Critiques of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion The purpose of this research is t

In critiquing Philosophy of Religion, Fackenheim develops the thesis that Hegel's philosophical system is permeated by the notion of religion as a fundamental analytical component. To establish that thesis, furthermore, Hegel analyzes the components of religion in a way that serves to connect what might be called the religious and secular (Hegelian) Spirit(s), through the agent of philosophy. The tight construction of Hegel's philosophical argument is consistent with the line of thought present elsewhere in his work.

The overarching idea is a deceptively simple one, that, as Fackenheim quotes Hegel, "philosophy cannot exist without religion" (1:160). Why this thesis is deceptively simple is contained in the way that Hegel discusses the nexus of secular and religious thought. For Hegel does not make a simple-minded declaration in favor of either faith or an emotionalistic, if secular, mysticism. As Fackenheim puts it, "In Hegel's time as in ours, demythologizing philosophies sought simply to destroy myth and symbol. Hegel's own philosophy is not among these. In his view, myth an

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ip forms) of Christianity. Even the doctrinal content of what does attract Hegel to Christianity should not be understood as his own uncritical acceptance of literal truth. What makes Christianity so useful to Hegel's philosophy of religion is the Incarnation. Synonyms for the term illustrate its power--the Word Made Flesh; Son of Man; Son of God; two natures, divine and human. The Incarnation, which owes much to Greek religious tradition, differs qualitatively from its anthropomorphism because it unites in the palpably human person of Jesus the nature of ordinary man and the nature of God. The special nature of Christianity is its first reduced reconciliation of secularism and divinity to a human form. The insight of the doctrine of the Incarnation is that it actualizes, in history but also in the generalized realm of human experience, the unity of eternity and time. There may well be a valid argument that Hegel as the Western philosopher does not account for, say, Buddhism, wherein the special figure of the Buddha achieves stature. But Hegel does not really need to account for Buddha in detail once he establishes that the whole of Christianity is built around the human-divine unifying principle of the Incarnation. Furthermore, i
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