Abstract
The comparative study of world religions has been a distinctive part of Western thought. G. W. F. Hegel's contribution to the philosophy of history is most clearly seen where he introduces a theory of historical development based on the secularization of Christian cosmology. With Hegel, the spirit '(Geist),' previously theologically understood, gradually becomes the embodiment of historical development. In the Hegelian vocabulary, the phenomenology of religion is formulated along with the theory of historical progress. The question of historical development has been continuously elaborated in a culturalist fashion in the works of Hegel, Max Weber, and Samuel Huntington, through different intellectual traditions, as they have essentialized the spiritual backgrounds of world religions and tied the phenomenology of religion with the philosophy of history in their historical analyses. These scholars, by relying on the idealized images of religions and particularly of the "Occidental Spirit," subtly elaborate the historical culturalist notion of development within Western thought. By arguing for an inherent link between religion and development, these scholars implicitly institutionalize a Eurocentric understanding of Western Christianity and the Occidental path of development within mainstream social theory. Be it philosophical (Hegel), sociological (Weber), or political (Huntington), the historical culturalism of these approaches shapes the understanding of historical change and, ironically, instead of countering the excesses of crude materialism, leads social theory into a form of Eurocentic historical culturalism.