Berthold-Bond Hegel's Eschatological Vision Does History Have a Future

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Hegel's Eschatological Vision: Does History Have a Future?Author(s): Daniel Berthold-BondSource: History and Theory, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Feb., 1988), pp. 14-29Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2504959 .

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HEGEL'S ESCHATOLOGICAL VISION: DOES HISTORY HAVE A FUTURE?

DANIEL BERTHOLD-BOND

... Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end .. .: for at the time appointed the end shall be. (Daniel viii.19)

A central motif of Hegel's philosophy is his effort to trace out a teleological development of human thought and culture, from its initially embryonic, undeve- loped stages to ever more evolved and mature forms. And he conceives of this process of development as the Bildung of rationality in history: "history is the process of mind [Geist] itself, the [progressive] revelation of itself from its first .. . enshrouded consciousness ... in order that the absolute command of mind, 'know thyself,' may be fulfilled"1 (HPh, III, 7). In this article I will address the question of what this "fulfillment" means for Hegel. I will argue that there is a strongly entrenched ambiguity and ambivalence in Hegel's philosophy between two opposed ways of describing the End, or "completion" of history: what I will refer to as the "absolutist" and the "epochal" readings.2 And I will suggest that contrary to the usual way of reading Hegel, we should adopt the non-absolutist, epochal version of Hegel's eschatology if we are to preserve the spirit of his metaphysics. I wish to make it clear from the start that my argument is not that this epochal reading is clearly what Hegel himself intended, so that the great majority of commentators who insist on the absolutist alternative simply mis- read Hegel. Indeed, the import of my argument will be to suggest that neither the absolutist nor the epochal readings can be interpreted away: I am convinced that a faithful reading of Hegel must result in a confirmation of his deep-seated ambivalence in this matter. I will argue, on the other hand, that we should choose for Hegel, where he was unwilling to, the reading which emphasizes the non- absolutist pole of the ambivalence as against the absolutist pole.

I. THE AMBIGUITY

Hegel's theory of knowledge, and with it his philosophy of history, are governed throughout by an eschatological vision. For the teleological principle which he

1. All references to Hegel's works will be abbreviated and given parenthetically in the text, fol- lowed by the volume number (where applicable) and page number (or section number where appropriate, designated "?"). "HPh" refers to Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 vols, transl. E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson (New York, 1974).

2. Actually, in the course of my analysis I will indicate a third alternative, one which seeks to synthesize the absolutist and epochal interpretations (see pages 19f, and fn 34 below). I will suggest, however, that such a synthetic reading is finally implausible.



HEGEL'S ESCHATOLOGICAL VISION 15

regards as essential to a true appraisal of the essence of thought makes a con- sideration of the End indispensable to his anatomy of human knowledge and history. It is precisely the absence of the notion of a consummation of the End that Hegel takes as one of the fundamental failures of the philosophy of the German Aufklarung. In speaking of Fichte, for example, Hegel writes that "Fichte's theory of knowledge regards the struggle of the ego with the object [or of human consciousness and its world] as that of a continuous, [unending] process" (HPh, III, 501), a process which is "a constant progression . . . which never reaches any end" (HPh, III, 492).

It is the aim of Hegel's absolute idealist system to show how human knowledge can "wrest itself out of this progress to infinity, and free itself absolutely from limitation"3 (PhM, ?386 Zusatz), by "resolving the infinite progress into the End"4 (SL, ?242). Hegel's conviction that truth must be more than an "ap- proximation," more than something relative to finite and subjective consciousness, leads him to posit a "final concord" (SL, ?24 Zusatz) of consciousness with the totality of its objects, a "consummation of the infinite End" of knowledge and of the world (SL, ?212 Zusatz). This is in keeping with the systematic aim of Hegel's method, which involves the idea that nothing short of the whole, or totality, of the determinations of thought can constitute truth. Philosophic knowledge consists in "comprehending nothing less than the entire system of consciousness, or the entire realm of the truth of spirit"5 (PhS, 56). Hegel thus speaks of a "self-closure" of his system, a "sich selbst zusammenschlieflend" of knowledge or spirit (SL, ?242; cf. PhS, 483; PhM, ?379 Zusatz) where "spirit [has reached] ... the completion of its work" (PhS, 486), and "concluded the move- ment in which it has shaped itself" (PhS, 490). In this same vein, Hegel is led to speak of the "absolute End of history"6 (PhH, 103), where spirit has fulfilled its eschatological design, the realization of its freedom and the attainment of its complete knowledge of itself.

There is no room for dispute that Hegel speaks of the "End of history" and the "conclusion" of the development of spirit in Absolute Knowledge. What is open to dispute is what Hegel means by this. What does Hegel mean when he speaks of "the End," "the completion," "the conclusion," "the consummation," "the fulfillment," of history and of knowledge? There seem to be two basic alternatives: either the completion Hegel speaks of is absolute or it is not. That is, either Hegel's eschatological vision is of a completely final End, where no further progress in history or knowledge is possible, or it is an epochal conception, where the completion he speaks of is the fulfillment of an historical epoch, leaving the future open to progress.

It is my feeling that an ample supply of passages in Hegel's texts may be found to support either of these basic alternatives, as well as many passages which can

3. "PhM" refers to Hegel's Philosophy of Mind (Part Three of the Encyclopedia), transl. W. Wal- lace, with translations of the Zusatze by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1978).

4. "SL" refers to Hegel's so-called "shorter" Logic (Part One of the Encyclopedia), transl. W. Wal- lace (Oxford, 1975).

5. "PhS" refers to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, transl. A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1979). 6. "PhH" refers to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. J. Sibree (New York, 1900).



16 DANIEL BERTHOLD-BOND

be read in either way. And I feel that this reflects a deeply entrenched ambivalence and ambiguity in Hegel's philosophy. That is, I am convinced that we cannot explain away one interpretation or the other and be left with a single, clearly correct doctrine of the End. For the ambiguity represents an internal tension in Hegel's philosophy between two desiderata which are both important to him but which conflict with each other (in a way which cannot plausibly be swept away or "aufgehoben" by Hegel's notorious synthetic method of unifying opposites).

On the one hand, Hegel analyzes both knowledge and being as in their very essence dialectical and teleological processes of becoming. Becoming is the pulse of life, the vital principle of knowing and being, for the "satisfaction" of spirit is "that which brings on natural death" (PhH, 74). This suggests that no absolute completion of knowledge or being would be possible without at once destroying their very essence - without literally tolling their death-bell. But on the other hand, Hegel presents his philosophical system as achieving an "absolute knowledge" and "absolute truth" which depends for its absoluteness on being a comprehension of the whole compass or totality of the Gestalten of spirit. This suggests that there must be an absolute completion of knowledge and being and history, a "self-closure" of the circle of development, a final arrival at the End and result which is the truth of the whole. For if the future were open-ended as regards progress in knowledge and being, the whole would never be achieved, but would remain an unfulfilled ideal, and absolute knowledge, the comprehension of the whole, would seem to remain an unrealizable project.

This tension is present throughout Hegel's philosophy. It may be seen, for example, in his theory of substance, which seeks to unite Heraclitian becoming with Spinozistic permanence; in his epistemology, which is both committed to the view of knowledge as a perpetual labor of development and to the proposition that consciousness finally achieves an "Absolute Knowledge"; in the Hegelian dialectic, which both uncovers the intrinsic opposition and contradiction of all things and also reveals the ultimate resolution of this negativity; in his teleology, which is both described in terms of a continuous process of evolution and at the same time stresses the constant presence and dominance of the End; and in his view that history is both the "slaughterbench" of human happiness and the theater in which all the "wounds of spirit" become healed.

While I am convinced that a faithful interpretation of Hegel can only result in a confirmation of his ambivalence, still, I feel that preference should be given to the reading which finally chooses the epochal, dialectically open-ended side of the ambivalence as against the absolutist side. I say this because I feel that the reconstruction entailed by such a choice offers us the chance to revitalize the "magic charm," as Hans-Georg Gadamer puts it,7 of Hegel's dialectical vision of history which his ambivalence places so much into question. This is desirable for two reasons: first, because once the dialectical principle of the Hegelian system is removed (as it unavoidably is under the absolutist reading where the strife of

7. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel's Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, transI. P. Christopher

Smith (New Haven and London, 1976), 105.




becoming is finally overcome), we have removed the very soul of Hegel's anatomy of spirit; and second, there are practical, ethical consequences at stake for our own historical age. Our age is one of disillusionment and apprehension, an age struggling to find a sense of purpose and moral identity, situated as it is in the aftermath of the Holocaust and towards an anxiety-laden future fraught with the risk of nuclear Armageddon. What message Hegel's philosophy holds for our own age depends very much upon how we interpret his eschatological lan- guage of the "completion of the work" of spirit. If, as is usual, we read Hegel literally when he announces the "absolute End of history," then we must say that history has already achieved its purpose, and we are merely carrying out the last cycle of destiny, spiraling downward ever closer to the final act of death. History, by this reading, is pronouncing its last rites, and the Freudian prediction of an ultimate victory of the death instincts over the instincts of life is achieving its historical fulfillment.

If, however, we are successful in our argument for a less absolutist interpretation of Hegel's eschatology, then his message for our contemporary world would obviously be entirely different from the bleak and frankly terrifying destiny im- plied by the absolutist interpretation. Hegel's message would then stand not as a prediction of doom but as a voice of hope for redemption from our disen- chantment with the world -what Freud calls man's Unbehagen, his uneasiness and discontent with his civilization. It would stand, that is, as a challenge to resist the attitude of indifference and despair, and to recognize that reason has the power to transform the world, "beget[ting] revolutions in the world as well as in individuals" (HPh, III, 8), and that it is our highest responsibility to take up and use this power conscientiously.

I wish to begin my analysis of the question of completion in Hegel's philosophy with a discussion of the specifically theological dimension of his eschatological vision. Despite the attempts of some commentators to view Hegel's Chris- tian imagery - which is everpresent in his writings - as a purely mythological, symbolic, figurative covering over his basically secular and even atheistic philosophy, I believe that Hegel took his Christian heritage seriously, and sincerely viewed his philosophy as "the true theodicy, the justification of God" (PhH, 457, and see p. 15; cf. HPh, III, 7, 546). We would be confounding the whole spirit of Hegel's philosophy if we were to read his claim that "the philosophic idea is the idea of God" (HPh, III, 11) as somehow merely allegorical, or his equally uncompromising proposition that "religion can exist without philosophy, but philosophy cannot exist without religion"8 (PhRel, III, 148) as only a mythological trapping, or worse, as simply an artificial concession to the church. Hence Hegel's specifically Christian eschatology is central to his conception of the End or completion of knowledge and history. His Christianity is quite idiosyncratic, however. He does not simply take over the Christian-vision of the "End of the world" and the creation of the new Jerusalem, but has an unorthodoxly historical in-

8. "PhRel" refers to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 3 vols., transl. E. B. Speirs and J. B. Sanderson (London, 1895).




terpretation of the eschatological End. As we shall see, it is precisely because of this unorthodoxy that Hegel is not necessarily committed to the common Chris- tian reading of an apocalyptic End - an absolute closure of history - but can also be read as proposing a non-absolutist, epochal conception of the End.

A word of warning: we will find that Hegel's Christian eschatology serves more to underscore the conflict in his philosophy between an absolutist and a non- absolutist conception of completion than to resolve it. The immediately following discussion will thus end in frustration and loss of way, and it will not be until the succeeding sections of the article that we will be led to an attempted resolution of the dilemma of completion. This path of disorientation and uncertainty is not a gratuitous prolonging of our search, however, but is necessary for ex- hibiting one of the basic contentions of my reading of Hegel, that we look in vain for an unambiguous formulation of his eschatological vision, precisely because he is torn in two opposing directions by conflicting desiderata of his philosophy. The forthcoming discussion of the theological dimension of Hegel's eschatology will serve in this way as an initiation into the pathway of doubt which he left as the legacy of his inconclusive search for a resolution to the question of completion. Only after such an initiation will it be appropriate to turn to an analysis of several less directly theological passages in order to support my recom- mendation for a non-absolutist reading of Hegel's philosophy. Finally, I will return in my conclusion to draw out the implications of this non-absolutist reading for Hegel's Christian eschatology.

II. HEGEL'S CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY

Christian eschatology is based on the Biblical promise of salvation and redemption from suffering and despair, from the irrationality and injustice of the world. It is derived largely from the Book of Revelation, but also from many of the prophetic and apocalyptic visions of both the Old and New Testaments. The Book of Revelation itself, written around 96 A.D., was addressed to a Christian community in the throes of a brutal persecution by the Romans. It promised the annihilation of-the pouring of the "vials of wrath" on-the imperial cult of the Caesars, and the salvation and redemption of the faithful in a new heaven on earth, a New Jerusalem:

1. And I saw [John writes of his Revelation] a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.




5. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.... (Rev. xxi. 1-5)9

Thus there will come a new world, where "the former things are passed away," and "all things are made anew."10 This New Jerusalem will redeem man from God's curse - "and there shall be no more curse" (Rev. xxii.3) - and will be an eternal kingdom: as Luke prophesies, "[God] shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i.33).1l

It goes without saying that there have been many diverging interpretations of this eschatological vision. Yet despite this wide divergence of interpretation, there seems to be substantial agreement among most Christian theologians that the return of Christ (at the apocalypse) signals the end of history"2 (however much they differ as to whether this End of history occurs at the outset or the completion of the messianic millennium predicted in the Book of Revelation). Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, expresses this view very clearly when he says that history is but an "interim" for man, in which there is no hope for the fulfillment of the moral and religious ideal, but that this ideal will be fulfilled only "beyond time,"13 "not within history itself," but at "the end of history."14 The End of history, Nie- buhr continues, "is a point where that which exists ceases to be: it is finis"; "the ultimate vindication of God over history . .. [cannot be] reduced to a point in history."'-'5

The notion that, as the Gospel of Matthew puts it, Christ's return will usher in "the end of the world" (xxiv.3)- that "the field is the world; . . . [and] the harvest is the end of the world" (xiii.38-39)-has thus generally been read to mean that redemption will be the announcement of the End of history, "beyond

9. Cf. Isaiah lxv. 17-19:

17. "For behold [the prophet hears the Lord say], I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

18. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

19. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress."

10. Cf. Isaiah lxv. 17. 11. Cf. Rev. xxii.5: "And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord

God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever." 12. See The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G. A. Buttrick, et al., 5 vols. (Nashville, Tenn.,

1962), vol. II, 138, 610; vol. IV, 61, 69. This orthodox interpretation is not by any means universal, of course. Theologians like Walter Rauschenbusch, Adolf von Harnack, Horace Bushnell, and Harry Emerson Fosdick, to name a few, believe that the redemption is to be continuous with human history, and hence a social and historical overcoming of tribulation. In this, I would argue, they share Hegel's non-orthodoxy exactly. Rauschenbusch, for example, writes that the Kingdom of God (the New Jerusalem) is nothing but "humanity organized according to the will of God"; "a growing perfection in the collective life of humanity" (cited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Reinhold Niebuhr's Role in American Political Thought and Life," in Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. R. W. Bretall and C. W. Kegley [New York, 1961], 128).

13. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York, 1941, 1943), II, 288, 290 (and chapter X, passim.).

14. Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of His- tory (New York, 1949), 235 and passim.

15. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny, II, 287, 289.




time" as Niebuhr says. Karl L6with summarizes this basic component of Chris- tian eschatology in an article on "History and Christianity":

What really begins with the appearance of Jesus Christ is not a new epoch of secular history, called "Christian," but the beginning of an end. The Christian times are Christian only in so far as they are the last time. Because the Kingdom of God ... is not to be realized in a continuous process of historical development, the eschatological history of salvation also cannot impart a new and progressive meaning to the history of the world, which is fulfilled by having reached its term. The "meaning" of the history of this world is fulfilled against itself, because the story of salvation, as embodied in Jesus Christ, redeems and dismantles, as it were, the hopeless history of the world.16

It is from this basic tenet of Christian eschatology -that there is no historical hope for man, but that the redemption and salvation of man will occur at the End of history, or "beyond history" -that Hegel's vision of the consummation of the Christian telos departs. For Hegel, God's revelation is intrinsically historical. Hence "the history of the world, ... the process of development and realization of spirit, is the true theodicy, the justification of God in history" (PhH, 457). To say that God is a manifest God, a revealed God, is for Hegel to say that He is manifest and revealed in the course of human history.

St. Paul writes that man should "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God" (I Cor. iv.5).

But when Hegel says that "man must know God" (HPh, II, 387), he means that "the deepest things of the Godhead," God's innermost nature and purposes, are accessible to human reason in history (PhH, 14). Revelation is the manifestation of rationality, which is not discontinuous with the Bildung of human thought in history, but its very expression: God's manifestation is history itself.

As I mentioned in the introduction to the article, the usual interpretation of Hegel is to read him as asserting an absolute completion of history. Franqois Chatelet, for one, says that Hegel takes over "l'eschatologie chretienne ... [with its assertion of the] fin de l'histoire ... [and the] abolition du temps" lock, stock, and barrel.17 Marx and Engels view Hegel's "compulsion to make a system ... [and hence his] compulsion to make an end to the historical process" as a central failure of his philosophy. 18 Alexandre Kojeve says that Hegel "gives up the dialectical method" in order "to lay claim to absolute truth," and thereby requires that "history is truly completed.'" But, he argues, with "the end of history ... man properly so-called ... disappears. In point of fact, the end of time or history . . . means quite simply the cessation of action in the full sense of

16. Karl LUwith, "History and Christianity," in Bretall and Kegley, eds., 283 (italics added). 17. Frangois Chatelet, Hegel (Paris, 1968), 161. 18. Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, ed.

C. P. Dutt (New York, 1978), 13. 19. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, transl. J. H. Nichols, Jr., ed. Allan

Bloom (Ithaca and London, 1980), 191, and see 32, 35, 95, 97f., 237.




the term ... [and] the definitive annihilation of man properly so-called." Stanley Rosen also says that Hegel's philosophy requires a "decisive completion" and "final resolution" of history,21 but that "if we achieve the Hegelian science of totality, we must cease to become human."22 And Charles Taylor speaks of the Hegelian "total overcoming" of the dialectic of becoming as an expenditure of "enormous energy" to "make [his philosophy] yield an impossible conclusion."23 And we could go on and on.24

My own feeling is that what we have seen to be Hegel's insistence on the intrinsically historical significance of revelation becomes quite hard to explain under the reading of his eschatology which sees it as involving an absolute completion. Indeed Hegel's entire exposition of the Christian message is straightforwardly historical in tone. A good example of this is his interpretation of the notion of the "tabernacle of God." Recall the words of John's revelation:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God (Rev. xxi.2-3).

For Hegel, the tabernacle of God is the community of the Church on earth and in history. It is his belief that "one may have all sorts of ideas about the Kingdom of God; but it is always a realm of spirit to be realized and brought about in man"25 (RH, 20). He follows Christ's saying that "the kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Luke xvii.21).26 "What Jesus calls the 'Kingdom of God,"' Hegel says, "is the living harmony of men; ... it is the development of the divine among men"27 (SXty, 277, v. 267f., PhS, 473). And in his History of Philosophy he writes that "the reconciliation of God with Himself is accomplished in the world, and not as a heavenly kingdom that is beyond" (HPh, III, 21). The human

20. Kojeve, 158-160 (fn 6). 21. Stanley Rosen, Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom (New Haven and London,

1974), 16, xix, and see 9, 15, 45. 22. Rosen, 279. 23. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, 1977), 349. 24. See e.g. Richard Kroner, who speaks of "die Antinomie zwischen System [i.e. completion]

und Geschichte [i.e. becoming]" in Hegel's philosophy, and asks, almost with a sense of affront and indignation, "mit welchem Recht Hegel, trotz seinen historische Resignation [that is, his "resignation" to the perpetual progression of history, which continually moves beyond the results of a particular stage in history], fur sein System absolute Geltung in Anspruch nehmen durfte" ("System und Geschichte bei Hegel," Logos, Band XX (1931), 252; and cf. Von Kant bis Hegel, 2 Bande [Tubingen, 1921], II, 518ff.).

See also Hyppolite, who feels that Hegel becomes unfaithful to his dialectical principle with his move to the Logic, which leads to "l'immobilisme" of spirit (557).

25. "RH" refers to Hegel's Reason in History (the Introduction to the Philosophy of History, drawing

from all three editions), transl. R. S. Hartman (Indianapolis, 1953). 26. Christ oscillates throughout the Gospels between saying that the Kingdom of God is approaching

and that it has already arrived with his ministry. See Interpreters Dictionary, II, 136f. for references. 27. "SXty" refers to Hegel's The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, in Early Theological Writings,

ed. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia, 1977).




community is the witness to God, being His manifestation in the world. Hence the true elevation of man to a unity with God takes place in history, and specifically, according to Hegel, in the Christian epoch in which man sees his unity with God through the revelation of God in His Son, who is the living symbol of the reconciliation of the human and divine natures.

Given this reading of the "tabernacle of God," it seems that the fulfillment of the Christian logos could not possibly take place "beyond time," "outside of history." The Christian "eschaton," the "new world" of prophecy, must itself be subject to the dialectic of history, the dialectic of perpetual becoming. Only under this non-absolutist reading of completion will Hegel not be forced to abandon his Heraclitian metaphysics of spirit, his insistence that spirit is simply not capable of a mere "empty repetition [of the present], . . . a monotonous cycle [that is, without evolution]" -which is precisely the situation which would characterize spirit which had somehow superseded history - but rather "in itself, or in its very principle, [the life of spirit] ... contains a progress" (PhM, ?399). Thus if Chris- tianity were to usher in a radical completion of history and time, spirit would cease to be spirit, and God - this seems an unavoidable conclusion - would cease to be God, since for Hegel God is irreducibly the logos, or Word, or spirit.

Still, there remains a problem with this non-absolutist interpretation. As I have remarked, Hegel's eschatological vision is fundamentally ambiguous. However much support we may find for a non-absolutist reading of Hegel's theory of the End - most importantly the fact that only such a reading seems to allow for the preservation of his dynamic and evolutionary metaphysics of spirit - we can always find passages which support the orthodox reading of Hegel as suggesting an absolute End of history. Hence for example Hegel speaks of the Christian logos as the ultimate "perfection of spirit" (PhS, 413), in which the human spirit gains "liberation" and "reconciliation" from alienation (HPh, II, 2, 3, 6). And he calls this a "final concord" of man with himself, with his world, and with God (SL, ?24 Zusatz). Thus (at least in many passages) Hegel does seem to view Chris- tianity as something which cannot be superseded, that is, as a final End.28 But if this is so, then surely the fulfillment of the Christian logos must be beyond history, since for Hegel a central principle of history is that the consummation of one shape of spirit necessarily gives rise to "a new principle" (PhH, 71-79). The "completion of . .. one stage," Hegel says, "is at the same time the rejection of that stage and its transition to a higher"29 (PhR, ?343, and v. ??344, 347 An- merkung). Time itself is for Hegel out-and-out "negativity," the perpetual process of the "dissolution of all existence," the subsequent "transcendence of that existence," and the inevitable "production of a new, renovated, fresh life" (PhH, 77, 78, 73). If the fulfillment of the Christian logos is in fact meant to be a final, unalterable state of affairs, clearly it must somehow escape this intrinsic "nega-

28. Even here there is some room for dispute. Lowith, for example, suggests that Hegel views Chris- tianity as something to be superseded itself (From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought, transl. D. E. Green [Garden City, New York, 1967], 39). I will return to this question on page xx below.

29. "PhR" refers to Hegel's Philosophy of Right, transl. T. M. Knox (London, 1976).




tivity" of time, and this would seem to require that it take place beyond history, the theater of time.

Thus the ambiguity and ambivalence in Hegel's theory of completion is not finally resolved in his Christian eschatology. For (1) if Chatelet and others are right that Hegel's Christian eschatology announces the "abolition du temps," then we seem to be incapable of making sense out of the Hegelian ontology: spirit is a progressive becoming, a perpetual development in its very essence, so that a non-temporal, suprahistorical spirit would simply be a contradiction in terms. But (2) if the "new world" is not the End of history and time, then it seems impossible to see how it could persevere without progress, and hence without alteration. And if alteration or development is to be allowed, then we must ask what sense it makes to speak of the Christian eschaton as the revelation of absolute truth, the "final concord" Hegel speaks of. For the notion of development relativizes every particular stage within the development, and unless we are willing to speak of an "absolute" truth which is relative to the course of development up to the present - that is, a "relative absolute" - then the idea of an eternal, un- changing "new world" in history seems to slip out of our grasp.

We have reached an impasse as to how we are to read Hegel's eschatology, and we need to seek further to find the way to turn towards the absolutist or the non-absolutist alternative. A good place to begin our search is with a closer look at Hegel's conception of the "new world," in some of the less directly theological passages of his speculations about the nature of history and knowledge. I will argue that while these passages do not completely resolve our impasse, they do guide us in the direction of the non-absolutist reading of Hegel's eschatology.

III. A CLOSER LOOK AT THE "NEW WORLD"

First, let us look at a passage from the end of the last section of the History of Philosophy, which Hegel titles the "Final Result," and where he speaks of a "new epoch":

[Absolute knowledge] is the demand of all time and of philosophy. A new epoch has arisen in the world. It would appear as if the world-spirit had at last succeeded in strip- ping off from itself all alien objective existence, and apprehending itself at last as absolute spirit. . . The strife of the finite self-consciousness [man] with the absolute self- consciousness [God], which last seemed to the other to lie outside of itself, now comes to an end.

.. . This is the whole history of the world in general up to the present time, and the history of philosophy in particular, the sole work of which is to depict this strife. Now, indeed, it seems to have reached its goal, when this absolute self-consciousness, which it had the work of representing, has ceased to be alien, and when spirit accordingly is realized as spirit (HPh, III, 551f., italics added).

At first blush, the eschatological message of this passage is in doubt. It may be that the "new epoch" is to be beyond history, history having "reached its goal" in Absolute Knowledge and the overcoming of alienation. Or, on the contrary, it may be that Hegel does not mean to suggest that the strife and alienation of




man has "come to an end" forever, and although it has done so "at the present time," the "new epoch" will have its own history and must face its own strife.

And yet in context, the message becomes clearer. The whole tone of the concluding section of the History of Philosophy, the "Final Result" section, is one of taking stock of where we have arrived so as to look to the future. After the passage about the "new epoch" where Hegel says of world-history that "now, indeed, it seems to have reached its goal," he goes on to say that "this, then, is the standpoint of the present day, and the series of spiritual forms is with it for the present concluded" (HPh, III, 552, italics added). This seems to give very strong support to the non-absolutist interpretation of his eschatology, where history is to have a future progression. In this passage, at least, the completion of the development of spirit is epochal, not absolute, and the "whole development" of spirit which Hegel refers to shortly before this passage would seem to mean the whole development up to now, rather than a radically closed whole, that is, rather than the closure of history itself.

Further, in the penultimate paragraph of the History of Philosophy, just before thanking his students for attending his lectures, Hegel exhorts them to "give ear to the urgency [of spirit] -when the mole that is within forces its way on, we have to make it a reality." Hegel indeed speaks of the "summons" of the spirit "to bring it forth from its natural condition . . . its lifeless seclusion, into the light of day" (HPh, III, 553). This sense of urgency and this summons would seem inappropriate if the "new epoch" was to be "beyond history."

Finally, the concluding section of the History of Philosophy is interspersed with passages which reaffirm Hegel's Heraclitian metaphysics - his emphasis on the nature of spirit as a perpetual becoming: "[spirit] goes ever on and on, because spirit is progress alone. Spirit often seems to have forgotten and lost itself, but inwardly opposed to itself it is inwardly working ever forward" (HPh, III, 546f.); "[the] eternal life [of spirit] consists in the very process of continually producing the opposition [of subject and object, or consciousness and world] and continually reconciling it" (HPh, III, 551). In the light of such passages, I would argue that when Hegel speaks of the "consummation" or "completion" or "coming to an End" or "reaching the goal" of spirit, such pronouncements should be read as the fulfillment of the telos of an historical epoch, not of his-

tory or knowledge entire-a fulfillment which will give place to a new epoch, a new production and work of spirit.

The second "new world" passage I wish to cite is from the Preface to the

Phenomenology:30

It is not difficult to see that ours is a birthtime and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labor of its own transformation. Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward.... The vague foreboding

30. We may note in passing that the Preface was written immediately after the body of the Phenome- nology was completed, and thus serves to illuminate a passage from the very last pages of the work where Hegel speaks of "absolute knowledge" involving a "transformed existence" of spirit, a "re- born, . . . new existence, a new world and a new shape of spirit" (PhS, 492).




[which our age feels] of something unknown ... [is] the herald of approaching change. ... But this new world is no more a complete actuality than is a new-born child; it

is essential to bear this in mind. It comes on the scene for the first time in its immediacy . . . (PhS, 6f).

This passage is frankly and straightforwardly anticipatory, a looking-forward to a new era of history. The new world is explicitly portrayed as in its birth-time, as opposed to being the fulfillment and conclusion of time. And finally, there is again the reaffirmation of Hegel's Heraclitian metaphysics, the idea that "spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward."

This Heraclitian metaphysics leads Hegel to a view of spirit and its history which, in my view, makes the absolutist version of an End of history and time unacceptable. He expresses this non-absolutist, epochal view clearly in his Phi- losophy of Right, in a passage we have already partially cited:

In history, the act of Geist is to gain consciousness of itself as Geist.... This apprehension is its being and its principle, . . . and the completion of apprehension at one stage is at the same time the rejection of that stage and its transition to a higher (PhR, ?343).

This is Hegel's Phoenix theme, one of the central metaphors of his anatomy of spirit, where spirit is "eternally preparing for itself its funeral pile and con- suming itself upon it, but so that from its ashes is produced a new, renovated, fresh life" (PhH, 73). This is a vision of the eternally "restless mutation and change" of spirit, where the fulfillment or "satisfaction [of attaining] ... what is desired," the principle or telos of a shape of spirit, "signals the death of that shape" (PhH, 72, 74f). "For spirit," Hegel says, "the highest attainment is self-knowledge ... [and] this it is destined to accomplish; but the accomplishment is at the same time its dissolution and the rise of another spirit, . . . another epoch of Welt- geschichte" (PhH, 71). Spirit is destined to achieve its goal, in the recollective epiphany of Absolute Knowledge, but this achievement is episodic, occurring at the culmination of each epoch, where every recollective closure of the circle of an epoch reaches beyond itself to the opening of a new era, regenerating history at each moment of its temporary fulfillment, just as every satisfaction recreates desire at the instant of completion. Given this, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that if history were to reach a radical consummation, an "absolute final End," it would at once undermine the very conditions which animate the world-spirit. The final satisfaction of history would be the final death of spirit. This is why I feel we must sacrifice Hegel's desire to portray an absolute consummation of knowledge and history and being, and seek the merit of his philosophy in an epochal conception of the development of Geist. Only such a sacrifice can avoid the deeper, paralyzing sacrifice of the dialectical soul of Hegel's philosophy.

IV. CONCLUSION: CONSEQUENCES OF THE EPOCHAL VIEW OF COMPLETION FOR

HEGEL'S CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY

If we return now to the question of the meaning and fate of the Christian era, the Christian "new world," and attempt to answer this question from the per-




spective of a non-absolutist reading of Hegel's eschatology, we have two basic options. One option would be simply to reject Hegel's portrait of Christianity as the "final concord" of spirit. By this account, we would insist that the Chris- tian era, like all other Gestalten of spirit, is destined to "die" when its principle has achieved its historical "satisfaction"-thereby leaving history open-ended, free to assume ever-newly created shapes.

Karl L6with, in his impressive intellectual history of nineteenth-century thought, From Hegel to Nietzsche, goes so far as to suggest that this is in fact the position Hegel holds. LUwith believes that Hegel viewed his own age and culture as the "end of the history of the Christian logos," where a "great turning [away from] and break with Christianity" would be made, "thus opening a new [post-Christian] era."931 Note that this reading entails an opposite assessment to the one Lbwith gives of Christian eschatology in general, which, as we have seen, he characterizes as a "redemption and dismantling of the hopeless history of the world." Lbwith is indeed one of the few commentators32 who adopts an epochal reading of Hegel's eschatology, seeing him as displacing the post-historical redemption of orthodox Christianity into the course of history, pointing beyond itself to a further epoch of historical progression. My only reservation with Lowith's reading is that it is arrived at too precipitously, without acknowledging just how much it stands in conflict with a great deal of evidence which suggests that Hegel never intended to portray Christianity as just one more epoch of Weltgeschichte, destined to be overcome like all other epochs. Lbwith's is a way of reading Hegel which Hegel would have been quite uncomfortable with, due to that side of him which felt constrained to posit a radical End of history, a fact that L6with does not explicitly come to grips with. If we are to adopt an epochal reading of Hegel's eschatology, it is important to explicitly recognize that it is a reading which stands in fundamental tension with the other (absolutist, apocalyptic) side of Hegel's ambivalence, a side which in fact often got the better of him in his directly theological musings on history. Hegel fell under the spell of the Christian description of the ultimacy of its own logos, and as a result he compromised his Heraclitian metaphysics, against all of his own principles. If we finally wish to accept an epochal reading such as Lbwith's, we must correct it by seeing how it is in fact a re-reading and reconstruction of Hegel's eschatology, which is necessary to re- cover the integrity of the Hegelian dialectic from the spell of the absolute End which crippled it.

This alternative may well appeal to many readers, but there is also a second option, one which would not require the sacrifice of Hegel's commitment to Chris- tianity as the "final concord" of spirit. According to this reading, Christianity

31. LUwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, 38, 39. 32. In addition to L6with, we may mention Robert Solomon (In the Spirit of Hegel [New York

and Oxford, 1985]) and Herbert Marcuse (Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory [Boston, 1969]) as proponents of an epochal interpretation. However, Solomon admits that he chooses to "celebrate" the "Hegel of change" rather than the Hegel of final repose only as a matter of emphasis (14-16), and Marcuse develops his interpretation without the slightest acknowledgment of the opposing (absolutist) reading, and hence without doing full justice to the deep-seated ambiguity of Hegel's eschatology (see especially 224ff.).



HEGEL'S ESCHATIOLOGICAL VISION 27

is indeed the "final concord," but at the same time it is not for this reason im- mune from historical development. The Christian era is eternal and absolute, not however in the sense of being "beyond history," but in the sense of the "time- lessness" of its truth.33 The logos of Christianity will not become undermined in time. But this truth still requires manifestation, and hence a temporal existence. Christianity is the End, or telos, of human history in the sense that it expresses the ultimate purpose and meaning of spirit, but this too must be subject to the world of time, the world of change: this purpose and meaning must be worked out and evolved in history.

This second interpretation has all the marks of Hegel's infamous synthetic principle of the unity of opposites: the Christian era is both eternal and temporal, absolute and changing, infinite and historical. As such, it seems to place my suggestion that there are essentially only two opposed ways of reading Hegel's eschatology - either an absolutist or an epochal reading - into question, for it seems to allow for a harmonization of the two.34 I will say shortly why I find this synthetic approach troublesome, but first I would like to note how it bears striking resemblance to one common interpretation of Marx's eschatology. When Marx describes the approaching communist revolution as an event which will bring about the total "supersession [Aufhebung] of self-estrangement," and as the ultimate "resolution of the conflict" inherent in history, "the solution of the riddle of history"35 -he is usually read in such a way that he is not suggesting that history will come to an end, that communist society will somehow be "beyond history." Although there will be no more class conflict, which Marx and Engels regard as the moving force of all previous history, the communist world will continue to evolve, not beyond communism, to be sure, but still in such a way that will give full place to human creativity and development. If Marx is able to speak of a "resolution" of history which still allows for historical development, why should we not permit Hegel to do the same?

Now I think this last question is a perfectly valid one -that Marx and Hegel do in fact face analogous situations with regard to their eschatological visions, and that the two should be judged in a similar way. I confess that for my own part I am not entirely comfortable with this second interpretation, where we must envision an ultimate "solution to the riddle of history" which itself will not be

33. Hegel in fact conceives of eternity as "neither before nor after time" but "absolutely present," which seems to allow for an historical unfolding of the eternal. (The Philosophy of Nature [Part TWo of the Encyclopedia], transl. A. V. Miller [Oxford, 1970], ?247 Zusatz). Cf. HPh, I, 287; HPh, II, 84f.; PhH, 79.

34. J. N. Findlay (in his Foreword to Hegel's Phenomenology, xiv) and Emil Fackenheim (The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought [Chicago, 1967], see 17 and chapter 4) offer attempts at a synthetic reading. While it would initiate far too long a digression to do these views justice, I believe that Findlay's reading finally collapses into an epochal reading, thus failing to make good the promise of a synthesis, and that Fackenheim does not finally extend his proposal into a considera- tion of the close of history, which is just where the inadequacy of a synthetic reading appears in its most glaring light (but chooses instead to confine his discussion to the dispute between right- and left-wing Hegelians on the metaphysical issue of transcendentalism and immanentism).

35. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, transl. G. Benton and R. Livingstone, in Karl Marxac Early Writings, ed. Q. Hoare (New York, 1975), 345, 348.




overcome and which nevertheless is compatible with historical development. It is not that I cannot imagine historical change occurring under an essentially un- changing guiding logos. There has certainly been tremendous historical change in the common era, since the beginning of Christianity, and I would be willing to accept (at least for the sake of argument) that the essential truth of Chris- tianity has remained unchanged. Rather, it is that this interpretation just does not seem to accord with Hegel's notion that the fulfillment of the telos of a shape of spirit "signals the death of that shape," "the rejection of that stage and its transition to a higher." This interpretation would allow for historical change, but not for fundamental change, not for the sort of change which is necessary for the evolution from one historical epoch to another. And the most straightfor- ward way to read Hegel's dialectic is in terms of a commitment to fundamental change. Any attempt to harmonize the absolutist and epochal readings must in- evitably fall into confusion. To speak of an "absolute End of the progression" which is nevertheless always relative to a further development, where "absolute" has the usual connotation of being non-relative - and if it does not, then the absolutist interpretation simply collapses into the epochal reading, where there are continually reappearing "absolutes," each relative to the close of a given era of history -is to be forced into the uncomfortable position where, as Hegel says in another context, we cannot say what we mean to say (see PhS, 60-66).

There may well be problems with both of the alternatives I have just given: the first seems counter to the place Hegel allots to Christianity as the ultimate telos of history, and the second confronts us with the peculiar idea of an eternal logos which nevertheless alters. A simple solution to these problems can be found by opting for the reading of Hegel's eschatology which sees it as proclaiming an absolute End to history. Such a solution, however, would entail the sacrifice of the Hegelian dynamics - his Heraclitian metaphysics of spirit and history. And I am convinced that such a sacrifice would amount to the euthanasia of Hegel's philosophy, the abandonment of the very dynamics which gives life and purpose and inspiration to his analysis of the Weltgeist. Further, as I noted earlier in the article, such a sacrifice, if taken seriously, would essentially doom our contemporary world to indifference and despair as a consequence of our role in carrying out the last rites of history. These circumstances, the first based on internal grounds of consistency in Hegel's system, the second on practical, ethical considerations, should incline us, I believe, to take the non-absolutist version of Hegel's eschatology seriously, and to pursue further one of the two alternatives I have sug- gested for reconciling the role of the Christian logos with this non-absolutist eschatology. As I have indicated, my own leanings are towards the alternative which "corrects" Hegel's adoption of the Christian logos as the final perfection of spirit, since I find this reconstruction to be the most consistent with his principle of the "unending" and "eternal" evolution of historical time.

In one of the most famous passages of the Phenomenology, Hegel says that "the wounds of spirit heal, and leave no scars behind" (PhS, 407). This idea was already prefigured in his early Spirit of Christianity (1798-1800), where he wrote that from the "severed life" of spirit, "life can heal its wounds again" (SXty, 230).




But insofar as Hegel's portrayal of spirit depends upon his central principle that "becoming [is] the fundamental feature of all existence" (SL, ?88 Zusatz), then we must not suppose that the "wounds of spirit" ever heal over so fully that they will not bleed again, that spirit will not be thrown into the negativity, the strife and conflict, of self-development. If we are to appreciate the depth of Hegel's analysis of spirit, we must hold him to his view that "the life of spirit is not the life that shrinks from . .. the tremendous power of the negative . .. and keeps itself untouched by devastation [Verwustung], but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it" (PhS, 19). The very life of spirit, as Hegel portrays it, depends on its immersion in the flux of existence, in the "labor of its own transformation" (PhS, 6), and insures that, on pain of death, it will never cease from becoming, from striving, from exploration, from evolution.

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Berthold-Bond Hegel's Eschatological Vision Does History Have a Future

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