Hegel's theory of religious knowledge
pp. 30-57
in: Frederick Weiss (ed), Beyond epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 1974Abstrakt
Just as Augustine's proof of the existence of God has been described as "neither an argument nor a series of arguments, but a complete metaphysics plus an ethics and a mysticism which crowns it,"1 so Hegel's Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God are a microcosm of his systematic thought. Delivered in the summer semester of 1829, just two years before his death, and apparently intended for publication, they represent a mature statement of themes Hegel had worked on since Bern, Frankfurt, and Jena. Although they are by no means self sufficient, due to Hegel's tendency to summarize at times what he had worked out in detail elsewhere and to the fact that only the cosmological argument gets discussed, they remain, properly supplemented, the best guide to a systematic statement of his theory of religious knowledge.
