By searching for “Aufklrung” and its derivatives in the young Hegel’s works (1785—1800), we can find that firstly, the Enlightenment is the background to Hegel’s education, and secondly, like Mendelssohn and Kant, he highly values the important role of the Enlightenment in science, art, religion, history and politics, and thirdly, Hegel’s critique of the Enlightenment during this period can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, when talking about religion and morality, Hegel points out that the Enlightenment and Understanding cannot really promote people’s moral and religious feelings. In the second stage, by emphasizing history, diversity and reality, Hegel criticizes the abstraction and homogeneity of the Enlightenment. Mendelssohn, Kant and the young Hegel not only have common attitudes towards the Enlightenment, they also have different views, which involve the relationship between theory and practice. Both Mendelssohn and Kant’s solution of delimitation between theory and practice and Hegel's solution of reconciliation is problematic. It is preferable that theory namely that thinking should be put in its proper place of cognizing principles and praxis, namely that thinking should be put in its proper place of dealing with practice,should be thought of thus.

German Philosophy; Hegel; the Enlightenment; morality religion; Kant; Mendelssohn