CHAPTER II the YOUNG HEGELIANS the Young Hegelian

66 CHAPTER II THE YOUNG HEGELIANS The Young Hegelian Movement Vie have seen how Hegel had tried to build a grand philosophical system that would explain and interpret all the phenomena in the universe. His was an attempt to build a system of universal reconciliation. Any system of such proportions was bound to break up and give rise to many different movements. This is precisely what happened in the case of the Hegelian system too. Soon after Hegel's death it started to disintegrate and create discordant results,, To the orthodox# Hegelianism was a conservative system, which was the answer of German traditionalism to the new systems of philosophy that were making their presence felt in Germany, especially to the rationalism that was coming from France, Hegelian philosophy was essentially an explanation of the past but the younger generation of his followers wanted to detach it from its preoccupation with the past and make it a progressive force for the creation of a future. Both the old and the young Hegelians# the right and the left, based themselves on the master's famous dictum that the real is rational and the rational is the real.^ The schism arose from the different emphasis which the schools gave to the two crucial terms 'rational' and ' real' . 6? The conservatives held that only the real is rational. For them the measure of rationality was its actuality. That something was real and historically necessary meant that it was rational. For them mere existence was enough to prove the rationality of a historical reality. Thus the conser vative side found the justification for the status quo in Hegel's philosophy. To revolt against the existing system was an act against rationality, an irrational act. The radicals (the Young Hegelians) stressed the opposite view. They insisted that only what is rational is real. The actual was not f,or them the real# it often consisted of inconsistencies, anachronisms and opposing factors. So reality, or mere existence, could not be considered real in the philosophical or metaphysical sense. They pointed out that the mere occurrence of something in space and time was not equivalent to being real at all. Something was real only to the extent that it was rational. So anything that could not withstand the test of reason was not really real. The real should be able to form a rational whole; this might necessitate the radical transformation of the existing institutions in accordance v/ith the dictates of reason. Thus the Hegelian left was able to put forward a system, within the Hegelian framework, which could account for social change and even necessitate revolution. Because Hegel had stated in unmistakable terms that reality is a process, a universal effort to attain self-consciousness and that it grows more 68 perfect in the very growth of critical self-consciousness among men. There was no reason to suppose that such a process should be gradual and painless, the progress was necessarily the result of tension between the opposites which grew into a crisis and then burst into open revolution. Only at this juncture did the leap into the next stage occur. These were the basic laws of development found equally in nature and 2 in affairs of men and societies. Again to the radical Hegelians it seemed evident that a ohilosophy which proclaimed the principle of universal negativism and which treated each successive phase of history as the basis of its own destruction, could not consistently tolerate the endorsement of a particular historical situation, or recognize as final and irrefutable any kind of state, religion or philosophy,^ Consequently the Young Hegelian Movement singled out the theme of permanent negation as the dominant theme of Hegel's philosophy, which led to the radical criticism of all existing aspects of society. In one of his early writings, when he himself was a Young Hegelian, Engels observed that the Hegelian communists such as Hess, Ruge and Herweg were a proof that trie Germans must adopt communism if they were to remain faithfully to 4 their philosophical tradition from Kant to Hegel, Historically the Young Hegelian philosophy was the philosophy of the republican, bourgeois-democratic opposition which criticized the feudal order of the Prussian state. In the literary field this opposition was led in the early 18 30's 69 by Heine# Bonme, etc. In the field of philosophy and theology the movement was led by Bauer, Strauss, Koppen, etc. They demonstrated their opposition to the existing system by criticizing Christianity and its presuppositions from the Hegelian point of view. That was the time when Marx came on the scene and into contact with this group of Young Hegelians. To gain an insight into Marx's thinking we must turn to the ideas and convictions of the radical Hegelians, because an insight into a man's thought could be furthered by an appreciation of the doctrines which contended against in his struggle for clarity, Marx's intellectual journey started with an acceptance of the left-wing Hegelian philosophy of religion. Then it proceeded to a penetrating socialogical criticism of the roots of all religious beliefs in general and of Christianity in particular and ended with the first sketchy formulations of historical materialism in his Holy Family,^ This period of Marx's development coincided with the bourgeois movement to bring liberal political ideals into German politics. This movement made certain consequences .6 appear in the weaver revolt and the spread of utopian religious socialism. But the opening shots in the fight against the feudal system, land-lords, absolute monarchy, bureaucratic officialdom and reactionary church were fired' 7 in the field of philosophy of religion. 70 As we have seen# the Young HegeJ.ians from the outset considered themselves to be orthodox Hegelians. Their stress on the continuous negation made them critics of all existing social institutions. They adopted a historical approach to all institutions and especially to religions, because a criticism of these institutions from a merely philosophical point of view had been attempted by the French materialists without much success."8 The Young Hegeliansu on the other hand, by their historical approach tried to show that the religions and their claims were once justified but had now become outdated and irrational by their ov;n historical developments. Neverthless their approach was not without its defects. According to Sidney Hook their approach suffered from a threefold defect. First, it was abstract and considered the development of theological doctrine independently of the instituional activities of the Church . The young Hegelians did not consider the bodies of doctrine-juridical^ philosophical/ social - which were pervaded with religious notions. Secondly, the young Hegelian criticism was idealistic. It did not search for the origins of religious thought and practice in the material culture of the age; it did not inquire into the linkage between the techniques of religion and the material wants of the everyday economic life of man. Thirdly, it was fatalistic: it regarded the historical development and process as automatic, carried on by the pure g spirit or by certain individual leaders. 71 Thus the first field in which the struggle between the Young Hegelians and other post Kantian philosophers took place/ was religion, separated from the socio-economic realities of the day. It v/as only with the advent of Marx and Feuerbach that this criticsm became a criticism of the whole socio-political-economic system that was prevalent at the time. They pointed out that the criticism of religion was incomplete if it was done in isolation from other social structures. Even such innocent guestions about the priority of the Gospels, not to speak of their historical validity, were soon found to have consequences that were detrimental to the existing order. That this implication was seen by the authorities, is manifest from the fact that Metternich met the first religious criticism with political persecution of the critics. He understood that the challenge to the authority of the Church involved challenge to the authority of the state. The young Hegelians pointed out that religion had always professed a metaphysical dualism. Religion always held that its chief concern was with the other-worldly affairs, yet the threefold emphasis upon authority, tradition and renunciation that religion advocated in reality strengthened the political and social props of the existing order. How could religion function in this very v/orldly and concrete manner unless it had some connection with the past and present social realities? The primary objective of the Young Hegelian philosophy of religion was to discover the character of this 72 continuity and relation by submitting specific texts, doctrines and practices to a searching criticism. On the basis of such investigation they concluded that religion was a fantastic and compensatory expression of the nature of man. ^t arose and endured in the course of the prolonged struggle of human beings to adjust themselves to an irrational and inhuman world. A critical analysis of religion, then, was at the same time a radical criticism of the world out of which it had 10 arisen. Individually not one of the young Hegelians (with the possible eocception of Feuerbach) can claim to be a philosopher of real depth or significance. But they have the credit of dividing up Hegelianism and making it a historical force. It was through them that Marx first came into contact with Hegel. As Louis Althusser says: The Hegel with who Marx argues ever since his doctoral dissertation is not the Hegel taken from the library shelf, the Hegel whom we now ponder in our studies. It is the Hegel of New Hegelian movement, who had already become an insistent need for the German intellegentia of the 184Gs, the Hegel by means of whom it seeks to comprehend its own history and its hopes.

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