Abstract

This thesis locates the religious centre of concern that animates Hegel's view of the modern human community and the spiritual individual. If there is to be a viable community for this individual, then all the evidence for both the finite and infinite aspects of human experience must be accounted for in a philosophically self-conscious manner. ;The proper human expression of these aspects, for Hegel, is to be found in the areas of ethics and morality. Here we can discern the pattern of a complete modern world-form. The absolute content of religious forgiveness and reconciliation is the basis for achieving the complete good--freedom--in the secular order. ;However this analysis of Hegel's thought also reveals him to be aware of the tensions and relativity of he community precisely because it includes divine spirit: the open spiritual principle of free reason. So Hegel's absolute possesses a sense of incompletion that is paradoxically a necessary part of its coherence. This needs to be explicated in a religious context. ;In the tradition of religion and philosophy Hegel is in pursuit of the self-examined and good life for his community