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Hegel in the Mirror of Biography: The Biographical Hegel-Literature from Rosenkranz to Althaus1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Abstract
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- Type
- Review Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 14 , Issue 1-2: number 27/28 , 1993 , pp. 1 - 11
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1993
Footnotes
1
The present article was originally motivated by the appearance of the recent biography of Hegel by Horst Althaus, Hegel: die heroischen Jahre der Philosophie (Hanser 1992). I thought it might be instructive to place the book in the larger context of previous biographical treatments of Hegel's life, thought and times. In Part I the discussion is essentially concerned with the first half of the Hegel-reception, ie. the principal 19th century literature from Karl Rosenkranz through Rudolf Haym to Kuno Fischer. To be published in a subsequent number of the Bulletin, Part II discusses, along with some of the lesser relevant literature, the major 20th century monographs on Hegel's life and thought: Wilhelm Dilthey, Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels (Berlin 1905); Franz Rosenzweig, Hegel und der Staat (Munchen 1920); Th Haering, Hegel: Sein Wollen und sein Werk (Leipzig 1929 and 1938); Hermann Glockner, Hegel (Stuttgart 1954 and 1958); Gustav Emil Mueller, Hegel: Denkgeschichte eines Lebendigen (Bern 1959); Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: reinterpretation, texts and commentary (New York 1966) and the aforementioned work by Horst Althaus. For a review of the recent translation of Jacques D'Hondt, Hegel en son temps, see this issue, pp 37-39. References to Hegel are to the Theorie-Werkausgabe (henceforth TWA, with vol and page number).
References
2 See Helferich, Christoph, G W F Hegel (Stuttgart 1979), p 7 Google Scholar.
3 Walter Biemel writes concerning our expectations that the biographical and historical circumstances of a life will throw significant light upon the significance of a life-work: “In the case of Heidegger this expectation is disappointed. Here it is not the life through which we can come to experience anything about the work, but his work is his life. To gain access to the life therefore means to pursue the productive work, to try and grasp the basic thought of this activity, to see what discloses itself here, how it unfolds and finds itself in constant movement”. Heidegger (Hamburg 1973), p 7 Google Scholar.
4 Rosenkranz emphasised this aspect of modern idealism in the preface to his biography: “Philosophy has undeniably changed and extended its relationship to actuality insofar as it has renounced the seclusion and alienation from the world which formerly characterised it. In the ever closer connection between the realms of knowledge and action, theory and praxis, which all the more important philosophers since Spinoza have more or less striven towards, Hegel in particular has accomplished a great advance” (Ros pp xi-xii). It is noteworthy that at the very moment when Hegel programmatically declares in a letter to Schelling in 1800 that his “youthful ideal” is ready to “transform itself into [ie. not simply to be abandoned and replaced by] the form of a system”, he simultaneously reaffirms his interest in finding “a way back towards intervention in the lives of men”.
5 Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen, ed Nicolin, G (Hamburg 1970), p 483 Google Scholar.
6 Dieter Henrich observes that “never before had plans for a collected edition and also for a biography followed with such alacrity upon the death of a thinker”. See Henrich's, article “Auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen Hegel”, in the Zeilschrift für philosophische Forschung, 35, 1981, pp 585–591 Google Scholar. The full story of the editorial politics behind the production of Hegel's Werke remains to be written but see Beyer, W R, “Wie die Hegelsche Freundesvereinsausgabe entstand”, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 15, 1967, pp 563–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Pöggeler, O, “Perspektiven der Hegelforschung” in Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 11, 1970, pp 79–102 Google Scholar. J E Toews provides a comprehensive and well-documented historical account of Hegel's thought in relation to the contemporary cultural and political situation, of the enormous intellectual influence he exerted during his own lifetime, and of the gradual humanist and anthropological transformation of the hegelian project amongst the “Young Hegelians”. His study supplies very useful background information for anyone interested in studying Hegel's life and thought in cultural context and provides interesting mini-biographies of many of the leading members of the Hegelian ‘School’. See his Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805-1841 (Cambridge 1980)Google Scholar.
For the fate of Hegel's literary remains see Henrich, loc cit. There is some evidence to suggest that in the 1880's Hegel's two sons destroyed a substantial amount of Hegel's papers in order amongst other things “to prevent further misuse”, as Immanuel Hegel darkly put it in a letter to his brother. When he was researching material for his study on Hegel's development Wilhelm Dilthey already encountered a “story” circulating about a family “Autodafé”. See Henrich, loc cit, p 589 and Becker, W F, “Hegels hinterlassene Schriften im Briefwechsel seines Sohnes Immanuel”, also in the Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 35, pp 592–614, esp p 613Google Scholar.
7 There is even a special section on Hegel's personal characteristics (Eigenheiten) which will appeal to those for whom the essence of Hegel's teaching is simply to reconcile us all too quickly and apparently at whatever cost to the existent The mature realism beyond romantic revolt which strives to make us prematurely “at home in the world”, to regard individual and social alienation solely as a personal attitude problem, ironically turns itself into a purely subjective reflection, a powerless “Sollen” instructing the world as to how it ought to be. In one passage Rosenkranz paints a psychological portrait which radiates an irritating equanimity: “…he exerted an extraordinary influence without, like Fichte, bringing about a catastrophic fate for himself. In love without Abelardian romance, in politics without Baconian ambition, in religion without Spinozan misfortunes, in everyday life without Leibnizian eccentricity, in teaching without Fichtean conflicts, Hegel always remained dedicated without any personal clamour to the strict service of knowledge … North German sensitivity and pretention were foreign to his easy going openness and characteristic examples of northern German mentality, like Hamann and Solger, he could only regard as hypochondriac” (Ros pp 22-23).
8 Caird, Edward, Hegel (Edinburgh 1883), p v Google Scholar. The first 5 chapters of Caird's excellent little monograph provide a lively and readable account of Hegel's life which was the first such to appear in English. It is inevitably based on Rosenkranz and Haym, along with the same confused chronology with respect to the early writings, often assigned too late, and the Jena manuscripts, often assigned too early. Generally Caird is very balanced in his assessment of Hegel's intellectual and political position in relation to his contemporaries but even he, against the grain of his own sympathies, presents the older Berlin Hegel in particular as more rigid and conservative than he was. It is of course only with the publication of much new material from Hegel's unpublished lectures on the philosophy of right during the last two decades that this case could be properly and amply confirmed.