Är inget heligt? : Religion i Andens fenomenologi

Sammanfattning

This thesis considers the role of the chapter on religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I find there to be a lack in the contemporary reading of Hegel in so far as those who show fidelity to Hegel as a thinker of universality do not give sufficient attention to his writings on religion, while those who closely read Hegel’s writings on religion want to lessen the extent to which he is understood as a universal thinker. By reading this chapter in conjunction with the preceding on spirit and the following and final on absolute knowing, this thesis explores the necessity of spirit passing into religion and religion into absolute knowing. By locating the decisive role of alienation (Entäußerung) in Hegels understanding of religion, this paper argues that the structure of alienation found in religion is the structure constitutive of thought itself. It is the necessity of alienation inherent to the act of forgiveness that sees spirit pass into religion, and it is the truth of alienation when God becomes human and dies that sees religion pass into absolute knowing. The internal split of God is introduced implicitly by religious thought itself as it demands both an irreducible God of the beyond and an appearing God of its devotion. In the practice of the religious community God appears as that which cannot appear. What appears in the appearance of God is therefore precisely the nothingness of appearance. The conclusion of this thesis is that the religious fidelity to a sacred nothingness is a pictorial representation of the universal structure of thought itself.