3233113

Société québécoise de science politique
"The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate": Towards a Reconsideration of the Role of Love in
Hegel
Author(s): Alice Ormiston
Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol.
35, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 499-525
Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science
politique
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"The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate":
Towards a Reconsideration of the Role
of Love in Hegel
ALICE ORMISTON Carleton University
Introduction
Hegel's "Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," written in 1798-1799,

constitutes his most extensive consideration of love, and his attempt to
work out why a community based on the immediate bond of love is
not possible for modem individuals.' Although Hegel himself never
published it, because it involved the articulation of a problem for
which he had not yet conceived a solution, it is nevertheless important
as a philosophical text in its own right.2 It is important because in it,
Hegel is attempting to come to terms with what it means to be a mod-
em individual, with the defining feature of modernity at the level of
individual subjectivity. In exploring why a community of love, which
he sees historically manifest in the early followers of Jesus, could not
be sustained by modem individuals, Hegel is seeking to come to grips
with what it is that necessarily makes such a unity impossible to sus-
1 G. W. F. Hegel, "Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," in Early Theological Writ-

ings, trans. by T. M. Knox (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948), 182-301;
Herman Nohl, ed., Hegel's Theologische Jugendschriften (Frankfurt: Minerva
Gmbtt, 1966), henceforth Nohl.
2 Richard Kroner, "Hegel's Philosophical Development," introduction in Early
Theological Writings, 1-66, ranks it with The Phenomenology of Spirit as one of
Hegel's two most enduring texts.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Alkis Kontos, Edward Andrew, Alan Brudner, Reza

Rahbari and the anonymous reviewers of the JOURNAL for their help in the develop-
ment of this article.
Alice Ormiston, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa,

Ontario KIS 5B6; aormisto@ccs.carleton.ca
Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique

35:3 (September/septembre 2002) 499-525
? 2002 Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique)
and/et la Soci6t6 qu6b6coise de science politique
500 ALICE ORMISTON
tain; he is coming to te
izes modems. Thus this
the same relationship t
course does to Rousseau
to come to terms with the modem individual's alienation from a more
primordial knowing due to the development of the principle of reflec-
tive thought. Both pieces thus represent a point of departure for the
thinkers' subsequent philosophical development.3
Rather than as a philosophical text in its own right, however, this
early essay by Hegel has received attention mainly in terms of its
place in the development of his thought.4 It represents a phase when
he believed that love was the highest kind of knowing for humans, a
knowing which could only find objective expression in the religious
symbol. And the inadequacy of love in terms of satisfying the modem
3 Most commentators have discussed the essay in terms of Hegel's attempt to come
to grips with the modern socio-economic reality. For example, Raymond Plant,
Hegel: An Introduction (2nd ed.; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); and Georg
Lukaics, The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Eco-
nomics, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1975). See also
Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit,
1780-1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) more generally on
this confrontation. It is true that Hegel is examining the clash between love and a
world dominated by private property relations, but, as I shall discuss, property
has a deeper root for him in the rise of reflective rationality that fundamentally
characterizes the modem subjectivity. Hence I believe the essay can more prop-
erly be understood in terms of a confrontation with the nature of the modem sub-
jectivity.
4 In the English literature alone there is quite a list of scholars who have sought
insight into Hegel's philosophy through a study of this early essay. Besides Kro-
ner, Lukacs, and Plant already mentioned, there are George Plimpton Adams,
The Mystical Element in Hegel's Early Theological Writings (New York: Gar-
land, 1984) [re-printed from University of California Publications in Philosophy
2 (September 24, 1910) 67-102]; Schlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Mod-
ern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Bernard Cullen,
Hegel's Social and Political Thought: An Introduction (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1979); Henry Harris, "Hegel's Intellectual Development to 1807," in
Frederick Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press,1993), 25-51 and Hegel's Development: Towards the
Sunlight, 1770-1801 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); Dieter Henrich,
"Some Historical Presuppositions of Hegel's System," in Darrel E. Christensen,
ed., Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion: the Wofford Symposium (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 25-44, and "Hegel and Hdlderlin," The Course of
Remembrance and Other Essays on Hilderlin, trans. by Taylor Carmon (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 119-40; Herbert Marcuse, Reason and
Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960); G. R. G. Mure, The Philosophy of
Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); and Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Walter Kaufmann also discusses the
essay but dismisses its significance (Hegel: A Reinterpretation, Texts and Com-
mentary [New York: Doubleday, 1965]).
Abstract. This article examines Hegel's view of love in his "early theological writ-
ing," "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," where he saw love as a basis of autonomy
in the modem self which could overcome the divisions between reason and emotion, self
and other and finite and infinite. The article also examines Hegel's attempt in the essay to
come to grips with why a community of love cannot be sustained by modem individuals.
Consideration of this essay is seen to be valuable because of the insight it offers into the
nature of the modern subjectivity. Even more importantly, it throws a different perspec-
tive on the mature Hegel. Contrary to the feminist view of Hegel as basing his political
community on a reason that is exclusive of love and intuition, and the Marxist view of
him as building the political community upon the abstract labouring will, this article
argues for the ongoing importance of love in Hegel's mature political philosophy. Fur-
thermore, it suggests that the need to protect and preserve the knowledge of love from the
eclipsing effects of a narrow instrumental reasoning was an essential motive in the devel-
opment of Hegel's mature philosophical system.
Resume. Cet article examine la vision de l'amour de Hegel dans son oeuvre theolo-
gique de jeunesse <<L'Esprit du christianisme et son destin>>, vision selon laquelle
l'amour est un des fondements de l'autonomie de la conscience moderne, susceptible de
r6concilier les contradictions entre la raison et l'6motion, le moi et autrui, le fini et l'in-
fini. Le texte s'int6resse 6galement aux efforts que fait Hegel dans cet ouvrage pour com-
prendre l'incapacit6 des individus modernes a soutenir une communaut6 d'amour.
L'6tude de cet essai est importante car elle permet a l'auteur d'approfondir la nature de la
subjectivit6 modeme et de proposer une interpretation des oeuvres de maturit6 du philo-
sophe diff6rente de celles des f6ministes et des marxistes. Pour ces derniers, la commu-
naut6 politique de Hegel est le produit ou de la raison ou de l'abstraite volont6 produc-
tive. Nous soutenons a l'inverse que l'amour conserve une place importante dans la phi-
losophie politique de Hegel. Le besoin de prot6ger et de preserver la connaissance de
l'amour contre les effets r6ducteurs d'une rationalit6 6troite et instrumentale demeure une
preoccupation essentielle du systeme philosophique 61abor6 par Hegel dans sa maturit6.
principle of abstract reasoning and achieving a true reconciliation

between the self and its world is what initiates Hegel's move toward,
first, a philosophy based on intuition,5 and subsequently, the philoso-
phy of the concept.6
With the examination offered here, I do not dispute this view so
much as raise the question of what happens to love as Hegel moves
5 G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Phi-

losophy, trans. by H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1977).
6 See, in particular, Harris' discussion of Hegel's "phenomenological crisis" of
1805 in "Hegel's Intellectual Development," the crisis that constituted Hegel's
break with the "transcendental intuition" of the Differenzschrift and gave birth to
The Phenomenology of Spirit. See also Frederick Beiser, "Introduction: Hegel
and the Problem of Metaphysics," in Frederick Beiser, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1-24; and
Henrich's "Hegel and Hiilderlin," for the most clear and accurate discussions of
these shifts. Kroner runs together the last two phases of Hegel's development and
so cannot adequately account for The Phenomenology. Avineri's extremely accu-
rate and detailed reading of the early texts does not get at the basic question of
the ontological shifts in Hegel's thought.
502 ALICE ORMISTON
into his mature philos

the experience of love
cal system? Such a q
ambiguous in much
Some commentators
knowledge of love as H
tem.7 For others, the
and philosophy remai
avow his earlier emp
sought to find a conce
about the role of lov
fixes his attention spec
tory answer to it, but t
The idea that Hegel l
into the concept, or th
intuition and concept,
of his mature system.
cism of certain femini
the movement from an
civil society, point to
7 Kroner suggests, regretf

to Hegel's Early Theologic
view of Hegel also seem
Political Thought, Marcus
Solomon, whose reduction
taken seriously, suggests t
ogy has relatively little t
Oxford University Press,
with.
8 For Harris, the breach between nature and spirit is decisive, after which point
"substance" cannot be grounded in intuition but in language. See Harris, "And
the Darkness Comprehended It Not: The Origin and Significance of Hegel's Con-
cept of Absolute Spirit," in Theodore E Geraets, ed., Hegel: The Absolute Spirit
(Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), 15-37. Charles Taylor emphasizes
Hegel's move into the self-grounding logical circle (Hegel). Similarly, Henrich in
"Hegel and Holderlin," sees Hegel as breaking with a Hilderlinian intuition of
Being or substance and comprehending love as a relation of opposites. Robert
Williams follows Henrich in this understanding (Recognition Fichte and Hegel
on the Other [Albany: State University of New York Press], 1992). This may
well be Hegel's mature philosophical understanding of love, but it does not
address the question of what role love continues to play in experience.
9 In The Mystical Element in Hegel's Early Theological Writings, Adams suggests:
"perhaps the most interesting and significant problem in the interpretation of the
Hegelian philosophy, and indeed of all absolute idealisms, is precisely this rela-
tion between the two motives of intuition and discursive thought, experience and
its intellectual elaboration, mysticism and rationalism" (69). Laurence Dickey is
one of the only commentators who gives reference to Adams' work.
Reconsideration of the Role of Love in Hegel 503
principle of "blood and hearth," or "reproduction."o10 Love, it i

in Hegel's mature work is restricted to the limited realm of the n
family, constituting only the private life of men, while reason b
the true bond of the political community. Thus while Hegel
acknowledge love and intuitive knowing generally as a moment in
this is seen to be replaced by a conceptual knowing which s
above life and reflects it.
From a less critical standpoint, the emphasis on Hegel's develop-
ment as being one from the standpoint of love to the standpoint of rea-
son has lent support to prominent Marxist appropriations of Hegel,
where the emphasis is on the idea of subjects creating their own world
from the perspective of a critical rationalism." The notion of a deeper
substance or knowledge of unity informing and limiting the will, a
knowledge experienced in intuitive form, is abandoned, just as Marx
strips the substance out of Hegel's ontology in his own attempt to
anthropomorphize it.
Against such views, the consideration of "The Spirit of Chris-
tianity and Its Fate" given here aims to make the argument that, while
Hegel did indeed move away from a philosophy based on intuition and
a community based on the immediate bond of love, the central place
that he assigns to love in this early work is not something that he ever
really abandons at the level of life. The movement towards a commu-
nity based on reason and constructed through the human will, and
towards a philosophy based on the concept rather than upon intuition,
should not lead us into thinking that Hegel meant to leave the intuitive
knowledge of love behind. Rather, as a knowledge of unity, love
remains the source of the modem will in its drive to realize its unity in
the world, albeit a source which becomes unconscious. And the philo-
sophical system, while it does provide a higher form of knowing than
Hegel had earlier conceived as possible, does not thereby seek to
replace the knowledge of love. Rather, the deep antagonism between
10 See Seyla Benhabib, "On Hegel, Women, and Irony," and Mary O'Brien,
"Hegel: Man, Physiology, and Fate," in Patricia J. Mills, ed., Feminist Interpre-
tations of Hegel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996),
25-44 and 177-208, respectively.
11 Kojeve is the most notable here but we find it also in Marcuse (Reason and Revo-
lution) and in Manfred Riedel's Between Tradition and Revolution: The Hegelian
Transformation of Political Philosophy, trans. by Walter Wright (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984). Dickey's Hegel, is an excellent corrective to
this view, arguing that Hegel keeps his earlier idea of homo religiosus but tries to
comprehend how it could be reconciled with the modem reality of the homo eco-
nomicus. See also Miriam Bienenstock, "Hegel's Jena Writings: Recent Trends
in Research," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 11 (1985), 7-15, for
another critique of such Marxist appropriations of Hegel from a similar perspec-
tive to that offered here.
504 ALICE ORMISTON
love and reason with w

essay points towards hi
preserve love against th
abstract rationality. B
this, his most extensiv
lem of the inherent ant
to understand better the
Hegel's Critique of Re
While Hegel ultimately
ment, a study of "The
deep awareness of the n
"instrumental rationali
Enlightenment reasonin
his larger, dialectical th
the claims of the more
essay, he understands r
gaged character of the
that is characterized fu
away from the body, aw
the distant and neutral
thinking that registers
"neutral" judgment of
Hegel will later derisive
In "The Spirit of Chr
nality as fundamentally
societies, with the inca
ful and satisfying bas
ancient Greece, are pre-
they are not marked b
tence. The ethical order
sentiments of individua
commitment to it is im
of reflective rationalit
separation between th
abstract thinking ego a
political community, in
which Hegel sees histor
longer accorded a place
basis of this "unfeeling,
12 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosop
1956), 288; Vorlesungen u
The political philosophy that embodies this reflective separa

of thought and being is found in the early modems such as H
and Locke, who were dominated by the spirit of scientific ration
The isolated self, viewed as an object of science, can be seen
driven merely by appetites and aversions. It realizes itself i
expression of these passions, in the taking of what it wants fro
material world. Furthermore, these passions are seen to be funda
tally idiosyncratic, since nature is no longer regarded or experi
as the locus of one's social identity, the way it had been in trad
communities. Hence the establishment of self in the world thro
property is a fundamentally isolated act, the assertion of an abs
particularity of self in which others cannot share. This is the cha
of private property and of how it is bound up with the self of
reflection.
While there is a conception of unity involved in a society ba
upon the "abstract ego," it is a conceptual unity only, a pu
together of a multitude of individuals according to a principle of
that is external to nature, that exists purely in thought. In contr
traditional societies and customary morality, there is nothing in
nature of individuals that ties them together, no inherent bond of
ing. Rather, nature is understood only as idiosyncrasy and raw de
As Hegel says of Rome, it had "no spiritual centre which it
make the object, occupation and enjoyment of its spirit."'93 Fur
more, while there is a conception of justice here whereby indiv
must respect each other's rights, the experience of fulfilling one'
gation to the other is inherently divisive. One limits one's own
in order to respect the rights of the other. This may indeed const
kind of ethics, based on a unifying principle of equality, but
Hegel, it is only an "equality of enmity."14 One's own interes
always conceived as separate from the interests of others and in
petual tension with those others. At best, what can be achieved
mere balancing or overlapping of fundamentally separate self-in
ests, rather than a unity in something truly common.
The inherent relationship between reflective rationality and
atomistic political community finds its religious counterpart, ac
ing to Hegel, in the Jewish separation of God and man. The not
hauer and Karl Markus Michel, eds., Werke Band 12 (Frankfurt: Suhrk
1970), 351. Hegel maintained and strengthened his critique of a polit
abstract right into his mature philosophy, and hence I use The Philosophy o
tory in concert with "the Spirit of Christianity" essay here to illuminate his
cisms.
13 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 311-12; Vorlesungen uber die Philosoph
Geschichte, 378.
14 Hegel, "Spirit of Christianity," 218; Nohl, 270.
506 ALICE ORMISTON
the Jews that God exis

demned to finitude, is
nature and the viewing
rationality.15 Such a vie
human existence, and i
must project it into th
bound up not only with
from other, as in the so
tion of finite from infini
Furthermore, because
aspect of the self outsid
of a law coming from
with the further separa
had been united in the
Judaism also as a religi
submission to a law giv
ated from within, just
positivism.16
Hegel is hostile to positivity, to a law given outside of the self,
because he is committed to the modem principle of freedom. In spite
of his idealization of ancient Greece, and in spite of his concerns about
the negative effects of reflective thinking, he recognizes, even at this
early stage, that such thinking is bound up with the principle of free-
dom. While in its negative sense thought had tom the individual away
from the unity experienced in ethical substance, such a tearing free
also had a liberating effect. No longer bound by nature to their ethical
15 Hegel's hostile and troubling remarks about the Jews in "The Spirit of Christian-
ity" can be explained as the product of his more general hostility towards the
principle of reflective rationality, even though he has not himself clearly sorted
out the relationship at this point. The essay is a transitional piece, where he con-
fronts reflective thought and private property as realities that cannot be denied
(and in which he sees the Jewish religion as fundamentally implicated), but
which, at the same time, he views largely as negative ones. Only later will he
incorporate this reasoning and private property as essential to the unfolding of
the Absolute. Significantly, his hostile attitude to the Jews disappears in this later
period. See Philosophy of History, 321; Philosophie der Geschichte, 388, for
Hegel's mature understanding of the role of the Jews in history. Emil Fackenheim
recognizes that Hegel's real philosophical point about the Jews regards the other-
ness of the divine in their religion. He acknowledges the element of truth in this
view, but says that Hegel ignores the whole subsequent development of Judaism
from the Middle Ages onwards, developments which make Judaism still a com-
petitor with the divine-human unity that Hegel is putting forth here (Encounters
between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought
[New York: Basic Books, 1973], 111ff.).
16 See Hegel, "The Positivity of the Christian Religion," written in 1795, in Knox,
Early Theological Writings.
substance and accepting its demands in an unreflective manner,

viduals had to find a rational confirmation of what is right. But r
tive thought itself was incapable of generating any content to r
The Roman commitment to the universal that lay against their n
self, the abstract ego and the equally abstract universality of the
that held them all together, was clearly an unsatisfactory basis of
and of community for Hegel.17 And the Jewish projection of the
versal into the beyond was seen as an abdication of the posit
freedom.
While Hegel had earlier looked to Kant's philosophy, to
notion of a larger moral reason, as providing a more meaningfu
of autonomy and unity for the modem self in The Life of Jesus
ment, by the time of the "Spirit of Christianity" essay he sees
position as itself bound up with the divisive limitations of refle
rationality. Indeed, it posits a new division within the self, betw
reason and emotion. As Hegel argues in a now-famous polemi
apparent progress of Kant's position is simply a transition of the
ter from the outside to the inside of the soul:
... between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules
church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the
man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the differ-
ence is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is
free, but that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the
latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.18
Hegel's desire in the "Spirit of Christianity" is to find a basis of

both individual autonomy and of political community that overcomes
the limitations of the reflective rationality, with its harsh separation of
reason and emotion, law and being, self and other, finite and infinite.
And it is in love that he finds such an overcoming. An examination of
Hegel's view of love in this early essay shows in just what sense love
constituted an overcoming of the position of reflective rationality.
17 Indeed, in his critique of the Roman empire in the Philosophy of History Hegel
goes further, tying the principle of abstract right to Rome's immanent decline
into empire, corruption, and disintegration (Philosophy of History, 279ff).
18 Hegel, "Spirit of Christianity," 211; Nohl, 266. While here Hegel seems to lump
Kant together with the narrow, reflective, reasoning of the enlightenment, in the
1801 Differenzschrift he clarifies his relationship to Kant, suggesting that the lat-
ter had achieved a higher philosophical standpoint in his "Transcendental Deduc-
tion," but that he proceeded, like Fichte, to conceptualize the unity of the self-
reflectively, which results in the limitation suggested above.
508 ALICE ORMISTON
Love as the Overcomi

For the Hegel of "The
tutes the highest kind
is because love capture
and from which reflec
The Hegel of the late
ence of his old friend
"Identity" theory. Hold
Schelling and the Rom
knowledge than that o
could overcome the ne
reveal the one-sidednes
in the Identity theory
and, in particular, H
Being.19 According to
viewing it as a neutral
point of modem consc
primal identity that ex
subject and object is th
subjectivity that, in it
this primordial Identity
Reflective thought
unity of existence beca
from object, of concep
or mode of knowing, a
the form of human kn
emotion, of mind and
that only those bless
encounter this knowle
mordial identity, Hege
the experience of Chri
As such, love is not a
view it from the persp
love is the experience
and being, of consciou
it speaks in the langua
concepts. This must no
ever, for it also embr
position of reflective r
primordial experience
19 Henrich, "Some Histor

to 1807," supports the view
time of the "Spirit of Chris
influence of reflective rationality. It is the overcoming of the su

object divide.
What is so significant about this conception of unity, as opp
to the unity manifest in societies governed by custom, as in an
Greece, is that love is a coming back to unity after the sufferin
diremption. And because of this, love is a unity of acute awaren
is the self-consciousness of the unity, a self-consciousness whic
felt. And, most significantly, because it is a self-conscious
achieved after separation, love is compatible with the principle b
that separation, the principle of freedom implicit in reflective th
Love is the finding of what is right in one's own self, not a
abstract ego, nor as the rational moral law divorced from feeling
as a higher unity of the universal and finite being. As this unity,
the transcendence of the negative separations of reflective ration
love is the ultimate realization of the principle of freedom.20 It
Hegel's specific interpretations of the teachings of Jesus in "The
of Christianity" that we can see more clearly the way in which
constitutes an overcoming of the divisions of reflective rationality
Christian Virtue: The Unity of Reason and Emotion

Christian virtue, according to Hegel, was consonant with the m
principle of autonomy, with the idea of adhering to a principle of
that is found within one's own self. But it went beyond the Kan
notion of adhering to the moral law within while subordinating
sensuous desires. Indeed, it is the "fulfilment" of Kantian morali
that through love we realize the Kantian moral law not only wi
rational side of our being, but with the whole of our selves. Love
overcoming of an authority that sets itself against actual being
transcendence of a morality founded on mastery.
Hegel finds this notion of virtue in Jesus' Sermon on the Mo
where virtue is described as a "modification" of the subjective d
sition of love. Rather than ignoring or repressing the sensuous s
the individual, in virtue it is to be raised to a higher unity, whil
moral rule, in turn, becomes something living. Thus it is not a
servient response to a "command" coming either from outs
within the self; instead, one is pulled toward the virtuous actio
the whole of one's being. While, indeed, Christian virtu
expressed in command form by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mou
in "Thou shalt not kill," this is only because the language of refl
thought is inherently incapable of adequately expressing the ki
20 We can see why commentators have pointed to this essay as an early inst
Hegel's dialectic or principle of sublation (Aufhebung), for example, Adam
Mystical Element, and Harris, "Hegel's Intellectual Development," 34.
510 ALICE ORMISTON
unity that virtue repres

It was the figure of Jesu
virtue, for he was the
obedience to his comma
because he himself "
imitate."21
In Jesus, the disposit
action, just as in traditi
the abstract, external n
particular circumstances
text. This is not domina
the action emanates fro
ous side of the self is n
but is engaged as precisely
Fidelity in marriage,
for duty independent o
inclination for one pers
stancy of desire. Nor, in
the moral rule of fidelit
dental balancing of the
must emanate from a hi
love: "This sanctity alo
of his many aspects wh
its head against the wh
stand in the way of the
grates any competing de
Love furthermore overcomes the inevitable clash of duties that
emerges under rule-bound morality. For if moral rules or commands
are considered as absolutes in the multifaceted reality of concrete situ-
ations, we will be faced with the paradoxical situation of having a plu-
rality of absolutes. If this is dealt with by ranking specific duties as to
which is most important, the lower duties take on the status of vices.
Love, on the other hand, is "the one living spirit which acts and
restricts itself in accordance with the whole of the given situation."23
Against the elevation of particular duties as absolute, we have love as
a "living bond of the virtues," their "all-pervasive soul": "It does not
set up a determinate virtue for determinate circumstances, but appears,
even in the most variegated mixture of relations, untorn and unitary.
Its external shape may be modified in infinite ways; it will never have
the same shape twice. Its expression will never be able to afford a rule,
21 Harris, Toward the Sunlight, 402.

23 Ibid., 245; 294.
since it never has the force of a universal opposed to a particula

The root of the virtues is thus not their universality of form, b
unified self, the self of love, from which the virtues emanate a
"modifies" itself according to its context. It is this love, this uni
self, which informs the practice of virtue, which allows for the m
sidedness of the situation and calls forth an action. Rather than con-
sciously invoking one absolute and imposing it on particular circum-
stances, thereby destroying other absolutes that might also find some
rights therein, the virtuous action represents a fusion of the universal
and the particular in life.
Love, then, as the fusion of law and inclination, is meant to over-
come the abstract form of theories of moral law, without transgressing
the rational content of that law. The notion of virtue as a modification
of love finds a way to reconcile sensuous being with ethical action. It
humanizes the morality of Kant, without compromising the moral seri-
ousness of his project, the seriousness of what he expected from
humans as rational beings. The moral law is fulfilled, not out of mere
obedience, but willingly, with one's whole being. This, says Hegel, is
the most genuine "fulfilment" of the moral law. The rational content
of law is no longer set over against being. Rather it now exists as the
real harmony of reason and being that love represents.25
"Reconcilability": The Unity of Self and Other

Christian love also overcomes the atomism of the standpoint of
abstract right, in Hegel's interpretation, by revealing the deeper unity
between self and other from which abstract thought, and the political
philosophy founded upon it, has separated humans. It is upon Jesus'
command to "Love one another" that Hegel develops this notion of a
community based on love. For this "command" contains the idea of a
virtue of "reconcilability," a modification of love that is to govern
one's relations to others.
Reconcilability constitutes an escape from the inherent divi-
siveness of rights-based justice. It constitutes an annulling of the
"equality of enmity" that Hegel had complained of in relation to this
justice. In reconcilability, if one asserts one's right against another,
there must be no hostile reaction in act or feeling. For reconcilability
"even anger is a crime."26 For to feel anger is to feel wronged, and to
want to do wrong in return, or to assert one's rights in the face of the
24 Ibid., 246; 295.

25 A further illustration of how love constitutes an overcoming of the separation of
law and being is found in Hegel's discussion of "fate," in "Spirit of Christian-
ity." This has been well discussed by Adams, The Mystical Element, and others.
26 Hegel, "Spirit of Christianity,"216; Nohl, 269.
512 ALICE ORMISTON
other. Reconcilability,
right as something he
other from a dispositio
with the other that transcends the atomistic relation.
A heart thus lifted above the ties of rights, disentangled from every-
thing objective, has nothing to forgive the offender, for it sacrificed its
right as soon as the object over which it had a right was assailed, and
thus the offender has done no injury to any right at all. Such a heart is
open to reconciliation, for it is able forthwith to reassume any vital rela-
tionship, to re-enter the ties of friendship and love, since it has done no
injury at all to life in itself. On its side there stands in the way no hos-
tile feeling, no consciousness, no demand on another for the restoration
of an infringed right, no pride which would claim from another in a
lower sphere, i.e., in the realm of rights, an acknowledgment of subor-
dination.27
If one continues to assume one's place in the competitive world

regulated by a system of rights, then one will always be involved in an
injury to "life,"28 to the fundamental unity with the other. But if one
withdraws from this system of justice, from the profanity of the public
world, if one stops making claims on others, then there will no longer
be feelings of resentment, hostility and pride. By clearing the self of
these emotions, the way is opened up to love, to the "sensing of a life
similar to one's own"29 that takes individuals back to the truth of their
life and to the real bond of community with others.
But already, in this conception of love, we can see that it is bound
up with a morality of retreat from the modem world. It is impossible
for love to find any existence on the terrain of atomistic individuals
who express themselves in private property. The standpoint of atom-
ism already presupposes the moment of reflective separation from self
and community wherein an experience of true unity could be found.
Reflective rationality is the knife that severs, that cuts into and dis-
tances humans from any previous experience of unity they might have
had. Private property is the expression of that separated self, and its
nature considered only as appetite and idiosyncrasy. Even if common
possession is posited-"community of goods is still only the right of
one or other of the two to the thing."30 What the lovers genuinely
27 Ibid., 236; 286.

28 "Life" is the term that Hegel uses in "Spirit of Christianity" to refer to the
underlying unity of existence, while love is the conscious recapturing of that
unity. See Harris, Toward the Sunlight, 26-27, for a further discussion of this dis-
tinction.
29 Ibid., 247; Nohl, 296.
30 G. W. F. Hegel, "Fragment on Love," trans. by T. M. Knox, Early Theological
Writings, 302-08; "Der Liebe," Nohl, ed., Hegel's Theologische Jugendschriften,
share as a unity cannot be the relation to the external dead objec

belong to them. As a living relation, love cannot penetrate the lif
world of things. Seeking to find its relation to the other, it enco
the impenetrable wall of property, the boundary of the other's e
which it can share nothing, and retreats.
Thus to find unity again, love must go behind the separative
ciple of reflective thought and its expression in private pro
Unlike the unity of individuals in ancient Greek society, in the s
ethical substance which constitutes their being, the unity of lo
implicit and undeveloped, lying beneath the actual existence of
viduals in the world of property relations. To attain the unity of
then, it is necessary to strip away the world of property that hid
smothers the true relation to the other. And because the world of
which the followers of Jesus were a part was so completely dominat
by property relations, because there seemed to be no space for love t
express itself there, opposition to that world became a fundamenta
feature of the community. The purity of the union could only be pr
served by withdrawal. Hence "Jesus required his friends to forsake
father, mother, and everything in order to avoid entry into a leag
with the profane world."31
Nevertheless, by such a retreat, the early Christians could find th
unity they were looking for. And it is in Hegel's discussion of t
"culmination" of the community in the notion of the "Kingdom of
God" that we can understand how such a community of love wa
achieved, and how it represented the experience of the divine in th
finite lives of individuals.
"The Kingdom of God": The Unity of Finite and Infinite

For Hegel, Jesus is not to be understood literally as the son of a tran-
scendent God, but as representing the unity of the finite and the infi-
nite, the idea that there is an infinite principle that exists in this life, a
principle of unity with which we can come into contact and through
which we can find the deeper truth and meaning of existence. But
because individuals were so separated from any experience of the infi-
nite in the Roman world, because they could not find the divine in
their own selves, they required Jesus as a way of becoming conscious
of the divine within, as an intermediary step toward the attainment of
genuine love.
Belief in Jesus as an embodiment of the divine stems, on the one
hand, from a felt absence in one's own life, from the feeling of being
378-82. Harris, in "Hegel's Intellectual Development," argues that Hegel

intended the "Fragment on Love" as a part of the "Spirit of Christianity"essay.
514 ALICE ORMISTON
separated from the who

nition that Jesus represe
exists in a finite form.
understanding; rather,
with the depths of his
through spirit,"33 a sen
recognition also presup
faith is "only possible i
ment which rediscover
believes, even if it be u
nature. "34 Jesus is the
implicitly within each o
Beyond this intermed
sions a "culmination,"
This final stage is an ac
existence of Jesus. Jes
sonality," an "individua
would be an absolute
theirs." 35 The living link
allows no exclusive indi
tionship that Jesus soug
ing of the subject-objec
unity of individuals wit
realized: "Where two or
the midst of them, and s
A further illustration o
of lovers. The joining o
putting together of tw
living link that is said t
rated only in the sense
even this they strive to
this notion is that a co
and difference. In his "
clearly. Love entails th
in the other, a mutual
32 Ibid., 256; 306.

33 Ibid., 239; 289.
34 Ibid., 266; 313; emphasis added.
35 Ibid., 271; 316.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 This realization of the bond of love through the physical act may contain
quences for the community as a whole, as Hegel seems to suggest in his
ence to the "community of wives" (ibid., 280; 323).
the more particularities the lovers encounter in one another, the

aspects of themselves they can reunify and the deeper lov
become. Love "seeks out differences and devises unifications ad
infinitum; it turns to the whole manifold of nature in order to dri
love out of every life. What in the first instance is most the individu
own is united into the whole in the lover's touch and contact; con-
sciousness of a separate self disappears, and all distinction betw
the lovers is annulled."39 We can also see here the distinction from
Platonic love, which is love of the beautiful only, and which ultimately
seeks to leave finite embodiment behind. In Hegel's notion of love, the
finite is not a mere stepping stone to the infinite, but is its ultimate
dwelling place. This is why physical love plays a central role in
Hegel's conception, whereas for Plato it is an inferior expression of
love.
The developed experience of unity with one's fellow human
beings was the true spirit of Christianity according to Hegel, and the
culmination of existence that Jesus preached. A community of individ-
uals who love one another is the true "Kingdom of God," and not
some otherworldly or transcendent existence. Love, as an experience
of the infinite, is an infinite that can live only in and through the finite.
Even as each member of the community must die, the bond of love
that unites them will live on. And it is this bond that gives truth and
meaning to a mortal existence.
In Hegel's discussion of the kind of unity that Christian love
achieves-the unity of reason and emotion, of self and other, of finite
and infinite-we can see the ways in which it constitutes for him the
overcoming of a morality that subjugates feeling, an atomistic society
that ties us together through the cold principle of right and a religion
that strips the world of any spiritual significance. And in portraying it
with the beauty and the feeling that he does, it is clear that he has a
profound investment in the notion that it might have worked. But
already in the analysis we can see the seeds of its failure. For in
retreating behind the world of private property relations, behind the
self of reflective rationality that knows only its own idiosyncrasies and
differences, love fails truly to overcome reflective reasoning. Rather, it
turns its back upon the latter. The principle of reflective rationality
which love was meant to overcome, in fact, turns out to be the "fate"
that continues to plague it. And it is out of Hegel's confrontation with
the clash between love and reason that we can begin to comprehend
the motivating impetus of his mature philosophy.
39 Hegel, "Fragment on Love," 302-08; "Die Liebe," 378-82.
516 ALICE ORMISTON
The Failure of Love as

We have already seen th
tally on a retreat from t
inated early Christiani
sion of love in the wor
absolute particularity of
vation of the bond of
Christian love and the
has been emphasized by
failure of the commun
world, the Christian co
that world. By dismissi
it tremendous importa
itself the ultimate cause
this withdrawal, the e
atively, the communit
and hence by retreat fr
Jesus that bound them
other and in spreading
believing and hoping. T
is deeper; it lies in the
nality within the modern
Ultimately, the escape
ity and its expression
strategy of withdrawa
external governing fac
selves, and it is this de
self of the modem indi
the community of love.
We have already con
transcendence of the p
capturing of the unity
Nevertheless, reflectiv
who participates in a re
merely an emotion, som
Hegel says in his 1800
tion, however divine t
feeling, in which refle
40 Lukacs and Plant, for ex

aspect is bound to be linked
For he seems to attribute t
to such an extent that love
deeper, pointing to the natu
from the other."41 The reason imbedded in love feels this inadeq
feels that it is conditioned by reflective thought in this way. If i
be a true knowledge of the whole, then it knows that it must b
reflection into the experience of the unity. Reflective understan
with all the oppositions it entails, has emerged as a part of the tr
life, and must be accounted for.
How does love deal with the reality of reflective rationality
address its claims so that it can bring that rationality into the un
does so through the objectification of the feeling of love in a wa
can satisfy the reflective understanding of the truth and reality of l
it renders love a knowable object. Otherwise, love's knowledg
always be in competition with the knowledge of the intellect tha
not grasp it, and will always be conditioned by that knowled
harmonize feeling and intellect truly, then, the divine must app
"the invisible spirit must be united with something visible."42 T
says Hegel, is "the supreme need of the human spirit and the ur
religion."43 Thus the religious object is to be the objectification o
subjective experience of the infinite. Religion, and not philosoph
to be the completion of the knowledge of love, its fulfillmen
preservation.
Religion is a rational objectification of the experience of the
divine in life. But we are dealing in religion with a different kind of
reason. It is not the same as a conceptual abstraction. It is not the rea-
son of reflective understanding for which every object is a thing which
can be united with others only under an abstract category, by means of
a barren universal. The religious object is constructed "by means of
fancy,"44 by reason in its imaginative use, a higher form of reason
(inspired by Kant's Vernunfi) which transcends the categories of the
understanding. It is through the intellect in its imaginative use that the
separation between reflection and emotion is overcome, and that the
truth of the religious object can be comprehended.
For the first Christians, the religious object was an immediate
objectification of the feeling of love, a symbol of the unity of life.
While they could not attain such objectification in the world around
them, in relations that had been so de-spiritualized, according to them,
they did achieve it in religious worship. It was in Jesus that they ini-
tially found such an object. He was the image of the unity, of the pure
life in which believers implicitly felt the truth of their own life. And it
was through their imagination that they could recognize him as such,
41 Hegel, "Fragment of a System," trans. by Kroner Early Theological Writings,

314; Nohl, 349.
43 Ibid., 289; 332.
44 Ibid.
518 ALICE ORMISTON
that they could, even

themselves and him.
But the object was inadequate, because they focused on the fact
of his separate individuality, on that which was irrelevant to the truth
of Jesus. By their understanding they saw him as separate from their
own selves, but by love they felt his true reality as the unity of divine
and human, law and being, self and other. Thus with his death they
were devastated by the understanding's belief that "He had taken
everything into the grave with him."45 But by the intuition of love,
they felt his truth persisting after death amongst them, and it was in
the resurrected Jesus that they found their true religious object, that
"love found the objectification of its oneness."46
The resurrection of Jesus was a sign of the genuine union of spirit
and body, the overcoming of the finite human form as fundamentally
particular. The real truth of Jesus was his unity with life, the unity of
the finite and the infinite, of this life with the divine. And this truth
was realized in the living bond of the finite human community. The
finite Jesus had to die, for it was not he himself that was the unity of
God and human, of spirit and body; rather, he only represented that.
The personal, individual Jesus was not what was to be immortalized in
the end, but his existence as the unity of love, the spirit of the whole
which transcends separate individuality (a form imposed by reflec-
tion), and which goes on living in the finite community of which he
had been a part. And with his death and resurrection, the individuals of
the community could come to comprehend this. The resurrected Jesus
was a better sign of the unity that Jesus represented, of his real exis-
tence as the love of the finite community, which enabled the members
of his community to make the final transition to the higher truth, to the
fully developed knowledge of love.
And yet the religious worship, the objectification of the knowl-
edge of love, had an immanent tendency to become positivistic, to be
understood as an external bond uniting them. Ironically, this tendency
was partly a product of the temporary success of the community. And
it points to another intrinsic difficulty in sustaining a community of
love-the problem of size. It has already been discussed how a truly
developed love entailed encountering and overcoming differences in
the other. The intensity and completeness of such a developed love
means that it is exclusive and indifferent to others; it necessarily
restricts itself to a small number of people. Yet the task of the Chris-
tians was to extend love to others, to proselytize and bring more peo-
ple into the community. A large group can live a shared life and expe-
45 Ibid., 291; 333.

46 Ibid., 292; 334.
rience a "common spirit," but it is not the spirit of love, rathe

depends on similarity of need, a common sharing of objects
striving after common goals. And the early Christians would not
promise the spirit of love as the principle of their communi
engaging in activities outside love's boundaries. As the g
expanded, there was no hope of working through individual dif
ences and incorporating them into a higher unity. "For the sake
petty interest, a difference of character in some detail, love woul
been changed into hatred, and a severance from God would have
lowed."47 The only way for them to ward off this danger, says H
was "by an inactive and undeveloped love, i.e., by a love wh
though love is the highest life, remains unliving."48 Rather than
"surrendered" in the higher unity of love, particularity must sim
removed from the possibility of expression.
Because the love of the Christians remained undeveloped, a m
"sensing of a life similar to one's own," as the group enlarged, t
love became more and more fragile, less and less alive. The unde
oped nature of this love was what caused the Christians to se
external source of unity. "Love itself did not create a thoroughg
union between them, and therefore they needed another bond w
would link the group together and in which also the group would
the certainty of the love of all."49 This bond was the "mundane
ity" of the factual Jesus which they continued to read into the p
of the symbol, "hanging on the deified one like lead on the feet
drawing him down to earth."'5 They remained attached to the m
ries of the individual, his activities and his death. They could not
tain the certainty of the truth of love without clinging to the histor
factual reality of Jesus as the criterion for the recognition of their l
The harsh opposition between spirit and body, which the resurr
Jesus was meant to overcome, remained in the tendency to regar
sign as a "vague hovering," "midway between heaven's infi
where there are no barriers, and earth, this collection of plain re
tions."51 Rather than simply the love uniting them, they found
religious object a factual reality, a common master and teacher, t
them together. The divine was something given to them, an
spirit, an external master, not what they themselves had becom
the true realization of freedom.
It remains ambiguous whether, for Hegel, any relationship of
love, no matter how developed, could be strong enough to withstand
47 Ibid., 381; 323.

48 Ibid., 381; 325.
49 Ibid., 294; 336.
50 Ibid., 293; 335.
51 Ibid.
520 ALICE ORMISTON
the crystallizing power

love, any attempt to ex
by this reason to misc
objectified by the intell
and-dried fact."52 Refl
prehending love. As H
"Love ... is the most t
cannot resolve it."53 An
objective expression in
ultimately, in children,
it; for it is the develop
recognition that is resp
ily.54 Furthermore, as
feeling, the bond of lo
through the rational kn
Hence while Hegel doe
the Christian communi
love must be small and
of Right confirms that
resolve is the antagonism
the "Spirit of Christia
reflective rationality fo
tians did find the object
They were capable of un
love given shape. But t
than we. The crudeness of the union between divine and human in the
symbol, a seemingly direct connection between Jesus' actual body and
the ascendance, was compensated for among the early Christians by
this lower development of reflective rationality. "They were breathed
upon by the oriental spirit; the separation of spirit and body was less
complete for them; they regarded fewer things as objects and so
handed fewer things over to intellectual treatment."55 Their imagina-
tion was more capable of finding in the resurrected Jesus the true uni-
fication of spirit and body, feeling and objectivity, and thus of satisfy-
ing the rational self. But even for them the cleft in the symbol between
God and man was there, and so the grasp on the unity was very tenta-
tive. The longing for religion, for a completion of the sense of unity
with life, remained: "even in its highest dreams, even in the transports
of the most finely organized love-breathing souls, it is always con-
fronted by the individual, by something objective and exclusively per-
52 Ibid., 288; 331.

53 Philosophy of Right, 158A.
54 Ibid., 177.
sonal. In all the depths of their beautiful feelings those who fel
longing pined for union with him, though this union, because he
individual, is eternally impossible."56
The continuance of the opposition between God and man exp
enced by the early followers of Jesus has plagued the entire hist
the Christian church, who, in their consciousness, if not in their
ing, have seen God variously as friendly, hating or indifferent t
world, but always as opposed. And as humans became more intel
tual, the incapacity to see any spiritual truth in life was extend
their incapacity to see it in the religious object of Christ. The o
tion between God and human in the symbol was deepened by
imposition of reflective thought, until that symbol, too, became s
a spiritless object.
Hegel's recounting of the ultimate failure of religious objecti
tion, its tendency to become positivistic, confirms that the d
problem which love faced all along, in an era of modernity, was
confrontation with reflective reason. While love did constitute an over-
coming of the negative divisions of reflective rationality, it was never a
complete overcoming. Because reflective rationality ultimately sepa-
rates itself from love and stands outside it, unable to comprehend or
do justice to the deeper truth of existence, love cannot finally tran-
scend that rationality. And yet this reason, and its centrality to the
modem subject, cannot be denied.
Conclusion: Love, Will, and the Task of the Mature Philosophy

The fate of the Christian community appears to be of tragic dimen-
sions, reflecting the fundamental clash between love and reflective
rationality in the modem self, and the apparent triumph of the latter,
with all of the loss that this entails. For Hegel, however, this clash and
this triumph are not ultimate. While he must turn his back on the
notion of a community of love, this rejection is not, in the end, an
abandonment of the truth of love, but only an abandonment of its
immediate form. Love now becomes only the beginning point. To
reclaim life, to actualize its fundamental unity, is to be a task of the
will.
It is in this early essay that Hegel is being forced to come to grips
with the modem principle of will. For will is precisely what emerges
with the reflective separation of thought from nature, of individual
from ethical substance, and with the concomitant demand of the indi-
vidual for self-determination. In Philosophy of Right Hegel is explicit
that will must not be considered separately from thought, as if it were
56 Ibid., 300; 341.
522 ALICE ORMISTON
another faculty, but that

self-assertion of the in
individual as a rational,
private property, which
first, most primitive, ex
Hegel will not only relu
embrace it as a mode of realization of the Absolute. And it is this real-
ity, that the Absolute must include the expression of difference and
particularity, one mode of which exists as private property, that he is
already embracing in his famous statement in the 1800 "Fragment of a
System": "Life is the union of union and non-union."58
But after witnessing Hegel's deep attachment to the principle of
love as the fountain of autonomy, and the overcoming of the division
between reason and nature in the modem self, it should be very diffi-
cult to believe that he so easily abandoned it to the concept of a will
driven purely by the logic of necessity, or by the need to actualize its
own natural potentialities.59 Rather, love is implicitly behind the
movements of the will which we witness in the later works. The drive
of the feudal consciousness in Phenomenology towards a unity with its
objective world, the achievement of reconciliation between the judg-
ing and the acting conscience in that same work, the expression of the
modem will in private property and in the subsequent manifestations
that Hegel traces in Philosophy of Right, the need of that will to objec-
tify its certainty of itself in the world, and the drive of the individual of
civil society towards the knowledge of its unity with others, all of
these movements can only be understood if the will already has some
deeply rooted conviction of its own inherent significance, of its
implicit unity with the world and with other individuals around it. And
these convictions presuppose the knowledge of love. For, as we have
seen, love is precisely the knowledge of the unity of self and other, of
self and world and of self with an infinite principle.
Thus while the will, in its very coming into being, may have sep-
arated itself from the knowledge of love, it is nevertheless uncon-
sciously driven by it. And this unfolding of love is precisely the pro-
cess of "History," according to Hegel: "The process displayed in His-
tory is only the manifestation of Religion as Human Reason-the pro-
duction of the religious principle which dwells in the heart of man,
under the form of Secular Freedom. Thus the discord between the
inner life of the heart and the actual world is removed."60
57 Philosophy of Right, 4, 4A.

59 See Allen Wood's, Hegel's Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), for a version of this latter view.
60 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 335; emphasis added.
A full substantiation of this argument would require a detai

examination of these later texts.61 Nevertheless, it is further sup
by a whole tradition of Hegel scholarship. Much of this scholars
has concerned itself with the relationship between faith and ph
phy in Hegel's thought, and thus has tended to be ignored by m
secular commentators.62 Tracing the continuity of the role of love
Hegel's early to mature work is a way of getting at the fundam
experiential basis of the Absolute in Hegel's thought, a way
may be more palatable to secular readers.
Even though it is impossible adequately to substantiate my a
ment in the space of this article, it may be further evidenced he
pointing out that love continues to constitute the basis for the transc
dence of the position of abstract reflective rationality and the po
associated with it in Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Philosop
History. This overcoming in the mature Hegel is not purely rat
and reflective, where the logical inadequacy of the position of ab
right is recognized. Certainly there is a logical inadequacy, whic
depicts in Philosophy of Right and dramatizes in Philosophy of
tory.63 But at the level of actual individual existence, it presup
more than mere logic-it presupposes the experience of love. It i
61 I trace the implicit role of love in Hegel's mature political philosophy in

Ormiston, "Love and the Will: Hegel and the Spiritual Basis of Modem
tics," (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1998), ch
and 3.
62 See esp. Emil Fackenheim's, The Religious Dimension of Hegel's Tho
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), chap. 4 on the "crucial assumption" of
"Hegelian middle" where Fackenheim argues that Hegel's philosophical sy
requires an experience of the Absolute at the level of life. See also G
Adams, The Mystical Element; Frederick Copleston, "Hegel and the Ration
tion of Mysticism" in Warren E. Steinkraus, ed., New Studies in Hegel's P
phy (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 187-200; Stephen Houl
Freedom, Truth and History: An Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy (Lon
Routledge, 1991), chap. 5; Walter Jaeshcke "Christianity and Seculari
Hegel's Concept of the State," The Journal of Religion 61 (1981), 127-45;
von der Luft, "Would Hegel Have Liked to Burn Down All the Church
Replace Them with Philosophical Academies?" The Modem Schoolma
(1990), 41-56; and Andrew Shanks, Hegel's Political Theology (Camb
Cambridge University Press, 1991). Laurence Dickey (Hegel) and Mi
Bienenstock ("Hegel's Jena Writings") also fit in with this interpretive trad
and are closer to my own approach in focusing on an intuitive knowledg
unity present in Hegel's early writings and continuing on into his mature w
rather than on the religious knowledge of faith.
63 See the transition from "Abstract Right" to "Morality," as well as tha
"The Administration of Justice" to "The Police and Corporation" in the s
on "Civil Society" of Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 82-105, 229-30, respect
See Philosophy of History, 279 ff. for the portrayal of the immanent disin
tion of the Roman empire.
524 ALICE ORMISTON
the utmost significance

know that he sees Chris
empire, the society mos
right and the abstract r
is the case not because i
Hegel's thinking, but be
fies with the early Chr
coming of the standpo
founded purely on re
Hegel.64 Thus while love
of the divisions of refl
basis of that overcomin
Commentators such as
Hegel comes to embrac
importance of labour an
thinking means.65 It is
will something purely s
Absolute Identity, to di
ing and to merge his on
such an exaggeration. B
should not be anathema
dency of the Marxist on
simism, as in the Frank
love seems to take us in
The argument offered
modem will, and the ul
with the world, also hel
philosophy of the conce
form of "right," love w
form, in the valid laws
nity. Hence, unlike the
this is an objectification
perpetually threatened b
ity. But it is now philosop
ity of this objectificati
reflective understandin
in his subsequent period
and which crystallized
64 In The Philosophy of Rig

family, indicating that Heg
ondary importance. The inte
uals must have an experien
extreme individualism of ref
65 See Reidel, Between Trad
ophy is not bound by the limitations of a narrow, abstract ration

but is inherently dialectic; it takes up the standpoint of reflective
nality, shows it its own limitations, and transcends that standpo
the progressive movement towards a higher kind of rational kno
Only such a philosophy can deal with the threat that reflective r
ing poses to love and to any objectification of the reality of love
it does so by incorporating and transcending that reasoning. Th
great importance that Hegel places on philosophy for the rest o
life can be understood, in light of his work on "The Spirit of C
tianity and Its Fate," not in terms of a desire to find a reconcil
merely in the realm of thought, but precisely in the known impe
to protect and preserve the experience of love-the true sourc
reconciliation in life-from the eclipsing effects of the empty,
tific reasoning that dominates the modem spirit.66
66 As Adams says: "What Hegel's later philosophy attempts is the working

the logic of this experience which transcends discursive reason ... it is a l
what may fairly be called the experience of mysticism" (The Mystical Ele
96).

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Société québécoise de science politique

Canadian Political Science Association, Société québécoise de science politique are

ALICE ORMISTON Carleton University

Hegel's "Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," written in 1798-1799,

1 G. W. F. Hegel, "Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate," in Early Theological Writ-

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Alkis Kontos, Edward Andrew, Alan Brudner, Reza

Alice Ormiston, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa,

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique

principle of abstract reasoning and achieving a true reconciliation

5 G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Phi-

into his mature philos

7 Kroner suggests, regretf

principle of "blood and hearth," or "reproduction."o10 Love, it i

love and reason with w

The political philosophy that embodies this reflective separa

the Jews that God exis

substance and accepting its demands in an unreflective manner,

Hegel's desire in the "Spirit of Christianity" is to find a basis of

Love as the Overcomi

19 Henrich, "Some Histor

influence of reflective rationality. It is the overcoming of the su

Christian Virtue: The Unity of Reason and Emotion

unity that virtue repres

21 Harris, Toward the Sunlight, 402.

since it never has the force of a universal opposed to a particula

"Reconcilability": The Unity of Self and Other

24 Ibid., 246; 295.

If one continues to assume one's place in the competitive world

27 Ibid., 236; 286.

share as a unity cannot be the relation to the external dead objec

"The Kingdom of God": The Unity of Finite and Infinite

378-82. Harris, in "Hegel's Intellectual Development," argues that Hegel

separated from the who

32 Ibid., 256; 306.

the more particularities the lovers encounter in one another, the

39 Hegel, "Fragment on Love," 302-08; "Die Liebe," 378-82.

The Failure of Love as

40 Lukacs and Plant, for ex

41 Hegel, "Fragment of a System," trans. by Kroner Early Theological Writings,

that they could, even

45 Ibid., 291; 333.

rience a "common spirit," but it is not the spirit of love, rathe

47 Ibid., 381; 323.

the crystallizing power

52 Ibid., 288; 331.

Conclusion: Love, Will, and the Task of the Mature Philosophy

56 Ibid., 300; 341.

another faculty, but that

57 Philosophy of Right, 4, 4A.

A full substantiation of this argument would require a detai

61 I trace the implicit role of love in Hegel's mature political philosophy in

the utmost significance

64 In The Philosophy of Rig

ophy is not bound by the limitations of a narrow, abstract ration

66 As Adams says: "What Hegel's later philosophy attempts is the working

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