The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  While Greek art-religion relied on beautiful sensuous presences to represent the Absolute, the new religious content is fundamentally represented to consciousness as ‘Vorstellung’—‘representation’. This is a form of representation based in that of everyday perceivable objects and conceives of ‘higher’ things on the metaphorical extension of such cognition. Thus Trinitarian Christian religion still has a (once) perceivable object as the medium for representing its God—Jesus—however, Jesus is not an aesthetically idealized human, but the ‘son of’ another divine person within the triune deity who can only be posited as his ‘father’. After the death of the actual Jesus, God continues to exist in the practices of the religious community qua ‘holy spirit’. Trinitarian Christianity, especially in its modern protestant phase, becomes the ‘consummate religion’, allowing a type of universalization of ‘I-hood’ not found in other religions.

  Vorstellungen combine sensuous images with conceptualized relations, and a final shift in absolute spirit will occur when this type of thinking is replaced by properly conceptual thought. Hegel sees this as a continuation of the internal transformation within Christianity from medieval Catholicism and modern Protestantism:

  It is a great obstinacy, the kind of obstinacy which does honour to human beings, that they are unwilling to acknowledge in their attitudes anything which has not been justified by thought—and this obstinacy is the characteristic property of the modern age, as well as being the distinctive principle of Protestantism. What Luther inaugurated as faith in feeling and the testimony of the spirit is the same thing that the spirit, at a more mature stage of its development, endeavours to grasp in the concept so as to free itself in the present, and thus find itself therein.65

  As with the transition from art to religion, the passage from religion to philosophy thus involves a shift within the authority of cognitive forms. Whether Hegel was signalling the overcoming of religion by a fundamentally secular philosophy or a transition to some higher, more rational form of religion is a question that divided his followers into ‘left’ and ‘right’ Hegelians—the split that ultimately brought down Hegelian philosophy itself. One thing is clear: if one takes Hegel as a basically secular modernist, for whom the governance of life in the modern world is to be driven by argumentative, conceptually articulated inquiry rather than appeals to tradition and religion, his account of the nature of ‘logical life’ underlying this modern life will separate him from those more mainstream ‘naturalistic’ forms of secularist modernism. Hegel identified himself as a Christian as he saw the Trinitarian conception of God as a precursor, in the form of Vorstellungen, of his own holistic notion of ‘the concept’. Without this element we have only the dead ossifications of reason, rather than reason itself, and the inability to conceptually distinguish the realms of nature and spirit.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Beiser, F. Hegel. New York: Routledge, 2005.

  Brandom, R. B. Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.

  Burbidge, J. W. ‘Conceiving’, in A Companion to Hegel, edited by S. Houlgate and M. Baur, 159–74. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

  Capozzi, M. and G. Roncaglia. ‘Logic and Philosophy of Logic from Humanism to Kant’, in The Development of Modern Logic, edited by Leila Haaparanta, 78–158. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

  Dickey, L. Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  Ferrarin, A. Hegel and Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

  Fichte, J. G. ‘Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge’, in The Science of Knowledge, edited and translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

  Forster, M. N. Hegel and Skepticism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

  Frank, M. The Philosophical Foundations of Early German Romanticism. Translated by Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2004.

  Harris, H. S. Hegel’s Ladder (2 volumes). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1970.

  Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publications, 1956.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: 3 volumes. Translated and edited by M. J. Petry. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the ‘Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences’ (1830). Translated by William Wallace and A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction. Translated by H. B. Nisbet with an introduction by Duncan Forbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  Hegel, G. W. F. ‘How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (as Displayed in the Works of Mr. Krug)’, in George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris (eds.), Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: One-volume Edition, The Lectures of 1827. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

  Hegel, G. W. F. The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze. Translated by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Edited by Allen W. Wood and translated by H. B Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

  Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 volumes. Translated by E. S. Haldane. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

  Horstmann, R.-P. ‘Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as an Argument for a Monistic Ontology’. Inquiry 49, no. 1 (2006): 103–18.

  Houlgate, S. The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2006.

  Jaeschke, W. Reason in Religion: The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion. Translated by J. M. Stewart and P. C. Hodgson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

  Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

  Pinkard, T. Hegel: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  Pinkard, T. Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  Pippin, R. B. Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

  Pippin, R. B. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

  Redding, P. Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  Redding, P. ‘Hegel, Aristotle and the Conception of Free Agency’, in Gunnar Hindrichs and Axel Honneth (eds.), Freiheit: Stuttgarter Hegelkongress 2011, 389–404. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2013.

  Ross, N. On Mechanism in Hegel’s Social and Political Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2008.

  Schiller, F. On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters. Translated and edited by Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

  Stern, R. Hegelian Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

  Taylor, C. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

  Tolstoy, Count L. What to Do? Thoughts Evoked by the Cens
us of Moscow. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co, 1887.

  * * *

  1 F. Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters, trans. and ed. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).

  2 M. Frank, The Philosophical Foundations of Early German Romanticism, trans. Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2004).

  3 For a detailed account of Hegel’s life and times, see T. Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  4 Count L. Tolstoy, What to Do? Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow (New York: T.Y. Crowell & Co, 1887), 170.

  5 Tolstoy, What to Do?, 170–1.

  6 A. Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and T. Pinkard, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  7 G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), 26.

  8 Hegel, Science of Logic, 37.

  9 Hegel, Science of Logic, 39.

  10 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), §§91–5.

  11 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §136.

  12 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §175.

  13 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §177.

  14 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §§184–5.

  15 G.W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §163, Add.

  16 R.-P. Horstmann, ‘Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as an Argument for a Monistic Ontology’, Inquiry 1, no. 49 (2006), 103–18.

  17 For example, R.B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Pinkard, Hegel; Pinkard, Hegel’s Naturalism.

  18 Hegel, Science of Logic, 27.

  19 F. Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005); S. Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2006); R. Stern, Hegelian Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  20 For a welcome corrective to the traditional view, see J.W. Burbidge, ‘Conceiving’, in A Companion to Hegel, ed. S. Houlgate and M. Baur (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 159–74.

  21 Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, § 82, Add.

  22 Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, §80, Add.

  23 Hegel, Science of Logic, 33.

  24 Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, §126.

  25 Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, §81, Add.

  26 For the philosophical background to this dimension of reason as Hegel conceives it, see M.N. Forster, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).

  27 Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, §82.

  28 Hegel, Science of Logic, 583–4.

  29 Hegel, Science of Logic, 600.

  30 Hegel, Science of Logic, 625.

  31 Hegel, Science of Logic, 627; and Burbidge, ‘Conceiving’, 165.

  32 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3 volumes, trans. E. S. Haldane (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), volume II, 255; and P. Redding, ‘Hegel, Aristotle and the Conception of Free Agency’, in Freiheit: Stuttgarter Hegelkongress 2011, ed. Gunnar Hindrichs and Axel Honneth (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2013), 389–404.

  33 Hegel, Science of Logic, 669.

  34 R. B. Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); P. Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  35 Hegel, Science of Logic, 679–86.

  36 M. Capozzi and G. Roncaglia, ‘Logic and Philosophy of Logic from Humanism to Kant’, in The Development of Modern Logic, ed. Leila Haaparanta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 94–5.

  37 Hegel, Science of Logic, 679–86.

  38 Hegel, Science of Logic, 679–80.

  39 By this calculus, logic is meant to be ‘mechanically brought within the reach of the uneducated (Ungebildeten)’ (Hegel, Science of Logic, 686)—that is, those whose thinking has not be brought to the standpoint of philosophy.

  40 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §343.

  41 H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder, vol. 1 (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 585.

  42 Hegel, Science of Logic, 575.

  43 The centrality of ‘mechanism’ to Hegel’s account of spirit in the socio-political sphere has recently been underlined by N. Ross, On Mechanism in Hegel’s Social and Political Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2008).

  44 Hegel, Science of Logic, 695.

  45 Hegel, Science of Logic, 575.

  46 G. W. F. Hegel, ‘How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (as Displayed in the Works of Mr. Krug)’, in George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris (eds.), Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 299.

  47 Hegel, ‘How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (as Displayed in the Works of Mr. Krug)’, 299.

  48 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Nature: 3 volumes, trans. and ed. M. J. Petry (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), §250, Remark.

  49 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, §389, Add.

  50 G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §71. Remark.

  51 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §199.

  52 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the ‘Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences’ (1830), trans. W. Wallace and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), §548.

  53 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 78.

  54 Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, §549.

  55 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 56.

  56 The way in which the activity of the philosophical historian presupposes that of ‘original’ and ‘reflective’ historians is treated in G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, trans. H. B. Nisbet, intro. D. Forbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1–8.

  57 Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, §556.

  58 G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975), 310–11.

  59 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 325.

  60 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 357.

  61 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 77.

  62 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 77–8.

  63 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 502–4.

  64 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 505.

  65 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 22.

  CHAPTER 4

  FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL (1772–1829)

  DALIA NASSAR

  4.1 INTRODUCTION

  AMONG the romantics, it is Friedrich Schlegel1 (1772–1829) who is most recognized for his contributions to philosophy.2 While he is best known for his work in the Athenäum, his definition of ‘romantic poetry’ and his literary criticism, Schlegel’s critique of foundationalism, his theory of knowledge, his philosophy of history, and his conception of Lebensphilosophie were equally important in shaping the romantic movement.3

  Nonetheless, the nature and significance of Schlegel’s contributions to philosophy remain contested issues. Hegel famously described Schlegel’s philosophy as nothing more than ‘vanity’,4 and Goethe complained about Schlegel’s proclivity to ‘popularize’ ideas which were not his own.5 In a letter to Fichte, Schelling expresses alarm about Schlegel’s intention to offer lectures on transcendental philosophy in Jena. It is one thing, Schelling writes, for Sc
hlegel to spread ‘poetic and philosophical dilettantism’ in his own circle, but to influence students with his ideas was very disconcerting.6 After all, Schelling concludes, Schlegel has repeatedly contradicted himself: how could he intend to carry out transcendental philosophy while arguing that a philosophical system is impossible?7

  Indeed, it is Schlegel’s critique of systematicity that won him both his greatest critics and his greatest admirers. Both Schelling’s bewildered statement and Hegel’s related claim that Schlegel’s notion of irony is a poetic exaggeration of the Fichtean I that nullifies morals and leads to empty subjectivity, exemplify the view taken by his critics.8 In contrast, Schlegel’s admirers praise precisely those aspects of his thought that Schelling and Hegel found so problematic: his critique of closure, his emphasis on irony, his notion of the fragment, and his claim that knowledge (absolute knowledge) cannot be achieved. This laudatory view of Schlegel’s philosophy has become particularly popular in recent years, largely motivated by certain affinities between his thought and postmodernism.9 Postmodern critics contend that Schlegel’s use of literary devices, and his move to literature, was a response to a ‘crisis’ in knowledge—as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy put it—which occurred in the wake of Kantian philosophy and symbolized the beginning of the end of systematic thought.10 Although Manfred Frank distances himself from postmodernism, he agrees in fundamental respects with postmodern interpretations of Schlegel. For one, he considers Schlegel’s project to involve a critique of systematic philosophy and first principles. Furthermore, he argues that Schlegel turns to literature and literary tools—such as allegory and wit—in order to point to or suggest (andeuten) an unknowable and un-presentable absolute.11 Now, while postmodern interpreters consider the absolute to be purely fictive, Frank insists that the absolute plays the necessary role of organizing knowledge, and thus functions as a regulative ideal.12 Nonetheless, Frank agrees with the premise that underlies the postmodern reading: Schlegel is primarily concerned with epistemological questions, and his aim is to challenge systematic philosophy and knowledge of the absolute.13