There is one concept of freedom in religion and state": The Significance of Religion for the Modern Secular State - Ambivalence and Tension
Abstract
The article deals with the question of the relationship between state and religion in Hegel's philosophy. On the question of the relationship between religion and the state, Hegel follows his modern philosophical predecessors in trying to dim the conflictual potential of religion and promote its integrative function.
To achieve this, he converts both the state and religion into one common denominator: the notion of freedom. The aim of the first part of this paper is to show how this starting point enables Hegel to analyze both the interdependence and simultaneous difference and tension between state and religion.
This tension need not, I argue, merely threaten freedom, but enhances it and necessarily adheres to it. The second part of the paper is devoted to the question to what extent freedom as premise and Hegel's subsequent analyses retain their validity in our own time, which differs from the first half of the nineteenth century by a more advanced degree of secularization of society on the one hand, and a much greater religious pluralism on the other.