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you need to provide citations for your preferred content. citations already exist for the content that you do not prefer. and saying that Hegel was a deist is ludicrous. his phil explicated how spirit was *involved* in the world, the opposite of deism
Zaldax (talk | contribs)
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Undid revision 571558248 by Goethean (talk) -- Hegel was certainly NOT an atheist; you need to provide a citation if you disagree. Spirit is still not atheism by your argument.
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{{see also|Atheism dispute}}
Most interpreters agree that Hegel was an atheist. Though indoctrinated in Lutheranism as a child, Hegel rejected Christianity in his college years. In his early religious writings, he inveighed against religion. But for professional reasons, beginning around 1800, he tried to create the impression that he was a believer. Solomon explains: "Hegel really did have a secret, and...it has been well kept. The secret, abruptly stated, is that Hegel was an atheist. His 'Christianity' is nothing but nominal, an elaborate subterfuge to protect his professional ambitions in the most religiously conservative country in northern Europe."<ref name="Robert C. Solomon 1983">Robert C. Solomon, ''From Hegel to Existentialism'' (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 57.</ref> What has Hegel's atheism to do with his need for subterfuge? Terry Pinkard writes: "Hegel was desperate for a position [professorship], and to get a position he needed a book."<ref>Terry Pinkard, ''Hegel: A Biography''(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 224.</ref> But writing a book that openly espoused atheism would be professional suicide.
 
Solomon elaborates: "Hegel had seen Spinoza's ''Ethics'' condemned in Germany. He had seen Kant, whom he considered to be unquestioningly orthodox, censured and censored by the narrow-minded regime of Frederick Wilhelm II. He had seen Fichte dismissed from the University of Jena for views that were (incorrectly) considered atheistic."<ref>Robert C. Solomon, ''In the Spirit of Hegel'' (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 582.</ref> The University of Jena is where Hegel was seeking a professorship. The book he was writing, which became ''Phenomenology of Spirit'', was a book that espoused atheism by covertly redefining God as, in essence, humanity. Solomon puts it this way: "What then does Hegel's conception of God [in ''Phenomenology''] admit which any atheist would not? To say that God exists is no more than to say that humanity exists. That is atheism."<ref>Robert C. Solomon, ''From Hegel to Existentialism'' (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,1987), 67.</ref>
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