The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (973 page)

 
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Hefker
.

Ownerless property. According to Jewish law, ownerless property (whether it has never been owned, such as a wild bird, or whether its original owner has irretrievably lost it) is exempt from the law of
tithes
and heave-offering.

 
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(1770–1831).
German philosopher, the most influential and arguably most significant in the 19th cent. Hegel completed his formal education at Jena, where he also taught until the university was ‘reorganized’ by Napoleon (whom Hegel called ‘the
Zeitgeist
on horseback’) and where he wrote
The Phenomenology of Spirit
(1807). In this, his first major book, the dialectic of human experience is unfolded. Spirit as pure potentiality (
An-sich-sein
), through its self-alienation and self-objectification in nature (
Dasein
) and then through its progressive self-reconciliation in the history of human self-consciousness, comes finally to full awareness of itself as pure or absolute Spirit (
Für-sich-sein
). Hegel defined ‘religion’ with disarming simplicity as ‘the consciousness of God’. Viewed
phenomenologically
, ‘consciousness of God’ refers in Hegel's writings to a person's coming to be aware of essential unity with the divine Spirit. Viewed speculatively, however, ‘consciousness of God’ refers at the same time to God's own self-consciousness. The history of religions is likewise the means of God's coming to ‘be-for-himself’ in and through people's ever-developing consciousness of him.

 
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Hegira
(migration of Mu
ammad)
:

see
HIJRA
.

 
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(Gk., ‘leader’). A title in E. Christianity for the leader of a
monastic
community (equivalent of the W.
abbot
or prior).

 
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(Japan, 794–1185): see
BUDDHISM IN JAPAN
;
SAICH
.