Abstract

Over 150 years have elapsed since Hegel lectured on the philosophy of religion in Berlin. Now for the first time a critical edition of the fragmentary manuscript that he used to lecture in 1821 has been published in a masive volume, to be followed by subsequent volumes of equal size containing student notes or transcripts of the 1824 and 1827 lectures. Despite heroic efforts by the editor, Karl-Heinz Ilting of Saarbrucken, who previously edited Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of right according to the same principles, this new edition is unsatisfactory on several counts, and we shall have to await the appearance of these texts in the Gesammelte Werke slowly being produced by the Hegel-Archiv at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum before we have a completely adequate critical edition of Hegel’s philosophy of religion lectures.