DOCSLIB.ORG

On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More Information Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY HEINRICH HEINE On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors KARL AMERIKS Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame DESMOND M. CLARKE Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork The main objective of Cambridge Textsin the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information HEINRICH HEINE On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings edited by TERRY PINKARD Georgetown University translated by HOWARD POLLACK-MILGATE DePauw University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521678506 © Cambridge University Press 2007 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2007, 2011 Second Edition 2012 Reprinted 2013 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn 978-0-521-86129-8 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-67850-6 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information Contents Introduction page vii Chronology xxxiii Further reading xxxviii Translator’s note xl On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany Preface to the first edition 3 Preface to the second edition 4 Book One 9 Book Two 42 Book Three 76 Other writings From a letter to Moses Moser in Berlin, May 23, 1823 121 From The Songbook (1827), “Return home” 122 From The Songbook (1827), “North sea: second cycle” 124 From Lucca, the City (in Travel Pictures, Part IV, 1831) 127 From the Introduction to “Kahldorf on the Nobility in Letters to Count M. von Moltke” (1831) 130 From The Romantic School (1835) 136 From New Poems (1844), “Poems of the Times,” “Doctrine” 196 From the Letters about Germany (1844) 197 From the “Afterword” to Romanzero (1851) 198 From Confessions (1854) 203 Index 216 v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information Introduction At his death in 1856, Heinrich Heine was the most widely read poet in Europe. He was also a prolific essayist and critic, and his poems have been set to music more often than those of any other poet. Both in his own time and in ours, he has been known as a “political poet” since he championed the cause of the oppressed, and as a friend of sorts of Karl Marx, he was regarded as a “socialist” poet for many years, even though he himself was as wary of Marx’s communism as he was distrustful of the emerging commercial and industrial society around him. Heine was also not merely a German poet, but a German Jewish poet (who for a while had rather pro forma converted to Christianity), and the anti-Semites in Germany did their best to make sure nobody forgot the “Jewish” part. If anything Heine seemed to regard himself as a German European;in1822 while still in Berlin he himself noted, “I love Germany and the Germans; but I love no less the inhabitants of the rest of this earth, whose number is forty times greater – and it is surely love which gives a man his true value. I am therefore – thank God – worth forty times more than those who cannot pull themselves out of the swamp of national egotism and who love none but Germany and the Germans.”1 But when, in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat in Russia and then a few years later in Waterloo, the various governments of the German principalities began their authoritarian crackdown on “demagogues” (the term of art used for alleged “subversives”), not unsurprisingly anti-Semitism began to increase. In 1831, Heine had decided that for the time being, Paris would 1 Cited by S. S. Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 57–58; Heinrich Heine, S¨amtliche Werke in vier B¨anden (Dusseldorf:¨ Artemis und Winkler, 2001), vol. II, p. 467. vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67850-6 - Heinrich Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings Edited by Terry Pinkard and Translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate Frontmatter More information On the history of religion and philosophy in Germany and other writings be a safer home for him than Berlin or Gottingen;¨ however, his tempo- rary exile became permanent after 1835, when the Prussian government banned publication of his work and then the German Bundesversammlung issued a decree forbidding publication of many authors including him. His exile was sealed in 1844 when the Prussian government issued an order for Heine’s arrest if he were ever to set foot on Prussian soil. But if their goal was to silence Heine or diminish his popularity, they failed utterly.Heine continued to weave his magic with the German public until his death, although he always remained a controversial figure. As Heine’s biographer, Jeffrey L. Sammons, has noted, it is very hard to pin down Heine on virtually anything, since he early on created a per- sona for himself that he himself continually shifted around; as Sammons remarks, “Heinrich Heine” is “a central, commanding, fictional figure in the works of Heinrich Heine.”2 Even his birth date is relatively hard to fix, since Heine himself regularly entered very different dates and years on various official and unofficial papers. In that light, it is not surprising that the twenty-five-year-old Heine himself noted in his 1822 Letters from Berlin that as far as he was concerned, the highest freedom comes at a masked ball: What does it matter who is beneath the mask? The quest is enjoy- ment, and for that one only needs human beings. Nowhere can one be a human being more fully than at a masked ball, where the waxen mask hides our usual mask of flesh, where a simple Du [the famil- iar form of address in German] restores the primordial sociality of familiarity, where a Venetian cloak (Domino) covers all pretensions and brings about the most beautiful equality and the most beautiful freedom – the freedom conferred by masks, Maskenfreiheit.3 Infact,hisname,“Heinrich,”onlycamelater;hewasbornHarryHeine in Dusseldorf¨ (apparently on December 13, 1797). His father, Samson Heine, was a middle-class cloth merchant. His uncle, Salomon Heine (his father’s brother), became an immensely wealthy banker in Hamburg and exercised a formidable influence on Heinrich for most of his life. Heine never quite got over the idea that his uncle could make him rich overnight with a large gift of money that his uncle would in fact never miss; but the 2 Jeffery L.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • German Jews in the United States: a Guide to Archival Collections
    GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE,WASHINGTON,DC REFERENCE GUIDE 24 GERMAN JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES: AGUIDE TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS Contents INTRODUCTION &ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 ABOUT THE EDITOR 6 ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS (arranged alphabetically by state and then city) ALABAMA Montgomery 1. Alabama Department of Archives and History ................................ 7 ARIZONA Phoenix 2. Arizona Jewish Historical Society ........................................................ 8 ARKANSAS Little Rock 3. Arkansas History Commission and State Archives .......................... 9 CALIFORNIA Berkeley 4. University of California, Berkeley: Bancroft Library, Archives .................................................................................................. 10 5. Judah L. Mages Museum: Western Jewish History Center ........... 14 Beverly Hills 6. Acad. of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Margaret Herrick Library, Special Coll. ............................................................................ 16 Davis 7. University of California at Davis: Shields Library, Special Collections and Archives ..................................................................... 16 Long Beach 8. California State Library, Long Beach: Special Collections ............. 17 Los Angeles 9. John F. Kennedy Memorial Library: Special Collections ...............18 10. UCLA Film and Television Archive .................................................. 18 11. USC: Doheny Memorial Library, Lion Feuchtwanger Archive ...................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Development of Marxist Thought in the Young Karl Marx Helenhund
    DOUGLAS L. BENDELL AWARD THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARXIST THOUGHT IN THE YOUNG KARL MARX HELENHUND Karl Marx was born a contradiction to the world of his time: from a Jewish family, he would become the world's foremost proponent of atheism; from a culture steeped in German romanticism and Hegelian idealist philosophy, he would become the foremost materialist philosopher; from a profligate son and later, profligate husband and father, he would become the economist who spent hours researching the topic of money for the world­ changing "Das Kapital;" and from this man noted for his culture, intelligence, and arrogance would come the destruction of the old order of privilege through the "Communist Manifesto." Karl Marx was a contradiction to his times, and a revolutionary with a burning desire to change the existing society. His thought, however, was not revolutionary in the sense of being original, but a monumental synthesis of influences in his life, which congealed and culminated in three early works: "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," and the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844." Marx was born May 5, 1818 in Trier, a city on the Mosel River • a region renowned for its wine, Roman history, Catholicism, and revolutionary French ideas. Trier, a beautiful city surrounded by vineyards and almost Mediterranean vegetation, had a reputation for wine production from Roman times: Treves (Trier) metropolis, most beautiful city, You, who cultivate the grape, are most pleasing to Bacchus. Give your inhabitants the wines strongest for sweetnessP Marx also had a life-long appreciation of wine; he drank it for medicine when sick, and for pleasure when he could afford it.
    [Show full text]
  • “Neusnerian Turn” in Method and the End of the Wissenschaft As We Knew It
    The “Neusnerian Turn” in Method and the End of the Wissenschaft as We Knew It Peter J. Haas Over the course of a career marked by extraordinary productivity and the training of virtually a generation of Judaic studies scholars, Jacob Neusner has almost singlehandedly altered the entire methodological orientation of the field of Jewish Studies. I take this occasion to look at this extraordinary Neusnerian turn in method for the field of Jewish Studies. Prior to Jacob Neusner’s work, the greatest paradigm shift in Jewish Studies since the emergence of the talmuds was probably the coalescence of the Wissenschaft des Judenthums movement in the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury. In a broad way, the Wissenschaft brought the methods of German phi- lology into Jewish Studies, or, to put matters the other way around, brought Jewish Studies into conversation with the German “scientific” university dis- course of the time. In a similar vein we can say that the second major shift, which took place over a hundred years later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s was when the methods of the North American academic world were brought to bear on classical rabbinic materials, or, again to restate matters, when Judaic Studies was brought into conversation with modern American higher educa- tion. This is what I referred to above as the “Neusnerian turn.” Before turning to the critical methodological shift in Neusner’s early scholar- ship, it will be helpful to review the older paradigm to which it was responding and which it ultimately overturned. The Wissenschaft des Judenthums had its roots in the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft des Judenthums that was estab- lished in 1819 by Leopold Zunz, Eduard Gans, and Isaac Marcus Jost, among others.
    [Show full text]
  • Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848 Review
    Book Reviews 417 semantic meaning (sometimes exceeding the precepts of the post-hermeneutic theo- retical approach). Given the strong connection between the readings and the specific qualities of the poems, Holzmu¨ller’s readings do not yield abstractly summarizable ‘results,’ per se, but it is worth mentioning a few particular strengths. First, her treat- ment of previous scholarship on the poems (and, in the next section, their settings) is thorough and effective, as for example when she reflects on the claims of a long line of scholars about the “Unantastbarkeit” of “Wandrers Nachtlied II” and lists the words whose removal each claims would destroy the poem (232–233) before explaining the phenomenon as a result of the work’s material-linguistic qualities (233ff.). Moreover, in contrast to many approaches focused on formal structuration, Holzmu¨ller keeps the historical-cultural development and connotations of various forms in view (for ex- ample in her analysis of the relation between lineation in “Wandrers Nachtlied I” and the “Abendlied-Strophe” [200–211]). Finally, her reading of the tensions and conflicts between various schemata for formal organization (in “Wandrers Nachtlied II”) pro- vides a model for readers striving to give non-reductive accounts of formal interac- tions and effects (259–261). The third section, which analyzes and compares settings of the two poems by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Carl Loewe, Franz Schubert, and Hugo Wolf (“Wandrers Nachtlied I”) and Carl Friedrich Zelter, Schubert, and Robert Schumann (“Wandrers Nachtlied II”), is similarly impressive. Holzmu¨ller acknowledges Goethe’s virtuosic shaping of Sprachklang as a problem or challenge for musical setting (one attested to by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms, among others [289]) and reflects on the rarity of music-theoretical analyses that take into account the fact that song settings always involve the interaction of two sound systems (linguistic and musical), not merely the fitting of a (musical) sound system to a thematic (linguistic) content.
    [Show full text]
  • Leopold Zunz and the Invention of Jewish Culture
    SCHOLARSHIP OF LITERATURE AND LIFE: LEOPOLD ZUNZ AND THE INVENTION OF JEWISH CULTURE Irene Zwiep Around 1820, a group of Berlin students assembled to found Europe’s first Jewish historical society. The various stages in the society’s brief his- tory neatly mirror the turbulent intellectual Werdegang of its members. The studious, typically Humboldian Wissenschaftszirkel they established in 1816 was changed into the more political Verein zur Verbesserung des Zustandes der Juden im deutschen Bundesstaate in the wake of the HEP!HEP! pogroms of 1819, only to be relabelled the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden two years later, in November 1821. In January 1824, in a session attended by a mere three members, the society’s meet- ings were again suspended. Thus, within less than five years, its ambitious attempts at building an alternative, modern scholarly infrastructure had come to a halt. The new Institut für die Wissenschaft des Judentums that was to serve as the Verein’s headquarters never materialized. Its relentless- ly academic Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1822/23) did not survive its first issue. And when trying to strengthen their position within German society, many of its supporters, including first president Eduard Gans (1797-1839) and the ever-ambivalent Heinrich Heine, seem to have preferred smooth conversion to Lutheranism to a prolonged ca- reer in Jewish activism.1 Yet if the Verein’s attempts at establishing a new, comprehensive in- frastructure remained without immediate success, its overall agenda had a lasting impact on modern Jewish discourse. In the early 1820s, Wis- senschaft des Judentums as a form of shared political activism had been doomed to fail; during the following decades, however, a whole genera- 1 For a short history of the Verein, see I.
    [Show full text]
  • Inventing Tradition: on the Formation Of
    SHULAMIT VOLKOV INVENTING TRADITION On the Formation of Modern Jewish Culture I Tradition is such a self-evident element in our culture that it seems to require no special explanation. Nevertheless, it has recently become a sub- ject for a prolonged debate in a number of scholarly disciplines1. Repeated efforts to redefine and analyse its meaning led especially to some funda- mental rethinking especially in the field of Volkskunde, in Folklore-studies, in what Americans usually call Anthropology. 2 Interestingly enough, the matter has now invaded other domains, too. The problematising of the con- cept of tradition, together with some of its most common antipodes, such as innovation and modernity, brought about a fundamental rethinking in Kunst- and Literaturwissenschaft3 and, as could only be expected, its reeval- uation is now slowly becoming an issue for historians too. In an ever expanding and changing world, with continuously shifting perspectives, explaining what has always seemed only obvious is no mere luxury. The clearing-up of terminological mess becomes an absolute necessity if one wishes to avoid dogmatism and, worse still, the ever-present danger of provincialism. Terms like tradition must be repeatedly rethought and reconsidered and their meaning reconstructed again and again; they must, in fact, be deconstructed. 1 A shorter version of this study has been the basis of a lecture given in the framework of the Jewish Studies Public Lecture Series of the Central European University on 4 December 2001. 2 See the interesting discussion in D. Ben-Amos, ‘The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in Its Meaning in American Foklore Studies’, Journal of Folklore Research 21 (1984), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Assimilation and Profession - the 'Jewish' Mathematician C
    Helmut Pulte Assimilation and Profession - The 'Jewish' Mathematician C. G. J. Jacobi (1804-1851) Biographical Introduction "T;cques Simon Jacobi, nowadays better known as carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, --r'ed from 1804 to 1851. He attended the victoria-Gymnasiunt in potsdam, :s did later Hermann von Helmholtz. He was an excellent pupil, especially .: mathematics and ancient languages. In the report on his final examina- :ron, the director of his school cerlified that Jacobi had extraordinary mental 'bilities, and he dared to predict that "in any case, he will be a famous man r.''me day.", That was in April 1821, the same month Jacobi registered at the univer- of Berlin. 'rry He studied mathematics, but from the very beginning he was rored by the curriculum offered to him; so he also studied classics and phi- rrsoph!. One of his teachers was the famous philologist August Böckh, .,. ho found only one fault with him: "that he comes from potsdam. because . lamous man has never ever come from there."2 Young Jacobi's hero in rhilosophy was Hegel, who later was a member of his examining commit- :e . Jacobi took the examination in 1824, and only one year later became a -)''itutdozent After another year, at the age of 23, he was appointed assis- ::nt professor in Königsberg and then full professor at the age of 28. Jacobi remained eighteen years at the Albertina in Königsberg, ,,where ris tireless activity produced amazing results in both research and academic ,nstruction."s His theory of elliptic functions developed in competition .'' ith Niels Henrik Abel was received by the mathematical community as a :l:st-rate sensation.
    [Show full text]
  • Youth in Stuttgart and Tübingen
    29.6.2020 Illustrated Hegel Biography V. 1.07.07 - hegel.net . 1.07.07 Kai Froeb, Maurizio Canfora YOUTH IN STUTTGART AND TÜBINGEN “HOFMEISTER” IN BERNE AND FRANKFURT JENA: STRUGGLING FOR A LIVING AS A PROFESSOR WAITING FOR FAME IN BAMBERG AND NUREMBERG CORONATION OF A DREAM: PROFESSORSHIPS IN HEIDELBERG AND BERLIN HEGEL’S LAST YEARS IN BERLIN other Hegel Biographies in the internet Specic Resources About Hegel’s time YOUTH IN STUTTGART AND TÜBINGEN GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (his close family called him simply, “Wilhelm”) was born in Stuttgart on the 27th of August 1770. Hegel’s mother and father His father Georg Ludwig (1733-1799) born in Tübingen to a family of civil servants and pastors, was an ordinary revenue ocer in the scal service of Württemberg (1766 “Rentkammersekretär”,1796 “Rentenkammer-Expeditionsrat”). His mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa (nee Fromm, 1741-1783) came from a well-to-do family of Stuttgart, home to some of the foremost theologians, lawyers and high-ranking bureaucrats in Württemberg. She was well-educated for her time and had sucient scholastic ability to teach young Hegel the elements of Latin. Georg Ludwig and Maria Magdalena married in September 29, 1769. Hegel was the oldest of their three children (four more children died short after their birth in 1771, 1774,1777 and 1779). His sister, Christiane Louisa (1773-1832), who had worked 1807-1814 as governess for Count Josef von Berlichingen, contracted a nervous disorder in 1820, and was committed to an asylum (Heilanstalt Zwiefalten) for one year, after which Christiane’s relationship with Hegel suered.
    [Show full text]
  • Adolf Jellinek and the Creation of the Modern Rabbinate
    “A NEW SHOOT FROM THE HOUSE OF DAVID:” ADOLF JELLINEK AND THE CREATION OF THE MODERN RABBINATE Samuel Joseph Kessler A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved By: Randall Styers Yaakov Ariel Susannah Heschel Jonathan Hess Malachi Hacohen Lloyd Kramer @2016 Samuel Joseph Kessler ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Samuel Joseph Kessler: “A New Shoot From the House of David:” Adolf Jellinek and the Creation of the Modern Rabbinate (Under the direction of Randall Styers) This dissertation is a social history of Jewish religious experience in Central Europe during the nineteenth century, primarily told through the life and work of one of its founding rabbis, Adolf Jellinek (1821-1893). In response to Enlightenment ideology, emancipation, and urbanization, from about 1830 to 1860 three major changes occurred in institutional Jewish religious life, changes that transformed the very essence of what the practice of Jewish religion meant between the pre-modern and modern periods. First, the role of the rabbi in the life of the Jewish community shifted fundamentally. Second, because of demographic shifts brought about by emancipation and economic conditions, the monumental urban synagogue became the dominant space for the expression of Jewish religious activity and expression in European cities. Third, the sermon became an integral part of Jewish religious practice and rabbinical responsibility, one that introduced a new form of public Jewish theology focused on individual belief and history (the constituent components of “religion” as it came to be defined in modern Europe).
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy of Right GWF Hegel
    Philosophy of Right G.W.F. Hegel Translated by S.W Dyde Batoche Books Kitchener 2001 Batoche Books Limited 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada email: [email protected] Contents Translator’s Preface. .......................................................................... 7 Author’s Preface. ............................................................................. 10 Introduction. ..................................................................................... 21 First Part: Abstract Right. ............................................................... 51 First Section. Property. ................................................................ 55 A. The Act of Possession. ........................................................ 63 B. Use of the Object. ................................................................ 67 C. Relinquishment of Property. ................................................ 71 Second Section: Contract. ............................................................ 77 Third Section: Wrong................................................................... 83 A. Unpremeditated Wrong. ...................................................... 85 B. Fraud. .................................................................................. 86 C. Violence and Crime. ............................................................ 86 Transition from Right to Morality.............................................. 95 Second Part: Morality. ....................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Between Hegel and Marx: Eduard Gans On
    8 lETWIlN Hiail AND MARX of gods who are all equally magnificent, equally holy, and equally Between Hegel and Marx: happy. We . demand nectar and ambrosia, purple robes, deli• cious scents, sensual pleasures, splendor, dances of laughing nymphs, Eduard Gans on the music and comedies. ... To your censorious reproaches we reply in the words of a Shakespearean fool: 'Dost thou think, because thou art "Social Question" virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?' [Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 3, line 105-6; Heine replaces 'ale' by 'sweet champagne.'] The Saint-Simonians had some such ideas and plans. But they were on un• Myriam Bienenstock favorable soil, and they were suppressed, at least for some time, by the materialism all around them."*' Heine's description is doubtless half-ironical. It is nonetheless obvious that his appreciation of the Saint-Simonian program is totally different from that of Gans. As a matter of fact, Gans seems to have In the account of his travels in France published in Berlin under the remained extremely skeptical altogether in face of the surprising meta• title Looking Back on Persons and Situations {Ruckblicke auf Personen und morphosis which can be observed in Paris toward 1830 among Saint- Zustdnde),^ Eduard Gans,^ the celebrated Hegel follower among the ju• Simonian adepts: the metamorphosis of the ideas of Saint-Simon into a rists, described a conversation which unfolded during a meal at the fa• religious doctrine, of which Gans himself gives an eloquent account in mous Parisian restaurant Au Rocher de Cancale. Participants in this con• his Looking Back on Persons and Situations.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards a New Philosophy of History. European Vichianism and Neapolitan Hegelianism (1804-48)
    Alessandro De Arcangelis University College London Towards a New Philosophy of History. European Vichianism and Neapolitan Hegelianism (1804-48) In his Introduction to the 1837 edition of Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, the jurist Eduard Gans drew a comparison between the philosopher’s ideas and those developed roughly a century earlier by a thinker largely unknown to the German public: Giambattista Vico. Gans (1837: ix), who had attended Hegel’s lectures in Heidelberg and whose work was characteristically imbued with the principles of his philosophy of history, explained that the formulation of a worldview akin to the one illustrated in the Vorlesungen had previously only been attempted by Herder, Friedrich von Schlegel and Vico. In particular, Gans applauded the latter for elaborating a conception of history as ruled by absolute laws and Reason. In Italy, Bertrando Spaventa labelled the Neapolitan philosopher ‘the true precursor of all Germany’ in his lectures on the history of European philosophy known as La Filosofia Italiana nelle Sue Relazioni colla Filosofia Europea (1862: 31) and maintained that Vico should be recognized as the first theorist of a historicist perspective informed by a new metaphysics of ideas and by a groundbreaking intuition, namely that of Spirit (see also Spaventa [1867: 21] on this topic). Spaventa’s admiration for Vico exemplified the latter’s broad appeal among Neapolitan Hegelians, whose use of Vichian historicism alongside Hegel’s Geschichtsphilosophie was often examined by later commentators (Gentile 1915, Croce 1922, Piovani 1968, Tessitore 1968 and 1979, Oldrini 1973, Caianiello 2011, Origo 2011). While these works explained this tendency on the basis of the perceived intellectual affinities and thematic continuities between Vico and Hegel, however, the present article will attempt to provide a more critical discussion of their encounter.
    [Show full text]