Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World

Jon Stewart is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He is the founder and general editor of the series Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, Texts from Golden Age Denmark, and Danish Golden Age Studies. He is the co-editor of the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook and Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series. He is the author of Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2015).

• AbbreviationsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: The Neglect of the Historical Dimension of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion1: Hegel's Methodology2: Immediate Religion: Magic3: Chinese Religion: The Religion of Measure4: Buddhism and Lamaism: The Religion of Being-within-Self5: Hinduism: The Religion of Imagination6: Zoroastrianism: The Religion of the Good or Light7: The Egyptian Religion: The Religion of Mystery8: Judaism: The Religion of Sublimity9: Greek Polytheism: The Religion of Beauty10: Roman Polytheism: The Religion of Expediency11: The Absolute or Revealed Religion: ChristianityBibliography: Hegel and the World Religions

Stewart has the requisite expertise, and he has written an important book. He possesses a mastery of the many sources utilized by Hegel; he shows the pivotal position of Determinate Religion in the lectures as a whole; he reveals many connections between the lectures on religion and those on the philosophy of world history and the history of philosophy; he discusses the rise of Orientalism in the nineteenth century and Hegel's role in it; he analyzes the impact of G. F. Creuzer on Hegel; and he demonstrates the connection between "the logic of the gods," human self-recognition, and the slow progression of freedom in culture and history.