Hegel’s Political Theology of Kenosis: From the Death of God to the Hegelian Monarch

Abstract

This article explores the concept of the death of God in Hegel's philosophy and its implications for his political thought. It argues that Hegel's notion of the death of God involves a Christological kenotic sense of self-emptying, which extends beyond his philosophy of religion to impact his entire philosophical system, including politics, given that Hegel considers that the state consists in the march of God. The paper aims to interpret Hegel’s stance on the death of God as kenotic and its integration into his system, with the purpose of addressing how this kenotic structure manifests in concrete conceptions of the state. Specifically, it examines the enigmatic figure of the Hegelian monarch as a kenotic-political figure. Finally, it concludes that Hegel's political thought consists of a political theology of kenosis, which is more concerned with the divestment of power rather than a plenipotentiary paradigm.

Hegel’s statement on the death of God has often been overlooked due to a Nietzschean focus on this theme. This article argues that Hegel's notion of the death of God encompasses a Christological sense of self-emptying, and that this interpretation of the Absolute's self-emptying has significant implications for Hegel's political thought. Despite the recovery of the trope of the death of God in Hegel as well as the exploration of its kenotic aspect, Hegel's political philosophy seems to remain disconnected from this interpretation in the academic literature. While Molly Farneth has delved into Hegel's kenosis as a model of intellectual virtue in political life (Farneth 2017), the implications for Hegel's own political thought remain unexplored.

In an attempt to fill this research gap, I present the following argument: Hegel's formulation of the death of God introduces a concept of God that involves a self-emptying of power, which can be understood as a variation of the Christological motif of kenosis. This conception of the Absolute, as pointed out by authors such as Donald G. Dawe (1963), applies not only to Hegel's philosophy of religion but also to his entire philosophical system, including the political realm. Thus, if Hegel's God is kenotic, with the fullest expression in his death, the Hegelian state would also assume the kenotic character of the Hegelian God.

However, this argument faces two initial difficulties. Firstly, if kenosis is a theological doctrine, it is important to examine how Hegel comprehends it and how it is integrated into his system. In this regard, Hegel's early theological texts require special attention to understand his Christological thought. Secondly, when considering the political realm, it is not enough to merely claim its general kenotic structure; we must also explore how this kenotic pattern is manifested in concrete Hegelian conceptions of the state. This means that if the Hegelian state is indeed kenotic, there should be a correspondence with Hegel's political proposal in this direction. In this vein, this paper explores the enigmatic figure of the Hegelian monarch as theological-political figure of Hegel's kenotic dead God.

Hermeneutics of the Death of God in the Hegelian Corpus and its Kenotic Interpretation

Nietzsche’s famous words “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (Nietzsche, 2007: §125) have eclipsed Hegel’s previous statement “God is dead” (Hegel, 1977a: §785). As Paolo Diego Bubbio notes, the Nietzschean affirmation takes part in the secularisation’s narrative and the Weberian disenchantment of the world which replaces the faith in the divine by human will and reason (Bubbio, 2015: 689). While it is clear that Nietzsche has passed into history of philosophy due to this affirmation and Hegel has been recognised for other theoretical merits, Hegel’s passage of the death of God has much to say to the rest of the Hegelian system. Indeed, authors such as Thomas J. J. Altizer or Deland Anderson propose a revision of the entire Hegelian thought from this statement (Altizer, 2002; Anderson, 1996).

Hegel’s statement appears twice in the Phenomenology (1807) (Hegel, 1977a: §752 and §785), but as noted by Carlos Restrepo, this is not the first time the philosopher makes allusions to it (Restrepo, 2010: 433). Hegel previously referred to it in Faith and Knowledge (1802) (Hegel, 1977b: 190), within the context of the discussion on the philosophy of religion by Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte,¹ and later in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.² This demonstrates that the idea of the death of God is not a residual theme in Hegel’s philosophy.

Academic literature has widely interpreted this Hegelian concept as a prelude of Nietzschean philosophy; the death of God in Hegel may involve a change from a “theological” era to an atheistic one (Depoortere, 2007; Matějčková, 2017).³This interpretation is perfectly coherent with the text where the claim appears, as Hegel alludes to a secularised time when pointing out that “trust in the eternal laws of the gods has vanished, and the Oracles, which pronounced on particular questions, are dumb” (Hegel, 1977a: §753). Nevertheless, this interpretation does not only address the social aspect but also the change from individual religious consciousness to an atheistic one (Restrepo, 2010: 442). Therefore, the death of God constitutes both an individual and a social process. In addition, this passage has been read in relationship with Hegel’s first use of it in Faith and Knowledge, and it has been interpreted as a critique of the abstract concepts of God and transcendence that Enlightenment had developed (Herrero, 2018: 22; Ginzo, 2000: 22). With this interpretational framework, Hegel seems to make a theological claim by criticising the Enlightenment’s conception of God simultaneity as he augurs forthcoming atheism.

While these interpretations address the role of God in both individual lives and society, they appear to be insufficient. They indeed shed light on the relationship between individual consciousness and the Absolute, whether approached from an atheistic perspective or as an empty conceptualization of God's notion. In other words, they directly interpret Hegel's motif of the death of God in an abstract sense, viewing it as a metaphorical trope employed by Hegel that encompasses a theodical statement: it is not God who is dead but the religious consciousness of human beings.

However, while it is true that Hegel utilises it in an abstract manner, Hegel’s claim of the death of God entails more than a metaphorical value: these interpretations overlook the underlying Hegelian conception of God that forms the basis of its abstract form. Furthermore, this is particularly evident when considering Hegel's early texts, where he approaches the death of God in a more realistic manner. This suggests a potential connection between the realistic and metaphorical interpretations of the question of the death of God and raises possible implications for Hegel's Absolute, which, in this instance, encompasses a structure where death plays a significant and unavoidable role, positioning death as necessary moment within its absoluteness. To put it differently, the death of God in Hegel signifies an announcement of atheism at a first interpretative level. Nevertheless, in a deeper meaning, it involves a kenotic conceptualisation of divinity.

In this context, Anderson rightfully asserts that the kenotic interpretation of the death of God assumes absolute necessity within Hegelian thought. As he puts it, it not only emerges as a recurring theme but also holds a crucial role in Hegel’s Logic, serving as a paradigm of his speculative discourse (Anderson, 2007). This suggests that death holds a fundamental place in Hegel's understanding of divinity, and the notion of this dead God is indispensable in his philosophical system. Hence, the notion of the death of God in Hegel, due to its intrinsic necessity, should not be regarded merely as another thematic element within his system; instead, it constitutes a core component.

However, before delving into the Hegelian development of this theological motif, it is important to note that the doctrine of kenosis is not monolithic, and Hegel's introduction represents one variant among others, with its own peculiarities that will be discussed later. The doctrine of kenosis is initially introduced by Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians through a hymn structure, where he uses the verb κενόω (“to make empty”) to refer to the self-emptying of Christ, who, as God, takes on the form of a servant in his incarnation and death.⁴

Within Christian theology, this initial formulation underwent multiple variations, as addressed by Dawe (1963). Of particular significance are the interpretations of the definition of the faith of the Council of Chalcedon (451) regarding the unity of Christ's divine and human natures in the Incarnation, which gave rise to these different formulations (Cf. Lefsrud, 2020: 100).⁵ More specifically, Gerard O. Forde argues that Luther, in the Heidelberg Disputation, applies the doctrine of sub contrario from Theses 3 and 4, where he distinguishes between the works of humans and the works of God, to the death of Christ (Luther, 1957: 35–70; Forde, 1997: 31).⁶ In doing so, he paves the theological path for Hegel to understand the death of God as a dialectical Christology (Jaeschke, 1990: 334; von Balthasar, 1990: 52).

In this context, Hegel's kenotic theory, as argued below, aligns with Lutheran thought, which notably differs from more contemporary Catholic approaches, such as Balthasar's theology of the three days. Balthasar intentionally distances himself from Luther's approach, as he believes it places excessive emphasis on the contradictory aspect of God's dual divine and human nature.⁷ In Hegel, the contradiction of God with his own nature in his death is seen as inevitable and holds the status of a law. Therefore, even the divine nature is subject to the law of contradiction. However, for Balthasar, what gives significance to kenosis is not contradiction, but rather God portrayed as absolute love. To put it differently, what for both Luther and Hegel is considered contradictory, which is sublimated in Hegel's thought, in Balthasar is not a contradiction but a mystery, which reveals the incommensurability of God as absolute love (Cf. Molina, 2023).

Although Balthasar sees self-emptying as an expression of absolute love, this does not diminish the importance of love in Hegel's formulation of kenosis. Conversely, Balthasar suggests that, in Hegel's system, both the idea of God's death as love and the depiction of divinity are reduced to a philosophical dialectic. According to Balthasar, a purely dialectical Christology in Hegel becomes simply a “philosophical” dialectic, a discourse grounded in the “worldly,” lacking the preservation of God's majesty in the kenotic moment of the cross (von Balthasar, 1990).

Similarly, Gianni Vattimo has adopted kenosis as a concept in the field of philosophy, using it as a centrepiece to argue that it is to be understood as secularization, and that secularization constitutes the central element of Christianity. For him, kenosis as secularization leads irrevocably to what he calls the 'dissolution of metaphysics’ (Vattimo, 2012: 66–68). In a similar vein, Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere, in light of the theological shift in phenomenology, puts forward a phenomenology of kenosis that articulates kenosis in a post-theological sense: the kenosis of continental philosophical thought, namely, its deconstruction (Cassidy-Deketelaere, 2022). Furthermore, although the concept of kenosis is rooted in the Christian tradition due to its Pauline origin, there are new approaches that consider kenosis as the foundation for a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity, which also relates to the exploration of death of God theologies (Odin, 1987).

Distinctively, Hegel considers negativity and self-emptying as necessary moments of the Absolute. The kenotic sense of the death of God that Hegel subtly suggests is rooted in the death of Jesus. It implicitly recovers the figure of the dead and risen Christ. In other words, the abstract notion of the death of God that Hegel presents in his various formulations is not detached from his Christology, which he develops in his early theological texts. This transfer of meaning from the religious to the philosophical field configures and shapes Hegel’s thought in such a way that the Absolute only is possible through its negation. In this light, if kenosis influences Hegel's conception of the Absolute, it consequently impacts divine attributes, including omnipotence. The paradigm of absolute power -omnipotence- relies on a paradigm of self-emptying of power. This redefinition of the power paradigm is fundamentally expressed in the idea of the death of God.

In this context, three key aspects of Hegelian thought support the kenotic sense of the death of God in Hegel and its inherent Christological permeation. First of all, as Farneth points out, Luther uses the German word Entäußerung to translate the Greek word kenosis of the Bible (2017: 158). It is the same word that Hegel years later uses to denote ‘externalisation’ and which plays a key role in the Hegelian system. Indeed, the theological meaning of Luther’s translation and the philosophical meaning of the Hegelian dialectics are contiguous; an externalization implies a self-emptying of the inner.⁸

This linguistic concurrence is better understood in the contextual life of Hegel, who received a full Lutheran education, and even contemplated the idea of becoming a Lutheran pastor (Mure, 1966: 130). While it is true that Hegel is not a model of Lutheran orthodoxy, as extensively discussed by scholars like Emilio Brito (1983), Cyril O'Regan (1994), or Lu De Vos (2012: 243–274), he took pride in the Lutheran spirit that permeated his philosophical proposal. He clearly manifested it in the brief text “Über eine Anklage wegen öffentlicher Verunglimpfung der katholischen Religion” (1826), where he stated that he should be expected to follow Lutheranism (Hegel, 1986: GW 11, 68–71). This idea is not only defended by Hegel in a public document but also in a private letter addressed to August Tholuck a couple of months later, where he states, “I am a Lutheran, and through philosophy have been at once completely confirmed in Lutheranism” (Hegel, 1984b: 520), confirming that his philosophy has Lutheranism as its foundation. Thus, Hegel's affiliation with Lutheranism implies that he most likely knew about Luther's use of the German word.

Moreover, as Dubilet notes, the moment of Entäußerung structurally entails a movement of kenosis in the Hegelian system (2018: 97). This becomes evident in the use of the word Entäußerung in the 1821 Lecture Manuscript of the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, when Hegel explains the death of God through the concept of Entäußerung, understanding as ‘divestment’ and ‘self-emptying’ and not merely as an externalisation: “the highest divestment [Entäußerung] of the divine idea […] – is expressed as follows: ‘God has died, God himself is dead’” (1998: §60).

In this regard, while the hymn of Philippians addresses kenosis in a balanced manner, referring to both the incarnation and death of Christ, Hegel emphasizes the death of God as “the highest divestment,” centring the Pauline trope on death. This semantic proximity carries conceptual implications in his depiction of kenosis; the death of God represents a necessary moment of the kenosis of the Absolute.

Secondly, the syntagma “death of God” refers to a Lutheran hymn.⁹ Hegel himself recognises such evocation in the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion.¹⁰ This hymn explicitly refers to the death of Jesus on the Cross, highlighting the Christological sense behind the Hegelian affirmation of the death of God. Certainly, this utterance cannot only mean a secularisation process or a critique to an abstracted idea of God; it has its roots in the death of Jesus, which for Hegel, who follows Luther’s theologia crucis, involves the negation and finitude of the divine entity, although this moment is followed by the resolutive resurrection (Hegel, 1998: §250; Venter, 1984).

Regarding this Lutheran hymn, two aspects are particularly illuminating. On the one hand, the Lutheran faith contemplates the death of God in a realistic manner. Luther himself in his dispute against Schwenkfeld states that God himself is dead when Jesus dies on the Cross (2005: WA 39/2, pp. 92–121). Nevertheless, as Berhard Jüngel points out, the trope of the death of God is not a genuine Lutheran topic since it can be distinguished in Tertullian’s teaching (Jüngel, 2014: 64–65).¹¹ Luther recovers this trope accommodating it to his thought, and Hegel’s references to the death of God are in line with the Lutheran interpretation of Christ divine and human nature (Jaeschke, 1990: 325). Therefore, Hegel’s controversial utterance consists of a Christology mediated by the Lutheran doctrine rather than an atheistic or secularisation claim.¹²

On the other hand, the fact that Hegel recalls a hymn to introduce his statement is not naïve. There is a parallelism between the Pauline hymn of kenosis and the Lutheran hymn of the death of God. Both concepts, relevant for theology and philosophy, are introduced with a poetic grammar. As Altizer argues, rather than an atheistic claim, the death of God in Hegel is a “genuinely apocalyptic prayer” (2006: 150).

Thirdly, in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Faith and Knowledge, as well as in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion – which are the texts where the utterance appears – Hegel recognises the death of God related to a kenotic sense of the death of Christ. The semantics in which this trope is introduced reflects this conceptualization. Firstly, in the manuscript of Jena, Hegel refers to a “speculative Good Friday” (1977b: 191). In the Phenomenology of Spirit, he similarly talks about “the Calvary of the Absolute spirit” (Hegel, 1977a: §808). These Good Friday Christological metaphors, which refer to the Christian tradition of commemorating the death of Jesus on the Cross – a time of solitude and negativity as well as of hope in the resurrection – make a strong case for the Christological-kenotic doctrine as the foundation of his speculative thinking. In this regard, as Montserrat Herrero notes, negation and death are neither the final word for Hegel (Herrero, 2018: 292). Analogous to Christian, the Hegelian system sees in the speculative Good Friday a necessary moment before the speculative Easter Sunday, or, in Hegel’s words, the moment of resolution. Thus, Hegel’s statement of the death of God constitutes a Christological paradigm that configures the structure of the Hegelian system and not only some content of it.¹³

Furthermore, in the Phenomenology of Spirit §785, Hegel alludes to the “death of the Mediator,” who is the same person as the “dead divine Man or human God,” which Hegel mentions in a previous paragraph (1977a). These references evoke the figure of Jesus in the Christian theological tradition, where Jesus is recognised as the incarnated mediator of the Father in the Trinitarian God.

Lastly, in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion refers to “dead, empty God” in the Manuscript of 1824 (Hegel, 1984a: Sect. 208). The contiguity of the terms “dead” and “empty” stresses the kenotic interpretation. The death of God, introduced in Christological terms, for him expresses a weak and negative moment of the divine and emphasising that the glory and majesty of the divinity only is possible through this negative kenotic moment (Hegel, 1998: Sect. 250).

The Young Hegel and the Death of Christ: Love and Community

In accordance with the preceding argument, Hegel's concept of the death of God is grounded in a Christological basis mediated by Luther.¹⁴ Within this conceptualisation, kenosis assumes a pivotal role, as God empties his divinity on the Cross, negating it through death. Essentially, Hegel eternalizes the historical moment of the death of Christ and transforms it into philosophical thought by asserting the necessity to re-establish “the speculative Good Friday in place of the historic Good Friday” (1977b: 191). This underscores the importance of examining the death of Jesus on the Cross to comprehend Hegel's assertion of the death of God within his philosophical system.

While the Christology within Hegel's philosophical system is presented in an abstract manner, leading to a dialectical Christology in alignment with his dialectic thinking, it deviates from the more concrete Christology initially formulated in his early theological work. Acknowledging the different Christologies within Hegel’s thought, as rigorously discussed by Brito, I align with Brito's argument that the negative aspect of Hegel’s Christology, and thus the kenotic doctrine, assumes a prominent position in his mature Christology, serving as a cornerstone of his philosophical system (Brito, 1983: 522–531). This necessitates a reassessment of the contexts in which the young Hegel introduces this negativity and kenosis, as they would play a pivotal role in shaping his philosophical system, including his political thought.

For the theologian Hegel, the death of Christ involves a structure of love. This structure of love is completely consistent with his subsequent philosophical developments in the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion. Likewise, the relationship that Hegel establishes between death and love in his early texts is of paramount importance for grasping the distinctive aspects of his kenotic doctrine, and consequently, its implications for the political sphere.

In his early text of The Positivity of the Christian Religion (1795), Hegel contrasts the “plenipotentiary” character that the Jewish expected from the figure of the Messiah with the self-emptying structure of the death of Jesus on the Cross (1961a: 77). On this basis, Hegel notes a conceptualisation of power different from the paradigm of sovereignty, or in religious terms, that of omnipotence. Furthermore, referring to Jesus, Hegel states that “he spends his few remaining minutes in commending love” (1961a: 84). In other words, the meaning of the sacrifice on the Cross is closely linked to a paradigm of love. This idea is later reaffirmed by Hegel in the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion of 1824 when he addresses the death of Christ:

“Death is love itself; in it absolute love is envisaged. The identity of the divine and the human means that God is at home with himself in humanity, in the finite, and in [its] death this finitude is self-determination of God. Through death   God has reconciled the world and reconciles ‘himself’ eternally with himself” (1998: §151).

For Hegel, the death of Christ manifests the form of God, who is only absolute in his finitude and identifies himself with love. The Cross offers the speculative intuition of what love is, as God triumphs over it through the resurrection when he overcomes the negation of his negation (Soual, 1998: 92). It is not just a doctrine or an objective concept, but the absolute love presented as such. Thereby, the community among the disciples is only absolute in the dead and risen God, after the aufhebung of love on the Cross (Cf. Hegel, 1961b: 291). There, a new bond between humans and divinity is created when divinity assumes the finitude of humanity.

It is not by chance that all the different versions of the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion introduce the element of the community immediately after the Hegelian reflection on the death of Christ. For Hegel, the community is, therefore, a result of such a moment. In parallel fashion, Hegel underscores in The Spirit of Christianity, that despite the separation caused by Jesus’s death, his friends remained united in spirit. However, the true unification took place through the risen figure of Christ, as the negation of the negation of the divinity was necessary for sustaining the community over time (Hegel, 1961b: 291).

In this light, the death of God in Hegel has a social dimension. It is the emergent point for the creation of an absolute and affirmative community, being love the base of it. Nonetheless, the bond that creates love among the members has a negative character, as Hegel founds it on the sublated finitude of the Absolute on the Cross. There, Jesus reconciles the mortality of humanity with the absoluteness of God (Altizer, 1991: 85). and in this reconciliation, the mortal community assumes the absoluteness character of the dead God. This conceptualisation of conceiving the community through the death of God affects the political community, which for the German philosopher is accomplished through the figure of the state.

The Kenotic State: Rethinking Hegelian Political Thought

The transfer from the religious community to the political community is performed by Hegel himself. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel asserts that “the state consists in the march of God in the world, and its basis is the power of reason actualising itself as will” (1991: §258). In other words, God founds the state, even if the members of it are not aware of it. The power of the state is only a consequence of the power of the Absolute. This should not be interpreted as theocratic authoritarianism or an immediate form of divine power, but rather as the manifestation of the Absolute in the concrete reality of the state (Tarasiewicz, 2015: 339). Thus, if the state embodies a specific form of God, its structural configuration depends on this conceptualisation of God. Thus, Hegel’s idea that “the state should derive its justification from religion” (1991: §270) should be interpreted in that direction.

With the aim of clarifying any potential misunderstandings, Hegel argues for the religious foundation of the state by pointing to Christianity as the religion of freedom and, according to his system, of rationality, of which the state should emerge. Therefore, in this vein, he remarks that a king is not able to justify his kingship solely based on God (1991: §281). Given the fact that divine providence can allow rebellion inside the state, there is not a direct justification of power between a concrete monarch and God. Therefore, for Hegel, rulers can never legitimise their power by evoking God. God takes part in the state, but as providence, or in the Hegelian secularised form; the cunning of reason. For Hegel, the divine idea is always behind the human passion of world-historical individuals (2011: 169). While rulers do not incarnate the divine idea or the Absolute, divine reason drives all the passions of the individuals, including rulers, even when they are wrong, in the attainment of the “will of the world spirit” (Hegel, 2011: 96) – and therefore, the state, in a more concrete form – aligning these particular wills with the rationality of the Absolute, even when they do not represent the highest stage of consciousness's development in a given historical moment.¹⁵

Thus, if God founds the Hegelian state, which for Hegel is the purest manifestation of the Absolute Spirit on earth, and the Hegelian God is a dead and risen God that follows a kenotic pattern in which the form of love predominates over the plenipotentiary character, then the Hegelian state should evoke such kenotic God. Consequently, if the state is analogous to God as an earthly manifestation of him, and the Hegelian dead God is kenotic, then the Hegelian state would represent kenosis. It would mirror Jesus’ self-emptying of divinity on the Cross as well as place absolute love in the centre of its raison d’être, rather than absolute power not tempered by the absolute negation of death. Analogously, the Hegelian state finds its majesty in the self-emptying and negation in the same way as the glory of God reveals its splendour in the dead and risen God. In this context, the Christological doctrine of kenosis, mediated by the motif of the death of God, gives rise to a Hegelian political theology, whose core is not omnipotence but negation and self-emptying.

This Hegelian political theology of kenosis opposes the totalitarian interpretation of the Hegelian state. Scholars that defend this thesis -with Popper and Arendt among them- relate the Hegelian conceptualisation of the state to the historical totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century (Popper, 1966: 30; Arendt, 1973: 249). In doing so, they attribute the lack of freedom and authoritarianism of specific historical political structures to Hegel's theory of the state. However, reflecting a kenotic Absolute, the Hegelian state has nothing to do with totalitarianism or authoritarianism. While totalitarianism would involve what Hegel understands as a plenipotentiary structure of the political, the death of God evokes a kenotic paradigm for political aggrupation.

Nevertheless, even though kenosis invalidates totalitarian interpretations, it is not incompatible with the idea of the political structure as a totality since Hegel defines the state as a totality (Hegel, 1991: §275; 2011: 107). The Hegelian state requires the moment of negation and self-emptying for achieving totality, analogous to Christ's death preceding resurrection. In this moment of negation, Hegel rejects totalitarian power structures. Similarly, the state's splendour derives meaning from negation or kenosis, akin to the theological concept.

For Hegel, the majesty and totality of the state are possible only as a consequence of its negativity. Hegel's Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History provide a compelling example of how the annihilation or negation of the determination of a national spirit serves as the seed for a more fully developed expression of the Idea. Hegel himself refers to this negation as the “death of a national spirit” (1980: 63). highlighting the semantic connection between kenosis and death. World history, according to Hegel, offers concrete examples of this process, such as the individuality of the Greek spirit being resolved in the universality of the Roman Empire (1980: 203) or the German nations finding freedom for their national spirit with the rise of Christianity (1980: 54).¹⁶

In this context, Hegel asserts that the state is the result of the negation of the particularity of self-consciousness in its universality. That is, the state only acquires a sublime form that reflects the rationality of the Idea when it assumes its own negation. Thus, in a first sense, the state is kenotic, inasmuch as it arises from the kenosis of self-consciousness, which must abandon its particularity to achieve its essence (Hegel, 1991: §258). In other words, kenosis is intrinsic and foundational to the state, rather than something externally imposed upon it.

Consequently, if kenosis is intrinsic to the state, its structures and figures should embody this negative moment of divestment of power. Examining them not only makes the theory of the kenotic state possible on a speculative level but also feasible within the concrete Hegelian conception of the state.

The Hegelian Monarch as a Kenotic-Political Figure

With the aim of exploring the viability of Hegel's politics as kenotic and consequently justifying a potential political theology of kenosis in Hegel’s thought, the enigmatic yet essential figure of the Hegelian monarch constitutes a compelling case for such an endeavour. The Hegelian monarch, despite its unusual formulation, is crucial as it represents the actual unity of the state (1991: §281). In this regard, Hegel justifies the state by stating that “union as such is itself the true content and end, and the destiny of individuals” (1991: §258). Therefore, in the concrete figure of the monarch, the true content of the state—unity—is fully realized.

Nevertheless, as political unity is not a univocal concept, before delving into how the monarch concretizes such unity, it is important to elucidate the sense that Hegel grants to political unity within the state, fully accomplished through the monarch. For Hegel, the goal of the state is essentially the relationship among its members: the realization of individuals in the universality of the union. It is not, therefore, a Hobbesian covenant to control the violence of the state of nature. Nor is it a social contract that compels citizens to exercise both duties and rights. Instead, the state is the possibility for individuals to achieve, in union with others, the highest right and duty. The Hegelian state seeks the union of individuals without basing it on external causes, such as the Aristotelian concept of “living well” (Nancy, 1982: 483).

In clarifying the meaning of “union as such” in Hegel's thought as a key to understanding the enigmatic figure of the monarch, Jean-Luc Nancy refers to a passage from the Encyclopaedia where Hegel clearly states that “the same unity, which in the family becomes the feeling of love, is the essence of the State” when elucidating the nature of the union among the members of a state (Hegel, 2007: §535; Nancy, 1982). The “union as such” of the state that Hegel alludes to is ultimately a love relationship, different from the familial union only in the crucial aspect that the former “acquires the form of conscious universality” (Hegel, 2007: §535). It entails an abandonment of individualistic aspirations for the sake of achieving such a union.

Thus, the Hegelian state and the death of God share love as their essence in Hegel's work. As mentioned earlier, for Hegel, the death of Jesus on the Cross embodies love conceived “as union as such.” This becomes evident in the theological fragment of Love, where Hegel defines love as a “true union” that exists “only between living beings who are alike in power” (1961c: 304). He also states that “this genuine love excludes all oppositions” (Hegel, 1961c: 304). Thus, As Robert R. Williams argues concerning the constitution of community in Hegel’s thought, love for Hegel implies dispossession of power, fully effectuated in the kenotic death of God, to exclude the oppositions that might power cause (Williams, 2017: 275). This confluence allows for a kenotic interpretation of the political “union as such.”

Through death, God unites himself with humanity by assuming its mortal character and neglecting his divinity. By adopting mortality, God reconciles the distance between humans and divinity.¹⁷ The person of Jesus denies his individual aspirations to develop the universal goal, that of the intimate union between divinity and humanity. Analogously, the individual aspirations of the members of the state are negated in order to achieve the unity that grants them a universal character. In the same way as the death and resurrection of Jesus maintained his disciples united, the negativity of all the individuals keeps and constitutes the community of the state.¹⁸ Likewise, as God’s resurrection comes after death, the splendour of the Hegelian state is the reconciliation of its negativity.

In this “union as such,” the monarch is the head of the kenotic body politic of the state, and all the members are united in him by a self-emptying operation. Hegel points out that sovereignty resides in the figure of the monarch, which is the entity “in which the ultimate decision is vested” (1991: §279). In other words, the monarch is the person who actualises the will of the state. However, the monarch is not the authoritarian person that seems to be after this first approach. The sovereignty of the monarch is mediated by the emptying of his particular will. In this vein, the monarch does not constitute an exception in the negation his individual will, but it takes it to its maximum peak.

The monarch, incarnating the personality of the state (Hegel, 1991: §279). and being the state the “march of God,” manifests this structure of the divine entity that Hegel repetitively states through the utterance of the death of God. This analogy does not mean that the monarch represents Jesus on earth, and Hegel himself prevents us from making this assumption by saying that “it is not enough to say that kings are appointed by God” (Hegel, 1991: §281). While Hegel states that the “right of the monarch is based on divine authority” (1991: §2799), he acknowledges that there is a danger of mystifying the figure of the monarch, to whom Hegel never attributes divinity or a divine justification. Hegel suggests that the monarch has the same structural pattern that the dead and risen God, that of kenosis. The monarch, to be supreme, must neglect his supremacy as God to manifest himself as God negates his divinity through death. It is not, therefore, an analogy between personalities but between structures. In the same way that the resurrection of Jesus, which only comes after his death invests him with majesty, the negative character of the kenotic structure of the monarch does not invalidate his majesty.

The structural parallelism of the monarch and God, which has nothing to do with personalities, is reinforced in the way Hegel justifies the real character of the monarch, whose absolute concept undergoes the same transition as that of the ontological proof of the existence of God (Hegel, 1991: §280). As Nancy points out, the monarch is not symbolic but real (1982: 492). For Hegel, it is not enough to have an abstract concept of the monarch. The “union as such” is fully accomplished in the concrete reality of the monarch. Thus, through his natural birth and sovereign position in the state, the monarch incarnates the power—not the personality, as he does so regardless of his character and is not necessarily distinguished by physical power or intellect (Hegel, 1991: §281)—of the Absolute. In the figure of the monarch, the Absolute undergoes a divestment of power. Similarly, the monarch, as the ultimate instance of the state, follows this kenotic pattern and is divested of absolute power. Consequently, the Hegelian monarch is by no means an absolutist monarch since the content of his decision is always mediated by the constitution of the state and divested of his particularity.¹⁹

Likewise, Hegel identifies the monarch as the sovereign of the state (1991: §279). Therefore, the kenotic interpretation of Hegel's political thought should not be seen as a renunciation of the discourse of sovereignty, as may be found in new developments of the theological-political discourse (Cf. Caputo, 2006). Instead, it represents a kenotic definition of sovereignty, subtly arguing that the highest form of sovereignty lies not in the exercise of power but in its dispossession. In this context, two main characteristics of the Hegelian monarch follow this kenotic structure: his “empty decision,” which only consists of dotting the 'i,' and the right only entitled to him to pardon. These two aspects place the discourse of sovereignty in an alternative venue compared to that of plenipotentiary power.

On the one hand, Hegel delimits the ultimate decision “to say 'yes' and to dot the 'i'; for the supreme office should be such that the particular character of its occupant is of no significance” (1991: §280). To put it differently, the supreme decision of the monarch is irrelevant when it comes to particular issues. The ‘yes’ or ‘not’ of the king is just a confirmation of a previous determination.²⁰ Thereby, the monarch, being the supreme form of power and the person who actualises the state’s personality, is divested of such power. His decision is the final one, but it is an empty decision. In the figure of the monarch, a self-emptying of the supremacy can be distinguished as the death of Jesus on the Cross depicts a self-emptying of Christ’s divinity.

Thus, the sovereignty of the monarch does not consist in exercising power but in its dispossession for the sake of the very totality and universality of the state. This does not mean, on the contrary, a negation of the subjectivity of the monarch, which is preserved in this supreme decision. This divestment of power should only be accomplished by a real subject and not merely on a conceptual level, just as the death of God, while it works as an abstract concept, has a correspondence with reality in the death of Christ.

The Hegelian monarch, as the sovereign to whom corresponds the supreme decision, bears a resemblance to the Schmittian sovereign, the one who “decides on the exception” (Schmitt, 2005: 5). However, while the decision of the Schmittian sovereign is an analogy of God's omnipotence, the decision of the Hegelian monarch, in its empty form, reflects God's divestment of power. Contrary to the Schmittian sovereign, the decision of the Hegelian monarch is not outside of the law, but rather “the absolute apex of an organically developed state” (Hegel, 1991: 286). In this regard, Hegel states that the monarch “functions as head of state and as part of the constitution” (1991: §281). Additionally, he posits that sovereignty is present as a whole “in the conscience of the monarch and objectively in the constitution and laws” (1991: §285). In other words, the power of the monarch presupposes the objectivity of the law. The monarch is not the one who may suspend the law, as can be seen in Schmitt’s formulation (Cf. Schmitt, 2005: 9), but the one who brings the objective law to its supreme splendour, which is the law of kenosis, the self-emptying of particularity for the sake of universal totality.

On the other hand, Hegel claims that the sovereignty of the monarch entitles him with the right to pardon. He states that “only the sovereign is entitled to actualize the power of the spirit to undo what has been done and to nullify crime by forgiving and forgetting” (1991: §282). In other words, the sovereignty of the monarch neither resides in repression through force, nor in mere justice. By way of contrast, the monarch exercises supreme power through mercy. The forgiveness reconciles the offences that the crime involves for the state not by punishment or revenge but by assuming the other’s negativity as its own. For Hegel, the supremacy of the king, who has the power to eliminate the criminal, resides in forgiveness, that is to say, in the self-emptying of the supremacy and not in the elimination of the adversary. Following the parallelism, through the death of Jesus on the Cross, God forgives the offences to humanity, and in theological-political terms, to the members of his kingdom. Pardon, which has a kenotic structure, is the sovereign power for both the Hegelian monarch and God. The monarch is supreme as God is omnipotent, but such supremacy and omnipotence are only absolute through the moment of negation (Altizer, 2002: 77).

For Hegel, pardon is one of the highest manifestations of the majesty of spirit. It has clear theological-political connotations, as the German word “Begnadigungsrecht” that Hegel utilizes, and is generally used in German jurisprudence to refer to it, has “Gnade” (grace) as the cognate. In Christianity, pardon for sins arrives through the death of Christ; it is precisely the kenosis on the Cross that allows this “right of grace.” Nevertheless, for Hegel, pardon does not invalidate or cancel the law; the objective law remains untouched. Instead of suspending the law with pardon, as the Schmittian sovereign does, the Hegelian monarch, through pardon, manifests that law involves self-emptying, the negation of the exertion of power for punishment.

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel provides nuances in forgiveness and pardon that support their kenotic sense. According to Hegel, pardon and forgiveness involve the “renunciation of itself” and the abandonment of exclusive individuality for the sake of universal reconciliation (1977a: §670). Thus, pardon enables reconciliation and, therefore, the majesty of the state. As pardon necessitates self-renunciation, when the monarch pardons, he performs an act of self-renunciation, which is an act of kenosis (Cf. Bubbio, 2017: 45–50).

In the right to pardon, Hegel shows how sovereignty is fully manifested in the self-emptying act of forgiveness rather than in the power to punish. Pardon does not come from temporal considerations, as the monarch, even in pardon, is divested of particularity in his decisions, but from a “divine logic of mercy” that goes beyond mere justice or punishment (Tuckness & Parrish, 2014: 241). This is the same logic that we can find in the figure of Jesus, whose divinity is best manifested in the forgiveness of sins rather than in miracles, even though the latter are more ostensive. The majesty of the monarch resides in the dispossession of power through the gratuity of pardon.

This logic of kenosis maintains the members of the state united in the monarch, who, in his right to pardon, resembles the kenotic death of God on the Cross, which, as appears in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, is what enables the community among the disciples. In this sense, the right to pardon reflects in a supreme way the “union as such” between the monarch and the members of the state, as it is grounded in the divine mercy accomplished in the death on the Cross. In Hegel, the transition point from the religious community to the state is located in the kenotic death of God (Cf. Williams, 2017: 301).

Conclusion: Political Theology of Kenosis

Kenosis becomes the theological locus where individuality and universality converge in Hegel, and where the supreme and empty power intersect. Furthermore, through the kenotic state, Hegel presents a structure based on love rather than on power, redefining the paradigm of sovereignty. It contemplates a kenotic sovereignty, in which the union as such of the members takes precedence over a plenipotentiary exercise of power. The majesty of this sovereignty lies in the dispossession of power rather than its exertion.

The proclamation of the death of God in Hegel opens a path of exegesis not only for his theological thought but also for its relevant implications on Hegel's political thought. This allows for the exploration of Hegel's political theology through the lens of kenosis, an aspect that alternative political theologies of Hegel dismiss (Cf. Agar, 2015; Lynch, 2019; Shanks, 1991).

However, this has implications not only for Hegel's political thought but also for broader political theologies of the death of God. In the emergence of the Nietzschean political theologies of the death of God (Cf. Herrero, 2020), the Hegelian case introduces a political theology in a very different direction, where the political decision is divested of particular interest, and the self-emptying of each one, including the monarch, allows for the political place of the other. This perspective shows that there is a possibility of politics more concerned with the divestment of power than its exercise, with love and the “union as such” at its core, rather than omnipotent authority or plenipotentiary rule.