Abstract

Hegel on Logic and Religion is a collection of previously published essays which have been arranged under three general headings: “Logic,” “Logic Applied,” and “Christianity.” It proposes a Hegelian response to Lessing’s well-known rejection of the claim of Christian apologetics to provide an adequate “rational theology.” Such apologetics held that the reliability of the historical testimony to Christ’s miracles and resurrection is cogent evidence to warrant claims for his divinity. Lessing concedes the assertions of historical veracity but denies their cogency for drawing rational conclusions about divinity. There is, he argues an “ugly broad ditch” separating the necessary truths of reason from the contingent truths of history. Lessing’s attack, moreover, did more than strike at the heart of traditional Christian apologetics. It also rendered a central project of the German Enlightenment problematic. Thinkers such as Mendelssohn held that metaphysics could provide a new rational basis for the claims of historical religion. So—according to Lessing—whether one approached historical faith from the perspective of a metaphysical system, or began on the opposite site side and used history as evidence for conceptions of divinity, one was brought to a halt before the “ugly, broad ditch.”