The French Revolution and German Modernity - Hegel

7/21/2019 The French Revolution and German Modernity - Hegel

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The French Revolution and

the

Problem of

German Modernity:

Hegel Heine and

Marx

Harold Mah

The response of

Gennan

intellectuals in

the

late 18th century to the

French Revolution was various and changing. Some were immediately

suspicious

of

the Revolution's intentions and prospects. Goethe

showed a skeptical reserve; Schiller

doubted

its ability to bring about a

free society.l Others who

at

first welcomed

the

Revolution quickly be

came disillusioned when it yielded war, regicide, and Jacobin dictator

ship. Klopstock's initial poetic celebrations gave way to expressions

of

bitter disappointment.

2

Gentz travelled from one extreme to the other:

the Revolution's energetic apologist in 1789, he

had become

by 1792

one

of

its most vociferous critics.

3

But if not all Gennan intellectuals were initially

or

continuously

sympathetic to the Revolution, there was nonetheless a significant

number

who

embraced

it

as

the beginning of a new

and

better era.

4

1. General works

on

the German response to the French Revolution are Jacques

Droz,

I:Allemagne et la revolution franVJise

(Paris: Presses Universitaire

de

France, 1949);

Jurgen

Voss, Deutschlarul urul

die

Franzosische Revolution (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1983);

Maurice Boucher, U Revolution de 1789 vue p r les

ecrivains

allemands

se

contemporains (Paris:

M. Didier, 1954); G.P. Gooch, Germany

arul the French Revolution

(London:

F.

Cass, 1965);

Horst

Gunther, ed.,

Die

franzosische Revolution:

Remhte

urul Deutungen

deutscher Schriflsteller

und Historiker (Frankfurt: Deutscher Classiker Verlag, 1985); Alfred Stern, Der Einfluss der

franzosischen Revolution uf

das deutsche Geistesleben

(Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung,

1928). On Goethe

and

Schiller specifically see Stern 129-144; Gooch 175-207,214-229;

and

Droz 172-186, 207-320.

2. Gooch 119-126; RudolfVierhaus 'Sie und nicht Wir': Deutsche Urteile uber

den Ausbruch der

Franzosischen Revolution,

in

Voss, 1-2.

3.

Gooch 91-103; Droz 371-392.

4. See the general works cited in note 1 especially Stern 3-16. Also see Vierhaus 1-15.

3

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2001 All Rights Reserved


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The French

RevoLution and German

Modernity

And although some

of

these intelleauals later deplored its violence and

authoritarianism, a prominent group, including Kant, Fichte, and Hegel,

remained loyal to what they identified

as

its original impulse. For these

thinkers, the Revolution was a welcome

and

irreversible historical

breakthrough.

5

According to Hegel, the Revolution cleared away an anarchic mass of

antiquated social and political institutions and allowed the most ad

vanced moral and political tendencies in Europe to assume concrete

form. In France, it abolished aristocratic privilege and arbitrary royal au

thority, founding in their places social equality and constitutional, repre

sentative government.

6

Carried by Napoleon's armies into central Eu

rope, the Revolution led to the removal

of

a moribund empire and rem

nants

of

feudal privilege

and

servitude, and it helped to establish rational

legal codes, freedom of property and person, and equal access to gov

ernment service (PH 456 .

Because the Revolution eliminated traditional obstacles to social

equality and constitutional government, German intellectuals could view

it in particular

as

the realization of the Enlightenment and in general

as

the achievement of unfettered reason.7 Or

as

Hegel said, invoking the

significance of

the Revolution in his

leaures on

the philosophy

of

histo

ry,

Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets re

volved around him had it been perceived that man's existence centers in

his head, i.e., in thought, inspired by which he builds

up

the world

of

re

ality (PH 447 . For Hegel and other Germans, the Revolution replaced

a decaying and obsolete social and political order with rational institu

tions. In characterizing the Revolution

as

the heroic consolidation of ra-

tional social and political forms, these Germans (and many commenta

tors today) identified it

as

the decisive arrival of modernity. 8 And

al-

though these German thinkers and writers did not want to emulate the

abrupt and violent manner in which the French constructed modernity,

they nonetheless

hoped

that Germany would follow the Revolution by

5

On

Kant, see Gooch 126-282;

on

Fichte, Gooch 283-295;

on

Hegel, see below.

6 C.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy

o

History trans.

J

Sibree (New York: Dover Publica

tions, 1956) 446-447. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation PH

followed

bv

page number(s). '

7

Vierhaus 8-9.

8

See, for example, M. Rainer Lepsius, Soziologische Theoreme tiber die Sozial

struktur

der 'Modeme' und

'Modemisierung,'

Studien

zum Beginn

de

modernen

Welt

ed.

Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1977) 12 This view is indirectly criticized by

Rolf Reichhardt, Die franzosische Revolution als MaEtab des deutschen 'Sonder

wegs'?, in Voss, 322-324.

-----------_._--_

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2001. All Rights Reserved.


3/18

Harold Mah

creating its own real world

of

reason.

9

Faith in the Revolution's historical validity

as

the breakthrough of mo

dernity,

and

in its relevance for Germany,

was not

easily held, for under

standing the Revolution in this

manner

left German intellectuals with

considerable problems. Perceived

as

the achievement

of

universal reas

on, the Revolution offered a model

of

social

and

political principles that

rational people everywhere were obligated to follow.

lO

Yet

it

was

not at

all

clear that Germany could meet this standard

of

reason

and

modernity.

There was no comparable social

and

political change in Germany 11

The

Napoleonic conquest precipitated social

and

political reform, notably in

Prussia, but that reform ultimately proved ambiguous in its results

and

was followed furthermore by varying degrees of political reaction.

2

t

was also unclear what the Revolution as a measure of social

and

po

litical progress implied for German culture. 18th-century German intel

lectuals had freed themselves only recently from what they had per

ceived to be their tutelage to French culture.

3

From

Sturm und Drang,

through classicism

and

romanticism to idealism, German intellectuals

had steadily gained a sense

of

autonomy

and

accomplishment,

so

that in

the opinion of many turn-of-the-century German thinkers, Germany

was

now a privileged realm

of

spirit

and

intellect, the nation

par excellence of

the Dichter

and

the Denker. I t is a national characteristic only among the

Germans, Friedrich Schlegel wrote in 1799,

to honor art and

learning

as divinities

just

for the sake of

art and

learning themselves. 14

9. V1erhaus 10-12.

10. The rational principles of the Revolution could

be

and were separated from the

means used to realize them; the former were considered essential and universal precepts

that did not have any necessary connection to the particular, contingent or accidental

conditions

of

their realization. See V1erhaus

8

11. V1erhaus

12;

and Ji.irgen Voss, Vorwort, in Voss, viii-ix.

12.

Reinhart

Koselleck,

Preussen

zwischen

Reform

und

Revolution

(Stuttgart:

E

Klett,

1975); Walter Simon, The

Failure

o

he

Prussian

Reform Movement (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,

1955).

13. See Madame

de

Stael,

De

EAllemagne (Paris: Libraire

de

Firmia-Didot, 1876)

112-113; V1erhaus 8

14.

Quoted

in Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and

the

National State (Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1963) 62,

and

see 45, 55,148; Droz 183-185,483-485,487-488.

In

De

L'Allemagne,

Madame

de

Stael

did her best

to fix

the

new

German

cultural identity in

the

minds of

the rest

of Europe,

repeatedly emphasizing that by nature and tradition

Germans were an impractical people, lovers of abstraction; Germany was the country

of thought (11),

the

metaphysical nation par excellence (363). See also 10, 85, 408,

468, 481, 489. The construction of this new cultural identity aided and was aided bv

the university reform

of

the early 19th century. See the articles

of R

Steven Turne;:

The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 - Causes

and

Con

text, Historical Studies in

the

Physical Sciences 3 (1972):137-182; Universi ty Reformers

and Professorial Scholarship; The University in

Society,

ed. Lawrence Stone,

v

2

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6 The

French Revolution

and

German

Modernity

Those German intellectuals who believed in the Revolution's reason

and modernity were part of this efflorescence of intellectual activity and

they shared in its new sense of cultural autonomy and accomplishment.

Yet the cultural politics of turn-of-the-century Germany threatened to in

validate their claim to membership in Germany's new cultural identity.

For German writers

and

thinkers opposed to the Revolution now argued

that Germany's unique culture -

its

special spiritual nature - distin

guished it from France in particular and from social and political moder

nity in general.

5

To align oneself with the modernity of the Revolution

was t declare oneself alien to authentic German spirituality. Intellectuals

who both supported the principles

of

the Revolution

and

wanted a stake

in Germany's new cultural identity therefore needed to show that that

identity could be reconciled with the essential impulses

of

the Revolu

tion. They had to figure Germany's cultural achievement into the equa

tion that defined the meaning of the

modem

age.

This paper examines the evolution

of

this attempt to incorporate Ger

many's new cultural identity into a general discourse

of

modernity de

fined by the French Revolution. By focusing on key writings of Hegel,

Heine, and Marx, I hope to show how this project, difficult from its be

ginning, became ever more problematical during the first half

of

the

19th century. From Hegel to Heine and from Heine to Marx, there

emerged a growing disquiet with Germany's ability to meet the new

standard

of

modernity and a growing skepticism about the accomplish

ments

of

German culture. By mid-century, the project of aligning Ger

many's cultural identity with the putative modernity

of

the French Revo

lution had collapsed. And in its collapse, it paradoxically yielded the

conclusion it

was

initially designed to prevent: that Germany was deeply

and intractably resistant to modernity.16

(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974) 495-531; The Bildungsburgertum

and

the Learned Profes

sions in Prussia, 1770-1830:

The

Origins

of

A Class, Histoire

social/Social

History

8

(1980): 105-136.

15. Droz 483-487; Stae185, 408, 465; Vierhaus 14

The

notion of

an

inheren t antipa

thy between

German

culture

and

a putative social

and

political modernity was powerful

throughout the 19th

and

early the 20th centuries. See Fritz Ringer, The Decline

oj the Ger-

man Mandarins: The German Academic Community 1890 1933 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard

UP, 1969).

In

this paper, I discuss

one

counte rcurrent to this trend; the attempt to integ

rate German culture into a general discourse ofmodernity.

In

a recent book, Jeffrey

Herf

outlines another countercurrent, the converse of the

one

I discuss. He analyzes the early

20th-century attempt to integrate aspects of modernity (i.e., technology) into a general

discourse of a privileged

German

culture. See Herf,

Readionary

Modernism: Technology

Cul-

ture arvl Politics in ~ i m r arvl the Third Reich (Cambridge: Camridge UP, 1984).

16. This view

of

the

Germans has

been

almost a truism

of

German

studies.

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2001. All Rights Reserved


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Harold Mah 7

Hegel:

Aligning France and Germany

In

his lectures

on

the philosophy

of

history, delivered

in

the 1820s

in Berlin, Hegel notes that what underlies and empowers

the

Revolu

tion's achievements

of

social equality

and

representative constitutional

government

is

the principle

of

the absolute will.

The

absolute will,

Hegel claims, is purely formal; it acts without regard for particular in

dividual or social concerns (PH 442). Unrestrained by prior desires, in

terests, morality, religion, history, or politics, it strives for a complete

autonomy. And in seeking to free itself from all given constraints, the

will aspires to

an

abstract universality. t wills that unconstrained will

ing be made a general principle (PH 442-443). Hegel asserts that

both

the achievements

of

the Revolution and its descent into terror, dicta

torship,

and

continuing political instability derive from this abstract

and universalizing will (PH 450-453).

In

the form of the French Revolution, the principle of the absolute

will made a spectacular entry onto the historical stage. But, Hegel

notes, that development is not unique to the French; the principle of

the

absolute will is not exclusive to a particular nation. On the contra

ry, it defines a broader condition, a generalized present - the

last

stage

in

history, Hegel writes, our world, our time (PH 442). The absolute

will, in other words,

must

also have realized itself in Germany.

But,

s

Hegel recognizes, no similar political change,

no

equivalent

political transformation in accordance with the absolute will has occur

red in Germany (PH 443). To bring Germany

under

the purview

of

the

principle

of

the absolute will, Hegel therefore seeks its manifestation in

German developments he considers equivalent to the political devel

opments

of

the French Revolution. Hegel, in other words, resorts to an

interpretive strategy

of

creating homologies

or

plotting parallelisms be

tween diverse forms of phenomena. This strategy assumes that homolo

gous or parallel forms necessarily express the same principle or essence.

In France, Hegel observes, the abstract and universalizing will s-

sumed a practical effect in the form of the Revolution. But in Germa

ny, the absolute will appeared in a different shape, in no other form

Geoffrey Eley's and David

Blackboum's

The Peculiarities a/German History (Oxford: Ox

ford UP, 1984) has recently challenged this view. One

of

the aims

of

my essay

is

to un-

derstand how

and why 19th-century

Germans

themselves came to embrace

what

Eley

and

Blackboum

identifY s a

problematic

conceptualization

of

German history. From

this paper, I hope it will be evident that such a theoretical choice was

by

no means

empirically self-evident, as

many

suggest, but a product

of

historical circumstance and

an

anxiety-ridden manipulation of different theoretical and cultural assumptions.

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The

French Revolution

and German Modernity

than that of

tranquil theory (PH 443). More specifically, Hegel asserts

that

the absolute will

obtained

speculative recognition in Kantian

philosophy (PH 443); Kant achieved for

Germany

what

the

Revolu-

tion accomplished in

FranceY

y

asserting a homology between the disparate forms of philosophy

and

politics, Hegel aligns Germany with

the

French Revolution:

the

Germans have accomplished in theoretical abstraction what the

French have accomplished in practice (PH 444). In drawing this paral-

lelism between German theory

and

French politics, Hegel implicitly

makes a claim for Germany's participation

in

modernity. Germans are

no

less advanced in their thinking than are

the

French in their politics.

Hegel thus establishes a measure of

German

modernity,

but

as he him-

self recognizes, this

attempt

to align Germany with the French Revolu-

tion in a unified vision

of

the

present immediately leads to a further,

pressing question: why

did

the French alone and

not

the Germans

set about realizing [the principle of the absolute

will] ?

(PH 443).

Why France,

not

Germany, for the will's practical realization?

To

an-

swer this question, Hegel looks to what

many

German intelleauals

identified as the source

of

Germany's distinctive spiritual

charaaer,

namely,

the

Reformation. According to Hegel, Luther detached German

consciousness from external authority

and

forced it to rely

on

itself.

Since Luther, German thought has been

charaaerized

by an increasingly

introspective and soulful

inner

life, by a constant deepening

of

inward-

ness

Innerlichkit).

Hegel asserts that this

unique

German characteristic

of

enhanced

Innerlichkit

conditions Germany's acceptance

of

modernity.

Because

of

the Reformation, he argues, Germany developed a broad and

secure spirituality,

an inner

life

that

could absorb the exertions

of

the ab-

solute will (PH 444, 449). Thus the first expressions

of

the absolute will in

the German Enlightenment were entirely compatible with religion, in-

deed, were conducted in the interest

of

theology (PH 444).

In

France,

however, the absence

of a Reformation resulted in a weak and frag-

mented spirituality. Consequently, the absolute will, making its appear-

ance in the Enlightenment, entered into

an

intense and external

conflia

with the Catholic Church. The French never established a general, har-

monious spirituality; the

will

was channeled into

an

adversarial politics

(PH 444, 449). Unlike the situation in Germany, in France there was no

17. For Hegel the idea of the absolute

will

is at the center

of both

Kantian episte-

mology in its

notion of

a transcendental ego

and of

Kantian ethics in its notion

of an

uncompromising good

will. See PH 343.

Co ri ht 2001 All Ri hts Reserved


7/18

Harold

Mah

soothing and all-encompassing Innerlichkeit to render the agitations of

pure will against social institutions into agitations within thought.

Hegel s appeal to German Innerlichkeit to explain why Germany had a

theoretical, rather than political, modernity

is

an

extraordinary vindica

tion of the new German cultural identity. At least since the Reformation,

Hegel argues, Germans have become spiritual people

par

excellence. Their

special spirituality has not precluded modernity but, on the contrary, has

allowed

them

to attain it without succumbing t the excesses of the ev-

olution. Hegel not only claims for German culture a share in modernity,

but further employs the former t banish the potential social and politi

cal problems of the latter. German culture offers a safe passage t mo

dernity, a way of realizing the absolute will while avoiding the violence

and war that accompanied the arrival of political modernity in France.

Hegel goes on t say that

no

revolution can make lasting political gains

without a preceding Reformation, for no revolution can establish free in

stitutions without first cultivating inward spirituality (PH 453). An endur

ing modernity can be founded only on an established Innerlichkeit.

8

With his strategy of plotting parallelisms or creating homologies,

Hegel redeems German culture for the modem age and, even more,

identifies it as the preferred form of modernity. But at the same time that

Hegel justifies Germany s cultural identity and protects its claim t mo

dernity, he also recognizes that German culture remains an incomplete

embodiment of

modernity.

He

cannot

be

content with

Innerlichkeit

alone.

For if the freedom of the will is limited to the inner life of human beings,

a disjunction could arise between internal states of mind and external

states of objective social existence. The

will

cannot be truly or fully free if

its

domain is confined t thinking. To avoid this potential dissonance be

tween thought

and

reality, Hegel s answer to the question of why the will

realizes itself in France, not Germany, ultimately leads to a second asser

tion about the nature

of

German politics. Hegel returns from

Innerlichkeit

t political reality.

He proceeds by claiming that the Reformation has brought some so

cial and political reform, particularly in areas associated with the Church

and

with the religious foundations

of

government (PH 445). These devel

opments are harbingers of further and deeper change: Thus the princi

ple of thought was already so far reconciled [in German religion]; also

18. Also see C.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology o

Spirit

trans. A.v. Miller (Oxford: Ox-

ford UP, 1979) 328-364. Here Hegel gives a fuller account of the link

between

will,

En-

lightenment,

religion, the Terror, and Kantian

philosophy.

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8/18

10 The French Revolution and

German

Modernity

the Protestant world

had

the

consciousness

that in the earlier developed reconcilia-

tion the

principle was

present

for

the further formation of right (PH 445).19

The

Refonnation and the creation of an intensive Gennan spiritual

ity promise future social and political improvement. From the homol

ogy between the French Revolution and

Gennan Innerlichkeit,

Hegel

projects

another

hannonizing alignment of

Gennan

politics. Indeed,

without this promise the original parallelism

is

unstable; it threatens to

collapse into fixed dichotomies

of

thought and being, Innerlichkeit and

political reality, Gennany and France.

In

this sense, both the original

parallelism and Gennany's claim t modernity are sustained by the

promise of refonn. That promise ultimately guarantees the coherence

of

Hegel's interpretation

of

the modernity of Gennan culture.

20

Heine: Reconstructing and

Preseroing

German Culture

In 1834, the dissident political poet Heinrich Heine published in

Parisian exile On the History

of

Religion

and

Philosophy in Genna

ny.

In

this writing,

Heine

intended t educate

the

French

about

Ger

man culture, particularly since he believed the Gennans had been mis

infonned by the conservative Madame de Stael in her earlier work De

EAllemagne.

21

But Heine's writing also served another end: it continued

Hegel's project of aligning

Gennany

with France, of integrating the

new

Gennan

cultural identity into a unified view of modernity. Al-

though Heine

followed Hegel in serving this general cause, he did so

under altered circumstances. In the decade after Hegel's lectures, a

strengthening conservatism dominated politics in Gennany. A repre

sentative constitution was never established in Prussia; liberal move

ments, particularly following the 1830 revolutions in France and else

where, were subject to intensified censorship and repression.

The

dwindling of political refonn on the

Gennan

horizon led, in fact, t

Heine's decision to transplant himself to Paris. His attempt to align

19. This

is

a modified version of Sibree's translation.

The

original reads: So war

das

Prinzip

des Denkens

schon

so

weit versohnt; auch hatte

die

protestantische

UHt

in ihr

das Bewusstsein, dass in der friiher explizierlen Vtmiihnung das Prinzip

zur

weiteren

Ausbildung

des

Rechts vorhanden sei. C W F Hegel, Philosophie

der

Geschichte (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam,

1961) 591.

20. On

the

specifics of Hegel's political progranl see Harold

Mah,

The

End oJPhilos-

ophy, the Origin

o

Ideology : Karl Marx and

the

Crisis

o the

Young Hegelians (Berkeley

and

Los Angeles: U of California P, 1987) 20-45.

21. See

Heinrich Heine,

Die

romantische

Schule,

Beitriige zur deutschen Ideologie,

ed.

Hans

Mayer (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1971) 116-117;

and

Les Aveux

d'un

Poete, Re-

vue

des

deux

Mondes

15 September 1854) 1173.

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9/18

Harold

Mah

Germany with France could therefore no longer rely

on

the promise

of

imminent political reform; the unfolding of events

had

invalidated

Hegel's simple

guarantee.

Preserving a claim to

modernity

required

the German

cultural identity

be

made

to address the

more

clearly con

strained political situation

of

the time. To save German culture for mo

dernity Heine now

found

that he had to reconstruct it.

Heine begins by telling his readers that Germany's present social

and

political situation

is

equivalent to France's before the Revolution.

The German

people are still

dominated

by

an

authoritarian Christiani

ty and

the

institutions of

the

old regime. Germany is thus socially and

politically retrograde, far behind the developments

of

contemporary

France.

22

But like Hegel before him, Heine does not believe that this

discrepancy between

German and

French politics signifies a total lack

of

modernity in Germany. Setting

out

an

interpretive strategy similar

to Hegel's, Heine points to a remarkable parallelism between Ger

man philosophy

and

the French Revolution (RP 200).

Like Hegel,

Heine

sees this parallelism appear in particularly striking

form in Kantian philosophy. With Kant's Critique

o

Pure Reason Heine

writes, there began in Germany an intellectual revolution which pres

ents the

most

striking analogies to the material revolution in France and

which must seem just as important RP 200).

The

German revolu

tion in thought and the French revolution in politics passed through

the same stages. Where Robespierre and the Terror overthrew all

past forms

of

political authority and abolished the monarchy, Kant crit

icized all previous epistemological authority and did away with deism.

Napoleon, the conqueror

of

Europe, found a German alter-ego in

Fichte's world-creating

Ich.

Schelling's nature philosophy,

and

his ulti

mate

tum t Catholicism and absolutism mirrored restoration in

France. The overthrow

of

the restoration and the resulting political situ

ation in France found its equivalent in the defeat

of

conservative

Naturphilosophie

by Hegel and his followers. Hegel, Heine notes,

closed the great circle of philosophical revolutions RP 199-240).

By asserting this homology between German thought and French

politics, Heine the poet

and

thinker can claim for German culture a

22.

Heinrich Heine, Concerning the

History of Religion

and

Philosophy

in

Ger

many,

in The

Romantic

Sclwol nd

Other Essays

eds.

J.

Hermand

and

R.C.

Holub

(New

York: Continuum Books, 1985) 129. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation

RP followed

by page

number(s).

The German edition

is

found in

Mayer,

Beitriige

zur

deutschen Ideologie.

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10/18

2 The

French Revolution

and German Modernity

share

of modernity. But for

Heine

the political dissident, Germany s

cultural analogue to France s political modernity is deeply unsatis

ring. In the

end he

is still in exile and his fellow Germans continue to

live

under

unconstitutional

rule

and

censorship.

In other

words, by es

tablishing the

homology

between

German

thought

and

French action,

Heine approaches the same issue that Hegel was forced to confront:

the further synchronization of

German

politics with a modern Ger

man culture. The problem for

Heine

as it was earlierfor Hegel, is

how

to

demonstrate that German

practice will align with

German

theory.

Here Heine reverses Hegel s procedure. Hegel argued that reason was

increasingly present in history, assuming in Germany introverted spiritu

al

forms that in

turn

created

an

inner disposition for rational political re

form. Heine, however, argues that spiritual

or

idealistic dispositions are

inherently authoritarian, distracting

one

from the concrete concerns

of

politics

and

hence implicitly providing

support

for tyranny.

To

this

he

contrasts sensualism - the glorification of matter, the concern with sen

suous satisfaction - as the radical agent of history: it focuses one s atten

tion on the real world of politics (RP 146-147, 167, 177-181).

To

establish

the

possibility of political change in Germany,

Heine

must now

locate a source of sensualism in

German

institutions

and

tra

ditions.

In

France, he argues, sensualism appeared in the uncompro-

mising materialist philosophies of the Enlightenment (RP 168-169);

in

Germany, it

assumed

a more mystical form,

rooted

in

that

country s

pagan

past.

t appeared

as

pantheism

as a belief

in the

unity

of the

di

vine

and

the natural, of god and

matter

(RP 137).

Heine s

argument

for the possibility of political change in Germany

follows a different tack from Hegel s; the two,

in

fact, seem to proceed in

different directions.

To

maintain the possibility

of

political change in

Germany, Heine identifies in Germany s past a radical sensualism, there

by repudiating Hegel s belief in a characteristic

German

spirituality.

By

extension, one might conclude that Heine also repudiates Germany s

new cultural identity.

The

notion of

the German poet and

thinker as

privileged vessels of spirituality must seem to him hopelessly reactionary.

But Heine in fact does

not

repudiate the German cultural identity.

Against the conventional emphasis

on German

spirituality, he identifies

a different content - i.e., sensualism - in German culture, but he

places this new content into the same forms of German culture that

Hegel determined as the defining manifestations of German spirituality.

Heine, in other words, retains the progression of cultural forms that con

ventionally defined Germany s new cultural identity.

He

adheres to the

Copyright



11/18

Harold Mah JJ

conventional terms that

add

up to a special German culture, but he

gives those terms a new substance and consequence.

With Hegel, Heine sees Luther's Reformation s a watershed in the

development of Germany in particular and

of

humanity in general. It

marks a qualitative advance in freedom. But in direct opposition to

Hegel, Heine identifies the Reformation's progressive aspect in Luther's

sensualism, in his recognition of the legitimacy of ordinary, material

life.

23

Luther's sensualism passes into the pantheistic philosophy

of

Spinoza,

and

through Spinoza enters German philosophy, finding its

highest manifestations in Schelling and Hegel. Pantheism thus entrench

es itself in German religion and philosophy. And because Hegel has

closed the great circle

of philosophical revolutions, because panthe

ism has reached its highest point in theory, it will now, according to Hei

ne, necessarily empty into reality. Because of these doctrines, Heine

writes, revolutionary forces have developed that are only waiting for the

day when they can break out and fill the world with terror and with ad

miration RP 242). Heine concludes On the History

of

Religion and

Philosophy in Germany with a prediction of imminent revolution in

Germany, warning the French that, if they should interfere, the coming

bloodbath in Germany will engulf

them as

well

RP

244).

Like Hegel, Heine establishes a parallelism between German culture

and the French Revolution in

order

to preserve the former's historical

legitimacy. Germany's new cultural identity -

the German as the

poet

and

thinker p r excellence - also participates in modernity. But given

the

decade of political reaction following Hegel's lectures on

the

phi

losophy

of

history, Heine can no longer guarantee that relation by sim

ply asserting the imminence

of

the synchronization of German politics

with

German

theory.

To

argue

that

German culture presages

or

will is-

sue in further political improvement now requires a reworking of the

meaning

of

German culture, a Hegelian

ujhebung

that would at once

transform that culture, render it

more

compatible with

the

radical re

quirements of the age, yet preserve its customary, defining forms.

In

Heine's rewriting

of

the

German

cultural identity, Germany remains

unique

and

praiseworthy for

the

increasing depth and sophistication

of its religious and philosophical achievements, but those achievements

are no longer to be seen

as

substantively spiritual. The conventional

23. This appears, according to Heine, in Luther 's origins, blunt personality, repudi

ation of celibacy for priests, and abandonment

of

miracles, among other things (RP

152-162).

Copyright



12/18

4

The

French Revolution

and German

Modernity

signifiers

of

Germany's cultural identity represent,

behind

their appar

ent spirituality, a deeper, subversive sensualism.

Heine's attempted renovation

of the

project to align Germany with the

French Revolution indicates that that project had become ever

more

problematical since Hegel's lectures in the 1820s. German culture's

claim to modernity had become increasingly difficult to sustain in the

face

of

German politics's

apparent

hostility to the rational principles

of

the French Revolution.

That

Heine

experienced considerable difficulty

in carrying

out

this project

of

cultural legitimation

is

evident

as

well in

another, striking way

In

the course

of

reconstructing a

modem

German

cultural identity,

he

betrays

an

unsettling anxiety that such a project

is

ul

timately untenable. In a burst of ironic self-criticism, he in fact defeats his

own attempt to preserve the modernity of German culture.

As we have seen, Heine's

argument

has two steps. First, he argues

that Germany's philosophical development - from Kant to Hegel -

mirrors France's political development; this establishes Germany's par

ticipation in modernity. Second, to get from thinking to acting,

Heine

argues that

the

revolution in

German thought

marks the culmination

of

the development

of

a pantheism that

is

inherently revolutionary. Now

that the theoretical revolution is

over,

modem

pantheism will

pour

into

the real world.

Heine

never fully explains, however, this passage from

theoretical pantheism to revolutionary action. He does not show

how

it

will

happen

empirically

or

institutionally,

but

merely asserts the devel

opment

as a kind of logical deduction that follows necessarily from

the

internal workings

of

pantheist consciousness.

24

But this assertion

is

diffi

cult to accept. It

is

neither logically self-evident nor,

as Heine

shows,

justified by how his pantheists actually behaved.

Few pantheists were revolutionaries. Heine tells us that some, such as

the romantics

and

Goethe, were politically conservative

or

at best politi

cally indifferent.

And

he recognizes that Schelling,

one

of the

most

ac

complished pantheists

of

Germany's philosophical revolution, became

increasingly conservative in politics

and

religion, ultimately converting

like other romantic pantheists to Catholicism (RP 237-239). Brooding

over Schelling's

apparent

political backsliding,

Heine

notes that not

just

Schelling

but

also Kant

and

Fichte can be accused of desertion.

In

24. Heine:

In

my

opinion,

a

methodical people

like us

had

t

begin with

the

Ref

ormation,

only after that

could

it occupy itself with philosophy,

and

only after comple

tion of the latter could it go

on

to political revolution. I find this sequence very ration

al (RP 242).

Copyright



13/18

Harold Mah

5

their later years, according to Heine, they

became

apostates of their

own philosophies (RP 239).

Heine's extended reflection

on

Schelling's actual political behavior

thus spirals into a refutation

of

his

argument

about

pantheism's revo

lutionary potential, and hence denies German culture's claim to mo

dernity. To

put

this another way, Heine deconstructs the elaborate

system

of

interpretation he is simultaneously erecting. As he dwells

on

the real consequences of pantheism, his carefully demarcated system

of oppositions (spiritualism

vs.

sensualism, conservatism

vs.

radical

ism) and affinities (Germany and France, thought and action) begins to

collapse into a confusion of categories: sensualism can lead to political

conservatism, modern philosophy consorts with retrograde romanti

cism, thought repudiates action.

Heine thus works towards contradictory aims.

He

both

argues for a

position

and

undermines it.

In

On the History of Religion

and

Philos

ophy in Germany, this contradictory, self-negating procedure abrupdy

results in a rhetorical stalemate: Heine suddenly cuts off the flow of his

exposition. Immediately after claiming that Germany's great pantheists

have so frequendy turned apostate, he intetjects: I don't know why

this last sentence has such a depressingly paralyzing effect on my feel

ings that I am simply unable to communicate here the remaining bitter

truths about Mr. Schelling as he

is

today (RP 239).

Heine

then tries to

make his way back to his argument about the essential radicalism and

ultimate modernity

of

German

pantheism.

He

arbitrarily suppresses

his doubts

and

turns to happier thoughts: Instead [of dwelling

on

the

late Schelling] let us praise that earlier Schelling . . . for the earlier

Schelling, like Kant and Fichte, represents one of the great phases of

our

philosophical revolution, which I have compared in these pages

with the phases

of the

political revolution in France RP 239). Forcibly

fixing his attention on the

more

promising youth of pantheism, Heine

continues his argument about the inherent political radicalism

of

Ger

man theory. His answer to his anxieties

is

to evade them.

But his evasions catch up with him. In the 1852 preface to the second

edition

of

On the History

of

Religion and Philosophy in Germany,

Heine in effect repudiates the central argument

of

his study. He admits

that he was wrong to claim practical power for what he had identified as

the

most

radical of

German

philosophies. Hegel's radical followers, he

points out, have proved incapable of changing reality

RP

5).25 Even in

25. Also see

Heine,

Les Aveux 1169-1206.

In On the

History of Religion and

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14/18

16 The French Revolution

and Gennan

Modernity

its

most

developed form, then,

German pantheism

does

not empty

automatically its energies into reality. With this striking confession in

his preface, the entire argument of the

subsequent

text is fatally

dam

aged

and,

even

more

dearly

than

in Hegel's case,

Germany's

cultural

identity again

runs the

risk of

being

cut adrift

from the modernity

of

the French Revolution.

Marx: Gennan Culture Acknowledged nd Overcome

In the decade following Heine's On Religion and Philosophy in

Germany,

German

liberals

and

radicals made few gains. The

1840

ac

cession of Frederick William IV

to the

Prussian crown ultimately

brought about

a renewed wave of political repression, which in

1843

led the

young

Karl Marx to make his way to Paris. Here, like Heine be

fore him,

Marx reconsidered the

cultural

and

political situation in Ger

many,

measuring

it against

the standard

of

modernity

identified with

the French Revolution. Marx's only published writing

in

Paris, the

Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, shows

how

a

further

10 years of political conservatism had left

the

earlier

hopes

of Hegel

and

Heine in

complete

ruins.

Like Hegel and Heine before him, Marx measures contemporary

Germany

against

the

French Revolution and finds it politically want

ing. Germany,

Marx

states bluntly, is an

anachronism,

a flagrant con

tradiction

of

generally recognized axioms. 26 Indeed, German condi

tions are so retrograde that even abolishing them would not bring Ger

many up-to-date:

If

I negate the

German

state of affairs

in 1843,

then,

according to

the

French

computation

of time, I

am

hardly in the year

of

1789,

and still less

in

focus of the present (IN

176).

But again like Hegel

and

Heine, Marx concedes that Germany is not

altogether without modernity;

he

agrees that modernity has manifested

itself in German thought. We are the

philosophical

contemporaries of the

Philosophy in Germany, Heine in fact contradicts himself in his assessment

of

Hegel.

He

characterizes Hegelian theory as radical

and

even potentially bloodthirsty, yet at

another point

refers to Hegel as a

moderate

spirit (RP 237).

And

in

another

writing

he

compares Hegelian theory to Orleanist government, which is

full of

rival political groups.

This would also suggest that Hegelian theory might have a character other than the revo

lutionary one he imputes

t it

Heine, Introduction to

Kahldorf

Concerning

the

Nobility in

Letters to Count M von Moltke in The Romantic Sclwol

and Other

Essays

246

26. Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique

of

Hegel's Philosophy

of Law.

Intro

duction, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,

Colleded

Works v 3 (New York: Intemational

Publishers, 1976)

78

Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation IN followed by

page number(s).

------------_.

_._

_----------------

Copyright



15/18

Harold

Mah

17

present,

Marx

writes, without

being

its historical

contemporaries

(IN

180).

Modern

politics has appeared

in Germany

as modern philoso

phy: In politics the Germans thought what other nations did (IN 181).

To

determine

Germany's place

in

modem

history,

Marx

begins with

the

same interpretive

move used

by Hegel

and

Heine:

he

constructs a

homology

or parallelism between French politics

and German

thought.

But he deploys this tactic in the service of a quite different strategy.

Hegel

and Heine

drew their parallelism

in

order to align

German

cul

ture

with

the

putative

modernity

of

the

French Revolution.

Germany

could thus justifiably claim a share of modernity.

To

sustain this paral

lelism, these thinkers then argued that modem

German

ideas were har

bingers of modem political reform. The

modernity

of

German thought

pointed

to

the imminence

of a modem

German

politics.

Marx, however, sets the assertions

of

Hegel

and

Heine

against them

selves. He accepts

the

new

German

cultural identity - the idea that the

German Dichter and

Denker are of a special

nature

-

and

with Hegel

and

Heine,

he

grants

that

identity a modem character.

But then

departing

from the earlier interpretive pattern, he refuses to take the next step;

he

refuses to predict a

subsequent harmonization

of

German

politics with

German

theory.

And in an

ironic reversal

of

Hegel's

and Heine's

earlier

reasoning, Marx justifies this refusal by appealing to the modernity

of

German

thought:

in

Marx's view, the

modernity

of

German

culture pre-

cludes the

possibility of a modem

German

politics.

For Marx,

the

parallelism between

German thought

and

French poli

tics no longer portends a fulfilled

German

political modernity. On the

contrary, this parallelism suggests to Marx

that

Germany is irredeem

ably anachronistic.

Where

Hegel

and Heine argued

for

the modernity

of German theory despite the backwardness of

German

politics, Marx

argues that

the

theory is advanced precisely because

the

politics are ret

rograde. The abstraction

and

conceit of [Germany's]

thought, he

writes, always kept in step with the one-sidedness and stumpiness

of

its

reality The status quo of German

political

theory expresses the imperfec-

tion of he modem

state the defectiveness of

the

flesh itself (IN 181). Ger

man

philosophy,

in

short,

is

the way

Germans make up

for a

bad

reality

- it compensates in

thought

for an inadequate politics.

Marx

sees

German philosophy and

politics locked

in an

inverse rela

tionship: s politics becomes increasingly retrograde, theory compen-

sates by

becoming

increasingly modem.

And

s theory continues to de

velop

an

advanced modernity, it allows politics to

become more

deeply

and perversely anachronistic. The current state of German culture

Copyright



16/18

18

The

French Revolution

and

German Modernity

and politics

now

begins

to

combine

the

civilized shortcomings of

he

mod-

ern

world

with the

barbaric

deficiencies

of

he

ancien

regieme (IN 183). It

shares

the

restorations of modern nations without sharing their

revolutions (IN 176).

Germany,

Marx

predicts, will

one

day find

itself on

the

level of European

decadence

before ever having

been

on

the

level of European emancipation (IN 183).

Against Hegel and Heine, Marx does not believe that German phi

losophy foreshadows a modern German politics or works to realize it.

On the contrary,

the modernity

of German

philosophy

depends en

tirely

on

its inverse, the backwardness of political reality. The existence

of

the

former presupposes

the

latter. For Marx in 1843,

the

issue is not

whether

German reality

can

catch up to German theory

and

thereby

match the political modernity

of

other nations. The perverse symbiosis

between

the

modernity

of

German thought and

its retrograde political

practice precludes

that

possibility. Germany, in short, has no chance of

ever reaching the present.

In Marx's view, Germany's new cultural identity merely shows that it

is hopelessly anachronistic; bound to a retrograde politics, this identity

ensures

that

German conditions remain below

the

level of history

(IN 177). Germany

is

stranded

in

time, its theory fixed to the present,

its politics to the past. In the last pages of the Introduction, Marx in

fact goes

on

to say

that Germany

lacks the usual resources for concrete

historical

development

- its petty states and enervated classes

are

in

adequate

agents

of

change

(IN

184-85).27

Germany's only hope for rejoining

the

historical mainstream is to

repudiate

the past

and

the

present,

and Marx

insists they they must do

this without appealing to anything considered characteristically Ger

man - neither to German culture, nor to German politics and society.

Marx

looks within

Germany

for an agent of history

that

owes

nothing

to

German

culture and institutions. He in fact paradoxically defines

this new historical actor by its exemption from the society and culture

that generated it; it

is

a

class

of

civil society which

is

not

a class

of

civil society;

an

estate

which

is

the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which can no

longer invoke a

historical but

only a human title, which does

not

stand in anyone-sided antithesis to

the

consequences but in

an

all

round antithesis to the premises of the German state (IN 186).

27. See also Karl Marx

and

Friedrich Engels, The

German

Ideology, in

Collected

Works,

v 5,193-196.

Copyright



17/18

Harold Mah

9

With this obscure, paradoxical formulation, Marx for the first time

calls on

the

proletariat to assume a decisive role

in

history. The prole

tariat in its first manifestation as an agent of history

is

to serve as Ger

many s redeemer.

28

The nd of Discourse

The movement from Hegel to Heine and then to Marx does not

mark a simple shift from idealism to materialism. All three thinkers are

in a sense materialist; each recognizes Germany s problem

in

the 19th

century

s

social and political, a lack

of

what they believed to be mod-

ern social and political institutions. Rather, the movement from Hegel

through Heine to Marx suggests

the

progressive erosion

of

a particular

attempt to legitimate the new cultural ideal

of German

intellectuals,

which was established at the turn of century

and

projected through it.

From Hegel to Heine to Marx, the

German

cultural identity - the

German

as poet and

philosopher

p r

excellence

-

became

increasingly

untenable

when

measured against the putative modernity

of

the

French Revolution.

Hegel and Heine erected a parallelism between contemporary

French politics and

German thought

in order to justify a German

claim to modernity; in this way, Germany could be counted

s

part of

the

avant-garde of history. They self-consciously erected this parallel

ism because

of

Germany s apparent lack of modernity. But while this

interpretive strategy acknowledges

that

it derives from the absence of

political modernity in Germany, it also denies that absence, asserting

that the

current

homology between French politics and German theo

ry must lead to further homologous developments in German politics.

The modernity

of

German

thought renders a

modern

German politics

28. Marx's

description

of the

proletariat

here is clearly at

odds

with his

description

of

it in

subsequent

writings.

In the Communist Manifesto and other

works, he speaks

of

the proletariat as strictly a class, rather than also

an

estate. He further drops the ob-

scure

notion that

it

is

not

part of

society,

making

it instead

one of the

polarities in

the

defining conflict

of

modern

society.

In the Introduction, Marx seems

t

identify

the

emergence of the proletariat as the

unique

answer to Germany's particular cultural

and

po:itical situation, but it

is unclear

how it fits into

the development of

other,

more

consistently

developed

countries. In later writings,

of

course, he removes the prole

tariat from a

unique German

situation

and

integrates it into the

normal

evolution of

all industrial societies. At the same time, Marx in

particular

and

German socialism in

general progressively ignore the peculiarities that Marx originally saw in Germany.

In

other

words, as Marxism becomes increasingly systematized, both

the

proletariat

and

Germany are fitted into a general, uniform development of industrial capitalism.

Copyright



18/18

2 The rench Revolution and erman Modernity

inevitable.

The

parallelism between French politics and German thought

therefore seeks t rectify its own political preconditions - to over

throw the

given of Germany s political backwardness.

The apparent continued

resistance

of

Germany

to a political

moder

nity ultimately

undermined

the optimistic belief that German politics

would soon

harmonize

with

German

culture.

As the

prospect of politi

cal

reform disappeared

from the

horizon, the attempts to

ground

it in a

putative German cultural modernity became increasingly strained. By

the mid-1840s, Marx no longer expected the inverse relation between

German thought and German

reality to correct itself in favor of the mo

dernity of thought. In 1843,

he

turns

the

project of aligning

German

culture with the French Revolution against itself. For Marx, German

thought

is as advanced as French modernity,

but

that does

not

prefig

ure

a

modem German

politics. On

the

contrary, Germany s culture has

made great achievements in order to forget its retrograde politics; the

German cultural identity is constructed on a wishful suppression of its

political preconditions.

The

inverse relation between

German thought

and German

reality

is

necessary

and

inescapable, for

German thought

is modem precisely because German reality is backward.

In turning

the

interpretive strategy of Hegel

and Heine

against itself,

Marx provides

an

ironic

commentary on

his predecessors.

In

Marx s

account, the attempts to justify the modernity

of

German culture are se

cond-order manifestations of German perversity. They are faltering,

self-deceived attempts at historical self-consciousness. They recognize

Germany s

anomalous

place in history

but then

seek to escape it in

wish-fulfillment, in the delusion of an

imminent

and necessary political

harmonization, in a false faith in a

coming

and uniform modernity.

The self-consciousness of Hegel and Heine therefore ends up repro

ducing the condition it hoped t overcome; it issues a powerless and

isolated affirmation of

the

modernity of

German

culture. By turning

upon

the interpretive strategy that

he himself

deploys, Marx brings to a

close in his

Introduction

a multi-generational discourse that strove to

fit

German

culture into a general system of modernity. His contribution

t that discourse ironically

condemns

it

he

accuses it

of

complicity in

rendering

Germany

anachronistic.

Documents

The French Revolution and German Modernity - Hegel