Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Phenomenology's treatment of religion is its pervasiveness. Several earlier sections – particularly the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul – deal with much that we reflexively identify as religion and associate with Judaism and Christianity in particular. Yet it is not until the penultimate chapter, “Religion,” that Hegel articulates a theory of religion as such, one that seeks both to appreciate its significance and to identify its limitations in the modern world.

In the face of widespread challenges to religious tradition, Hegel sought to reconcile religion with the social and intellectual developments of the Enlightenment and its aftermath. In contrast to influential approaches that aim to effect this reconciliation by relegating reason and religion to distinct realms with distinct objects, Hegel's strategy turns upon his conception of representation (Vorstellung) as a mode of cognition distinct from thought yet capable of cognizing the same object as thought. Whereas philosophy employs the discursive, conceptual language of thinking, religion is closely associated with the imagistic, metaphorical, and allegorical language of representation. While religious representations express much of the content of philosophy, they do so in a manner that juxtaposes what philosophy reveals to be identical. In so doing, they project our own essence beyond us and, in viewing it as other, alienate us from the world around us. Despite these functions, however, Hegel credits religion with providing partial reconciliation and expressing the content of philosophy in a manner accessible to much of the population.