This essay traces Hegel's conceptualisation of “the spirit and the letter”, from the period of his early theological writings to that of the Science of Logic, with particular reference to his correspondence. This dialectic, for Hegel, concerns the realisation of the truth or “spirit” of something from the specificity and fixity of its particular details – its “letter”. It also concerns, then, the freedom to interpret the spirit of something in spite of the apparent authority of any supposed original meanings (...) or authorial intentions. We find him using the phrase in a variety of contexts, with reference to politics, Biblical hermeneutics, textual criticism, the history of philosophy and education. While originally derived from St Paul's dictum – “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6) – Hegel's early invocations of “the spirit and the letter” are inspired by Fichte, who sought to distinguish the spirit from the letter of Kant's philosophy. However, while Fichte conceives of the “spirit” as an “aesthetic sense” with which to take creative liberties with the letter, the later Hegel finds that it is only by tarrying with the contradictions of the dead letter that the spirit might be brought to life. (shrink)

Josiah Royce relates the following story concerning the writing and publication of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's first major work, the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.Fichte … called upon Kant at Königsberg, in July, 1791. The aged, prudent, and … highly economical philosopher regarded this reverent, fiery, but obviously impecunious young disciple with a certain suspicion, and received his confidences coolly. The rebuff only heated Fichte the more. He tarried in Königsberg two months, in order … to write, for presentation (...) to Kant, a work on religious philosophy, which, once finished, proved to be so thoroughly in Kant's spirit that, when in the spring of the next year the book was published anonymously, it was very generally hailed by Kant's admirers as a new production of the master's own genius. Kant himself had to correct this misapprehension, and in doing so named, and now with warm praise, the real author. (shrink)

Given its use of religious concepts and language, it is tempting to class Fichte’s rarely discussed Staatslehre as a political theology. I argue that the Staatslehre can be classed as a political theology because of the way in which it can be understood in terms of the concepts of immanence and transcendence. The concept of immanence applies to Fichte’s account of history in particular. Fichte himself allows for a moment of transcendence at the very beginning of history. I argue that (...) the concept of transcendence is also implicit in the Staatslehre in relation to some problems faced by Fichte’s own account of the role of the Zwingherr in the historical development and actualization of right and moral freedom, despite his attempt to avoid introducing theologically based explanations of political concepts at this stage of his Staatslehre. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that in the Jena period (1801–1803) Schelling and Hegel both rejected the conception of God as coinciding with the moral order, which they attribute to Fichte; such coincidence, in their view, turned God into a transcendent and merely moral Being. In an effort to demonstrate their distance from Fichte's view, we contend, Schelling and Hegel advocated for a metaphysical (rather than merely moral) and immanent (rather than transcendent) understanding of God, conceived in its inextricable relation (...) with nature and self-consciousness. We conclude by demonstrating that the cooperation between Schelling and Hegel in the Jena period led them to develop an analogous conception of immanence—which already foreshadows, however, the different directions that Schelling and Hegel take in their mature works. (shrink)