Early Theological Writings

Prefatory Note

P R E F A T O R Y N O T E 0F THE translations in this volume, Professor Kroner is responsible for the Fragment o f a System and the speech On Classical Studies, while I am responsible for The Positivity o f the Christian Religion, The Spirit o f Christianity and Its Fate, and the fragment on Love. With the exception of the speech On Classical Studies, the translations have been made from Herman Nohl's Hegels theologischeJugendschriften (Tiibingen, 1907); the page numbers of that edition have been inserted in parentheses for the convenience of readers who wish to refer to the original German. Nohl printcd in footnotes a number of passages which Hegel had written and then deleted; these, along with most of the drafts and fragments printed in Nohl's appendixes, have been omitted from the translation, although a few of them have been used in the explanatory notes. The use of square brackets indicates that what they inclose was not in Hegel's manuscript; this bracketed material is the translator's except where otherwise stated. All footnotes originating with the translator are numbered; Hegel's own footnotes are marked with asterisks. Although this volume does not comprise all the matcrial collected and published by Nohl, it includes all Hegcl's most important early theological writings. In addition to the omissions mentioned above, I have omitted a series of fragments to which Nohl gave the general title "National Religion and Christianity" and an essay on the "Lifc of Jesus." These have not seemed worth translation-the fragments because they are too fragmentary and are concerned in the main with questions treated more systematically and maturely in the essays which I have translated, the "Life of Jesus" because it is little more than a forced attempt to depict Jesus as a teacher of what is in substance Kant's ethics. Throughout his life, and not least in his early period when he was [ v l P R E F A T O R Y N O T E mainly preoccupied with theological problems, Hegcl was stronglv influenced by the civilization of Greece and Romc. It is for thls reason that his speech On Clilssicd Studies, delivered in 1809, has been included in this volume as an appendix. The Positivity of the ChristianReligion, The Spirit of Christianity, and the Fragment of a System, all now translated for the first time,l were left in manuscript at Hegel9sdeath and remained unpublished (except for fragments in Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel and Haym's book on Hegel andHis Time) until 1907. Since then they have given rise to an immense literature in Germany, Italy, and France, but they are almost unknown in Great Britain and very little known in America. Hegel's manuscripts were untitled; the titles now given to them are Nohl's. The sectional headings, except those unbracketed in The Positivity of the Christian Religion (which are Wegel's), are the translator's. The fragments collected by Noh1 under the general title The Positivity of the ChristianReligim are little more than first drafts; this is clear from their general form as well as from the repetitions they contain. Nonetheless, the gifts of a great historian are foreshadowed in the section on how Christianity conquered paganism, and passage after passage already witnesses to Hegcl's remarkable mastery of language. The Spirit of Christianity is much more carefully elaborated. The manuscript, full as it is of "erasures, reveals prodigious labo~r."~ After years of theological study, Hegel came to the conclusion that the spirit underlying the letter of Christian dogma could be discerned only if he first placed the teaching of Jesus in its historical context; but, when he had done so, what he found was so diffcrent from his earlier rationalism that to understand its implications and to describe it adequately was a formidable task. Throughout the essay his concern is with the spirit of Judaism and the spirit of 1. So far as I know, the only one of Hegel's early theological writings which has previously been translated into any language is his "Life of Jesus." O f this, there is a French translation, with an introduction, by I). D. Rosca (Paris, 1928). 2. Roques, Hegrl, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1912), p. 45. P R E P A T O R Y N O T E Christianity, and he takes the biblical...