The State and Religion in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

The aim of this dissertation, The State and Religion in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, is to explore the issue of the modern secular state and its relation to religion in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. Before turning attention to this thinker two other concepts of the relationship between the state and religion, the one of Thomas Hobbes and the one of John Locke, will be introduced briefly. These two predecessors of Hegel in the modern political thought both share the same empirical presumptions; they nevertheless come to wholly different conclusions concerning the possibility of religious tolerance and the relationship of the state and the church. Hegel's political philosophy represents an alternative point of view on the nature of the secular state and its relation to religion to both of these exponents of the social contract theory of state. The question of the relationship between the state and religion, which will the focus in the main part of this work, will be discussed with regard to Hegel's concept of freedom. It is this very concept, which makes it possible to show both the mutual interconnection as well as the necessity of the differentiation between these two manifestations of the spirit, i.e. religion and the state, and to explain the tension, which remains present between them. This tension,..