UNDERSTANDING HEGEL 8
OR: NO MORE THESIS — ANTITHESIS — SYNTHESIS

Win Corduan

Part 8 Hegel in Nuremberg and the Phenomenology

In our last episode, you will remember, our hero, G. W. F. Hegel, had to surmount the obstacles posed by the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and the last remaining rump of the Holy Roman Empire, in order to get his manuscript of the Phenomenology of Spirit to the publisher on time. On Tuesday, October 8, 1806, he had written to his go-between, Professor Niethammer

However, he did not have the last pages of the manuscript ready until Monday, the 13th, the last likely date for it to get to the publisher on time. In the same letter in which he called Napoleon a "world soul," which is not at all the Absolute Spirit, he expressed his frustration:

Somehow it worked out. Niethammer conveyed the manuscript and proofs to Göphardt, the publisher and printer. Hegel still needed to write the preface, which he personally gave to Göphardt. In any event, his lawyer had assured him that the apocalyptic war with Napoleon was sufficiently important to count as special circumstances, so that Göphardt could not weasel out of his contract.

On January 3, 1807, Hegel informed Schelling,

Schelling replied enthusiastically on January 11,

Technically, the university at Jena could have continued to function, but most of the students left for places where they were not directly eye-to-eye with Napoleon's soldiers all day long, and so the institution was forced to close, at least for a brief time. Hegel had to find some other means of subsistence, and he became a newspaper editor in Bamberg, a job that he thoroughly detested. Then, for a few years he found a niche within the school system of Nuremberg, where he quickly advanced on the administrative ladder.

Still, even though his days of poverty were now over, the bread he was bringing to his family's table came from work for which he did not have a passion. His heart was in academics. During this time he wrote the Science of Logic, which was widely read, and which may have retroactively endowed the Phenomenology with greater respectability. In fact, during this time of working outside of the academic framework, Hegel's reputation within academics grew. He also increased in stature among his non-scholarly contemporaries (i.e., friends, acquaintances, and colleagues) in Nuremberg (and perhaps beyond). Never mind the misery of the Jena years; his friends and acquaintances knew only that he had once been a professor at a major university and had published articles and books. His connection to Schelling, whose star of fame was pulsing but not vanishing, could not have been unknown. And, most importantly, Hegel longed for a time when he would be at a university once more, not merely for his own sake, but for the good of philosophy as well.

Finally, in 1816, the University of Heidelberg invited him to accept a position, and Hegel agreed to it immediately. Furthermore, I can't imagine otherwise than that he must have done so gleefully because Heidelberg had probably left him with a bitter taste in his mouth a decade or so earlier, a story that goes back to his time in Jena.

Retrospect: Hegel and Fries

Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843) had joined the faculty at Jena somewhat later than Hegel; he also taught philosophy, but from a psychological point of view since the two disciplines had not yet separated. Fries was one of the many German intellectuals whose supposedly liberal outlook against monarchies and princedoms included rabid anti-Semitism to the point of advocating the eradication of all things Jewis. It is frequently said that Hitler enticed the German people into anti-Semitism. That may have been true for a large number of common people, but a hatred of Jews had been in the academic air for more than a century prior to 1933. In fact, there wouldn't have been a "1933" if the inhumane ideology of the Nazis had not been able to draw on an encrusted tradition. Hegel is frequently accused of being reactionary in his political views because of his loyalty to the Prussian kingdom. The fact of the matter is that he could not bring himself to make common cause with these "enlightened" intellectuals whose views were quite rightly unacceptable to him. 

Both Hegel and Fries started on the level of Privatdozent, which, as I mentioned before, allowed the instructor to list his courses in the university catalogue, but the remuneration was strictly based on the number of students who enrolled in his course. The next step up, "extraordinary professor," was an advancement in rank, but it still came without a consistent salary. The increased prestige might raise the number of students attending your lectures, and—I'm purely speculating—maybe the amount of money per student may have been higher. For some unknown reason, Fries received that promotion ahead of Hegel, and Hegel only became "extraordinary professor" after lodging a grievance.

Still this so-called promotion had done nothing to alleviate Hegel's financial troubles; if anything it may have contributed to his not teaching some semesters because he had been under increased pressure to have a serious book in print, and not-teaching would mean a decrease in net income.

Then Hegel had received word of an apparent opening at the University of Heidelberg, most likely an "ordinary" position, providing a salary. When Hegel wrote letters applying for this position and rounding up recommendations, he received the cold shoulder, informing him that there was no suitable opening for him at this time, etc. (If you've never received one of those, may God continue to bless you.) A short while later, Heidelberg tendered that very appointment to Fries. Hegel was chagrined.

Now, ten years after leaving Jena, Heidelberg offered a solid professorship to him, and he wasted no time accepting it. Whether that opening was created by the fact that Fries had accepted an invitation to return to Jena I cannot say, though I can tell you that subsequently Fries was suspended from Jena for several years for his views 

Shortly after Hegel had received the offer from Heidelberg, before the term there had even begun, he was invited to the University of Berlin for a position that far exceeded Heidelberg in money, prestige, and professional exposure. Nevertheless, Hegel had already given his word to Heidelberg, and so he informed Berlin that, if it was amenable with them, he would teach at Heidelberg for a year and then move to Berlin the next year. And so it was agreed. Thus, after a one-year stint at Heidelberg, Hegel moved to Berlin. He was now well-known, highly respected by many and vilified by some. But even the negative reactions to Hegel in Berlin demonstrated that people were now reading his writings and taking them seriously.

Retrospect: Hegel, Schelling, and the Preface to the Phenomenology

However, we must return to Hegel's "exile" in Bamberg and Nuremberg. I am fascinated by Hegel's inner drive to be a part of the academic world. Once you have caught the feeling that your contributions are making a difference, it's tortuous when you cannot be a part of the ongoing discussions. Göphardt was printing and distributing the Phenomenology, but only sporadically. He even sent some bound, but cover-less, copies to Hegel. Hegel had wanted Schelling to write a foreword to the book, but, even though there were printed copies available now, Schelling had not yet received one. Still, even before Schelling could read the book, Hegel attempted to downplay the way in which he had represented Schelling's philosophy in the preface. He tried to persuade Schelling that he was not attacking Schelling or his philosophy directly, but only Schelling's incompetent followers, and he allowed himself to judge that he had not gone too far in his critique of Schelling's supposed imitators. One might get the feeling that Hegel was already trying to defend himself against the possibility that Schelling could be offended by what Hegel had said. One reason might just be that Hegel's remarks were, in fact, offensive to Schelling.

Not too soon thereafter, Schelling did receive a copy of Hegel's book, but he put it aside for a while. By the time that Schelling wrote to Hegel again, it was already November 2, 1807, and Schelling had just barely made it past Hegel's preface. He had not liked what he had read. His letter to Hegel is a masterpiece of diplomacy:

To be sure, Hegel does not mention Schelling by name, and it was gracious of Schelling to play along with Hegel's claim that he was only referring to Schelling's minions. However, there can be little doubt that Schelling's own philosophy was the target of Hegel's criticism, and, based on further documents, we know that Schelling was deeply stung. When we look at Hegel's observations themselves, we find that they did not lack his customary wit.

To save you from having to scroll backwards, let me quickly remind you of Schelling's attempt to circumvent the laws of logic. He argued that all things were identical in the Absolute, and that he had found a way of sneaking past the law of contradiction in order to make this claim intelligible.

A cannot be not-A,
but if A can also be B,
and B can be not-A,
then it is possible for A to be not-A after all.

Thus, every particular thing can be subsumed under the Absolute, which, as we intimated earlier, makes the philosopher's life easy, but empty. A is in the Absolute., and not-A is also in the Absolute.

The same thing is true for B and not-B, C and not-C, and so forth. All distinctions are blurred and merged. In Hegel's memorable phrase, "This is the night in which all cows are black."

Despite his diplomatic response, Schelling felt that Hegel had overstepped the boundaries of friendship. Needless to say, he did not supply Hegel with a foreword to the Phenomenology. The relationship between the two was permanently strained. They did not abandon all contact, but on the few occasions that they got together, neither one of them broached the subject of philosophy.

What was missing in Schelling's thought, according to Hegel, was the "toil of the negative." You can't just declare all things to be identical in the Absolute. The Absolute must be earned, as it were, and to get there you must traverse a long road, in which each paving stone contains its own negation.

But if you're now thinking "thesis-antithesis- synthesis," as tempting as it is, that's not what Hegel has in mind either. Just a little further on the preface, Hegel also criticizes Kant and Fichte for organizing all thoughts in triplets. We have seen Fichte's Absolute I, non-I, and limited I. In Kant, the triads show up in how the pure concepts of the understanding are organized. For example, the unity of a plurality is a totality.

In Hegel's opinion, this triadity is a pure formalism, a philosophy without any depth. A toddler can memorize groups of three and repeat them, but there is no further value in applying such a scheme.

"If Hegel's philosophy is not 'thesis-antithesis-synthesis,' then what is it?" I have been asked this question countless times, presumably the idea being that there must be some other simple pattern that subsumes his thought. But why should that be? How many philosophies can be summarized with a simple three-word pattern? Hegel's system is far more complex and organic.