In this paper, I first explore Hegel’s own distinctions between various types of idealism, most of which he explicitly rejects. I discuss his notions of subjective, transcendental and absolute idealism and present the outlines of his criticisms of the first two as well as the motivation behind his commitment to a version of absolute idealism. In particular, I argue that the latter does not share the defining features of what is now commonly called ‘idealism’, as Hegel neither denies the existence of an external world nor even holds that we can only somehow indirectly infer the truth of propositions about the external world from the structure of some given mental material. I give a basic account of what Hegel’s concept of ‘the absolute idea’ is about, which lies behind his absolute idealism. In this context, I maintain that it is crucial for our understanding of Hegel and of his potential relevance for contemporary metaphysics and epistemology that the absolute idea is precisely not a mental or ‘spiritual’ (geistig) entity. Rather, it amounts to a set of methodological assumptions designed to guarantee the overall intelligibility of what there is, regardless of its actual natural, social or more broadly normative structure.

To assert the primacy of objective spirit is to claim that certain distinctively human capacities, such as thinking and acting, are not capacities we have as individuals considered singly but are in some way dependent on shared public norms or social institutions. In this essay, I provide a brief history of arguments for the primacy of objective spirit from Hegel to the present, identifying three distinct strategies for defending this thesis: the teleological argument, the sociological argument and the quasi-transcendental argument. Although it has now become quite common to read Hegel as advancing a quasi-transcendental argument, one similar to the argument found in Wittgenstein’s famous remarks about ‘rule-following’, I show that Hegel’s most interesting claims about the social dimensions of human mindedness are incompatible with this strategy and can only be vindicated if he is read as offering a teleological argument.

In this paper, I explore the question of the reality of God for Hegel. I first consider the contemporary interpretative debate on Hegel’s metaphysics and the implications of this debate for the Hegelian conception of God. I then advocate a ‘qualified revisionist’ approach to Hegel, and, as a further qualification to such an approach, I suggest an interpretation of the objective reality that Hegel attributes to God as mediated objectivity. I analyse how Hegel’s ‘mediated objectivity’ applies to religious representations, suggesting that a figural reading of the kind theorized by philologist Erich Auerbach should be adopted. Finally I reconstruct Hegel’s distinction between the image (Bild) of God, the concept (Begriff) of God, and the Idea (Idee) of God, and I argue that the answer to the question of the objective reality of God in Hegel’s philosophy of religion can be retrieved in the process according to which the concept turns into the Idea.

The paper analyses the concept of ‘bad infinity’ in connection with Hegel’s critique of infinitesimal calculus and with the belittling of Hegel’s mathematical notions by the representatives of modern logic and the foundations of mathematics. The main line of argument draws on the observation that Hegel’s difference is only derivatively a mathematical one and is primarily of a broadly logico-epistemological nature. Because of this, the concept of bad infinity can be fruitfully utilized, by way of inversion, in an analysis of the conceptual shortcomings of the most prominent foundational attempts at dealing with infinite quanta, such as Cantor’s set theory and Hilbert’s axiomatism. As such, the paper is an attempt at reconstructing Hegel’s philosophy of mathematics and its role in his philosophical system and, more importantly, as a contribution to logic in the more general and radical sense of the word.

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel critically refers to Hinduism as ‘The Religion of Imagination’ or, in another translation, ‘The Religion of Phantasy’. Hegel’s study of Hinduism came during the period when there was a rapidly growing interest in India, indeed, an Indomania, in the German-speaking world. Hegel meticulously kept up with the most recent publications in the field. This article examines Hegel’s critical assessment of Hinduism in order to determine what specifically he finds objectionable in it. It is argued that his objection ultimately concerns what he takes to be the mistaken conception of what it is to be a human being that underlies the Hindu view. This conception, he claims, undermines the development of subjective freedom that he takes to be so important.

This paper offers a response to Hegel’s critique of Hinduism as explicated by Jon Stewart, by drawing on a variety of textual sources which are normative for Hinduism. In a first section, Hegel’s idea that the Hindu conception of the divine is too abstract to provide meaningful content is challenged by explicating the role of the Veda in Hinduism. A second section seeks to question the idea that the kind of naturalism available in Hinduism is necessarily incompatible with subjective freedom in the way that Hegel suggests. A third section engages with the specific empirical question regarding the subjective freedom of women in Hindu society which Hegel provides as one practical illustration of the lack of subjective freedom. Rather than providing a definitive rebuttal, the evidence adduced on all these points suggests a more heterogeneous picture of Hinduism than that which Hegel was able to provide.