Theologian of the Spirit

The only anthology of Hegel’s religious thought, this volume offers sympathetic and clear entrée to Hegel’s religious achievement through his major relevant texts. Starting with early theological writings, the Selected Texts move on through the Phenomenology of Spirit and Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and culminate with Hegel’s 1822 essay on faith and reason and his 1824 lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Several selections are newly translated. Hodgson’s marvelously clear Introduction, with helpful commentary and annotations, lucidly unfolds the evolution of Hegel’s religious thought, the emergence of its central themes, and the religious genius epitomized in his notion of Absolute Spirit. Anticipating as it does the modern world’s drive to think historically, dialectically, and wholistically, Hodgson shows that Hegel’s thought might well tutor the next century as much as it did the last.