In this work, Peter C. Hodgson's task is twofold: exegetical and apologetic. Hodgson, the editor of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, first explicates Hegel's philosophy of religion by interpreting the lectures within the context of his larger theological project as well as the theological debates and controversies of his day. Hodgson justifies situating Hegel's lectures in this way by noting that the purpose of the philosophy of religion for Hegel – indeed, the ‘highest task of philosophy’ – is to ‘occupy itself with God’ (p. 53), and thus Hegel's philosophy is ‘a distinctive sort of philosophical or speculative theology’ (p. 14). As such the book functions well as a companion to Hegel's Lectures in much the same way that Jean Hyppolite's Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or Robert C. Solomon's In the Spirit of Hegel does for the Phenomenology. Here and there, especially in the final chapter, Hodgson attempts to defend Hegel's work as relevant to contemporary theology.
The exegetical part consumes most of Hodgson's energy. Hodgson clearly and commendably untangles the disparate threads of Hegel's speculative reconstruction of various Christian themes. Critics frequently disapprove of Hegel's philosophical treatment of Christianity, finding it finally dismissive of the symbols and myths of the tradition. Hodgson demurs, instead agreeing with Cyril O'Regan that ‘Hegel's friendly demythologisation. . . preserves its theological referent and its deep insight while subverting the hostile demythologisations (subjectivist, materialist, atheist) that were already under way in his time’ (p. 99). It may seem, then, that Hodgson interprets Hegel's theology as traditional onto-theology, but he in fact is at pains to show that the Hegelian notion of absolute spirit actually represents a radical departure from the traditional metaphysical concept of God as the first, highest, most perfect and real being, even as it does not evolve into a philosophical and post-religious humanism which renders theology irrelevant.
Whether Hodgson manages to make this case often hinges on his reading of certain key concepts in Hegel's philosophy. For instance, Hodgson repeatedly attempts to disabuse the naïve reader of the misplaced tendency to read the term ‘absolute’ in this traditional sense. Instead, he notes the connection of the Latin absolvere, meaning ‘to loosen from’ or ‘to let go’, to Hegel's Germanic term entlassen, meaning ‘to release’. Hodgson notes the way that absolute spirit, in Hegel's own words, ‘releases (entläßt) the other to exist as a free and independent being’ (Lectures, 3:292). Through this process of release, Hegel's God is ‘utterly connected with everything: it is nothing but relationality’ (p. 90). Similarly, Hodgson affirms Andrew Shanks' reading of Hegel's epistemological use of the term ‘absolute’, describing absolute knowing as the commitment to an open-ended conversation (p. 241 n. 48).
As for Levinas' charge that Hegel's absolute is totalising, Hodgson recommends construing terms such as Ganze, Ganzheit, and Totalität holistically because Hegel's holistic system does not reduce the other to the same (p. 129). Hodgson uses this point to criticise William Desmond's recent work Hegel's God: A Counterfeit Double? ‘Absolute spirit’, according to Hodgson, ‘is not a totalising substance but a unity that both generates and emerges from determinacy and difference’ (p. 106). Desmond's thought, like Levinas', remains too Kierkegaardian; not only is it dualistic, but its only alternative is monism. Hodgson mentions the notions of ‘emergent subjectivity’ and ‘absolute intersubjectivity’ (p. 17) as a way of positioning Hegel's absolute idealism beyond such monisms as naturalism or subjective idealism and yet also beyond dualism (advaitic is Hodgson's term for the holism that is not two and yet not one), but he does not probe the resources in emergence theory that might elucidate this point more fully. In any case, this discussion of ‘nondualistic otherness’ (p. 90) allows Hodgson's exegesis to merge into his apologetic task.
This second task receives its fullest treatment in dealing with Hegel's approach to the history and plurality of religions. Since the four versions of Hegel's lectures spanned a decade and because they contain numerous variations, any attempt to find a static or final resolution of Hegel's thought process would not only be difficult but also misguided – misguided in the sense that it would treat Hegel as a ‘prisoner of his own system’, whereas ‘for him it was not a closed system but a way and discipline of thinking’ (pp. 217–18). This point becomes a hermeneutic principle for Hodgson's reading and appropriating of Hegel's thought. For example, we should read Hegel's treatment of other religions as ‘a kind of conceptual play based on imaginative variation in order to arrive at new insights’ (p. 217). Thus, if we find inaccuracies or distortions in Hegel's account of determinate religions, we would do well to remember that ‘he is not offering empirical descriptions but rather imaginative constructions’ (p. 50). In the end, Hodgson criticises Hegel's teleological approach to world religions, not for its teleology per se, but for its privileged interpretation of Christianity as the consummate religion. However, he notes Hegel's criticism of the ethical failings and dogmatisms of Christianity and goes on to conclude that ‘on Hegel's own terms Christianity cannot be the consummate religion’ and that, to be consistent, Hegel would have ultimately embraced religious pluralism (pp. 242–3). Thus, Hodgson's hermeneutical technique allows him to dismiss Hegel's explicit claim in favour of an implicit movement in his thought. Occasionally, Hodgson's attempt to defend Hegel through this sort of rational reconstruction does not fully deliver the sort of argument that his claims would require. If, for example, the ‘mystical posture’ helps to ‘check the excesses of reason to which speculative philosophy is prone’, further explanation of how this is so would help the reader (p. 81). If the belief that death is the prevailing power in the age of postmodernity, it would help to show both that and why this is so (pp. 174–5). On the whole, the book succeeds admirably as exegesis but only partially makes the case for Hegel's continuing contribution to contemporary theology.
