Rational Criticism On The Religion History Of The Young Hegel School

Hagel believes that religion uses the absolute spirit to carry out its own link.The content of religion,the legitimacy of existence,and the development of religion regards the absolute spirit as the ultimate basis in an unfolded way.Superficially,Hagel achieved the reconciliation of religion and philosophy by the way of making rational belief higher than faith,making spirit higher than reality,but its philosophy system is full of critical spirit which lead religion to nous.Young Hagel School is the "direct successor of critical spirit" and changed the philosophy of Hagel from mild,neutral standing point to violent and aggressive one.They point their criticism directly to the Christian religious history.They use what Hagel established as the "nous" and "spirit" to redefine the gospel of creation,Jesus' s identity,the miracle and the essence of the doctrine and religious history.They completely negate religious idealism—the will of God decided the fate of the human history and establish the rationality as the "cornerstone" of historical idealism.In the young Hagel school,we can roughly find the picture of criticism for Christian religious history from young Hagel party--the history of the process of reduction from religion to human being by studying David Strauss,Bruno Bauer,Feuerbach and Stirner's religious criticism text.Strauss restored Christian history as a universal history of human development.Bauer melted the history of religion into the history of rational self-consciousness.Feuerbach further restored the religion to the history of the generation of human nature".Shidinaze reduced the history of religion to the reality of the individual.The religious criticism of the Youth Hegel School contains the construction of the idealistic historical view based on human rationality,and the "rational foundation" of its historical view is presented as an absolute and independent logical development process which is away from the personal rationality and tends to the human own rationality.Through further research,this paper reveals the logical trend of the rational critique of religious history in the youth Hagel School,which is mainly manifested in three aspects.First,it is the rational reduction logic in the history of religious critique.Strauss' s historical basis rooted in Jewish people's expectation of being saved from Jewish.Bauer,on the other hand,went out of the national character of Judaism and restored the history of religion to the universal history of the world.Feuerbach broke ethnic boundaries of rational basis,which placed the Christianity historical basis to the whole human essence to extend the historical mankind from nationality to humanity.Stirner thought all ration and spirit which contain the class nature are inauthentic.Only the reality of "self" is the existing basis of substance.The historical basis of Christianity needs to seek its rationality of existence.It pushed historical rational basis from Feuerbach's "class" to the individual "self".Second,humanization of god is presented in the young Hagel school.Bauer denied the historical authenticity of the existence of Jesus,and he thought God was nothing more than a spiritual alienation of self-consciousness.Strauss believed that Jesus is the moral mentor in human history.Feuerbach believed that God cannot be reduced to a single individual.God's essence is the alienation of the human nature.Stirne opposed all the class and the divine and Feuerbach's "class nature" had been completely restored to the reality of the individual.Third,it is the historical liberation logic in the history of religious criticism.Strauss hoped to purify Christianity through rational and scientism methods,and make Christianity a rational religion for human needs.Bauer uses self-consciousness to eliminate religion and leads to a thorough atheism,meanwhile employs the ultimate realization of self consciousness to achieve the purpose of human spiritual liberation.While Feuerbach attempts to make the essence of God return to the road by alienation,replace the Christian egoism by "love",so that human can be liberated by love.Shidinaze tried to exclude all abstract objects,establish an anarchic "self association",thus completing the self-interest of the Liberation Road.Young Hagel School built their historical idealism in the criticism of history of religion.This historical view tried to see "rational" and "essence" and "self" as the basis of historical development to remove the non-rational ingredients in the history of religion,to complete the reduction of human history to rationality,and to achieve a change of view on history.The significance of this reform was not only introducing Hagel's spirit of religious criticism into the historical field of Christianity,but also providing the necessary ideological premises for Marx's construction of historical materialism.Marx's early philosophy was based on the intense criticism and thorough liquidation of young Hagel School,and strongly opposed the abstract rationality,spirit and all "strange shadow" as the basis of historical development.We must seek the "real power" from the materialism life of human activity to complete the theoretical construction of materialist history view.Thus,Marx's historical materialism once again realized the change of historical view,which was the change from rational idealistic historical view to practical materialist conception of history.Through this research,in history review we can clearly view the change of Marx's constructing historical materialism,which is conducive to deepen and enrich our understanding of Marx's historical materialism.As a necessary part of Marx's historical materialism,the young Hagel School needs to be paid attention to and reevaluated for its "intermediary" role in the history.At the same time,Marx's historical materialism is based on the fully ending of religious and rational idealism.Therefore,the behaviors of some western contemporary scholars who tried to make Marx's historical materialism to be religious and Utopian "sophistry" will collapse naturally.