Die Freien

The Young Hegelians (), or Left Hegelians (''Linkshegelianer''), or the Hegelian Left (''die Hegelsche Linke''), were a group of German intellectuals who, in the decade or so after the death of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 1831, reacted to and wrote about his ambiguous legacy.

The Young Hegelians drew on his idea that the purpose and promise of history was the total negation of everything conducive to restricting freedom and reason; and they proceeded to mount radical critiques, first of religion and then of the Prussian political system. They rejected anti-utopian aspects of his thought that " Old Hegelians" have interpreted to mean that the world has already essentially reached perfection.

Left and Right Hegelianism

The German philosophers who wrote immediately after the death of Hegel in 1831 can be roughly divided into the politically and religiously radical 'left', or 'young', Hegelians and the more conservative 'right', or 'old', Hegelians. The Right Hegelians followed the master in believing that the dialectic of history had come to an end—Hegel's '' Phenomenology of Spirit'' reveals itself to be the culmination of history as the reader reaches its end. Here he meant that reason and freedom had reached their maxima as they were embodied by the existing Prussian state. And here the master’s claim was viewed as paradoxical, at best: the Prussian regime indeed provided extensive civil and social services, good universities, high employment and some industrialization, but it was ranked as rather backward politically compared with the more liberal constitutional monarchies of France and Britain.

The Young Hegelians drew on both Hegel's veneration of reason and freedom as the guiding forces of history and his idea that the 'Spirit' (''Geist'') overcame all that opposed reason and freedom. They wanted to overcome the religious dogma and political authoritarianism in Germany at that time.

It is important to note that the groups were not as unified or as self-conscious as the labels 'right' and 'left' make them appear. The term 'Right Hegelian', for example, was never actually used by those to whom it was later ascribed—namely, Hegel's direct successors at the Fredrick William University (now Humboldt University of Berlin). The term was first used by David Strauss to describe Bruno Bauer—who actually was a typically 'Left', or Young, Hegelian.

History

It was the outcry caused by David Strauss' ''The Life of Jesus'' in 1835 which first made the 'Young Hegelians' aware of their existence as a distinct group, and it was their attitude to religion that distinguished the left and right from then onwards ( August Cieszkowski is a possible exception to this rule). Despite the lack of political freedom of speech in Prussia at the time, King Wilhelm III, under the influence of his relatively enlightened minister of religion, health and education Altenstein, allowed pretty much anything to be said about religion so long as there was practical obedience to his enforced merging of Calvinism and Lutheranism and spreading of Protestantism in Catholic areas.Stedman-Jones, Gareth, introduction to ''Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto'', Penguin Classics, 2002 Thus the Young Hegelians at first found it easier to direct their critical energies towards religion than politics.

A major consolidator of the Young Hegelian movement was the journal ''Hallische Jahrbücher'' (1838–41) (later ''Deutsche Jahrbücher'' (1841–43)) which was edited by Arnold Ruge and received contributions from many of the other Young Hegelians (and, in its infancy, Old Hegelians). It attacked Catholicism and orthodox Protestantism but was initially politically moderate, taking the line that Prussia was the embodiment of historical reason, which required that it evolve by peaceful reform towards a bourgeois egalitarian state with a constitutional monarchy, Protestant religion (though without a dominating state church) and freedom of speech. Another nucleus of the Young Hegelian movement was the Doctors Club (''Doctorklub'') in Berlin (later known as ' The Free Ones'), a society of intellectuals founded in 1837 and led by Bruno Bauer who, by 1838, was writing the most anti-Christian pamphlets in Germany at the time.Kolakowski, Leszek, ''Main currents of Marxism: the founders, the golden age, the breakdown'', Norton, 2005.

The radicalization and politicization of the movement occurred when the new king, Frederick William IV, upon whom the Young Hegelians had pinned their hopes of political reform, came to power in 1840 and curtailed political freedom and religious tolerance more than before. In philosophy, the radicalization took the form of a breach with Hegel’s doctrine of the Prussian state as the fulfillment of history. In religion it manifested as a rejection of Christianity even in its most diluted pantheistic form and an adoption of atheism (led by Bauer and Feuerbach). In politics the Young Hegelians dropped much of Hegel's political theory and for the most part turned to republicanism – the exceptions being Moses Hess, who mixed Hegelianism with communism, and of course Marx and Engels

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases