Karl Rosenkranz's 'Life of Hegel' 1/24 - Discovering the book and Osmo's introduction
(The article below is reproduced at hegel.net with the kind permission of its author, Stephen Cowley. It first appeared 2009/2010 on the hegel.net Hegel mailing list and was then first published 2011 as article with the pictures below on his blog ‘Hegelian News & Reviews’)
This is a summary of the preface and first eleven chapters of Karl Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel
(1844), the first biography of the German philosopher
Hegel. Rosenkranz was a Calvinist and Professor in Königsberg in East
Prussia who had access to Hegel's papers through his family.
Discovering the book and Osmo's introduction (Stephen Cowley)
On looking up Hegel literature recently, I discovered that “Hegels Leben”, the first biography of Hegel (1844),
by Karl Rosenkranz
(1805-79), was recently translated into French by Pierre Osmo
(Vie de Hegel, Paris: Gallimard, 2004). The second, by Rudolf
Haym also appeared in the same year (also Gallimard). Osmo's translation
has 731 pages, appendices by Marheineke, Foerster and Hotho,
Rosenkranz's Reply to Haym (1858) and an index of names. It was put into
Italian shortly before that. It is interesting that the Latin languages
are still ahead of English in this respect, perhaps because of the
proximity of these countries to Germany and cultural interactions within
Europe.
I've now had a change to look through the introduction by Osmo. I find
that Rosenkranz was not actually a direct pupil of Hegel, though he
associated with him and his family quite closely in Berlin in
his early years and was taught by Leopold von Henning, Hinrichs and
Hotho, who were students of Hegel. However, he went on to teach in
Königsberg (a successor to Kant and contemporary of Herbart) and said
this gave him a sense of distance in writing about Hegel, who had lived
in Berlin. He had the co-operation of Hegel's family and different
levels of co-operation from other people in writing his biography.
By background, Rosenkranz was a Calvinist (that is, Reformed church, as
opposed to Lutheran). The general line he takes was influenced by
Marheineke, who edited Hegel's Lectures on Religion - in other words, he
contradicts the Left Hegelian line (of D Strauss, Feuerbach, etc) that
Hegel was in some way an Atheist or Secular Humanist, who merely
expressed himself in religious imagery to disguise the real content of
his thought from himself or others. However, Rosenkranz does address
Hegel's interest in pagan Greek literature in the early parts of the
biography. Rosenkranz also edited Kant's Works - it is fair to say that
he focuses on the transition from Kant to Hegel and acknowledges as
much, saying that it was inevitable in Königsberg!
He also uses other perspectives (e.g. the Pantheismusstreit and
influence of Spinoza) of a theological nature, that perhaps helps to
explain why the early reception of Hegel in English from the 1850s takes
Hegel so seriously as a theologian. Rosenkranz was also a critic of
Schleiermacher - in which he follows Hegel (roughly speaking).
The volume concludes with Rosenkranz's reply to Haym (1858). The book is
obviously the source of much that has since become commonplace in
biographical writing on Hegel. Osmo discusses the biographical writings
on Hegel of Jacques D'Hondt and the recent German work of Horst Althaus
in this respect.
Here is the French review of Osmo's translation from Le
Figaro:
"The translation of Karl Rosenkranz's book which today appears is an event. The author was chronologically the first biographer of Hegel. He followed the courses of the thinker [this appears not to be true] and knew him personally. It was at the request of Hegel's family that he wrote his book, published in 1844. Rosenkranz was a singular Hegelian, as Pierre Osmo shows in his excellent preface.
[The book] is the most serious witness of a contemporary of the thinker, neither an exalter nor a detractor. Certainly, he did not know everything and did not say all that he knew, but he keeps his distance with regard to the neo-hegelians who fratricidally attacked each other speedily after the death of the philosopher. Later, when the latter was no longer fashionable, he took up his defence in his Defence of Hegel against Dr Haym, who followed his biography.
This biography reminds us that Hegel was deeply religious, which we tend to forget nowadays. He never rejected his Protestant upbringing, which was not so gentle with the Catholics and the Jews. He thought that the Church and State were the two pillars of society. "Religion constitutes the most intimate unity of man, who comprehends everything under it." At the end of his life, Hegel wrote a work devoted to the proofs of God's existence. "It is the determination of God that is at the origin of the creative activity of the world" - of which the philosopher describes the history in the Phenomenology of Spirit."
"La traduction du livre de Karl Rosenkranz qui paraît aujourd'hui est
un événement. L'auteur fut chronologiquement le premier biographe
de Hegel. Il suivit les cours du penseur, le connut personnellement.
C'est à la demande de la famille de Hegel qu'il rédigea son livre publié
en 1844. Rosenkranz était un hégélien singulier, comme le montre Pierre
Osmo dans son excellente préface. C'est le témoignage le plus sérieux
d'un contemporain du penseur, ni chantre ni détracteur. Certes, il ne
sait pas tout et ne dit pas tout ce qu'il sait, mais il garde ses
distances à l'égard des néohégéliens qui s'entre-tuent allégrement après
la mort du philosophe. Plus tard, alors que ce dernier n'était plus à
la mode, il prendra sa défense dans son Apologie de Hegel contre le
docteur Haym, qui suit sa biographie... Cette biographie nous
rappelle que Hegel était profondément religieux, ce que l'on a
tendance à oublier aujourd'hui. Il n'avait jamais renié son
éducation protestante, peu tendre avec les catholiques et les juifs. Il
pensait que l'Eglise et l'Etat étaient les deux piliers de la société.
«La religion constitue l'unité la plus intime de l'homme qui comprend
tout sous elle.» A la fin de sa vie, Hegel écrivait un texte consacré
aux preuves en faveur de l'existence de Dieu. «C'est la détermination de
Dieu qui est à l'origine de l'activité créatrice du monde» dont le
philosophe décrit l'histoire dans La Phénoménologie de
l'esprit.…"
Rosenkranz's Preface
Reading Karl Rosenkranz's book has taken me back to my own discovery of
"philosophy" through Hegel, which was a magical experience for me -
Rosenkranz breathes enthusiasm for the role of thought and scholarship
in experience.
I've now read his preface three times and think I've got the gist of the
complicated argument. There is a lot of material there, so I'll only
comment on stuff that I think would be new to an English reader.
There is firstly some material on the French reception of Hegel. Apart
from Victor Cousin, this was associated with Joseph Willm of Strasbourg,
whose "Essay on the Philosophy of Hegel" (1836) Rosenkranz cites and who
went on to write a four volume History of Philosophy from Kant to
Hegel (1848-51) as well as work on education.
There follows a summary of Rosenkranz' approach to biography, where he
says he wants to make his book the history of Hegel's thought, this
being appropriate to a thinker whose outward life was uneventful and who
so ceaselessly thought matters over throughout his life. I think RG
Collingwood borrowed this remark for his Autobiography. Its
full significance will hopefully come out in the course of the
book.
Thirdly, and most interestingly, there is material on the philosophical
possibilities of Rosenkranz' time, in which he sees the appropriation of
Hegel as central. Rosenkranz states that post-Hegelian thought has
fallen into extremes (Left and Right in politics, but the state is not
the whole arena where this plays out). He characterises these as
abstract ontology and (abstract) empiricism, with a similar opposition
of abstract theory and abstract practice. He predicts that these
extremes will fail to "verify themselves" in "concrete practice", but
that is not the end of the Hegelian school, but maturity. (Oddly (to me,
but not to everyone) he identifies this with Spinoza, for whom "abstract
knowledge of the Idea is the principle of practice".)
The examples he gives of the failing "extremes" are interesting. On
abstract empiricism, he cites F A Trendelenberg (1802-72), author of
Logical Studies (1840). We have discussed
Trendelenberg before on this list and he was influential in the
"personal idealist" critique of Hegel by A Seth (Hegelianism and
Personality). Trendelenberg, says Rosenkranz, claims Hegel relies
on "intuition" (Anschaaung, presumably) but dissimulates the fact. As he
separates thought and being and takes only intuition as the bridge (a
version of common sense, I guess) his though becomes dualist and fails
to test itself in history. For Hegel though, thought and being are one
(when "concrete").
"Abstract practice" is exemplified by Feuerbach, though he endorses his
critique of Schelling. His abstractions are true, but in reality are
limited by other determinations and thus are not applicable to reality.
As an example, he cites their endorsement of "love", but indifference to
its realisation in marriage.
He has less to say about "abstract ontology" and "abstract theory", but
what he does say is key, for he says that the former involves the
separation of logic and metaphysics (i.e. a dualism of thought and
being). Their unity is a key initiative of Hegel's "Logic". The
structure of the Logic has always puzzled me. It looks like the Doctrine
of the Concept is simply a repetition from a subjective standpoint of
the content of Being and Essence, but apparently Rosenkranz means to
deny this. I will look forward to the rest of the book and see if his
point becomes clearer to me.
In terms of "concrete practice" - the Hegelian alternative to all the
above - Rosenkranz says that "A true philosophy is the act of a people"
(p75). This seems to prefigure the trend towards nation-state
nationalism in 19th century Europe rather than something that is
prominent in Hegel, though it is there in him (Rosenkranz is writing
only four years before the 1848 Springtime of nations, after all). He
develops his point saying that a philosophy in another language may be
true, but is "without weight", presumably because you have not put it
into practice in your own community. I sometimes think it is a shame for
Europe that no-one thought of the European Union in 1910, but at the
same time, there is something to be said for enough "patriotism" (or
public spirit) to get you out your front door and along to meetings. I
will wait and see how this one pans out over the course of the book
too.
Finally, Rosenkranz defends Hegel against the view that, having
expressed some guarded sympathy with Voltaire, he really agreed with
D'Holbach's Système de la Nature. In Rosenkranz' view, Hegel
was a "Protestant", which he identifies with an absence of reliance on
outside authority, which you might guess is a bit of an exaggeration,
but there too, I will wait and see what he does with the thought before
judging him.
The Preface is particularly rich in ideas (almost like the
Phenomenology) and I could go on for some time summarising and
reacting to it. However, I will hold my horses until the abstract
initial statement of the case outlined above is put in relation to the
biographical facts.
“Hegels Leben”, Book 1
Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel is organised into
three "books" [KF: published as one book], the first covers the period
up to his move to Jena around 1800, the second up to his move to Berlin
around 1818 and the third the time in Berlin.
[KF: the chapters are not numbered in Rosenkranz’s original
edition].
Chapters 1 -6 - Hegel's Youth
Book 1 has 20 chapters, of very uneven length and the first six cover
Hegel's youth until he left for Tübingen in 1788. Again, I will focus on
stuff that I haven't seen in English biographies, though I have never
read the longest, by H.S. Harris. Rosenkranz describes a "family album"
on which he partly relies, in which family members would get people they
knew to write comments. He describes Hegel' younger brother Karl and
timid younger sister Christiane. Psychologically one might think that as
the eldest son, Hegel would carry responsibilities and the expectations
of his family, but that is conjecture on my part. Rosenkranz stresses
that Hegel's father, a civil servant, was quite well connected in
Stuttgart and thus that Hegel met some famous characters at the family
home, from the court and politics.
For his very early life, Rosenkranz makes some fanciful interpretations,
e.g. that Hegel's recognition of the Swabian dialect as distinctive
indicates a dawn of self-consciousness, but we soon move on to firmer
ground, as documentary evidence of Hegel's schooldays was available to
Rosenkranz.
At school, Hegel read Cicero and Shakespeare ("The Merry Wives of
Windsor"). He early comes to like history, taught in a manner like Hume
and Voltaire and speaks of "the consolations of the sciences amidst the
vicissitudes of life" (Chapter 3). The principles of the Enlightenment
and study of the Greek and Roman classics were the marrow of teaching at
the Gymnasium. He dislikes superstition", which he finds in Christianity
as well as in the ancients. He goes on to read the Psalms, Sophocles'
Antigone, Homer, etc. He thought the seriousness and serenity of the
Greeks must be taken up by Christianity, but at the same time was no
uncritical admirer of antiquity.
He also read modern reviews. He began to keep leaves of quotes and
extracts of what he read, a habit he kept all his life. This seems to
have functioned with him like a kind of commonplace book and is similar
to the lecture note-taking encouraged in some models of university
education. This reflected an intellectual method of putting himself in
others' shoes and this too stayed with him.
His declamation and public presentation were and remained poor. He did
not repeat, but rethought material as he spoke. Rosenkranz notes that he
wrote well though - and comments that only his depth of thought later
stifled this.
On leaving school, he read out a remarkable speech on the quality of
education at the Karlschule, praising his teachers, the Duke's support
for education and contrasting this with Turkey - a speech also notable
for its piety.
Rosenkranz thinks that Hegel's personality was settled by the time he
left school and did not change thereafter. He was scholarly and
scientific par excellence. He did not present himself as a philosopher,
but rather you dealt with the whole person when you met him. He thought
he controlled passion of card games said something about modernity. It
strikes me that, despite Hegel's later interest in mathematics and the
philosophy of nature, there is little record of the scientific input to
his education.
Chapter 7 - Tübingen
Hegel attended the University of Tübingen (the Stift - meaning
convent, charitable foundation) from the Autumn of 1788. His first year
courses were Schnurrer's on the History of the Apostles and Psalms; on
Psalms and Catholic Epistles by the same; and Flatt's on Cicero's De
Natura Deorum (nature of the Gods). He had already read some Cicero
- the considerable Old Testament content of the course of study was news
to me.
In his second year, he took the courses of Roesler on History of
Philosophy and Flatt on Metaphysics and Natural Theology. Metaphysics
would cover immortality of the soul, freedom of the will. Flatt (d1821)
taught something of Wolff and Kant and was considered a penetrating
critic of Kant with liberal views - Hegel already knew Wolff's Logic
since age 14.
In his third year, he studied under Storr, firstly the Gospels, Romans
and other letters and secondly Dogmatics. The atmosphere of the Stift
owed much to the Enlightenment, but the content could be pedantic.
Of Hegel's own undergraduate work, we know that he preached on
Isaiah 61.7-8 and Matthew 5.1-16. These turn out to be the Covenant with
Israel and the Sermon on the Mount respectively. It is notable that in
his own manuscript on the Life of Jesus, Hegel simply quotes the Sermon
on the Mount, apparently unable to give the Kantian turn to it he
previously succeeds in. Rosenkranz comments that other sermons are dry
and moralistic interpretations of Christianity. This is a common feature
of sermonising in the Enlightenment era.
A further talk on advantages of reading Greek and Roman
writers survives. He argues that we learn much about the customs of the
Israelites and are a propadeutic to philosophy, in that we find a
"middle way" in which truth resides through the mutual contradictions of
the ancient schools. He also studied some anatomy and botany.
All in all, what I find notable is that there was some
considerable exposure to the Old Testament - which of course is not
reflected in the Phenomenology. It may thus be that the idea of
Lutheran Christianity as focussed on the promise of the Gospels seen out
of context is overdone and anachronistic.
Chapter 8- Student Life
Hegel was remembered as jovial, joining in drinking sessions,
rising early, playing cards, neglecting theology at first and reading at
most some Kant. He also read Rousseau and liked the wild language of the
book of Job (this in preference to Kant). He fell back a place among his
students (these places were taken seriously) for his disorganised way of
studying, then tried to catch up. He also practised English and
apparently French. His manner led to the nickname "the old man"
(Laurence Dickey has more to say on this). He admired a girl Augustine,
along with several others, to little apparent effect.
On the French revolution, he and Schelling (several years his junior)
planted a tree of liberty. Klopstock, Schiller, Kant and Jacobi all
welcomed the French revolution at first, seeing it as an
"authentically philosophical spectacle". There was a political club
formed at the Stift. Soon an inquiry into it was set in motion by the
authorities and some students left for Strasbourg. There was soon an
émigré regiment stationed nearby and duels were fought. Hegel argued
with his father about the latter's aristocratism, but he soon came to
dislike phrases such as liberty, equality, rights of man, seeing them
as "empty". This takes us up to around 1791, probably with some memories
mixed in from a little later.
Chapter 9 - The Dissertation for a masters degree of 1790
This chapter discusses a dissertation that Rosenkranz attributes to
Hegel, but which Osmo, the French translator, says was actually written
by his tutor and only discussed by Hegel after two years at the Stift.
It's of some interest anyway.
The dissertation is on 'the limits of human duty, abstraction made from
the immortality of the soul' and takes issue with Kant. The argument is
that sensibility and reason are so interwoven as to be the basis of a
single, unique [human] subject. Thus there is no *purely* moral action,
but rather we can distinguish degrees of moral culture. The argument is
that some sense of duty would survive, but on a scale from necessity,
utility, perfection the highest would suffer most from absence of a
belief in immortality and Divine Providence.
One can see from this that Hegel's critique of Kant's stoicism and
historical approach to morality was not unique to him, but borrowed from
the studies of his college days. Rosenkranz doesn't see this, as of
course he thinks Hegel wrote it himself.
Chapter 10 - The Dissertation of 1793
This also concerns a document that, according to Osmo, was not
written by Hegel. Unfortunately, he does not give his source for this
view, but as the document itself seems to be of less interest I will
pass over it.
Chapter 11 - Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling
In the family album referred to, Hölderlin wrote Goethe's
words:
Desire and love are the wings
That give flight to great actions
and the 'hen kai pan' ("One and All") motto. Neither were bound by
the worldview of the French Lumières (the secularising
enlightenment in France), but were also drinking in the culture of
Greece. In Hegel's case, this particularly meant Sophocles the
tragedian. Soon, Hölderlin went on to Jena (near Weimer, where Goethe
stayed). Here he heard Fichte, who had not yet been dismissed, and wrote
to Hegel about him. Around this time, Hegel also read Plato, Kant and
Jacobi.
Schelling was five years younger than Hegel and the son of a prelate His
best days were thus ahead of him at this time.
[PS: I draw your attention to some valuable remarks made by Kai Froeb in
response to the above on the https://groups.io/g/hegel/topics archive on 18 March
2009, now available here]