Hegel's Writings on Religion

Hegel did not address the topic of religion only for the first time in his Berlin lectures of 1821 and following. There was no topic in which he had a deeper and more abiding interest, as evidenced from his days as a theological student in Tübingen through the years in Jena and Nuremberg. This chapter provides a survey of Hegel’s writings on religion from the 1790s to the early 1820s: Early Theological Writings, Faith and Knowledge, Jena system outlines, Phenomenology of Spirit, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and Hegel’s Foreword to a book by Hinrichs. It is argued that differences between Hegel’s four series of lectures on the philosophy of religion (1821, 1824, 1827, 1831) are of significance, and that spoken lectures display his thinking at its best.