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  • The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School
  • Todd Gooch
Douglas Moggach , editor. The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 345. Cloth, $75.00.

Of the thirteen essays collected in this volume, several of which discuss more than one thinker, approximately three are devoted to Marx, two to Feuerbach, two to Bruno Bauer, two to Max Stirner, and one each to Eduard Gans, Edgar Bauer, and Friedrich Engels. Underlying the diversity of their individual positions, these "New Hegelians" were united by a common interest in exploiting the conceptual resources of Hegelian philosophy to develop new categories for analyzing and transforming the European intellectual and social order after the collapse of the traditional estate system. The concluding essay by Ardis Collins draws on the discussion of conscientiousness in the Phenomenology to develop a defense of Hegel against his Left Hegelian critics.

Several of the essays are notable for the light they shed on less well known figures, while others present novel claims with respect to more familiar ones. Thus, José Crisóstomo De Souza seeks to "re-contextualize" (243) Marx's historical materialism by arguing that Marx's revision of Feuerbach's conception of the species-essence (Gattungswesen) represents an attempt to transcend the "individualist ontology" (252) that Marx saw as a fundamental defect of Feuerbach's philosophy. Andrew Chitty examines the characterization of the essence of the state found in Marx's early writings for the Rheinische Zeitung (1842) to show how the theory of productive forces in Marx's mature theory developed out of this earlier Hegelian conception. These essays, taken together, militate against interpretations of Marx that insist upon a clean break in his thinking before and after 1845. [End Page 667]

Warren Breckman's discerning analysis of the theories of referentiality underlying the approaches to the interpretation of religious texts pursued by Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, respectively, shows how divergent conceptions of symbolism and its role in aesthetic experience articulated by various turn-of-the-century German writers continued to be played out among Hegel's heirs. Breckman succeeds in illuminating the relations of Bauer and Feuerbach to these predecessors, as well as in demonstrating the relevance of their contrasting approaches to late twentieth-century discussions of allegorical and symbolic modes of representation and their relative merits.

In addition to his introduction, Moggach contributes an essay on Bauer that he describes as "an exercise in the retrieval of a specifically Hegelian republicanism" (117). Bauer's "rigoristic" republican theory collapses the distinction between right (Recht) and morality maintained by Kant, demanding that private interests be excluded not only from the formulation of moral maxims, but also as motivating factors of political action, and in the legitimization of institutions produced through such action. As shown persuasively by Massimiliano Tomba, however, Bauer's rejection of particularistic privileges does not amount to a devaluation of individuality per se. Freedom, for Bauer, is neither the natural condition of human beings, nor something that can be granted to or imposed upon them by the state. By its very nature it must continually be "conquered" through the struggle of self-conscious spirit to transcend the contradictions inherent within each of its particular historical manifestations. This agonistic and aristocratic conception of freedom thus leaves to "the mass" the "freedom not to be free" (110–11).

Eric van der Luft's article on Edgar Bauer paints a more distinctive portrait of Bruno's younger brother than has previously been available, and goes some way toward clarifying Edgar's political views, especially in relation to those of the elder Bauer and Max Stirner. Edgar emerges as a proponent of the "passion for destruction" (Bakunin) of all institutions that inhibit the historical development of human spirit toward the realization of its essence, conceived as freedom.

David Leopold constructs a typology of anarchist theories and locates Stirner's position within this framework. Leopold identifies Stirner as an "a priori weak anarchist" (180), meaning that, for Stirner, the authority of the state as such is illegitimate (i.e., not because of any empirical flaw), though Stirner recognizes no moral imperative to abolish the state and replace...

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