Review of "Hegel's Career and Politics" by Mehmet Tabak

We review a recent Hegel-biography, Hegel's Career and Politics: The Making of the Most Famous Philosopher in Germany, 1788-1831, by Mehmet Tabak.

Hegel’s Career and Politics: The Making of the Most Famous Philosopher in Germany, 1788-1831. Mehmet Tabak. Tabak, 2019.

Introduction

This self-published, polemical work (available here) earned our notice for the challenge it offers to the relatively recent “consensus view” of Hegel as a broadly liberal or progressive political thinker, albeit one critical of individualist theories of society. It also incorporates several rarely-cited recent English and German works on German and Prussian history into a continuous narrative of Hegel’s career.

The source material is drawn from the stories and observations of Hegel’s opponents, to which the author adds his own sarcastic asides.  He makes much use of Nicolin’s Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen (1970) and Hoffmeister and Nicolin’s edition of the Letters. Insofar as it relies on biography, the argument works best for the better documented later period of Hegel’s life after his move to Berlin.

The polemical aspect is a one-sided character-assassination of Hegel. For example, when Hegel is outside academia, he is a “dismal failure” (xi, 7), but when he promotes his views within it, it is only as an “ambitious sycophant” (xv, 302) intent on “double dealing” (34) by pursuing different prospects at once. His friendships are manipulative, his extensive philosophical studies and wide reading leave him “utterly unqualified” (18) to teach the subject, etc. Whilst this hostility is largely pointless, it is accompanied by valuable doubts about the sources and origin of more sympathetic views.

Tabak divides Hegel’s political allegiances into an early nationalist stage; a middling Napoleonic stage, the evidence for which he finds only in letters; and his post-1815 role as an “apologist” (xi) for the Restoration regimes created by the Congress of Vienna.  The substance of his revisionist thesis is its reinterpretation of Hegel’s political  writings, specifically Cart’s Vertrauliche Briefe (1798), The German Constitution (1800), the essays on Natural Law (1802), the Württemberg Estates (1816) and The English Reform Bill (1831), passages from the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) and the Preface and the theory of the state in Philosophy of Right (1820). To this are added analyses of Hegel’s lectures in Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin, his opposition to alleged “demagogues” such as Fries and De Wette, his political alliances with Hardenberg and Altenstein in Berlin, the dispute with Schleiermacher, his inaugural lectures, speech on the Augsburg confession, response to the July 1830 revolution in France and relationship to Edouard Gans.

Early Nationalism and Bonapartism

Unfortunately, Tabak neglects the key modern book on Hegel’s early life, Jacques D’Hondt’s Hegel Secret (1968), with its discussion of the journal Minerva and the politicised continental masonry assailed in Professor Robison of Edinburgh's once famous Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe (1797). Hegel left this behind soon enough for the common high road of reason, but it seems to have crossed his path. The author notes the slender basis for the “freedom tree” story, used to illustrate Hegel’s initial enthusiasm for the French Revolution of 1789. He later undermines his case by citing the description of the Revolution in the Philosophy of History as a “glorious mental dawn” (271). The skeptical treatment of the Cart Letters adds little to our knowledge. It is clear that these reflect a Girondin rather than a Jacobin position in any case. This is consistent with Hegel’s acknowledgement in a letter of the “ignominy of Robespierre’s party” (11).

Turning to the manuscript on The German Constitution, Tabak concludes that “the claim that the author was not a nationalist... is clearly false” (45). He dates part of it to the aftermath of the Second Congress of Rastatt (1799) and notes that Hegel laments territorial concessions to France. Hegel states that “a state should be formed by a nation” (46) and opposes the “French frenzy of freedom” (46). The praise of Richelieu and engagement with Machiavelli are authoritarian. Whilst he supports representative institutions, he advocates a “monarchical oligarchy” (51) Tabak considers the view that “if the state is to exist, it cannot regard [private] rights as inviolable” (53) as illiberal.

Tabak has little constructive to say about the essay on Natural Law (1802), which he regards as a “philosophical and linguistic disaster” (53) and “barely readable” (60). Likewise, the notes of the Jena lectures of 1805-06 are full of “silly contradictions and tricks” (61) He concedes that Hegel thinks that modern individuals should choose their own professions. Along with the autonomy of family life, these give a scope for personal freedom allegedly missing in the ancient world.

The brief and highly selective discussion of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) concludes that “Hegel belonged to the “conservative” philosophical trends in Germany.” (74) Given the alternation of abstruse argument with more diffuse narrative styles in the Phenomenology, I smiled on learning that Hegel both wrote the work to deadlines and was paid 18 florins a page (100).Tabak criticises the argument of the “Absolute Freedom and the Terror” section of the book to some effect, noting that the structure of deriving practical consequences from an analysis of a disordered “universal freedom” and then seeing them confirmed in the case of France does not prove the correctness of the prior analysis. He complains that in a later account the events of the Revolution are "lined up as inevitable results" (273), but the search for necessity (over historical accident) is legitimate and essential to Hegel's interpretative framework.

The Restoration

After the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna in 1815, guided by the Austrian statesman Metternich, established the German Confederation. Under Article 13, all member states were to have an Estates constitution, similar to the Charte of Louis XVIII in France. In Germany, the sacrifices of the War of Liberation were to be rewarded by political reform. The “Holy Alliance” of Austria, Prussia and Russia stood in the background as guarantor of “Christian and monarchical principles of government” (115) in Europe.

Acts of the Congress of Vienna (1815).

Tabak comments that “Hegel knew that his career prospects... were now in the hands of the forces of “Reaction”...  academic careers were to be ultimately decided by government officials throughout Germany.” (123-27) Hegel saw political progress continuing through the vagaries of politics. He taught at Heidelberg University from 1816 to 1818, after Jakob Fries left and a professor of Law Martin was dismissed. Tabak interprets his Inaugural Address at Heidelberg as politicised in its urging acceptance of reality and opposition to the “shallowness” of Fries. In the essay on the Württemberg Estates he claims that “Hegel wants to do away with popular, democratic elections altogether.” (146) He rejects the liberal interpretation of Hegel’s 1817 lectures on natural right and political science by Ilting and D’Hondt.

The Wartburg Festival of October 1817, attended by Hegel’s rival Fries, and the “demagogue” and student movements with which it was associated, is presented sympathetically. Fries’s speech is cited twice (180, 189). This sets up the author's denunciation of Hegel’s attack on Fries in the Philosophy of Right. However, Hegel had already criticised Fries on philosophical grounds in the Science of Logic. Hegel profited from the situation, but it does not follow that he was not expressing his own views.

Hegel and Prussian Politics

Jacques D’Hondt argued in Hegel en son temps (1968) that Hegel was allied with the reformist figures of Hardenberg and the Minister of Education Altenstein in Berlin from 1818. Tabak claims at the outset that “the popular claim that Altenstein hired Hegel as a liberal ally is utterly implausible.” (157) He rejects D’Hondt’s account in favour of the analysis of Horst Althaus. The author concedes that “Hardenberg had sought to implement relatively liberal policies around 1810.” (169) He argues however, that Hardenberg changed his views under the Restoration and dismisses Altenstein as “Hardenberg’s lackey” (169).

Tabak proceeds to refute D’Hondt’s analysis of Hegel’s relations to a series of liberal students and teachers: Victor Cousin, Asverus, Carové, Henning, Schulz and Förster, adding information on the student’s politics and downplaying Hegel’s actions on their behalf. He points out that Hegel was not in Dresden on 14 July 1820, when he reportedly toasted the French revolution there.

Tabak then turns to the Philosophy of Right (1820). He supplies evidence that this went past the Prussian censor (Letter of 9 Jun 1820 to Nicolai). However, he does not address D’Hondt’s work on this (in Hegels Philosophie des Rechts, Ed. Henrich, 1982, 151-184). The background of the censorship was the Karlsbad Decrees of October 1819 that followed the killing of Kotzebue earlier that year by a student. He cites the University Law from these in full. Tabak presents Hegel as a “servile apologist” of “illiberal and antidemocratic ideas” (179) and “political quietism” (183). He illustrates this by taking up Hegel’s views of the French Revolution, the monarchy and freedom of the press. He complains that “Hegel cannot explain how [the Reign of Terror] necessarily issued from the arbitrary [popular] will.” (183) He helpfully contrasts Hegel’s tripartite division of state powers with that of Montesquieu and makes some reasonable criticisms of Hegel’s views on war and press freedom. He overlooks Hegel's interest in British Whig politics.

The author then takes Schleiermacher’s side against Hegel on religion and attacks Hegel’s endorsement of the state as an instrument of God. He does not venture far into the field of religion on his own account. Yet faith is clearly a factor in the texts he is evaluating. The author observes of Hegel that “his strongest sympathies were with Christ.” (6) This was also the finding of Lukács in The Young Hegel. The Restoration involved a return to Christianity, as the Revolution had led to its abolition. Hegel called himself a Lutheran Christian (243). Tabak notes that Hegel was seen as a religious figure by some (231-3) and says he spoke from a “professorial pulpit” (277). He attributes Hegel’s 1821 lecture course on the philosophy of religion to an attempt to counter Schleiermacher’s theory of religion as grounded in feeling. He refers repeatedly to Hegel’s “deification and glorification of the state” (209) in the Philosophy of Right and cites his view of history as a “true theodicy” (276) from the Philosophy of History, with overtones of idolatry. However, St Paul wrote that “the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13.1) and the Bible itself clearly contains (or indeed is) a history of sin and redemption. Hence it is not clear that Hegel’s basic doctrine is unorthodox on these points or that it denigrates the path of reform when it advocates “habitual obedience” (188) to legitimate earthly authority. Laurence Dickey's Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit (1989) sheds further light on the concepts at work here.

The author observes that “One often gets lost in Hegel’s “speculative” or “logical” jargon, and thus loses sight of the concrete political aims of the book.” (183) He cites the complaint that Hegel was “fond of using the word “therefore” often when it was not warranted.” (Berichten #557, 267) He further complains of “logical hocus-pocus” (206) and a “typically cryptic manner” of presentation. (241) Hegel wrote that “Truly speculative philosophy cannot take on the garb and style of Locke and the usual French philosophy.” (107, letter to Ghent of 18 Dec 1812). His abstruse logical terminology plainly serves a purpose for him like that of surgical clamps and scalpels in his diagnoses of living thought and social relations. He shares the view of James Mylne that reason is already active in such immediate acts of the mind as the decisions of statesmen, administrators and businessmen. Philosophy famously only comes along afterwards to retrace reason's first steps and paint its grey in grey. The book does not get further than complaints of obscurity in shedding light on Hegel's logical vocabulary.

On Hegel’s final years, Tabak identifies several sources that support Rosenkranz’s view of Hegel’s alarm over the July 1830 Revolution in France. Michelet and Karl Hegel’s recollections and letters to Göschel, Cotta and Schulz confirm the account that Rosenkranz had from Varnhagen. This explains the reference to the “disquieting impression... produced by the example of neighbouring France” (282) at the start of the English Reform Bill essay. This sets the author up to emphasise effectively the conservative aspects of this essay. In practice, as we have shown elsewhere, the 1832 Reform Act, long advocated by Hegel's Whig contemporary James Mylne in Scotland, led to many successful and enduring social reforms.

Conclusions

The author reveals his own hand politically only by conversational implication. Presumably readers can consult his other books, e.g.  Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx’s Philosophy (2012) and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution and Freedom: a Critical Reconstruction (2020) for his own views. His partial reduction of Hegel’s thought to class or individual interest is one strand within this tradition. There is something of a performative contradiction in his devoting three books – with another planned – to someone judged to be a “largely incoherent charlatan” (302) whose leading work contains “gibberish” (70). It seems likely that Tabak’s earlier work on Hegel’s Logic (Palgrave, 2017) does his own position and Hegel’s philosophy more justice than the current book in this respect.

The book concludes with an unfortunately brief and incomplete sketch of the origins of the contemporary “consensus view” (in Allen Wood's phrase) of Hegel scholars of Hegel as a broadly progressive critic of individualism. He traces this back to Thomas Knox in Britain, Jacques D’Hondt in France and Joachim Ritter and Herbert Marcuse in Germany and the USA. Lukács could have been usefully added to this list. He has effectively challenged some of these thinkers' central tenets.

My impression is that much Western Hegel-scholarship retreated behind the walls of academe after the end of university expansion in the 1970s, becoming inward-looking in the process. Hence a work that brings out Hegel’s public significance again, albeit in a harsh and imperfect light, is particularly welcome. D’Hondt said in 1968 that the “conservative aspects” of Hegel’s thought were “well known and indisputable” (Hegel en son temps, 10). Arguably, this is no longer the case and Tabak has provided a welcome corrective to an overly cosy consensus.