iii ) Providence - The Idea of History .sx Both Hegel and Coleridge identify history with the plan and outworking of divine Providence which is Reason , Logos .sx Hegel rejects the idea that divine Providence is unfathomable .sx Providence is the immanence of the divine wisdom , which is " one and the same in great things and in small .sx It is the same in plants and insects as in the destinies of entire nations and empires " .sx He insists that " the world's events are controlled by a providence " and that " divine providence is wisdom coupled with infinite power , which realises its ends , i.e. the absolute and rational design of the world ; and reason is freely self-determining thought , or what the Greeks called nous " .sx " God's will " , he asserts , " must always prevail in the end , and .sx .. world history is nothing more than the plan of providence " .sx Coleridge claims that the " science of HISTORY " is " History studied in the light of philosophy , as the great drama of an ever unfolding Providence .sx " This understanding of the role of the Logos as Providence becomes increasingly important in Hegel's later writings ( post 1820) .sx The Idea of history , he claims , is the progressive revelation of a " chain " of necessity , the great scheme of redemption which is nevertheless made up of " free-acting links " , the contingent and particular events which form the whole .sx For this reason , the truths of history must be integrated with the facts of history .sx History reveals the Logos as within it and directing its course .sx Coleridge's " Historic Idea " has much in common with Hegel's World Spirit , which is not only the first , final and efficient cause of the whole historical process , but the actuality of the historical process itself .sx The close parallel is illustrated by Coleridge's note on a copy of the Statesman's Manual concerning the theme of his lectures on the history of philosophy which he states to be " the gradual Evolution of the Mind of the World contemplated as a single Mind in the different stages of its development " .sx There are differences in Hegel's and Coleridge's understanding of history which have important implications for their respective religious and philosophical views .sx Both , however , recognize the Logos as Providence acting in nature and in history .sx Coleridge links the purpose of historical study to prophecy , for :sx " Whatever is unfolded is rendered prophetic , whether a physical or moral Law .sx To prophesy is to unroll and draw out the involved consequences , be it of a state of things , or of an action or series of actions , or of a truth " .sx Because the Logos is revealed in history as Providence , Idea and Law , Coleridge denies that history is concerned merely with accumulated chronologies of facts and events .sx Hegel has a similar view .sx He describes the reflective type of historical analysis which he believed to be obsessed with petty and particular details as " a motley assortment of details , petty interests , actions of soldiers , private affairs , which have no influence on political interests - they are incapable [of recognizing] a whole , a general design " .sx iv ) I-Thou Relationship .sx For both Hegel and Coleridge , the Johannine Logos , incarnate in Christ , is , at an early stage , recognized as a powerful answer to Enlightenment rationalism and its religious expression , Deism .sx Since the philosophy and religion are reconciled in the Logos , reason and revelation are never at odds .sx St John shows that revelation is not an object of debate or analysis , but the undeniable truth of encounter .sx In the encounter with Christ ( revelation ) , living faith is restored which is beyond the reach of the speculative intellect .sx In the early essays Hegel rejects Kant's righteousness of reflective rationality , seeing in Jesus the communicator of the spirit of absolute love .sx Through love neither God nor our fellow man/woman is a mere object to us :sx Religion is one with love .sx The beloved is not contrasted with us , he is one with our being .sx In him we see ourselves , and yet once again he is not identical with us .sx This is a wonder which we cannot grasp .sx .sx In his early attempts to reconcile faith and reason , Coleridge's position is similar to that of Hegel .sx He finds in a Spinozism , allied to his Unitarian views and to a psychological determinism ( through David Hartley ) , support of his belief in the One who is All .sx Hegel too has adopted the we Kai pan , which , he agrees with Moses Mendelssohn , could form the basis of a higher , purer kind of Spinozism , perfectly reconcilable with Theism .sx Coleridge too draws on St John's Gospel to demonstrate and support the reconciliation of reason and religion in the Logos , by which both , at this stage , believe the man Jesus to be inspired .sx Following Priestley ( and in stark contrast to those beliefs which are , a few years later , to form the nucleus of his whole system ) , Coleridge denies the divinity of Jesus , claims to which , he argues , devalue his humanity and his message .sx Hegel too insists , in the Frankfurt years , that Jesus must not be seen as some mystical divinity :sx that the tendency of his followers to exalt his name above his message led to the distortion of that message .sx Despite his disagreements with Kant , Hegel ( in the early writings ) shares with Coleridge the view of Jesus as representing an ideal of virtue , and the belief that this aspect of him is imperilled by a faith which deifies him and separates him from man .sx During his Frankfurt period , however , Hegel's Christology alters .sx Now God's presence in Jesus becomes more important than Jesus' role as a teacher and example .sx Man and God are indeed reconciled in the Son :sx In this Son there exists also his disciples ; they too are one with him ; so that there is a real transubstantiation and a real indwelling of the Father in the Son and of the Son in his pupils .sx All of these are not simply separate substances which are only united in a universal concept ; rather it is as with a vine and its branches :sx there is a lively indwelling of the Godhead in them .sx .sx Jesus is the direct opposite of the legalism and the alienation of Judaism .sx He is the " one who wished to restore man's humanity in its entirety " and the one in whom reconciliation with life is made possible through love :sx It is in the fact that even the enemy is felt as life that there lies the possibility of reconciling fate .sx This reconciliation is thus neither the destruction or subjugation of something alien , nor a contradiction between consciousness of one's self and the hoped-for difference in another's idea of one's self , nor a contradiction between desert in the eyes of the law and actualisation of the same , or between man as concept and man as reality .sx This sensing of life , a sensing which finds itself again , is love , and in love fate is reconciled .sx .sx Hegel's concept of reconciliation with life is closely bound up here with the relationship between the self and the " other" .sx This relationship is central , too , in Coleridge's whole system of thought .sx It is the idea of " finding a Self in another and now another , yea !sx even an alien and an enemy , in the Self " .sx Coleridge makes constant reference to the reconciliation of love whereby the self and the " Other " are united as equal objects of love .sx In the Biographia Literaria he quotes Spinoza , in expressing the experience of divine love as that by which a man is able to live free from the bondage of his own emotions and lusts .sx It is love , not legalistic piety , that reconciles law with will .sx Both Coleridge and Hegel develop this idea to the full , in repudiation of Kant's formalism .sx Increasingly , both see Christianity as expressing the fulfilment of life and love which they find , in their early work , to be revealed in the life of Jesus and , later , to be actualized and realized in the Logos as Christ .sx It is just this truth of life and love which each finds to be lacking in much of the theological inheritance of their own time .sx Nominalist and Reformation theology seemed to them to emphasize only an arbitrary , capricious , almighty Will .sx The theology of Descartes , Wolff and the Enlightenment offered , on the other hand , only a systematic principle of order .sx Despite an increasing divergence in their later understanding of Logos , both Hegel and Coleridge continue to find in Christ , first , the witness , teacher and example of divine love , and , as their thought develops , the Incarnation of love .sx For both , love is the means and the source of a reconciliation which is not merely emotional and psychological but epistemological and ontological .sx v ) The 'I Am' - Divine and Human .sx Influenced , as we have seen , by Schelling's combination of Fichte's Ego with objective Substance , and understanding Logos as this identity , both Hegel and Coleridge are concerned to restore the subjectivity of religion .sx The divine and the human 'I am' are reconciled in the Logos , and the essence of every true self is spirit .sx It is through the realization and fulfilment of self that man comes to know God and to recognize that his true self is the I AM of the Logos .sx Schelling , they believe , is mistaken in concluding that nature itself is not merely contained within and created through the movement of Life and Love , but one with it .sx However , both Coleridge and Hegel agree that the Self , whether divine or human , finds itself in the Other and the Other in the Self .sx Absolute Spirit is revealed as Person in the Logos , through the act and freedom of self-consciousness .sx Coleridge believes that man's potential for personhood is actualized by the redemption of the will .sx Hegel finds it fulfilled in man's elevation of himself , as the individual who is also universal and , as such , one with the divine Logos who is incarnated in the individual-universal Christ .sx In the revelation of Christianity , in the Incarnation , God can be , according to Hegel , " sensuously and directly beheld as a Self , as an actual individual man " .sx Man must find his true self in God .sx We must participate in the redemption and reconciliation " by laying aside our immediate subjectivity ( putting off the Old Adam ) and learning to know God as our true and essential self " .sx The parallel with Coleridge's conclusion is clear ; I , as a purely subjective self , find the true objectivity - myself , as real and true object - only in the Logos who is Christ :sx " My Self ought to exist , and might exist , wholly in the 'I' - the Subjective - the object being he who is the Being , the living Truth , the Deitas objectiv a-grave - Christ " .sx God hath also revealed in His Word , that He is the I AM or Esse , the very essential Self ; and the One only Being , which is Self-essent , ( Ipsum et Unicum quod in Se ) , and thereby the First , or Beginning , from whom are all things .sx It is by means of this revelation , that the natural man is enabled to elevate himself above nature , and thereby above himself , and to contemplate such things as have relation to God .sx .sx In common with the tradition which is developed by Pico della Mirandola from Aristotle and Aquinas , one of the chief characteristics of humanity , according to Hegel and Coleridge , is self-development and self-definition .sx This is accomplished , Hegel maintains , when the subject-object identity in Spirit , fragmented in the otherness of finitude and mere reflection , is realized through their reconciliation in philosophical thought and in the whole historical process of Mind or Spirit through which the human logos is found to be one with the divine .sx Coleridge too finds the subject-object reconciliation is achieved within self-consciousness , and that in this act the human logos images the begetting of the divine .sx The 'I' is therefore more than the expression of individuality ; it is " the act of self-consciousness generically , absolutely , coinstantaneous with which the consciousness of Individuality will doubtless introduce itself " .sx The essential quality of mind , for Coleridge , is that of a " self-finding power " , just as , for Hegel , Absolute Spirit is a finding of itself in the reconciliation of otherness .sx There is , however , in Coleridge's estimation , a further step required to the fulfilment of self and of person , that is , to distinguish between the 'I' , and mind .sx