The Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life”

Letters on the Spirit and the Letter of Hegel's Philosophy

Bibliographic Data

ID12643245
AuthorsRobert Lucas Scott (0009-0001-2837-5547, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume24
Issue3
Pages266-281
Publication date2023-07-03
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Horizons (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14409917.2023.2241061
OpenAlexW4385515782
LanguageEN
References cited17

This essay traces Hegel's conceptualisation of "the spirit and the letter", from the period of his early theological writings to that of the Science of Logic, with particular reference to his correspondence. This dialectic, for Hegel, concerns the realisation of the truth or "spirit" of something from the specificity and fixity of its particular details – its "letter". It also concerns, then, the freedom to interpret the spirit of something in spite of the apparent authority of any supposed original meanings or authorial intentions. We find him using the phrase in a variety of contexts, with reference to politics, Biblical hermeneutics, textual criticism, the history of philosophy and education. While originally derived from St Paul's dictum – "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:6) – Hegel's early invocations of "the spirit and the letter" are inspired by Fichte, who sought to distinguish the spirit from the letter of Kant's philosophy. However, while Fichte conceives of the "spirit" as an "aesthetic sense" with which to take creative liberties with the letter, the later Hegel finds that it is only by tarrying with the contradictions of the dead letter that the spirit might be brought to life

Art · Criticism · Dialectic · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Literature · SOCRATES · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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