Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory

Modern European Philosophy

by Warren Breckman

This is the first major study of Marx and the Young Hegelians in twenty years. The book offers a new interpretation of Marx's early development, the political dimension of Young Hegelianism, and that movement's relationship to political and intellectual currents in early nineteenth-century Germany. The book draws together an account of major figures such as Feuerbach and Marx, with discussions of lesser-known but significant figures, as well as such movements as French Saint-Simonianism and "Positive Philosophy." Wide-ranging in scope and synthetic in approach this is an important book for historians of philosophy, theology, political theory and nineteenth-century ideas.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Sociology, Politics, European History

335 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 1998

About the author

Warren Breckman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Reviews

[Bertrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's no shortage of books chronicling the 'invention' of the individual/subject/self (variously located in Medieval authorship, in the Renaissance, in the Early Modern period: Hobbes To Locke, and so on) and the fin-de-siecle 'crisis of the subject' has to contend with so many precursor that it is very tempting to think that it is central to the subject's paradoxical nature to be both perpetually in crisis and thus in constant need of being invented.
I cannot recall how I came across this book: while I have an occasional interest in Marx, I know very little about the Young Hegelians, so I am surprised I approached it, perhaps in an attempt to better my understanding of XIXth century Germany. What got me hooked, however, is the subtitle: 'Dethroning the Self'. While the theoretical discord among post-war Marxists with regard to the subject, his dignity and import in Marx's thought are well-known (even to me!) I was not aware that this controversy stretched back further, and Breckman follows it between Hegel and Marx. He opens his introduction with the following quote, taken from an 1828 letter from Feuerbach to Hegel, which gives an idea of the book's peculiar flavour:
'It is now a question, so to speak, of founding a Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Idea, of thought which contemplates itself in all that exists and is conscious of itself. The founder of this Kingdom will naturally bear no name, will not be an individual, or will be this individual which alone is, the World Spirit. Further, it is a question of overthrowing from its throne the ego, the self in general, which, especially since the beginning of Christianity, has dominated the world, which has conceived itself as the only spirit to exist. (Ludwig Feuerbach to Hegel, 1828)'
Breckman's contention is that the Young Hegelian critique of both Restoration conservatism and, later, for the more radical, of civil society and liberalism, was shaped by a particular current of German political theology which was emphatically personalist: to me reminiscent of Robert Filmer, and conducted by the likes of FJ Stahl or Savigny, this sought to link up the absolute personal authority of the monarch with the authority of the paterfamilias and, most importantly, with the principle of private property. By suggesting the identity of those three sovereignties, those Prussian reactionaries hoped to consolidate a statu quo that the Napoleonic wars had considerably challenged.
As a result, while following a very roughly chronological order, Breckman covers most of the Young Hegelians (second generation Hegelians with a liberal or radical outlook) with partilar focus on their attacks against conceptions of a personal God, against monarchy in general and absolute monarchy in particular, as forms of 'personal' sovereignty, and finally in their critique of civil society as a separate sphere from the state. We hear, despite the title, very little about Marx, save for the last chapter, but throughout the author shows not only a dizzying command of the writings (published, unpublished, letters, etc.) of that fairly wide milieu, but also a incisive and original interpretation, which emphasizes the centrality of religion and its critique in the Young Hegelian project, as well as foregrounding the influence of French 'utopian' socialism on both their critique of religion and of personalism.
I recommend this in particular for those interested in the inventions, constructions and deconstructions of the subject: this is a fascinating insight in a phase of this process which I had no familiarity with, and which is rarely emphasized. it certainly got my attention, and now authors like Feuerbach or Schelling, whom I long thought to be the exclusive preserve of historians, have entered my Tsundoku.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a book of history, the author is no doubt correct, but as a work of philosophy, this book is a complete disaster. At no point does the author ever clarify or explain a thinker's position, he only states it. E.g., "Hegel was an idealist" would be a correct claim found in this book, but what that means or entails is never forthcoming. Every time the author introduces a new theorist, although he states the beliefs of the theorist, he never provides the justification for those beliefs, thus this is a terrible philosophy book, despite being a correct and useful history book.