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27 2 Group Formation and Divisions in the Young Hegelian School Wolfgang Bunzel and Lars Lambrecht Translated from the German by Douglas Moggach Beginnings and Phases of the Young Hegelian Movement Already at Hegel’s death in 1831 there existed a spectrum of politically oriented distinctions among various tendencies in Hegelianism. These differences came to a head in the latter half of the 1830s, with the appearance of a new generation of young intellectuals. After Arnold Ruge delivered his striking repudiation of the “old Hegelian principle” in his 1837 article “Our Educated Critical Journalism” (“Unsere gelehrte kritische Journalistik”),1 and David Friedrich Strauss in his 1837 Polemics (Streitschriften) distinguished a right, left, and center in respect to philosophical and theological attitudes toward religious dogmas,2 the conceptual and ideological basis was laid for the evolution and designation of a distinct and independent formation within the Hegelian school. The clearly visible external sign of this new faction was the establishment of a journal, the Hallische Jahrbücher (after July 1841, the Deutsche Jahrbücher), by Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermeyer. Originally conceived as a forum open to all representatives of an unorthodox Hegelianism—despite its implicit opposition to Hegel’s own Berlin-based Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik—the journal developed in the first year of its existence into an organ of literary combat. The ground for this development was the so-called Leo controversy (1838–39). In the course of this dispute, the conservative Halle historian Heinrich Leo published a polemical attack,The Hegelings (Die Hegelingen, 1838), in which he vehemently assailed a number of Hegel’s students. He accused the members of this “Young Hegelian party”3 of a complete break with Christian doctrine, including the denial of a personal god; they were thus guilty of barely disguised atheism. The terms that Leo 28 W O L F G A N G B U N Z E L A N D L A R S L A M B R E C H T made current were quickly taken up in the contemporary debates, and came into common usage to designate the group of deviant followers of Hegel who were critical of religion. The rapid spread of the terminology was promoted by the fact that the accused immediately adopted these “denunciatory terms” (Denunciationsbegriffe)4 as their own, and applied them self-consciously to characterize their own position. In consequence of the Leo controversy, which led to a detectable lessening of the impact of the Young Hegelians, the objects of Leo’s attack drew together more closely, becoming a sociologically describable faction.5 The external appearance of the Young Hegelians as a homogeneous group is, however, quite incorrect. Although most of the Left Hegelians were of approximately the same age, and so can be considered as a generational group, indeed as the first youth movement in the history of philosophy,6 there were nonetheless considerable differences in age and experience between the eldest representatives (Arnold Ruge was born in 1802) and the youngest (Edgar Bauer, born 1820). Moreover , the goals of the group changed considerably during its relatively short existence. From the very beginning, there existed several regional factions, with tense mutual relations. Despite the thoroughly justified efforts of previous research to define Young Hegelianism through its proximity to Hegelian philosophy,7 its function as the critical elaboration of Hegel, or its structure as a quasi-political party in the German Vormärz, it must be insisted that the term “Young Hegelian” is essentially a polemical concept, deployed in multiple and partly contradictory ways in the ideological controversies of the 1830s and 1840s. Still, the pronouncedly journalistic character of the movement, as it expressed itself in the founding of numerous journals and in collaboration in selected publication venues, gave rise to a marked social network which can be explained through the sociology of communication, illustrating the fluid contours of the phenomenon of Young Hegelianism. In retrospect we can distinguish five more or less distinct phases of Young Hegelianism. In the first stage, the principal ideological premises were formulated, and the philosophical basis laid for the subsequent movement. Heinrich Heine provided the central slogans in his book On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, 1833–34), as did David Friedrich Strauss in his critical investigation The Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu, 1835); in a sense Eduard Gans also contributed.8 In this early phase, from 1835 to 1837, group...

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