Experiencing the history of philosophy
Reading “Hegel” by Charles Taylor, about the ideas, beliefs, opinions and motivations that flowed and ebbed in western Europe between the time of the Enlightenment and Hegel’s philosophical career. As I read Taylor, and my mind emulates and empathizes with the various zeitgeists, I discover that this in itself is a peculiar and personally valuable experience. I mean to distinguish this from a purely factual learning, which would be an understanding of which philosophies influenced which, and how. Facts are only one aspect of an experiential learning, which helps me (the reader) undertake historical ideas – understanding the ideas not just as static, but as (metaphorically) organic: ideas that are responses to their environment and that are outcomes and fulfillment of intentions. To undertake ideas in this way is to feel them growing naturally and almost inevitably (since they are reactions to the presumptions of their environment).
I produce here an outline of those historical trends. This will be both a collection of the major intellectual forces of that period, as well as suggestion of mechanistic flow (e.g to imply that A causes B and opposed via C).
Brewing an Enlightened Storm (Sturm)
The Enlightenment reached the German states in a form secondary to its French incarnate, for instance lacking a strong opposition as formed by French Catholicism.
Consider the central idea (for getting to Hegel) being a “disenchantment”* of the world: meaning no longer resides the world, since it (meaning) is now understood to emanate from and depend on man and his experiences. Now add to the table Calvinism and Pietism in turn. The relationship is becoming increasingly complex, but for simplification the two can be considered as emphasizing a sense of personal responsibility, and making way for mystical experience. Consequentially, the German Enlightenment was more prone to deism than to materialism.
- Calvinism opposed sacred spaces of Catholicism, thus removing meaning from the world and allocating its generation to man.
- Personal spirituality implies that man creates meaning, and emphasizes an individual’s expression.
Local thinkers were also affected by contemporary philosophical discussions that were typical in Germany, especially of Leibniz who dominated philosophy (via Wolff). Leibniz’s philosophy describes a universe composed of completely insulated monads, which despite their independence combine to form a harmony. Spinoza was also soon adopted, providing a philosophical perspective sympathetic to pantheistic worldviews.
Fast forward to the literary movement Sturm und Dang (Storm and Stress), which emphasizes “expression”, in the sense of a person living authentically by acting in a way that expresses the nature of their being.
“Each man has his own measure, as if it were an accord peculiar to him of all his feelings to each other.” – Herder
- Sturm un Dang concerned language: language itself is a form of idiosyncratic expression, cf. traditional Enlightenment view that language is a form of relating to ideas, without noticing that this “relating to” could need explanation.
- Art becomes a mode of expression (cf. traditionally for imitation or enjoyment).
- Sturm un Dang implies a way of living, i.e. authentically expressing who you are.
The Sturm movement was the beginning of a trend which was itself a response to the Enlightenment and many of the problems it was felt to hold. That trend is today called the German Romanticism movement, and it is within this and to this that Hegel reacted.
Enlightenment vs Expressivism
It’s easier to sympathize with the birth of romanticism by relating its intentions forward to the present day. The Romantics were bothered by a feeling that the Enlightenment was destroying human nature, and in this they are not foreign to the (perennial) belief (including its 21st century incarnation) that technology is destroying human nature, and therefore society needs some sort of return to “natural” existence. In more detail, the problems perceived in the Enlightenment (its ideas and culture) included:
- It cuts up human nature, delineating reason from feeling and invalidating the latter
- It negates our freedom and sense of freedom by ignoring holistic and final causes, and preferring to explain everything as mechanically determined.
- It damages our ability to interact with, and relate to nature, since nature has now become a subservient tool and subject.
- And similarly, it cuts us off from other people, who have become self-sufficient atoms seeking their own advantage.
The reason these problems were accentuated in the German states, and responded to in a particular way requires ultimately an historical question, which is partially answered by considering the forces mentioned above briefly (e.g. Pietism). In any case, the point is to see that the Romantic reaction was in its origin a lived reaction, that is, it was due to human experiences, including fears and hopes. As for the development of ideas: the Romantic school grew out of the Sturm movement, and Taylor labels their shared philosophical and intellectual foundation “expressivism“*.
Expressivism combined Aristotlean final causes and holism, with the modern idea of self-defining subjectivity. Taylor calls this a “major idees-forces which has shaped the contemporary world”, and to the extent that this ideology is familiar he must be right (nb. this ideology seems primary and foundational within 21st century Western life).
Expressivism allowed lessons from the Enlightenment to be learned and kept, without necessarily regressing into pre-modern nostalgia. Man creates meaning, but can express himself to achieve an authentic existence. This helps defend human unity, freedom, relationship with nature and society. As for those elements of expressivism (per its explanation by various writers and thinkers) that seemed flawed, or that seemed to fail to fulfill particular needs, these would be the points of focus for philosophical development, including Hegel’s.
The Kantian Revolution
Continuing his transcendental philosophy, Kant defined morality in terms of the will’s self-imposed law (nb. expression of reason free from other influence), and thus by implication defined morality in terms of freedom. To express morality is to be free in a radical, transcendental sense, “self-determining not as a natural being, but as a pure, moral will.” This was exciting not just because of its promise of freedom, but by also offering religious awe for (not God, but) the moral law itself. Note also how this prepares for Herder‘s Sturm philosophy, which fits the timeline as the two were contemporaries at Königsberg (although they were to fall out).
Kant’s third Critique appears to be responding to the younger (Romantic) generation’s interests, viz. by writing about aesthetics and teleology, and seeming to suggest that free authentic (cf. teleology) expressivism can be achieved via art. Notably Schiller parallels this course, when he writes that the human person (sensibility and reason) can be unified via beauty, by practicing what he called the “play drive”.
“Man only plays when he is human in the fullest sense of the word, and he only fully human when he plays.” – Schiller
Taylor summarises Schiller’s ideal world as one wherein “realized humanity would live entirely in the creation and love of beauty” (p38).
Kant’s morality and aesthetics were of course underpinned by his meta-epistemology (i.e. first Critique), which had ramifications for his successors beyond its role as a superbly original and intelligent defense of Enlightenment ideals. Fichte (originally a disciple of Kant) was the first to respond to those ramifications, since like those after him, he felt the need to remove the thing-in-itself. Some (incl. Hegel) argued that the thing-in-itself was dependent on an illogical argument, but it was in any case felt to cut man off from the world, and to restrict the power of the moral subject. By making subjectivity all that there is, Fichte moved towards those goals (viz. connecting man to nature and empowering moral subject), although only ever as what ought to be, i.e. a desired goal rather than something that is. (The same problem appeared for many Romantics, i.e. their philosophies only allowed them to approach their ideals, and this may explain, says Taylor, why so many of them in later life returned to their Christian roots).
“See the whole of nature, behold the great analogy of creation. Everything feels itself and its like, life reverberates to life.” – Herder
Note – significant for the history of Hegel – that Fichte’s ideas illustrated his generation’s desires. If man is to express authentically, without being cut off from nature, then there must be a spiritual underpinning to nature, which (likely inspired by Spinoza) took the form of a cosmic spirit. By expressing himself, man was acting qua component of the cosmic spirit which was thus expressing itself through man. For Schelling this involved the paradigm of the unconscious subjectivity of nature seeking to unite itself with full subjectivity, which in turn (i.e. too) moves towards its objective counterpart. This (for Schelling) is achieved through art. Taylor describes this vision of a nature which yearns to be expressed (through man, through art) as “nature as slumbering spirit” (p42).
Another pattern of thought to be noticed (re. Hegel) is that of historical, mystical trends, including the spiral vision of history (cf. divided into ages of the father/son/ghost, or paradise/fall/redemption). The Romantics were aware of these parallels, and made use of them, believing as they did than an important, historical transformation was at hand. This feeling of history happening now justifies why it should be that new forms of living (esp. expressivism) were apparently just coming into existence (i.e. the obsession with expression inevitably followed and grew out of recent and ongoing historical events and transformations).
One important difference between the post-Kant Romantics and Hegel was that the former eschewed rationality, feeling that they must preferentially dedicate themselves to intuition (which appeared closer to expressing one’s self than did reason). Without Hegel’s realizing that reason is necessary for man qua vehicle of cosmic spirit and retainer of autonomy, the “Romantics either fell into the despair of exile in a God-forsaken world, or recovered unity with nature and God only in the twilight zone of intuition and fantasy” (p48).
Take-Away Message
- The historical facts and ideas which fed into (whether positively or as problems needing answers) Hegel’s mature philosophy.
- The general picture of philosophical development occurring in response to historic existential (viz. “spiritual” in an informal sense of the word) desires.
