The Death of Religion? Absolute Spirit and Politics by Hegel

In his Encyclopaedia Hegel makes clear that philosophy is the most adequate form of Absolute spirit, in which the concept relates to itself and hence spirit understands itself in its own form and element without exterior leftovers and limitations. In fact, both art and (much less) revealed religion maintain a structural, unavoidable relation to externality and to non-conceptual contingency. From the political point of view, only philosophy is at last fully charged with the task of providing a rational, shared basis of right, or to be more exact, a reconstruction of the rationality (or, possibly, irrationality) of its actuality; this is, incidentally, the main task of the Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. On the other hand, philosophy seems to need an ›integration‹ concerning its Bildung-function within every given political situation that is historically present from time to time and at least in part contingently determined. In what follows I shall first develop this point, and then investigate the possibility of integrating the political task of philosophy by addressing the two past forms of absolute spirit. Finally, I will sketch an answer’s attempt to the question of which of these two forms, art or religion can play this integration role more effectively in the modern world.