Divine Foolishness and the Wisdom of the World: The Complex Relation Between Madness and Religion in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit

Mowad, Nicholas

doi:10.5840/owl202521748

The Owl of Minerva

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published on February 22, 2025

Nicholas Mowad

https://doi.org/10.5840/owl202521748

Divine Foolishness and the Wisdom of the World
The Complex Relation Between Madness and Religion in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit

In Hegel’s Anthropology: Life, Psyche, and Second Nature, Allegra de Laurentiis develops a masterful and incisive reading of Hegel’s anthropology, bringing to light the parallels between the madness and other forms of spirit (moral evil, hypocritical politics, and religious fanaticism). The similarities suggest that madness is a perversion of spirit comparable to others, unique only in its anthropological character. Yet building on de Laurentiis’s work, I will argue that what is pathological in madness is not its withdrawal from the world into its own spiritual center, but rather its enduring worldliness, its failure to fully withdraw from its engagement in the independent objectivity of the world. The Christian ambivalence toward politics and the state cannot be taken as fanaticism, or a pathological form of spirit at all. Yet owing to the logical isomorphism, the summit of spirit in Christianity can fairly be described as divine foolishness that is wiser than the world’s wisdom.

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