedly notes in all our o the lecture courses, religion as such is the con-

sciousnesso God and thus carries with it the division o subject and object thatmakes consciousness possible (LPR3: 250). Christianity is the ConsummateReligion because it recognizes the content o God to be spirit itsel and thusbrings the religious consciousness back to itsel. But i this dierence wereentirely eaced, then there would be no religion at all. Tus the Christianreligion can only be consummate in a manner that preserves the distinctionbetween God and the worshiper and thus ceaselessly expresses rather thancognizes its gratitude to God. Even in Christianity, God and spirit are takento be distinct poles that must be reconciled through the relationship cultivated

through the divine git. In tying itsel to particular images o divine benef-cence, such expressions o gratitude still ail to grasp conceptually spirits unitywith its git. Tis is not to say that philosophy makes the dierences betweenreligions mootater all, representation, though a privative orm o cogni-

40) For this reason, while I agree with Kolbs claim that Hegel does not see all religions as moreor less equally embodying various structures o spirit, I do not think he goes as ar as to makeKolbs stronger claim that Christianity achieves an inclusive closure that helps establish theabsoluteness o absolute spirit (David Kolb, Te Final Name o God, in Michael Baur and John Russon, Hegel and the radition [oronto: University o oronto Press, 1997], 170). AsHodgson reminds us, absolute knowing is not a completion but an acceptance o the inevitabil-ity o incompletion.


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tion, is not nothingbut it does mean that none o these representations orsystems o representation has an absolute claim to superiority over the others.

While Christianity may reconcile itsel with Gods git in a way that Hegelfnds lacking in other religions, this does not imply that Christianity ought toreplace determinate religions or even that it deserves to sit at the head o thetable o religions. Rather, it means that the gratitude expressed in the Chris-tian religion entails a relinquishment o such acile narratives o completion.41

Overcoming Sovereignty

Tis moves me to my second contention about the political implications oHegels philosophy o religion. As spirit moves rom religion to absolute know-ing, it must learn to suspend not only the ingratitude with which it throws oits merely natural side, but also the sovereignty. As early as the Diferenzschrit,Hegel had dismissed Fichtes assumption o humanitys sovereignty over natureas an archaism that the times were already beginning to reject.42 o assumethat nature becomes signifcant only in its relation to human cognition is toassume a sovereignty that absolute knowing must learn to suspend. Christian-ity expresses its gratitude or creation both in prayer and in remembrance o

the Passion, but this is a gratitude that treats nature as a mere thing, as a gitthat has been passed rom the divine to the human. Religion does indeed teachspirit to see nature as something more than merely its opposite (LPR3: 294n)and even to appreciate the evil toward which its own nature inclines it (LPR3:309), but it can only see nature as an object o exchange between God andhumanity and not as a vital moment o spirit itsel. So long as its representa-tive (vorstellendes) thinking continues to distinguish between the git and itsgiving, religion will ail to see that its gratitude is incompatible with its assump-tion o sovereignty. And as Hegel had also shown in the Diferenceessay, thisassumption o sovereignty over nature transorms all too easily into a orm o

41) See Hodgson, HC, 275. Tus while I think Cyril ORegan is right to criticize Hodgsonsradically pluralistic reading o Hegels account o religion, Hodgson has a reasonable deenseagainst the claim that this pluralism orces him to downplay Hegels emphasis in the Lecturesonnarrative completion or return (Rckkehr) and recollection (Errinerung) as a condition otruth (Cyril ORegan, Philosophy o Religion in the Context o Hegels Philosophy, Te Owlo Minerva 37, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 20056): 21). While narratives o completion do indeed playa signifcant role in Christianitys representation o its own relation to God, these narrativesbegin to dissolve as Christianity begins to ragment (LPR3: 157).42) Hegel, GW4: 50.


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political totalitarianism (GW4: 58). Without the humility and tolerance thataccompanies philosophys grasp o the concepts ability to turn into its opposite,

any religioneven one as committed to universal love as Christianitycangrow intransigent and thus lapse into the crusades and pogroms that give thelie to its ounding act o sel-divestment.

Near the end o the Phenomenologys fnal chapter, Hegel notes that theexternalization o the path o spirit into the atemporal orm o science is insu-fcient, or spirit must also divest itsel o its assumption that it can know itselcompletely. Hegel writes, Te sel-knowing spirit knows not only itsel, butalso the negative o itsel, or its limit; to know ones limit is to know to sacrifceonesel (GW9: 433; PhG807).43 Absolute knowing thus entails a renuncia-

tion o the sovereignty that spirit claims over nature. o the extent that spiritremains mired in the representative thinking o religion, it will tend to viewnature as a git rom God and thus as its sovereign dominion. For the religiousconsciousness, nature is to be valued as participating in the divine, but never-theless nature begins as a beyond and is accessible only to the extent that it hasbeen given to spirit. But or a philosophy that grasps the necessity o naturesrelease rom reason, the strangeness o nature is no longer a threat. Spirit canbe thankul or the simple presence o the world without reducing nature to a

mere object o exchange between the divine and the human.Indeed, there is something perverse in the religious consciousness demandthat creation as a whole be taken as a git. Just as it is more than a little ridicu-lous or sel-help books to suggest that patients learn to accept their cancer asa git,44 absolute knowing must learn to absolve itsel o the image o a worldcreated expressly or it. Tere is o course much to be said or a orm o con-sciousness that is able to arm the world as spirits proper home rather thanear it as a swarm o alien orces, and Hegel would never want to reduce Chris-tianity to the sel-help books demand that one learn to look on the bright

side. While Christianity or Hegel has learned to embrace spirits suering asprovidential, it has done so only through the long and arduous work o aith,rather than rom an a priori certainty that everything will turn out all right(LPR1: 315). Nevertheless, the representative thinking o religion embraces a

43) Seine Grenze wissen, heit, sich auzuopern wissen. Millers translation, . . . to know oneslimit is to know how to sacrifce onesel (p. 492) misleadingly implies that in absolute knowingspirit gains the ability to sacrifce itsel rather than knowledge o the necessity o this sacrifce.44) Barbara Ehrenreich explores this almost comic position in her recent anti-sel-help treatiseBright-Sided: How Positive Tinking Is Undermining America (New York: Metropolitan Books,

2009).


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sense o being at home in the world that the uidity o the concept cannotabide. Te suspension o religion is a suspension o the need or a sovereign

dominion and thus o the assumption that spirit can be entirely comortablewith its place. Only in this peaceul release o all claims o sovereignty can itfnally make good on the gratitude it proesses in religion.

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Hegel on Religion and the Gif

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