Thought and Action in Richard Kroner's Hegel-scholarship

French translation (2015) of Richard Kroner's Von Kant bis Hegel (1921-24).

This post compares the theme of the relations of thought and action in Richard Kroner's and John Macmurray’s philosophy.

Introduction (Stephen Cowley)

Richard Kroner's two-volume book Von Kant bis Hegel [From Kant to Hegel] (1921-24) was a milestone in the revival of Hegel's influence and Hegel-scholarship in the early 20th century. Hermann Glockner called Kroner "the German Hegelian of the present day" and his book "the classic work of neo-Hegelianism" (Beiträge, 276, 302). Kroner's early critic Leo Shestov thought it the best book on German Idealism (Jalley, 16). György Lukács considered it as "a book of decisive importance for the later development of neo-Hegelianism" (The Young Hegel, xviii).

It will be helpful to sketch the philosophical background. In the late 19th century, systematic philosophy often adopted the positivist separation of matters of fact from judgements of value (known as "normative judgements"). In the theory of value, neo-Kantianism predominated in ethics and religion. The idea of a stable and organised system of knowledge as found in Hegel's Encyclopaedia was held to hamper the reception of new factual information about nature and history. The Encyclopedia Britannica for example, was a looser collection of factual essays that went through several editions, most famously the Ninth. Hegel's influence endured in the history of philosophy, e.g. his former student Erdmann's History of Philosophy, associated with the idea of a developmental history of ideas. The limitations of the neo-Kantian schools in Heidelberg and Marburg on questions of culture led to a renewed interest in Hegel's theory of objective mental structures.

Richard Kroner (1884-1974) was educated in Breslau, Berlin and Heidelberg and served in the first world war. He co-founded the philosophy journal Logos. In the 1920s he taught educational theory and philosophy in Dresden, where he met the famous diarist Victor Klemperer. From 1928 he lectured on philosophy in Kiel. Kroner left Germany in 1938 and later lectured in Oxford and New York. He knew Scottish Hegel-scholar and translator T.M. Knox and wrote an introduction to Knox’s edition of Hegel’s Early Theological Writings (1948). Kroner's Gifford lectures in Scotland were published as The Primacy of Faith (1943/51). His book Kant’s Weltanschauung (1914) was made available in English (1956). He originated the description of Hegel as "the Protestant Aquinas" and sees him as a religious thinker.

Richard Kroner in 1938, from Asmus, 1993.

Kroner expresses his intentions in From Kant to Hegel as follows:

"History demonstrates that at the heart of the European spirit, the particular mission of the German people has been to draw all great movements into the human mind and to make them resonate in the depth of feeling. [...] German idealism from Kant to Hegel should be conceived in its development as a whole, as a line which, conformably to a law inherent to it, but which is imprinted only on it, launches itself in a great arc. [...] It is to be shown how the Hegelian philosophy of spirit grew out of the Kantian critique of reason, what changes the original form of German idealism underwent in order to find this its final form." 

In order to see German Idealism as an inevitable progress from Kant to Hegel, Kroner ignores thinkers such as Herbart and Schopenhauer who do not fit this trajectory. He also continues the patriotic tone of Rudolf Haym and the last work of Karl Rosenkranz. Kroner concludes his book:

"In the end, after he has demonstrated the identity of revealed religion and philosophy-rightly-understood, Hegel concludes his Encyclopedia with the famous formula of Aristotelian metaphysics [that God's contemplation of his own nature is what is most pleasant and best, from Met. L.7, 1072b, 18-30] in order, so to say, to seal the combination of the mind of Greece with that of Germany realised by his system." 

Similarly, the combination of Aristotle's philosophy and Christianity was the content of Aquinas's teaching. Kroner cites Hegel's own words in support of this:

"What is true, great and divine in life is so by the Idea. The goal of philosophy is to apprehend it in its true shape and universality. [...] All that human life contains, all that has value, everything that counts, is of the nature of mind, and this realm of spirit exists only by the consciousness of truth and justice, by the apprehension of the Idea." [De Kant, I, 23; Inaugural Speech at Berlin, 22 October 1818. Dickey, Political Writings, 185]

Shestov took issue with the priority of theory over action in Kroner and questioned whether we possessed any conception of reason that would account fully for the content of religion. This led to a discussion of "irrationalism". Kroner was also overly Pangermanic for Shestov's sensibilities.

The relation of thought and action in Kroner is also a theme in John Macmurray's theoretical philosophy, particularly in The Form of the Personal (1957-61). Jack Costello’s biography of Macmurray makes no mention of Kroner. However, Kroner’s book was well known in its day and the common starting point with Kant and similarity of the reasoning are striking. Here’s a summary of the relevant material on thought and action from the section on Kant in From Kant to Hegel, with a few comments on my own behalf:

Transition to Practical Philosophy

The Significance of Ethics for Kant’s Philosophy

Kroner notes that he has already argued for the fundamentally ethical impulse in Kant in his book Kant’s Weltanschauung (1914). He says that this ethical world-view “provides the key to the entire edifice of his philosophy”, though other factors contributed. He says of Kant’s philosophy:

“Thus the relationship of theoretical to practical reason stands at its focal point. The idealism of the transcendental logic proves to be, at its very core, an idealism of ethical consciousness and only thereby becomes a generalised idealism. Kant would never have completed the “Copernican” revolution that makes the self the sun around which objects turn, if his thought had not been deeply anchored in his ethical consciousness, if he had not known the will that determines itself and the law that the will gives itself as the immoveable rock in the sea of appearances.” (153)

This is true also for the impact on Fichte and the young Schelling. It is for this reason that the centre of gravity of metaphysics moves from the object to the subject. Consciousness obeys its own law and does so freely in the ethical realm. Kroner says:

“To be sure, the presupposition of this turn is that ethical reason is recognised in its independence, and ethics understood as a science of the rational will, by the practical reason. In ethics too, a Copernican revolution must have been accomplished in order that the corresponding move in the theory of knowledge can be undertaken.” (154)

It is not an idea of the good outside us, but the ethical character of the will itself, i.e. conscience, that is central. Nothing is good without qualification but the good will, as Kant says. Ethics ceases to be a logic of ethical concepts, or a part of metaphysics, or a psychology and becomes something independent. Kroner stresses the fluid aspect of Kant’s terminology of the various categories and faculties. It is the idea of subjectivity, Ichhaftgkeit, that is key. He says of the problems of interpreting Kant: “There is in fact only one way out: in place of a metaphysical-psychological interpretation, there must come an ethical interpretation in the broadest sense, that is to say, practical-theoretical.” (158) This first happened with Fichte. Kroner says in conclusion:

“A solely theoretical consciousness is not thinkable at all, whether as empirical or transcendental, for consciousness is always active, doing, productive. A practical moment is always supposed in it. [...] Separation and reunification of empirical as of transcendental consciousness are only to be understood if one considers in general the practical moment in consciousness. The empirical [consciousness] then becomes the infinitely striving, gradually self-realising but never realised transcendental consciousness.” (158-59)

Macmurray also references Kant in his Gifford lectures, but his scope is broader as he draws also on the French phenomenological tradition with its analysis of the sense of touch. This becomes clearer in the following section. There may be a mistake in this – going back to Kant, but from which Macmurray is not entirely free – namely of thinking that what happens in religion is not that God or his justice exists, but I become a  good person by willing to believing in them. But truth is prior to goodness. The church may have to reject the subjectivism that began in Kant and Schleiermacher and continued in their modernist successors in theology.

The Primacy of Practical Reason as Presupposition of Kant’s “Copernican Act”

Kroner explains that the finitude of human understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason achieves a determinate meaning in opposition to a striving for infinitude in the realm of practise. It also gives sense to the step-by-step realisation of an Ideal of reason. Kroner says:

“If one pursues these thoughts of Kant in this direction encompassed by Fichte, one recognises that the transcendental logic already teaches the “primacy of practical reason”. Where reason is the highest condition of the use of the intellect [Verstand], no scientific judgement at all, but also no object of experience, is possible, without striving for the infinite, without a broadening out towards the whole.” (160)

This is why the objects of experience are taken to be phenomena. The concept of phenomena emerges from the twilight role it plays as a foil to the Thing in Itself [Ding-an-sich]. The practical-theoretical standpoint introduces a dualism of finite and infinite spirit into philosophy. The concern with dualism is a common theme in Macmurray. Kroner states:

“All the oppositions of Kantian philosophy are based in the final reckoning on this primal opposition, which forbids speculative synthesis. Therefore the Idea, as task of reason, thought as the Ought [Sollen], is the decisive and final concept of this philosophy, through which it becomes as a whole an ethical philosophy. In Kant though, the ethical thought predominates, so to say, only naively. Although he proclaims the primacy of practical reason, this is not in the sense of a principle penetrating all the parts of philosophy, but only from the standpoint of certain ethico-religious ideas.” (160-61)

So Macmurray's idea of generalising the practical standpoint is also found in Kroner. In Kant, Kroner argues, we do not proceed from an original unity, but rather the parts of philosophy gradually grow together. Kroner asks if Kant’s philosophy is one building with a single plan, or not rather a series of buildings. He himself seems to have moved from seeing it as a propaedeutic (CPR, B869) to seeing it as a finished system (Letter to Allgemeine Literaturzeitung 7 Aug 1799). The dogmatic prejudice that separates our reason from the absolute is a prejudice of ethical consciousness that feels itself to be incomplete. Kroner concludes: “Ethical self-knowledge: that is the deepest meaning of the critical transcendental philosophy: that is what makes it critical and transcendental.” (162) What makes the ethical self-consciousness ethical is that it aspires beyond itself to absoluteness. It separates duty from inclination and opposes its finitude to an infinite self (God). That it has to follow rules is common ground with the transcendental logic. Kroner summarises:

“In Kant’s theory of knowledge, the motive of an ethically grounded philosophical system is at work, without entirely prevailing. It crosses with the logical motive, but doesn’t unite with it without contradiction. Both motives wrestle with each other.” (163-64)

This is why the Critique of Pure Reason is interpreted so variously. Kroner says: “German idealism as a whole is not a system, but a creative thought that is deployed in systems, announces itself in systems, that can only be understood in its continuity historically.” (161) Nevertheless, to see Kant as a starting point has a clarifying effect. Kant corroborates the ethical interpretation when he says: “I had to set aside [aufheben] knowledge to make room for faith.” (CPR, BXXX) From this we have derived the opposition of phenomenon and thing-in-itself – and this requires a subject, to whom the phenomena appear. Hence follows the Copernican turn. What we have is an ethics of experience, an ethical logic. Kroner says: “The great turn that occurs in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is the reversal of the hierarchical order of the two fundamental philosophical disciplines.” (G165)

Kant broke with the primacy of logic that dates back to Socrates. Goethe called him the first “ethical thinker”, who not only thinks about ethics, but whose thought is an ethical thought. This ethical thought had then to become conscious of itself, before the Logos could again raise its head and take back power. Kroner summarises the plan of the rest of his book:

“The history of this revolution, carried through to the end and the succeeding Restoration, the history of the marriage of the ethico-religious German spirit with the aesthetico-speculative Greek spirit, is the story of the development of German idealism.” (165-66) 

I see in this the project of generalising a practical standpoint and exploring the origins of fixed dualisms in theoretical philosophy which characterised Macmurray’s thought in the 1950s (i.e. Self as Agent).

Kroner's influence in the Anglosphere extended to Hegel-scholar Michael Foster (1903-59), who was a student of Kroner in Dresden in the 1920s (see Foster's dissertation). Foster went on to write The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel (1935) of which George Davie gives a favourable account of in Crisis of the Democratic Intellect (Polygon, 1986) and Foster's work also influenced the theologian Alister McGrath.

The themes of agency and of the general direction of religion and culture are not exhausted. Kroner's work stands at some recent crossroads in the discussion of these subjects and hence clearly merits further study.

References
Asmus, Walter. Richard Kroner, 1884–1974. Frankfurt: Lang, 1993.
Glockner, Hermann. Beiträge zum Verständnis und zum Kritik Hegels. Bonn: Bouvier, 1965.
Hegel, G.W.F. Political Writings. Eds. Dickey, Hisbet. Cambridge: UP, 1999.
Jalley, Émile. Introduction to Kroner, De Kant à Hegel. Paris, L'Harmattan, 2015.
Kroner, Richard. Von Kant bis Hegel. Tübingen: Mohr, 1921-24. [French translation by Marc Géraud, De Kant à Hegel. Paris, L'Harmattan, 2015. There is also a Chinese translation. I have not seen the second German edition (1961), which has a new Foreword.]
Lukács, György. The Young Hegel. Orig: Zürich: Europa, 1948; English translation, Merlin, 1975.