Küng and Hegel: The Implicit Kinship
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Küng rarely cites Hegel, but his project is structurally Hegelian. Three parallels deserve attention.
First, Hegel’s philosophy of religion shows that all religions are shapes of absolute spirit. They intuit the same truth but express it differently – in images, symbols, rituals corresponding to their cultural situation. Philosophy explicates what religion presents pictorially. Küng’s Global Ethic Project has the same structure: all religions practice the same basic principles but express them differently. Comparative analysis shows what is common to all.
Second, Hegel’s dialectic is a method that finds unity in difference. The universal realizes itself in the particular, not against it. Abstract universality is empty; concrete universality is the unity that sublates the differences within itself. Küng practices exactly this: the universal ethical structures realize themselves in particular cultural forms, not beyond them.
Third, for Hegel, recognition is the basic structure of all intersubjectivity. Self-consciousness arises only through recognition of the other. Küng’s method presupposes recognition: each tradition is acknowledged as equally original before what is common is sought. Not: “We are right, you must adapt.” But rather: “We all have insights – let us share the best of them.”
The difference from Hegel, however, is also significant. Hegel ranks the religions hierarchically: Christianity is the “consummate religion,” the others are preliminary stages. Küng does not rank them: all religions are equal paths to truth. But the structure – universality through particularity – is the same. Küng is a practicing Hegelian, even if he does not make Hegel explicit.