Keywords

Rightly considered the most systematic of German idealists, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) elaborated a comprehensive philosophical system which, he believed, could consistently explain how everything in the world, including our thoughts, is interrelated. It is hard to overestimate his ambition and the complexity of his undertaking, which, together with the highly abstract metaphysical background of his philosophy, has led to a number of misinterpretations and misconceptions about both his philosophical project and its results. Hegel’s writings are difficult to read and comprehend, yet his many valuable insights into numerous topics remain philosophically significant today and secure for him a permanent place in philosophy and its history.

This chapter sketches the thinker’s life and views him in the context of his historical time and intellectual milieu. It does not attempt to discuss all the nuances of Hegel’s intellectual development. There are many outstanding biographies of Hegel published only in recent years (Pinkard 2000; Althaus 2000; Fulda 2003; Vieweg 2019), and it would be hard to surpass either their details or their breadth. My more modest aim is to explore links between Hegel’s life, philosophical ideas, and specific intellectual context that together can provide the context necessary for a thorough understanding of the thinker and his ideas.

This chapter examines the most formative and decisive periods of Hegel’s life, which either significantly impacted his thought or reflected some notable changes in his philosophical views. It begins with a discussion of the early stage of Hegel’s intellectual development, which focuses on his life in Stuttgart (most notably 1777–1788), then turns to Hegel’s time in Tűbingen and his interactions with Hölderlinand Schelling that proved to be instrumental to his philosophical self-awareness (1788–1793). The third section considers the transitional years between his time as a student and the beginning of his academic career, as he first tries his hand at writing philosophical essays (1793–1800), the fourth turns to Hegel’s stay at Jena where he successfully launched his university career (1801–1806), the fifth section draws from Hegel’s years outside the university (1807–1816), the sixth examines a short two-year period at Heidelberg, and the final, seventh, section addresses the Berlin period, perhaps the most productive of Hegel’s philosophical career (1818–1831). I thus aim to consider Hegel in his natural setting, i.e. the historical and intellectual context that shaped him as an individual and influenced the development of his philosophical thought.

1 Early Life and First Encounter with Philosophy

The son of Georg Ludwig Hegel and Maria Magdalena Louisa, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on 27 August, 1770 in Stuttgart, the capital of the Duchy of Württemberg. The youngest of six children, only he, his sister Christiane Luise, and his brother Georg Ludwig survived into adulthood. Throughout his life Hegel was plagued by health difficulties and, in his early years, suffered through several life-threatening illnesses. Hegel’s father, Georg Hegel, had studied law at Tűbingen University and eventually became a secretary to the revenue office at the court of Wűrttemberg. Equally impressive, Hegel’s mother was unusually educated for a woman of her time.

The Hegel family was moderately well off in comparison to other households, which allowed them to move close to the “non-noble notables” (Ehrbarkeit) “who staffed the Wűrttemberg assembly of estates and who had a near-monopoly on the better, more prestigious positions in Württemberg” (Pinkard 2000, 5). However, Hegel’s family was not part of this establishment and had to rely on education and the opportunities procured through their hard work and talent instead of familial or social connections. As a child, at the age of three, Hegel began attending German School. In addition, his mother taught him Latin at home, and by the time he was placed in Latin School, he already knew basic Latin. No doubt, this emphasis on education and learning would characterize Hegel’s views on the role education (both as schooling and as enculturation [Bildung]) would play in the modern world.

When Hegel was eleven, his mother died from bilious fever (a sort of acute intestinal or malarial fever) that spread through Stuttgart. Hegel himself barely survived and, as a result of the disease, developed a speech impediment characterized by stuttering and periodic gasping, with which he had to cope his entire life. His mother’s death had a lasting, traumatic impact on the young boy, who was now left in the care of his father.

In 1784, Hegel was admitted to the Gymnasium Illustre in Stuttgart. The school, like many others during this period, was unorderly and in a state of partial disarray. Nonetheless, it managed to combine Enlightenment thought with the Protestant humanism of the Renaissance, thus giving Hegel a sense of both tradition and progress in his youth. The decision to send the boy to the Gymnasium was likely a compromise between his father, who wanted to provide Hegel with an Enlightenment education, and his deceased mother’s desire to see her son studying theology at Tűbingen. As some of the seats at Tűbingen were reserved for students who attended the Gymnasium, Hegel could get an Enlightenment education and still be qualified for a theological career (Pinkard 2000, 8).

One of the most significant influences on Hegel’s thought during this period was his friendship with Professor Jacob Friedrich von Abel, a faculty member of the Karlsschule, a unique educational institution founded by Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg to train officials and high ranking military officers in the new sciences.1 Hegel’s sister wrote that von Abel “fostered” Hegel (or made him his “protégé”), so it should be no surprise that, when Abel voiced his opinion on the debate surrounding Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any FutureMetaphysics through the publication of his 1787 book Versuch über die Natur der speculativen Vernunft zur Prüfung des Kantischen Systems (An Essay on the Nature of Speculative Reason for a Test of the Kantian System), Hegel would take his mentor’s opinion very seriously.

Abel’s book sought to defend the traditional rationalist metaphysical stance against Kant’s claims that positive metaphysical knowledge of the world is impossible, and that all one can know is the negative claim that there are metaphysical things. Moreover, in light of the view that God is a metaphysical being, Kant’s argument held that one cannot know anything of God. It was this line of thought that Professor Abel attacked in his book, which claimed that the world simply must have a creator and that this divine creator establishes the relation of our experience to the world (Pinkard 2000, 13). This book was one of Hegel’s first introductions to Kant’s philosophy, and given the influence that his mentor had on him, it is likely that Hegel would have been inclined to have a highly critical view of Kant’s philosophy. Indeed, his anti-Kantianism seems to be confirmed by his dismissive attitude toward Kantian philosophy over the next several years.

While Hegel might have held less than enthusiastic views about Kant’s philosophical system, he was greatly swayed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), whose attitude toward philosophy and education of the general public made a substantial impact on Hegel’s intellectual development. In a letter to Hegel, one of his contemporaries, Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, observes:

The study of your system of science has convinced me that someday, when the time for understanding has come, this work will be viewed as the elementary text of human emancipation, as the key to the new Gospel announced by Lessing. (Letters 558)

Lessing, a philosopher, writer, publicist, and art critic, was widely regarded as one of the German-speaking world’s most prominent “men of letters.” In particular, Hegel became fascinated with Lessing’s role as an “educator of the people” (Volkserzieher) and envisioned a similar future for himself. His diary was filled with musings on what being an educator of the people entailed, and what exactly he would teach all of them.2

2 Time in Tübingen: Acquaintance with Hölderlin and Schelling, and Lived Experience of the French Revolution

In 1788, Hegel began his studies at the Tübinger Stift, a Protestant theological Seminary, which he entered with the intent of studying theology and eventually becoming a Lutheran pastor.3 Many commentators and biographers of Hegel underscore the idyllic setting of the Stift on the bank of the Neckar River and the glorious traditions of this oldest of theological institutions, whose roots can be traced to the Middle Ages (see Plant 1999). Yet, at the time of Hegel’s arrival, the Stift was in such a state of decline that it was in danger of closing altogether: the lecturing material was antiquated, the professoriate was comprised of amateurs who were only able to teach in virtue of their family relationships or friendship with the Stift administration, and the Seminary’s antiquated mission of providing corrective attitudes towards the students was oppressive. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that Hegel’s initial reaction was one of overwhelming disappointment and discouragement. Nonetheless, two major events that happened during Hegel’s stay in Tübingen altered the course of his life forever.

The first event was not a single moment in time, but rather two separate happenings stretched over several years. Both of them involved developing lasting friendships that had a crucial formative significance. The first occurred during Hegel’s first year at the Stift, when he struck up a friendship with Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), a same-year student who, like Hegel, felt alienated and frustrated with the way the school was being run. Hölderlin, who would grow into a key figure of German Romanticism and one of the most renowned poets of his era, tremendously influenced the direction of Hegel’s intellectual development and became an invaluable asset for Hegel later on in his life. Another of Hegel’s formative experiences was associated with an event that occurred a few years later, during the fall term of 1790. This is when Hegel and Hölderlin first crossed paths and developed a close friendship with a student several years younger than they. That student was Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), who himself would later become one of the most renowned representatives of the German idealist movement, eventually succeeding Hegel at the University of Berlin after the thinker’s death.

The influence Hölderlinand Schelling had on Hegel’s intellectual development was immense, although this outcome could not have been predicted while the three were still in Tübingen.4 They might have shared similar views (they all vowed not to become pastors, for instance), but there were distinct ways in which their beliefs diverged that determined their later philosophical views and career paths. This was especially true with regards to Kantian philosophy. While Hölderlin and Shelling actively participated in a Kant club that students organized at the Seminary, Hegel decided not to join or even take part in discussions held there. At that point in his life, he still did not see himself as becoming a philosopher; rather, he still planned to follow in Lessing’s footsteps and become a religious and moral reformer of the people like the man he admired. Furthermore, his suspicion of Kant’s philosophy, which he had likely maintained since his time in Württemberg, surely dampened his desire to study Kant more fully, thus putting him at odds with Hölderin and Schelling on the matter. In January 1795, reflecting on his experience with Kant, Hegel wrote in his letter to Schelling:

Some time ago I took up again the study of Kantian philosophy to learn how to apply its important results to many an idea still current among us…With more recent efforts to penetrate to more profound depths I am still just as little familiar as with the efforts of Reinhold. For to me these speculations, rather than being of great applicability to universally usable concepts, seem of more direct significance mainly to theoretical reason alone. Thus I am not more directly cognizant of these efforts with respect to aim, and my intimations regarding them are even more obscure. (Letters 30)

Hegel seemed to be skeptical about the applicability of Kantian philosophy to pressing practical questions of the time, whereas Schelling viewed it as a powerful tool for resolving not only theoretical but also most practical issues central to philosophy.

The second major event that occurred during Hegel’s time at Tübingen was the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789. News of the Revolution sent shockwaves throughout the European continent; some welcomed the change (including Hegel, Schelling, and Hölderlin), while others, especially those with vested interests in the tradition of monarchy, were undoubtedly worried about the future of the crown. To protect themselves from the spread of the Revolution, Austria and Prussia pledged to defend their monarchic values, which culminated in the Declaration of Pillnitz in 1791. When an anti-revolutionary coalition was formed (spearheaded by émigrés of the French nobility), France declared war on 20 April, 1792. The struggle for power came to a head on 20 September with a decisive French victory over the coalition during the battle of Valmy (near Paris). The next day, the newly elected National Convention in France abolished the monarchy.

Hegel and his friends were overjoyed at these developments. A persistent (but most likely false) rumor was spread that on the fourteenth of July 1793, Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel planted a “victory tree” in a field near Tübingen, then danced and sang the Marseillaise, which Schelling had translated into German (see Pinkard 2000, 24). Although Schelling actually translated the Marseillaise, the rest of the story seems to have little historical support. However, it is clear that the three friends undoubtedly shared a strong pro-French sentiment. In the aftermath, Hegel himself opted to join a political club created at Tübingen to discuss the Revolution, as did many of his friends and classmates.

In the summer of 1793, during a particularly rough spell of bad health, Hegel decided to take time off from the Seminary and return to Stuttgart to recuperate at home. While there, he received an offer to become a Hofmeister, or house tutor, for a wealthy family in Berne. This was a common route for many educated young men to take during Hegel’s day, and given his desire to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the Seminary and start a life as a “man of letters,” Hegel gladly accepted the offer. After petitioning to take his theological exam early (which he easily passed), Hegel finished his studies ahead of schedule and set out to find his own pathway and calling in the world.

3 Pre-Jena Period: Despair, Uncertainty and Desire for a New Path

In October of 1793, Hegel began working as a house tutor for the two children of the Steigers, a wealthy family in Berne. Much like his original experience in Tübingen, Hegel was overwhelmed by disappointment. Indeed, the position of being a house tutor was in many ways fraught with unfairness and a lack of respect. Although the tutor was usually much more educated than the family he worked for, he was still treated as a domestic servant—esteemed slightly higher than regular servants—but by no means an equal to the family. As such, tutors were alienated both from their employers and from the other servants of the household. This alienation made Hegel feel depressed, but at the same time created opportunities for him to continue pursuing his own goals and visions.

At this point, Hegel still wished to be an “educator of the people,” but, shifting away from the desire to be a strictly religious educator, Hegel now intended to be a “popular philosopher”; someone who would spread modern philosophy to enlighten the people and thus bring the spirit of the French Revolution to Germany. Although the intellectual landscape in philosophy was heavily influenced by Kantians and those who either sought to refute or refine Kant’s ideas, Hegel was still not involved in philosophical discourse, nor was he yet interested in working out its intricacies. In a revealing letter to Schelling, Hegel writes about how, in his mind, the particular points being debated around the Kantian philosophical system, while necessitating their understanding by intellectuals, would not be that important in what a popular philosopher (as Hegel already viewed himself) actually presented to the people (see Letters 35/Briefe I, #11).

This is not to say that Hegel still remained largely anti-Kantian. To the contrary, he now thought that Kant’s ideas were central to the cultural reformation beginning to take hold in Europe. Yet Hegel thought that these ideas merely had to be applied in the right way, and that this task would be left to the popular philosopher to figure out. This point is further elaborated in the same letter to Schelling, where Hegel writes that

from the Kantian philosophy and its highest completion I expect a revolution in Germany. It will proceed from principles that are present and that only need to be elaborated generally and applied to all hitherto existing knowledge. (Letters 35/Briefe I, #11)

While in Berne, Hegel had begun working on several manuscripts that focused on Christianity and its role in the modern world. However, he came to be dissatisfied with the content of his work and decided against publishing these manuscripts. Feeling isolated from the real intellectual milieu, Hegel’s despondency only continued to grow. His disappointment was evident in the letters he wrote to Hölderlinand Schelling around this time. Alerted by this development, Hölderlin, who had grown much closer to Hegel than Schelling ever did, began looking for a way to help his old Tűbingen friend. Eventually, Hölderlin, who lived in Frankfurt, learned that a local man, a wine merchant named Gogel, was looking for a Hofmeister for his children. The prospect of living closer to his friend encouraged Hegel to undertake the move. Furthermore, Hölderlin assured Hegel that Gogel’s family would be much more hospitable than the Steigers’ in Berne, and so, after getting permission from the Konsistorium (the church authorities) in Württemberg, Hegel set off to Frankfurt at the end of 1796.

Frankfurt, which was centrally located and much larger than Berne, proved to be more suitable for Hegel’s intellectual interests, and he soon found himself surrounded by intellectuals involved in philosophical pursuit. Equally pivotal was Hegel’s reunification with Hölderlin, who had been developing his ideas on the post-Kantian movement for quite some time. Indeed, while Hegel was serving as a house tutor in Berne, Hölderlinwas attending Fichte’s lectures at the University of Jena, which at that time became a breeding ground for post-Kantians and Romanticists. While there, he gave much thought to what he felt was wrong with Fichte’ssystem.

Hölderlin’s influence on Hegel during his time in Frankfurt was immense. For one, it was Hölderlin who suggested that Hegel drop his colloquial writing style, which, up to that point, attempted to reframe the ideas of Kantian philosophy in a way that could be made accessible to the public. Instead, Hölderlin insisted that Hegel had to write in a way that would force the reader to learn and appreciate Hegel’s ideas in his own terms. Taking his friend’s advice to heart, Hegel quite suddenly changed his writing style and began presenting his thoughts in a highly dense and technical manner. Second, Hölderlin’sinsights into Fichte’sidealism demonstrated to Hegel that he had been trying to apply a system of ideas that were in desperate need of resolution themselves.

Upon reflection, Hegel realized that he had come to an impasse. He came to view his early dream of emulating Lessing, spreading popular philosophy, and aiding the spirit of the Revolution, as foolish. Already in his early thirties, Hegel was unpublished, had little money, and still had not accomplished anything important. This was especially visible in comparison to Hölderin, whose poetry was starting to gain significant attention, and Schelling, whose meteoric rise in philosophy was nothing short of breathtaking, Hegel knew that if he was to become a person who would drive the modern world forward, he had to establish himself in the academic world.

On 2 November 1800, Hegel wrote to Schelling asking for advice on where to move, declaring (perhaps with false modesty) that he was not ready to live in a place like Jena, but nonetheless affirming his desire that the two would once again be friends. Hegel also added that in “[his] scientific development, which started from more subordinate needs of man, [he] was inevitably driven toward science, and the ideal of youth had to take the form of reflection and thus at once of a system” (Pinkard 2000, 85). The subtext of this confession-like statement is hard to miss. While earlier, Hegel had dismissed Schelling’s intellectual path as esoteric, he now tacitly admitted that Schelling had been correct to pursue systematic philosophy while he, Hegel, had gone down the wrong intellectual path. Schelling responded by inviting Hegel to move to Jena with him, an offer which Hegel accepted at once. He moved to Jena in January 1801, eager to launch his philosophical career in the academic world.

4 At Jena: Launching His Academic Career

At the time of Hegel’s arrival, Jena, which had just recently acted as a center of the post-Kantian and Romantic movements, fell into a state of gradual decline, although the situation was not as dire as what Hegel experienced in Tübingen. Indeed, following Fichte’s dismissal in 1800 (due to the infamous accusation that he was an atheist), much of the intellectual talent originally teaching at Jena began to migrate away from the city and its university.

It was against this backdrop that Hegel moved into a garden apartment next to Schelling and, encouraged by his Tübingen friend, began shaping his academic career. In an attempt to secure a position at Jena, he wrote a habilitation thesis on the orbit of the planets, which he defended in 1801. He hoped to be installed as an “extraordinary professor” (a professor without a chair). However, this aspiration would not be realized until 1805, and for a while he had to content himself with a position as an unpaid lecturer (a Privatdozent). In order to make a living as a Privatdozent, he had to survive on the lecture fees he collected from his students, who were often few and far between during his early years of teaching.

During Hegel’s first year in Jena, he published a book titled The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy (1801). This work, commonly known as the Differenzschrift (see Diff.), was widely viewed as a vigorous defense of Schelling’sphilosophy over Fichte’s. In this same year, he and Schelling began editing a journal called the Kritische Journal der Philosophie (or the Critical Journal of Philosophy). The journal, which appeared for two years (1802–1803) and consisted of two volumes and six issues, published essays that had mainly Schellingian themes and content. While the journal published a number of Hegel’s early works, the position he formulated there was still largely similar to the one argued by Schelling. However, minor tensions between Hegel and Schelling had already started to emerge during this time, foreshadowing their inevitable split.

For one, Schelling was dissatisfied with the way Hegel edited his (Schelling’s) essays for their journal, noticing in Hegel’s revisions a visible departure from his own position. Schelling took the journal to be their joint project that should present philosophical views they both share. Certainly, this placed Hegel in a difficult situation. On the one hand, by adhering to Schelling’s ideas, Hegel did not have the space to develop his own position, despite the fact that so doing would help distinguish himself and his own intellectual prowess, thereby furthering his career. On the other hand, straying too far from Schelling’s ideas would have been viewed as a slight against a friend who had greatly assisted Hegel in starting his academic career and getting him settled in Jena.

Adding to this, Schelling became embroiled in a controversy that forced him to leave Jena in 1803. The controversy concerned his private life but it impacted his relations with others, including his friends and colleagues. Around the same time that Hegel was launching his academic career in Jena, Schelling became romantically involved with the wife of August Schlegel,5 Caroline Schlegel. The two began an affair that lead to Caroline Schlegel divorcing her husband. Eventually, in 1802, she and Schelling got married. Hegel never developed friendly feelingstowards Schelling’s new wife, who returned the attitude in kind.

Only after Schelling’s departure from Jena to the University of Würzburg, did Hegel begin to establish himself as a thinker who was more than just Schelling’s disciple. Although he still shared many ideas with Schelling, Hegel’s views began to gradually form into a position that was entirely his own.

In his Differenzschrift, Hegel had described what he saw as the fundamental differencebetween Fichte’sand Schelling’s philosophical positions and their understandings about the direction that post-Kantian philosophy should take. Whereas Fichte’s search for a first principle had led to a self-positing I (or more precisely to the self-identity of consciousness with itself [I = I]), Schelling (and Hegel at the time) had thought that the tension between the subjective and objective points of view, between the theoretical and practical, etc., were grounded in something more fundamental and original that made this distinction possible. Both Schelling and Hegel called this the “Absolute,” which Hegel would later identify with “all that is,” i.e. the ultimate reality and all of the moments of the history of thought (including human culture in all its entirety) taken up together as a whole. This Absolute is a unity of thought and being that underlies our ability to form a differentiated experience of the subjective and the objective; this unity thus lies at the heart of debates between realism and idealism (see Pinkard 2000, 158).

Despite many similarities, already in Jena Hegel began to deviate from Schelling’sunderstanding of the Absolute as an absolute identity always revealed in some form in which the Absolute identifies with itself (or, as Schelling terms it, reaches the Absolute’s self-affirmation).6 In 1802, Hegel started tackling the Absolute (and some related philosophical questions) in a way that sought to synthesize productive ideas from Fichte, Hölderlin, and Schelling, which they developed in response to the shortcomings of Critical philosophy. Yet Hegel’s own approach differed decisively from all three thinkers. Hegel accepted Hölderlin’sinsight that Fichte’s first principle was flawed insofar as he started from a purely subjective aspect of experience, and that there was some underlying fundamental unity before the divide of consciousness and its object (subject and object). For Hölderlin that unity was a kind of non-discursive, primordial Being. However, Hegel believed that this approach would be limited because it needed to start with something originally given as pure and true, and thus not prompted to undertake any changes and development. Instead, Hegel insisted that the Absolute should be the demonstration of the systematic unfolding of the history of thought in its totality.

These and some other ideas began to take form in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, a book intended to show the necessity of completing a systematic philosophy that could ground and justify the modern realization of freedom. Without such a philosophical underpinning, modernity would be subject to Jacobi’s charge that world historical progress ultimately culminates in nihilism (Jacobi 2004).

While Hegel was working on his Phenomenology, his life in Jena became increasingly difficult, and his options for finding a way to secure a livelihood were running out. His position as a Privatdozent meant that he could not have a constant income; even if he did have a university salary, a paid professor was still only barely able to make ends meet in Jena. At this point he had virtually no money, and although he had acquired a small inheritance after his father’s death, this sum was quickly depleting.

Devastated by his unfortunate financial situation, Hegel wrote constant letters to his friends and colleagues asking for possible job openings at other universities. In the midst of this personal turmoil, one particularly crucial asset of Hegel’s was his friendly relation with the theologian Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848), whom Hegel had originally befriended while the two were studying in Tübingen. Niethammer, who for about ten years held a professorship at Jena, in 1804, like Schelling, had transferred to the University of Würzburg, but, after the city was given over to the Austrians, was dismissed on account of his Protestant beliefs, for which he was subsequently compensated with a job in the Bavarian civil service. Being in a bad financial situation, Hegel had to constantly borrow money from Niethammer. On top of Hegel’s financial woes, he had a liaison with Christina Charlotte Johanna Burkhardt, his landlady, who became pregnant with Hegel’s illegitimate child, Ludwig Fischer. Hegel now urgently needed to find money, and find it quickly.

The extent to which Niethammer supported Hegel during this trying period was made especially clear when he published the Phenomenology. As Hegel was constantly having to push back the completion of his work, his publisher in Bamberg, Joseph Anton Goebhardt, became increasingly vexed with Hegel’s inability to give him a definite date for when the manuscript would be delivered. After several pleas from Hegel, Niethammer agreed to serve as his guarantor: he promised the publisher that he himself would buy up all produced copies of the book, should Hegel fail to turn the manuscript in by the deadline (see Pinkard 2000, 227).

Immensely thankful to his guarantor, Hegel turned to work fully committed to submit the book on time. Yet, while he was finishing the Phenomenology, the situation in Jena changed for the worse. On 14 October—just four days before the Phenomenology had to be submitted—French troops led by Napoleon appeared outside of Jena to engage the Prussian forces that had amassed there. The Battle of Jena lasted only for a few hours and ended with the decisive defeat of the Prussian army. The city was partially destroyed and many houses were set aflame. Hegel stayed at a friend’s house, but the place where he lived was looted by the French and, as he himself wrote in a letter to Niethammer, his papers came to be “messed up … like lottery tickets” (Briefe I, #76; Letters 114).

As a result of the French invasion, the University of Jena closed down, and Hegel was forced to leave the city. He had no money or recognition and expected to win neither upon publication of his Phenomenology, which he publicly announced as the Introduction to the System of Science.7 In dire need of employment, he hoped to receive a call from the University of Heidelberg, where many of his former colleagues and friends from Jena had gone. Instead, Niethammer, who was at that time already living in Bamberg, offered him a position as an editor for a Bamberg newspaper, which Hegel thankfully accepted, although not without a measure of disappointment. Hegel strongly felt that his place was at a university, an ambition he refused to abandon. “I must … stipulate that the engagement into which I am entering … not to bind me firmly for any length of time. … I cannot be entirely without hope of being formally called to Heidelberg,” Hegel wrote to Niethammer about Niethammer’s proposal (Briefe I, #89; Letters 127; see also letters to Voss, Letters 104–107). Hegel clearly believed that his job with the newspaper was only temporary, and he elucidated that should a better offer arrive, he would leave at once. In this way, he could work without feeling obligated to stay indefinitely.

5 Between Jena and Heidelberg: Another Period of Despair

In 1807, about a month after the birth of Ludwig Fischer, his illegitimate son, Hegel came to Bamberg to assume editorship of a local newspaper, the Bamberger Zeitung. Before moving to Bamberg, he finally finished his long-anticipated book, and the Phenomenology of Spirit appeared shortly after his arrival in the Bavarian city. Publication of the Phenomenology put Hegel’s name on the map of the philosophical world, and he began to be regarded as an independent thinker, well positioned within the post-Kantian movement. Many of his former students and colleagues praised the book for its ability to successfully address shortcomings in previous philosophical theories. Hegel himself was praised for the originality of his position and novelty of his approach. Some commentators started to distinguish openly between Hegel’s own views and those associated with Schelling. Both thinkers were now viewed as equally important contributors to the progress of philosophical thought. A former student of Hegel at Jena, K. F. Bachmann, commenting on the impact that Hegel’s book and ideas had on his contemporaries, noticed that if Schelling was like the Plato of modern philosophy, then Hegel was “Germany’s Aristotle” (Briefe I, notes to #155/Letters 498–499).

The independence of Hegel’s thoughts now became widely recognized. Yet this also meant that he was creating a distance between his own ideas and Schelling’s. This could not go unnoticed by Schelling himself, who grew more and more impatient about how Hegel portrayed his (Schelling’s) own philosophy in the Phenomenology. In particular, there was a passage in the Phenomenology that described Schelling’sidentity philosophy as the “night in which all cows are black” (PhG GW 9:17.28–29). Schelling was outraged, and Hegel undoubtedly had to soften it for his Tübingen friend. On 1 May, 1807, Hegel wrote to Schelling to explain that his criticism of Schelling’ssystem was targeted at those who misappropriated Schelling’s ideas and insights. Schelling’s response was somewhat conciliatory, yet his feelings were clearly hurt. He replied that if Hegel had indeed aimed his criticism merely at those who misused his (Schelling’s) ideas, it would seem that “in the text itself the distinction is not made” (Briefe I, #107/Letters 80). Furthermore, Schelling was disappointed that Hegel broke away from what he thought was their shared project, namely, the articulation of the intellectual intuition. Commenting on this issue, Schelling wrote that concept and intuition were both aspects of “what [he] and [Hegel] have called the Idea—which by its very nature is concept in one of its aspects and intuition in another” (ibid.). Hegel never replied to this letter, and all written correspondence between the two ceased (Pinkard 2000, 257).

Beyond Schelling’s reception of the work, many other interpretations of the Phenomenology flooded the scene—a fact evidenced by the competing claims about the book in the literature. During Hegel’s lifetime, some found the text to be indecipherable, yet others viewed the work as purely Schellingian. More recently, an epistemological reading of the work has developed (currently highly influential), which views Hegel’s project as an inquiry into the character and range of our knowledge, “questioning the notion of knowledge as an instrument by means of which one could take possession of the absolute” (Althaus 2000, 96; see also Westphal 2003). Another important interpretation points to Hegel’s attempt to outline a science of the experience of consciousness, which he describes as a history of the development of consciousness itself (Pinkard 2000, 204).

In Bamberg, Hegel’s professional life as an editor was unfolding. However, it proved to be less than satisfactory, and he continued to make clear that his true vocation lay elsewhere. Moreover, he was annoyed by the political censorship of newspaper publications. Much effort had to be spent trying to avoid being entangled in undesired controversies and political intrigues that could cost him his job.

In an attempt to escape further complications and to secure a better job, he turned again to Niethammer, who was then in charge of education in Bavaria. Niethammer responded on 26 October 1808, offering Hegel a highly demanding rector position at a Gymnasium in Nuremberg (see Briefe I, #133). Although Hegel gratefully accepted this offer, he noted that he still hoped to find a position in a university. At that point, he was ready to settle on any university and he believed that the most feasible would be perhaps the University of Altdorf which Niethammer had under his patronage. Hegel wrote to Niethammer in this regard:

any prospect you would hold out for me there [Universität Altdorf] would by itself be most appreciated, but what completely elevates this prospect above all others is the hope of thus joining you in a common life of teaching and active endeavor. (Briefe I, #135/Letters 178)

He also noted that this new appointment would be “directly linked to his literary activities, [which] at least do not differ in type even if they do differ in shape” (ibid.).

By November 1808, Hegel assumed his new post in Nuremberg. Although Niethammer likely assisted Hegel, out of consideration of their friendship, Niethammer, a neo-humanist by his philosophical views, also needed allies who could support him in his desire to reform the Bavarian (and eventually the German) educational system, and Hegel was certainly sympathetic in this regard (Wenz 2008). Both Hegel and Niethammer wanted to cultivate Bildung-ideals in their students, and to do this, both were convinced that philosophy would be central to achieving such an end. Indeed, when Hegel accepted the offer, he wrote that he was “ever more convinced that theoretical work accomplishes more in the world than practical work. [And that] once the realm of ideas is revolutionized, actuality will not hold out” (Briefe I, #135/Letters 178).8

In addition to serving as rector of the Gymnasium, Hegel was also appointed professor of the philosophical preparatory sciences. This position entailed teaching philosophy to the students of the Gymnasium and exposing them to speculative thought in order to prepare them for the philosophical courses they would encounter at university. Hegel also became the “head teacher” for philosophy, per Niethammer’s administrative directive that such a position be created. Niethammer believed that Hegel’s teaching efforts could not only improve students’ educational experiences in the Gymnasium but also serve as a sample to follow for other educational institutions. He also hoped Hegel would use his teaching as an opportunity to develop philosophy curriculum for Gymnasium. Unfortunately for Niethammer, Hegel quickly discovered that it would be better not to teach speculative philosophy to students at the Gymnasium, as only a few could grasp what was taught. In a letter to Niethammer, Hegel mentioned that “of the 160 pupils” only three or so were able to understand “such an abstract” subject (see Letters 191).

Aside from his career, Hegel’s personal life was also moving forward. On 15 September 1811, Hegel married Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher, who was almost twenty years younger than he. The von Tuchers were well established in Nuremberg, and Hegel played to this situation by writing to Niethammer that his marriage to Marie was contingent on him landing a paid position at a university (which was certainly not true, because despite von Tuchers’ good connections, they did not have any standing within academia). In spite of his unrequited career ambitions, Hegel was nonetheless delighted at being married, and he expressed as much in a letter to Niethammer, stating that he had “reached [his] earthly goal” (Briefe, I, #196/Letters 255).

However, it is clear that his sentiments were somewhat hyperbolic, for while Hegel was indeed generally satisfied with his marriage, other, more urgent philosophical issues remained to be worked out. The most important among these was the question about the paradigm of his philosophical system and its actual introduction. As his time in the Gymnasium had shown him, the Phenomenology’s place within Hegel’s overall system had gradually come to be less and less clear for him. He saw the need for rethinking the very idea of developing philosophy as “science,” a project that was central to Kant and his followers and which still remained uncompleted. This became Hegel’s central task in the Science of Logic, a notoriously complex philosophical study, on which he began to work almost immediately after the Phenomenology came out.

Due to its complexity, the Logic found little to no audience immediately after its tripartite presentation of Being, Essence, and Concept were published between 1812 and 1816. In the Logic Hegel sought to reinvent the traditional fields of logic and metaphysics by creating a single comprehensive “science of logic” in which “system” and “method” were to be united as one (Althaus 2000, 126).

6 Heidelberg Period: Return to the University

Despite the initial rather cool reception received by the Science of Logic, this work earned Hegel a higher position in academia and rocketed him to the top, both professionally and in prestige. In the summer of 1816, Hegel accepted an offer from the University of Heidelberg and thus finally fulfilled his long-standing hopes of becoming a salaried professor and of being installed at the University of Heidelberg, of which he had dreamed since leaving Jena. Back in 1805, Hegel wrote to Johann Heinrich Voss, then a Professor at Heidelberg, that the spirit of Jena had moved to Heidelberg and taken root there (Briefe I, #55/Letters 105–106). Although this view proved to be only partially true by the time Hegel arrived, he seemed to still feel this way.

Hegel’s old habits such as stuttering, gasping for breath and nervously shuffling about returned when he began teaching at Heidelberg, although these impediments were not as pronounced as they were during Hegel’s time in Jena.

In 1817, during his second year at Heidelberg, Hegel published the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences.9 Originally meant as a supplement to his lectures, this work contained a condensed version of his tripartite system (including his Logic, now in somehow abbreviated form, thus known as the Lesser Logic). Yet an emphasis was put on the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit (Geist), the two other central parts of his system.10

Hegel’s time in Heidelberg was further punctuated by his involvement in three controversies: the proposed constitutional reforms in German states, the codification of German law, and the new student fraternity movement—the so-called Burschenschaft.

The first controversy over constitutionalism was grounded in the post-Napoleonic uncertainty of Germany’s political direction, which was contested by three groups: those who wanted to restore their aristocratic privileges, those who wanted to maintain their recent gains, and a minority group who wanted to unify the Germanic states. A compromise between these various interests came to fruition in June 1815 when the Congress of Vienna passed the Bundesakte (The German Federal Act), which created a loose confederation of German states, headed by the Bundesversammlung.

The second controversy, the codification of German law, hinged on whether the traditional patchwork German legal system—which had particularistic and fragmented legal arrangements that varied across hometowns and principalities—ought to be reformed, and about the model such reform should take (here, the “Prussian general code,” enacted by Friedrich Wilhelm II, was the paradigmatic model favored by reform-supporters).

Thirdly, the rise of a German national consciousness, rooted in the (false) belief that the Germanic people had retained their original identity and language from the Teutons, had spurred the formation of a national consciousness that, among other things, sought to replace the old student fraternities (the Landsmannschaften) with the more universally-orientated Burschenschaften.

Hegel entered the debates concerning these issues with his essay “Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Württemberg 1815-1816,” which was published in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher in the winter of 1817–1818. In this work, Hegel argued that what was at stake had to do with the substantial differences between the “commitments underlying modern life” and those that determined the foundation of the previous way of life, which he took to be competing, mutually exclusive claims (PEA GW 15). The old order, he maintained, had collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions and deficiencies; further, he argued that the new, rationally orientated direction in which the modern world was now heading would be the rallying call of Germany’s future. Hegel’s clearly progressive position had its roots in his revolutionary and reform-oriented views, which he maintained throughout his life. However, many people disagreed with Hegel on the matter, including Niethammer, who argued that Hegel would not have written his essay if he “had been in the position of having to see these ruling rationalities face to face” (Briefe II, #327).

7 Call to Berlin: Realization of Goals and Ambitions

After the death of the Grand Duke of Baden, Frederick I, Hegel began worrying that Heidelberg would fall under Bavarian rule, which, after his rather frustrating experiences in Bamberg, was something he undoubtedly wished to avoid.

As if to answer Hegel’s worries, on 26 December 1817, Karl Sigmund Franz Freiherr vom Stein zum Altenstein, the newly appointed minister of culture, wrote to Hegel to invite him to come to the University of Berlin and assume Fichte’s former chair. Hegel was overjoyed at the offer, which he happily accepted, and he moved to Berlin with his wife Marie and their three children on 5 October 1818.

Yet his time in Berlin, despite being professionally satisfactory and productive was, nonetheless, much like his stay in Heidelberg, marked with controversy and scandal. On 23 March 1819, the ultra-reactionary playwright August von Kotzebue was murdered by a twenty-three-year-old student, Karl Sand, who was greatly influenced by a particularly radical leader of the Burschenschaften, Karl Follen. Then, a few weeks later, Karl von Ibell, an official in the Land of Nassau, was murdered by another member of the Burschenschaften. These deaths greatly alarmed the reactionary forces in Prussia, who then began a search for potential “demagogues” connected with the Burschenschaften movement and their supporters, which unfortunately implicated Hegel.

One of the first people to be arrested in the “demagogue” affair was Gustav Asverus, a former student of Hegel’s from his time at Heidelberg. Although Asverus had no direct connection to Karl Sand, he wrote a provocative letter praising Sand and Hegel, which was then intercepted by the police and used as evidence in his arrest. To make matters worse, Hegel’s brother-in-law, Gottlieb von Tucher, was also involved with the Burschenschaften movement, and was good friends with Asverus. Although Hegel was not under surveillance, he clearly had reason to worry.11

This situation came to a head on 13 November 1819, when Hegel exchanged bitter remarks with the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher over the recent firing of Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette from the University of Berlin, who had written a letter of condolence to the mother of Karl Sand. Hegel was of the opinion that de Wette’s firing was acceptable, while Schleiermacher sharply disagreed. The two ended up hurling insults at each other, which caused a permanent rift between them. Unfortunately for Hegel, Schleiermacher was a member of the Academy of Sciences, which, coupled with his disdain for speculative philosophy, virtually ensured that Hegel would never join the Academy, and indeed, he never did.

Remarkably, even during this trying period, Hegel remained committed to his revolutionary and reformist roots. On a trip to Dresden in 1820, Hegel publicly made a toast to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, much to the astonishment of those around him, given his precarious situation.

During this time, Hegel was also working on the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821), which was largely a work in political philosophy that presented a richer and more detailed account of objective spirit than that developed in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences. The central topic of the work is the question of freedom and what is needed for its actualization. The answer that Hegel provided links freedom to right (or justice), conceptualizing the latter as the necessary condition for the realization of the former. In this respect, Hegel disagrees with Kant’s notion that freedom entails a sort of non-natural causality on the part of the individual, or a “transcendental causality” as such. Rather, Hegel holds that having a will is to act in a minded way, which is simply to act according to norms. Moreover, the will is a form of thought. This form of thought as freedom is actualized when an individual acts in a way that is consistent with what they would rationally endorse for themselves, not from what they would be coerced into endorsing. Yet as the Phenomenology had shown, the individual here cannot be regarded merely in isolation, as the individual becomes who he is only within the social context of human life, that is, in reciprocal acknowledgement and interaction with other individual agents. This social context is objective spirit as such, the externalized form spirit develops in interacting with itself in the social dimension.

However, the reception of the Philosophy of Right was extremely damaging to Hegel’s reputation. Many readers felt that Hegel had sided with the Prussian reactionary movement. The truth of the matter was very different, yet public opinion was largely indifferent to Hegel’s attempts to clarify himself and a misunderstood statement that precipitated the critical and controversial reception of the book. Namely, in the book’s Preface, Hegel stated that “what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational” (PR 20).12 As this central idea was set in bold on the page, it made it impossible to miss. Although almost a decade earlier in his Logic, Hegel already explained that “what is rational is what is efficacious – its actuality announces itself through that which it brings forth” (WL SL 546), the line in the Philosophy of Right was interpreted as saying that the Prussian regime at that time (the actual) was also rational, and that therefore, any attempt at reform was irrational. Despite his multiple efforts to correct this interpretation (Enz. §6R), he was unable to fully recover from the negative public reception of his book, which is perhaps among the most interesting and influential works in political philosophy.

During his years in Berlin Hegel taught a variety of courses based on his own philosophical system. In the various Lectures he developed different parts and sections of his enormously complex system.13 His Lectures still remain a trove of knowledge which—each in its own way—further elucidates and clarifies Hegel’s philosophical project and specific ideas he developed.

In the years following the publication of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s health began to noticeably deteriorate. Hegel started to complain of headaches and suffer chest pains as his overall condition steadily worsened. Those around him also began to notice the pallor on his face, which likely indicated a form of anemia. Still, he was able to continue working despite his health. In addition to publishing two new, heavily revised editions of the Encyclopaedia (1827 and 1830), he also planned a new (expanded) edition of the Phenomenology. However, this plan never came to realization.

When in the fall of 1831 the cholera epidemic struck Berlin, exposure to the disease proved lethal to Hegel. Infected with cholera, he died on 14 November 1831 in Berlin. He was 61 years old. He was buried near the University of Berlin, where he rests next to Fichte.

***

Hegel’s legacy is vast and, like his philosophical system, very complex and difficult to navigate. His life too was filled with events and personal encounters that stimulated his thoughts and—to some significant degree—influenced their direction. External events, such as French revolutionary upheaval, political alterations in modern Prussia, the social and political controversies of the time, philosophical disputes, intellectual and personal disagreements—all those events undoubtedly shaped his personality and influenced his constantly evolving ideas. Thus, to fully understand Hegel’s philosophy and appreciate all its turns and peculiarities, it is crucial to view it in the context of the thinker’s life, placing him in dialogue with his contemporaries and his surroundings. The present study is a modest attempt to contribute to this task.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Originally conceived and run as a military academy, the Karlschule eventually grew into a broad university-like educational institution combining a medical school, business school, arts college, and music school (Beiser 2005, 13–14). Hegel’s older brother Georg attended this school. Similarly, Schiller was a student there from 1773 to 1780.

  2. 2.

    For more details about Hegel’s entries in his diary see Pinkard (2000, 15).

  3. 3.

    Another possible career path for the graduates of this famous Swabian educational institution led to influential positions in the state administration; many of Hegel’s Stift classmates later grew into high-ranking state government officials.

  4. 4.

    For a discussion of Hegel’s friendship with Hölderlin and Schelling in Tübingen see Bykova (1990, 140ff.). Cf. Jamme and Schneider (1990), Harris (1972), Kondylis (1979).

  5. 5.

    A German poet, translator and critic, August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) was an influential representative of the Jena intellectual milieu. Along with his brother Friedrich Schlegel, he is known as a leading figure of Jena Early Romanticism.

  6. 6.

    The most programmatic text in this regard is Schelling’sPresentation of My System of Philosophy (1801), where he articulates his understanding of the Absolute as an absolute identity and explains the crucial significance of form as a manifestation of the Absolute. For Schelling, the Absolute always exists and is expressed only in form, and only through a mutual correlation of different forms the Absolute becomes revealed in its fullness.

  7. 7.

    That was an official subtitle of the Phenomenology of Spirit which Hegel supplied at the early stage of his work on the book.

  8. 8.

    Hegel’s emphasis on theoretical work was first mentioned and discussed in detail in Kaufmann (1978).

  9. 9.

    In 1817, Hegel published the first (concise) edition of the work, now known as the Heidelberg Encyclopaedia. Later, while already in Berlin, he brought to completion—much more expanded—the second and third editions of the book that appeared in 1827 and 1830 respectively. Whereas the Heidelberg Encyclopaedia was compiled as a single volume, the two later editions grew into a three-volume book, where most of the sections (§§) came to be supplemented by Hegel’s own additional remarks that sought to explain main ideas in greater detail.

  10. 10.

    Interestingly, the part on philosophy of nature garnered some controversy, partly from Hegel’s defense of Goethe’s theory of colors, which was to be contrasted by Newton’s account of color; consequently, this work was largely dismissed by the natural scientists at Heidelberg and elsewhere. How appropriate this reaction was, the reader can judge for him/herself. Important insights into Hegel’s philosophy of nature are discussed in Part IV of this Handbook.

  11. 11.

    For more on this development see Pinkard (2000, 436ff.).

  12. 12.

    For excellent discussions of a true meaning of this statement, which is usually called the Dopplesatz, see Hardimon (1994) and Stern (2006).

  13. 13.

    For a complete list of Lecture series that Hegel taught during his tenure at Berlin, consult the Chronology, “Hegel’s Philosophical System in His Writings and Lecture Series,” provided in this volume.