conscience and religion in hegel’s later political philosophy

The Owl of Minerva 43:1–2 (2011–12)

© The Hegel Society of America - ISSN 0030-7580

DOI: 10.5840/owl2011-12431-22 pp. 41–72

Conscience and Religion in Hegel’s Later Political Philosophy

Timothy BrownleeXavier University

Abstract: In recent years, commentators have devoted increasing attention to

Hegel’s conception of conscience. Prominent interpreters like Frederick Neu-

houser have even argued that many points of contact can be found between

Hegel’s conceptions of conscience and moral subjectivity and historical and

contemporary liberalism. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of an under-

examined 1830 addition to the Philosophy of Spirit concerning the relation

between religion and the state which proves particularly resistant to the kind

of liberal interpretation of conscience which Neuhouser provides. I assess the

significance of the argument that Hegel provides for the “inseparability” of

ethical and religious conscience in relation to recent interpretation. I conclude

by arguing that we can identify a kind of consistency between the Philosophy of Right and the later writings and lectures, but that Hegel’s conception of

conscience is incompatible with contemporary political liberalism.

Subjectivity is the animating force of ethical life (Sittlichkeit).1 Hegel’s theory

of ethical life aims to set out those objective institutions and practices that

make possible the full realization of our freedom. However, Hegel believes

that subjectivity plays a constitutive role in ethical life, insofar as institutions are

reproduced and sustained only through the continuing recognition of their

legitimacy by individual subjects.2 When he introduces the idea of ethical life

in the Philosophy of Right, he stresses that it is “the concept of freedom that has become the present world and taken on the nature of self-consciousness.”3 However,

Hegel also claims that the specific institutions and practices that constitute the

substance of the modern social and political world are significantly distinct

from those of other historical eras because of the unique relation that they

bear to subjectivity. In modern ethical life, individual subjects are recognized

as the bearers of a special kind of right, which Hegel identifies as subjective

42 The Owl of Minerva 43:1–2 (2011–12)

right. Hegel suggests that subjective right includes both a conative element—

namely the right to find satisfaction of one’s reflectively determined aims and

goals in one’s actions, insofar as this satisfaction is an essential component

of the agent’s well-being (Wohl)4—and a cognitive element—namely the right

of the will to recognize as binding on it only what the individual can see as

good.5 According to Hegel, this cognitive right finds its highest expression

in conscience, in a form of subjectivity which understands its own “thinking”

and conviction to be “that which is alone obligatory.”6

In recent years, a range of scholars have devoted their attention to

understanding the specific role that Hegel’s concept of conscience plays in

his ethical and political philosophy. In particular, scholars have tended to

dismiss a once-prominent view according to which Hegel either significantly

downplayed or outright denied any role for conscience in the institutions

of modern ethical life. Adherents to the latter view tend to focus on the

discussion of conscience in the “Morality” chapter of the Philosophy of Right, which famously concludes with a criticism of the excessive pretensions of the

individual moral conscience (what Hegel calls the “formal” conscience) to

determine for itself on the basis of its own arbitrary will (its Willkür) what is

right and good.7 Indeed, Hegel goes so far as to suggest that the “vanity” of

this conscience which presumes to set itself above objective moral standards

is itself “evil.”8 Interpreters like Ernst Tugendhat understood these remarks to

suggest that Hegel leaves no room at all for individual conscience within the

institutions of ethical life, and that, in each case, the individual’s conscience

will be subject to the overriding demands of the state.9 Responses to these

charges on Hegel’s behalf have been powerful and cogent. Ludwig Siep has

contended that Tugendhat disastrously misconstrues the sense of the Hege-

lian Aufhebung operative in the critique of conscience and almost willfully

misreads the transition from morality to ethical life in the Philosophy of Right in arguing that no room is left for individual conscience in the modern state.10

More recently, Frederick Neuhouser has worked to point out flaws in

Tugendhat’s interpretation by means of a detailed, exhaustive, and nuanced

account of the role that moral subjectivity plays in Hegel’s account of the

institutions of modern ethical life in the Philosophy of Right.11 He shows that

Hegel’s criticism of conscience in the Philosophy of Right is limited to a specific

kind of appeal to individual conscience to legitimate an action as moral,

and that this “overly individualistic” conception of conscience is neither

coherent nor attractive.12 Moreover, he goes on to demonstrate that, rather

Conscience and Religion in Hegel’s Later Political Philosophy 43

than supporting an absolutist or totalitarian conception of political author-

ity, Hegelian conscience and moral subjectivity in fact embody a political

“ideal” that is shared by contemporary liberal theorists, most notably in the

notion of the “person” operative in the work of John Rawls.13 Specifically,

Neuhouser believes that Rawls and Hegel share a belief that our constitution

as reflective, rational agents imposes limitations on the kinds of political

obligations that are appropriate within a just polity. That is, a citizen’s po-

litical obligations should not be such that they demand that the individual

be compelled “to act in accordance with conceptions of the good that are

not their own.”14 Neuhouser, too, believes that interpreters like Tugendhat

get something importantly wrong about Hegel’s conception of conscience

and its political significance. The state’s authority is not absolute in relation

to the individual in this way, and its demands cannot override those of the

individual in each case. Neuhouser understands this recognition of indi-

viduals as persons to be one of the basic commitments of liberal theories of

the state, since our constitution as persons requires protection by means of

“securing for [persons] an arena, protected from incursion by the state and

other individuals, within which they are free to act as they, guided only by

their own assessment of the good, find appropriate.”15 In what follows, I take

this demand, stemming from our constitution as persons, to be the central

one underlying contemporary liberal theory.16

Neuhouser’s account of moral subjectivity in the Philosophy of Right is sig-

nificant because it indicates that interpreters like Tugendhat have overstated

the role that Hegel ascribes to the state in limiting individual conscientious

expression. However, my concern here is to suggest that Hegel’s later account

of the role that religion plays in securing the conditions for the existence

of a free state appear to compromise the liberal account of the liberty of

conscience which Neuhouser claims to find primarily in the 1821 Philosophy of Right. Most notably in the lengthy but rarely-discussed 1830 remark ap-

pended to §552 of the Encyclopedia Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel closely aligns

the genuine conscience of modern ethical life with the religious conscience

of the Protestant reformation. Hegel seems to appeal to the specific religious

program of “Protestant” Christianity to determine which appeals to individual

conscience are to count as genuine or “truthful” in ethical life. This appar-

ent appeal is significant since it would seriously compromise attempts—like

Neuhouser’s—to argue for consistency between Hegel’s understanding of the

liberty of conscience and liberal conceptions.17 I proceed as follows. I begin by


offering a complete account of §552R of the Philosophy of Spirit, stressing the

significance of Hegel’s argument for the inseparability of religious and ethical

conscience for his political philosophy (§1). I next demonstrate that Hegel’s

arguments seem to contradict liberal accounts of the liberty of conscience

on the grounds that they violate the liberal demand for state neutrality in

religious matters (§2). Subsequently, I address some possible interpretations

of §552R that might help to save liberal interpretations like Neuhouser’s, but

I suggest that none of these can provide a coherent account of Hegel’s mature

political philosophy that is also consistent with contemporary liberalism (§3).

I conclude by offering an account of these issues that saves the consistency of

Hegel’s mature political thought, but leaves open the issue of the consistency

of that position with contemporary liberalism (§4).

§1

Between the various editions of the Encyclopedia Philosophy of Spirit in 1817,

1827, and 1830, Hegel devoted special attention to the remark to §552. In

spite of the static form of §552 itself in the 1827 and 1830 editions, Hegel

significantly expanded the remark in the 1830 edition. §552 itself is the final

section of the Philosophy of Spirit discussion of objective spirit, and Hegel

consciously treats the remark to §552 as the hinge between objective and

absolute spirit, claiming in the 1830 edition, that the remark is “the place to

enter into the relation between the state” (which belongs to the division of

objective spirit) “and religion” (which belongs to absolute spirit).18 Indeed, the

lengthy discussion of the specific relation between religion and the state, which

amounts to a full ten pages in the Theorie Werkausgabe edition of the text, is

unique to the 1830 edition.19 Not only should it be clear that these issues were

ones that continued to be pressing for Hegel through the 1820s and up to the

years immediately preceding his death, but that he thought that this specific

connection between the state and religion required more significant comment.

On its face, the remark appears to be importantly similar to other discus-

sions of the relation between the state and religion that we find in the mature

writings and lectures. First, Hegel asserts again that the state and religion share

the same content, but differ in form. In §270R of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel

claimed that, while the state and religion share a common content, namely

“the spirit,” they differ in the way in which they realize that spirit. While the

state is the spirit in the form of “a real configuration and organization of a

world,” that is, as developed or realized objectively in laws and institutions,


religion is “the relation to the absolute in the form of feeling, representation, and faith [Glauben],” that is, a subjective relation.20 In the Philosophy of Spirit re-

mark, Hegel stresses that both the state and religion are real (wirklich) shapes

of “the holy spirit.” While in ethical life, the holy spirit is present “as a people

[Volk] and its individual members,” in religion, it is “inwardly” present in “the

faith and conscience” of self-conscious individuals.21 Second, Hegel stresses

that religion constitutes the “foundation” (Grundlage) or “base” (Basis) of the

state and of ethical life generally, whose justification and truth rests on their

participation in and subsumption under the higher truth of religion.22

In spite of these two important similarities, the Philosophy of Right and

Philosophy of Spirit discussions are distinct in virtue of the perspective and

focus with which they approach the relation between the state and religion.

Standing as it does squarely in the midst of the treatment of objective spirit,

it should not surprise us that the 1821 Philosophy of Right discussion focuses

primarily on the significance of this relation for political life, detailing the

specific social and institutional arrangements that will best facilitate the

establishment and sustenance of religion within political life. By contrast,

the account of the relation between the state and religion in the Encyclopedia

approaches the issue from the subjective standpoint of the believer, and Hegel

stresses rather the sense in which religion constitutes the practical foundation

of the state insofar as it indelibly marks and informs the outlook of indi-

vidual citizens.23 Most importantly, this shift of emphasis prompts a closer

consideration of the role that the systematic relations between objective and

absolute spirit play in Hegel’s account of individual subjectivity and agency.

That is, Hegel consistently holds that the objective institutions and practices

of ethical life depend essentially on the ethical dispositions of individual

agents.24 As a result, those institutions retain their practical legitimacy and

efficacy only so long as those self-conscious individuals continue to recognize

their demands as binding and, as Hegel says, “true.” However, Hegel asserts

that the subjective conviction of the truth of these objective institutional ar-

rangements, the consciousness of their “absolute truth,” can only be secured

by religion, which belongs, of course, to “absolute spirit.”

His speculative language aside, the problem which Hegel’s appeal to

religion here is supposed to address is one that should be familiar enough to

us. Even though Hegel stresses the “absolute truth” of religion, his primary

concern is not speculative, but is rather eminently practical. Specifically, the

issue concerns a worry we have no doubt all had concerning the legitimacy


of our institutions. That is, given the fact that our institutions are, as Hegel

says, “worldly beings” with their own idiosyncratic histories, their own, in

some ways, arbitrary procedures and demands, the question that faces us

is one that we have likely all asked at some point: How can I be confident that these institutions—and not those of some other culture, or some other

historical moment, or those specified from an ideal standpoint—do, in fact,

embody basic principles that I hold to be legitimate, and how can I be sure

that I am right to hold those principles to be justified or “true”? Hegel invokes

the notion of “absolute truth” in this connection precisely to indicate that

he thinks that this worry could be addressed if we could provide a rational

account of our institutions such that our confidence in them would not be

grounded in idiosyncrasies of our upbringing or on unfounded prejudices,

but rather in a knowledge founded on a non-relative—or “absolute”—truth.

However, Hegel clearly believes that religion can secure this justified and

full confidence in ways that political institutions themselves cannot. As Hegel

states in the History lectures:

Religion stands in a strict connection to the principle of the state. . . . The

worldly being is one that is timely, self-moving in individual interests, and

thereby relative and unjustified. The worldly being contains a justification

only insofar as its universal soul, the principle, is absolutely justified, and it

is only justified in this way if it is known as the determinacy and existence

of the essence of God.25

Of course, we ought to ask why Hegel thinks that we need religion to secure

this conviction (and not, for example, philosophy26). His reasoning depends

essentially on his understanding of what religion itself is. First, Hegel stresses

that, in distinction from individual action and conviction, religion constitutes

a kind of collective self-determination undertaken by a specific historical na-

tion or people: “Religion is the place where a people [Volk] gives definition

to what it takes to be true.”27 However, more importantly, religion is able to

provide the conviction of the relevant kind of non-relative or absolute truth

precisely because its object is at the same time “the absolute” or “God.”28 Hegel

believes that both of these characteristics uniquely suit religion to address this

legitimacy problem. On the one hand, because it is specifically concerned

with comprehending “the absolute” or “God,” religion is capable of providing

the kind of non-relative or “absolute” justification of a scheme of political

institutions which those institutions cannot provide for themselves. On the

other hand, because it is a kind of collective self-determination, religion can

provide a foundation for a shared allegiance to a particular form of social life.


Hence, for Hegel, “The sanction [die Sanktionierung] of the ethical life which

exists in empirical reality stems from the religious content as the highest truth

which exists purely in and for itself; thus, for self-consciousness, religion is

the basis of ethical life and the state.”29

Even though religion constitutes a form of collective self-determination

by a specific people or community, in §552R Hegel stresses the significance of

religion as a guarantor of truth. Since religion provides the kind of ultimate

justification for the institutions and practices of a specific form of social life

which those institutions cannot provide for themselves, Hegel points to the

fact that the individual’s conviction of the legitimacy of their social world

requires underwriting by religion. However, Hegel identifies individual con-science as the domain of conviction, and stresses that, in the modern world,

considerations count as obligatory for me only if I can, through “thinking,”

bind myself to them.30 It is for this reason that he stresses that “There cannot

be two consciences, different in constitution and content, one religious, and

the other ethical.”31 Rather, the kind of “ethical conscience” required for

the institutional demands of ethical life to be binding on the individual is

“inseparable” from a specific kind of religious conscience, which provides the

individual with the assurance of the legitimacy or truth of those demands.

This religious conscience is so important precisely because of its very close

relationship to the individual’s disposition (Gesinnung). Hegel claims in the

Philosophy of Right, “The true conscience is the disposition [Gesinnung] to will

that which what is in and for itself good.”32 However, he frequently stresses that

it is religion which plays the most essential role in shaping the individual’s

disposition, or in influencing what the individual is disposed to will as

good.33 Since it is religion which supplies the individual with confidence in

the truth of her convictions, religion will have a profound influence on what

the individual is disposed to will.

These remarks on the relation between religion and individual conscience

are significant for a number of reasons. First, finally in this late addition to

the 1830 Philosophy of Spirit Hegel clarifies for his readers the meaning of the

“religious conscience” to which he alludes in the earlier Philosophy of Right treatment of conscience, but which he merely indicates belongs to “another

order” than that of morality.34 Second, and perhaps more importantly, Hegel

is pointing to the necessity that there be a religious conscience within modern

ethical life. That is, Hegel is not simply arguing that it would be difficult for

individual subjects to have to navigate between the demands of their religion


and those of their state should those demands conflict. Rather, he is argu-

ing that it is in fact impossible for a state to continue to exist if its citizens

find a division in their conscience between the demands of their state and

those of their religion.35 This is because institutions depend on individuals’

continuing to take their demands as legitimate and, since religion provides

the source of that legitimacy, a state that imposed demands on its citizens

that conflicted with those of religion would lose the hold necessary for its

maintenance. Because the ethical conscience in fact rests on and is insepa-

rable from the religious conscience, the “subjective disposition” appropriate

to all individuals within ethical life will be indelibly religious in character.

However, Hegel takes one further step in arguing that it is not simply that

citizens in a free state need to adhere to some religion. Rather, he argues that

certain religions will do a poor job of securing the conditions under which a

unified ethical and religious conscience is possible. In particular, he points to

“the great division . . . within the Christian religion” between Catholics and

Protestants, and he argues that it is only in “the Protestant conscience” that

“the principle of the religious and ethical conscience become one and the

same.”36 Hegel stresses that Catholic states must contend with precisely the

divided allegiances which a Protestant state need not. In many ways, Hegel’s

reasoning for this claim mirrors that offered elsewhere in the mature lectures.

In the world history lectures, Hegel stresses the role that the rise of Protestant

religious movements played in the overturning of the feudal political order in

which monarchies were buttressed by the institutions of the Catholic church.

Such Catholic states, Hegel argues, will never have a “rational constitution”

since the allegiances of their citizens will be constantly divided between the

(national and this-worldly) state and the (trans-national and, ultimately,

other-worldly) church.37 However, the Philosophy of Spirit discussion which we

have been considering here, with its specific emphasis on subjectivity and

conscience, is importantly unique. In the history lectures, Hegel argues that

the genesis of the modern political order was made possible only with the rise

of Protestantism.38 However, the Philosophy of Spirit discussion makes it clear

that there is a continuing need for Protestant Christianity in sustaining the

state, and this need stems precisely from Hegel’s conviction that the state,

like ethical life in general, is sustained essentially through the conviction and

conscience of self-conscious agents.


§2

While we have identified numerous areas of thematic overlap between the

discussion of the relation between religion and the state in the Philosophy of Spirit §552R and similar treatments of that issue in Hegel’s later writings, it

should be clear that the former discussion is of great significance because of

the emphasis that Hegel places there on the issue of individual conscience.

Indeed, Hegel’s emphasis on the continuing need for a predominantly

Protestant conscience within modern ethical life should raise questions for

us concerning some important issues regarding the notion of conscience in

Hegel’s later political thought.

As we saw at the outset, in recent years, commentators like Neuhouser

have been interested in showing that Hegel’s conception of the political im-

portance of conscience is much more compatible with liberal conceptions of

the liberty of conscience than critics like Tugendhat have contended. Indeed,

Neuhouser argues, primarily on the basis of an interpretation of the Philoso-phy of Right, that Hegel’s conception of conscience embodies the same ideal

as that of the “person” at the foundation of Rawls’ conception of justice.39

Specifically, both Hegel and Rawls stress the importance of reflection and

individual self-determination to our moral life and contend that this reflec-

tive agency must be countenanced in the very foundations of our political

life and institutions. However, the point that I would like to stress here is

that, in the writings on religion and history published after the Philosophy of Right—most notably in the Philosophy of Spirit discussion that I’ve been con-

sidering here—Hegel appears to argue for a political limitation to individual

conscience. In suggesting that the “true” conscience of ethical life is, in fact,

none other than the religious conscience of modern Protestantism, Hegel

is committed to the idea that the continuing existence of the free state is

inextricably bound up with this same religious program.

Claims of this kind appear manifestly inconsistent with the contempo-

rary accounts of the foundations of liberalism to which Neuhouser appeals.40

We can make this inconsistency perspicuous by comparing Hegel’s remarks

with some relevant ideas from Rawls. Rawls, like Hegel, acknowledges that

the Protestant Reformation played a significant role in the historical genesis

of liberal political orders. On Rawls’s account, these orders grew out of the

modus vivendi established between Protestants and Catholics following the

horrors of the religious wars of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centu-

ries.41 However, Rawls is emphatic that it would be an error to think that


the origins of liberal political organizations are bound up in an essential way

with the justification of those orders, with the reasons for their legitimacy.

Thus, for Rawls, even though liberal polities owe their genesis to the rise

of Protestantism, a “Protestant state” would be a clear violation of the first

principle of justice, which guarantees to each individual the greatest possible

range and exercise of the basic liberties, among which Rawls importantly

includes the liberty of conscience. Rawls argues that “The state can favor no

particular religion,” and that “The notion of a confessional state is rejected”

on the grounds that such a state would compromise the moral and religious

freedom, the liberty of conscience, of individuals that is guaranteed by the

conception of justice as fairness.42 It is because individuals are understood

to be persons, beings capable of forming and acting on a conception of the

good, that they are to be granted these liberties to act on the basis of their

religious and moral convictions, that is, to act on the basis of their conscience.

Likewise, Rawls contends that recognizing this liberty also entails that tolera-

tion of others with differing conceptions of the good should be a significant

value in a liberal society.43

While Rawls suggests that the rise of Protestantism is significant for the

historical development of liberalism, Hegel’s claims are clearly stronger. Not

only is Protestantism necessary, according to Hegel, for the sustenance of the

free modern state. In addition, it is precisely the ethical conscience of the

individual citizen which must, itself, be Protestant in order for a free state

to exist. What is important about the text of the Philosophy of Spirit §552R is

that it appears to demonstrate an inconsistency between Hegel and Rawls on

precisely the score on which Neuhouser claimed to find consistency. Even

if Hegel’s conception of conscience shares some characteristics with Rawls’s

notion of a person, it cannot be the case that the two concepts embody the

same “ideal” if their consequences are so radically incompatible, namely, a

Protestant state in Hegel’s case, and a state that favors “no particular religion”

in Rawls’s.

This inconsistency points to another. Specifically, it is far from clear

how the demand for a Protestant conscience in the late lectures and writings

is itself consistent with those of the right of the subjective will which Hegel

articulates in the earlier Philosophy of Right. Stating a need for conscientious

uniformity among citizens would introduce limitations on the kinds of con-

victions that could reasonably held within the state. Practically, it is far from

clear how the right of the subjective will possessed by all citizens, especially


non-Protestants, could be respected in such a state, since it is difficult to see

how, for example, Catholics could recognize as good institutions and practices

hostile to their deeply held religious commitments. Even if, through the idea

of subjective right in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel provides the materials for a

defense of the liberty of conscience, the later writings on history and religion

throw significant doubts on the prospect for such a defense.

§3

In the following two sections, I consider possible strategies for interpreting

Hegel’s later writings on conscience that might help to resolve these inconsis-

tencies. In this section, I consider four possible strategies for understanding

the later writings, each of which aims to demonstrate that the inconsistency

between Hegel’s later political thought and contemporary liberalism is, in

some sense, merely illusory. However, I argue that none of these strategies

succeeds in establishing that consistency. In the next and last section, I con-

clude by bracketing concern for that external consistency, and focus instead

on understanding the internal relationship between the Philosophy of Right and the later accounts of conscience and religion.

i. Against the Confessional State

A first strategy for understanding the relationship between Hegel’s later writ-

ings and contemporary liberalism aims to show that even if Hegel ascribes

special legitimacy to a Protestant conscience, this stress bears no great influ-

ence on the scheme of political institutions of a free state. It is clear that

Hegel rejects the idea of a confessional state, in which political offices are

held by religious authorities. As Emil Fackenheim rightly argues, just as Hegel

rejects “a medieval Catholic state (whose religious basis was other-worldly and

authoritarian)” on the grounds that such a state “could give at least limited

disciplined recognition to secular right and law,” so “A state ruled by the

modern Protestant ‘heart’ (which is freed of external authorities and has

descended from heaven to earth) could give no such recognition.”44 Indeed,

Hegel contends that a Protestant state in which positions of government power

were occupied exclusively by religious authorities would give “free scope to

caprice, tyranny, and oppression.”45 Rather, he rejects the confessional state

on the grounds that it is incompatible with freedom, and advocates for some

form of non-establishment, according to which the state endorses no single


church.46 This first interpretive strategy aims to secure consistency between

Hegel’s later political thought and contemporary liberalism by showing

that Hegel’s strictures against the unity of political and religious authority

guarantee liberal freedom of conscience. This interpretation gains support

from Hegel’s arguments that the state oversteps its legitimate authority in

attempting to employ coercive state power in enforcing uniform religious

belief. It is also consistent with Hegel’s view that the public and objective laws

of the state are incapable of recognizing individual conscience in its inward

and “proper form, that is, as subjective knowing.”47 A liberal state recognizes

this inability, and regards attempts to enforce adherence to a single religion

as misguided and unjust.

However, this first strategy fails, since prohibitions against a confessional

state and against religious establishment are not alone sufficient to guarantee

liberal freedom of conscience. For Hegel, we speak of the “state” in two dif-

ferent senses—one narrow, which refers specifically to the government of a

polity, the “political state,”48 and one broad, which refers to “the whole of a

civilly and politically well-organized society.”49 Even if Hegel does not argue

for a Protestant government, for a Protestant “political state,” his remarks

concerning the indivisibility of religious and ethical conscience indicate that

the state in the broad sense, the comprehensive unity of the institutions of

a well-ordered society, would still have to be religious, since the disposition

and conscience of their members would need to be Protestant. Such a de-

mand would violate liberal demands for “neutrality” with regard to different

conceptions of the good.50 It is true that more moderate liberals like Rawls

argue that complete neutrality is impossible, and that certain religious and

philosophical doctrines—especially doctrines that countenance and endorse

liberal institutions—are more likely to flourish within a liberal polity.51 How-

ever, Hegel’s claim is clearly stronger than this. If the central institutions of

the ethical life of the modern state depend for their continued sustenance

on a uniform religious disposition, Hegel is arguing that the adherence to

a specific religion is a necessary condition for a free state, not simply and un-intended consequence of the adoption of free institutions. Hence, pointing to

Hegel’s rejection of a confessional state and religious establishment provides

insufficient help to liberal interpretations.52


ii. Stability

A second interpretive strategy would stress Hegel’s view of Protestantism’s

contribution to the accomplishment of civil stability which liberals like Rawls

also argue is necessary for guaranteeing liberty. It is true that Hegel argues that

stability is possible only in Protestant states. Referring to the persecution of

French Huguenots in the 1830 “Address on the Tercentenary of the Augsburg

Confession,” Hegel indicts “the French kings” whose “ill-starred and terrible

[and, we should note, Catholic] piety . . . drove them to frenzied action—even

with their own hands—against their Protestant subjects, nobility and com-

moners alike, with carnage, plunder, and every kind of atrocity.”53 According

to Hegel, citizens can enjoy stability and security in Catholic states only at

the expense of their freedom and their possessing a rational constitution.54

Since, for Hegel, the only possible religious alternative to Protestantism is

Catholicism, and violence and civil strife will accompany Catholic political

agendas, this second interpretive strategy contends that Hegel endorses Prot-

estantism because it is necessary for political stability.55 Since most liberals

identify the stability of the political order as an important counter-balance to

the kinds of excesses of individualism that might threaten to undermine the

basic institutions of that order,56 this interpretation would retain consistency

between Hegel’s later thought and contemporary liberalism.

Difficulties with this second strategy arise, however, when we ask whether

Hegel really had stability of this kind in mind, or if his convictions concerning

the Protestant character of the state were rather bound up with the fact that

Protestantism is, in a more basic sense, true. Texts like the “Augsburg Confes-

sion” aside, it very much seems as though his endorsement of Protestantism is

based on the latter conviction. After all, we have seen that, in §552R, Hegel

stresses the benefits of Protestantism from the subjective side, as the religious

program that provides the appropriate kind of assurance to the individual

in showing that her political institutions are legitimate because “absolutely

true.” Hence, even if Hegel believed that, from the standpoint of stability and

security, Protestantism is preferable to Catholicism, his claims concerning

the truth of Protestant Christianity suggest that the individual’s conviction of

this truth is more fundamental in Hegel’s philosophical account of modern

political institutions than matters relating to civil stability. Again, Hegel’s

argument does not simply appeal to the pragmatic benefits of Protestantism,

and his account of political institutions appears to be anchored rather in a

specific and exclusive conception of the good.


iii. Protestantism as a Liberal Religion

A third interpretive strategy would be to argue that Hegel’s understanding

of Protestantism is, in some sense, idiosyncratic, and that the primary sense

in which the state is “Protestant” has little to do with “religion,” at least as

that notion is understood from the standpoint of contemporary political

philosophy. Hegel’s views of the political importance of “Protestantism”

therefore need not set him at odds with contemporary liberalism. It is clear

that Hegel’s understanding of Protestantism is unique.57 On the one hand,

Hegel may simply endorse the central principle that animates Protestantism

on the grounds that this same principle underlies the basic social and po-

litical institutions of the modern age. In the “Preface” to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel claims that “the characteristic feature of the modern age” is the

“peculiar principle of Protestantism,” namely the “stubbornness [Eigensinn]

. . . of willing to recognize nothing in one’s disposition that is not justified

through thought.”58 On the other hand, interpreters like Pinkard argue that

Hegel’s praise for Protestantism is not based on his endorsement of Protes-

tant doctrine or belief in a particular “creed” (Konfession), but rather, first

and foremost as a “spirit of reflection [Nachdenken] and higher, more rational Bildung.”59 Pinkard stresses important senses in which Hegel’s conception

of Protestantism differed from those generally held at the level of popular

religious practice in his time (Hegel claims that the churches of the modern

age are, in fact, its universities, and their aim is not to secure salvation for

the chosen few, but rather to promote “the intellectual and moral Bildung of

all”).60 While Pinkard does not assess the significance of this unique concep-

tion of Protestantism for the political question which we are considering here,

it might prove promising for a liberal interpreter. That is, if Protestantism,

for Hegel, is really only a “principle” or Pinkard’s “spirit of reflection,” it is

open to the liberal interpreter to argue that neither runs afoul of liberal con-

ceptions of the appropriate role of religion in political life. Moreover, Hegel

himself stresses that both the Protestant principle and its “spirit of reflection”

promote recognizably liberal values like freedom and formal equality.

The difficulty with this third interpretive strategy is that Hegel clearly

argues that the state requires a religion for its sustenance and preservation,

and religion includes, for Hegel, far more than a set of principles or a spirit

of reflection. First, Hegel stresses in the Religion lectures that, while principles

can have a powerful juridical effect, religion is distinct from politics and

law in being concerned specifically with the individual’s disposition.61 Hegel


stresses the need for Protestantism (and not some other religion) precisely

because of its influence on the development and shaping of a disposition

that is compatible with and oriented towards freedom.62 Principles alone are

not enough, and it is only a religion that can shape the individual’s disposi-

tion in the ways that Hegel deems necessary. Second, while this disposition

may include a specific “spirit of reflection” which we do not find in other

religions, the means by which this disposition is acquired and maintained are

themselves indelibly social. Such a disposition requires a shared way of acting

(a Kultus63) anchored in discursive practices in which individual speak about

the nature and meaning of their spirit.64 It is the Kultus which so profoundly

shapes the individual’s disposition and conscience. Concrete freedom could

not be realized in a political system anchored solely in a formal conception

of freedom, which failed to acknowledge the constitutive role of a particular

subjective disposition.65 Pinkard is no doubt right that Hegel’s understand-

ing of Protestantism is idiosyncratic. However, even if it promotes liberal

values, Protestantism remains for Hegel a religion. Since a free state requires

for its sustenance a common religious disposition among its members, and

not simply a common allegiance to a set of principles, Hegel’s argument is

incompatible with the fundamental liberal conviction that the political order

should not depend on a single and exclusive moral or religious doctrine.

Moreover, since this disposition is only possible through the social Kultus of

a particular religion, Hegel clearly argues that the state requires much more

than a common spirit of reflection. Rather, it depends essentially on the pre-

dominance of a specific religion, and that dependence is again incompatible

with liberal views of the independence of the political order from a specific

religion or conception of the good.

iv. Development and Inconsistency

Finally, it could simply be that Hegel’s later political thought is inconsistent,

and that the apparent modification to the conception of individual conscience

that Hegel put forward in the Philosophy of Right in his subsequent thought

was, from the liberal standpoint at least, simply ill-advised or mistaken. If

this is the case, Neuhouser’s treatment of the issue of conscience could be

right with regard to the Philosophy of Right, but mistaken when considered

in relation to Hegel’s subsequent writings on politics, history, and religion.

More sympathetically, we might understand Hegel’s later political thought

to embody a “development,” in which the Philosophy of Right sits at the begin-


ning of a period of sustained meditation on the nature of modern ethical

life. Indeed, Lawrence Dickey has argued that we find a development of

precisely this kind between the publication of the Philosophy of Right in 1821

and Hegel’s death in 1831, and that this development should prompt us

to reconsider the authority of that earlier work in relation to the other late

writings on politics, history, and religion.66 Of course, even if we identify the

difference between the later systematic view and the initial proposal of the

theory of modern ethical life in the Philosophy of Right as a “development” and

not simply an inconsistency, interpretive questions and problems proliferate.

In particular, proponents of such a “development” view would also need to

answer the question of the extent to which Hegel’s new thinking on the role

of religion in modern political subjectivity compromises what he says about

the general role of subjectivity in ethical life.67

In an important sense, if Hegel did change his mind on this question,

then he changed his mind on one of the enduring questions of the history of

political philosophy, namely the question of whether the existence of a just

polity depends on a conception of the human good shared by its members or

whether such a polity is founded on a principle of individual liberty. However,

this interpretation fails really to settle the specific issue of the consistency of

Hegel’s political thought with contemporary liberalism insofar as it suggests

that Neuhouser’s interpretation might be right with regard to Hegel’s view

in the early 1820s, but wrong with regard to the late 1820s. Of course, we

are then left with the unattractive prospect of settling which of these views

we ought to take to be really Hegel’s. So failing to resolve the inconsistency

internal to Hegel’s mature thought does not really help us to understand the

inconsistency relative to contemporary liberalism.

§4

We are therefore left with a significant interpretive problem. I would like to

conclude by suggesting one plausible strategy for resolving the appearance of

inconsistency between the Philosophy of Right account of subjectivity and the

later writings on the relationship between conscience, religion, and political

life. I bracket concern with the question of the relation of Hegel’s thought to

contemporary political philosophy until the end. I argue that we need to see

the earlier and later accounts of subjectivity to be addressing different problems.

Hegel’s primary aim in the Philosophy of Right is to articulate the social

and institutional conditions for the realization of freedom. This includes an


account of both the idea of freedom itself, which Hegel identifies as “right,”

and of the specific social and institutional arrangements in which that idea is

itself realized, which Hegel calls “ethical life.” The account of right sets out,

in general terms, the normative criteria against which the specific institutions

and practices of a society and state can be measured. These general criteria

are satisfied when those specific institutions and practices make possible a

free life. At the same time, the account of ethical life includes an exposition

of the specific rights and duties afforded by participation in those institutions

and practices.68 The Philosophy of Right is therefore concerned with spelling

out the elements of a condition in which freedom is something already

realized and existent. Hegel’s argument in the “Ethical Life” chapter of the

Philosophy of Right is that freedom is fully realized—and that means that I am

fully free—only through participation in institutions and practices which are

necessarily shared with others.

By contrast, the discussions of conscience which we find in the later

writings address the specific historical conditions under which a free state, one

governed by right, might come into existence in the first place. That is, the

later accounts are not primarily concerned with articulating the normative

standards to which a state must measure up in order to count as free, or even

with explaining which specific configurations of institutions best meet those

standards. Rather, they are concerned first and foremost with identifying how

a state which does satisfy those standards might come into existence in the

course of world history. In this connection, it is important to recall that the

treatment of the relation between the state and religion in the Philosophy of Spirit appears at the conclusion of Hegel’s treatment of world history. Hegel

contends that Protestantism plays such an important role in the genesis of

a free state precisely because the values which he takes to be at the heart of

Protestantism are the same ones which animate and sustain such a state.

We have already seen that Hegel believes that “Protestantism” promotes

many of the same values as are to be realized and protected in the modern

constitutional state. Most importantly, Hegel stresses the centrality of freedom

to both political life and Protestant Christianity: “This is the essential content

of the reformation; human beings are determined by themselves to be free.”69

Hegel identifies Protestantism’s concern with freedom in several ways.

First and foremost, the subjective disposition which Hegel believes is cen-

tral to Protestantism is one which places significant value on subjective freedom.

We saw in §1 above that Hegel stresses that religion in general has a unique


and special influence on the development of the individual’s disposition and

character. However, he also stresses that different religions can promote the

development of different kinds of dispositions. In articulating the specific

value of Protestantism, he again proceeds negatively by way of contrast with

Catholicism. Catholicism demands, Hegel thinks, a non-rational, unquestion-

ing obedience to all manner of external authorities. The Catholic Eucharist,

the institution of the priesthood, the Latin mass, icons, salvation by means

of external works “all bind the spirit beneath a being outside of itself [Außer-

sichsein], through which the spirit’s innermost concept is misunderstood and

inverted, so that right and justice, ethical life and conscience, responsibility

and duty rot at their root.”70 If a people develops a disposition of blind obe-

dience, a “slavery of conscience,” Hegel contends that they cannot expect to

live in a free state. By contrast, Hegel stresses that Protestantism promotes

the kind of disposition necessary for a free state precisely because of the value

that it identifies in individual conscience. While other religions countenance

practical standards external to the individual subject, Protestantism identifies

the individual’s own subjectivity as essential to all action and practice. That is,

Protestantism, in Hegel’s view, not only gives pride of place to the principle

that norms should be justified to thought, thereby ascribing a special authority

to conscience. In addition, as a religion, it helps to cultivate in individuals a

disposition to reflect and seek justifications for their actions and beliefs, by

means of a system of specific institutions and practices. It is Protestantism

which occupies “this higher standpoint, the standpoint of the modern world”:

“Prior sensuous times have something external or given [ein Äußerliches und Gegebenes] before them, be it religion or right; however, conscience knows

itself as thinking, and that this my thinking is alone for me obligatory.”71

In addition to contributing to the development of this free disposition,

Hegel contends that Protestantism makes possible a unique attitude to institu-tions necessary for a free life. Specifically, Hegel argues that Protestantism is

the only religion which enables individuals to countenance and ascribe the

appropriate value to the central institutions of modern ethical life. In place

of Catholic endorsement of chastity, poverty, and unquestioning obedience

to the Vatican, Hegel argues that Protestant Christianity promotes marriage

and family life, the activity and uprightness of the Bürger in civil society, and

the informed obedience to a rational constitution in the state.72 The overall

argument of the “Ethical life” chapter of the Philosophy of Right is simply that

a free life is only possible by active engagement in these institutions, in which


“right,” the existence of freedom, is itself something real or actual. However,

the Protestant can experience this participation in a unique way. That is,

social life is not, for the Protestant, a merely instrumental good necessary for

a spiritual satisfaction found elsewhere. Rather, the Protestant experiences

these “worldly” institutions as “immanently permeated” by “the holy spirit,”

so that “wisdom is concretely present therein and the warrant [Berechtigung] [of those institutions] is determined in themselves.”73 In the language of the

Religion lectures, it is possible for the Protestant to experience the institutions

of the social world as existing in “harmony” with her deeply held religious

convictions.74 That is, in spite of the stubborn insistence on rational justifica-

tion at the heart of the Protestant disposition, Hegel contends that only the

Protestant is capable of experiencing the institutions of modern social life as

freedom-enabling, rather than as unfortunate impediments to their freedom.

In short, Hegel advocates Protestantism not simply because it is consis-tent with the values and institutions of the free constitutional state which he

considers in the “Ethical life” chapter of the Philosophy of Right, but rather

because a specific religion is in fact necessary in order to bring about and

sustain those institutions. Because, as we have seen, Hegel generally believes

that a religion is required to grant to individuals the appropriate confidence

in the legitimacy and truth of their institutions, the religion which secures

that confidence in a free state must itself be a religion of freedom. A free

state is possible, Hegel contends, only if its citizens share a specific subjective

disposition, which places a high value on conscientious affirmability, and

Protestantism is the only religion which places a similar value on subjective

freedom and conscience. Likewise, a free state is possible only if its citizens

can experience participation in its institutions not as impediments to their

freedom, but rather as inherently good. In Hegel’s view, Protestantism is

unique among religions insofar as the Protestant is able to understand the

central institutions of modern social life as supporting and promoting their

most deeply held convictions. It is in this sense that Hegel believes that it

is only in a Protestant state that “right and morality can first be present.”75

Put another way, the existence of a free and just state has specific subjective

conditions, and religion, specifically the religion of Protestant Christianity,

contributes essentially to the satisfaction of those conditions. Hegel’s advo-

cacy of Protestantism is grounded in his conviction that it is the only religion

suitable to a free state.


Having identified that Hegel’s aim in the later writings is to show that

a Protestant conscience is a necessary historical condition for the existence

of a free state, we can now more clearly understand the relationship between

this later account and the earlier account offered in the Philosophy of Right. Most importantly, we need not understand these two accounts to be conflict-

ing or inconsistent. That is, even though Hegel argues in the later writings

that Protestantism is necessary in establishing and sustaining a free state, he

nowhere argues that a Protestant conscience (or any particular religion at all)

is a necessary normative consequence of such a state. As we saw above in §3,

Hegel opposes suggestions that political offices should be held by religious

authorities, and that state power should be employed in the propagation of

religion. Rather, life and activity in civil society should be open to all human

beings, regardless of race or creed,76 the institutions of the state proper which

Hegel outlines in the Philosophy of Right require no direct religious influence

or direction,77 and the state should exercise tolerance in relation to even those

citizens who refuse to recognize direct duties against it.78 This account of the

role that religion will play in the free modern state is by no means inconsistent

with Hegel’s later views on the importance of Protestantism and, in some

ways, seems even to require it. In particular, Hegel claims that the universal

aims of the free state are best promoted and sustained if the state need not

contend with a single, monumental church but rather garner the support of

a plurality of churches.79 Unlike the monolithic Catholic church, Protestant

Christianity was, almost from its founding, characterized by precisely this

diversity and plurality. Protestantism is therefore more likely to countenance

the kind of diversity which Hegel contends is necessary to a free state.

We might state Hegel’s view of the relation between the earlier and

later accounts of conscience as follows: on the one hand, the state which

Hegel describes in the Philosophy of Right in which universal standards of right

are realized will necessarily, as a matter of justice, protect subjective rights

guaranteeing liberty of conscience. On the other hand, the later accounts of

conscience and religion show that a free state, one in which right is realized

and which can afford the protection of such rights, will come to exist and

continue to subsist only if a historical people’s religious convictions include

a strong endorsement of the unique and irreducible value of conscience

and freedom, and of institutional arrangements which make possible the

realization of those values. It is not the role of the state to promote such

religions—indeed, a state governed by right would overstep its legitimate


authority in attempting to do so. Rather, the means by which right becomes

something real is not itself political, and is not the action of any specific

state, but rather the process that Hegel identifies as world history.80 In other

words, the Philosophy of Right shows us that the kind of liberty of conscience

that we find in liberal states is possible only if those states are shaped by

right or justice, while the later accounts show that right alone cannot secure

the conditions for its own existence. Those conditions are satisfied only

through the awakening in a historical people of an interest in freedom which

Hegel believes is supplied through religion. Objective spirit—the domain of

right—therefore depends essentially on subjective conditions which can only

be satisfied by a religion which identifies freedom as a fundamental value.81

The later accounts do not compromise the central claim of the Philosophy of Right, namely that my freedom is fully realized only through my participation

in certain freedom-enabling institutions, which are themselves sustained only

through their common endorsement and support from other agents and

subjects. This point is significant since, even though Hegel contends that

Protestantism can awaken in me an interest in subjective freedom, I need to

acknowledge that that freedom and liberty of conscience is something that I

enjoy fully only through participation in the institutions of modern ethical

life along with other free subjects.82

Having established the coherence of these mature accounts of the

relation between conscience, religion, and the state, I would like, by way of

conclusion, to turn to the issue with which I began, namely that of the relation

between Hegel’s mature thought and contemporary liberalism. According

to the account that I have offered, the later writings do not undermine the

Philosophy of Right’s focus on institutions whose goodness stems primarily

from their contribution to the realization of freedom. That account also gives

pride of place to subjective rights, treating individual conscience especially

as a “a sanctuary which it would be a sacrilege to violate.”83 Rather, the later

writings on conscience and religion point to a different problem. That is,

they show that only certain religions will place the appropriate kind of value

on the freedom which the modern state is to realize, and, because religion

plays a fundamental role in shaping individual conviction, such religions are

necessary for the existence of a society governed by right.

In a sense, the question with which Hegel is wrestling in identifying these

subjective conditions is one which has animated contemporary liberalism.

One of the central issues which Rawls aimed to confront in his later “politi-


cal liberalism” concerned precisely this issue of the subjective conditions for

the existence of a just society. Rawls ultimately argued that a just society is

possible without the kind of common foundational conviction which Hegel

argues is necessary, and which religion is to secure. That is, Rawls’s aim was to

present a scheme for social cooperation that is “freestanding,” not grounded

in any single “comprehensive doctrine,” a conception of “what is of value

in human life,” and which specifies a determinate set of ends and pursuits

for a human life to be good.84 While Rawls acknowledges that individual

confidence in the political institutions of one’s society will require some

manner of underwriting by one’s own comprehensive doctrine, he suggests

that his political conception of justice could be the object of an “overlapping

consensus,” a module which could be incorporated into a diverse range of

those metaphysical, moral, and religious views which provide individuals

with their sense of what is of value in life. In this sense, Rawls would disagree

not so much with the view that political life requires a kind of foundation

in individuals’ convictions concerning what is of value, but rather with the

claim that those convictions need to be drawn from a single religion. While

Hegel contends that Protestantism alone can provide an appropriate founda-

tion for a free state in which right is real, Rawls argues that it is possible for a

pluralistic society also to be just. We can therefore draw the conclusion that,

if Hegel’s political philosophy is liberal, it must be what Rawls would call

a “comprehensive liberalism,” and not the political liberalism which Rawls

developed in his later years.85

The claim that a society governed by a standard of right cannot alone

secure the conditions for its own existence, but rather requires that its mem-

bers share a common interest (in Hegel’s case, this is an interest in freedom)

is one that arises frequently in communitarian criticisms of political liberal-

ism. As, for example, Charles Taylor argues, the existence of a free society

requires a special kind of allegiance, which Taylor identifies as patriotism, which

a commitment to impersonal standards of justice cannot alone provide.86

Taylor criticizes what he calls “procedural liberalism,” according to which

the primary function of society is to facilitate individuals’ pursuit of their

individual life plans without reliance on a single comprehensive conception

of what is good for those individuals. Taylor contends that procedural lib-

eralism cannot account for the value of a kind of freedom indispensible to

political life, namely “citizen liberty, that of the active participant in public

affairs.”87 Citizen liberty is an “immediately common good,” based “on an


identification with others in a particular common enterprise.”88 Against

procedural liberalism, Taylor stresses that this common pursuit requires more

than a “consensus on the rule of right.” Rather, it depends on patriotism,

“a common allegiance to a particular historical community,” and “a love of

the particular” traditions constitutive of that community.89 In short, in order

to be viable, a polity requires a shared attachment to the good common to

its citizens, which in turn depends on a patriotic allegiance to the particular

traditions of that community shared among its citizens.

As his frequent criticisms of the social contract tradition and the atom-

ism underlying it indicate, Hegel certainly shares Taylor’s “holist” political

ontology, since “concrete” freedom is possible only through common engage-

ment in shared institutions. It is also clear that some important parallels

exist between his defense of Protestantism and Taylor’s arguments for the

need for patriotism. Both arise from a common conviction that, as Taylor

says, “the rule of right” is not alone sufficient to render a set of institutions

viable. However, there are some important differences between their views of

what, in addition, is required for a free society. While Hegel too suggests in

the Philosophy of Right that a patriotic disposition will play a significant role

in a free state, that political patriotism is distinct from the kind of common

religious allegiance that is Hegel’s concern in the Philosophy of Spirit.90 As we

have seen, it is essential for Hegel that Protestantism is a religion. His defense

of the contribution that Protestantism makes to the development of the ap-

propriate subjective disposition and attitude towards institutions depends

essentially on the religious character of Protestantism.

We have seen first that Protestantism is essential to the development

of a disposition that is conscientious, that is, that ascribes significant value

to individual reflection and conscientious affirmability. It is true that the

meaning of this commitment to the value of individual conscience is ulti-

mately political—that is, we can achieve full subjective freedom only through

the pursuit of common aims, specifically through participation in rational

institutions. However, the source of this commitment is not itself political,

but rather religious. As we have seen, the source of the conviction that indi-

vidual conscience is something “holy” is religion, which is the ultimate root

of the conviction that the pursuit of freedom is something valuable, which

should be a goal for me. In identifying the source of this conviction in religion,

Hegel’s appeal to Protestantism is therefore very different from Taylor’s appeal


to patriotism, which identifies only a common political interest (and not a

religious one) as essential for the viability of a free society.

However, we have also seen that Hegel endorses Protestantism on the

grounds that it enables a unique kind of institutional participation. That

is, the Protestant is able to affirm as inherently good participation in the

central institutions of modern social life. By contrast, that condition is one

that cannot be enjoyed by adherents to religions which identify the locus of

spiritual satisfaction outside of this world. Hegel is therefore stressing a point

similar to one which Taylor identified with regard to patriotism, namely that

it necessarily involves an engagement with the particular, specifically the

particular traditions and history of one’s own society. However, the engage-

ment with the particular which Hegel believes Protestantism makes possible

is different. It is not an endorsement of the particular qua particular, that is,

the Protestant does not affirm the institutions of modern social life simply

because they are her institutions. Rather, as we have seen, Hegel stresses that

the Protestant experiences those institutions and practices as “immanently

permeated” by “the holy spirit.” That is, she values the particular institutions

of modern social life insofar as they are permeated by the universal standards

of right and morality, or insofar as they realize the idea of freedom. Put

otherwise, the Protestant values her participation in the family, civil society,

and the state not simply because those are the institutional arrangements

in which she was raised—not simply because they belong to her traditional

way of life—but rather because she knows that those particular institutions

are those which realize values that are universal. While Hegel’s argument for

Protestantism does bear important similarities to communitarian conceptions

of politics like that which Taylor advocates, the specifically religious character

of Protestantism distinguishes it essentially from the primarily political aims

which communitarians defend.

It seems therefore that the distinction between liberalism and commu-

nitarianism only provides some help in understanding Hegel’s conception of

the role of religion in political life, insofar as his view appears to fall simply

under neither of these labels. According to the interpretation that I have been

offering here, Hegel’s account of the central institutions of modern social

and political life does give pride of place to rights and values like the liberty

of conscience which are central to liberal accounts of politics. At the same

time, his argument that a state governed by right ultimately has its foundation

or substance not solely in an abstract conception of right, but in a specific


religion which informs the disposition and attitudes of its citizens appears

to bear much in common with communitarian accounts of the conditions

for a viable polity.

In spite of the fact that I believe we can provide a coherent account of

the relationship between religion and conscience in Hegel’s mature political

thought, it should also be clear that my aim here has not been to defend

Hegel’s view. There is indeed much to question in his argument. First, it is far

from clear that his portrayal of “Catholicism” is an accurate one in the pres-

ent day. Notably, the Cathechism does ascribe a special authority to individual

conscience, and does countenance something like the right of the subjective

will in so doing: “Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as

personally to make moral decisions. ‘He must not be forced to act contrary

to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his

conscience especially in religious matters.’”91 This point is significant, since it

brings into question Hegel’s suggestion that it is only Protestant Christianity

which ascribes the right kind of authority to individual conscience. Second,

nor is it clear that religion—at least organized religion—still plays the role for

us today which Hegel suggests it does. That is, it is far from clear that religion

is the place where a people gives definition to what it takes to be true. It

might be objected that in the present day, this collective endeavor to iden-

tify the truth happens outside of the bounds of traditional religion, or that

peoples no longer engage in collective endeavors of this kind at all. In short,

it may not be religion which provides the ultimate standard against which

individuals measure their institutions.92 Granting these questions, however,

Hegel has presented us with a powerful and important argument for the

necessary subjective conditions of a free state. That argument is an urgent

one today just as much for societies that have not traditionally been liberal,

democratic, and pluralistic—since it points both to the importance of specific

subjective dispositions that it is necessary for citizens in such a state to pos-

sess, and to the importance of religion in informing those dispositions93—as

it is for constitutional democracies—since it points to the continuing need

for individuals to value freedom, especially subjective freedom, to bring about

and sustain a just society.

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the meeting of the Society for German

Idealism at the Pacific APA in 2008. I am grateful to the meeting coordinators and participants,


and to Marcos Bisticas-Cocoves for his helpful commentary. Anthony Jensen provided valuable

comments on an early draft of this article. Some material from the final section is drawn from

a paper delivered at the “Hegel’s Absolute Spirit” Conference at Duquesne University in 2010.

My thanks to the conference organizers, and to Nahum Brown for his generous comments.

2. It is equally possible for institutions to lose this grip on individual subjects, and that

loss anticipates the “decline” of a form of ethical life: “As a universal shape in history (with

Socrates, with the Stoics, etc.), there appears the tendency to turn inward, to seek in oneself

and to know and determine from oneself what is right and good. This occurs in epochs

where what counts as right and good in reality and custom can no longer satisfy the better

wills; when the present world of freedom becomes untrue, the will no longer finds itself in

those duties which count as valid, and must seek to win the harmony that has been lost in

reality only in ideal inwardness.” G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts in Theorie Werkausgabe 7, ed. Eva Moldenauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970), §138R, p. 259.

On historical “rot” and decline, see Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §139A, p. 260; and Hegel,

Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Theorie Werkausgabe 12, pp. 276, 318, 323 esp. In

what follows, I use the term “subjectivity” in the specific sense in which Hegel employs that

term in the Philosophy of Right. That is, subjectivity (Subjektivität) is the reflected and reflective

moment of the will, the standpoint of the individual “I,” and it is existent as subjective right

(das Recht des subjektiven Willens, das subjektive Recht). On the relation between the subjectivity

of the will and subjective right, see G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §106, p. 204 and

§107, p. 205 esp. While Hegel elsewhere uses the terms “subject” and even “subjectivity” to

refer to forms of self-consciousness that are not reducible to individual subjects (for example,

the account of the “subject” that is also “substance” in the Phenomenology of Spirit likely refers

to subjectivity in this sense), the closest he comes to ascribing subjectivity to the “world spirit”

in the Philosophy of Right is to identify it as “self-conscious” in the account of world history with

which that text concludes. See for example Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §347, p. 506. In what

follows, I use the following conventions for referring to Hegel’s texts, taking section 140 of

the Philosophie des Rechts as exemplary: §140 refers to the numbered paragraph; §140R refers

to the “Remark” which follows the paragraph; §140A refers to the “Zusatz” or addition which

follows the remark. I employ a similar convention for referring to the Enzyklopädie works.

3. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §142, p. 292.

4. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §122-123, pp. 229-30.


6. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §136A, p. 254.

7. See especially Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §137, pp. 254-55.

8. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §139, pp. 260-61.

9. See Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp,

1979), p. 349. In part, the efficacy of such interpretations no doubt derived from their

consonance with earlier conceptions of Hegel’s political project, according to which Hegel was

thought to be an apologist for the absolutist Prussian monarchy of the early nineteenth century,

and, by some bizarre extension, for the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. The

former charges were leveled by Rudolph Haym in 1857 in his Hegel und seine Zeit (Hildesheim:

Georg Olms, 1962 [reprint]). The latter charges appear in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. 2: The High Tide of Prophecy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).


10. See Ludwig Siep, “The Aufhebung of Morality in Ethical Life,” trans. T. Nenon, Hegel’s Philosophy of Action, ed. L. Stepelevich and D. Lamb (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,

1983), pp. 137-55. See also the excellent discussion of Daniel O. Dahlstrom, “The Dialectic of

Conscience and the Necessity of Morality in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Philosophical Legacies (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), pp. 152-62.

11. See “The Place of Moral Subjectivity in Ethical Life,” the final chapter in Frederick

Neuhouser, The Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

2000), pp. 255-80.

12. Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, pp. 248-49.

13. Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, pp. 227-29 (though the claim that they

share a common “ideal” appears on p. 229). In seeking points of contact and consistency

between Hegel’s thought and liberalism, Neuhouser is far from alone. See also Paul Franco,

“Hegel and Liberalism,” Review of Politics Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn 1997), pp. 831-60, 847-56

esp. Of course, Hegel is also treated as a critic of liberalism and the liberal tradition of political

philosophy by Stephen B. Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1989) and as a communitarian for whom a substantial conception of the good is essential

to any political scheme, by Charles Larmore, in his Patterns of Moral Complexity (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 99-107.

14. Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, p. 228. It remains, however, important

to note that Neuhouser still identifies some important differences between Hegel’s and Rawls’s

views. Specifically, while Rawls appeals to an idea of respect for persons and argues for a clear

limit to the state’s authority, Hegel’s treatment of moral subjectivity rather stresses the need

for a rational affirmability of the state and its central institutions.

15. Ibid.16. As Neuhouser observes, this issue is central to Rawls’s own theory of justice. See also

Will Kymlicka’s identification of this capacity for moral self-determination as central to political

liberalism in Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,

1989), pp. 10ff.

17. My specific concern, in what follows, is with the consistency of Hegel’s account of

the liberty of conscience with contemporary liberal accounts of that liberty. While I dwell

somewhat on the implications of this question for the more general relationship between Hegel

and contemporary liberalism, my main argument concerns the account and justification of

the liberty of conscience within liberal theory.

18. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III, Theorie Werkausgabe 10, §552R,

p. 355.

19. The 1827 version includes only the first two paragraphs of the later edition, concerning,

respectively, the Kantian postulates of practical reason and the place of the “genuine religion” in

ethical life generally. On these textual differences between the three editions of the Enzyklopädie, compare Hegel, Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968-), Band 13, pp. 239ff; Band

19, 388ff; and Band 20, 530ff.

20. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, p. 418.

21. Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 355. See also Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, pp.

68-69.


22. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, pp. 415-16; Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, pp.

355-56; Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 497; Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion

I, in Theorie Werkausgabe 16, p. 236.

23. This important difference is overlooked by most commentators who concentrate

on the Rechtsphilosophie discussion of the relation between religion and the state. See, for

example, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Modern Freedom (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), pp. 618-19. Also

relevant in this capacity is Hegel’s claim in the history lectures “that the state grounds itself in

religion, that it has its roots in religion,” which he takes to mean that “the state has emerged

from religion, now and ever shall be the result of religion, that is, that the principles of the

state must be considered as valid in and for themselves, and they come to be considered this

way only insofar as they are known as determinations of the divine nature.” Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 71.

24. In the Encyclopedia, he claims that “Ethical life is the holy spirit residing in [als inwohnend]

self-consciousness in its real present as the spirit of a people and its individual members”

(Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 355). This claim echoes the treatment of subjectivity in

the introduction to the “Ethical Life” chapter of the Philosophy of Right. See, Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §146ff, pp. 294ff and the related remarks on the role of subjectivity in the state, at

§257, 258, pp. 398ff.

25. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 70.

26. Recent considerations of the role that philosophy plays in Hegel’s political thought

stress a significant role for philosophy in securing this confidence. See, for example, Hans

Friedrich Fulda, “The Rights of Philosophy,” trans. Nicholas Walker in Hegel on Ethics and Politics, ed. Robert B. Pippin and Otfried Höffe (New York: Cambridge University Press,

2004), pp. 21-48; and Richard Velkley, “On Possessed Individualism: Hegel, Socrates’ Daimon

and the Modern State,” Review of Metaphysics Vol. 59, No. 3 (2006), pp. 577-99. Contrast the

account offered by Peperzak according to which “The knowledge that is presupposed in the

rationality of the state’s praxis must be rooted in the self-consciousness of the nation’s spirit. If

this self-knowledge cannot consist of a universally shared philosophy (in the strict conceptual

or ‘scientific’ sense of this word), where then can it be found? Hegel’s answer is religion. It is

one and the same spirit that is actualized objectively or externally in the state and subjectively

in the interiority of religious feelings and faith, and in the ethical Gesinnung that follows from

them. Religion is therefore the foundation (Grundlage) of the state” (Peperzak, Modern Freedom,

p. 622).


28. The argument of the “Manifest Religion” chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit is that

these two understandings of religion—as the project through which a people acquires its own

self-definition and as that whose object is the absolute—really amount to the same thing: In

Christianity, Hegel contends, the religious community comes to understand itself and its own

language as the site of the realization of the divine in the world.

29. Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 356.

30. See Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §136A, p. 254: “Prior sensuous times have something

external and given [ein Äußerliches und Gegebenes] before them, be it religion or right; however,

conscience knows itself as thinking, and that this my thinking is alone for me obligatory

[Verpflichtende].”31. Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, pp. 355-56.



33. See the remarks concerning the relationship between religion and the individual’s

disposition in Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, p. 420; Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 526,

531; Philosophie der Religion, p. 244.

34. In reference to moral conscience, Hegel says “The religious conscience belongs in no

way to this order [Kreis],” i.e. that of morality (Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §137R, p. 256). It

would seem that this religious conscience is (at least a version of) the “true conscience” (das wahrhafte Gewissen) of ethical life, and distinct from the merely “formal conscience” which we

find in morality. See Philosophie des Rechts, §137R, pp. 254-56.

35. On this division, see also Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, pp. 239ff.


37. “With the Catholic religion, no rational constitution is possible; for government and

people must contrarily have this final guarantee in a disposition and can have it only in a

religion which is not opposed to the rational constitution” (Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 531). This criticism is noted by Taylor in Hegel (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1975), p. 453. This is, essentially, a rehearsal of an anti-Catholic argument popular in the

Enlightenment. Compare Locke’s discussion of “papists” in the 1667 “An Essay on Toleration,”

Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 151ff;

also Rousseau’s discussion of “La Religion Civile” in Book IV of Du Contrat Sociale (Paris:

Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), pp. 170-80.

38. With regard to the French Revolution, Hegel suggests that “We ought to identify the

foolishness [Torheit] of the modern age . . . to presume to have undertaken a revolution without

a reformation” (Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 361). Such a reformation is required if individuals

are to be able to identify the institutions of their social order as not simply hollow and pale

reflections of some otherworldly “holiness,” but rather as “permeated” (durchdrungen) with

the holy spirit (Enzyklopädie III, §552R, pp. 358, 359).

39. See again Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, pp. 227-29.

40. I do not intend to make any definitive claims here on the question of whether Hegel’s

political thought is “liberal” in other senses. Within the immediate political context of the

1810s and 1820s, Hegel’s political writings certainly appear to be endorsements of the kinds of

“liberalizing” changes within Prussian political life of the kind which Hardenberg promoted,

rather than the repressive, conservative measures imposed by Metternich through the Carlsbad

Decrees during the Restoration period following the Napoleonic wars. On this issue, see Terry

Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 421-25. I am

grateful to Anthony Jensen for helping me to clarify this point.

41. “The historical origin of political liberalism (and of liberalism more generally) is the

Reformation and its aftermath.” See the “Introduction” to Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded

ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. xxii-xxvi.

42. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971),

pp. 212, 214.

43. “Toleration is not derived from practical necessities or reasons of state. Moral and

religious freedom follows from the principle of equal liberty” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p.

214).

44. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, p. 220.

45. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, p. 238.


46. Hegel’s endorsement of non-establishment is strongest in his discussion of the relation

between church and state in the Philosophy of Right. See Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, pp. 415-

31. See also my “Hegel’s Defense of Toleration,” forthcoming.

47. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §137R, p. 255.

48. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §273, 276, pp. 435, 441.

49. I draw this phrase from Kenneth Westphal, “The Basic Context and Structure of

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 259.

50. On the demand for the state to remain neutral with regard to different conceptions

of the good, see Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, pp. 43ff.

51. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 191-94; Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 153-57.

52. Of course, as Marx suggests, we have perhaps greater reason to be suspicious of

a state that does not explicitly acknowledge its necessary religious foundation. See Karl

Marx, “Zur Judenfrage,” Frühe Schriften I, in Werke I, ed. Hans-Joachim Lieber (Darmstadt:

Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), p. 460.

53. Hegel, “On the Tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession (25 June 1830),” trans.

H. B. Nisbet, Political Writings, ed. Nisbet and Lawrence Dickey (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1999), p. 195. In contrast to these Catholic kings, Hegel rather rosily claims

that “The Protestant princes know that they are acting piously if they shape and administer

the commonwealth in accordance with the eternal rule of justice, and guarantee the security

of the people; and they neither know nor recognize any kind of sanctity but this.”

54. See Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 517.

55. On this score, see also Hegel’s remarks on the 1830 revolution in France, an example of

strife which he claims is the “consequence of a religious conscience which had contradicted the

principles of the state constitution” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, p. 245).

56. Rawls again: “Liberty of conscience is limited . . . by the common interest in public order

and security. The limitation of liberty is justified only when it is necessary for liberty itself, to

prevent an invasion of freedom that would be still worse” (A Theory of Justice, pp. 212, 215).

57. Some commentators argue that Hegel simply gets Lutheranism wrong. Merold

Westphal argues that Hegel, in fact, misconstrues the notion of freedom that we find in

Luther’s Protestantism: “There can be no justification for presenting the Enlightenment

Principle of Autonomy as if it were the principle of Reformation. The differences are too deep

to be papered over so easily” (Westphal, “Hegel and the Reformation,” Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992], p. 157). Of course, if Emil

Fackenheim is right in that “Only the inner bond between secular freedom and Protestant

faith can produce the dynamic which frees the one from being fettered to some status quo

and the other from inactive unworldliness,” then Protestantism alone cannot accomplish the

kind of freedom with which Hegel is concerned (The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], p. 213). On the realization of this bond in

Protestant states, see Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, pp. 242f.

58. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, p. 27.

59. Letter from Hegel to Niethammer, #169 in Briefe von und an Hegel, Vol. I, ed. J. Hoffmeister

(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1969), quoted in Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography, p. 292.


60. Letter from Hegel to Niethammer #309, in Briefe von und an Hegel, Vol. II, quoted in

Pinkard, Hegel, p. 294.


62. Hegel stresses that “The state rests . . . on the ethical disposition [der sittlichen Gesinnung], which rests, in turn, on the religious disposition” (Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 355).

63. On the notion of Kultus, see Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, pp.

202ff. On the uniquely modern Protestant Kultus which is relatively free from external,

“natural” determination, but which instead emphasizes and acknowledges the centrality of

freedom, see Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, pp. 232-36.

64. These features are most apparent in the Phenomenology of Spirit’s discussion of religion.

See especially Hegel, Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner,

1952), §671, 677, pp. 471-72, 474-75.

65. See again the discussion of the relation between religion and the state in the Religion

lectures. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, pp. 244-45.

66. “Hegel develops in his years in Berlin a theory of the modern state in which

Protestantism becomes a political ideology through the agency of Sittlichkeit, and Sittlichkeit becomes an agent of Protestant religious fulfillment in the course of Hegel’s various reflections

on the philosophy of history. For students of his political ideas, this means that the philosophy

of Sittlichkeit can no longer be grasped by studying PR alone. Indeed, despite its monumental

character, PR should not be viewed as the culmination of Hegel’s development as a thinker.

Rather, in keeping with the trajectory of his political thinking in Berlin, it is more accurate

to see PR as beginning a project in which he tries to explain the political interplay between

Protestantism and Sittlichkeit in terms of a philosophy of history in which the modern state

occupies a central place. It is in fact in his reflections on history that he develops an agenda

for political change in Europe as well as in Prussia; and Sittlichkeit is the point on which his

meditations on history, politics, and religion converge” (Lawrence Dickey, “Introduction,”

Hegel: Political Writings, pp. xxii).

67. Walter Jaeschke too claims to find a development in Hegel’s thinking on the relationship

between the state and religion in the Berlin period. On this question specifically, Jaeschke

contends that “One need not fear . . . that Hegel’s demand for the ‘Christianness’ of the state

contradicts the state’s neutrality toward religious communities. In contrast with the legal situation

of his time, but in complete agreement with the more recent theories concerning the relation

between the state and religion, Hegel sees this neutrality as a constituent of the modern state”

(Walter Jaeschke, “Christianity and Secularity in Hegel’s Concept of the State,” The Journal of Religion Vol. 61, No. 3 (1981), p. 142). Of course, if, when Jaeschke mentions “more recent

theories concerning the relation between the state and religion,” he has in mind the liberal

views which we have been considering here, the issue cannot be settled as simply as he suggests.

68. On the reciprocity of rights and duties in ethical life, see Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §155, p. 304.



71. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §136A, p. 254.

72. Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 359. See also Hegel’s discussion in the religion

lectures of the division within political life which plagues Catholics (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, pp. 239ff).


73. Hegel, Enzyklopädie III, §552R, p. 359. See also the discussion of Protestantism in the

history lectures, especially where Hegel argues that Protestantism makes possible a specific

kind of reconciliation of religion with “the worldly” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 502ff).



76. “It belongs to culture, to thinking as consciousness of the individual in the form of

universality, that I be grasped as a universal person in which all are identical. The human being counts in this way simply because they are a human being, not because they are a Jew, Catholic,

Protestant, German, Italian, and so on. This consciousness, which pertains to thought, is of

infinite importance” (Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §209R, pp. 360-61).

77. On the undesirability of the unity of church and state, see Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, p. 428.

78. See, again, Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270R, pp. 420-21 esp.

79. See Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §270, p. 415.

80. World history, as Hegel treats it, is philosophical in that it is not, in the final instance,

concerned with specific political events or the actions of important individuals. Rather, it tracks

important changes in the development of “spirit,” of the normative framework which provides the

basic elements of identity and meaning in terms of which we make sense of the world and ourselves.

81. The claim that religion is necessary to satisfy conditions for the existence of a free

state which the state itself cannot secure indicates that, for Hegel, a state governed by right

requires a clear shared aim among its members. Hegel would therefore clearly disagree with

Kant’s assertion that a just state is possible even for a “nation of devils,” who are motivated

to submit to the demands of right solely out of fear of violence coercion, and not out of a

genuine interest in freedom. See Immanuel Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden,” in Kants Werke, Akademie Textausgabe VIII, Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter, 1968), p. 366. Hegel’s view is closer to Fichte’s. While, in some ways, Fichte shares

Kant’s view of the motivational power of coercion in sustaining a just state, he also suggests

that the law of right binds only “hypothetically” (“If a society of free beings, as such, is to be

possible, so the law of right must count,”), and presupposes a “common will” to live freely

according to standards of right (J. G. Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts in Sämmtliches Werke III, ed. I. H. Fichte [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971], p. 89).

82. Hegel is unambiguous on this point. The kind of freedom that he identifies in the

Philosophy of Right as “concrete” can only exist within a well-developed state. See Hegel,

Philosophie des Rechts, §260, p. 406.

83. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §137R, p. 155. See also the claim in the religion lectures

that, in Protestantism, conscience is something holy (ein Heiliges) that cannot be touched by

the state. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion I, p. 242.

84. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded Ed. (New York: Columbia University Press,

2005), p. 13.

85. This is, in fact, how Rawls claims we ought to understand Hegel’s account in the

Philosophy of Right. See Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. Barbara Herman

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 330.

86. Charles Taylor, “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate,” Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 194ff.


87. Taylor, “Cross-Purposes,” p. 192.



90. Moreover, it is not clear that patriotism is, for Hegel, a simple love of the particular qua

particular. Hegel’s discussion of patriotism in the Philosophy of Right does not explicitly concern

a love of my society’s particular institutions. Rather, it consists in a “trust” that “my substantial

and particular interest is preserved and contained in the interest and purpose of another (here

the state)” (Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, §268, p. 413). Rather than being a love of the particular

qua particular, for Hegel, it seems just as likely that I feel a special allegiance to my particular

society because it promotes universal values like freedom and justice which I hold dear. For an

excellent study of Hegel’s understanding of patriotism, see Lydia Moland, “History and Patriotism

in Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie,” History of Political Thought Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007), pp. 496-519. See

especially Moland’s claim that Hegel thought patriotism included engagement in local affairs, and

awareness of political ideals, but largely did not include the cultivation of nationalist sentiment.

91. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1782, quoting DH 3 #2. I am grateful to Marcos

Bisticas-Cocoves for pointing this out.

92. Of course, Hegel could still respond that individuals nonetheless do have specific

convictions concerning the truth, and it is these convictions which will play an essential role

in political life.

93. This point is clearly significant for those engaged in “nation-building.” Hegel would

certainly argue that it is unreasonable to suggest that the same institutions will perform equally

well for every historical peoples. This is not to say that he would dismiss the suggestion that non-

liberal societies might become liberal, but rather to indicate that he would point to the need to

cultivate the right kinds of subjective dispositions in citizens for such a transition to be effective.

conscience and religion in hegel’s later political philosophy

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