Overview
Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel analyzes Hegel's philosophy of religion and develops its significance for ongoing debates about the relation between religion and politics as well as the history of the conceptualization of religion. One of the most vital currents in contemporary Hegel scholarship argues that Hegel radicalizes, rather than reneges upon, Kant's critique of metaphysics. Critics have claimed that this new scholarship cannot account for Hegel's treatment of religion. Addressing an important lacuna in the scholarship, Lewis argues that reading Hegel's philosophy of religion in relation to these non-traditional interpretations of his intellectual project as a whole generates a new understanding of Hegel as well as a new perspective on religion, politics, and modernity. In relation to the conceptualization of religion, Hegel's complex and multi-faceted account of religion reconciles common contrasts, presenting religion as both personal and social, both emotional and cognitive, both theoretical and practical. In relation to politics, it is public without being theocratic and gives a decisive importance to individual conscience. Attending closely to Hegel's social, political, and intellectual context, the book begins with Hegel's early concerns with a modern civil religion in the tumultuous 1790s. After analyzing Hegel's crucial engagement with post-Kantian idealism, Lewis elaborates Hegel's mature philosophy of religion as presented in his Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. This unique engagement between Hegel and the contemporary study of religion thus advances the non-traditionalist interpretation of Hegel's project as a whole and inspires a promising conception of religion that challenges those that have dominated both public discourse and religious studies scholarship.
Full Product Details
Author: Thomas A. Lewis (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.00cm
, Height: 1.60cm
, Length: 23.20cm
Weight: 0.438kg
ISBN: 9780199678310
ISBN 10: 0199678316
Pages: 292
Publication Date: 10 July 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
[Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel] is a major development in Hegel scholarship, and it will require historians of religious thought to rethink Hegel's relationship to his successors as well as to his predecessors. This book deserves a wide audience in philosophy, intellectual history, and religious studies. * Jeffrey Stout, author of Blessed Are the Organized *
Lewis's book is elegantly organized...Anyone who is searching for a pellucid overview of Hegel's religious thought, one that connects it both to his philosophy of history and to current controversies in political theory and religious studies, need search no further. --Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History
Author Information
Thomas A. Lewis is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Freedom and Tradition in Hegel: Reconsidering Anthropology, Ethics, and Religion (2005) as well as numerous articles on religion and politics, philosophy of religion, and comparative ethics.
