„Man is in God“. Was Hegel really an Atheist?

What is it about?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the critical and ambiguous interpretation of Christianity provided by Hegel in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion in Berlin. The first aim is thus to study the way in which Hegel interpreted the relationship between God and man in the Christian religion, focusing in particular on incarnation and the man-God (Christ) and underlining the way in which Hegel’s theory was welcomed, criticized or, more generally, misunderstood by the “Hegelian school” ¬– and especially the “Hegelian Right”– in the years immediately after his death. The paper will then examine the work of one of the lesser known Hegelian “scholars”, Carl Friederich Göschel (1781-1861). Generally considered to be one of the most conservative exponents of Hegelian thought, Göschel came to the awareness of German audiences when Hegel published a favourable review of his Aphorismes über Nichtwissen und absolutes Wissen in the 1829 Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik. However, despite his references to Hegel in this and many other works, Göschel’s thought was not particularly close to that of Hegel, some of whose ideas were even misunderstood by the younger philosopher. Indeed, an analysis of Göschel’s Beiträge zur spekulativen Philosophie von Gott und dem Menschen of 1838, a work in which Göschel attempted to interpret Hegel’s thought on the relationship between God and man and his consideration of Christ, shows Göschel trying to defend Hegel’s interpretation of Christ and his human-divine nature against the criticism of D. F. Strauss published in Das Leben Jesu (1835/37), whilst simultaneously misinterpreting Hegel by identifying Christ as the Urmensch or the model (Urbild) of all human kind. Indeed, although Göschel’s aim was to introduce a new element to the Hegelian Right with a view to preserving the great philosopher’s ideas, his identification of Christ with all human kind actually came very close to the thinking of Strauss and the Young Hegelians, from whom he was trying to keep his distance. But was Göschel’s aim really to aid the understanding of Hegel’s ideas or, despite his efforts to defend the great German philosopher, was his underlying objective to prove Hegel’s atheism? Can man ever become God? And what about the identification between man and God? Did Göschel really aim to defend Hegel or, on the contrary, was his real purpose to oppose him? To echo the title of the conference, was he mit or gegen Hegel? As well as illustrating Hegel’s interpretation of Christ, this paper also demonstrates just how difficult it is to divide Hegelian thought into three factions as even the most conservative (of which Göschel was a leading exponent) accepted elements of a very “leftist” inclination.

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