-
CHAPTER 17 Heine’s Dis/Enchantment of Hegel’s History of Philosophy
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
with heine, spinoza reception reaches a new stage. Ironically, Heine’s outspoken advocacy on behalf of his Unglaubensgenosse (fellow nonbeliever) has gone virtually unnoticed except for his Jewish readers from Moses Hess to Sigmund Freud.1 This is mostly due to readings that have been oblivious to the philosophical sophistication of a writer whose artful staging of his narrative as chance and free association has concealed the theoretical implications of his so palatably wit-wrapped critique. Yet with his intervention in the reception of Spinoza, Heine reclaims the revolutionary potential of a philosopher who, as a result of his appropriation by German idealism from Fichte to Hegel and Schelling, had, in the wake of Jacobi, been “spiritualized” and dehistoricized. With Heine’s reclamation, Spinoza assumes a central position in the emergence of modern thought. Yet, Heine broaches his reappropriation in an ingenuously framed challenge of the historiography of philosophy in general. This makes it possible to expose the underlying assumptions that inform and cripple the historiography of philosophy, which, in the case of Spinoza , has led not only to the oversight of his role in the shaping of modern thought but even to the denial of his speciWcity. Heine’s On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany marks a rather curious point of transition in German letters. At the crossroads of philosophy and literature, it is alternately trivialized or charged with cryptic meanings. If Heine obviously engages Hegel’s philosophy, the 253 c h a p t e r 1 7 heine’s dis/enchantment of hegel’s history of philosophy question of whether he simply appropriates or rejects the philosophical paradigm of his time overlooks the carefully targeted argument Heine brings into play in this work. Some critics have called attention to the fact that the poetological ramiWcations of this text are crucial. Yet discussions regularly overlook what seems to lie at the heart of Heine’s project. The claim that On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany was written solely to provide the French audience with a popularized introduction to German thought misses the critical thrust that transcends the humor and gives the whimsical presentation its deeper meaning. This text stages an open challenge that takes the historiography of philosophy to task, exposing in an unforgiving way the strings and ropes that move religion, philosophy, and politics. Yet Heine’s text is not simply a parody that ridicules the sublime and deXates the hot air of both idealism and empiricism for the sake of entertainment. Heine’s project is philosophical in a distinctly critical way. It challenges the positions and opinions that have assumed canonical status.2 As Heine rewrites the history of philosophy as one of a not so mythological reality, he launches into reinventing in a playful way a mythology and genealogy, constructing a monumental history while at the same time constantly undoing such mythologization. If on the historical stage tragedy is followed by farce, as Heine notes3 —a remark picked up by Marx, certainly one of the more attentive readers of Heine’s radical critique of ideology—this is certainly the hermeneutic-critical principle Heine brings to bear on the history of philosophy. His farcical style DisneyWes culture with a critical intent. This approach sets in motion a dynamic that demythologizes philosophy. Exposing the mythological fundament of philosophy’s self-fashioning in Hegel, Heine pushes the tendency of the self-mythologization of philosophy to its extreme. Rewriting the history of philosophy as mythology forces the framework of the history of philosophy and, as a consequence, of history to its cataclysm. The application of the Hegelian model of philosophy of history to itself reveals the problematic nature of the assumptions on which it is based. Heine cannot attack Hegel’s philosophy of history from outside but has to critique him from within if he is to challenge it on its own grounds. Heine’s intervention thus recasts Hegel’s vision as a farce. Yet it is a farce that subverts the entire Hegelian setup, leaving no room for even a partial redemption of Hegel’s claims. Despite all his ambivalent admiration, Heine leaves no doubt about his view of Hegel. If in his 1852 preface to the second edition of On the 254 spinoza’s new place [54.210.126.232] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:31 GMT) History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany his famous verdict on Hegel is unequivocal, it only makes even more explicit what Heine’s...