Hegel's Early Development

and the Gnostic Tradition

Gerry Hanratty
Even during Hegel's early years as a precocious student in the
Gymnasium of Stuttgart he was a keen observer of the cultural
ferment which was occurring in Europe. His concern for the renewal
of culture ~ or for the spiritual, intellectual, moral, aesthetic and
social advancement of mankind ~ was already aroused. While he
supported the ideal of rational enlightenment, he was at the same
time acutely aware of the spiritual, imaginative and experiential
shortcomings of the conception of reason which had emerged in the
eighteenth century. More importantly, it is clear from Hegel's
earliest reflections that the spectrum of gnostic traditions, which
were available in Wiirttemberg, would play a decisive part in his
intellectual development and his attempt to solve the cultural
dilemmas of the age. I During his final years in Stuttgart, according
to H.S. Harris, "he became more and more consciously convinced
that 'truth is a whole', and at the same time that the wholeness of
truth was essentially a process of development".2 The mystical,
chiliastic, pansophic and panvitalistic traditions, which had been
recently revived by the "Swabian Fathers", thus provided a platform
on which he would gradually erect his own distinctive gnostic
system.~
After Hegel's transfer to Tiibingen in 1788, his critical attitude
towards the established forms of religious and social life became
more pronounced. The conservative stance of the theological institute
only deepened his feelings of disillusionment and of resentment
against the religious and political authorities of Wiirttemberg. From
his radical perspective, Wiirttemberg was a microcosm of the corrupt,
artificial, and even inhuman ethos which characterized the modern
age. As Hegel's horizons expanded, however, he became convinced
that the revolutionary ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity
represented the outstanding hope of renewal. And since these ideals
co Philosophical Studies Volume XXXIII (1992), pp. 75-92.
76 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

were transmitted to Germany through Masonic channels, they were

inevitably stamped with the gnostic spirit.4 When Hegel, H6lderlin
and Schelling formed a Masonic Bund or "invisible Church", they
were expressing both their opposition to ecclesiastical and political
institutions and their commitment to an ideal society in which
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity would prevail. Or, in another key,
they linked their chiliastic vision of a radical transformation of the
conditions of existence with the imminent realisation of "the
Kingdom of God". There is further evidence of Hegel's abandonment
of the visible Church, and of his commitment to a chiliastic vision
of the kingdom of God, in the sermons which he preached at
Tiibingen. In the circumstances he was compelled to pay lip service
to the institutional Church and to the orthodox theology of the
institute; but he nevertheless conveyed his conviction that those
who were "children of light", or "new men", were citizens of a
spiritual or inward kingdom rather than of the visible Church. 5
During their Tiibingen years, Hegel, H6lderlin and Schelling also
subscribed to the pan vitalistic slogan of the "One and the All" (hen
kai pan). The slogan was available, of course, in the religious culture
of Wiirttemberg, and Lessing and Herder had accorded it a prominent
role in their works. For Hegel, it was a convenient and succinet
expression of his conviction that reality was an infinite sea of life;
in Harris's words, it "undoubtedly meant for Hegel even in 1791
primarily this living unity of all organic life, this immortal
equilibrium of unstable mortal elements, sustained by the universal
power of life".6
At Tiibingen Hegel became increasingly preoccupied with the
question of how religious experience could become a dynamic or
practical influence on the social and political life of a people. Like
the "Swabian Fathers", he was concerned that "the doctrines and
the force of religion should enter into the web of human feelings,
become associated with human impulses to action, and prove living
and active in them .... ".7 From Hegel's disaffected standpoint,
orthodox and institutional Christianity lacked these qualities; it was
an example of what he now called "objective religion" - a formal,
legalistic and dogmatic creed which was remote from the practical
concerns and aetivities of its adherents. In contrast with the "fetish
faith" and "theological sourdough" which marred institutional
Christianity, Hegel painted an idyllic picture of "subjective religion";
in his view, "subjective religion" enabled people to worship God "in
spirit and in truth", appealed to the "fancy, heart and sensibility"
and enhanced human dignity and freedom. However, "subjective
religion" was not based on mere sentiment or feeling; instead it was
a truly rational religion (reiner Vernunftreligion) which prescinded
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 77

from contingent historical events and traditions. Due to the influence

of Kant's - and more particularly Lessing's - enlightened concepts
of a purely rational religion, Hegel now believed that the "subjective
religion" of all men of good will was essentially the same. As an
illustration of his contention that there was a rational core which
constituted the essence of "subjective religion", he quoted a remark
from Lessing's drama, Nathan the Wise: "What to you makes me a
Christian, makes you to me a Jew".8 However, this rational core had
to be fully integrated into the cultural life of a people. At this stage,
Hegel reflected nostalgically on the popular or "folk-religion"
(Volksreligion) of the Greeks which seemed to him to be an instance
of his idea of a "subjective religion". Here was a model society in
which the religious experience of the people enabled them to exist
harmoniously within the all-embracing wheel of life, pervaded every
aspect of their social life and formed their national spirit. According
to Hegel, the essentially rational and moral spirit of religion was
realised in the community life of the Greeks of the fifth century B.C.
Greek "folk-religion" was the antithesis of that institutional or
"objective" Christianity which was based on "faith in Christ",
demanded obedience to authority, and adherence to dogmatic
formulae which were outside the scope of human reason.
Despite Hegel's critical attitude toward the religious and political
institutions of the time, he nevertheless detected signs of a radical
cultural renewal in the spirit of the age. The exalted tone of a letter,
which he wrote to Schelling from Berne in 1795, shows that he was
inspired by a chiliastic vision of a new order and that he was
convinced that he would play a crucial role in overcoming the
corrupt and inhuman conditions which prevailed:
I believe there is no better sign of the times than this, that
humanity is set forth to itself as so worthy of respect; a proof is
that the halo round the heads of the oppressors and gods of the
earth is disappearing. The philosophers are proving this
worthiness, the peoples will come to feel it and not simply ask
for their rights which are now brought low in the dust, but take
back themselves - repossess themselves (sich aneignen). Religion
and politics have played the same hidden game together (haben
unter einer Decke gespielt), the former has taught, what despotism
willed, the dishonouring of the human race, its inability to
achieve any good, or to amount to anything on its own. With
the spread of the ideals (der Ideen) of how things ought to be,
the apathetic tendency of the solid citizens [die Indolenz der
gesetzten Leute] to accept everything always just as it is, will
disappear. .. I exhort myself always in the words of the
78 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

Lebenslaufe: 'Strive toward the sun my friends, that the salvation

of the human race may soon come to fruition. What use the
hindering leaves? or the branches? Cleave through them to the
sunlight, and strive till ye be weary. 'Tis good so, for so shall ye
sleep the better'.9
Hegel's path to the sun now involved him in an attempt to grasp the
essential meaning of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus.
Predictably, his principal concern was to extract the rational content
or the eternal message from the incidental, and often incompatible,
historical details which the Gospels recorded. Since Hegel aimed to
"fulfil" rather than interpret the Gospels, he could alter or expand
even the words which the Evangelists ascribed to Jesus. It is clear
from the first paragraph of The Lile ol Jesus, which he wrote in 1795,
that he was now expounding a new Gospel of Reason, or, in a phrase
which was derived from Meister Eckhart, of that "divine spark"
which constituted the real essence of man:
Reason [Vernunft] pure and exceeding all limits is the Godhead
itself - According to Reason therefore is the plan of the world
in general ordered (John I); Reason it is which teaches man to
recognize his vocation [Bestimmung], an unconditional purpose
of his life; often indeed it is obscured but never wholly quenched,
even in the darkness he has always retained a faint glimmer of
it - Among the Jews it was John who made man conscious of
this their dignity - which ought not to be something foreign to
them, but which is to be sought for in itself, in their true self,
not in their lineage, and not in the urge towards happiness. It
is not be sought in being servants of a man greatly revered
[Moses, explicitly, but by implication Jesus himself also], but in
the development of the divine spark which has been allotted to
them, which bears witness to them, that in a sublime sense they
are the children of God rather than of Abraham - The
development of Reason is the unique source of truth and peace
of mind, which John perchance did not proclaim as belonging
exclusively or exceptionally to him but which on the contrary
all men could open up in themselves. 10
Hegel's statement of principle at the outset of The Life ol Jesus was
an expansion rather than an interpretation of the Prologue to his
favourite Gospel, that of St. John. And when the four Gospel records
were placed before the tribunal of reason, the picture of Jesus which
emerged was that of a teacher of "subjective religion" as Hegel now
defined it. Jesus did not perform any miracles; he did not demand
that his followers should have faith in him or submit to his authority.
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 79

Instead, he was an outstanding moral teacher who tried to inculcate

in his followers an awareness of their dignity and freedom as rational
beings.
In view of Hegel's preoccupation with the meaning of the life and
teaching of Jesus, another of his letters to Schelling casts an
interesting light on his attitude towards the early development of
Christianity. In his letter, Hegel commented on Schelling's thesis,
De Marcione, which was concerned with one of the variants of the
original gnostic heresy. Significantly, however, Hegel's comment was
an almost verbatim repetition of the thesis which had been advanced
by Gottfried Arnold:
I have found in it especially confirmation for one suspicion,
which I have already harboured for a long time, that it would
perhaps have turned out more honourably for us and for
mankind, if one or other (and no matter which) of the heresies
damned by Councils and Symbols had developed into the public
system of belief, instead of the orthodox system maintaining the
upper hand. l l
The question which now presented itself to Hegel was how the
"subjective religion" of Jesus had become an "objective", or, as he
now called it, a "positive" religious system. Among the causes of the
decline, Hegel argued in The Positivity of the Christian Religion,12
were the circumstances in which Jesus lived and worked. Judaism,
at the time of Jesus, seemed to him to be the epitome of a positive
religion; its adherents passively accepted "legislation from the
supreme wisdom on high"; they were "overwhelmed by a burden of
statutory commands" or "dead formulas" and preoccupied "with
petty, mechanical, spiritless and trivial usages". While Jesus himself
was free from this contagion, he simply had to come to terms with
the degenerate moral condition of those among whom he lived and
taught. In order to communicate with his contemporaries, he had
"to demand faith in his person" and situate himself within the
context of Jewish messianic expectations. An even more crucial role
in determining the positive character of the Christian religion was
played by the disciples of Jesus who superstitiously ascribed
superhuman powers to him and "elevated his religious doctrine into
a peculiar sect distinguished by practices of its own". In their
preaching the disciples appealed to the authority which Jesus had
conferred on them and thus founded a positive religious system.
Furthermore, the positive elements in Christianity became more
deeply entrenched when it formed an alliance with civil and state
institutions. In this situation, there was no longer any distinction
between those who were truly religious and who were therefore
80 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

"citizens of the moral realm, i.e. of the invisible church" and those
members of the "society of the 'positive' Christian sect" which was
identical with the state. All the Christian denominations, Hegel
believed, had succumbed to the lure of becoming positive religious
systems. "The fundamental error at the bottom of a church's entire
system", he wrote, "is that it ignores the rights pertaining to every
faculty of the human mind, in particular of the chief of them, reason.
Once the church's system ignores reason, it can be nothing save a
system which despises men".13 Significantly, however, Hegel saw a
glimmer of light in the emergence of groups such as the Beghards
and Beguines in the middle ages and their successors in modern
times; these groups represented isolated assertions of the dignity and
freedom of human nature against the dogmatic and authoritarian
character of positive Christianity.
At the end of the essay Hegel located the fundamental defects of
positive Christianity in its erroneous conceptions of human nature
and of man's relation to God. Because positive Christianity
emphasized God's transcendence, "objectivity" and absolute self-
sufficiency, it diminished man's status and compromised his freedom
and dignity. In Hegel's words: "The doctrine of God's objectivity is
a counterpart to the corruption and slavery of man, ... ".'4 Despite
Hegel's disenchantment with positive Christianity, he nevertheless
focused his attention once more on the life and teaching of Jesus
which he now saw in an even more sympathetic light. Jesus, he
acknowledged, had recognized that "human nature had needs which
it cannot itself satisfy, that its highest needs are of this sort". And
in the context of these religious needs, Jesus' teaching concerning
the infinite God became more intelligible. This original teaching
even contained the germ of a solution to the most fundamental of
all questions - the relation between the finite and the infinite:
This view of the relation between man and the Christian religion
cannot in itself exactly be called positive; it rests on the surely
beautiful presupposition that everything high, noble, and good
in man is divine, that it comes from God and is his spirit, issuing
from himself. But this view becomes glaringly positive if human
nature is absolutely severed from the divine, if no mediation
between the two is conceded except in one isolated individual,
if all man's consciousness of the good and the divine is degraded
to the dull and killing belief in a superior Being altogether alien
to man.
It is obvious that an examination of this question cannot be
thoughtfully and thoroughly pursued without becoming in the
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 81

end a metaphysical treatment of the relation between the finite

and the infinite. I5
In the light of Hegel's emphasis on the divine presence in man, and
his concern with the metaphysical question of the relation of the
finite and the infinite, it is significant that he was at this time
engaged in a study of the medieval German mystics, that he was
particularly impressed by some of the most extravagant passages of
Eckhart's sermons, and that the emergence of heretical groups, like
the Brethren of the Free Spirit, seemed to him to have been an
authentic reaction against the concept of a transcendent or objective
God. In another key, Hegel drew on Masonic imagery and symbolism
in a poem, Eleusis, which he dedicated to Holderlin in 1796.
Essentially, the poem was an evocation of the mystical experience
of a breakthrough to union with the infinite spirit or the absorption
of the self in the all-encompassing sea of life:
I raised my eye to the timeless vault of heaven
To you, shining star of the night.
Now, prayers and hopes which were unanswered,
And submerged desires and expectations,
Were fulfilled in your eternal nature.
In the intuitive vision which I enjoyed
The senses played no part.
My inmost self lost its identity
I abandoned myself to the infinite
I am in the infinite, I am the all,
and only the all. 16
In writing thus to Holderlin, Hegel was addressing an initiate with
whom he shared the prisca theologia which was contained in the
venerable mysteries of Eleusis; he was describing a gnostic experience
of an ascent beyond the limits of the human condition or the return
of the divine self to its eternal homeland. There is further evidence
of Hegel's desire to construct a chiliastic gnostic system in a short
fragment which he composed in 1796. "Thus in the end", he wrote,
"enlightened and unenlightened must clasp hands, mythology must
become philosophical (in order to) make the philosophers sensible.
Then reigns eternal unity among us ... No power shall any longer
be suppressed, for universal freedom and equality of spirits will
reign. A higher spirit sent from heaven must found this new religion
among us, it will be the last and the greatest work of mankind."17
Hegel's search for a new religion, and for a solution to the
metaphysical question of the relation of the finite to the infinite, led
him to reflect once more on the contrast between the spirit of
82 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

Judaism and the life and teaching of Jesus. On the basis of a

superficial, and even partisan, interpretation of the history of the
Jews, Hegel concluded that their fate could "arouse horror alone".
Because they thought of their God as a "perfect Object on high",
"an invisible ruler", and "the infinite object, the sum of all truth
and all relations" they were a passive and servile people; their tragic
fate was due to their inability to emerge from their "bondage to an
alien Lord" or overcome the "infinite separation" between themselves
and their God. 18 In his life and teaching, on the other hand, Jesus
showed himself to be totally opposed to the Jewish spirit. Instead of
the infinite separation between man and God, which was the
cornerstone of the Jewish religion, he tried to awaken an awareness
of the divine presence which corresponded to "a human urge and so
a human need". Furthermore, in Hegel's view, Jesus' moral teaching
was superior to that of Kant, which, although it abolished the
separation between man and an alien lord, nevertheless posited an
opposition between human reason and inclination or between the
command of duty and the pull of desire. The adherents of Judaism,
in Hegel's words, "have their own lord outside themselves, while the
latter [i.e. the Kantian moralist] carried his lord in himself, yet at
the same time is his own slave".19 However, Jesus' teaching was on
a higher plane than the Kantian version of the moral law. When
Jesus preached the superiority of love, He was referring to "that
which fulfils the law but anuls it as law and so is something higher
than obedience to law and makes law superfluous".20 Jesus' teaching
on love was thus invested with metaphysical significance; love
inspired "a feeling for the whole" and effected a "synthesis of subject
and object, in which subject and object have lost their opposition".21
More importantly, Jesus' teaching anticipated the panvitalistic
metaphysics which Hegel had shared with H6lderlin and Schelling.
"In the 'fulfilment' of both the laws and duty", Hegel wrote, "their
concomitant, however, the moral disposition, etc., ceases to be the
universal opposed to inclination, and inclination ceases to be
particular, opposed to the law, and therefore this correspondence of
law and inclination is life, and as the relation of differents to one
another, love".22
From Hegel's perspective, therefore, Jesus transcended the
categories of justice and injustice and of law and retribution. The
all-embracing metaphysical framework cancelled these categories
and set them in the context of the "fulness" of divine life or love. In
Hegel's terms, the forgiveness which Jesus taught and effected was
a reconciliation of the sinner with fate and ultimately, with the
infinite life which was now known to be present in the life of the
sinner:
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 83

This sensing of life, a sensing which finds itself again, is love,

and in love fate is reconciled. Thus considered, the trespasser's
deed is no fragment; the action which issues from life, from the
whole, also reveals the whole. But the trespass which is a
transgression of law is only a fragment, since there is outside it
from the start the law which does not belong to it. The trespass
which issues from life reveals the whole, but as divided, and the
hostile parts can coalesce again into the whole. Justice is
satisfied, since the trespasser has sensed as injured in himself
the same life that he has injured. 23
If Jesus thus anticipated the panvitalistic metaphysics which Hegel
espoused, He also exemplified the dialectical process of exodus and
return which occurred within the infinite circle of life. Jesus was, in
effect, a symbol of the ultimate reconciliation of all oppositions
within the comprehensive framework of Life. "Between sin and its
forgiveness". Hegel wrote, "there is as little place for an alien thing
as there is between sin and punishment. Life has severed itself from
itself and united itself again".24 Furthermore, Hegel saw Jesus as a
symbol of the elevation of man to the status of identity with the
infinite whole of life. When Jesus asked for faith in Himself, He was
not asserting His superiority over others. Rather He wished to evoke
in His hearers an awareness of the presence of divine life in
themselves and their unity with Him and the totality of life. Through
the love which He exemplified Jesus exhibited the fundamental unity
of man with the infinite whole of life. Or, in the language which
Hegel now used, Jesus was a symbol of the unity of the finite human
spirit with the infinite divine spirit. "Love", he asserted, "is a unity
of spirit, divinity. To love God is to feel one's self in the 'all' of life,
with no restrictions, in the infinite".25
Predictably, Hegel found further confirmation of his panvitalistic
metaphysics in the Gospel of St. John. Although St. John could only
express his comprehensive vision in an imperfect way, the "sense
and weight" of his teaching could nevertheless be appropriated by
"the spirit of the reader" who, like Hegel, had reached a superior
gnostic standpoint. Thus Hegel found in St. John's portrayal of the
relationship of the Father with the Son, or of God with the Logos,
an approximation to his own vision of the essential unity of the
whole of life. And in his exposition of the implications of the
Johannine teaching he incorporated the symbol of the tree of life
which Jakob Boehme had used to express the content of his gnostic
VISIOn:

God and the Logos are only different in that God is matter in
the form of the Logos: the Logos itself is with God; both are

G
84 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

one. The multiplicity, the infinity, of the real is the infinite

divisibility realised: by the Logos all things are made; the world
is not an emanation of the Deity, or otherwise the real world
would be through and through divine. Yet, as real, it is an
emanation, a part of the infinite partitioning, though in the part
or in the one who partitions ad infinitum, there is life. The
single entity, the restricted entity, as something opposed to life,
something dead, is yet a branch of the infinite tree of life. Each
part, to which the whole is external, is yet a whole, a life. And
this life, once again as something reflected upon, as divided by
reflection into the relation of subject and predicate, is life and
life understood (truth).26
Hegel had thus extracted what he took to be an implication of St.
John's theology. From St. John's reflective or conceptual account of
the unity of the Father and the Son, he has drawn the conclusion
that both were "simply modifications of the same life" and, even
more importantly, that in the whole of life "the individual ... or the
part of the whole is one and the same as the whole".27 It is also
significant that, in his attempt to elucidate his vision of the essential
unity of life, and in his assimilation of finite spirit to infinite spirit,
Hegel reverted once more to Eckhart's teaching on the presence of
a divine spark or element in the soul and to Boehme's use of the
symbolism of fire:
The relation of spirit to spirit is a feeling of harmony, is their
unification. .. Faith in the divine is only possible if in the
believer himself there is a divine element which rediscovers
itself, its own nature, in that on which it believes, even if it be
unconscious that what it has found is its own nature. In every
man there is light and life; he is the property of the light. He is
not illuminated by a light in the way in which a dark body is
when it borrows a brightness not its own; on the contrary his
own inflammability takes fire and he burns with a flame that is
his own ... Hence faith in the divine grows out of the divinity
of the believer's own nature; only a modification of the Godhead
can know the Godhead. 28
Hegel's gnosis extended even further than this level of faith in the
divine and the recognition of the divinity of the self. There was, he
now argued, a crucial difference between those who, through their
faith in Jesus, recognized their divine status, and those who were
fully initiated "children of light". While the former depended on
Jesus and acknowledged a distinction between His essence and their
own, the latter had attained the fulness of light and life. In Hegel's
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 85

view, the death of Jesus, and the subsequent descent of the third
person of the Trinity, symbolized a more developed awareness of the
unity of the self with the infinite whole of life and a more
comprehensive knowledge of the intradivine process which comprised
the totality of being, The Christian mystery of the Trinity symbolized
at once the phases of man's ascent to gnosis and the panvitalistic
metaphysics which Hegel espoused:
The culmination of faith, the return to the Godhead whence man
is born, closes the circle of man's development. Everything lives
in the Godhead, every living thing is its child, but the child
carries the unity, the connection, the concord with the entire
harmony, undisturbed though undeveloped, in itself. It begins
with the faith in gods outside itself, with fear, until through its
actions it has isolated and separated itself more and more; but
then it returns through associations to the original unity which
now is developed, self-produced, and sensed as a unity. The child,
now knows God, i.e. the Spirit of God is present in the child,
issues from its restrictions, annuls the modification, and restores
the whole. God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.29
Following this gnostic expansion of the doctrine of the Trinity,
Hegel linked the reception of the third Person of the Trinity with
the ideal which had inspired him from his youth - the realisation
of the Kingdom of God. Those who were "filled with the Holy Spirit",
and who were therefore "children of light", lived in perfect harmony
with one another and with the whole of being. From their higher
standpoint, they knew that all oppositions were annulled in the
unity of divine life which permeated all reality. "The idea of a
Kingdom of God", Hegel wrote, "completes and comprises the whole
of the Christian religion as Jesus founded it ... In the Kingdom of
God what is common to all is life in .God. This is not the common
character which a concept expresses, but is love, a living bond which
unites the believers; it is this feeling of unity of life; a feeling in
which all oppositions, as pure emnities, and also rights, as unifications
of still subsisting oppositions, are annulled .... Is there an idea more
uplifting than that of belonging to a whole which as a whole, as
one, is the spirit of God ... ?"ao
It was in a religious context, therefore - and specifically in a
gnostic reconstruction of the Christian religion - that Hegel found
the realisation of his youthful ideal of an integrated, harmonious
and free existence. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and
in the doctrine of the Trinity, he discerned an anticipation of the
all-embracing vision which he now possessed. It was love which
annulled and ultimately reconciled all the divisions within the unity
86 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

of Life or Spirit. And most importantly, it was love which finally

overcame the distinction between the finite or determinate and the
infinite or indeterminate, by situating them in a dialectical
relationship within the unity of life. Hegel was clearly extrapolating
from the central Christian event of the Incarnation when he wrote:
"If the divine is to appear, the invisible spirit must be united with
something visible so that the whole may be unified, so that knowing
and feeling, harmony and the harmonious may be one, so that there
may be a complete synthesis, a perfected harmony".31 Philosophical
reflection which "stops short of religion" could not bridge the gulf
which separated God from nature or infinite Spirit from finite spirit.
The rich and varied symbols of Christianity, on the other hand,
which were forms of life rather than of reflection, were more flexible
and thus suggested to Hegel that there was a dialectial relationship
between the "absolute opposites" of Spirit and Nature which were
nevertheless reconciled in a higher synthesis:
The outgoing of the divine is only a development, so that, in
annulling what stands over against it, it manifests itself in a
union with that opposite.... Their union, in which opposition
ceases, is a life, i.e. spirit configurated, and when this spirit
works as something divine and undivided, its deed is a marriage
with a related being, a divine one, and an engendering,
developing, of a new being which is a manifestation of their
union .... Divine action is the restoration and manifestation of
oneness. 32
Christianity, interpreted in terms of love, life and spirit, appealed to
the human imagination rather than to the analytic and reflective
powers of understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft). These
powers, Hegel argued, could not comprehend the ultimate synthesis
which was "a reality beyond all reflection".33 It was only through
religious experience that man could become aware of the dialectical
relationships which prevailed throughout the entire circle of being.
Hegel described the all-encompassing dialectical process succinctly
as "unity, separated opposites, reunion",34 a "union of union and
nonunion",35 and a "union of synthesis and antithesis".36
Having passed through a long and winding route, Hegel had thus
returned to the panvitalistic metaphysics of the "one and the all"
which he had shared with Holderlin and Schelling during their
Tiibingen years. In a reconstructed version of Christianity, he had
found a living or authentic "folk-·religion" which corresponded to
the needs of the "fancy, heart and sensibility", and which assured
its adherents of their "elevation ... from finite life to infinite life".37
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 87

As Hegel struggled to extract the full meaning or the authentic

spirit of Christianity, he had adverted to the role of man's "higher
need", that of reason. In the sense in which Kant had portrayed
reason, however, it could not comprehend the totality of being. Only
the religious experience of love, Hegel argued in these early writings,
provided the key to the all-embracing metaphysical vision which he
sought. Having found this key, however, be became convinced that
the Kantian philosophy contained only a truncated account of human
reason, that the task before him was the elaboration of a more
complete account of the power of reason, and the construction of an
all-embracing "reflective" or "scientific" system. "In my scientific
development", Hegel wrote to Schelling in 1800, "which began from
the more subordinate needs of men, I was bound to be driven on to
science, and the ideal of my youth had to be transformed at the same
time into reflective form, into a system".38
Hegel's early writings, which were not intended for publication,
were of an exploratory and tentative nature. They testify, nevertheless,
to the crucial influence of a range of gnostic sources on his early
development. When Hegel moved from Frankfurt to Jena at the turn
of the century, he concentrated on the task which he had outlined
to Schelling - that of formulating his panvitalistic vision in a
speculative or reflective form. Through speculation or absolute
reflection he would show that the living totality, or the infinite
circle of being, is a self·conscious process. As Hegel searched for a
more adequate expression of his vision during his years at Jena, he
had to take account of the philosophies of Kant, Fichte and Schelling.
But there is abundant evidence that he continued to draw on the
gnostic traditions. In a text, entitled "The Triangle of Triangles", he
attempted to formulate his system in terms of a rational exposition
of Trinitarian theology. The geometrical imagery, which Hegel
employed, was derived from Neo-Pythagorean sources which had
been recycled by Franz von Baader, and the same imagery had also
occurred in the works of Boehme. Significantly, the exposition of
Trinitarian theology comprehended the entire circle of being. The
doctrine of the Trinity symbolized the intra-divine process in which
God manifested Himself, and achieved knowledge or consciousness
of Himself, through a process of emergence and return which
coincided with "the resumption of the whole into One". In this
gnostic perspective, the historical incarnation of the second person
of the Trinity was accorded only a symbolic value. And in the light
of the final synthesis, evil was seen as a necessary moment in the
universal process of exodus and return. Finally, since the Holy Spirit
signified the identity in difference between the Father and the Son
and between the Father and the universe, Hegel asserted that Spirit
88 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

was the most appropriate name for God or the total process which
was nothing other than God's knowledge or consciousness of Himself.
An excerpt from the account of "The Triangle of Triangles" by
Hegel's biographer, Rosenkranz, brings out the definitely gnostic
character of the text:
Spirit for the first time is the unity, without which the distinction
of Father and Son would be without sense, of if it made sense,
must lead to dualism. For this reason Hegel hurled himself about
in the most peculiar expressions to display the reciprocity of
mediation between the Persons . . . Love would according to him
be a more fitting, more understandable expression for the concept
of God, but Spirit is deeper ... In the son God is cognizant of
Himself as God. He says to Himself: I am God. The within-itself
ceases to be a negative ... The self-consciousness of God is not
a withdrawal back within himself and an otherness of the Son,
just as it is not an otherness of his withdrawal back within
himself as simple God, but his intuition in the Son is the
intuiting of the simple God as his own self, but in such a way
that the Son remains Son, or as not distinguished and at the
same time distinguished; or the farspread Realm of the Universe,
which has no longer any being-for-self over against itself, but
rather its being-for-self is a returning back within God, or in
God's returning back within himself, a joy over the majesty
[Herrlichkeit] of the Son whom he intuits as himself. As the
Earth thereby ceases to be something mixed [ein Vermischtes]
(for that its being-within-self is no longer pure being-for-self, or
Evil). What stands over against the Son in his majesty as he
intuits the Earth, is the majesty of God Himself, the looking
back and returning home to him. And for the consecrated Earth
this self-consciousness of God is the Spirit, which proceeds from
God, and in which the Earth is one with him with the Son. This
Spirit is here the eternal mediator between the Son returned
unto the Father, who is now wholly and only one, and between
the being of the Son within himself, or of the majesty of the
Universe. The simplicity of the all-embracing Spirit has now
stepped into the middle and there is now no distinction any
more. For the Earth as the self-consciousness of God is now the
Spirit, yet it is also the eternal Son whom God intuits as himself,
and the pair is one unity and the cognition of God within
himself. Thus has the holy triangle of triangles closed itself.39
At this time Hegel also used characteristic gnostic expressions, such
as "the abyss" and the "negative absolute", to designate the
unmanifested and ineffable godhead. Furthermore, his portrayal of
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 89

the process in which the divine abyss externalized and manifested

itself in nature and world-history was structurally similar to those
early gnostic systems which described a "fall" in the godhead and a
metaphysical scheme of exodus and return which comprehended the
totality of being. Hegel also adverted to the chiliastic implications
of his speculation. His gnosis, he claimed in 1802, enabled him to
discern "the chain of absolute necessity on which the world
develops". And those who possessed this superior knowledge were
also endowed with magical power through which they could
comprehend and influence the course of history. "Every single
person", he wrote, "can extend his dominion over a greater length
of this chain only if he recognizes the direction in which the greater
necessity will go, and learns from this cognition to utter the magic
word which conjures up its shape".4o
In view of the emphasis which Renaissance Gnostics placed on the
"divine" power of the imagination it is worth noting that, in a
manuscript of 1803/4, Hegel identified his emerging notion of
"consciousness" or the "pure transparent aether" of absolute
knowledge with the faculty of imagination, and that this notion of
consciousness would become the cornerstone of the speculative
system which he would soon construct.41 As Hegel proceeded to
elaborate his vision of nature and its role within his system of
absolute knowledge, the presence of magical and alchemical
symbolism became more pronounced. Adopting the expression of his
Swabian predecessor, Oetinger, he appealed to the authority of "the
ancients" (Die Alten), the most important of whom, according to
H.8. Harris, were Paracelsus and Boehme. Although he pointed to
the conceptual and linguistic shortcomings of Boehme's works, he
nevertheless acknowledged that they anticipated the speculative
truth which he was now disengaging from the gnostic traditions. In
1804 Hegel saw his own speculation as an expansion of the
unsophisticated "intuitions" which were present in Boehme's works.
"The development of Science (Wissen)", he wrote, "is not a setting
aside of these intuitions (i.e. Boehme's), but a building up of their
meaning (Ausbilden derselben) from the inside outwards or from the
outside inwards".42 At the beginning of his sojourn in Jena, Hegel
met the outstanding personality of the Age, Goethe, who became his
mentor and friend. And it is clear that he was profoundly influenced
by Goethe's natural philosophy which incorporated many features
from the alchemical and magical traditions. The following excerpt
shows that Hegel availed himself of the conceptual and linguistic
apparatus of the alchemical traditions in the elaboration of his
system:
90 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

[Darkness] is the positive, the substantial side, as light is the

side of the Concept. Night contains the self-dissolving ferment
and the uprooting struggle [Kampf] of all forces, [it is] the
absolute possibility of all, the chaos that does not contain a
single matter in being, but even in its annihilating contains
everything. Night is the mother, the subsistence, the nourishing
of all, the Light the pure form, which for the first time is, has
being, in its unity with Night. The trembling awe of Night is
the still living and stirring of all the forces of substance; the
brightness of Day is its self-externality, which holds no
inwardness, but is shucked off and abandoned as [an] actuality
without spirit or force. But the truth is (as it shows itself) the
unity of both, the light that does not shine in the darkness, but
being penetrated with it as the essence, becomes substantial, is
materialized, precisely therein; it does not shine in it, it does
not brighten it, it is not broken within it, but it is the Concept
that is broken within itself, which as the unity of both in this
substance, displays its own self, i.e. the distinction of its
moments. 43
There can be no doubt either that when Hegel identified the first
man, Adam, with the "moving Spirit" of God, and with the second
man or the eternal Logos, he was playing another variation on a
theme which had recurred frequently in the gnostic traditions. 44
The manuscripts of Hegel's Jena years show that he was convinced
that he could construct a "system of science" from an "infinite" or
absolute standpoint. His panvitalistic vision, he now believed, could
be expressed in terms of a speculative penetration of Spirit which
encompassed the complete circle of being. By 1805, according to H.S.
Harris, Hegel had come to see his vocation as that of "God himself
shepherding his people". His task was to construct a "Metaphysics
of the 'absolute identity' of thought and being, or of reflective
consciousness and real life, the identity of mind and nature, of man
and world, of subject and object; the self-identity of the Sache selbst,
the substance which knows itself as subject".45 The Phenomenology
of Spirit, which was published in 1807, was Hegel's first attempt to
expound this essentially gnostic viewpoint in a detailed and
systematic form.'6
University College Dublin
 HEGEL'S EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND THE GNOSTIC TRADITION 91

NOTES
1. For an account of the emergence and significance of gnostic speculation, and of
the survivals and revivals of gnostic speculation in the western tradition, see G.
Hanratty "Hegel and the Gnostic Tradition" in Philosophical Studies Vol. XXX, 1985,
23-48, Vol. XXXI, 1986, 301-325.
2. H.S. Harris, Hegel's Development: Toward the Sunlight, 1770-1801 (Oxford, 1972)
29.
3. On the revival of these gnostic traditions in Wiirrtemberg by the "Swabian
Fathers", see G. Hanratty, art. cit., Vol, XXXI, 313-317.
4. On the role of Masonry in the transmission of French Revolutionary ideals to
Germany, see G. Hanratty, art. cit., Vol. XXXI, 317-319.
5. See Harris, 103--106, lO8--119.
6. Harris, 163.
7. "The Tiibingen Essay: Religion ist eine" Appendix 1 in Harris, 486.
8. Harris, Appendix I, 487.
9. Harris, 184.
lO. Harris, 198--199.
11. Harris, 212.
12. This rather disjointed essay is included in On Christianity: Early Theological
Writings of Friedrich Hegel trans by G.T.M. Knox with an Introduction, and
Fragments trans. by Richard Kroner (New York, 1961) 67-·181.
13. Knox, 143.
14. Knox, 163.
15. Knox, 176.
16. G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, I (Frankfurt am Main, 1971) 230-231. My trans.
17. Harris, 255.
18. See Knox, 182-205.
19. Knox, 211.
20. Knox, 212.
21. Knox, 214, 217.
22. Knox, 215.
23. Knox, 232.
24. Knox, 239.
25. Knox, 247.
26. Knox, 257-258.
27. Knox, 260.
28. Knox, 266.
29. Knox, 273.
30. Knox, 278.
31. Knox, 291.
32. Knox, 296-297.
33. Knox, 312.
34. Knox, 308.
35. Knox, 312.
36. Knox, 312.
37. Knox, 311.
38. Harris, 406.
39. Rosenkranz's account of the text, "Triangle of Triangles", has been translated
by H.S. Harris in Hegel's Development: Night Thoughts (Jena 1801-1806), (Oxford,
1983) 184-188; the quotation is from pp. 186-187. Besides the Triangle-Text which has
been lost, there is, according to Harris, an extant Triangle-Diagram. This Diagram,
Harris writes, "belongs in the context magical speculation" (157, n. 1). Harris also
notes that "in the Holy Triangle of Triangles Hegel himself employed something very
92 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

close to the gnostic or Schellingian image of the Fall to express the going-forth of
Spirit into Nature" (406-407).
40. Harris, Hegel's Development: Night Thoughts (Jena 1801-1806) 183.
41. See Harris, Night Thoughts, 206--207.
42. Harris, Night Thoughts, 408.
43. Harris, Night Thoughts, 434-435. On Hegel's contacts with Goethe during his
Jena years, see 1ix, 83, 268, 271, 435, 438. For an account of the influence of alchemy
on Goethe's worldview, see Ronald D. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist; A Study of
Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's Literary and Scientific Works (Cambridge, 1952).
44. See Harris, Night Thoughts, 472--474. There is a detailed account of the tradition
of gnostic speculation on Adam in Ernst Benz, Adam: Der My thus vom Urmenschen
(Miinchen, 1955).
45. Harris, Night Thoughts, 546.
46. In a discussion of Hegel's Jena years, Alexandre Koyre refers to the experience
of reading Hegel as "celIe d'assister ii. une espece de sorcellerie ou de magie
spirituelle". Cf. Etudes d'histoire de la pensee philosophique (Paris, 1971) 147-148.
Koyre also highlights the Boehmean and Paracelsean influences on Hegel's speculation.
In a discussion of Hegel's distinctive terminology, Koyre draws attention to the links
with the mystico-theosophic movements of the seventeenth century and the etymologies
of Franz von Baader which "livrent bien sou vent la cle des termes hegeliens" (197).
Koyre also adverts to the chiliastic dimension of Hegel's system: "La philosophie de
l'histoire - et par la meme la philosophie hegelienne, Ie 'systeme' - ne seraient
possibles que s'il n'y avait plus d'avenir; que si Ie temps pouvait s'arreter" (189).