" Der Gang Gottes in der Welt " . The Secularity of the Hegelian State and its Theological Foundation (Conference: Hegel and the Concept of World History, Kingston University London, 2015) (original) (raw)
In a systematic model of thought like that laid out by Hegel, the dislocation of the objects of study from their treatment is never a merely external matter of organizational or architectonic requirements. Rather, the positioning expresses the speculative validity of the arguments, and -unless read superficially -suggests a possible heuristic basis for their further investigation and development. No exception in this respect is the matter of the relation between state and religion, understood here as the higher, complex specification of the relation between politics -or ethical life -and religion. This question is obviously also present, albeit with another slant and emphasis, in the early writings, but the present contribution will limit its focus to the Berlin period. Hegel dedicates two precise points in his system to this relation, namely the two long Anmerkungen to paragraph 270 of the Outlines of the Philosophy of Right and paragraph 552 of the 1830 edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. (In the 1827 edition the Anmerkung on the state-religion relation appears, with minor modifications, in paragraph 563.) Maintaining the systematic approach, Hegel returns to the argumentproblematizing and enriching it with historical references and qualifications -in the Berlin lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, the Philosophy of Right and the Philosophy of
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