2 - “Free Means Ethical”: Idealism, History, and Critical Theory

Summary

Bauer's critical theory attains its mature form after 1839, with the complex interweaving of aesthetic and ethical motifs in an original, Hegelian republicanism. The diffuseness of Bauer's writings requires us first to examine the model synthetically, reconstructing it from its many fragmentary expositions, and exploring its general outlines, as it applies to the subjective and the objective dimensions of history. We can then trace its detailed elaboration through the writings of the Vormärz. The Hegelian idea of the unity of thought and being, expressed in the language of infinite self-consciousness, is fundamental to Bauer's conception of the historical process, the necessity it contains, and the critical judgements it elicits. In the 1840s, Bauer employs the concept of infinite self-consciousness to describe this unity. This concept replicates features of Hegelian objective spirit and develops the relation between self-consciousness and its historical manifestations. Bauer proposes to derive legitimate and determinate content for this consciousness through a specific form of ethical idealism, to which the previous literature on the Left Hegelians has been insufficiently attentive: a conception of an evolving Sittlichkeit infuses his model of immanent critique, his doctrine of autonomy, and his repudiation of heteronomy. The thought of the historical process as a whole permits a universal perspective from which to make judgements on the existing order. These judgements articulate Bauer's republicanism in the 1840s, though the limits of his political critique will also appear in a sharpened dichotomy between universal and particular interests, especially apparent after 1843.