Richard H. Bell, Teleology, Providence and the ‘Death of God’: a New Perspective on the ‘Ring’ Cycle’s Debt to G.W.F. Hegel

March 2017, Volume 11, Number 1, 30–45.

Heinrich Heine, reflecting on his acquaintance with Hegel in Berlin, writes as follows:

I often used to see him looking around anxiously as if in fear he might be understood. He was very fond of me, for he was sure I would never betray him. As a matter of fact, I then thought that he was very obsequious. Once when I grew impatient with him for saying: ‘All that is, is rational’, he smiled strangely and remarked, ‘it may also be said that all that is rational must be’. Then he looked about him hastily; but he was speedily reassured, for only Heinrich Beer had heard his words. It was not till later that I understood these expressions. Not till later did I understand what he meant when he declared in his Philosophy of History that Christianity represents progress because it teaches the doctrine of a God who died; while heathen gods knew nothing of death. What a step forward it would be, if we could declare that God never existed at all!

Heine is not always a reliable witness and one wonders whether it really was Hegel’s intention not to be understood. But the comments that concern the inextricable bond between ‘thought’ and ‘being’, and Christianity’s doctrine of ‘a God who died’ take us to the heart of his philosophy and sum up rather well why Hegel could appeal to the composer Richard Wagner.