Hegel by Althaus Horst; Tarsh Michael;

Author:Althaus, Horst; Tarsh, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press

One can certainly object to the style of such things, but the cumbrous syntax in no way invalidates the sincerity of Hegel’s supportive and respectful attitude to the Chancellor. These words would naturally have revolted Fries who had since become the leading spokesman of the Jena student fraternities, the most extreme patriotic wing of the ‘freedom-loving Germans’, and had recently lost his teaching post as a result. In a letter to a like-minded student leader called Ludwig Rödiger on 6 January 1821 Fries commented that ‘Hegel’s metaphysical mushrooms have grown not in the gardens of knowledge and learning but upon the dung-heap of sycophancy. Until the end of 1813 his metaphysics had given succour to the French, then it became royalist in the best Württemberg manner, and is now kissing the riding-whip of Herr von Kamptz [Head of the Berlin Police]’. The external impression of Hegel’s frequent changes of political course and all the signs of a loyal and devoted defender of the authorities generally might seem to justify some of this harsh judgement. But Fries’s catalogue of Hegel’s political commitments was still incomplete. The student Friedrich Förster, who belonged amongst Hegel’s closest circle, noted down one interesting incident from this period in his personal diary. In July 1820 Hegel undertook a short trip to Dresden, the principal purpose of which was to see Raphael’s Sixtine Madonna in the art gallery there. Amongst a small circle of friends one evening in the tavern The Blue Star Hegel refused a glass of the best Meissner wine that had been offered him and ordered a number of bottles of champagne instead. Hegel did the honours and then encouraged them all to raise their glasses ‘in memory of this very day’. Outside of Prussia itself he was toasting the anniversary of 14 July 1789 and the storming of the Bastille.

If Hegel himself had become on occasion the object of secret police investigations, something he thought he could easily counter through his public activities and academic teaching, he could not fail to recognize evidence of irritating and persistent opposition to his influence within the university. He had only gradually, and even then only incompletely, emancipated himself from his original sense of intellectual isolation in general. In part, of course, this was due to the almost impenetrable wall of obscurity with which he surrounded himself, and which could only be breached to some extent after the most sustained and stubborn efforts of study. But it was also due to the presence of Schleiermacher whose constant opponent he was destined to remain for a long time, not least through Altenstein’s express designs. Schleiermacher defended a theology of ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’, to borrow Winckelmann’s expression, and very much in the manner of Schinkel’s classicism, something which only recommended him all the more to the important circles of Berlin society. He attempted to respond to the disturbing depths of the human heart by an appeal to dialectics. In this he resembled Hegel, but his immediate model for dialectical thinking was derived from the Platonic dialogue.

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