Lewis has written a much needed book. The story long told about Hegel, that he was a throwback to the slumbering world of pre-Kantian metaphysics, has been forcefully challenged by philosophers over the last quarter century (by R. Pippin, T. Pinkard and R. Brandom among others). The major remaining stumbling block concerning the plausibility of such ‘anti-metaphysical’ readings has been the ‘old man’s’ writings on religion: for example, Hegel's concept of ‘Absolute Spirit’. For are such concepts not, ask the critics (e.g. F. Beiser), the quintessential themes of metaphysics? Lewis situates himself among these ‘New Hegelians’ and sets out to show that Hegel's religious thought by no means impedes such anti-metaphysical interpretations, but in fact supports the interpretative line that Hegel radicalised Kant's critique of transcendent metaphysics.
What makes Lewis’ book stand out from so many other recent books on Hegel is its textual attentiveness. While not a commentary per se (like e.g. Peter Hodgson's altogether different reading with which Lewis engages throughout), Lewis provides a close, historically sensitive reading of Hegel's texts. Chapters 4–6 are a careful reading of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Other chapters situate the Lectures within Hegel's historical context, present a developmental account of Hegel's thought in subsequent renditions of the lectures, and highlight the religious elements in other writings, notably the Science of Logic. Lewis provides a robust non-metaphysical reading of Hegel which is firmly supported by textual evidence and fine exegetical analysis. For this reason alone, Lewis’ book is highly recommended to anyone interested in Hegel and theology/religious studies.
Lewis’ primary concern is to show that Hegel is relevant today because of what he has to teach us about ‘social cohesion’ and particularly in this regard the role of religious institutions within the greater pluralist society. Lewis finds in Hegel resources to undermine the oft-told tale that modern ‘multicultural’ democratic societies are doomed to fail because of the fragmentation of racial, ethnic, economic-class and religious communities into opposing groups separated by incompatible judgements about the goods of society and the rights of citizens. According to Lewis, Hegel provides tools for thinking about the role of religion in modern society which acknowledges that religious concerns overlap with the political sphere. In this regard Lewis occupies a position between those who contend that religious reasons ought not to intrude on the political scene and are a purely private matter and those who contend that religious reasons belong, unrestrained by other reasons and immune from criticism, in the public square. By means of Hegel, Lewis seeks a balance between religion as ‘arational and apolitical’ and as ‘trump card’. Lewis’ argument shares much with Jeff Stout’s, also Hegelian informed, Democracy and Tradition (Stout has a glowing blurb on the back cover).
There are of course matters about which to disagree. I’ll highlight one which will be of interest to readers of this journal, many of whom are theologians. Lewis gives a non-transcendent, non-theist reading of Hegel. Here is a typical example: ‘Hegel argues that “God” is the religious language for spirit, which he conceives of in terms of socially constituted subjectivity that is self-realizing activity rather than thing or being. Moreover, spirit is properly understood as our own essence. Hegel's “God” is no transcendent other, not an entity separate from human beings’ (p. 12). Lewis seemingly reduces transcendence and immanence to a mutually exclusive either–or. Christian theology of course denies such a contrastive either-or. It must if its confession of the incarnation is to have any coherence – ‘Who for us men [and women] and our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man and was crucified for us’. The ‘non-contrastive’ logic of transcendence and immanence which is basic to the Christian tradition (cf. the work of K. Tanner and J. Herdt) serves to make space for the plausibility of interpreting Hegel as other than a proto-Feuerbachian and/or proto-demythologist (as he has been by nineteenth-century mediating theologians such as Isaak Dorner or Karl Barth and various post-Barthians). In this regard, Lewis’ account is unconvincing, at least to this reader, for a critique of dogmatic metaphysics is not equivalent to a critique of doctrinal theology.
Regardless of such disagreements, Lewis has written a remarkable book. Broadly speaking, Lewis’ most significant contribution for theologians is his analysis of elements other than Hegel's explicit doctrinal reflection (which is usually, and unfortunately so, the only element theologians turn to in Hegel). Hegel's accounts of, for example, the Trinity or of Christology are at best parables for the contemporary theologian; they cannot be adopted by those who strive to be faithful to the scriptures without rather severe qualification and modification. But Hegel's logical tools, his analyses of the dissatisfactions of modern society, his positive account of the role religion plays in modern ‘multicultural’ democracies – all of which Lewis ably highlights and explains – these are the very things which should lead contemporary theologians to reassess Hegel's possible contributions to contemporary theology. Lewis is to be thanked for drawing attention to these facets of the Hegelian legacy.
