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Unit 10: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The uniqueness of Christianity lay in the fact that Jesus combined in him a human body with Notes
being the Son of God. This linked human beings to some infinite values, an eternal destiny,
“religious consciousness” which made the city of God the spiritual world, the individual’s true
home (and not the natural world of the present) the city of humans. A link is established between
the life in the material world and that in the spiritual one. However, placing the entire argument
within his progressive knowledge of history, he asserted that the movement towards this cosmic
unity began with the Romans and reached culmination only in the contemporary world. The rise
of Christianity allowed the re-creation of the spirit of freedom of the Greeks in the contemporary
world. But unlike the Greeks, the Christian doctrine opposed slavery and replaced the customary
morality of the Greeks by a universal spiritual idea of love and fellow feeling.
By the time of Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and
continued for 1000 years of the Byzantine Empire, though the western part was detached from it
by the barbarian invasions. But this Christianity for Hegel was both decadent and stagnant, and
led to the rise of the contemporary world—what Hegel called the Germanic world.
Hegel referred to the entire period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire to his times as the
Germanic period. He used it broadly to include the Scandinavian countries, Holland and also
Great Britain. He also took note of the developments in Italy and France. But all these paled into
insignificance in what Hegel perceived to be the most important happening after the fall of the
Roman Empire : the Reformation, which began in Germany. The German nations “were the first
to attain the consciousness that man, as man, is free, that it is the freedom of spirit which constitutes
its essence”. The thousand years that elapsed between the fall of the Roman Empire and the
Restoration was a tragic period of history. There was a total degeneration of the Church and the
true religious spirit, for there was more insistence on blind obedience, and that was a sad
development of a faith which started with great promise. The Middle Ages, noted Hegel, were “a
long, eventful and terrible night”; that night ended with the dawn of the Renaissance, “that blush
of dawn which after long storms first brokers the return of a bright and glorious day”. Hegel saw
the Reformation as being more important than the Renaissance, and described it as “the all
enlightening Sun”. With the Renaissance and Reformation began the happy period of the modern
age.
The Reformation ended the corruption of the Church, symbolized by Luther’s protest. But it was
not just the achievement of one single individual, rather the lasting achievement of the entire
Germanic people. The two key words that Hegel used for the Reformation were “simplicity” and
“heart”. The Reformation swept away the hold of the Catholic Church with the simple but
revolutionary and explosive formulation that the individual had a direct spiritual relationship
with God (Christ), and as such did not need the mediation of anybody else. The replacement of
Roman Catholicism with Protestantism was not merely a revolt against the oppression of the old
Church, more important, it established the idea of individual identity and salvation. This set aside
the interpretation of scriptures, and there was no compulsion to perform rituals. The judgement of
truth, justness and goodness would be moulded by one’s self. This was the assertion of the free
spirit, which Hegel asserted was the destiny of humankind. The acceptance of individual freedom
based on human rationality and free choice was the crowning glory of modern times.
Hegel saw the aforesaid aspect bringing about significant changes, such as rationalization of
standards to accommodate multitudes of rational people. As such, any claim to universality had
to first satisfy the claim of rationality in all the spheres of social institutions, legal structures,
property, social morality, governmental organizations and the constitution. Since individuals had
the right of free choice, support would emerge only when institutions were based on rational
foundations. In such a situation, arbitrary rules and abuse of power could not exist, thereby
creating a world of harmony between the individual and the real world that he encountered.

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