ABSTRACT
Most commentators grant that religion plays a major role in shaping the distinctive character of Hegel’s mature philosophy. Religion and philosophy form an intimate twosome. Is there also an agon in the intimacy? Philosophy seems at times to double for religion. But how double? Hegel’s claim is that his philosophical concept (Begriff) effects the rational Aufhebung of religious representation (Vorstellung). This conceptual doubling seems an intimate embrace, but what of an agon, perhaps even a disguised antagonism in it all, if the embrace repulses divine transcendence as other? Are there asymmetries between these two which, if not respected, can lead to counterfeit reconciliations? Does the doubling of the philosophical concept not also make us ask: what of the reverse relation, namely, how Hegel’s concept of philosophy shapes in advance his interpretation of religion? What especially of the claim to absoluteness proffered for philosophy, relative to a similar claim to absoluteness made by religion? Can two such claims be sustained together? Or must the absolute double itself? And what kind of ultimate would a self-doubling absolute be?
