Abstract

In a recent review of the new German edition of Hegel’s lectures on “Determinate Religion,” Dale Schlitt says that Hegel “gave a surprisingly appreciative reading of the various religions…” If ‘appreciative’ is meant here to signify “affirmative,” it is hard to agree with this claim. Schlitt himself indicates why, when he writes, “Hegel was so appreciative of the various religions that, even with his often negative judgments on them, he consistently presented them as necessary instances without which the consummate, absolute, or true religion could not have come into being.”. With regard to the Indian traditions we know as Hinduism, it is true that Hegel finds within them “the instinct of the concept”. But that is hardly high praise, especially when Hegel more frequently emphasizes that in Hinduism the moments of the concept regularly fall apart. As a result, and to me this seems the central theme of Hegel’s accounts, Hinduism is irremediably a religion of unfreedom.