Part II - Württemberg's Hegel: Applied theology and social analysis

Summary

However incisive the social influences, economically and politically determined, may have upon a religious ethic in a particular case, it receives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its annunciation and its promise. Frequently the very next generation reinterprets these annunciations and promises in a fundamental fashion. Such reinterpretations adjust the revelations to the needs of the religious community. If this occurs, then it is at least usual that religious doctrines are adjusted to religious needs.

In view of the tremendous confusion of independent influences between the material base, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation, we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations between forms of religious belief and practical ethics can be worked out. At the same time, we shall as far as possible clarify the manner and the general direction in which, by virtue of those relationships, the religious movements have influenced the development of material culture.

Max Weber

In the Preface it was stated that Part I of this study would provide a “thick description” of the Protestant culture of Old-Württemberg in the eighteenth century. In setting this agenda I had a particular aim in mind: to establish a context within which historical sense could be made of what Hegel was “doing” when he began to engage in serious intellectual work in the 1790s.