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The Heterodox Hegel (Suny Series in Hegelian Studies)

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This book is something of a revolution in Hegel studies. It is still hotly debated in the halls of academia. But Cyril O'Regan has broken new ground in his effort to answer the postmodern critics like Derrida who charge that the absolute spirit of Hegel is a new myth tantamount to logomachy.

O'Regan focuses directly on the theology of Hegel as a means to organize all of Hegel's philosophy, and he succeeds admirably because Hegel himself centered his philosophy around his theology. That fact has been obscured for generations who have wondered if Hegel was really a Christian or not. Surely many who used his name in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were atheists, and this has colored our perceptions of Hegel.

O'Regan cuts through all those errors. Perhaps only after the fall of the USSR was it possible for O'Regan's ideas to be heard on their own merits. O'Regan shows us in textual detail how Hegel borrowed freely from the ideas of Meister Eckhardt and Jacob Boehme and other well-known quasi-Gnostic Christian mystics. Hegel's theology of the Trinity, specifically, is an exercise in the triads of his speculative dialectic. His treatment of this speculative thought resembles remarkably the mystic utterances of Eckhardt and Boehme, two writers Hegel liked to quote.

O'Regan is an expert in theology as well as in Hegel's philosophy. He is also an expert in literary criticism and in the postmodern critique in particular. His answer to Derrida is rich in detail and insight. His focus is the crisis in Christianity occassioned by the Enlightenment and its aftermath. Hegel was very much aware of this crisis and he sought to answer it in his unique, dialectical manner.

Postmodern deconstruction challenges the closure of meaning and intelligibility, but postmodernists often exhibit a lack of familiarity with the literature of theology. Some theologians say that a narrative about the self's journey to the Divine is one moment within a narrative about God's historical activities that are themselves moments within a narrative of the movement of the Trinity. This is not usually recognized.

O'Regan smiles at Derrida's charge that Hegel gave in to the seductive powers of truth and meaning because that seduction is nothing but the possibility that truth is possible. For Hegel, Christianity must be revitalized and reformed because it lost its power when it lost its vision of the absolute trinity. Christianity needs a speculative rewriting to prevent its decline into impersonalism. Hegel successfully rejoined Spinoza's logical space to a Christian narrative space with a logic that does not reject narrative but sublates and preserves it.

O'Regan smiles at the postmodern charge that Hegel's dialectical Christianity is mere wish-fulfillment, because the logical space of the concept implies a God, a divine history and a realized apocalypse. Is it wish fulfillment if narrative discourse is consoling? Or is this a question about the ontology of discourse? Hegel did not aim at consolation but at the truth; not a superficial truth, but a scientific truth. If consolation was obtained, perhaps it was incidental to Hegel's project.

Hegel's Christianity is actually different from the one that the skeptics, existentialists and postmodernists have criticized. The postmodernist tends to generalize that Christianity is Logomachy regardless of whether it is a narrative or nonnarrative type, an anthropogenic or theogenic type, a religious or philosophical type, or even a superficial or deep theology. O'Regan returns the charge of dogmatism to the postmoderns. The horror of despair over the death of God may only be balanced by the comedy of the skeptic's self-contradiction.

This is one of the most controversial and scholarly books on Hegel that has ever been written. The debate over this book has only begun, and I invite the interested reader to join the debate early. It's only going to get better.

When I read the trejo review of this book I thought "no way" it could be that good. I WAS WRONG; TREJO WAS RIGHT. First comment: you'll have to get used to the language-game of the author. Give yourself 30 pages or so to warm up; he's difficult at times. Having said that; BUY THIS BOOK. This is more than a presentation of the Hegelian right. It is a fantastic text for "hermeneutics", if you happen to be teaching that class. It is primarily a grad-level or post-grad-level book; but with good lecture you could use it in undergrad. He respects jurgen moltmann which is also another big plus. Pages 30-140 should be read by all Hegelian students. Those pages alone are worth the price of the book. Thanks to trejo for the recommendation. I loved it.

I read this book when it came out several years ago. At the time, I rated it as one of the top five academic books that I have ever read, given the book's incredible scope and insight about the pivotal role that theology played in Hegel's thought. Not only Lutheran theology, but unorthodox/heterodox theology, including hermeticism, Gnosticism, and other trends with which Hegel was familiar. Anyone wanting a new understanding of Hegel, an understanding not limited by the post-theological, atheistic standpoint taken by many 20th century commentators, must read and come to terms with the powerful message of this book.