Karl Löwith’s "Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" (2 of 2)

Karl Löwith (1897-1973)

This is the second of two parts of a discussion of Karl Löwith's 1941 book, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts: Marx und Kierkegaard (I'm working here from the second edition of 1949).

Hegel's historical scheme of development implied that history had reached a kind of culmination point. His successors and contemporaries were very much influenced by the religiously founded but secularly oriented end-times mood of Hegel's philosophical system. Including Marx and Kierkegaard. Löwith writes of their respective works, The Communist Manifesto (1847, in Löwith's dating) and the Literary Applications (1846):

Dieser Gegansatz bedeutet aber geschichtlich betrachtet nur zwei Seiten einer gemeinsamen Destruktion der bürgerlich-christlichen Welt. Zur Revolution der bürgerlich-kapitalistischen Welt hat sich Marx auf die Masse des Proletariats gestützt, während Kierkegaard in seinem Kampf gegen die bürgerlich-christliche Welt alles auf den Enzelnen setzt. Dem entspricht, daß für Marx die bürgerliche Gesellschaft eine Gesellschaft von "vereinzelten Einzelnen" ist, in welcher der Mensch seinem "Gattungswesen" entfremdet ist, und für Kierkegaard die Christenheit ein massenhaft verbreitetes Christentum, in dem niemand ein Nachfolger Christi ist.

[But this opposition {between the viewpoints of Marx and Kierkegaard} merely represents two sides of a common destruction of the bourgeois-Christian world. Marx counted on the masses of the proletariat {working class} for a revolution of the bourgeois-capitalist world, while Kierkegaard in his fight against the bourgeois-Christian world staked everything on the single individual. This corresponds to the fact that for Marx, bourgeois society is a society of "isolated individuals" in which the person is alienated from his "genus essence," and for Kierkegaard Christianity is a widely disseminated institutional Christianity in which no one is a follower of Christ.]

Löwith brings a range of 19th century philosophers into the discussion of the longer-range implications and development of Hegel's thinking in addition to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, especially Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), Max Stirner (1806-1856) and David Friedrich Strauß (1808-1874). Those five were among the Left Heglelians, as were Marx and Friedrich Engels also. The Left Hegelians developed the implications for social theory and radical politics. Bauer, Feuerbach and Strauß were also important in developing the historical-critical school of Biblical studies, which American fundamentalist would later deride as "Higher Criticism."

The Old Hegelians Löwith discusses only briefly, in the persons four of the most important: Rudolf Haym (1821-1901), Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805-1892), and Kuno Fischer (1824-1907) and Karl Rosenkranz (1805-1879). Of Rosenkranz, Löwith approvingly cites Arnold Ruge's comment that he was "by far the freest Old Hegelian." He notes that originally, Old Hegelian referred to Hegel's direct students who propagated his ideas during Hegel's lifetime. But, he writes, “For the historical movement of the 19th century, they are without significance.” And he provides a short discussion of New Hegelians like Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Julius Ebbinghaus (1885-1981), Richard Kroner (1884-1974), Georg Lasson (1862-1932), Johann Max Emanuel Plenge (1874-1963), Heinrich Scholz (1884-1956) and Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915).

Löwith has a fascinating section comparing the perspectives of Hegel and Goethe on history. He uses the comparison to raise several issue about the grand theories of history from both Hegel himself and his followers, which also had great influence on those who were not admirers or followers of Hegel. Löwith argues that Hegel's concept of world history, by which the World Spirit develops in ever greater stages of freedom, is essentially Christian teleology dressed up in more scientific trappings. It contains within it the danger of arrogance in having people assuming they understand the nature of history and the direction it is going and needs to go. Hegel's concept of the world-historical individual carries with it the risk over over-estimating the significance as well as the virtues of the showy and the powerful.

Löwith also sees an element of Hegel's view of history that celebrates the successful in the form of the dominant and powerful, a variant of which can look a lot like Social Darwinism. Or, as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher put it, "God intended the great to be great and the little to be little.” As a caution against such a view, Löwith quotes Nietzsche, "Der Erfolg war immer der größte Lügner" ("Success has always been the biggest liar.")

And Löwith raises an important point about Hegel's theory that neither his more traditional-minded nor his more radical followers in the 19th century were inclined to challenge: Hegel's philosophy assumed a sharp distinction between humanity and Nature, between the person as Subject and Nature as object. This sharp distinction has long since become highly problematic. Löwith makes the point well through a contrast of Hegel's view of history to Goethe's:

Hegel hat seine Vorlesung über die "Philosophie der Geschichte" in den Jahren 1822/3-1830/1 vorgetragen. Die Einleitung dazu erklärt das Prinzip seiner Betrachtung, welches die stufenweise Entfaltung des Geistes und mithin der Freiheit ist. Der Geist, welcher als Weltgeist die Weltgeschichte beherrscht, ist gegenüber der Natur negative, d. h. der Fortschritt in der Entwicklung des Geistes zur Freiheit ist ein solcher in der Befreiung von der Gebundenheit an die Natur. Die Natur als solche hat daher in Hegels Philosophie der Geschichte keine selbständige und positive Bedeutung. Sie ist nicht der Grund der Geschichte der Welt, sondern nur ihr geographischer Boden. Das naturgegebene Verhältnis von Land und Meer, die Gestaltung der Küsten, der Hochländer und Ebenen, der Lauf der Flüsse und die Form der Berge, Regen und Trockenheit, das heiße, kalte und gemäßigte Klima – das alles ist zwar immer von Einfluß auf das geschichtliche Leben der Menschen, aber es nie schlechtweg bestimmend. Dem "Naturtypus" einer bestimmten "Lokalität" entspricht Typus und Charakter des darin lebenden Volkes, weil sich der Geist überhaupt in Zeit und Raum auseinanderlegt. Diese Entsprechungen zwischen der natürlichen und der geistigen Welt hat Hegel oft bis ins Eizelne ausgeführt. Im Prinzip galt ihm die Natur aber doch nur als der natürliche "Schauplatz" des geistigen Geschehens der Welt. Für Goethe ist die Natur der Schlüssel für dessen Verständnis.

[Hegel delivered his lectures on the "Philosophy of History" in the years 1822/3-1830/1. The Introduction to them declares the principle of his treatment, which is the stage-by-stage unfolding of the Spirit and with it freedom. Nature as such has here no self-standing and positive meaning in Hegel's philosophy of history. It is not the basis of the history of the world, but rather only its geographical grounds. The naturally established relationship of land and sea, the formations of the coasts, the highlands and the plains, the course of the rivers and the form of the mountains, rain and dryness, the hot, cold and mild climate – all of that is certainly always an influence on the historical life of humanity, but never absolutely determines it. The "natural type" of a particular "locality" corresponds to the type and character of the people living there, because the Spirit lays itself out in time and space in any case. Hegel often explained these influences between the natural and the spiritual world in detail. But in principle, he held Nature to be only the natural "showplace" of the spiritual occurrences of the world. For Goethe, Nature is the key to its understanding.]

Nietzsche

Löwith has written extensively on Nietzsche's philosophy in other works as well as this one. Nietzsche, even more so than Hegel, suffered from association with National Socialism in both Anglo-Saxon and orthodox Marxism-Leninism traditions. In a reflection of the latter, Wolfgang Harich (1923-1995), who was persecuted as a dissident Marxist in Communist East Germany, wrote even in the late 1980s about Nietzsche as a hidebound reactionary in "Revision des marxistischen Nietzschebilds?" Sinn und Form 5/1987 (Sept/Okt). Writers from Leon Uris to Walter Kaufmann have written at length about the problems with such an interpretation. In the philosophical tradition in which Löwith and the thinkers of the Frankfurt School were working, Nietzsche’s thought was seen as a source of valuable insights, though scarcely accepted uncritically. (Is it possible to accept Nietzsche's thinking uncritically?) Psychoanalysis also has generally had a high regard for Nietzsche’s psychological insights.

Löwith in this book gives a succinct definition of what he sees as Nietzsche’s philosophical system:

Nietzsches eigentlicher Gedanke ist ein Gedanken-System, an dessen Anfang der Tod Gottes, in dessen Mitte der aus ihm hervorgegangene Nihilismus und an dessent Ende die Selbstüberwindung des Nihilismus zur ewigen Wiederkehr steht.

[Nietzsche's real though is a thought system, in whose beginning stands the death of God, in whose middle stands the nihilism that proceeds from it and at whose end stands the self-unwinding of nihilism in the eternal return.]

Nietzsche's notion of the eternal return had to do with the idea that a person would live his life again and again in exactly the same way. Löwith takes that concept as a sign of how indebted Nietzsche's thinking always remained to Christianity:

Sie ist ein ausgesprochener Religionsersatz und nicht weniger als Kierkegaards christliches Paradox ein Ausweg aus der Verzweiflung: ein Versuch aus dem "Nichts" in "Etwas" zu kommen.

[It is an outspoken substitute for religion and not less than Kierkegaard’s Christian paradox a way out of despair: an attempt to get to "something" out of the "nothing."]

Löwith also spends some time on aspects of the work of Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1897), Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853), Paul Anton de Lagarde (1827-1891), Nietzsche’s close friend Franz Camille Overbeck (1837-1905) and Georges Sorel (1847-1922).

Löwith in the final section of his book focuses on "The Problem of Christianity." Löwith's discussion of Kierkegaard uses three different German words that all translate into "Christianity" in English: Christlichkeit, Christenheit, Christentum. Christlichkeit in the chapter title isn’t much of a problem. But Kierkegaard used terms that translate into German as Christenheit, by which he meant the present state of the Christian institutional churches, and Christentum, which he regarded as the true, original core of Christianity.

Both the real nature of Christianity and the state of institutional Christianity are problems with which the thinkers of this time were concerned, not only Kierkegaard. Löwith here calls attention to the heavily Protestant cast of 19th century German philosophy from Kant to Hegel to Strauß, calling again on Nietzsche, who wrote, "Der protestantische Pfarrer is Großvater der deutschen Philosophie, der Protestantismus selbst ihr peccatum originale." ("The Protestant pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy, Protestantism itself its peccatum originale [Original Sin].")

Tags: goethe, hegel, karl löwith, nietzsche, von hegel zu nietzsche