HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AS A PHENOMENOLOGY

The present article takes up the issue of whether Hegel’s accounts of religion can be regarded as phenomenological analyses. This is a complex issue that concerns both the “Religion” chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. At first, an account is given of how Hegel understands phenomenology. Then this is used as the basis for an evaluation of his analyses of religion in the Phenomenology and the Lectures. The thesis is that these two analyses, although separated by many years, in fact show clear signs of methodological continuity and can indeed be regarded as phenomenological at least on Hegel’s own definition. This reading offers us a way to resolve the long-standing problem of whether the Phenomenology of Spirit can be seen as a genuinely unified text. Moreover, it shows the little-recognized connection between Hegel’s early philosophy of religion and his later philosophy of religion from his Berlin lectures.