The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity Hegel, Heine, And Marx

7/29/2019 The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity Hegel, Heine, And Marx

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The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity: Hegel, Heine, and Marx

Author(s): Harold MahSource: New German Critique, No. 50 (Spring - Summer, 1990), pp. 3-20Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488208

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TheFrenchRevolution nd the Problem fGermanModernity:Hegel,Heine, and Marx

Harold MahThe response of German intellectuals in the late 18th century to theFrench Revolution was various and changing. Some were immediately

suspicious of the Revolution's intentions and prospects. Goetheshowed a skeptical reserve; Schiller doubted its ability to bring about afree society.' Others who at first welcomed the Revolution quickly be-came disillusioned when it yielded war, regicide, and Jacobin dictator-ship. Klopstock's initial poetic celebrations gave way to expressions ofbitter disappointment.2 Gentz travelled from one extreme to the other:the Revolution's energetic apologist in 1789, he had become by 1792one of its most vociferous critics.3

But if not all German intellectuals were initially or continuouslysympathetic to the Revolution, there was nonetheless a significantnumber who embraced it as the beginning of a new and better era.4

1. General works on the German response to the French Revolution areJacquesDroz, L'Allemagnet la revolutionran9aiseParis:Presses Universitairede France, 1949);Jurgen Voss, Deutschlandnd die FranzsischeRevolution(Munich:Artemis Verlag, 1983);MauriceBoucher,LaRevolutione 1789vueparlesecrivainsUemandsecontemporainsParis:M. Didier, 1954);G.P. Gooch, GermanyndtheFrench evolution(London:F. Cass, 1965);Horst Gunther,ed., Die ranzisischeRevolution:erichtendDeutungeneutscherSchriftstellerund Historiker(Frankfurt:Deutscher ClassikerVerlag, 1985);Alfred Stem, DerEinfluss erfranzisischenevolutionaufdasdeutsche eistesleben(Stuttgart:.G. Cotta'scheBuchhandlung,1928). On Goethe and Schillerspecificallysee Stem 129-144; Gooch 175-207, 214-229;and Droz 172-186, 207-320.2. Gooch 119-126; Rudolf Vierhaus, " 'Sie und nicht Wir':Deutsche Urteile uberden Ausbruch der Franzosischen Revolution," in Voss, 1-2.3. Gooch 91-103; Droz 371-392.4. See thegeneralworks citedin note 1,especiallySter 3-16. Also seeVierhaus1-15.

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4 The FrenchRevolutionand GermanModernity

And although some of these intellectuals later deplored its violence andauthoritarianism, a prominent group, including Kant, Fichte, and Hegel,remained loyal to what they identified as its original impulse. For thesethinkers, the Revolution was a welcome and irreversible historicalbreakthrough.5

According to Hegel, the Revolution cleared away an anarchic mass ofantiquated social and political institutions and allowed the most ad-vanced moral and political tendencies in Europe to assume concreteform. In France, it abolished aristocratic privilege and arbitrary royal au-thority, founding in their places social equality and constitutional, repre-sentative government.6 Carried by Napoleon's armies into central Eu-rope, the Revolution led to the removal of a moribund empire and rem-nants of feudal privilege and servitude, and it helped to establish rationallegal codes, freedom of property and person, and equal access to gov-ernment service (PH 456).Because the Revolution eliminated traditional obstacles to socialequality and constitutional government, German intellectuals could viewit in particular as the realization of the Enlightenment and in general asthe achievement of unfettered reason.7 Or as Hegel said, invoking thesignificance of the Revolution in his lectures on the philosophy of histo-ry, "Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets re-volved around him had it been perceived that man's existence centers inhis head, i.e., in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of re-ality" (PH 447). For Hegel and other Germans, the Revolution replaceda decaying and obsolete social and political order with rational institu-tions. In characterizing the Revolution as the heroic consolidation of ra-tional social and political forms, these Germans (and many commenta-tors today) identified it as the decisive arrival of "modernity."8 And al-though these German thinkers and writers did not want to emulate theabrupt and violent manner in which the French constructed modernity,they nonetheless hoped that Germany would follow the Revolution by

5. On Kant,see Gooch 126-282;on Fichte,Gooch 283-295; on Hegel, see below.6. G.W.F.Hegel, ThePhilosophyfHistory,rans.J. Sibree(New York:Dover Publica-tions, 1956) 446-447. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviationPH followed bypage number(s).7. Vierhaus 8-9.8. See, for example, M. RainerLepsius, "SoziologischeTheoreme iiber die Sozial-struktur der 'Modeme' und 'Modemisierung,' " Studienzum BeginndermodernenWelt,ed.Reinhar Koselleck(Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta,1977) 12. This view is indirectlycriticizedbyRolf Reichhardt, "Die franzosische Revolution als Ma1tab des deutschen 'Sonder-wegs'?,"in Voss, 322-324.


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Harold Mah 5

creating its own real world of reason.9Faith in the Revolution's historical validity as the breakthrough of mo-dernity, and in its relevance for Germany, was not easily held, for under-standing the Revolution in this manner left German intellectuals withconsiderable problems. Perceived as the achievement of universal reas-on, the Revolution offered a model of social and political principles thatrational people everywhere were obligated to follow.10Yet it was not at allclear that Germany could meet this standard of reason and modernity.There was no comparable social and political change in Germany." TheNapoleonic conquest precipitated social and political reform, notably inPrussia, but that reform ultimately proved ambiguous in its results andwas followed furthermore by varying degrees of political reaction.'2It was also uncear what the Revolution as a measure of social and po-litical progress implied for German culture. 18th-century German intel-lectuals had freed themselves only recently from what they had per-ceived to be their tutelage to French culture.13 From Sturm und Drang,through classicism and romanticism to idealism, German intellectualshad steadily gained a sense of autonomy and accomplishment, so that inthe opinion of many tum-of-the-century German thinkers, Germany wasnow a privileged realm of spirit and intellect, the nation par excellence fthe Dichterand the Denker. "It is a national characteristic only among theGermans," Friedrich Schlegel wrote in 1799, "to honor art and learningas divinities just for the sake of art and learning themselves."14

9. Vierhaus 10-12.10. The rationalprinciplesof the Revolution could be and were separatedfrom themeans used to realizethem; the former were considered essentialand universalpreceptsthat did not have any necessaryconnection to the particular,"contingent"or accidentalconditions of their realization. See Vierhaus8.11. Vierhaus 12; andJurgen Voss, "Vorwort," n Voss, viii-ix.12. Reinhart Koselleck, Preussen zwischen Reformund Revolution (Stuttgart: E. Klett,

1975); Walter Simon, The Failureof the PrussianReformMovement(Ithaca, NY: Corell UP,1955).13. See Madame de Staie, De L'Allemagne(Paris:Librairede Firmia-Didot, 1876)112-113; Vierhaus 8.14. Quoted in Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanismnd the National State (Princeton:Princeton UP, 1963) 62, and see 45, 55, 148; Droz 183-185, 483-485, 487-488. In DeL'Allemagne, adame de Stael did her best to fix the new German cultural identity inthe minds of the rest of Europe, repeatedly emphasizing that by nature and traditionGermanswere an impractical people, lovers of abstraction;Germanywas "the countryof thought" (11), "the metaphysical nationpar excellence"363). See also 10, 85, 408,468, 481, 489. The construction of this new cultural identity aided and was aided bythe universityreform of the early 19th century. See the articles of R. Steven Turner:"The Growth of ProfessorialResearch in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 - Causes and Con-text," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1972):137-182; "University Reformersand Professorial Scholarship," The Universityn Society,ed. Lawrence Stone, v. 2


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6 TheFrenchRevolutionand GermanModernity

Those German intellectuals who believed in the Revolution's reasonand modernity were part of this efflorescence of intellectual activity andthey shared in its new sense of cultural autonomy and accomplishment.Yet the cultural politics of turn-of-the-century Germany threatened to in-validate their claim to membership in Germany's new cultural identity.For German writers and thinkers opposed to the Revolution now arguedthat Germany's unique culture - its special spiritual nature - distin-guished it from France in particular and from social and political moder-nity in general.15To align oneself with the modernity of the Revolutionwas to decare oneself alien to authentic German spirituality. Intellectualswho both supported the principles of the Revolution and wanted a stakein Germany's new cultural identity therefore needed to show that thatidentity could be reconciled with the essential impulses of the Revolu-tion. They had to figure Germany's cultural achievement into the equa-tion that defined the meaning of the moder age.This paper examines the evolution of this attempt to incorporate Ger-many's new cultural identity into a general discourse of modernity de-fined by the French Revolution. By focusing on key writings of Hegel,Heine, and Marx, I hope to show how this project, difficult from its be-ginning, became ever more problematical during the first half of the19th century. From Hegel to Heine and from Heine to Marx, thereemerged a growing disquiet with Germany's ability to meet the newstandard of modernity and a growing skepticism about the accomplish-ments of German culture. By mid-century, the project of aligning Ger-many's cultural identity with the putative modernity of the French Revo-lution had collapsed. And in its collapse, it paradoxically yielded theconcusion it was initially designed to prevent: that Germany was deeplyand intractably resistant to modernity.16(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1974)495-531; "TheBildungsbiirgertumnd the LearnedProfes-sions in Prussia, 1770-1830: The Origins of A Class," Histoire ocial/Social istory8(1980):105-136.15. Droz 483-487; Stail 85, 408, 465;Vierhaus 14.The notion of an inherentantipa-thybetween German cultureand a putativesocial and politicalmodernitywas powerfulthroughoutthe 19th and earlythe 20th centuries. See FritzRinger,TheDeclineoftheGer-manMandarins: heGermanAcademic ommunity,890-1933(Cambridge,Mass: HarvardUP, 1969).In thispaper, I discussone countercurrent o this trend;the attemptto integ-rate Germancultureinto a generaldiscourse of modernity.In a recentbook,JeffreyHerfoutlines anothercountercurrent, he converseof the one I discuss.He analyzesthe early20th-centuryattempt to integrateaspectsof modernity (i.e., technology)into a generaldiscourseof a privilegedGermanculture.See Herf,Reactionaryodernism:Technology,ul-ture,andPoliticsn Weimar nd the ThirdReich(Cambridge:CamridgeUP, 1984).16. This view of the Germans has been almost a truism of German studies.


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Harold Mah 7

Hegel: Aligning France and GermanyIn his lectures on the philosophy of history, delivered in the 1820sin Berlin, Hegel notes that what underlies and empowers the Revolu-tion's achievements of social equality and representative constitutionalgovernment is the principle of the "absolute will." The absolute will,Hegel claims, is purely formal; it acts without regard for particular in-dividual or social concerns (PH 442). Unrestrained by prior desires, in-terests, morality, religion, history, or politics, it strives for a completeautonomy. And in seeking to free itself from all given constraints, thewill aspires to an abstract universality. It wills that unconstrained will-ing be made a general principle (PH 442-443). Hegel asserts that boththe achievements of the Revolution and its descent into terror, dicta-torship, and continuing political instability derive from this abstractand universalizing will (PH 450-453).In the form of the French Revolution, the principle of the absolutewill made a spectacular entry onto the historical stage. But, Hegelnotes, that development is not unique to the French; the principle ofthe absolute will is not exclusive to a particular nation. On the contra-ry, it defines a broader condition, a generalized present - "the ast stagein history,"Hegel writes, "our world, our time" (PH 442). The absolutewill, in other words, must also have realized itself in Germany.But, as Hegel recognizes, no similar political change, no equivalentpolitical transformation in accordance with the absolute will has occur-red in Germany (PH 443). To bring Germany under the purview of theprinciple of the absolute will, Hegel therefore seeks its manifestation inGerman developments he considers equivalent to the political devel-opments of the French Revolution. Hegel, in other words, resorts to aninterpretive strategy of creating homologies or plotting parallelisms be-tween diverse forms of phenomena. This strategy assumes that homolo-gous or parallel forms necessarily express the same principle or essence.In France, Hegel observes, the abstract and universalizing will as-sumed a "practical effect" in the form of the Revolution. But in Germa-ny, the absolute will appeared in a different shape, in "no other formGeoffreyEley's and David Blackbour's ThePeculiaritiesofGermanHistoryOxford:Ox-fordUP, 1984)hasrecenty challengedhisview.Oneof the aimsof myessay s to un-derstandhow andwhy 19th-century ermans hemselves ameto embracewhatEleyandBlackbourndentify sa problematic onceptualizationf Germanhistory.Fromthispaper,I hope it willbe evidentthat sucha theoretical hoice wasby no meansempiricallyelf-evident,smanysuggest,but a productof historical ircumstancendan anxiety-riddenmanipulation f different heoretical nd cultural ssumptions.


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than thatof tranquil theory" (PH 443). More specifically,Hegel assertsthat the absolute will "obtained speculative recognition" in "Kantianphilosophy" (PH 443); Kant achieved for Germany what the Revolu-tion accomplished in France.17By assertinga homology between the disparateforms of philosophyand politics, Hegel aligns Germany with the French Revolution: theGermans have accomplished in "theoretical abstraction" what theFrench have accomplished in practice(PH 444). In drawingthis paral-lelism between German theory and French politics, Hegel implicitlymakes a claim for Germany'sparticipation n modernity. Germans areno less advancedin their thinkingthan are the Frenchin their politics.Hegel thus establishesa measure of Germanmodernity,but as he him-self recognizes, this attemptto align Germanywith the FrenchRevolu-tion in a unified vision of the present immediately leads to a further,pressing question: "... why did the French alone and not the Germansset about realizing [the principle of the absolute will] ?" (PH 443).Why France,not Germany,for the will's practicalrealization?To an-swer this question, Hegel looks to what many German intellectualsidentified as the source of Germany's distinctive spiritual character,namely,the Reformation.Accordingto Hegel, Lutherdetached Germanconsciousness from external authorityand forced it to rely on itself.SinceLuther,Germanthoughthas been characterizedby an increasinglyintrospectiveand soulful inner life, by a constantdeepening of inward-ness (Innerlichkeit).egel asserts hat this unique German characteristic fenhanced Innerlichkeitonditions Germany's acceptance of modernity.Becauseof the Reformation,he argues, Germanydeveloped a broad andsecurespirituality, n inner life thatcould absorb the exertionsof the ab-solutewill (PH444, 449).Thus the firstexpressionsof the absolute will inthe German Enlightenmentwere entirely compatible with religion, in-deed, were "conductedin the interest of theology"(PH 444). In France,however, the absence of a Reformation resulted in a weak and frag-mented spirituality.Consequenty, the absolutewill, making its appear-ance in the Enlightenment,entered into an intense and external conflictwith the Catholic Church.The Frenchnever established a general,har-monious spirituality;he will was channeled into an adversarialpolitics(PH 444, 449). Unlike the situationin Germany, n Francethere was no

17. For Hegel the idea of the absolute will is at the center of both Kantian episte-mology in its notion of a transcendental ego and of Kantian ethics in its notion of anuncompromising good will. See PH 343.


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Harold Mah 9

soothing and all-encompassing Innerlichkeito render the agitations ofpure will against social institutions into agitationswithin thought.Hegel's appeal to GermanInnerlichkeito explain why Germanyhad atheoretical,rather than political,modernity is an extraordinaryvindica-tion of the new German culturalidentity.At least since the Reformation,Hegel argues,Germans have become spiritualpeopleparexcellence.heirspecial spiritualityhas not precluded modernitybut, on the contrary,hasallowed them to attain t without succumbing to the excesses of the Rev-olution. Hegel not only claimsfor German culturea sharein modernity,but furtheremploys the former to banish the potentialsocial and politi-cal problems of the latter. German culture offers a safe passage to mo-dernity,a way of realizingthe absolute will while avoiding the violenceand war that accompanied the arrivalof political modernity in France.Hegel goes on to say that no revolutioncan make lasting political gainswithout a precedingReformation, or no revolution can establishfree in-stitutionswithout firstcultivating nwardspirituality PH 453).An endur-ing modernity can be founded only on an establishedInnerlichkeit.'8With his strategy of plotting parallelisms or creating homologies,Hegel redeems German culture for the modem age and, even more,identifies t as the preferred orm of modernity.But at the same time thatHegel justifies Germany'sculturalidentityand protectsits claim to mo-dernity,he also recognizes that German cultureremains an incompleteembodiment of modernity.He cannot be content withInnerlichkeitlone.Forif the freedom of the will is limited to the inner life of human beings,a disjunction could arise between internal states of mind and externalstates of objectivesocialexistence. The will cannot be trulyor fullyfree ifits domain is confined to thinking.To avoid thispotentialdissonance be-tweenthought and reality,Hegel's answer to the question of why the willrealizes itselfin France,not Germany,ultimately eads to a second asser-tion about the nature of Germanpolitics. Hegel returnsfrom Innerlichkeitto politicalreality.He proceeds by claiming that the Reformation has brought some so-cialand politicalreform,particularlyn areas associatedwith the Churchand with the religiousfoundationsof government(PH445).These devel-opments areharbingersof furtherand deeper change:"Thusthe princi-ple of thought was alreadyso far reconciled [in German religion];also

18. Also see G.W.F.Hegel's PhenomenologyfSpirit, rans.A.V. Miller (Oxford: Ox-ford UP, 1979) 328-364. Here Hegel gives a fuller account of the link between will, En-lightenment, religion, the Terror, and Kantianphilosophy.


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theProtestantworld had theconsciousnesshat in the earlierdeveloped econcilia-tion theprinciplewas present or the urther ormation of right" (PH 445).19The Reformation and the creation of an intensive German spiritual-ity promise future social and political improvement. From the homol-ogy between the French Revolution and German Innerlichkeit, egelprojects another harmonizing alignment of German politics. Indeed,without this promise the original parallelismis unstable;it threatens tocollapse into fixed dichotomies of thought and being, Innerlichkeitndpolitical reality, Germany and France. In this sense, both the originalparallelism and Germany's claim to modernity are sustained by thepromise of reform. That promise ultimately guaranteesthe coherenceof Hegel's interpretationof the modernity of German culture.20Heine:Reconstructingnd PreservingGermanCultureIn 1834, the dissident political poet Heinrich Heine published inParisianexile "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germa-ny." In this writing, Heine intended to educate the French about Ger-man culture,particularly ince he believed the Germanshad been mis-informed by the conservativeMadame de Stael in her earlierwork DeL'Allemagne.21ut Heine's writingalso served another end: it continuedHegel's project of aligning Germany with France, of integrating thenew German cultural identity into a unified view of modernity. Al-though Heine followed Hegel in serving this general cause, he did sounder altered circumstances. In the decade after Hegel's lectures, astrengthening conservatism dominated politics in Germany.A repre-sentative constitution was never established in Prussia;liberal move-ments, particularly ollowing the 1830 revolutions in France and else-where, were subject to intensified censorship and repression. Thedwindling of political reform on the German horizon led, in fact, toHeine's decision to transplant himself to Paris. His attempt to align

19. This is a modified version of Sibree's translation. The original reads: "So wardas Prinzip des Denkens schon so weit versbhnt;auch hatte dieprotestantischeeltn ihrdasBewusstsein,ass nderfriiherxpliziertenersihnungasPrinzipurweiterenAusbildungesRechts vorhandensei." G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophieder Geschichte(Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam,1961) 591.20. On the specificsof Hegel's political programsee Harold Mah, TheEndofPhilos-ophy,the Originof "Ideology".Karl Marx and the Crisisof the YoungHegelians (Berkeley andLos Angeles: U of CaliforniaP, 1987) 20-45.21. See Heinrich Heine, "Die romantische Schule," Beitrdgeur deutschenIdeologie,ed. Hans Mayer(Frankfurt:Ullstein, 1971) 116-117; and "Les Aveux d'un Poete," Re-vue des deux Mondes (15 September 1854) 1173.


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Harold Mah 11

Germany with France could therefore no longer rely on the promise ofimminent political reform; the unfolding of events had invalidatedHegel's simple "guarantee." Preserving a claim to modernity requiredthe German cultural identity be made to address the more clearly con-strained political situation of the time. To save German culture for mo-dernity Heine now found that he had to reconstruct it.Heine begins by telling his readers that Germany's present socialand political situation is equivalent to France's before the Revolution.The German people are still dominated by an authoritarian Christiani-ty and the institutions of the old regime. Germany is thus socially andpolitically retrograde, far behind the developments of contemporaryFrance.22 But like Hegel before him, Heine does not believe that thisdiscrepancy between German and French politics signifies a total lackof modernity in Germany. Setting out an interpretive strategy similarto Hegel's, Heine points to a "remarkable parallelism" between Ger-man philosophy and the French Revolution (RP 200).Like Hegel, Heine sees this parallelism appear in particularly strikingform in Kantian philosophy. With Kant's Critiqueof Pure Reason, Heinewrites, "there began in Germany an intellectual revolution which pres-ents the most striking analogies to the material revolution in France andwhich must seem ... just as important" (RP 200). The German revolu-tion in thought and the French revolution in politics passed throughthe "same stages." Where Robespierre and the Terror overthrew allpast forms of political authority and abolished the monarchy, Kant crit-icized all previous epistemological authority and did away with deism.Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, found a German alter-ego inFichte's world-creating Ich. Schelling's nature philosophy, and his ulti-mate turn to Catholicism and absolutism mirrored restoration inFrance. The overthrow of the restoration and the resulting political situ-ation in France found its equivalent in the defeat of conservativeNaturphilosophieby Hegel and his followers. Hegel, Heine notes,"closed" the "great circle" of philosophical revolutions (RP 199-240).

By asserting this homology between German thought and Frenchpolitics, Heine the poet and thinker can claim for German culture a

22. Heinrich Heine, "Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Ger-many," in TheRomanticchoolndOtherEssays,eds. J. Hermand and R.C. Holub (NewYork:Continuum Books, 1985) 129. Hereaftercited in the text with the abbreviationRP followed by page number(s). The German edition is found in Mayer,Beitrdgeurdeutschendeologie.


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share of modernity. But for Heine the political dissident, Germany'scultural analogue to France's political modernity is deeply unsatis-fying. In the end, he is still in exile and his fellow Germans continue tolive under unconstitutionalrule and censorship. In other words, by es-tablishing the homology between Germanthought and Frenchaction,Heine approaches the same issue that Hegel was forced to confront:the further synchronization of German politics with a modern Ger-man culture.The problem for Heine, as it was earlier for Hegel, is howto demonstrate that German practice will align with German theory.Here Heine reversesHegel's procedure.Hegel arguedthat reason wasincreasinglypresentin history,assumingin Germany ntrovertedspiritu-al forms thatin turncreatedan inner dispositionfor rationalpoliticalre-form. Heine, however, arguesthat spiritualor idealisticdispositionsareinherentlyauthoritarian,distractingone from the concrete concerns ofpolitics and hence implicitlyproviding support for tyranny.To this hecontrastssensualism- the glorificationof matter,the concern with sen-suous satisfaction as the radicalagentof history: t focusesone's atten-tion on the real world of politics (RP 146-147, 167, 177-181).To establish the possibility of political change in Germany, Heinemust now locate a source of sensualism in Germaninstitutions and tra-ditions. In France, he argues, sensualism appeared in the uncompro-mising materialistphilosophies of the Enlightenment (RP 168-169);inGermany, it assumed a more mystical form, rooted in that country'spagan past. It appeared as pantheism, as a belief in the unity of the di-vine and the natural, of god and matter (RP 137).Heine's argument for the possibilityof political change in Germany

follows a differenttack from Hegel's;the two, in fact,seem to proceed indifferent directions. To maintain the possibility of political change inGermany,Heine identifies n Germany'spasta radicalsensualism,there-by repudiatingHegel's belief in a characteristicGerman spirituality.Byextension, one might concude that Heine also repudiates Germany'snew cultural identity. The notion of the German poet and thinker asprivilegedvesselsof spiritualitymust seem to him hopelesslyreactionary.But Heine in fact does not repudiate the German culturalidentity.Againstthe conventionalemphasis on Germanspirituality,he identifiesa different content - i.e., sensualism - in German culture, but heplaces this new content into the same forms of German culture thatHegel determined as the defining manifestationsof Germanspirituality.Heine, in otherwords,retainsthe progressionof cultural orms that con-ventionallydefined Germany'snew culturalidentity. He adheres to the


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HaroldMah 13

conventional terms that add up to a special German culture, but hegives those terms a new substance and consequence.With Hegel, Heine sees Luther'sReformation as a watershed in thedevelopment of Germanyin particularand of humanity in general. Itmarks a qualitativeadvance in freedom. But in direct opposition toHegel, Heine identifies the Reformation'sprogressiveaspectin Luther's"sensualism,"in his recognition of the legitimacyof ordinary,materiallife.23Luther's sensualism passes into the pantheistic philosophy ofSpinoza, and through Spinoza enters German philosophy, finding itshighestmanifestations n Schellingand Hegel. Pantheismthus entrench-es itself in German religion and philosophy. And because Hegel has"closed" the "greatcircle"of philosophicalrevolutions,becausepanthe-ism has reacheditshighest point in theory,it will now, accordingto Hei-ne, necessarilyempty into reality."Because of these doctrines," Heinewrites,"revolutionaryorces havedeveloped that areonly waitingfor theday when they can break out and fill the world with terrorand with ad-miration"(RP242). Heine concludes "On the History of Religion andPhilosophy in Germany"with a prediction of imminent revolution inGermany,warningthe Frenchthat, if they should interfere,the comingbloodbath in Germanywill engulf them as well (RP244).LikeHegel, Heine establishes a parallelismbetween German cultureand the French Revolution in order to preserve the former's historicallegitimacy. Germany'snew culturalidentity - the German as the poetand thinkerpar excellence also participates in modernity. But giventhe decade of political reaction following Hegel's lectures on the phi-losophy of history,Heine can no longer guaranteethat relationby sim-ply assertingthe imminence of the synchronization of Germanpoliticswith Germantheory. To argue that German culture presages or will is-sue in further political improvement now requires a reworkingof themeaning of German culture, a Hegelian Aufhebunghat would at oncetransform that culture, render it more compatible with the radicalre-quirements of the age, yet preserve its customary, defining forms. InHeine's rewriting of the German cultural identity, Germany remainsunique and praiseworthyfor the increasing depth and sophisticationof its religiousand philosophical achievements,but those achievementsare no longer to be seen as substantively spiritual.The conventional

23. This appears,accordingto Heine, in Luther'sorigins,blunt personality,repudi-ation of celibacy for priests, and abandonment of miracles, among other things (RP152-162).


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signifiers of Germany's cultural identity represent, behind their appar-ent spirituality, a deeper, subversive sensualism.Heine's attempted renovation of the project to align Germany with theFrench Revolution indicates that that project had become ever moreproblematical since Hegel's lectures in the 1820s. German culture'sclaim to modernity had become increasingly difficult to sustain in theface of German politics's apparent hostility to the rational principles ofthe French Revolution. That Heine experienced considerable difficultyin carrying out this project of cultural legitimation is evident as well inanother, striking way. In the course of reconstructing a modem Germancultural identity, he betrays an unsettling anxiety that such a project is ul-timately untenable. In a burst of ironic self-criticism, he in fact defeats hisown attempt to preserve the modernity of German culture.As we have seen, Heine's argument has two steps. First, he arguesthat Germany's philosophical development - from Kant to Hegel -mirrors France's political development; this establishes Germany's par-ticipation in modernity. Second, to get from thinking to acting, Heineargues that the revolution in German thought marks the culmination ofthe development of a pantheism that is inherently revolutionary. Nowthat the theoretical revolution is over, moder pantheism will pour intothe real world. Heine never fully explains, however, this passage fromtheoretical pantheism to revolutionary action. He does not show how itwill happen empirically or institutionally, but merely asserts the devel-opment as a kind of logical deduction that follows necessarily from theinternal workings of pantheist consciousness.24 But this assertion is diffi-cult to accept. It is neither logically self-evident nor, as Heine shows,justified by how his pantheists actually behaved.Few pantheists were revolutionaries. Heine tells us that some, such asthe romantics and Goethe, were politically conservative or at best politi-cally indifferent. And he recognizes that Schelling, one of the most ac-complished pantheists of Germany's philosophical revolution, becameincreasingly conservative in politics and religion, ultimately convertinglike other romantic pantheists to Catholicism (RP 237-239). Broodingover Schelling's apparent political backsliding, Heine notes that not justSchelling but also Kant and Fichte "can be accused of desertion." In

24. Heine: "In my opinion, a methodical people like us had to begin with the Ref-ormation, only after that could it occupy itself with philosophy, and only after comple-tion of the latter could it go on to political revolution. I find this sequence very ration-al" (RP 242).


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their later years, according to Heine, they became apostates of theirown philosophies (RP 239).Heine's extended reflection on Schelling's actual political behaviorthus spirals into a refutation of his argument about pantheism's revo-lutionary potential, and hence denies German culture's claim to mo-dernity. To put this another way, Heine "deconstructs" the elaboratesystem of interpretationhe is simultaneously erecting. As he dwells onthe real consequences of pantheism, his carefully demarcated systemof oppositions (spiritualismvs. sensualism, conservatism vs. radical-ism) and affinities(Germanyand France,thought and action) begins tocollapse into a confusion of categories:sensualism can lead to politicalconservatism, modern philosophy consorts with retrograde romanti-cism, thought repudiates action.Heine thus works towardscontradictoryaims. He both arguesfor aposition and undermines it. In "On the Historyof Religion and Philos-ophy in Germany,"this contradictory,self-negatingprocedureabruptlyresultsin a rhetoricalstalemate:Heine suddenly cuts off the flow of hisexposition. Immediately afterclaiming that Germany'sgreatpantheistshave so frequentlyturned "apostate,"he interjects:"I don't know whythis last sentence has such a depressingly paralyzingeffect on my feel-ings that I am simply unable to communicate here the remainingbittertruths about Mr. Schellingas he is today"(RP 239). Heine then tries tomake his way back to his argument about the essential radicalism andultimate modernity of German pantheism. He arbitrarilysuppresseshis doubts and turns to happier thoughts: "Instead[of dwelling on thelate Schelling] let us praise that earlier Schelling . . . for the earlierSchelling, like Kant and Fichte, represents one of the great phases ofour philosophical revolution, which I have compared in these pageswith the phases of the politicalrevolution in France"(RP 239). Forciblyfixing his attentionon the more promising youth of pantheism, Heinecontinues his argument about the inherent political radicalismof Ger-man theory. His answer to his anxieties is to evade them.But his evasions catchup with him. In the 1852 prefaceto the secondedition of "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,"Heine in effectrepudiatesthe centralargumentof his study. He admitsthathe waswrong to claim practicalpower for what he had identifiedasthe most radicalof Germanphilosophies. Hegel's radicalfollowers, hepoints out, have proved incapable of changing reality (RP 5).25Even in

25. Also see Heine, "Les Aveux" 1169-1206. In "On the History of Religion and


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its most developed form, then, German pantheism does not emptyautomatically its energies into reality. With this striking confession inhis preface, the entire argument of the subsequent text is fatally dam-aged and, even more clearly than in Hegel's case, Germany's culturalidentity again runs the risk of being cut adrift from the modernity ofthe French Revolution.Marx: German CultureAcknowledgedand OvercomeIn the decade following Heine's "On Religion and Philosophy inGermany," German liberals and radicals made few gains. The 1840 ac-cession of Frederick William IV to the Prussian crown ultimatelybrought about a renewed wave of political repression, which in 1843led the young Karl Marx to make his way to Paris. Here, like Heine be-fore him, Marx reconsidered the cultural and political situation in Ger-many, measuring it against the standard of modernity identified withthe French Revolution. Marx's only published writing in Paris, the"Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," showshow a further 10 years of political conservatism had left the earlierhopes of Hegel and Heine in complete ruins.Like Hegel and Heine before him, Marx measures contemporaryGermany against the French Revolution and finds it politically want-ing. Germany, Marx states bluntly, is "an anachronism, a flagrant con-tradiction of generally recognized axioms."26 Indeed, German condi-tions are so retrograde that even abolishing them would not bring Ger-many up-to-date: "If I negate the German state of affairs in 1843, then,according to the French computation of time, I am hardly in the yearof 1789, and still less in focus of the present" (IN 176).But again like Hegel and Heine, Marx concedes that Germany is notaltogether without modernity; he agrees that modernity has manifesteditself in German thought. "We are the philosophicalontemporaries of thePhilosophyin Germany,"Heine in fact contradictshimself in his assessment of Hegel.He characterizesHegelian theory as radical and even potentiallybloodthirsty,yet atanotherpoint refersto Hegel as a moderate spirit(RP 237). And in anotherwritinghecompares Hegeliantheoryto Orleanistgovernment,which is fullof rivalpoliticalgroups.Thiswould also suggestthatHegelian theory might have a characterother than the revo-lutionary one he imputes to it. Heine, "Introduction" to KahldoifConcerningheNobilitynLetters o CountM. von Moltke, n The RomanticSchooland OtherEssays 246.26. KarlMarx, "Contribution to the Critiqueof Hegel's Philosophyof Law. Intro-duction," KarlMarx and FrederickEngels, CollectedWorks,. 3 (New York:InternationalPublishers, 1976) 78. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation IN followed bypage number(s).


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present," Marxwrites, "withoutbeing itshistoricalcontemporaries" (IN180). Modern politics has appeared in Germany as modern philoso-phy: "In politics the Germansthoughtwhat other nations did"(IN 181).To determine Germany's place in modem history,Marxbegins withthe same interpretivemove used by Hegel and Heine: he constructsahomology or parallelismbetween Frenchpolitics and Germanthought.But he deploys this tactic in the service of a quite different strategy.Hegel and Heine drew their parallelismin order to align German cul-ture with the putative modernity of the French Revolution. Germanycould thusjustifiablyclaim a share of modernity. To sustainthis paral-lelism, these thinkers then arguedthat modem German ideaswere har-bingersof modem politicalreform. The modernity of Germanthoughtpointed to the imminence of a modern German politics.Marx, however, sets the assertionsof Hegel and Heine againstthem-selves. He acceptsthe new German culturalidentity- the idea thattheGerman Dichterand Denkerare of a special nature - and with Hegel andHeine, he grantsthat identity a modern character.But then departingfrom the earlierinterpretivepattern,he refusesto take the next step;herefuses to predict a subsequent harmonization of Germanpolitics withGermantheory.And in an ironic reversalof Hegel's and Heine's earlierreasoning, Marxjustifies this refusalby appealing to the modernity ofGermanthought:in Marx'sview, the modernity of Germanculturepre-cludes he possibility of a modern German politics.ForMarx,the parallelismbetween Germanthought and Frenchpoli-tics no longer portends a fulfilled German political modernity. On thecontrary,this parallelism suggests to Marx that Germany is irredeem-ably anachronistic.Where Hegel and Heine argued for the modernityof German theory despite the backwardnessof German politics, Marxarguesthat the theory is advancedpreciselybecause the politics areret-rograde. "The abstraction and conceit of [Germany's]thought," hewrites,"alwayskept in stepwith the one-sidedness and stumpiness of itsreality.... The status quo of German olitical heory xpresses the imperfec-tionofthemodemtate, he defectivenessof the flesh itself' (IN 181). Ger-man philosophy, in short, is the way Germans make up for a bad reality- it compensates in thought for an inadequate politics.

Marx sees Germanphilosophy and politics locked in an inverse rela-tionship: as politics becomes increasingly retrograde,theory compen-satesby becoming increasinglymodern. And as theory continues to de-velop an advancedmodernity, it allowspolitics to become more deeplyand perversely anachronistic. The current state of German culture


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and politics now begins "to combine the civilizedshortcomings f themod-ernworld . . . with the barbaric eficiencies f theancienregieme" IN 183). Itshares "the restorations of modern nations" without sharing "theirrevolutions" (IN 176). "Germany,"Marx predicts, "will one day finditself on the level of European decadence before ever having been onthe level of European emancipation" (IN 183).Against Hegel and Heine, Marx does not believe that German phi-losophy foreshadows a modern German politics or works to realize it.On the contrary, the modernity of German philosophy depends en-tirelyon its inverse, the backwardnessof political reality.The existenceof the former presupposes the latter. ForMarx in 1843, the issue is notwhether German reality can catch up to German theory and therebymatch the political modernity of other nations. The perverse symbiosisbetween the modernity of German thought and its retrogradepoliticalpracticeprecludes thatpossibility. Germany,in short, has no chance ofever reaching the present.In Marx'sview, Germany'snew culturalidentity merely shows that itis hopelessly anachronistic;bound to a retrogradepolitics, this identityensures that German conditions remain "below the level of history"(IN 177). Germany is stranded in time, its theory fixed to the present,its politics to the past. In the last pages of the "Introduction,"Marx infactgoes on to saythat Germanylacks the usual resources for concretehistoricaldevelopment - its petty states and enervated classes are in-adequate agents of change (IN 184-85).27Germany's only hope for rejoining the historical mainstream is torepudiate the past and the present, and Marxinsists they they must dothis without appealing to anything considered characteristicallyGer-man - neither to Germanculture, nor to Germanpolitics and society.Marx looks within Germanyfor an agent of history that owes nothingto German culture and institutions. He in fact paradoxically definesthis new historicalactor by its exemption from the society and culturethat generated it; it is a

class of civil society which is not a class of civil society; an estatewhich is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere . . which can nolonger invoke a historical ut only a humantitle, which does notstand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in an all-round antithesisto the premises of the German state... (IN 186).

27. See also KarlMarx and FriedrichEngels, TheGermandeology,n CollectedWorks,v. 5, 193-196.


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With this obscure, paradoxical formulation, Marx for the first timecalls on the proletariat to assume a decisive role in history. The prole-tariat in its first manifestation as an agent of history is to serve as Ger-many's redeemer.28TheEnd of a DiscourseThe movement from Hegel to Heine and then to Marx does notmark a simple shift from idealism to materialism. All three thinkers arein a sense materialist; each recognizes Germany's problem in the 19thcentury as social and political, a lack of what they believed to be mod-ern social and political institutions. Rather, the movement from Hegelthrough Heine to Marx suggests the progressive erosion of a particularattempt to legitimate the new cultural ideal of German intellectuals,which was established at the turn of century and projected through it.From Hegel to Heine to Marx, the German cultural identity - theGerman as poet and philosopher par excellence became increasinglyuntenable when measured against the putative modernity of theFrench Revolution.

Hegel and Heine erected a parallelism between contemporaryFrench politics and German thought in order to justify a Germanclaim to modernity; in this way, Germany could be counted as part ofthe avant-garde of history. They self-consciously erected this parallel-ism because of Germany's apparent lack of modernity. But while thisinterpretive strategy acknowledges that it derives from the absence ofpolitical modernity in Germany, it also denies that absence, assertingthat the current homology between French politics and German theo-ry must lead to further homologous developments in German politics.The modernity of German thought renders a modern German politics

28. Marx'sdescription of the proletariathere is clearlyat odds with his descriptionof it in subsequent writings. In the CommunistManifestond other works, he speaks ofthe proletariatas strictlya class, rather than also an estate. He further drops the ob-scure notion that it is not partof society, making it instead one of the polaritiesin thedefining conflict of modern society. In the "Introduction,"Marxseems to identifytheemergence of the proletariatas the unique answer to Germany's particularculturaland political situation,but it is unclearhow it fits into the development of other, moreconsistently"developed" countries. In laterwritings,of course, he removes the prole-tariatfrom a unique Germansituationand integrates t into the "normal" evolution ofall industrial societies. At the same time, Marx in particularand German socialism ingeneral progressivelyignore the peculiaritiesthat Marxoriginallysaw in Germany. Inother words, as Marxismbecomes increasinglysystematized, both the proletariatandGermany are fitted into a general, uniform development of industrialcapitalism.


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inevitable.The parallelismbetween Frenchpoliticsand Germanthoughttherefore seeks to rectify its own political preconditions - to over-throw the given of Germany's political "backwardness."The apparentcontinued resistanceof Germanyto a politicalmoder-nity ultimately undermined the optimistic belief that German politicswould soon harmonize with German culture.As the prospect of politi-cal reformdisappearedfrom the horizon, the attemptsto ground it in aputative German culturalmodernity became increasinglystrained. Bythe mid-1840s, Marx no longer expected the inverse relation betweenGermanthought and Germanreality o correct tselfin favor of the mo-dernity of thought. In 1843, he turns the project of aligning Germanculture with the French Revolution against itself. For Marx, Germanthought is as advanced as Frenchmodernity, but that does not prefig-ure a moder Germanpolitics. On the contrary,Germany'sculture hasmade great achievements in order to forget its retrogradepolitics; theGerman culturalidentity is constructed on a wishful suppression of itspolitical preconditions. The inverse relation between German thoughtand German realityis necessaryand inescapable, for Germanthoughtis modem precisely because German realityis backward.In turningthe interpretivestrategyof Hegel and Heine againstitself,Marx provides an ironic commentary on his predecessors. In Marx'saccount, the attemptstojustifythe modernityof Germanculturearese-cond-order manifestations of German perversity.They are faltering,self-deceived attempts at historical self-consciousness. They recognizeGermany's anomalous place in history but then seek to escape it inwish-fulfillment, n the delusion of an imminent and necessarypoliticalharmonization, in a false faith in a coming and uniform modernity.The self-consciousness of Hegel and Heine therefore ends up repro-ducing the condition it hoped to overcome; it issues a powerless andisolated affirmation of the modernity of German culture. By turningupon the interpretivestrategy hat he himself deploys, Marxbringsto aclose in his "Introduction"a multi-generationaldiscoursethatstrove tofit Germanculture into a general systemof modernity.His contributionto that discourse ironicallycondemns it: he accuses it of complicity inrendering Germanyanachronistic.

The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity Hegel, Heine, And Marx

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