The Borders of an Uncertain Object. Nature, Desire and Magic in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

One of the essential aspects of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is the construction of religion as an inherent and necessary dimension of human freedom. The aim of this paper is to grasp the epistemic operation underlying this new scientific intelligibility capable to address the actual reality of the religious subjectivity. In that sense, it will analyze how Hegel’s thought dwell in the specificity of religion by refusing its subordination to the empirical interactions of nature as well as to the moral horizons of practical reason. By situating the anthropological structure of consciousness at the core of the discourse on the believing subject, Hegel opens the possibility for a new perspective on the diversity of historical religions. The fundamental hypothesis of this work is that such an epistemic horizon requires the identification of the dysfunctional borders of the concrete existence of religions. Within the section of the Vorlesungen devoted to the ‘determined religion’, Hegel conceives this liminal existence of belief through the concept of magic (Zauberei), which is the first expression of a spiritual detachment from nature that nevertheless does not succeed in fixing the objectivity of the divine in a stable conscious representation. The problem that magic consciousness arises goes beyond the particular ethnological or historical reality it might denote. It brings up the question of the borders of the philosophical intelligibility of religious spiritual consciousness.