The Method: Understanding from Within
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Küng’s methodological approach differs fundamentally from the classical universalism of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment tried to derive universal principles through pure reason – independent of all cultural traditions. Kant imagined “the human being as such,” abstracted from all particularities. The result was a universalism that was in fact European in character but claimed to be culture-free.
Küng takes the opposite path. He does not begin with abstract reason but with concrete traditions. He studies each religion from within: What are its best insights? What does it teach about the good life? What ethical principles has it developed? Only after each tradition has been understood in its particularity does he ask: What do they share?
This method has four moments. First, each tradition must be understood from within, not judged from without. This means not applying Western categories to Eastern religions, not measuring Islam by Christian standards, not transferring secular criteria onto religious traditions. Each tradition is first appreciated according to its own standards.
Second, the best of each tradition is to be worked out. Every religion has its high points and its low points, its greatest insights and its worst aberrations. It would be unfair to judge one religion by its low points and another by its high points. Here Küng practices what we call the steelman method: presenting each position in its strongest form.
Third, commonality is to be found, but not through leveling. The goal is not the lowest common denominator – that would be too little to be practically relevant. The goal, rather, is the richest common substance: What do all traditions share when understood in their depth?
Fourth, differences are acknowledged as productive tensions, not as relativism. Not all religions say the same thing. There are genuine differences – in the conception of God, in anthropology, in ritual practices. These differences do not disappear, but they need not lead to enmity. They can be understood as different perspectives on the same reality.
The dialectical structure of this approach corresponds to Hegel’s concept of mediation. The universal (the universal structures) realizes itself only in the particular (the cultural traditions), not against it. There is no abstract universality hovering above the cultures – there is only concrete universality, which manifests itself in each culture in its own way.