Philosophy of History and Religion in G. W. F. Hegel

Abstract

It is not our purpose to recount Hegel's work in his Lessons in World History; on the contrary, we want to grasp the concept of the development of history from the action (tat) of the spirit, insofar as history, Hegel says, is "the substance of the spirit". And he develops this theme both in the Encyclopaedia and in the Phenomenology of Spirit, as well as in the Lessons on the Philosophy of Religion (especially in 1828) and in his Philosophy of Right.  If history is conceived only through the action of the spirit that becomes movement and becomes freedom and rationality. In such a way that it can be said that reason directs history. But if he describes history as divine, it is because in it reason is historicised and loses its abstract condition. For in history, Hegel says, the spirit is at home. This process of movement must be understood as spiritual substance and the absolute end in the world, hence it is not possible to speak of an end to history. Absolute knowledge does not imply a closure to the infinite process of an unfolding through finite determinations. The importance of ethicity and the philosophy of law must be underlined, for the state as an ethical substance does not cancel out the rights of the subjects that evolve through history. The subjects themselves and the states can be considered as forms of objectification of the spirit in its movement. Absolute knowledge cannot therefore be understood either as a closure of history or as an overcoming of the figures it produces in its movement. Rather, it is what Hegel holds to be the Theodicy of history. And in it, religion already manifests the assumption of negativity and the overcoming of the death of God by the spirit in the community. Now, the community reaches its highest expression in the state, Hegel's claim is not to exalt the state, but he takes into account that citizens are subjects of law within the state.