(b.) A higher idea of God is attained by the religions of spiritual individuality, in which the divine is looked upon as subject,—as an exalted subjectivity, full of power and wisdom in Judaism, the religion of sublimity; as a circle of plastic divine forms in the Grecian religion, the religion of beauty; as an absolute end of the state in the Roman religion, the religion of the understanding or of design.
(c.) The revealed or Christian religion first establishes a positive reconciliation between God and the world, by beholding the actual unity of the divine and the human in the person of Christ, the God-man, and apprehending God as triune, i. e. as Himself, as incarnate, and as returning from this incarnation to Himself. The intellectual content of revealed religion, or of Christianity, is thus the same as that of speculative philosophy; the only difference being, that in the one case the content is represented in the form of the representation, in the form of a history; while, in the other, it appears in the form of the conception. Stripped of its form of religious representation, we have now the standpoint of
(3.) The Absolute Philosophy, or the thought knowing itself as all truth, and reproducing the whole natural and intellectual universe from itself, having the system of philosophy for its development—a closed circle of circles.
With Hegel closes the history of philosophy. The philosophical developments which have succeeded him, and which are partly a carrying out of his system, and partly the attempt to lay a new basis for philosophy, belong to the present, and not yet to history.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This word literally means clearing up, but has a philosophical sense for which no precise equivalent is found in the English language. When used physically, it denotes that every obstruction which prevented the clear sight of the bodily eye is removed, and when used psychologically it implies the same fact in reference to our mental vision. The Aufklärung in philosophy is hence the clearing up of difficulties which have hindered a true philosophical insight. To express this, I know of no better word than the literal rendering, “up-clearing” or “clearing up” which the reader will find adopted in the following pages.—Translator.
[2] The article on Socrates, from page 52 to page 64, was translated by Prof. N. G. Clark, of the University of Vermont.