**

' ' ' ' '

REINTERPRETATION, TEXTS, AND COMMENTARY

WALTER KAUFMANN j

1 9 6 5

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

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Llegttl as K iel'kcgltartl dicl is Sltrtrc. l'l't? Nvas atrttlally stl l'licittlltly n-

tcrtpsted to rkllld Llttgel and has nevcr nlttlc a stlcret of his inlncnse.

t.lt? bt ttJ l'legel .1S

(3n H egel's i nf1 tltlllce on this n-lan and l'novon-ltlnt (r thrtt, 1-k1:) Ily

CtIllonogrttpl't cltn btl alld ltas bcel written. Thc ptlint hu-re is nl(2l'-ly

to stlggest brittlly how relevkt nt l-legel is to tsveIltitltll-cfallttlry con-

ccrlls . Nrt lltl-ler l-til'teteti-ll t h-centtl ry pl-lltlsoj-nhtll- a pp ro:lclles 11 inl ifz

tllis l'tlspcct, with the solc klxccptiol'l ot' Nictzsclle.

69

A- brit?f contrast with Nietzsclle rnay prove illulllinating. 'lqitptzschtz

c anae frona :1 col-lservl ti ve backgrou nd. I1y the ti nle he wtts th i l-ty-s ix

.17 Vtlrretje ( p I'efll ce ) f or Cotlsi n's book 01.1 Frc llch and G e 1'1)) lt n ph i lostlphy

( 1 8 34 ) , p . x i v; see the 1.3 i bl iog rltphy. Cf . lt l so t he pttssll ges re fe l'rel t o 71bllvtl

i ,1 Ll 39 , not cr'

.

4 t **S:t I't I'e lelt l'ned to st tltly Hege 1 i n t he cl ltsses o f KtlJ- ve j u st be t-lll'e B?()r1 6.1

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nsvil f I'etl Desll n, F/?? 54arx'.b')l ta/ leall-ltllll 5flr//'tr,

l 965, 52 ) . Scc

ielllel, K 1Jt as 1-l:tl'!lntl) 11,

akld Kojve, in tl'le 1$J lAliography.

69. Comparson w?/l Nictzschc 29 1

l1c llad publishekl eight snlall books, the last three more radical than

llis early essays, and during the next few years, before he collapscd

:t tlle age of forty-four, l1e publishcd seven nlajor works and com-

pleted tllrt'lkz others that wdre published only later. Shortly beforc his

ctlllztpse he also bl-ought out inew editions'' of sevurktl ()f his carlitlr

ltotlks -. l1e dikl 11f.)( rcwritc thtl'n btlt added brillilnt prcfaces and in

(blle crstl t rel-nrtrk able linal chapter and :tn ltppentlix of verse as

svu-l 1. His radicalisn grew with the speed of his prodtlctivity. Like

Vtll Gogll, htt was drivcn to the breaking point in an incretliblt't

'rcscendtp.

Hegel wfts nnost radical when he was young and never pub-

lislled his boldtlst cssays. 'svht'tn 11e was tllirty-six, hc published his

fi rst Inajor work, by far lis lnost daring book. s'vhen hc wts forty-

fotlr l1e was in the ntidst of publishing his sccond mttjor work . On

the heels of that he published his system in syllabus fonn and thcn,

iI1 1 82 1, his last book, by all odds the least bold. Dtlring the final

tttn ycnrs of llis life he did not attempt another btok. First h wrote

1n unexciting prcface for thc. book of onc of his followers, tllen

seven book reviews totaling about four hundred pages. ln 1827 hc

ptlblishcd a thorough revision of his systenl, and three years later

allother revision, containing a very large number of very small

chltnges. During thc last year of his life hc revised the first volume

of his Logic and also made a great many nlinute and for the most

pCtrt utterly unhelpful changes in thc carly pages of the preface to

his Pllenomenology, but died before fnishing with the preface.

Saying that onc prefers the Iate Nietzsche to tlae early Nictzschc,btlt the early Hegel to the later Hegel would sound highly subjective.

13lt it is a fact that Hegel did his most original work before he

wont to Berlin and became a famous professor, that bis insprationgradually dyied up, and that his growing conservatism went together

with a Iack of new ideas. His Berlin lectures contain many strikingpassagcs and have exerted an immense intluence, but they drew

heavily on his early notes, and the power to fashion his youthftllvsions into lasting works was gone. Hegel worked t6 the end and,

far from bcing as self-satistied as he has often been pictured , kept

revising lzis lectures as well as his books. But his energies went into

relatively insignilicant changes, even if he did make thousands ofthem, and into unimportant reviews of less important books. Once

more, Rosenkranz's testimony ( 16 f. ) is to the point: dtone cannot

lind anything more hacked to pieces, more crossed out, more con-

1t).!.

292 HEGEL ON I'IISTORY

stantly rewritten than one of Hcgel's drafts for a lettur 1*1-0111the

Berlin period-''His early essays are bold both stylistically and in thuir radical

critique of Chlistianity. ln the. Phenolnenology and Logic the oc-

casionally very slriking prosc keeps colzaprtluislg 'with tlle author's

notions of what is acadelnically or ttscientitically'' respcctable al')d

solid, but the ovfar-all conception of both projccts is bold to the

point of foolhktrdiness. ln tlle Enc-yclopedil the format is ctlt and

dried, but the altelupt to oller so nluch in sucll a smtll compass s

still anything btlt tind. Then, bfaginning abou t fotlrtettn yettrs bcforkl

his death, Hegel dared no nzore.

The Phitosophy oj Ay/l/ is not, as has been alleged, tlle work of

a timeserver; nuithcr is it a courageous book. Tlzc rcligittls vjews

01 the later Hegel werc rcnote from a11 forlus of traditional Cllris-tianity, but he no longer heeded ls own emphatic dictun) that phi-

losophy should beware of bcing edifying, tnd tried to show that 11e

could be more inspiring, and sound more Christian, tllan Scllleier-

macher and other liberal theologians. He came to emphasize wll'this philosophy had in common with Cluistianity wllat is llear'd

gladly.He had not always been a tired old man; 11e had known Iittle

peace until he was forty-live. Thc great battlcs of the Napoleonie

era had never been far away. He had not found it easy to fit into

the social structure of ls time: while a grcat mtny nlediocriteswere appointed Professors of Philosophy, he was thirty-tzight when

he settled down to his flrst dectznt job as headnlaster of a boys'

sccondary school and he was forty-six when he finally obttinfcd an

academic clair. (Nietzsche had becn a professor for tun ycars when

he retired in ill health at thirty-five.) When Hegel came to Berlin,he palpably enjoyed having linatly found peace and seeurity.

After his death, Hegel's works werc editcd by professors and

other highly respectable men who had becn his students. Yet his

works wcre edited much more irrcsponsibly than Nictzsche's, al-

though the editing of Nietzsche has long becn considered a scandal.

That four words and one erroneous quotation were left out of TheAntichrist when it was published in 1895 has been cited as proof of

the perversionog Nietzsche by his editors, while thc fact th:lt scores

of changcs were made by Hegel's editors, even in the books hc

hzlself had published, has excited no izlterest wlzatever, except

69. Comparison with Ncfzsc/lc 293

among a very fuw Hegel scholars. That abundant ttadditions'' of

dtlbious character were interlarded iI) the posthunlous cditiens oftwo of his four books is not considcred a scand:tl, and thesc ttaddi-

tions'' are quoted by tle lllost reputable professors as Hegel's own

words. Not one of Hegel's books is better known tllan tthis'' Plli-/tp.$'tr)/77y oj Hltory, llnd inadttqurtte trlnslCltioos of indefensible Ger-

mktn texts keep being reissued with Iearned prefaces (f. H 52 and

53 ) .

lt has oftun been said that Nietzsclltt was not reltlly a philosopher

becausc he had no system. Solne German scholars still suppose that

a philosopher without a system is like a square circlc. This strange

notion is largely dtle to Hegel's influence, although Hegel himsclf

never denied thc name of philosopher to anybody because hc lacked

a system. Nor are lis own books as'tscientitic''

as ht) would have

likud them to be. As long as he was 'vigorous and original he was not

rgorous and systematic, bvt a writer who thought and wrote in briefunits. His span actually tendcd to be shortcr thltn Nietzsche's : he

did not write essays as long as Nletzsche's lirst livtt books or the

three inquiries that constitute the Gencaloyy tp/ Morals or The .4 n/f-cIrist. Even tle famotls system, which is the work of a professor

older than Nifztzsche was whcn he stoppttd writing, consists of llun-dreds of short aphorisms, avuraging about half a slnall page in lcngth

in tllc origlal edition of 18 17 nnd about one slnall page eaclz in the

final, third edition, including the i'renlarks'' that anlpllfy the pithystatements in the beginning. What is systcnzatic is merely the ar-

rangenwnt.Brhat makcs historical work so fascinating is that the realities

one discovers are often, f not usually, so different fronl what every-body thinks he knows about the subject. Studying Hugel is no excep-

tion. An llrchaeologist may bring to light an unknown civilization.A philosopher who studies one of his predecessors cannot ask more

than that he lniohr t verify Hegel's obselwation that what is Iamilitris not necessarily known: Dils Bekanntc iiberhaupt ist darum,weil e- bekannt ist, nicht erkannt (C 11.3.22) . Und er a portraitHegel once wrotc, dtwhoever knows me will recognize lne llcre''--wcr mich kcnnt, wird rzlc/l hier erkennen. ln another sense, these

words micxhr t conclude this reinterpretation: may those who have

long known of Hegel here come to know him; we?- ihn kennt, sollihn hier erkennen.

C H A P T E R I X :

Translation 46 1

most unlikely: it is so very different from the articles and the

Phenomenology that Hegel wrote duling his harassed and un-

happy years in that city. But Hoffmeister could be right that it was

written in 1807 or 1808.

Who Tllinks Abstractlyk''WHO THINKS ABSTMCTLY?

TMNSLATION

ln the nineteenth-centur,y edition of Hegel's Werke, this crticle

( J'Pcr denkt abstrakt/j appears in volume XVII, 400-5. Rosen-kranz discusses it brielly (355 1.) and says that it shows ihow muchHegel . . . entered into the Berlin manner.''

Glockner reprints it in his edition of the Werke in vol. XX( 1930) , which is entitled: Vermischte Schrijten (71:5. Jcr BerlinerZeit.k He includes it nmong Vtfour jeuilletons that Hegel wrote for

local papers during tlle later years of his Berlin period.'' But Glock-ner admits: tt-f'he exact place of publication is unfortunately un-

lnown to me'' (xix) .Hollmeister, whose critical edition of Hegel's Berliner Schrijten:

1818-1831 ( 1956 ) is much more comprehensive than Glockner's(800 pages versus 550) , does not include this article. ln a'' footnotche says that it belongs to Hegel's <lena period ( 1807/08)', (xiii) .This is an uncharacteristic slip: at the beginning of 1807 Hegel went

to Bamberg, in 1808 to Niirnberg; and in the Erst weeks of 1807,

before he left Jena, he certainly lacked the time and peace of mindto write this article.

Of Glockncr's tour jeuilletons'' Hofmeister retains only one, and

that is really a Ietter to a newspaper, protesting their review of a

new play. Ho:meister Sves no reasolw for dating this article so

much earlier than Rosenkranz and Glockner did. Possibly, the dis-

paraging remark about Kotzebue (a German plapvright, 1761-18 19) suggests a date before Kotzebue was stabbed to death by a

German theology student. That the piece was written in Jcna seems

l itDiverse Writings of the Berlin Period.''

Think? Ab-jpyctly? Sauve qui peutl Let those who can save

themselves! Even now l can hear a traitor, boyyht by the enemy,-exclaim these words, delwlmlg this essay ecathe it will plainlydeal with metaphysics. For metaphysics is a word, no less than

abstract, and almost thinking as well, from which everybody more or

less nms away as from a man who has caught the plague.

But the intention here really is not so wicked, as if the meaning

of thinking and of abstract were to be explained hcre. There is

nothing the beautiful world fmds as intolerable as explanations. 1,

too, End it tcrrible when somebody begins to explain, for when worst

comes to worst I understand everything myself. Here the explana-tion of thinking and abstract would in any case be entirely super-

lluous; for it is only because the beautiful world knows what it

means to be abstract that it zuns away. Just as one does not desire

what one does not know, one also cannot hate it. Nor is it my intentto try craftily to reconcile te beautiful wi'!d Wit thinking or with

the abstract as if, under the semblance of small talk, thinking and

the abstract were to be put over till in the end they had found theirway into society incognito, without having aroused any disgust; even

as if they were to be adopted imperceptibly by society, or, as

the Swabians say, hereingezunselt, before the author of this com-

plication suddenly exposed this strange guest, namely the abstract,

whom the whole party had long treated and recognized under a

diferent title as if he were a good o1d acqunlntance. Such scenes

of recognition which are meant to instrtlct the world against its willhave the inexcusable fault that they simultaneously humiliate, and

the wirepuller tries with his artilke to gain a little famek but this

humiliation and this vanity destroy the elect, for they push away

again an instruction gained at such a price.

462 twuo TI-IINKS ABSTRACTI-Y?''

1n. any case, such a plan would be ruiced from the start, for itwould require that the cnlcial word of the riddle is not spoken atthe outset. But this has already happened i.n the title. lf this essaytoyed with such craftiness, these words should not have been allowedto enter rigllt in the beginning; but like the cabinet membcr in a

comcdy, they should have been required to walk arotlnd during theentire play in their overcoat, unbuttoning it only in the last scene,disclosing the flashing star of wisdom. The unbuttoning of the meta-pllysical overcoat would be less effective, to be sure, than the un-buttoning of the millister's : it would bring to light no more tllan a

couple of words, and the best part of the joke ought to be that it is

sllown that society laas long been in possession of the matter itself;so what they would gain in the end would be the mere name, whilethe minister's star signilies solnetlng real a bag of money.

That everybody present should know what thinking is and whatis abstract is presupposed in good society, and we certainly are ingood society. The tuestion is merely who thinks abstractly. Theintents as already mentioned, is not to reconcile society witlz thesethings, to expect it to deal with something dicult, to appeal to itsconscience not frivolously to neglect stlch a nuttter that befits therank and status of beings gifted with reason. Rather it is my intentto reconcile the beautiful world with itself, although it does not seemto have a bad conscience about this neglect; still, at least deep down,it has a certain respect for abstract thinking as something exalted,and it looks the other way not because it seems too lowly but be-catlse it appears too exalted, not because it seems too mean butrather too noble, or conversely because it seems an Espce, some-thing special; it seems something that does not lend one distinction ingeneral society, like new clothes, but rather something that likewretched clothes, or rich ones if they are decorated with preciousstones in ancient mounts or embroidery that, be it ever so l-ich, haslong become quasi-chinese excludes one from society or makesone ridiculous in it.

Who thinks abstractly? The uneducatcd, not the educated. Goodsociety does not think abstractly because it is too easy, because it istoo lowly (not referring to the external status) not from an emptyafectation of nobility that would place itself above that of which it is

not capable, but on account of the inward inferiority of the matter.The prejudice and respect for abstract tlainkinj are so great that

sensitive nostrils will begin to smell some satire or irony at this point;

Translation 463

but since they read the morning paper thcy know that therc is a prize

to be had for satircs and that l should therefore sooner earn it by

competing for it than give up here without further ado.

1 have only to adduce examples for my proposition'. everybodywiil grant that they confirm it. A murderer is 1ed to the place ofcxecution. For the comnaon populace he is nothing but a murderer.Ladies pcrhaps remark that he is a strong, handsone, interesting

nlan. The populace linds this remark terrible: What? A murdererhandsolne? How can one think so wickedly and call a murdererhandsome; no doubt, you yourselves are somcthing not much bet-

ttzr! This is the corruption o morals that is prevalent in the upper

classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and htlman

hearts.

One who knows men traces the development of the criminal's

mind : he finds in his history, in his education, a bad family relation-ship between his father and mother, some tremendous harshncss afterthis human being had done some minor wrong, so he became em-

bitered against the social order a first reaction to this that in esect

expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for him to

preserve himself except through crime. Therc may be people who

will say when they hear such things ; he wants to excuse this mur-derer! After al1 l remember how in my youth 1 heard a mayorlament that writers of books were going too far and sought to extir-pate Christianity and righteousness altogether; somebody had writ-ten a defense of suicide; terrible, really too terrible! Further ques-

tions revealed that The x/fcr. o.f Wcrther (by Goethe, 17741

were meant.This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except

the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human

essence in him with this simple quality.It is quite diferent in reined, sentimental circles--in Leipzig.

There they strewed and bound flowers on the wheel and on the

criminal who was tied to it. But this again is the opposite abstrac-

tion. The Chlistians may indeed tre with Rosicrucianism, or rathercross-rosism, and wreathe roses around the cross. 'rhe cross is the

gallows and wheel that have long been hallowed. lt has lost its

one-sided signifcance of being the instrument of dishonorable pun-

ishment and, on the contrary, suggests the notion of the highest pain

and the deepcst rejection together with the most joyous rapture and

divine honor. 'l'he wheel in Leipzig, on the other hand, wreathed

294 HEGEL ON HISTORY

7 0

Others have seen him diflercntly. To review their Hegel imageswould be subject lnatter enough for an intercsting book. Btlt 1et us

go back once more to Schelling's triumph over Hegel in 1841 and

see how Httgel's philosophy looked to the King of Prussia a littleless than ten years after Hegel's death.

Even while Fricdrich Wilhelm 111 was king, the crown princc fcltdrawn to Schelling'. tln the l'orefront of his idcals stood the re-

ligious renewal and restoration of the church, while Schelling pro-claimed the spectllative renewal and restoration of positive religion,

und promised to ctlbct this in his Philosophy of Revelation-''4g

So the crown prince tried to bring Schelling to Berlin, as Hegel's

successor. But this did not work out. ln June 1840, his father died,and the crown prince ascendcd the throne as Friedrich Wilhelm 1V.On August 1, 1840, Bunscn, close both to the new king and to

Schelling, izlvited Schelling on behalf of the king.ttschelling's call to Berlin was the declaration of war from above

agalst the Hegelian philosophy. ln tlle letter itself it was stated

clearly against what enemy one wished to lead Schelling's intellectualpower into the field. . . . lt was against the dragon seed of the

Hegelian pantheism'; thus the king himself had cxpressed it recentlyin a letter to Bunsen.''Do

For te Prussian king and the old Schelling, Hegel was the enemyof Christianity. For Kierkegaard, too, he was the pllosopher who

had dared to place philosophy above faith. For Marx he was a greatgenius who, however, had turned things upside down :

ttl-le stands the world on its head and therefore also can dissolveal1 barriers in his head, while of course they endure for the badsensibility, for the zctual human beinp''l

'dln direct opposition to German philosophy (i.e., Hegelianisml,which desnds from heaven to earth, we ascend from earth to

49 Kuno Fisoher, Scllellings Lebens, Werke fzlTt Lehre, 2d rev. ed-, Heidel-berg, 1 899, 236.

D0 lbid-, 239.51 Marx and Engels, Die Heilge Familie in Literarischer Naclllass, 11 ( 1902) ,304. Tbis chapter was written by Marx, and page 304 refers expressly to thePllenontenology.

70. Some vcw. oj Hegel

heaven. That is, do not start from what people say, imagine,WC

suppose, nor from said, imagined, supposed human beings, in orderto arrive from there among human beings in the flesh; we start

from actually working people, and from their actual life process we

nlso present the development of thc ideological reflexes and echoes

of this life process. Morality, religion, metaphysics, and other

such ideolo,ry and forms of consciousness that correspond to them

thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no

history, they have no developnzent; instead, human beings who de-

velop their material produetion and their lnaterial intcrcourse also

change, along with this, which is their actuality, their tllinking and

the products of their thinking. lt is not consciousness that deter-

mines life, but life that detelmaines consciousness.''Gz

On one point Marx and Kierkegaard were in agreemcnt with the

old Schelling who called Hegel's philosophy negative and called fora new positive philosophy. It is the point Schclling formulated in his

Philosophie der Mythologic as he was making the transition to the

Philosophie der OFcnbarung (Rcvelation) : 'thkgative philosophy

may tell us in what blessedness consists, but it dbes not help us to

'J$ Kierkegaard, in the, Preface to Us Concluding Un-achieve it.'scientihc Postscript, made the cornerstone of his aFroach his passion-

ate concern about his infinite happiness, in the 'hereafter. Marx, in

the last of his eleven t-f-laetses Against Feucrbach,'' said: Ss-fhe phi-losophers have merely interpreted the worljl. diferently; but what

matters is to change it-'' They all wantcd salvation.ln their diterent ways, Schelllng and lrkegaard were mainly

'not a Christian, withpreoccupied with themselves; Marx, who was

the salvation of others. ne logftef Marx's. philosophical arguments

was not much better than Kierkgaard's, and- certainly not generally

superior to Hegel's: on the contrary, he wks more abusive and in-hnitely less patient in his philosovhicalwriti. gs. But his impassioned

. ';

interest in the salvation of wretqftd humanitf mdc him the second

Jew in history to be accepted by almost hal! the Sorld as a messiah.

We are not tempted to contemplate I-Igel's/'books as the Oldt

Testament of Marxism at least not the wny a hristian fundamen-

talist looks at the O1d Testament. Of> courpe, if 'we prefer the Old

Testament to the New and are usedY studying the Old Testament.

:12 Marx and Engtls, Dcutslte ldeologie, very neaitlae btginning; Volksausgabe

( 1932) , 15 f. -A .

611 Ferc II, 1, 567.

464

with violets and poppies,slovenly sociability between sentimcntality and badness.

ln quite a diflkrent nanner 1 once heard a comnon old woman

who worked in a hospital kill the abstraction of the murderer antl

bring him to life for honor. The severed head had been placed on

the seaffold, and the sun was shining. How beautiftllly, she said, the

sun of God's grace shines on Binder's head! You are not wortlly

ot having the stln shine on you, one says to a rascal with whom one

is angry. This woman saw (hat the murdcrer's head was struck by

the sunslline and thus wus still worthy of it. She raised it from the

punishment of the scallold into the sunny grace of God, and instead

of aecomplishing the reeonciliation with violets and sentiluental van-

ity, saw hinl accepted in grace in the higher sun.

Old woman, your eggs are rotten! the maid says to the market

wornan. What? she replies, my eggs rotten? You may be rotten! You

say that about my eggs'? You? Did not liee eat your father on the

highways? Didn't your mother run away with tlze French, and didn'tyour grandmother die in a public hospital? Let her get a whole shirt

instead of that llimsy scarf ; we know well where she got that scarf

and her hats: if it were not for those ocers, many wouldn't be

decked out like that these days, and if their ladyships paid morc

attenton to their households, many wotlld be in jail right now. Let

her mend the holes in her stockings! ln brief, she does not leave

one whole thread on her. She thinks abstractly and subsumes the

otlaer woman scarf, hat, shirt, etc., as well as her lingers and other

parts of her, and her father and whole family, too solely under

thc crime that she has found the eggs rotten. Everything about her

Jis colored through and through by these rotten cggs, while those

ofticers of which the market woman spoke if, as one may seriously

doubt, there Ls anything to that may have got to see vel'y different

is a rcconciliation la Kotzebue, a kind of

things.To move from the maid to a sezwant, no servant is worse ofl than

one who works for a man of low class and low income; and he is

better oft the nobler his master is. The common man again thinks

more abstractly, he gives himself noble airs vis--vis the servant and

relates himself to the other man merely as to a servant; he clings to

this one predicate. The servant is best off among the French. The

nobleman is familiyr with his servant, the Frenchman is his friend.When they are alone, the servant does the talking: see Diderot'sJacques et son mttre; the master does nothing but take snuff and

dwllo THINKS ABSTRACTI-Y9''465

Tranalation

see what time it is and lets the servant take care of evcrything clse.

The nobleman knows that the servant is not merely a servant, but

also knows the latest city news, the girls, and harbors good sug-

gestions; he asks him about these matters, and the servant may say

what he knows about these questions. With a French master, the

servant may not only do this; he may also broach a subject, havt his

own opinions and insist on them; and when the master wants some-

thing, it is not done with ap order but he has tt rguc and eonvince

the servant of his opinion and add a good word to make sure that

this opinion retains the upper hand.

In tbe army we encounter the same difference. Among the Aus-

trians a soldier may be beaten, hc is canaille; for whateverhas the

passive right to be beaten is canaille. Thus the common soldier is

for thc officer this abstractum of a bcatable stlbject with whom a

gentleman who has a uniform and port d'epe must trouble him-

self and that could drive one to make a pact with thc devil.