Erich Przywara – "Analogia Entis" as an Alternative to Hegel
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
A Thinker Between the Fronts
Erich Przywara (1889-1972), a German Jesuit, was one of the most original Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century. His main work “Analogia entis” (1932, expanded 1962) develops a position directed equally against Hegel and against Barth.
Przywara knew Hegel better than most Catholic critics. He had studied the “Phenomenology” and the “Logic,” he understood the fascination of the dialectic. But he saw in Hegel’s system – at least in the common reading – a danger: the dissolution of the difference between God and world.
The Basic Thesis: Analogy Instead of Dialectic
Przywara’s alternative is called “analogia entis” – analogy of being. The term stems from medieval scholasticism, but Przywara fills it anew:
Analogy means: similarity amid greater dissimilarity. When we say “God is good,” we do not mean the same as “this person is good.” God’s goodness is infinitely greater, qualitatively different. But there is a similarity – otherwise we could not speak of God at all.
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had formulated: “Between creator and creature no similarity can be noted so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be noted between them.” Przywara makes this sentence a principle: dissimilarity is always greater than similarity. God remains transcendent, even when we speak of him.
Against Hegel – so Przywara – this means: there is no complete “sublation” of the difference between God and world. The finite cannot “sublate” the infinite; reason cannot completely comprehend God. There remains a remainder, a surplus – this is transcendence.
Catholicity as “Both-And”
From analogy Przywara develops an entire worldview. The Catholic position is always “both-and,” never “either-or”: grace and nature (not: grace against nature), faith and reason (not: faith against reason), Church and world (not: Church against world).
This sounds almost Hegelian – and indeed there are structural parallels. Hegel too is a thinker of mediation, who overcomes false oppositions. The difference lies in the kind of mediation: for Przywara the tension remains (similarity amid greater dissimilarity); for Hegel – on Przywara’s reading – it is dissolved.
What Hits Hegel, What Misses Him?
Przywara’s insistence on the “surplus” of dissimilarity is important. There is a tendency in some receptions of Hegel to “comprehend” everything, to fit everything into the system, to leave nothing over. Against such receptions, Przywara’s objection is justified.
But does it hit Hegel himself? Hegel certainly knows the difference between finite and infinite – and he does not claim to dissolve it. “Sublation” is not an annihilation of difference, but a preservation on a higher level. The “absolute Idea” is not God in the Christian sense – it is the structure of thought itself, becoming transparent to itself.
Different readings of Hegel answer the question differently: the metaphysical reading (Taylor) would say that Hegel actually means a cosmic ontology – but even this is not identical with the caricature Przywara criticizes. The anti-mystical readings (Stekeler, ours) show: the “Absolute” in Hegel can be understood as “unavoidable” – the structures we cannot think away without already presupposing them. This is compatible with Przywara’s analogy: the fundamental remains greater than our concepts.
Przywara’s critique hits certain vulgarized receptions of Hegel more than Hegel himself – especially the Left Hegelians, who made atheism out of the dialectic, or the Right Hegelians, who deified the Prussian state.
The lasting question: is analogy an alternative to dialectic – or a complement? One might argue: analogy grasps statically what dialectic describes dynamically. The similarity-amid-dissimilarity is the snapshot of a movement that Hegel unfolds as process.
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