Hegelianism

Problems of the Hegelian heritage

The Hegelian system, in which German idealism reached its fulfillment, claimed to provide a unitary solution to all of the problems of philosophy. It held that the speculative point of view, which transcends all particular and separate perspectives, must grasp the one truth, bringing back to its proper centre all of the problems of logic, of metaphysics (or the nature of Being), and of the philosophies of nature, law, history, and culture (artistic, religious, and philosophical). According to Hegel, this attitude is more than a formal method that remains extraneous to its own content; rather, it represents the actual development of the Absolute—of the all-embracing totality of reality—considered “as Subject and not merely as Substance” (i.e., as a conscious agent or Spirit and not merely as a real being). This Absolute, Hegel held, first puts forth (or posits) itself in the immediacy of its own inner consciousness and then negates this positing—expressing itself now in the particularity and determinateness of the factual elements of life and culture—and finally regains itself, through the negation of the former negation that had constituted the finite world.

Such a dialectical scheme (immediateness–alienation–negation of the negation) accomplished the self-resolution of the aforementioned problem areas—of logic, of metaphysics, and so on. This panoramic system thus had the merit of engaging philosophy in the consideration of all of the problems of history and culture, none of which could any longer be deemed foreign to its competence. At the same time, however, the system deprived all of the implicated elements and problems of their autonomy and particular authenticity, reducing them to symbolic manifestations of the one process, that of the Absolute Spirit’s quest for and conquest of its own self. Moreover, such a speculative mediation between opposites, when directed to the more impending problems of the time, such as those of religion and politics, led ultimately to the evasion of the most urgent and imperious ideological demands and was hardly able to escape the charge of ambiguity and opportunism.

Stages in the history of the interpretation of Hegel

The explanation of the success of Hegelianism—marked by the formation of a school that, for more than 30 years, brought together the best energies of German philosophy—lies in the fact that no other system could compete with it in the richness of its content or the rigour of its formulation or challenge its claim to express the total spirit of the culture of its time. Moreover, as Hegelianism diffused outward, it was destined to provoke increasingly lively and gripping reactions and to take on various articulations as, in its historical development, it intermingled with contrasting positions.

Four stages can be distinguished within the development of Hegelianism. The first of these was that of the immediate crisis of the Hegelian school in Germany during the period from 1827 through 1850. Always involved in polemics against its adversaries, the school soon divided into three currents. (1) The right, in which the direct disciples of Hegel participated, defended his philosophy from the accusation that it was liberal and pantheistic (defining God as the All). These “old Hegelians” sought to uphold the compatibility of Hegelianism with evangelical orthodoxy and with the conservative political policies of the Restoration (the new order in Europe that followed the defeat of Napoleon). (2) The left—formed of the “young Hegelians,” for the most part indirect disciples of Hegel—considered the dialectic as a “principle of movement” and viewed Hegel’s identification of the rational with the real as a command to modify the cultural and political reality that reactionism was merely justifying and to make it rational. Thus, the young Hegelians interpreted Hegelianism in a revolutionary sense—i.e., as pantheistic and then, consecutively, as atheistic in religion and as liberal-democratic in politics. (3) The centre, which preferred to fall back upon interpretations of the Hegelian system in its genesis and significance, with special interest in logical problems.

In the second phase (1850–1904), in which Hegelianism diffused into other countries, the works of the centre played a preponderant role; thus, in this phase of the history of the interpretation of Hegel, usually called Neo-Hegelian, the primary interest was in logic and a reform of the dialectic.

In the first decade of the 20th century, on the other hand, there arose still in Germany a different movement, after Wilhelm Dilthey, originator of a critical approach to history and humanistic studies, discovered unpublished papers from the period of Hegel’s youth. This third phase, that of the Hegel renaissance, was characterized by an interest in philology, by the publication of texts, and by historical studies; and it stressed the reconstruction of the genesis of Hegel’s thought, considering especially its cultural matrices—both Enlightenment and Romanticist—and the extent to which it might present irrationalistic and so-called pre-existentialist attitudes.

In the fourth stage, after World War II, the revival of Marxist studies in Europe finally thrust into the foreground the interest in the relation between Hegel and Karl Marx and in the value of the Hegelian heritage for Marxism, with particular regard to political and social problems. This fourth phase of the history of Hegelianism thus appropriated many of the polemical themes of the earlier years of the school.