There are several things that make the manuscript problematic as a Hegelian text, which we unfortunately cannot go into here. Nonetheless, whoever its author may be, “The Oldest System Program” was either written or copied out during a crucial transition in Hegel’s own development and in the development of German idealism in general, and even if Hegel was not the author, the piece still reflects many ideas and concerns he had during that period and is a reliable piece of evidence as to the direction of his own intellectual development. Having taken Holderlin’s criticisms of Fichte to heart, Hegel would have seen in this piece how his Bernese program would have to be modified in light of his newfound interest in the most basic conceptions of idealist philosophy. The author of the manuscript speaks, for example, of how he wishes to “set down the principles of a history of humanity and expose the whole miserable human work of state, constitution, government, legislation, etc.’’-^'* Hegel’s interests in Berne in combining, as it were. Gibbon with Kant had expanded in Frankfurt into combining Gibbon and idealist philosophy in general into a more ambitious history than even Gibbon himself would have envisaged. The author of the manuscript announces some theses dear to Holderlin (which Hegel, Schelling, and Holderlin all no doubt themselves took from Schiller, perhaps even from Shaftesbury), namely, that “the Idea that unites all is the Idea of beauty f that the “philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as the poet,” that in forging a unity of poetry and philosophy, “poetry {Poesie) acquires a higher dignity, it becomes again what it was in the beginning — the teacher of humanity.
有几件事情使得把这篇手稿说成黑格尔文本是打问号的，对于这篇手稿，我们这里不可能去做深入细致的研究，这是令人遗憾的。然而，不论它的作者可能是谁，《德国唯心主义最早体系纲领》大体上要么写于要么抄写于黑格尔自己思想发展和德国唯心主义发展的关键的过渡时期，纵使黑格尔不是它的作者，这篇作品仍然反映着他在这一时期具有的很多观念和关心的东西，仍然是关于他自己的思想发展方向的一条可靠证据。在认真思考荷尔德林对费希特的批判后，黑格尔大概看出了由于这篇作品他伯尔尼时期纲领必将如何被根据他新形成的对唯心主义哲学最基本构想的兴趣加以修改。举例来说，这篇手稿作者论及自己如何希望“制定人类历史的原理并揭露国家、宪法、政府、立法和其他等等是极其悲惨的人类作品”。好像，黑格尔伯尔尼时期在把吉本与康德结合起来方面的兴趣，在法兰克福时期已经扩展成大体上使吉本和唯心主义哲学融入更为雄心勃勃的历史，而不是融入甚至吉本本人大概想得到的东西。手稿作者点出一些使荷尔德林感兴趣的主题（无疑全都被黑格尔、谢林和荷尔德林三人取自席勒甚或取自谢弗特斯布里的主题）：“使一切结合的观念就是美的观念”；“哲学家必须拥有恰与诗人相同的审美能力”；在使诗和哲学形成统一体时，“诗（Poesie）获得更高的尊严，它再度扮演它一开始扮演的角色——人类的导师”。
The author also speaks, in terms that at least Hegel himself never again repeated, of a “new mythology . . . [which] must stand in the service of Ideas, it must become a mythology of reason.The notion that modernity had to break with the past and that it would be the destiny of philosophers and poets to create a correspondingly new sensibility, a “new mythology” - an idea already powerfully at work in Holderlin’s poetry - to match the new times thus linked up with some of the ideas earlier found in Hegel’s “Tubingen Essay,” namely, the project of creating a “people’s religion” that would actually move people’s hearts in the direction of moral and spiritual renewal. What had earlier been a call for “subjective religion” had transmuted itself into a call for a “new mythology,” a new sensibility to be created by philosophers and poets. Hegel’s own version of radical modernism, ignited by Hblderlin’s influence, was thus expressed forcefully, and in its earliest form, in the manuscript (again, whoever its true author may be). Just as Holderlin was led to create new mythological landscapes and a new form of language to help create that modern sensibility, and to refuse to employ the jargon common to his time in order to adopt the kind of modernist stance on life that he considered necessary to the expression of that sensibility, Hegel concluded that for his philosophy to be the kind of modernist, rigorous Wissenschaft he intended for it to be, he had to create a new vocabulary that would force the reader to think for himself, that would avoid convention so as not to lull the reader into simply accepting past conceptions of things. (Indeed, it was shortly after Hegel wrote out this piece - again, leaving it open who the actual author may be - that his prose style began its decisive shift; that choice of obscure vocabulary, it turned out, was to be one of Hegel’s most enduring and most dubious legacies.) The most important aspect of “The Oldest System Program,” however, is that it is a step on the way toward what its editors named it: a system program. In Frankfurt, Hegel’s line of thought was rapidly shifting away from attempts at completing the Kantian philosophy by “applying” it to pressing social issues and toward issues of what it would take to work out the internal dynamic of the complex of ideas associated with the notions of self-consciousness and freedom. He was increasingly concerned with the issue of what was entailed, as the author of “The Oldest System Program” puts it, in our thinking of “the first Idea [being] naturally that of myself as an absolutely free being” and with how we were to think about nature, society, history, and philosophy itself if such an “Idea” were to have any effective basis in our lives. The “system program” notes that there can be no corresponding “Idea of the statef since “what is called the Idea can only be an object of freedom^ and that is clearly inapplicable to anything mechanical; the state thus cannot serve as the realization of freedom because, as the manuscript states, “the state is something mechanical'" - a clear reference to the conception, widespread in philosophical and cameralist thought in Germany in the eighteenth century, of the state as a “machine” and a clear indication that the kind of “modernist” sensibility at work in the piece looked to poetry and philosophy, not conventional political reform, to create the “new sensibility” for modernity.
手稿作者还论及，显然至少黑格尔本人之后从未重复过的，“新神话必须立足于为观念服务，它必须成为理性的神话”。因此，现代性必须与过去决裂，哲学家和诗人命中注定应该去创造相应的新鉴赏力或“新神话”——一个已经在荷尔德林诗中起着有力作用的观念——以便和新的时代相一致，这个看法跟见于黑格尔《图宾根论文》中早期的一些观念接续起来了，也即跟创造一种实际上将推动人民心向道德重生和精神重生的“人民宗教”的计划接续起来了。早期祈求的“主观宗教”已经变成祈求“新神话”、祈求由哲学家和诗人创造的新鉴赏力。黑格尔自己对激进现代主义的描述，受荷尔德林影响激起的描述，从而有力地表露在它最早的形式中和手稿中（不管手稿真正作者可能是谁）。正像荷尔德林被使得创造新的神话风景和一种有助于创造现代鉴赏力、拒绝使用他那个时代通行行话的新语言形式，为的是采纳一种被他看作表述鉴赏力必需的现代主义生活态度一样，黑格尔斩钉截铁地说道，就他哲学是他想要它将成为的一种现代主义的、严格的 Wissenschaft（科学）来说，他必须创造一种新的词汇，新词汇将迫使读者独立思考，新词汇将避免常规老套以不至于哄骗读者仅仅接受过去事物的概念。（实际上，正是在黑格尔写出这篇作品后不久——再说一次，不要去管实际作者会是谁——他的散文体风格开始出现显著性转变；对晦涩词汇的选择，证明是，成了黑格尔最持久和最引起怀疑的遗产之一。）然而，《德国唯心主义最早体系纲领》的最重要方面在于它踏上了通向它编者们给它取名的东西之路：体系纲领。在法兰克福时期，黑格尔的思路出现快速转换，不复尝试借助下列的做法来使康德哲学臻于完美：把康德哲学“应用”于紧迫的社会问题和康德哲学将开始用尽与自我意识及自由概念相联系的复杂观念的内在动力问题。黑格尔愈发关注，像《德国唯心主义最早体系纲领》作者论述的，在我们自然地把“作为我自己的首要观念[存在]看作绝对自由的存在”时我们所需要承担东西的问题，愈发关注我们应该怎样思考自然、社会、历史和哲学本身，假如这种“观念”可能在我们生活中具有任何有效基础的话。《体系纲领》中写道，根本不可能存在相应的“国家观念”，因为“被称作国家观念的只能是自由的对象”，而“自由的对象”显然不适用于任何机械的东西；因此，国家不可能用作自由的实现，因为，像手稿陈述的，“国家是机械的东西”——显然论及在 18 世纪德国哲学思想和经济学思想中广为传播的“作为机器”的国家概念，以及清楚地标示一种在这篇作品中起作用的“现代主义”鉴赏力：指望诗歌和哲学创造现代性的“新鉴赏力”，而对通常的政治改革不抱任何希望。
Holderlin had apparently convinced Hegel at this point that freedom was possible only when human action was structured in terms of principles whose outcome was a “beautiful” state of affairs, and that the realization of the ideal of “beauty” would somehow provide the answer to the problems provoked by Kant’s and Fichte’s works.’’ The manuscripts Hegel produced in Frankfurt while under Holderlin’s influence are, by and large, unsuccessful attempts to blend those various interests together into a coherent whole.’" It was not until he got to Jena that he was able to develop those ideas originally inspired by Holderlin into his own distinctive vision.
显而易见，荷尔德林在这一点上已经使黑格尔确信：自由只有当人类行动被按照某些原理建构而且人类行动的结果是“优美的”事务状态的时候才可能存在；“美”的理想的实现应该从某种角度对由康德和费希特著作激起的问题作出回答。黑格尔法兰克福时期在荷尔德林影响下创作出的那批手稿大体上是些失败的尝试，因为这些尝试未能使得那些不同的兴趣完全融合成一个连贯的整体。正是直到他抵达耶拿时，他才能够在荷尔德林鼓舞下富有创见地把那些观念发展成他自己的独特的见解。
Christianity, Modern Life, and the Ideal of Beauty:
"The Spirit of Christianity”
基督教、现代生活和美的理想：《基督教精神及其命运》
Under Holderlin’s influence, Hegel was motivated to work up a completely new manuscript on the subject that had provoked him in Berne; whether Christianity could be a “modern” religion - that is, whether it could become a genuine “people’s religion” and thereby serve as a vehicle for social and moral renewal. The essay is known under the title “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate.”’' The ideas at work in “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate” were in some ways continuous with those of “The Positivity of the Christian Religion,” but new themes and concepts were introduced, old ideas underwent a transformation, and a new conclusion appeared.’^
在荷尔德林影响下，黑格尔有意撰写一部关于早在伯尔尼时期就激起他去思考的问题的全新手稿：基督教可不可能成为“现代”宗教——也即它可不可能成为真正的“人民宗教”且可不可能因此被用作社会重生和道德重生的工具。这篇论著以《基督教精神及其命运》闻名于世。《基督教精神及其命运》中论述的那些思想从某些方面来说与《基督教的实定性》中的思想一脉相承，但是新的话题和概念得以采纳，旧的观念经受转型，新的论断得以面世。
The “Spirit of Christianity” is animated by the central notion that the “fate” of a people cannot be understood as the result of contingent factors in their historical development nor in terms of forces imposed from outside a people’s collective self-understanding. It is rather the logical outcome of the “principles” inherent in their common life, the logical development of the commitments undertaken by a people about what ultimately matters to them.
《基督教精神及其命运》被借助下列的核心观念作了栩栩如生的描绘：国民的“命运”既不可能被解读成他们历史发展进程中偶然因素的结果，又不可能被按照从国民集体自我理解外部强加的力量加以解读。它反倒是国民共同生活中固有的“原理”的逻辑结果，反倒是由国民就最终对他们来说至关重要东西作出承诺的逻辑发展。
The theme allowed Hegel to reflect again on which kinds of commitments to what ultimately matters are compatible with a modern understanding of freedom and which are incompatible with that understanding. In that light, Hegel returned to the differences between Judaism and Christianity to make his point. The “spirit” of Judaism, he argued, must be characterized as that of servility and alienation, since it understands the “law” as being imposed on it by an alien, divine being (an “infinite Object,” as Hegel put it). Hegel explained this in a Fichtean idiom colored by Holderlin’s notion of the unity of “subject” and “object”: Because the Jewish nation conceived of itself in terms of the “antitheses” of itself and nature and of itself and the rest of humanity. the only “synthesis” available to them was the abstraction of a God who was beyond nature and humanity and who was simply their “master. The result was a “spirit” that wedded itself to bondage, that embodied a self-incurred subservience: As Hegel puts it, the claim that “there is one God” becomes equivalent to “there is one master, for whom we are the bondsmen.”'*'* Judaism could therefore never be a religion of freedom, for its “spirit” could never allow it to achieve the “synthesis” that would be necessary for understanding freedom as self-legislation, as involving more than the imposition of laws by an alien being. (At this period in his life, not surprisingly, Hegel shared the widely prevalent view in Germany that the Jews would continue to be maltreated until they abandoned Judaism; as he put it, the Jews “will be continually maltreated until they appease it by the spirit of beauty and so sublate it by reconciliation.”)"*^
这个主题促使黑格尔去再度反思的是，对最终至关重要东西作出的哪些种类承诺和现代人对自由的理解相一致，哪些种类的承诺和现代人对自由的理解不相一致。出于这样的反思，黑格尔回过头来思考犹太教与基督教的差异以阐述他的核心问题。犹太教“精神”，黑格尔论证道，必须被刻画成具有奴性和异化精神的特点，因为犹太教“精神”把“法”解读为被异己的、神圣的存在者（“无限的对象”，像黑格尔论述的）强加给它。黑格尔以一种带有荷尔德林“主体”和“客体”统一概念色彩的费希特用语来解释上述情况：因为犹太民族按照它自己与自然的“反题”和它自己与其余人的“反题”来想象它自己，所以唯一为犹太民族所知的“合题”就是关于一个上帝的抽象，这个上帝在自然和人类之外，且只是作为自然和人类的“主人”。这就产生一种使自身受束缚且体现自我招致的屈从的“精神”。像黑格尔论述的，“主张‘存在着一个上帝’相当于说‘存在着一个主人，就我们都是主人的奴隶范围内来说’”。因此，犹太教绝不可能是自由宗教，因为它的“精神”绝不可能允许它得到一种合题，这种合题通常必须把自由理解为自律，理解为不止涉及由异己的存在者强加的法律。在他生活的这一时期，黑格尔也抱有当时德国广为流行的看法，这就是犹太人将继续受到虐待直到他们抛弃犹太教为止。黑格尔抱有这种看法是不足为奇的。像他论述的，“犹太人将继续受到虐待，直到他们因美的精神而放弃犹太教，并借助调和而扬弃犹太教为止”。
However, in the “Spirit of Christianity,” Hegel also took issue with his earlier, by and large Kantian identification of the essence of Christianity with a pure “religion of morality.” Departing from his Bernese conception, Hegel instead argued that Kant’s own conception of the self-imposition of the categorical imperative was only a form of “selfcoercion,” only another expression of the alienation of people from nature and from each other. Although the Kantian conception of morality as autonomous self-legislation by rational agents makes up for the deficiencies in the notion of being dominated by an alien “other” (by the Jewish God, for example) and thus marks an advance over Judaism, it still does not overcome the idea of domination in general, for, as Hegel puts it, “in the Kantian conception of virtue this opposition [that between universal and particular, objective and subjective] remains, and the universal becomes the master and the particular the mastered.”'*** The great Kantian split therefore between “inclinations” (coming from the natural self) and the “rational will” merely raises domination to another level rather than overcoming it."*’
然而，在《基督教精神及其命运》中，黑格尔同时重新审视他早期基本上康德式地把基督教本质认作纯“道德宗教”的这一做法。在摆脱他伯尔尼时期的概念后，黑格尔反倒坚持认为康德自己关于绝对和律的自我强加概念只不过是一种“自我强制”而已，只不过是人与自然异化和人们彼此异化的另类表述而已。虽然康德关于道德作为理性行动者自主的自我立法概念弥补了为异己的“他者”（例如为犹太人的上帝）所支配概念的很多缺陷，因而标志着胜过犹太教，但他总的来说却仍然没有克服支配观念。原因在于，像黑格尔论述的，“按照康德的德行概念，这[普遍与特殊之间和主体与客体之间的对立]依然没有消除，普遍成了主人，特殊成了佣人”。出自于自然的自我的“倾向”与“唯理的意志”之间康德式的鸿沟因此仅仅是把支配提升到另一层面，而非扬弃支配。
The spirit of Christianity, on the other hand, was understood in terms of love^ which supposedly transcends both the allegedly slavish obedience of the Jews and Kant’s rigid moralism."** Jesus preached an ethic of love and therefore of true freedom; in the ethic of love, we do that which answers to our particular, embodied lives while at the same time performing our universal duties. In love, there is no domination: Its essence is not a domination of something alien to it ... it is rather love’s triumph over these that it lords it over nothing, is without any hostile power over another.”'*'^ Kant had held that love cannot serve as the basis of morality because it could not be commanded; Hegel turned this around, arguing that this was precisely its superiority to the rigid Kantian notion of “self” domination.
另一方面，基督教“精神”曾常被按照爱来解读，这种解读据称超越了犹太人所谓奴隶般的服从，同时也超越了康德僵硬的道德主义。耶稣宣讲爱的伦理，因而宣讲真自由的伦理；根据爱的伦理，我们所做的就是与我们具体得到表现的生活相符合的事情，与此同时就是与履行我们普世义务相符合的事情。在爱里，根本不存在什么支配：“爱的本质不是对与爱格格不入的某物的支配……反而爱战胜了这些支配，因为爱不对任何东西逞威风，爱对另一个人没有丝毫敌意的控制。”康德早就认为爱之所以不可能用作道德的基础是因为爱不可以被人们控制；黑格尔对此避而不谈，坚称这恰恰表明爱优于康德僵硬的“自我”支配这一概念。
This conception of the “spirit” of Christianity, of course, required Hegel to offer some explanation as to how love is supposed to actually to overcome these hostilities, some account of that in which love’s alleged superiority consists. The answer came from Hegel’s newly acquired, Holderlin-inspired conception of the way in which a subject can said to be free. The imposition of any duty cannot come from the individual agent’s imposing a “law” on himself; it must come instead from the individual’s integrating himself into a loving relationship with some ground deeper than his own finite subjectivity, with something w hich is both himself and yet more than his own individual life, what Hegel called the “infinite,” meaning that which is self-bounding and not bounded by something “other” than itself Love does not need the opposition of duty and inclination; the lover is inclined to do things for the sake of the beloved all the while finding it right that he do so. Love, not self-coercive Kantian autonomy, is thus the true basis for the ethical virtues.
基督教“精神”这一概念当然要求黑格尔对关于爱怎样被假定实际上克服了这些敌意作出一些解释，对爱的所谓优越性在于的东西作出一些描述。这一解答出自黑格尔在荷尔德林启发下新获得的关于主体能被借以说成是自由的之方式这一概念。凡是强加的义务命令皆不可能出自作为个体的行动者把“法”强加于他们自己；它反倒是必须出自个人使他们自己融入一种与比他们自己有限主观性更深程度的某个基础的充满深情的关系，以及一种与某事物的充满深情的关系。这里的某事物既指个体自己，而又不仅仅指个体自己的个体生活，这样的某事物被黑格尔称作“无限者”，意为自我限制的东西，而不是受“其他”东西而非它自己限制的东西。爱无须义务与倾向的对立；爱人倾向于为了被爱者起见做事情，并始终感到他这样做是正确的。爱（而非康德自我强制的自律）因此构成伦理道德的真基础。
However, love as a subjective phenomenon cannot be satisfactory or self-sufficient; as Hegel put it, although “morality sublates domination within the sphere of consciousness; love sublates the barriers in the sphere of morality; but love itself is still incomplete in nature.In another fragmentary manuscript dating from roughly the same period as the composition of “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” Hegel spoke of something that he called “infinite life,” which he identified with God, and he there claimed that religion is the elevation of “finite life to infinite life.”^' In yet another manuscript of the same period, he said that “this love, when made by the imagination into essence is divinity.
然而，爱作为一种主观现象不可能是令人满意的或自给自足的。像黑格尔论述的，虽然“道德扬弃了意识领域的支配；爱扬弃了道德领域的障碍物；但是爱本身实际上仍然是有缺陷的”。在另一大约与《基督教精神及其命运》写于同一时期的札记式手稿中，黑格尔论及一种被他称作的“无限生命”的东西，这东西被黑格尔与上帝联系在一起。他在这篇札记式手稿中声称，宗教把“有限生命”提升到“无限生命”。然而在同一时期另一篇手稿中，他说道，“这爱在被成为本质的想象作出时是神性的”。
Holderlin’s influence in Hegel’s thought at this time was thus quite evident. Love consists in a deeply experiential going beyond one’s own restricted, personal point of view, in transcending one’s own finite “I” in the direction of an other, and it brings out the deeper unity among the various points of view, a unity that precedes all consciousness of division; this process of self-transcendence, however, has its logical stopping point in the idea of one’s uniting with “infinite life” (an activity that Hegel identified with worship itself), and it results in a vision of “beauty,” which is identified with “truth.”” Such infinite, divine life is Hegel’s surrogate for Hdlderlin’s idea of “Being”: It is more basic than any of the seemingly basic oppositions of self and other, lord and master, or mind and nature that we experience as finite beings, and it underlies them. Therefore, Hegel concludes, “subjective” love cannot be self-sufficient; it requires completion in religion, which is itself the synthesis of “reflection” and love: When love as something subjective and personal manages to become something objective yet still remain fully personal, one then has religion. This objective love is, in turn, described as “infinite life,” something in which the individual living agent participates, understanding it as the basis of his own finite life.
荷尔德林对这一时期黑格尔思想的影响因此是十分明显的。爱在于深刻体验超出人们自己有限的个人观点范围，在于超越人们自己围绕他者转的有限的“自我”，并且爱促成各种不同的观点更深程度的统一，一种高于切分一切意识的统一。然而，这一自我超越过程逻辑上终结于人们与“无限生活”结合的观念（一种被黑格尔等同于崇拜自身的活动），这一自我超越过程也导致一种“美的”幻象，“美的”幻象即为“真理”。这种无限的神圣的生命就是黑格尔为荷尔德林的“存在”观念寻找的替代物：它是被我们经验到的作为有限存在者的自我与他者、主人与奴隶或心灵与自然的基本对立，而任何非表面上的基本对立，它同时构成了上述这些基本对立的基础。所以，黑格尔断言，“主观的”爱不可能是不假外求的；它需要在宗教中达到圆满。宗教本身是“反思”与爱的合题：当爱作为主观的和个人的东西想方设法成为某种客观的然而仍然完全是个人的东西时，人们于是就有了宗教。这客观的爱反过来又被描述成是“无限的生命”，又被描述成是某种东西，这东西成了作为个体活着的行动者分享的东西，并被行动者理解为构成他们自己的有限生命的基础。
In “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” Hegel concluded that we are each individually free when we act according to principles that follow from t\\t free spirit of the people to whom we belong, for only the “spirit” of the people as a whole, not the isolated individual, can be fully self-determining in the relevant sense. In the daily world of everyday life, ethical duties and particular virtues will inevitably come into collision with each other; but the “spirit” of a people in which love is the principle overcomes those contingent collisions. Or, as Hegel phrased the matter, “only when it is simply the one living spirit which acts and restricts itselfm accordance with the whole of the given situation, in complete absence of external restriction, then and only then does the many-sidedness of the situation remain, though the mass of absolute and incompatible virtues vanishes.””
在《基督教精神及其命运》中，黑格尔断言，我们每个人作为个体都是自由的，其时我们根据某些原理做事，这些原理产生于我们所属的人民的自由精神，因为仅仅作为整体的国民（而非孤立的个人）的“精神”才可能从相关意义上说具有充分的自决能力。在日常生活的每日世界里，伦理义务与具体德行将不可避免地相互碰撞；但以爱作为原理的国民“精神”克服了这些偶然的碰撞。或者说，像黑格尔对这事加以解释的，“仅仅当它只是唯一活生生的精神，而且精神依照给予的情境的整体在完全不受外界限制情况下行事和限制它自己的时候，当且仅当这时，给予的情境的多面性才会得以维持不变，尽管那绝对而不相容的德行的主要部分消失得一干二净”。
Of course, the question this raised was: What then is the “fate” of Christianity? Is it the religion that Hegel had been seeking, that would be capable of providing a spirit of freedom for its adherents and thus be capable in a reformed state of leading a people to social and moral reform? Hegel’s answer turned out to be negative. Although, as he put it, there can be “no Idea more beautiful than that of a nation {Volk) of people related to one another by love,” nonetheless the world in which Jesus lived made it impossible for him to realize that goal. The RomanJewish world of Jesus’ time was corrupt, and thus “Jesus could only carry the Kingdom of God in his heart... in his everyday world, he had to flee all living relationships because they all lay under the law of death, because men were imprisoned by Judaism.Jesus (characterized in the essay as a “beautiful soul”) found himself in an impossible dilemma: He could either abandon what was most deeply true about himself (his dedication to a religion of love), or he could flee the world and live a life without worldly pleasure, which itself was only a “onesided,” unsatisfying resolution of the issue. Likewise, Jesus’ followers had to cut themselves off from the world, and thus the love they professed became only an ideal; as they became more numerous, it also became impossible to maintain the affiliations of love that had been the intended basis of Christianity. Instead of “infinite life,” the idea of the individual uniting himself with something both continuous with himself and yet deeper than his own individual life, the image of the risen Jesus, distant and transcendent, necessarily became the dominant image of Christianity, an image of longing for a redeeming love that Christians in principle could not experience in this life. What had been the ideal of “elevation to the infinite” in love increasingly became a “positive” religion based on the authority of a teacher and on belief in a God who became increasingly and necessarily conceived not as an object of love but merely as a master who commands.
当然，随之而来的问题是：那么什么是基督教的命运呢？难道它就是一种被黑格尔长期以来苦苦寻求的宗教，这种宗教应该能够为它的信徒提供自由的精神，并因而应该能够在一个经过改革的国家里把人民引向社会改良和道德改良吗？黑格尔的回答证明是否定的。虽然（像他论述的）根本不可能存在着“比由通过爱彼此联系在一起的人们组成的国民（Volk）这一观念还要美好的观念”，然而耶稣生活于其中的世界使他不可能体认到这一目标。耶稣时代古罗马人和犹太人的世界是一个堕落的世界，因此耶稣只能把上帝王国带进他的心中……带进他的日常世界，他同样不得不逃避一切活生生的关系，因为它们全都受到死亡法则的支配，因为人们被犹太教弄得画地为牢。耶稣（在这部论著中被描述成是“优美的灵魂”）发觉他自己身陷难以置信的两难境地：他要么可以抛弃关于他自己最深程度的真东西（他为爱的宗教献身），要么可以逃离世界和过着没有尘世乐趣的生活，这样的做法自身只不过是“片面的”，无助于对问题的解决。同样，耶稣的追随者们只得抽身遁世，从而他们声称的爱仅仅变成了一种理想；当他们的队伍愈益壮大的时候，要维持那早就成为基督教预期中基础的爱的联系也就变得不可能实现了。不是“无限的生命”，而是关于个体使他自己与那既和他自己相接续而又比他自己的个体生活更深程度的东西这一概念，而是那复活的耶稣像——远处的和超越的耶稣像，必然地成为支配基督教的像，必然地成为一张渴望救赎之爱的像，救赎之爱是基督徒原则上不可能在尘世生活中体验到的。早就成为在爱中“提升到无限者”这一理想的东西越来越变成一种奠基于传道士的权威和对上帝的信仰的“实定宗教”，上帝逐渐变成且必须被想象成不是爱的对象，而只被想象成发号施令的主人。
Christianity was thus necessarily led to create an insurmountable opposition between God and the world, and the “fate” of Christianity was that what was originally intended to overcome the relationship of dominator and dominated, of lord and bondsman, necessarily reintroduced such dominance into itself. In the form it had come to assume, Christianity, as the religion of Jesus, simply could not become the modern religion that Hegel had earlier hoped that it would be. The “fate” of Christianity is that it never could have really been or become a religion of freedom since it was never able successfully to unite “finite life” with “infinite life,” despite its initial promise to do so. What had been the story in Berne of the unfortunate loss of freedom, of Christianity’s becoming a positive religion despite the intentions of its founder, now in Frankfurt became a story of “tragic destiny,” of its being inevitable that Christianity could never become a religion of freedom, however exalted and (for its times) otherwise justified its founder may have been in assuming the stance he did.
基督教从而必定被使得创造了上帝与世界之间的不可逾越的对立，基督教的“命运”也就意味着，起初打算的克服支配者与被支配者的关系，起初打算的克服主人与奴隶的关系，必定重新把这种支配地位纳入基督教自身。以这种形式，基督教早就开始假定，基督教，作为耶稣的宗教，完全不可能变成那早已被黑格尔希望将成为的现代宗教。时下看来，基督教的“命运”意味着，基督教绝不可能确实代表或变成自由的宗教，因为基督教过去从未能够成功地使“有限生命”与“无限生命”相结合，尽管基督教最初承诺去这样做。早在伯尔尼时期就已对自由不幸丧失的描述，就已对基督教变成实定宗教（尽管这不是基督教奠基者的意图）的描述，如今在法兰克福时期变成关于“悲剧式命运”的描述，变成关于基督教下列的不可避免的东西的描述：基督教绝不可能成为自由的宗教。不管基督教奠基者可能假定了他抱有的态度多么高贵，（就他所处的时代来说）以另外的方式证明他抱有的态度是多么正确。
If Christianity cannot be the modern religion that will lead to moral and spiritual renewal and thus to social reform, and if religion is necessary for this end (a view Hegel continued to hold), it followed that some other form of religion had to be the vehicle for this reform. But could this new religion be based on what the “Oldest System Program” calls a new “mythology of reason”? Or - and this must have been clear to Hegel - would that be only another version of the ill-fated, almost laughable “cult of reason” attempted in France by Robespierre and his followers?
如果基督教不可能成为那将导致道德重生和精神重生，因此导致社会改革的现代宗教，如果宗教是这一目的（一种被黑格尔继续秉持的看法）必须具有的东西，那么由此得出宗教的某种其他形式必须成为社会改革的工具。但是这新宗教可能被奠基于《德国唯心主义最早体系纲领》中称作的新“理性神话”吗？或者说——想必为黑格尔心知肚明的——这新宗教大概只是关于那带来不幸的、几乎荒唐可笑的、法国罗伯斯比尔及其追随者试图做的“理性崇拜”的另一说法吗？
Driven to that conclusion but not happy with it, Hegel at least briefly toyed with the idea of investigating what would be entailed in the idea of founding a new religion - what would it take, what would it look like, would it even be possible? - and he even wrote an extremely short piece provocatively labeled, “Religion, founding a religion.”” Hegel’s essay clearly illustrated the unresolved state of his own thoughts at the time. On the one hand, little can done within the spirit of a people if it is not already free. If one is brought up in an unfree “spirit,” then in order to be free, one must break out of it and integrate oneself within another “spirit,” something that itself is not possible on the purely individual level. On the other hand, he also wanted to integrate these ruminations about freedom and the “fate” of a form of “spirit” into the scheme of thought recently inspired in him by Holderlin: We can transcend the inevitable oppositions of life only by elevating ourselves to the infinite, by coming to identify ourselves with the “infinite life” that lies at the basis of our own finite lives, and we can only do that if the “spirit” to which we belong enables us to have a self-understanding that makes such identification possible. Hegel was thus at this stage of his thought somewhat at odds with himself. He still held a belief in an essence of humanity (Kantian in Berne, Holderlin-inspired in Frankfurt) that is variously expressed in different periods in history or in different “spirits” but which remains constant over time, yet at the same time he also wanted to hold that our humanity takes its determinate shape in light of the “spirit” and its associated “fate” in which we form our self-understandings, which itself seems to imply that our “humanity” can historically also take very different shapes. In Frankfurt, Hegel was still not sure just what he thought. His essay on “The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate” thus became one more (in his eyes) failed attempt to come to terms with the complex set of issues about modern life that was troubling him.
在被迫作出上述断言但却不满意这个断言后，黑格尔至少简单地考虑过下列的想法：研究在创立新宗教时将需要何种观念——新宗教应该采取何种形式，新宗教大概看起来像什么，新宗教甚至将是可能创立的吗？他甚至撰写了一篇极其简短的作品，该作品被加上极易引起争议的题目，“宗教，创立一种宗教”。黑格尔的论著清晰地说明了他自己那时的思想悬而未决的状况。一方面，国民精神领域几乎无事可做，如果这个领域没有已经成为自由的领域的话。如果一个人在缺乏自由“精神”状况下接受教育，那么为了具有自由“精神”，一个人必须摆脱这种无自由的“精神”，必须使自己融入另一种“精神”，它自身在纯个体层面上是不可能存在的东西。另一方面，他同样也想要使就自由和“精神”形式“命运”作出的这些沉思融入他近来由荷尔德林唤起的思想图式：我们能够超越生命不可避免的对立，仅仅借助的是把我们自己提升至无限者，仅仅借助的是逐渐认为我们自己等同于那基于我们自己有限生命的“无限生命”，除非我们所属的“精神”让我们能够具有的自我理解使这种认同成为可能，否则我们做不到上述这种融入。黑格尔因此处在就连他自己也会感到奇怪的思想阶段。他仍然坚信人类的本质（伯尔尼时期康德式的人类本质，法兰克福时期荷尔德林灵感式的人类本质）在历史上不同时期或在不同的“精神”中被作了各种各样的表述，而人类本质自身仍然始终没有发生变化，然而同时他还想坚信的是，我们的人性究竟表现为何种确定的形式依“精神”及其有关的“命运”而定，由于“精神”我们形成了我们的自我理解，这本身似乎暗示着我们的“人性”还可能历史地采取十分不同的形式。在法兰克福时期，黑格尔依然对他正在思索的东西心里没有底。他的论著《基督教精神及其命运》因而（在他眼中）再度成了失败的尝试，因为该著没能与一系列复杂的使他伤透脑筋的现代生活问题达成妥协。
Part Two
Jena: Texts and Drafts
第二部分
耶拿时期：文本与草案
Hegel’s arrival in Jena signified his entry into the very center of the movement of post-Kantian philosophy, of all the exuberant attempts to go “beyond Kant” in philosophical discussion. However, even before his arrival, quite a number of young intellectuals, under the prodding of Immanuel Niethammer, had begun a quiet move “back to Kant.”-'’* This “re-Kantianization” of philosophical discussion, however, still regarded as unacceptable Kant’s various “dualisms,” his conception of experience as the application of conceptual “form” to neutral sensuous “content,” and his conclusions about unknowable things-in-themselves. Hegel’s friend Holderlin had participated in those early discussions, and Hegel himself arrived in Jena with a position that had already been decisively shaped by his friend’s own arguments and conclusions about those issues. He was, however, immediately drawn into Schelling’s orbit and found the appeal of Schelling’s own understanding of these issues attractive; but he was also quite definitely influenced by the atmosphere, still alive in Jena, that encouraged returning to Kant to see if within Kant’s own works there was a way out of Kant, using Kant himself If anything, Hegel’s attempt to find his own voice by combining Hblderlin’s influence with the ideas coming out of Schelling’s formidable talent for speculative philosophy was one of the prime motivations for his development in his early years in Jena.
黑格尔到达耶拿意味着他进入了后康德哲学运动真正的中心，后康德哲学运动中一切空谈家都试图在哲学讨论中“离开康德”。然而，甚至在他到达前，很多青年知识分子，在伊曼纽尔·尼特哈默尔激励下，就已默默地开始迈出“回到康德”的步伐。不过，哲学探讨“再康德化”仍然将他关于把概念“形式”应用于中性的感性“内容”的经验概念，看作康德不可接受的各种不同的“二元论”和他关于不可知的自在之物的结论。黑格尔的友人荷尔德林加入了早期那些讨论，黑格尔本人到达耶拿时已经怀有一种立场，这种立场是因他的友人自己对那些问题的论证和结论而明确形成的。不过，他旋即被引入谢林的思想轨道，亲身感受到谢林自己对那些颇具吸引力问题的理解的感染力；但他同样也铁定受到那时仍然存在于耶拿的那种氛围的影响，该氛围鼓励回到康德以看看在康德自己的著作中是不是有着一种走出康德的路径，利用康德本人走出康德。如果有什么区别的话，黑格尔尝试通过使荷尔德林的影响与出自谢林惊人的天才思辨哲学观念相结合来发现他自己的声音，这样的尝试是他早年在耶拿时发展出的主要动机之一。
1797-1800: Rethinking the Problem of “Germany"
1797年至1800年：重新思考“德国”问题
Hegel brought with him to Jena a manuscript that he had started in Frankfurt, which dealt with the problem of the status of the Holy Roman Empire in the age of the French Revolution. He drafted a good part of the essay near the end of his stay in Frankfurt and began work on it again in his first year at Jena, but then, as he had done with “The Positivity of the Christian Religion” in Berne and with the “Spirit of Christianity” in Frankfurt, he put it aside without ever attempting to publish it. Although quite philosophical, the essay - known as “The German Constitution” - was also very topical, and Hegel most likely decided not to publish it because his intensive work on establishing his credentials in systematic philosophy left him no time to make any further revisions to a piece that political events in Europe were quickly rendering obsolete.
黑格尔把一份他早在法兰克福时期就已动笔撰写的手稿带到耶拿，该手稿论述了法国大革命年代神圣罗马帝国的地位问题。他在临近客居法兰克福末期已经草写出这篇论著的大部分内容，并在他到达耶拿的第一年间再度着手撰写这篇论著。但另一方面，因为他在伯尔尼时期忙于撰写《基督教的实定性》，在法兰克福时期又忙于撰写《基督教精神及其命运》，所以他就把这篇论著搁置一旁，从未有过发表这篇论著的念头。虽然极富哲学价值，这篇论著——以《论德意志宪法》闻名于世——却是颇为论纲化的。黑格尔之所以很可能决定不发表它，是因为他在集中进行他体系哲学的证明工作，以致他根本无暇顾及对一部被那时欧洲政治事件很快使其成为过时的作品作出进一步的修改。
The Rastatt conference, begun in 1797, began to bring home both to otherwise hopeful and to skeptical Germans how ineffectual and practically useless the old Holy Roman Empire had become. In the past, the smaller political units of Germany (such as the Landgravate of Homburg vor der Hohe and the many relatively small imperial cities) had always rested their claims to independence on the laws of the Holy Roman Empire and had counted on its support to prevent them from being swallowed by their larger, more aggressive neighbors. However, in the wake of the growing evidence of the empire’s ineffectiveness against the French, they had acquired good reasons to fear for their existence, even though few could imagine that in a few short years almost none of them would continue to exist as independent political entities. These smaller political entities were surrounded by the French (who seemed unstoppable), the Prussians (who had demonstrated that they respected no territorial rights when they saw conquest to be in their interests and thought they could get away with it), and by the Austrians (who also had good reasons to extend their political domain). Indeed, to the various independent principalities, it was not at all clear just which of them - Prussia, Austria, or the French - was the greatest danger.
1795年召开的拉施塔特会议，开始被人们完全理解成既带来了另外的希望，又使德国人怀疑过时的神圣罗马帝国早已成了怎样无效的和实践上无用的东西。在过去，德意志那些较小的政治实体（例如霍姆堡兰德格拉瓦特和诸多相对较小的帝国城邦）始终把它们要求独立的主张建立在神圣罗马帝国的法律基础上，并总是指望神圣罗马帝国法律支持它们免遭地盘更大、更具侵犯性的相邻政治实体的吞并。然而，随着愈来愈多的证据表明帝国抵抗不了法国人，德意志这些较小的政治实体完全有理由为它们的生存而感到担惊受怕，尽管它们中没有几个会设想在短短几年内它们几乎全都将不复继续作为独立政治实体而存在。这些较小的政治实体被下列国家的人们所包围：法国人（他们似乎不可阻挡），普鲁士人（他们已经证明自己不尊重领土权，其时他们看到征服是他们的利益所在，且认为他们能够进行征服）和奥地利人（他们同样也有着充分理由扩大自己的政治领地）。实际上，对各种不同的独立公国来说，不完全清楚他们——普鲁士人、奥地利人或法国人——中究竟哪国人危险最大。
When the Rastatt congress was still in session, war broke out again. The Habsburgs in Austria had formed a new coalition with England, Bavaria, Franconia, and Wiirttemberg; once again feeling threatened, Russia and France declared war. However, on December 3, 1800, the Austrian forces were completely routed by the French in a forest not far from Munich. In February 1801, the Austrian emperor, Franz II, in the name of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire had no other real choice than to accept the treaty proposed to him. The Treaty of Luneville - signed on February 9, 1801, only a few weeks after Hegel’s arrival in Jena - forcefully brought home the complete political impotence of the Holy Roman Empire. Because of some difficulties, however, the Reichstag (the official representative body, as it were, of the Holy Roman Empire) was forced to conclude the details of the treaty, and this delayed a final settlement on the issues for a few years. Finally, the Report of the Imperial Deputation {Reichsdeputationshauptschlufi) of 1803 - about a year after Hegel had ceased work on “The German Constitution” - proclaimed exactly what many of the smaller political units had come to fear: The map of the Holy Roman Empire was totally redrawn, and the smaller political units by and large disappeared, swallowed up by their more powerful neighbors. Moreover, it was evident to all clear-eyed observers that these results came from France’s simply dictating the terms of the treaty to the representatives of the Holy Roman Empire, with the old Reich having little room to maneuver.
当拉施塔特会议仍然在进行的时候，再度爆发了战争。奥地利哈布斯堡人与英国、巴伐利亚、法兰克尼亚公国和符腾堡形成新的联盟；由于同样觉得受到威胁，俄国向法国宣战。不过，在1800年12月3日，奥军被法军全歼于离慕尼黑不远的森林中。1801年2月，皇帝弗朗茨二世别无真正的选择，只得以奥地利和神圣罗马帝国的名义接受法国向他提出的条约。《吕内维尔条约》签订于仅仅在黑格尔到达耶拿几个星期后的1801年2月9日，有力地使人们深切感受到神圣罗马帝国政治上的绝对重要性。然而，由于某些困难，德意志帝国议会（似乎作为神圣罗马帝国官方代表团体）被迫暂缓缔结条约的细节，这就使得有关问题的最终解决向后推迟了若干年。最后，1803年——大约在黑格尔停止撰写《论德意志宪法》后的那年——帝国代表团报告（Reichsdeputationshauptschluβ）恰好披露了很多小的政治实体已经开始担忧：神圣罗马帝国地图被完全重画，一些小的政治实体大体上消失了，被它们更强大的邻邦所吞并。尚不止于此，对于一切明眼的观察家来说显而易见的是，这些导致了法国完全强制性地把条约中某些条款强加给神圣罗马帝国代表，因为过时的帝国几乎没有什么回旋的余地。
Hegel began work on the essay “The German Constitution” while the Congress of Rastatt was in session, and he continued to work on it during the outbreak of war between France and the new coalition against it. Although it was abundantly clear to him that the creaky old machinery of the Holy Roman Empire was breaking down, even he was no doubt a bit taken aback at just how rapidly the whole empire managed to fall apart between 1801 and 1803.
黑格尔在拉施塔特会议召开期间着手撰写论著《论德意志宪法》，他在法国与新反法联盟之间爆发战争期间继续撰写论著《论德意志宪法》。虽然在他看来极其明确的是神圣罗马帝国这台摇摇欲坠的老掉牙的机器就要报废了，但他却甚至无疑对下列这个状况感到有点吃惊：整个帝国竟然这么快地仅仅在1801年至1803年就处于风雨飘摇之中。
He began the essay (in a forward composed some time after the major body of the essay) with the striking thesis, “Germany is no longer a state.He went on to explain that his reason for this assertion was that for anything to count as a state, it must be able to mount a common defense, and Germany had shown that it could not perform that task.“
他在这篇论著（在快接近它的主体部分时）开始写有这样惹人注目的论题：“德意志将不复是一个国家”。他继而解释道，他作出这个断言的理由是，就任何可以指望的国家而言，它必须能够进行日常防御，而德意志却显露出它不可能完成这样的任务。
