Karl Rosenkranz

Karl Rosenkranz (1805–1879) was the most creative mind among the centre Hegelians: a pupil first of Schleiermacher, then of Hegel, and holder of Kant’s chair in Königsberg.

From him comes the first Hegel biography, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Leben (1844). His aesthetic work is remarkable — the Ästhetik des Hässlichen (1853) is a genuine speculative innovation which grasps the ugly as a necessary moment of aesthetic totality. His Pädagogik als System (1848) became an international standard work, his Wissenschaft der logischen Idee (1858/59) the didactically most valuable commentary on the logic of its time.

He was the only Hegelian with a reworking of the logic of his own. Therein lies at the same time the tragedy: his Kantian formation led to a re-Kantianising of Hegel. The intermingling of logical and ontological categories — Hegel’s post-Kantian innovation — counted for him as a mistake, and he restored the separation. A systematic step backwards despite its didactic value.

Rosenkranz placed himself deliberately and ironically at the centre of speculation, in critical distance from the right as from the left.