Right Hegelians
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
in the early 19th century who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. They are typically contrasted with the Young Hegelians
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
, who interpreted Hegel's political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
to support innovations in politics or religion.
Hegel's historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
held that both ideas and nations could only be understood by understanding their history. Throughout his life, Hegel was an orthodox
Orthodoxy
The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...
member of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
's Lutheran Church. He devoted considerable attention to the Absolute, his term for the totality of reality that was used in his philosophy to justify belief in God
Existence of God
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology and ontology , but also of the theory of value, since...
. In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel wrote that:
The Hegelian right expanded this conception of statism
Statism
Statism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
, seizing on it as an affirmation of establishment politics and orthodox religion. Hegel's historicism could be read to affirm the historical inevitability of modern institutions; a nation
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
was an Ideal
Ideal (ethics)
An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere. It is the application, in ethics, of a universal...
, existing in Hegelian idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
above and about the people who constituted it. To argue for political change was to attack the Ideal of the national state. The Right Hegelians believed that advanced Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an societies, as they existed in the first half of the nineteenth century, were the summit of all social development, the product of the historical dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
that had existed thus far. Most praised the Prussian state, which enjoyed an extensive civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
system, good universities, industrialization, and high employment
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
, as the acme of progress and the incarnation of the Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
.
Many of the members of the Hegelian right went on to have distinguished careers in public academia or the Lutheran Church. As a school, they were closely associated with the University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
, and held many of the chairs of philosophy and theology there. Generally, the philosophers of the Hegelian right have been neglected; their fame, if not their reputations, has been eclipsed by the Young Hegelians
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
, including Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and historian. As a student of GWF Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism...
and Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. They left their mark chiefly in theology. Their efforts did not have the intended effect of bolstering a sense of the inevitability of faith as a product of history; rather, they pioneered the introduction of higher criticism by demonstrating the influence of an era on the development of Christianity.
Philosophers within the camp of the Hegelian right include:
- Karl Friedrich Göschel
- Georg Andreas Gabler
- Johann Philipp GablerJohann Philipp GablerJohann Philipp Gabler was a German Protestant Christian theologian of the school of Johann Jakob Griesbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn....
- Hermann Friedrich Wilhelm HinrichsHermann Friedrich Wilhelm HinrichsHermann Friedrich Wilhelm Hinrichs was a German philosopher.He studied theology at Strassburg, and philosophy at Heidelberg under Hegel, who wrote a preface to his Religion im innern Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft ....
- Karl DaubKarl DaubKarl Daub was a German Protestant theologian.He was born at Kassel. He studied philosophy, philology and theology at Marburg in 1786, and eventually became professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Heidelberg, where he remained until his death.Daub was one of the leaders of a school...
- Heinrich LeoHeinrich LeoHeinrich Leo was a Prussian historian born in Rudolstadt, his father being chaplain to the garrison there....
- Leopold von Henning
- Heinrich Gustav HothoHeinrich Gustav HothoHeinrich Gustav Hotho was a German historian of art and Right Hegelian. He is famous for being the compiler and editor of Hegel's posthumous work Lectures on Aesthetics....
Other thinkers or historians who may be included among the Hegelian right, with some reservations, include:
- Johann Karl Friedrich RosenkranzJohann Karl Friedrich RosenkranzJohann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz was a German philosopher and pedagog.-Life:Born at Magdeburg, he read philosophy at Berlin, Halle and Königsberg, devoting himself mainly to the doctrines of Hegel and Schleiermacher...
- Eduard GansEduard GansEduard Gans was a German jurist.He was born in Berlin of prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, where he attended G. W. F. Hegel's lectures, and became thoroughly imbued with the principles of...
- Karl Ludwig MicheletKarl Ludwig MicheletKarl Ludwig Michelet , German philosopher, was born at Berlin.He studied at the gymnasium and at the university of his native town, took his degree as doctor of philosophy in 1824, and became professor in 1829, a post which he retained till his death...
- Philip MarheinekePhilip MarheinekePhilipp Konrad Marheineke , was a German Protestant church leader within the Evangelical Church in Prussia.He was born at Hildesheim, Hanover, and studied at the University of Göttingen. In 1805 he was appointed professor extraordinarius of philosophy at Erlangen; in 1807 he moved to Heidelberg...
- Wilhelm Vatke
- Johann Eduard ErdmannJohann Eduard ErdmannJohann Eduard Erdmann was a German philosophical writer....
- Eduard ZellerEduard ZellerEduard Gottlob Zeller , was a German philosopher and theologian of the Tübingen School of theology.- Life :Eduard Zeller was born at Kleinbottwar in Württemberg, and educated at the University of Tübingen and under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel...
- Max Schasler
- Albert SchweglerAlbert SchweglerAlbert Schwegler , was a German philosopher and theologian.-Life:He was born at Michelbach in Württemberg, the son of a country pastor....