No More Learning

For Schelling, not unlike Novalis, who stressed the role of imagination in cognition, an apprehension - immediate or otherwise - of the Absolute was an exceptionally rare revelation or speculative disclosure reserved for artistic geniuses. On this point, Schelling and Hegel disagreed (Du? sing, 1969). It is through organization, or perhaps through systemicity, which requires its own form of genius, suggests Hegel, that "untruth returns to its own truth. "
The ideal of Hegel's youth is both directly and indirectly influenced by Plato's theory of forms, especially the doctrine of truth as recollection and the dialectical method. (Plato enjoyed a significant renaissance in Germany toward the end of the eighteenth century. ) In Tu? bingen, speculative Pietism was replete with metaphysical Platonism in various stages of its sizable heritage: from Plato to Plotinus and hermeticism to medieval mysticism, especially Eckhart, from Spinoza to Herder, from Luther and Boehme to Reuchlin, and all this in the hands of Swabian
18 Chapter One
religious societies in general and, in particular, theologians such as Fredrich Christoph Oetinger (1702 - 82). 3
A friend of Schelling's family, Oetinger was - by most estimates, writes Stoeffler - "the most original theologican of the eighteenth century in Wu? ttemberg and perhaps in all of Germany. "4 Shortly after entering the Tu? bingen Stift, Oetinger discovered the speculative theology of Jacob Boehme; but he was influenced also by a circle of Jewish Kabbalists. 5 Opposed to the mechanistic materialism and the rationalism typical of the enlightenment, Oetinger espoused a Boehmean vitalism in which God is conceived as "an eternal desire for self-revelation. " Elsewhere: "The Ancients saw God as an eternal process in which He emerges from Himself and returns to Himself; this is the true conception of God and of His Glory; it is the true conception of His infinite life and power which issues in the Blessed Trinity" (Hanratty: 314). This Oetingerian formula exerted considerable influence on Hegel's thought, it seems, and not only in his early theological essays; in the Enzyklopa? die der philosophischen Wissenschaften, initially published in 1817 and revised in 1827, so clearly within the scope of his mature thought, Hegel claims that: "God is God only insofar as He knows Himself; moreover, His self-knowledge is man's self-consciousness and the human knowledge of God, which moves on so as to become man's self-knowledge in God" (? 564; also see Fackenheim 1967: 191 ff. ). The spirit of the absolute, or the absolute spirit, is what Oetinger called an Intensum "in which the whole is immanent in every part a complex whole" (Magee: 69). The complex and unified whole, suggests Oetinger, which is the spirit of God, is greater than the sum of its parts. The problem of how to understand the whole without dissecting it, or how to observe something without distorting it, or how to analyze the aggregate parts without neglecting the complex if not dynamic set of relations that unify them, whether teleologically or otherwise, constituted something along the lines of a philosophical if not also poetic preoccupation at the Stift in Tu? bingen. 6
3 See Jensen, "The Theological Foundations of Hegel's Phenomenology" in Heythrop Journal of Philosophy and Religion, Volume 50, Issue 2 , pp. 181 - 360 (March 2009)
4 Stoeffler, German Pietism, 107.
5 See Magee, "The Sorcerer's Apprenticeship," 64 ff. .
6 The preface to Ho? lderlin's Hyperion provides a literary description of this problem: "Wer bloss an meiner Pflanze reicht, der kennt sie nicht, und wer sie pflu? ckt, bloss, um daran zu lernen, kennt sie auch nicht. Die Auflo? sung der Dissonanzen in einem gewissen Charakter is weder fu? r das blosse Nachdenken,
? Der Zeitgeist 19
"Das Wahre ist das Ganze," i. e. , that "the true is the whole," the well- known passage from the Preface to the Phenomenology (1807M: 11), may well allude to Oetinger's conceptual ideal of a "Zentrallerkenntnis": "The truth is the whole," wrote Oetinger, and "when one finally receives this total, synoptic vision of the truth, it matters not whether one begins by considering this part or that. "7 This Zentrallerkenntnis of the Absolute is intimately bound together with "sensus communis,"8 in Oetinger, anticipating the dialogical principle in Hegel, which might be generally though inadequately described as "an unmediated cognition" [unmittelbare Erkenntnis], at the very core of our being, of our underlying unity with God and other persons - "a state of faculty that lies beyond the run-of-the- mill distinctions made by consciousness, including the distinction between consciousness and the world" (Magee: 67; also see Sigrid Grossmann, 1979: 101 ff. ). One of Oetinger's students, Philipp Matthaeus Hahn (1739 - 90), was acquainted with Herder and also, it seems likely, with Schelling and Ho? lderlin. Hegel's early theological works, if not also the 'ideals of his youth,' are "alive with the sort of issues and questions that were characteristic of Wu? rtemberg Pietism" (Magee: 71). 9 A parish clergyman
noch fu? r die leer Lust" [Those who merely sniff the scent of my plant do not know it, nor those who pluck it solely for the sake of learning about it. The resolution of dissonances in a particular individual is accomplished neither by restive reflection nor empty desire. ].
7 Oetinger, Sa? mtliche Schriften, vol 5, ed Karl Chr. Eberh. Ehmann (Stuttgart: Steinkopf), 45.
8 Following Oetinger, sensus communis "is concerned only with thing that all men see before them, things that hold an entire society together, things that are concerned as much with truths and statements as with the arrangements and patterns comprised in statements" (quoted in Gadamer, 23; Magee, 67). This description fits nicely with the aims of Faith and Knowledge as well as the Phenomenology.
9 Though Hegel rarely makes explicit reference to the Kabbalah, certain portions of the Book of Zohar are not so far removed from the ideal of his youth: "And when these two, soul [nefesh] and spirit [ruah], have duly readied themselves, they are worthy to receive the 'supersoul' [neshamah], resting in turn upon the throne of the spirit [ruah]. The supersoul stands preeminent, and not to be perceived. There is throne upon throne, and for the highest a throne. A study of these grades of the soul yields an understanding of the higher wisdom; and it is in such a fashion that wisdom alone affords the linking together of a number of mysteries. " The influence of Jewish philosophy, especially mysticism, from the Kabbalah through Miamonides to Spinoza, Mendellsohn as well as Lessing, on German thought is not often enough discussed. Leibniz, as an example, was thoroughly well-versed in Maimonides's Guide to the Perplexed. Moses Maimonides was committed to reconciling faith and philosophy as well as presenting religious content in
? 20 Chapter One
in Wu? rttemberg, known not only for his popular sermons (published as Evangelische Rauchwerk in 1753) and prayer books but also for his utopian writings (e. g. , Die gu? ldene Zeit in 1759), Oetinger was certainly influential on the Tu? bingen Stift10; but it does seem possible, as some scholars insist, that Hegel was not directly exposed to Oetinger's teachings at that time. 11 But even if Hegel did not directly encounter the writings of Oetinger at Tu? bingen, which seems unlikely, he was quite likely to have been familiar - at least indirectly, through Ho? lderlin or Schelling - with Oetinger's doctrines by the time that he wrote the Phenomenology. 12 Opposed to the mechanistic materialism and the rationalism typical of the enlightenment, Oetinger espoused Bo? hmean vitalism in which God is conceived as 'an eternal desire for self-revelation' [eine ewige Begierde
philosophical form. Hegel considered Golgotha and Scheblimini (1784), Hamann's critique of Mendelssohn, to be more significant than his more celebrated Metacritique of Purism of Reason (1784), which was aimed at Kant. If the religious dimension of Hegel's thought consists in synthesizing faith and philosophy by means of retaining the content of faith while modifying its form, as Fackenheim among others suggests, and if this strategy leads to something along the lines of panentheism, Hegel's strategy was anticipated by medieval Jewish philosophy. Oetinger's fundamental "cosmic processes" are drawn explicitly with Kabbalism, including 'expansion' [Ausbreitung, identified with the fourth sephirah, both Hesed and Gedulah] and 'contraction' [Sta? rke, identified with the fifth, Gevurah] (see Magee: 66 ff. ). And in its poetic expression, the interlude between the "Expectation" and "Fulfillment" in Novalis' Frederick von Ofterdingen is replete with references to the Kabbalah and related hermetic traditions.
10 Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700 - 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 193.
11 Brecht and Sandberger argue - in 'Hegels Begegnung mit der Theologie im Tu? binger Stift: Eine neue Quelle fu? r die Studienzeit Hegels' - that Hegel was unfamiliar with and indeed not at all influenced by Schwa? bian Pietism in general or Oetinger's theological teachings in particular (Hegel-Studien, Bd. 5, Bonn 1969, 48 ff. ). Meinhard Prill, however, suggests that the ideas of Oetinger, as well as Fricker and Hahn 'constituted an Alltagswissen in Wu? rtemberg' (Bu? rgerliche Alltagswelt, 13).
12 Schelling was certainly familiar with the teachings of Oetinger by 1806 (see Plitt, Aus Schellings Leben in Briefen, 2 Bde. , Leipzig 1869-1870, Bd, II, 201). For more on the question of Oetinger's influence on Hegel, see Ernst Benz (1983, Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy) and Robert Schneider (1938, Schellings und Hegels schwa? bishe Geistesahnen); also Hayden - Roy, 'New and Old Histories: The Case of Ho? lderlin and Wu? rtemberg Pietism,' Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of German Language and Literature Papers, University of Nebraska - Lincoln (1992).
? Der Zeitgeist 21
sich zu offenbaren]. 13 The underlying unity if not identity between the finite and the infinite, in Oetinger as well as Boehme, is explicable in terms of the 'ewige Selbstbewegung' [eternal self-movement] - i. e. , the 'Zusammenziehung' [contraction or inhalation] and 'Wiederausdehnung' [re-expansion or exhalation] - of God. 14
How does one comprehend this infinitely complex if not incomprehensible whole? And how does one grasp 'the truth that is the whole' or 'that finitude which is infinity'? Oetinger suggests, and Hegel follows his lead, that the preferred method is generative and consists in grasping - through familiarity - the various stages of that organism's unfolding, as well as the vitalistic or teleological logic by which varied developmental stages emerge 'as plants do from their seeds. '15 Hegel's 'Das Wahre ist das Ganze,' the well-known passage from the Preface to the Phenomenology discussed at the outset of the present essay, sends the student of theology back to Oetinger's central insight, mentioned earlier, that "[t]he truth is the whole; when one finally receives this total, synoptic vision of the truth, it matters not whether one begins by considering this part or that. "16 It certainly seems plausible to suggest that this Zentrallerkenntnis contributed, directly or indirectly, to 'the ideal of [Hegel's] youth'; it also seems possible that Oetinger's doctrines secretly influenced, in various ways at different stages in his own philosophical development, the entire Hegelian system. (Though indirectly, Oetinger's teaching on Boehme may well have exercised also an influence on Hegel's ambivalent disenchantment with Spinoza. 17) Oetinger's Zentrallerkenntnis resurfaces, though philosophically transfigured, in Hegel's 'Preface' to the Phenomenology (1807: 11-2):18
13 Oetinger, Biblisches und emblematishces Woerterbuch (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969), as quoted in Magee, 65. Also see Jensen (2009), ? The Theological Foundations of the Hegelian System. "
14 Oetinger, Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia, Texte zur Geschichte des Pietismus, Berlin: New York (1977), 128.
15 Magee, 67; Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy, "A Foretaste of Heaven": Friedrich Ho? lderlin in the Context of Wu? rttemberg Pietism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 45. 16 Oetinger, Sa? mtliche Schriften, vol 5, ed Karl Chr. Eberh. Ehmann (Stuttgart: Steinkopf), 45, as quoted in Magee 67.
17 See Cosmann, Peggy (1998). "Der Einfluss Friedrich Christoph Oetingers auf Hegels Abrechnung mit Spinoza" in the Zeitschrift fu? r Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, Volume 50, Number 2, pp. 115-136 (22).
18 For Oetinger, the term "phenomenology" refers to the study of the 'divine system of relations' (see Benz, 1958, Der Christliche Kabbala, Zurich: Rhein V erlag).
? 22
Chapter One
The true is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result that only in the end is what it truly is . . . . Reason is, therefore, misunderstood when reflection is excluded from the True, and is not grasped as a positive moment of the Absolute.
And while this interpretative disagreement continues apace, Gerald Hanratty makes a convincing case that "commentators have recently focused attention again on the affinities between [Hegel's] speculation and the Gnostic systems of the second century and have thus contributed to a clearer appreciation of the nature and scope of the Hegelian synthesis (1984: 25).
1. 2 Hamann and the crisis of reason
Hegel was well versed in the thought of Johann Georg Hamann (1730- 1788). According to Goethe, "Hegel often made mention of Hamann in our discussions, indeed, he was able to recite lengthy passages committed to heart, displaying an intimate familiarity with the work of Hamann. Hegel's skills as a critic have always been excellent. " Hegel also wrote a glowing review of the first edition of Hamanns Schriften (see Werke, XI, 275). The post-Enlightenment critique of reason - the challenge to its authority, universality, impartiality, and its ability to justify morality, religion, and state - was initiated by Hamann and sustained, in large part, by F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819). Hamann, who many consider to be the father of the Sturm und Drang, was one of the first to champion the metaphysical significance of art, the irreducibility of cultural differences, to stress the historical dimension of rationality, the significance of language for thought, and even to suggest that reason was - not unlike Swedenborg - directed by the subconscious. Hamann was influenced by both Luther, who claimed that reason was a whore19 and that faith transcends all criticism, and Hume. Hamann refers to Hume as "a Saul among prophets and one who truly understands the need for faith [Glauben]. " While radically opposed to one another in other ways, Luther and Hume agree that the foundation of our knowledge of ourselves and the external world was belief [Glauben] - that is, "something for which there could be no a priori reasons," something to which everything else "could in the end be reduced" (Berlin, 31). And while Hamann's usage of Glaube is admittedly opaque, his description of how faith occurs or emerges is in some ways
19 Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. (Weimar: Herman Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1914), Band 51: 126.
? Der Zeitgeist 23
worse than opaque: Hegel claimed that Hamann's writings were "an enigma, indeed an exhausting one" (SW: XI, 226). In general, though, Hamann suggests that "faith happens for reasons just as little as tasting and sensing do. " In this, Hamann sounds similar to Pascal, who claimed that "la coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas" [the heart has reasons that reason will never understand].
Hamann's Sokratische Denkwu? digkeit (1759) might well be considered the first sustained attack on the Aufkla? rung. Addressed to the "little Socrates" of Ko? nigsberg, i. e. , to Kant, and tangentially perhaps to Mendelssohn, Hamann argues - implementing the themes mentioned above - for the limitation of reason,20 symbolized by the Socratic confession of ignorance, and a purer form of knowledge captured in an intuitional insight into pure Being. This "intuitional insight" is what Hamann in other texts rather obscurely refers to as faith, i. e. , not a belief per se but rather an experience or sensation [Empfindung] which provides a higher and non-discursive form of knowledge. According to his Aesthetica in nuce, which was influential on both Schiller and later Schelling, the intuitional ideal is enacted by artistic geniuses who, shunning all forms of abstraction, capture the wholeness as well as the fluidity and richness of experience: "Oh, for a muse like the fire of the goldsmith," writes Hamann, "and like the soap of the washerwoman" (Werke, II, 207). Hamann's Sokratische Denkwu? digkeit and Kreuzzu? ge eines Philologen were, writes Beiser, "a defense of the integrity and irreducibility of religious and aesthetic experiences. Such experiences consist of bursts of inspiration, surges of feeling, flashes of insight, Hamann argued, so that they cannot be directed, explained, or assessed according to the norms of reason" (1992: 194-195).
Although Hamann was instrumental in the publication of Kant's first Kritik, arranging for a publisher, and was perhaps the first to read it, he was convinced from the outset that the critical philosophy exhibited all the vices of the Aufkla? rung. Hamann's so-called "metakritik," initially circulated in 1784 but not published until 1800, has been said to have a "strong claim to being the starting point of post-Kantian philosophy"
20 Hamann is arguing here against a particular sort of reason, namely, against the discursive and abstract posture of, say, a theorem. This sort of reason is, for him, wholly helpless in establishing the existence or non-existence of anything; in this sense, Hamann should be sharply distinguished from an irrationalist like Jacobi, who believes that reason can, and in fact does, demonstrate or otherwise establish atheism, fatalism and nihilism.
? 24 Chapter One
(Beiser, 1987: 38). Hamann may well have been the first to reprimand Kant for his residual dualisms: e. g. , between the noumenal and phenomenal, understanding and sensibility, a priori concepts and forms of intuition. Hamann's critique is part and parcel with his more general critique of the Aufkla? rung, namely, that it conceives rationality in terms of arbitrary and artificial abstractions, i. e. , in a Platonic state of hypostasis, as opposed to terms that do justice to reason in its embodiment and homogeneity. Indeed, Hamann claims that Kant "revels more mischievously than Plato in the intellectual world beyond space and time (see his Briefwechsel, IV, 293-4 and 355). " Hamann was also critical, some twenty years prior to Kant's first Kritik, of the assumption common to what Hegel will later call the "reflective philosophy of subjectivity," namely, that self-consciousness was the self-illuminating and proper starting point of philosophy (see Werke, I, 300-301). Kant was well aware of these difficulties and intimated, rather evasively, that the "two stems of human knowledge, namely, sensibility and understanding . . . perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root" (KRV: A15/B29). Hamann subsequently suggested - alluding to this very passage in Kant - that it is upon this "unknown ground" that the central problem of the first Kritik, namely, explaining how the a priori concepts of the understanding apply to the completely heterogeneous intuitions of sensibility, becomes insoluble. 21 In a letter to Herder, Hamann wrote: "Giordano Bruno's principle of the coincidence of opposites is in my opinion worth more than all Kantian criticism" (4. 462). Although Hamann sought the coincidentia oppositorum in Bruno, as we know from his earlier correspondence with Herder, Hegel seems to have been more familiar or otherwise more comfortable with the principle as formulated by Nicholas of Cusa. "Unlike Hegel," though, writes O'Flaherty, "who sought to specify in what manner the contradictory elements of experiences are reconciled, Hamann never departed from the conviction that such antitheses can only be reconciled in God, and hence the need for faith is not eliminated by his appeal to the principle" (1979: 91).
21 It is precisely this theoretical problem - suggests Beiser - that set the agenda for post-Kantianism; proposed solutions include language in Hamann, representations in Reinhold, forces in Herder, the will in Fichte, the point of indifference in Schelling, religion in Schleiermacher and spirit in Hegel (see Beiser 1987, pp. 43 ff. ).
? Der Zeitgeist 25 1. 3 The Pantheism Controversy
The battle lines between faith and reason, as it is styled in Hegel's Glauben und Wissen, were drawn in earnest on the occasion of the "pantheism controversy," which ostensibly began as a private quarrel between Jacobi and Mendelssohn over Lessing's alleged deathbed "confession" of Spinozism. The warp and woof of this debate, however, antedates the biographical sensation of Lessing's Spinozism. The veracity of Lessing's alleged Spinozism was but the latest phase of Jacobi's relentless attack on the pretensions of 'enlightened' reason. Lessing was the perfect target for Jacobi: not only was he representative of the Spinozist tradition in Germany, he was also an advocate of the Aufka? rung. Jacobi's central argument is straightforward: Lessing's rare honesty with regard to the principles of rational inquiry and criticism, which made him a hero in the eyes of the left, central pillars to the Enlightenment status quo, had led him to Spinozism; but Spinozism, considered here as the one and only consistent philosophy,22 amounts to nothing less than atheism and fatalism. Even Wolff, who had made every effort to be unbiased in his Theologia naturalis (1737), concluded that Spinozism was fatalistic: "not far from a denial of God, and just as harmful as this. Indeed, to a certain degree, it is even more harmful than atheism" (see Scholz 1916: lviii). The only hope, suggests Jacobi, resides in a salto mortale - i. e.
, "mortal somersault" or hazardous leap of faith. This slippery slope put the Aufkla? rer on the defensive and further strained the tentative truce between faith and reason. The challenge to the "flag of reason," simply put, was clear: it was forced to show either that Spinozism was not, when properly understood, inconsistent with faith or that reason need not - when examined more critically - lead to Spinozism; Mendelssohn and Herder aimed at demonstrating the former whereas Kant argued the latter. (Hegel's critique of both of these responses to Jacobi, as well as his critique of Jacobi's misreading of Spinoza, is woven into the speculative design of Glauben und Wissen. )
The reasons for espousing Spinozism in the late eighteenth century were diverse if not personal. As modified by Herder, Spinoza provided
22 In his later writings, Jacobi would similarly represent Kantianism (especially as made consistent by Fichte) as the one and only paradigm of reason. Jacobi says, though, that these two models share a fundamental principle, namely that of "subject-object identity. " In this sense, Fichte's philosophy, which arrives at an identity by collapsing the object into the subject rather than the subject into the object, is nothing more than "inverted Spinozism. "
? 26 Chapter One
inspiration to those who sought a means of rendering their religious convictions consistent with scientific rationalism. For some, Spinozism was embraced because it was the singular philosophical school of that period that maintained the optimistic conviction that, contra Kant, the nature of God and the real world could adequately be known by reason. For others, Spinoza represented the finest fruits of political liberalism: he defended as well as demonstrated religious tolerance, he promoted freedom of speech if not democracy, and he insisted on the separatism of church and state. Beiser claims that most advocates were "unhappy children of the Protestant Reformation. " While disillusioned with the direction of the movement broadly construed, these unhappy revisionary theologians within the romantic movement wished to remain true to their Reformist ideals, namely, the universal priesthood of all believers, freedom of conscience, and the importance of an immediate relationship with God. "In embracing Lessing's hen kai pan," claims Beiser, "the romantics were also affirming the radical tradition of which he was an heir" and "they too forecast the great event that the radical reformers had always prophesied: the second Reformation" (1992: 243). While historical criticism certainly undermined the reliability of Scripture, alternative sources of revelation were sought under the auspices of pantheism. Indeed, Heine claimed that pantheism was the "secret religion of Germany" (1972: VIII, 175); as Beiser expresses it, in The Fate of Reason, "[p]antheism was thus the secret credo of the heterodox Lutheran" (1993: 52). An alternative explanation of Spinoza's popularity in Germany toward the end of the eighteenth century is to be found in the sheer strength of personalities who took up his cause: e. g. , Lessing, Herder and Goethe. These figures were bound together by a distinct distaste if not distain for the dogmatic rationalism of the then-contemporary "school-philosophers" and a general dissatisfaction with ecclesiastical answers proffered to what many considered to be urgent religious problems, especially the problem of evil and question of freedom. Still another inducement can be discovered in the unacceptable shortcomings of the alternatives to Spinozism, for example, the swelling tide of irrationalism on the one hand and the critical philosophy on the other.
And while the Glaubensphilosophen - e. g. , Hamann, Lavater, and Herder, at least during his Bu? ckeburg period, as well as Jacobi and Wizenmann - were central to the inspirational economy of the Sturm und Drang, the movement as a whole was relatively suspicious of those who seemed to insist upon orthodoxy as the object of that faith. Although weary of the "school dust" of rationalism, those who participated in the
Der Zeitgeist 27
Sturm und Drang were equally disheartened by the restraints imposed upon them by the Critical Philosophy. Spinozism seemed to provide a viable middle path between a discredited if not defeated Biblical Theism and the seemingly ruthless, bald atheism and mechanical materialism of, say, Holbach's Syste`me de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral (1770). The pantheism debate is perhaps best understood as concatenation of often-conflicting symbols. To one group it was a symbol for the consequences of all rational inquiry and criticism: If Lessing, a shining star in the Aufkla? rung, was exposed as a Spinozist, every self- respecting Aufkla? rer would have to concede that reason was heading for the abyss. To another faction, Spinoza shone as the symbol if not the patron saint of the extreme left who resisted the authoritative dogmatism of the academic and ecclesiastical establishment. To yet another group Spinoza was symbolic of the anti-skepticial conviction that God and the real world were knowable and that scientific knowledge leads to a greater comprehension of the Deity. The pantheism debate served as an occasion for drawing the lines between those Glaubensphilosophen who defended theological orthodoxy as well as political conservatism and those who identified instead with the mystical pantheistic tradition that reaches back in Germany at least to Jakob Boehme (1575 - 1624) if not Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1327). "Like the radical Aufkla? rung," claims Beiser, "this tradition is vitalistic, humanistic, and pantheistic; yet it also insists on the value of religious experience" (1996: 205; also Magee 2001: 67).
1. 4 Herder's Vitalism
The pantheism debate served as a convenient inducement for the exposition of J. G. Herder's system, which is indebted to Shaftesbury and Leibniz but also - and above all others - "the holy Spinoza. " Herder was a student of both Hamann and Kant, who personified the two main currents of intellectual life in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, i. e. , the Sturm und Drang and the Aufkla? rung, respectively, in Ko? nigsberg; eventually, and to varying degrees, Herder was denounced by both Hamann and Kant. (Hamann allegedly condemned Herder's Gott, einige Gespra? che, on his deathbed. ) But Herder's influence on Hegel was, writes Jaeschke, "early as well as steady and strong" (2004: 168 ff. ). "If we were to describe in a word how Herder adopted and assimilated Hamann's thought," suggests Beiser, "then we would say that he secularized it" (1992: 195). And while this may be true of Herder's early writings, it seems less true of his Aelteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts. Herder's writings emphasize throughout an aesthetic posture toward God, construed
28 Chapter One
as immanent in Nature, the reconciliation of all oppositions (e. g. , between God and the world, mind and body, belief and reason), a unified or monistic world view, and they also tend to treat history as the revelation of God in the process of the universe. Although his early works - especially those of the Bu? ckeburg period (i. e. , 1771 - 1776) - are stamped with the spirit of the Sturm und Drang, his later works tend to emphasize the importance of reason, especially to the knowledge of God. "He would misunderstand humanity," writes Herder, "who sought only to taste and feel the Creator without seeing or apprehending Him" (Werke, V: 163). Following Herder's Gott, einige Gespra? che [God, Some Conversations],
[The artist] had to be content with fusing various symbols. The abstract truth gives them to me as necessary determinations of the conception itself. . . You see, Philolaus, the advantage of such scientific formulas. They clarify and turn into general laws, and indeed wherever possible into quantitative terms, what the ordinary understanding dimly but intuitively apprehends in everyday experience. Thereby judgments attain a definite surety and a universal application which subsequently can be readily followed in every particular instance.
This text shows the influence of Spinoza on someone who had earlier claimed that "[i]f we weaken ourselves through abstraction, separate and split our senses, and shred our whole feeling into little threads which no longer fell anything wholly and purely, naturally the great sense of God, the Omnipresent in the world must thereby become weakened and dulled" (A? lteste Unkunde des Menschengeschlechts, Su. VI, 273). The Divine substance in Spinoza was considered by most of Herder's contemporaries to be a mere abstraction and empty conception. (Mendelssohn had argued, in his Morganstunden, that Spinoza's God was merely a collective name for the various extensions and thoughts of the phenomenal world. ) And it was one of the central goals of the Conversations to demonstrate that Spinozism can be made consistent with itself, that it can be liberated from its insipient Cartesianism as a means of revealing its inner essence, and that the new advances of science and speculation - especially that of J. H. Lambert and J. N. Tetens - rendered it possible to express that inner truth with greater significance and consistency (Cassier 1932: 172 ff. ).
The first part of the Fourth Conversation, which Herder directs against Jacobi's interpretation of Spinoza and in defense of Lessing, would be subsequently echoed - and in a similar polemical tone - by Hegel in the second section of his Glauben und Wissen. Herder challenges Jacobi's claim that Spinoza's system was closed, that his God is simply a "Naught
Der Zeitgeist 29
and an abstract idea," and that the knowledge of God through the exercise of our rational powers is impossible. (Following Herder's appropriation of Spinoza, God is "the most real and active One"; and if there is no need to resort to a salto mortale, asks Herder, alluding to Jacobi, then why take one? ) Herder also objects to Jacobi's usage of Glaube [faith] and Vernunft [reason], calling them "unusual" and "confused"; once these confusions are cleared away, he claims that the central truth behind the Jacobian project is one that all philosophers are agreed, namely, that all philosophizing must presuppose external existence and internal laws of thought. And while Herder was eager to defend Spinoza - and thus Lessing - against the charge of atheism, which consisted in transforming the idea of substance into a locus of forces, magnetic or otherwise, Herder was inspired by Kant's analysis of organicity and natural purpose in the Critique of Judgment (see especially ? ? 64, 76); this creative combination of Spinoza's monism and Kant's theory of teleological explanation was influential on Herder as well as Hegel.
Herder's thesis concerning the dynamism or organicity of nature is especially relevant to our understanding of Schelling's Naturphilosophie; but it is relevant also to Hegel's reading of Spinoza in Glauben und Wissen. According to Herder, the universe is best understood as a unified complex of forces, all of which are considered the activity of God construed as "the infinite, primal, and original power" or the "force of all forces"; moreover, Herder's God, Who "is but One," operates according to "inherent, eternal, and necessary laws" (1940: 123). The continuous and infinitely dense Whole, avers Herder, "lives many lives"; this early formulation of an all-embracing Spirit, which contains nature as well as persons, constitutes the ever present ideal of the Tu? bingen years: the hen kai pan. 23 The all-embracing monistic ideal that constituted the vital spirit
23 Walter Jaeschke claims - as does Henry Harris - "that Herder had a steady and strong influence on Hegel during the late 1780s and into the 1790s" ("Das Nictige in seiner ganzen La? nge und Breite - Hegels Kritik der Reflexionsphilosophie," Hegel-Jahrbuch, 2004: 165). The early ideal, which emerged in Tu? bingen with Ho? lderlin and Schelling, inspired by the monistic principle of the hen kai pan, finds precedent not only in Lessing but also Herder; but Hegel is also beholden to Herder for many of the leading ideas expressed in his early essays, especially "Liebe" (1797/8) and "Dem Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal" (1798- 1800). The title of the second of these early essays is but a slight variation on Herder's own "Vom Geist des Christentums" (1798); Hegel is also influenced by Herder in terms of the the central theme of the essay, namely, the relationship of ancient Judaism to Christianity.
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of the Spinozism was mitigated by the dualistic remnants of his inherited Cartesianism. The remaining dualistic residue of the 'real distinction' could now, suggests Herder, drawing on Leibniz and emerging paradigm of the natural sciences, be resolved in terms of substantial and organic forces, vis via, which Herder holds to be the dynamic essence of both mind and matter. "Thus the knot is loosed, and the gold it contained lies before us. However our frail reason may divide it up," claims Herder, "it is still infinite and the same" (1940: 123-4).
The organic Weltanschauung inspired an entire generation of thinkers at the close of the eighteenth century: beyond Leibniz, who is sometimes viewed as the father of Naturphilosophie, there was also Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, Ho? lderlin and Schelling. Nature is transformed from an indifferent mechanism, i. e. , dead extension, and into something active, organic, and alive. It could be argued that Herder is misinterpreting each of the participants involved in this new found synthesis, both Spinoza and Leibniz, but it seems more likely that Herder understood better than anyone the compromise that he proposed. (Herder's capacity for assimilation and synthesis is quite remarkable. ) Herder's Neo-Spinozism24 - and his willingness to radically transform previous traditions for the purposes and needs of the present - was significantly influential on Schelling as well as Hegel during the Jenaer Zeit. Schellingian musings about the dynamism of nature, in his On the World Soul (1799) and Of Human Freedom (1809), which provides a descriptive paradigm drawn from the life of organic beings, need not be considered as emerging solely or even primarily from Kant's Critique of Judgment; it could in fact be considered to be representative of the intellectual outlook of an entire generation. Although Herder was critical of the Aufkla? rung, because it failed to achieve its goal of Bildung (i. e. , the education of the people) and because it was used to justify oppression or imperialism, he "could never bring himself to join the ranks of the anti-Aufkla? rer, whether they were orthodox Lutherans or the pietist Schwa? rmer" (Beiser 1992: 205).
And while Hegel, not unlike Schelling, was attracted to Spinoza's monism as well as his theory of divine immanence and intellectual love of God, Hegel was in other ways repelled by Spinoza (e. g. , his geometric method and arch-mechanism). But as we shall see, Hegel was keen to
24 By Neo-Spinozism here, I am thinking of the Romantic transformation - influenced surely by figures like More and Schaftsbury - of Spinoza's views on the Universe and God, i. e. , monism, divine immanence, the dynamic and evolutionary understanding of the universe, et cetera.
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defend Spinoza against what he considered to be an egregious misreading by Jacobi. Hegel's reading or appropriation of Spinoza is also important as a way of distinguishing Hegel from Schelling during the Jenaer Zeit. Shortly before Hegel arrived in Jena, Schelling declared his Spinozism in no uncertain terms. But for Hegel, the significance of Spinoza lay more in the formulation of the ancient problem of the one and the many, i. e. , the origin of finitude or the necessity of contingency, than in the proposed solution. Similar to Spinoza, who considered finitude to be a figment of the imagination, Schelling argued - in his Darstellung (1801) - that the absolute consists in a pure or undifferentiated identity. But for Hegel, contra Spinoza and Schelling, an adequate solution to the perennial problem of philosophy would demonstrate the necessity of contingency, i. e. , that the absolute must include finitude and differentiation; by the time he wrote Glauben und Wissen, Hegel believed that the infinite both consumed and consummated finitude. As a differentiated unity, the identity of identity and non-identity, Hegel's conception of the absolute is deeply indebted to Herder's organic or vitalistic construal of life itself.
1. 5 The Critical Philosophy and her Critics
The "Critical Philosophy," associated with Kant but variously reformulated by his successors, was slowly but steadily gaining admirers within the final two decades of the eighteenth century. The early reception to the Critique of Pure Reason, which was published in 1781, was ambivalent. It was seven months before the first review, the so-called Go? ttigen Review, appeared anonymously; Kant's scathing reply to his unnamed critic, in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), deterred all other prospective critics for the next two years. Apropos the reception of the critical philosophy among the general public, Schultz wrote that they saw it as a sealed book, consisting in nothing but "hieroglyphics. " It was to this reception that Kant blustered, again in the Prolegomena, that the first Critique had been "honored by silence. " But this was merely the proverbial calm before the storm. The critics of the Critical Philosophy drew courage from, if nothing else, the sheer vastness of their numbers. There were in fact entire journals devoted exclusively to the criticism of Kant (e. g. , Feder's Philosophische Bibliothek and Eberhard's Philosophische Magazin). The Popularphilosophen,25 for
25 George di Giovanni offers the following concise description of the Popularphilosopie, though with the proviso that the movement was "just as complex a phenomenon as the Aufkla? rung itself" in Freedom and Religion in Kant
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example, whilst otherwise committed to the authority of reason, were among the bitterest critics of Kant. Although the Popularphilosophen were divided in their philosophical loyalties, some tending more toward Locke's empiricism and others in the direction of Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism, they were one and all disappointed with Kant's transcendental compromise; the former were disappointed by the vestiges of a priori knowledge, while the latter were equally distressed by the denial or restriction of that same knowledge. In the end, the early enemies of irrationalism became - in their collaboration against the tide of Kantianism - her unwitting ally.
The long anticipated reception of the Critical Philosophy lay largely in its promise to provide the suffering alliance between faith and reason with a desperately needed new foundation, viz. , in Kant's doctrine of a rational faith (Vernunftglaube). It was precisely this aspect of the Critical Philosophy that Karl Reinhold (1757-1823) emphasized to the public, making it, in his Briefe u? ber die kantische Philosophie (1786), a bona fide "sensation. " Following di Giovanni: "Reinhold was the first to appeal to Kant's new critique of reason as a medium for reconciling the otherwise- intractable opposition between philosophers and believers evidenced by Jacobi's book [namely, Letters to Mendelssohn on Spinoza (1785)]" (1997: 212). And while Kant had hinted at his doctrine of a rational faith in the first Kritik, e. g. , in ? 3 of the "Canon of Pure Reason," and though he promised to present it in its polished form in his second Kritik, the argument was rehearsed between these two works, namely, in his essay for the Berliner Monatsschift titled "Was heisst: Sich im Denken orientieren" (1786). This essay, the title of which alludes to Mendelssohn's celebrated method of orientation, allowed Kant to distinguish or otherwise distance himself simultaneously from Mendelssohn as well as Jacobi, both of whom - thought Kant - tended to denigrate reason.
Moses Mendelssohn's (1729 - 1786) defense of reason, which includes his solution to the faith and reason debate, and his proposed 'method of orientation' appeared in his Morganstunden (1785); at least indirectly, Mendelssohn also offers a defense of the metaphysical tradition of Leibniz
and His Immediate Successors: "The popular philosophers were the self-professed boosters of the Enlightenment, the vigilant defenders of the latter's program of rationalization of all things social and religious in the face of what they took to be the ever-present but hidden forces of 'obscurantism'. . . " (2005: 37); for Reinhold's account of Popularphilosophie, which he contrasts with the goals of the Illuminati, see his 1791 Fundament, pp. 44 ff. .
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and Wolff. Mendelssohn's defense of reason shifts quickly from a formal analysis of judgment into a defense of the Aufkla? rer ideal of objectivity and the liberalism espoused in his earlier Jerusalem. In the seventh chapter, Mendelssohn attacks J. B. Basedow's notion of a "duty to believe" [Glaubenspflicht]26 and insists that it is precisely the business of metaphysics to demonstrate the truth of our moral and religious beliefs; any other standard, suggests Mendelssohn, will eventually if not inevitably lead to superstition, intolerance and fanaticism. But in his David Hume u? ber den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787), Jacobi claims that this dogmatic insistence on truth as the sole justification for belief is viciously circular. And while Mendelssohn does not, strictly speaking, concede the Jacobian dilemma between faith and reason, he does discuss the possibility of a conflict between common sense [Gemeinsinn] and speculative philosophy. For Mendelssohn, common sense and speculation emerge from the same faculty, namely, reason: but whereas the former is shaped discursively, the latter is arises intuitively. When speculation diverges from common sense, suggests Mendelssohn, it must return to the crossroads at which they parted and discover the error of its ways. And while it is quite often, perhaps even typically, speculation that is to blame, Mendelssohn admits that common sense - because of its carelessness - is also prone to error. This privileged status of common sense prompted Kant to say that Mendelssohn had betrayed his alliance to reason; along similar lines, Wizenmann observed that Mendelssohn's belief in common sense was not altogether unlike Jacobi's belief in faith. The remainder of Morganstunden consists in an effort to demonstrate that reason does not, in the end, or at least not necessarily, lead to the fatalistic and atheistic conclusions associated with Spinoza.
The central contention of Kant's "Was heisst: Sich im Denken orientieren? " consists in his denial that reason is a faculty of metaphysical knowledge, per se, i. e. , a theoretical faculty suited to comprehending the unconditioned; rather, suggests Kant, reason is a practical faculty which prescribes the unconditioned as the regulative ideal or principle of all conduct. It is in this sense, then, that Kant can agree with Jacobi that 'knowledge cannot justify faith' and also with Mendelssohn that 'reason must be the justification of faith. ' Kant's Vernunftglaube is not knowledge, but belief [Fu? rwahrhalten]. Faith is subjectively sufficient because it is
26 This position, which in some ways reminds one of Kant's, claims that insofar as a given principle is necessary to moral conduct or happiness, albeit inadequately demonstrated on purely rational grounds, we nevertheless have a duty [Pflicht] to believe it (i. e. , to conduct ourselves as though it were true).
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derived from the universality and necessity of the categorical imperative, but objectively insufficient because it is not based upon knowledge proper. Hegel's professor of logic and metaphysics at Tu? bingen, Johann Friedrich Flatt, for example, insisted that Kant's "moral faith amounts to blind faith. " In his Briefe u? ber den moralishen Erkenntnisgrund der Religion u? berhaupt, und besonders in Bezeihung auf die Kantische Philosophie, Flatt argued:
Should you opt for this kind of faith, you might indeed be able to hold to it, provided you are comfortable with it, and stand by Kant's reassurance that it is legitimate for the righteous to say: I will that God exist. But then you must not ask me to approve of a system that, short of falling into contradiction, can leave nothing for the most important of truths but blind faith, or to believe that such a system is of greater use than all what has been done in speculative philosophy over half and two thousand years (1789: 72).