Freedom of Religion/History/Country sources/Absolute Idealism: Difference between revisions

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|question=Tradition contributions
|question=Tradition contributions
|questionHeading=What have religious and philosophical traditions contributed to our understanding of this right?
|questionHeading=What have religious and philosophical traditions contributed to our understanding of this right?
|breakout=Thomism and medieval Christianity
|breakout=Absolute Idealism
|pageLevel=Breakout
|pageLevel=Breakout
|contents=Freedom of religion, as one understands it today, is a relatively modern concept that arose from the work of Enlightenment philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, despite its relative modernity, theoretical arguments related to freedom of religion in its most simplified sense (i.e., the right to accept or deny faith in any form) have existed for centuries. Medieval Europeans did not enjoy freedom in choosing or refusing religion, as ecclesiastical structures were employed and amended to bolster political systems. Symbiotic relationships between church and state were a key characteristic of Medieval Europe and were seen to be a natural continuation of their respective roles in society. In analyzing the extent to which freedom of religion was respected or restricted in the Medieval period, one cannot expect to find evidence for the clear pro or contra argument in texts and sources. One can, however, apply modern logic and understanding of what freedom of religion constitutes to theoretically comprehend how Medieval theologians would have viewed and treated freedom of religion. By analyzing the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria from the 13th and 16th centuries, respectively, one can see the theoretical beginnings of freedom of religion as a natural right to be enjoyed by all peoples.
|contents=Hegel never addresses 'freedom of religion' by name. But if we examine the contents of this notion in its modern, liberal manifestation, including the freedom of religious practice and the prohibition of state adoption or encouragement of any particular faith (the latter not always being included in this right), we find Hegel has much to say (ACLU, 2023). His discussion of the relationship between religion and state is isolated mainly within §270 of his socio-political treatise, "The Philosophy of Right." In this section, Hegel criticizes both theocracy and a liberal separation of church and state. His disputes are both theoretical and practical. Ontologically speaking, religion and the state are different forms of the same rational activity of "Geist" (spirit or mind) coming to know "absolute truth." Thus, they should not be wholly alienated from one another. And practically speaking, Hegel believes that religion instills in the citizenry an allegiance to the common interest towards which the state aims, making it an essential form of education for any healthy state. But this is not to say that the law should hand over its authority to subjective religious opinion. In Hegel's view, the state retains the right to determine duties, rights, and laws that dictate "worldly life" but may heed religious doctrine insofar as it does not obstruct its rational operations.


Thomism refers to the teachings and beliefs of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a prominent Catholic theologian and philosopher whose works were heavily influenced by classical Greek and Roman thought. Much of Thomas’ work is based on a reconciliation of faith and reason to obtain true knowledge of the world and, if employed properly, of God. Freedom of religion was a nonexistent concept during the period Aquinas lived through. Despite this, one can see that spiritual arguments of the 13th century were focused on personal interpretation versus the organizational doctrine of Christianity. His magnum opus, Summa Theologica, is a systematic theological tome of what Aquinas believed to be the sum of all known learning. He employs Aristotelian logic processes to explain the relationship between God and man and how man can use faith and reason to understand God's natural world and workings.
We should first understand where the state and religion stand within Hegel's philosophical system. The state falls under the umbrella of "objective spirit;" it is a manifestation of spirit's rationality and freedom in concrete or 'objective' reality (i.e., it takes the form of state institutions and laws). The state, properly understood, is spirit existing in a way that is not only rational but inherently ethical. For this reason, Hegel makes it the highest manifestation of what he calls "ethical life," the stage at which ethics springs from its subjective, 'abstract' form (e.g., that of Kant's abstract morality) and becomes embodied in concrete social and political arrangments, rules, and institutions. As Hegel puts it, the state is "the building of reason into reality;" it is an objective expression of our free, rational spirit where the "end is the universal interest as such and the conservation therein of particular interests” (Hegel 1820, §270).


It is important to note that while Aquinas forms his arguments for a Christian audience, he does offer insight into broader faith-centered topics, like how to define heresy and man’s right to a free conscience. To Aquinas, heresy was something that only Christians could commit, as “heresy is the species of unbelief that belongs to those who profess the Faith of Christ but corrupt its dogmas” (ST II-II, q. 11, a. 1). Those who are not Christian cannot be heretics, based on the definition of heresy being inherent to the Christian faith. Aquinas explains further that “it is irrelevant to the corruption of the Christian Faith if someone holds a false opinion in matters that do not belong to the Faith, e.g., in geometrical matters or others of this sort, which cannot in any way pertain to the Faith. Rather, it is relevant only when someone has a false opinion with respect to the things that belong to the Faith” (ST II-II, q. 11, a. 2). Therefore, through omission, Aquinas acknowledges that peoples of other faiths are not contrary (or heretical) to Christianity, but rather believers of something else entirely. This is not to be confused with unbelief, which according to Aquinas, is a sin since that implies unbelievers are completely “without faith” (ST II-II, q. 10, a. 1).  
Hegel acknowledges that one might see the state's outward, worldly domain as distinct from the spiritual, inward orientation of religion. In his view, religion is defined by "intuition, feeling, representational knowledge, [whose] concern is God as the unrestricted principle and cause on which everything hangs;" its realm is the heart, and its object is divinity (Hegel 1820, §270). From this interpretation, one might assume that religion is fundamentally disinterested in the worldly concerns of the state. Yet, Hegel contends that the state and religion are not wholly distinct, differing in "form" but sharing the same "content" (Hegel 1820, §270) The two share the same "content" in being relations of spirit to "absolute truth." Explicating what Hegel means not only by "absolute" but also by "truth" is beyond the scope of this essay. But for simplicity, the reader might think of it as a complete, unified knowledge of reality. Religion is the spirit coming to know the "truth" of God, while the state is the "truth" of spirit rationally expressing itself in the external world. Both enterprises differ in their respective forms truth takes: in religion, knowledge comes in the form of feeling, faith, and mental representations, whereas in the state, knowledge becomes concrete in law, duty, right, and political institutions (Hegel 1820, §270). Religion and state, to Hegel, are the same free, rational truth manifesting in different shapes. Thus to imply, as liberalism does, that the religious and political realms should be completely separate is to deny that these are expressions of a common principle.


If we can infer from the Summa that only Christians are capable of heresy, where does that leave Thomist views of freedom of religion? As established earlier, freedom of religion in our modern sense was not understood in the same way by Medieval Europeans. However, it is important to establish that Aquinas believed in a moral order that “is prior to and superior to the legal order; and this moral order is what he calls the ‘natural law’" (Thiry, 174). Humans can't act contrary to this human or natural law, as Aquinas “conceived of human beings as… possessing natural liberty in terms of self-mastery, or natural dominium” (Cornish, 559). In synthesizing Aquinas’ arguments, he “contended that all human beings, Christian or not, had a moral obligation to follow even an erroneous conscience. This principle applied to everyone never previously exposed to the Christian message… [however] it did not apply… to Christian defectors—heretics and apostates—who… should be punished” (Little). Therefore, we can conclude that while not a proponent of freedom of religion per se, Saint Thomas Aquinas did believe in the idea of a free conscience that man was obliged to follow, so long as he was not committing Christian heresy or living with an absence of faith.
But despite this relationship, Hegel warns that religious sentiment should never have authority over the secular state. Because knowledge of the divine takes the form of "subjective idea and feeling… [that] draw a veil over everything determinate," to base the "enduring" character of laws and institutions on it will doom a state to "instability, insecurity and disorder" (Hegel 1820, §270). The religious opinion is internally disclosed and backed only by faith; it is thereby subjective and unfalsifiable (though not necessarily false). Anyone who "seeks guidance from the Lord" may claim that the dictates of the state are immoral and to be opposed (Hegel 1820, §270). Of course, this opposition to the state may remain an unexpressed belief. But it may also devolve into fanaticism that seeks to make religion equivalent to the state, i.e., to establish a theocracy. Hegel notes that when religion usurps the secular sovereignty of the state, "opinion and capricious inclination are to do the deciding" (Hegel 1820, §270). No state can be stable when the mercurial beliefs of religious zealots determine its laws, and thus an equivalency between church and state must be avoided (Hegel 1820, §270).


Several decades after Aquinas’ death and prompted by the actions of the insurgent French King Philip, Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull, Unam Sanctam, or “One Holy.” In the theoretical context of the extent of freedom of religion in Medieval Europe, this declaration put square limitations on the operational ability of political capabilities when challenged by spiritual controls. While the Unam Sanctam changed little for the average European Christian, it marks a turning point in the way in which organized religion interacted with temporal structures. Boniface explained that:
However, Hegel accepts that the state can incorporate religious ideas into its operations, though ultimately, the state has the final say over whether religious tenets are fit to be incorporated into law. Hegel contends that in the state, religion's "subjective truth" gets comprehended in "determinate thought" rather than faith or feeling (Hegel 1820, §270). For example, a state can make the religious precept "thou shalt not murder" into law, but not because religion says so. The state may look to religion as inspiration for or confirmation of this principle, but ultimately it must make sure this principle is rational of its own accord. To Hegel, the state has no authority over one's inner religious convictions. However, he argues that "when doctrines touch on objective principles, on thoughts of the ethical and rational, then their expression eo ipso brings the church into the domain of the state" (Hegel 1820, §270). So, the state may look to religion as a fount of ethical truth but retains sovereign authority as a secular institution over what religious convictions may rationally become law.


"We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords‘ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard ‘[Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest" (Papal Encyclicals Online).  
Finally, Hegel supports a relationship between religion and the state on practical grounds. He claims that religion is an "integrating factor in the state, implanting a sense of unity in the depths of men's minds," it imbues the citizenry with a sense of communal belonging that supports the state's function (Hegel 1820, §270). From here, Hegel makes a claim that deeply violates our notion of freedom of religion, claiming that a state should "require that all its citizens to belong to a church" (Hegel 1820, §270). In contemporary liberal thought, freedom of religion implies freedom not to worship. Though Hegel specifies that the state can not establish an official church for its citizens, he seems to believe it holds the authority to mandate participation in religious activities.


Here for the first time in Christian history, the pope ordained that the political and temporal “sword” should be squarely subordinated and at the mercy of the Catholic church. But, he did not stop there-- Boniface concluded by stating "Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff" (Papal Encyclicals Online). Every human creature, regardless of race, creed, location, or language, was now to be governed by the spiritual (and political through subjugation) sword of the pope in Rome. While this bull was issued after Thomas Aquinas lived, this document would prove to be an instrumental point of contention for neo-Thomists in the late Medieval period when the question of freedom of religion ceased to be purely theoretical and began to have practical implications due to the colonization of the New World.
We have mapped out a hazy outline of Hegel's views on religion and state: a conception that rejects both a complete separation of church and state and a theocratic unity of religion and law. Religion and state are expressions of the same underlying "absolute truth," and thus should not be wholly alienated from each other. Likewise, religion holds practical benefits for the state, making men conscious of the communal good that the state exists to promote. However, subjective religious ideas can not, as it were, 'take the reins’ of the secular state and its laws. This would, in Hegel's view, lead to a fundamentally irrational and despotic state. It seems Hegel envisions a state whose authority remains independent from religious institutions while still drawing on the truth revealed by religion as such. Further, Hegel shows an inkling of religious tolerance (insofar as a doctrine does not reach into the state's worldly domain). However, he does not respect the right to abstain from religious practice. Hegel's picture of the relationship between religion and state diverges from our modern notion of church-state separation and personal freedom of religious practice, though he is far from supportive of religious principles holding sway over secular, political rationality.


References:


Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546) was a crucial figure in the Spanish Scholasticism movement and a founder of the School of Salamanca, a neo-Thomist school of thought that produced innovative analyses and teachings on Spanish colonialism, Catholic superiority, and natural rights of all peoples. While Vitoria and Aquinas are formidable religious theorists, their philosophies emerged within different social, political, and religious contexts. While neo-Thomist in nature, Vitoria's works were heavily influenced by the social and political issues created by Spanish colonialism and its interactions with indigenous (non-Christian) Americans.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Stephen Houlgate. Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford [UK] ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.Absolute Idealism
 
Drawing on Thomist beliefs in freedom of conscience and the superiority of human (or natural) law to temporal powers, Vitoria was a staunch advocate for respecting the inherent humanity of those that the Spanish encountered in the New World. Vitoria “treated [the] law as made by ‘reason and enlightenment’, not just the will. Natural law, derived from eternal law by reason, was binding on all humanity; its principles applied to mutable situations and different peoples. God was the indirect cause of human laws, which were binding on the conscience of individuals” (Izbicki et al., 2019). So, despite the different faiths of the Spaniards and indigenous Americans, human law was omnirelevant in neo-Thomist philosophy.
 
The second part of Vitoria’s theoretical argument focuses on the limitations of the Pope as the head of Christendom and the spiritual and temporal controls available to him. Vitoria’s arguments were set directly against what was laid out in the Unam Sanctum of 1302; he argued that the Pope did not enjoy infallible temporal and spiritual power over non-Christians. Vitoria was keen to point out that “…the Pope 'has no temporal power over the Indians or over other unbelievers’” … because “Christ had no temporal power, and so neither can his representative [i.e., the Pope] on earth’” (Ruston, 11). Unlike the two-sword metaphor used to explain the powers available to the Pope in the early 14th century, Vitoria draws the line to exclude “unbelievers” and removes them from the Pope’s jurisdiction. Here again, we see the vital importance of man’s free conscience and the role of natural law in rudimentary accounts of freedom of religion. However, Vitoria did not believe that temporal power was superior to spiritual, just that Christian laws from the Pope did not bind all humanity equally (Izbicki et al., 2019). Vitoria was a Christian and a contemporary of Saint Thomas Aquinas by two and a half centuries. Still, he was able to remove personal religiosity from his political and social opinions in a way that did not become conventional until much later in history. Vitoria took Thomist beliefs of human law and free will one step further than Aquinas in his practical arguments related to the protections indigenous Americans should enjoy in the face of the Spanish conquistadors exploring the New World.
 
The arguments presented by Saint Thomas and Francisco de Vitoria have surprisingly modern applications in examining their theoretical applications to contemporary understandings of human rights and freedoms. As expressed earlier, because it would be impossible to draw a straight conclusion to support or contradict how they viewed freedom of religion within the social, political, and religious climates of Medieval Europe, we must analyze their works from a theoretical perspective. Suppose we can take the (neo-)Thomist emphases on the importance of free conscience as the primary basis of freedom of religion and man’s right to have a clear conscience. In that case, we can conclude “that when a government seeks to delimit the range of free behavior so that religious beliefs and practices regarding God are excluded or suppressed, the state necessarily acts against the very structure of deliberative human freedom itself, with respect to both its deepest initial inclinations and its ultimate transcendent horizon" (White, 1159). While Thomas and Vitoria would not have shared our contemporary understanding of freedom of religion, their appreciation for the necessity of free conscience over that of ecclesiastical or political restrictions translates well to modern arguments for freedom of religion as a natural and inalienable right to be enjoyed by everyone.
 
 
REFERENCES
Aquinas, Thomas. New English Translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Summa Theologica). Translated by Alfred Freddoso. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2023. https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm.
 
Cornish, Paul J. “Marriage, Slavery, and Natural Rights in the Political Thought of Aquinas.” The Review of Politics 60, no. 3 (1998): 545–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1407988.
 
Gundacker, Jay, and Noah Rosenblum. “Historical Context of Thomas Aquinas.” Historical Context of Thomas Aquinas; The Core Curriculum. Accessed June 20, 2023. https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/historical-context-thomas-aquinas.
 
Izbicki, Thomas and Matthias Kaufmann, "School of Salamanca", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/school-salamanca/>.
 
Keys, Mary M. “Aquinas’s Two Pedagogies: A Reconsideration of the Relation between Law and Moral Virtue.” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 3 (2001): 519–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/2669236.
 
Little, David. “Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Medieval Period (476 – 1453 CE).” Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Accessed June 20, 2023. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/christianity-and-religious-freedom-in-the-medieval-period-476-1453-ce.
 
O’Neill, Taylor Patrick. “Self-Destruction and the Sin of Heresy.” Church Life Journal, November 26, 2020. https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/to-choose-where-there-is-no-choice-self-destruction-and-the-sin-of-heresy/.
 
Pagden, Anthony. “Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe’s Imperial Legacy.” Political Theory 31, no. 2 (2003): 171–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3595699.
 
Pope Boniface VIII. “Unam Sanctam (1302).” Unam Sanctam One God, One Faith, One Spiritual Authority, April 27, 2017. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm.
 
Ruston, Roger. “Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216-1999: IV—Francisco Vitoria: The Rights of Enemies and Strangers.” New Blackfriars 80, no. 935 (1999): 4–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43250200.
 
Sarmiento, Edward. “HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE THOUGHT OF VITORIA.” Blackfriars 27, no. 319 (1946): 378–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43701441.
 
Thiry, L. “The Ethical Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Interpretations and Misinterpretations.” The Journal of Religion 50, no. 2 (1970): 169–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1201784.
 
White, Thomas Joseph. “The Right to Religious Freedom: Thomistic Principles of Nature and Grace.” Nova et Vetera 13, no. 4 (2015): 1149–84. https://www.academia.edu/27787560/The_Right_to_Religious_Freedom_Thomistic_Principles_of_Nature_and_Grace.
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Latest revision as of 13:41, 11 June 2024

Freedom of Religion

What have religious and philosophical traditions contributed to our understanding of this right?

Absolute Idealism

Hegel never addresses 'freedom of religion' by name. But if we examine the contents of this notion in its modern, liberal manifestation, including the freedom of religious practice and the prohibition of state adoption or encouragement of any particular faith (the latter not always being included in this right), we find Hegel has much to say (ACLU, 2023). His discussion of the relationship between religion and state is isolated mainly within §270 of his socio-political treatise, "The Philosophy of Right." In this section, Hegel criticizes both theocracy and a liberal separation of church and state. His disputes are both theoretical and practical. Ontologically speaking, religion and the state are different forms of the same rational activity of "Geist" (spirit or mind) coming to know "absolute truth." Thus, they should not be wholly alienated from one another. And practically speaking, Hegel believes that religion instills in the citizenry an allegiance to the common interest towards which the state aims, making it an essential form of education for any healthy state. But this is not to say that the law should hand over its authority to subjective religious opinion. In Hegel's view, the state retains the right to determine duties, rights, and laws that dictate "worldly life" but may heed religious doctrine insofar as it does not obstruct its rational operations.

We should first understand where the state and religion stand within Hegel's philosophical system. The state falls under the umbrella of "objective spirit;" it is a manifestation of spirit's rationality and freedom in concrete or 'objective' reality (i.e., it takes the form of state institutions and laws). The state, properly understood, is spirit existing in a way that is not only rational but inherently ethical. For this reason, Hegel makes it the highest manifestation of what he calls "ethical life," the stage at which ethics springs from its subjective, 'abstract' form (e.g., that of Kant's abstract morality) and becomes embodied in concrete social and political arrangments, rules, and institutions. As Hegel puts it, the state is "the building of reason into reality;" it is an objective expression of our free, rational spirit where the "end is the universal interest as such and the conservation therein of particular interests” (Hegel 1820, §270).

Hegel acknowledges that one might see the state's outward, worldly domain as distinct from the spiritual, inward orientation of religion. In his view, religion is defined by "intuition, feeling, representational knowledge, [whose] concern is God as the unrestricted principle and cause on which everything hangs;" its realm is the heart, and its object is divinity (Hegel 1820, §270). From this interpretation, one might assume that religion is fundamentally disinterested in the worldly concerns of the state. Yet, Hegel contends that the state and religion are not wholly distinct, differing in "form" but sharing the same "content" (Hegel 1820, §270) The two share the same "content" in being relations of spirit to "absolute truth." Explicating what Hegel means not only by "absolute" but also by "truth" is beyond the scope of this essay. But for simplicity, the reader might think of it as a complete, unified knowledge of reality. Religion is the spirit coming to know the "truth" of God, while the state is the "truth" of spirit rationally expressing itself in the external world. Both enterprises differ in their respective forms truth takes: in religion, knowledge comes in the form of feeling, faith, and mental representations, whereas in the state, knowledge becomes concrete in law, duty, right, and political institutions (Hegel 1820, §270). Religion and state, to Hegel, are the same free, rational truth manifesting in different shapes. Thus to imply, as liberalism does, that the religious and political realms should be completely separate is to deny that these are expressions of a common principle.

But despite this relationship, Hegel warns that religious sentiment should never have authority over the secular state. Because knowledge of the divine takes the form of "subjective idea and feeling… [that] draw a veil over everything determinate," to base the "enduring" character of laws and institutions on it will doom a state to "instability, insecurity and disorder" (Hegel 1820, §270). The religious opinion is internally disclosed and backed only by faith; it is thereby subjective and unfalsifiable (though not necessarily false). Anyone who "seeks guidance from the Lord" may claim that the dictates of the state are immoral and to be opposed (Hegel 1820, §270). Of course, this opposition to the state may remain an unexpressed belief. But it may also devolve into fanaticism that seeks to make religion equivalent to the state, i.e., to establish a theocracy. Hegel notes that when religion usurps the secular sovereignty of the state, "opinion and capricious inclination are to do the deciding" (Hegel 1820, §270). No state can be stable when the mercurial beliefs of religious zealots determine its laws, and thus an equivalency between church and state must be avoided (Hegel 1820, §270).

However, Hegel accepts that the state can incorporate religious ideas into its operations, though ultimately, the state has the final say over whether religious tenets are fit to be incorporated into law. Hegel contends that in the state, religion's "subjective truth" gets comprehended in "determinate thought" rather than faith or feeling (Hegel 1820, §270). For example, a state can make the religious precept "thou shalt not murder" into law, but not because religion says so. The state may look to religion as inspiration for or confirmation of this principle, but ultimately it must make sure this principle is rational of its own accord. To Hegel, the state has no authority over one's inner religious convictions. However, he argues that "when doctrines touch on objective principles, on thoughts of the ethical and rational, then their expression eo ipso brings the church into the domain of the state" (Hegel 1820, §270). So, the state may look to religion as a fount of ethical truth but retains sovereign authority as a secular institution over what religious convictions may rationally become law.

Finally, Hegel supports a relationship between religion and the state on practical grounds. He claims that religion is an "integrating factor in the state, implanting a sense of unity in the depths of men's minds," it imbues the citizenry with a sense of communal belonging that supports the state's function (Hegel 1820, §270). From here, Hegel makes a claim that deeply violates our notion of freedom of religion, claiming that a state should "require that all its citizens to belong to a church" (Hegel 1820, §270). In contemporary liberal thought, freedom of religion implies freedom not to worship. Though Hegel specifies that the state can not establish an official church for its citizens, he seems to believe it holds the authority to mandate participation in religious activities.

We have mapped out a hazy outline of Hegel's views on religion and state: a conception that rejects both a complete separation of church and state and a theocratic unity of religion and law. Religion and state are expressions of the same underlying "absolute truth," and thus should not be wholly alienated from each other. Likewise, religion holds practical benefits for the state, making men conscious of the communal good that the state exists to promote. However, subjective religious ideas can not, as it were, 'take the reins’ of the secular state and its laws. This would, in Hegel's view, lead to a fundamentally irrational and despotic state. It seems Hegel envisions a state whose authority remains independent from religious institutions while still drawing on the truth revealed by religion as such. Further, Hegel shows an inkling of religious tolerance (insofar as a doctrine does not reach into the state's worldly domain). However, he does not respect the right to abstain from religious practice. Hegel's picture of the relationship between religion and state diverges from our modern notion of church-state separation and personal freedom of religious practice, though he is far from supportive of religious principles holding sway over secular, political rationality.

References:

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Stephen Houlgate. Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford [UK] ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.Absolute Idealism



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