2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

P HILOSOPHY’ S ENDS
sented as separate from the religious consciousness, “it comes from without.” More pre-
cisely,
In religion, two factors are present: (1) An objective form, or kind, of consciousness
(wherein the essential spirit, the Absolute, appears as outside the
subjective spirit and so as its object) comes to image the spirit historically
or in the shape of art, removed in time and space. (2) The character or phase
of devotion and fervor; here this removal is discarded, and the separation is
superseded; here the spirit is one with the object, the individual is filled with
the spirit. (137/252)
The truth of religion is constituted by the sensible revelation of the divine through art, wor-
ship and cult, while in philosophy there is no external source of objectivity. Even in its sec-
ond phase, in the unity reached through devotion, the spirit comes from the outside, and
always stands out and against consciousness, although the latter has to bear witness to it.
This is what guarantees, it seems, that the development of religion’s inner content can be
settled rather rapidly, so that the relationship between it and its end can achieve the simpler
form we have already witnessed with respect to the sciences. What matters, in this context,
is the external source of authority: both science and religion possess an intrinsic openness
to the outside since the former relies ultimately on empirical experience, according to He-
gel, and the latter is based on the consciousness of the divine substance that comes through
an ultimately sensuous perception— the religious feeling, as it were.
This intrinsic openness ultimately means that science and religion are essentially “lim-
ited,” in the technical sense of being bounded in their aspirations by a horizon, by a limit
over which they have no control. Experience is, by definition, precisely what, being outside
science’s control, warrants its objectivity. Analogously, in religion, the religious conscious-
ness finds its truth outside itself. Science and religion are therefore immune, according to
Hegel, from the characteristic oscillations that he has described with respect to philosophy.
We might say that the presence of an external horizon, of a boundary condition of sorts, is
what limits the amplitude of such oscillations and, eventually, reduces them to nothing
(whether in time or asymptotically, it is a separate issue whose relevance is minimal in this
context). This is why the end of science and religion is so relatively unproblematic. The
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