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Hegel’s theory of tragedy is justly famous. In his view, however, the logical development of art culminates with comedy, not tragedy. This essay compares what Hegel regards as genuine comedy (found in Aristophanes and Shakespeare) with what he calls “subjective humor” (found, for example, in Jean Paul): whereas humorists find freedom and mastery in indulging their flights of fancy, comic characters find freedom in detaching themselves from the latter by seeing their foolish aims frustrated and yet, in their failure, retaining their irrepressible self-assurance. In the essay I also consider different forms of comic subjectivity identified by Hegel, such as the fool who openly laughs at himself (Falstaff), the one who acknowledges his folly without laughing at himself (Stepsiades), and the one who does not recognize his folly yet remains irrepressibly self-assured in that folly (Don Quixote). I then explain why, in Hegel’s view, comedy leads logically to religion (and so brings the conceptual development of art to an end). For Hegel, the core of true religion (found, he thinks, in Christianity) resides in love and forgiveness, both of which involve letting go of oneself and thereby attaining infinite, “divine” freedom in being finite (not in a transcendent “beyond”). Comic characters clearly do not “relinquish” themselves to the point of death. Yet they point towards self-giving religious love by showing that they, too, are not tied to their finite aims but enjoy a “divine” freedom in their all-too-human, and often quite irreligious, finitude.