This book examines how, in a series of critical confrontations, Stirner rejected the efforts of his “Young Hegelian” contemporaries to recast Hegel as a revolutionary. For him, the various apocalyptic declarations of these “pious atheists” were only the expressions of adolescent dreams set upon the annihilation of real individuality.

The course of Western philosophy has been profoundly altered by the philosophy of Hegel. The first of those who set about the transforming and revisioning of the world according to Hegel's dialectical theory were called "The Young Hegelians." Today, the most recognized names among them are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in their own age each of the Young Hegelians shared an equal notoriety. Each in turn, from Strauss with his reduction of the historical jesus into a Messianic myth, (...) to Stirner with his uncompromising egoism, shocked every cultural convention of their age. The aftershocks of their unrestrained criticism have forever altered the topography of our own. The Young Hegelians retrieves some of the central writings of that troubling generation. (shrink)

The topic of this conference, directed toward exploring the relationships between Hegel’s Naturphilosophie and his conception of spirit, drew a total of about 300 registrants, with about 140 papers being presented. Although sixteen countries were represented, well over half of the participants came from German universities. Next in the number of participants were those from Yugoslavia and Poland. There were five North Americans listed on the printed program, but only three attended: H.S. Harris, Leo Rauch, and this writer. Among the (...) welcome and familar faces in the audience were those of Howard P. Kainz, James Wilkinson, and Shlomo Avineri. Those of us who recalled the fine paper which Professor Avineri had presented at the 1986 Zürich conference were unhappy to learn that he had chosen not to present one at this time. (shrink)

Since its foundation in 1969, The Hegel Society of America has sponsored an ongoing series of biennial conferences which have provided a regular forum for some of the finest displays of scholarship ever directed toward the explication and development of Hegelianism. The fourteen essays in this distinguished collection have been carefully selected from these biennial conferences. Each essay has been chosen for its profound scholarship, philosophical acumen, and literary excellence. All of the authors have attained international recognition for their studies (...) of Hegel, with almost half having been, at one time or another, elected to the Presidency of the Hegel Society. (shrink)

Papers delivered at the joint meeting of the Hegel Society of America and the Hegel Society of Great Britain held at Merton College, Oxford, Sept. 1-4, 1981, to mark the 150th anniversary of Hegel's death. Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Editor of The Owl and the Treasurer of the Hegel Society of America share the same residence, i.e., the body of Lawrence S. Stepelevich. The Treasurer insists upon having a few words to say. These will be followed by a few from the Editor.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 817-827, July 2022.

I hope that the readers will forgive the length and personal character of these final words, but as this issue marks the end of my 19–year tenure as Editor of The Owl, I thought I could get away with it. This year also marks my retirement from university teaching. I’ve been at that for 37 years—with the last 32 years being spent at Villanova.

The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the “Young Marx” has also provoked some renewed interest in his contemporary, Johann Caspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill’s The Young Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx’s first critic, the harried “Sankt Max” of The German Ideology. This perspective, established firmly by Sidney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx’s development, but it (...) cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. (shrink)

From its first appearance in 1844, Max Stirner’s major work, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum ,[1] has produced little agreement among its many interpreters. The very first of these interpreters was Friedrich Engels, who suggested that Stirner’s doctrines would be quite compatible with Benthamite utilitarianism, which he then admired, and even saw in these doctrines the potential of benefiting communism.[2] Marx, in short order, corrected this optimistic deviation, and then—with a surely repentant Engels—set forth the orthodox gospel for all future (...) generations of communists: Stirner, or “Sankt Max,” was but the speculative spokesman for the petty bourgeois, a decadent Hegelian boasting over the unrestraint of his self inflated ego.[3] Sidney Hook echoed Marx when he condemned Stirner’s work as but the “social defense mechanism of a petty bourgeois soul.”[4] Others, unsatisfied with this “petty” status, elevate him to that of the Grand Bourgeois, or Fascist.[5] Still others, taking an opposite stance, see in Stirner the most articulate defender of individual liberty.[6] In between, he has been called a nihilist, an anarchist, an existentialist, a solipsist, an anti Benthamite, an intemperate capitalist, or—as we might now suspect—an anti capitalist.[7] At least two commentators, lost in the confusion, have managed to escape the need to classify Stirner within the ongoing political and ethical categories and simply declare him to be insane.[8] In short, the list of radically diverse interpretations.. (shrink)

Max Stirner (1806–1856) has been named as “The Last Hegelian,” which is usually taken to mean only that he was the final major figure among the so-called “Young Hegelians.” However, an argument can be made that he was not only the last in a historical sense, but that he was also the logical heir of Hegel’s philosophy. In short, Stirner concluded what Hegel had proposed as the “task” of philosophy: to supersede “fixed and determinate thoughts.” This lead Stirner to express (...) a distinctive form of egoism in which the indefinable individual, der Einziger, could neither be comprehended under any general idea, nor would need to act in accord with any ideals whatsoever. This set him in radical opposition to all of the other Young Hegelians, such as Karl Marx, Ludwig Feuerbach, or Bruno Bauer—all of whom sought to revise Hegel’s philosophy to accord with their own humanistic ideals. (shrink)

In August of 1978, the XVI World Congress of Philosophy convened in Düsseldorf. As the European Hegel societies were then unable to prepare a common program, it first appeared as if Hegel would be left unrepresented in this most important of philosophical gatherings. As this seemed not right, the Hegel Society of America took the initiative, at the last moment, to prepare a special section. The result proved, not unexpectedly, to be a great success. The special program featured two of (...) the finest Hegel scholars, Professors John N. Findlay and Errol E. Harris. The papers they delivered at that time, before a large and appreciative audience, were subsequently published in the Owl. (shrink)

A neglected Young Hegelian, Cieszkowski published prolifically in economics and philosophy, but the work most influential on the Hegelians was his Prolegomena Zur Historiosophie . Rejecting the conservative interpretation of Hegel, it denied that the end of history had been reached, celebrated the will as transcending thought, and anticipated a future in which being and thinking would find their syntheses in praxis. At once a critique of Hegel and a development of Hegelianism, his work is most notable for its millennial (...) optimism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking by Stephen CritesLawrence S. StepelevichStephen Crites. Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 572. Cloth, $65.00Unlike either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, or his contemporary, Schelling, there is really no “Early” or “Later” Hegel. The fundamentals of his system were, if not always fully articulated, nevertheless present from the (...) very beginning of his career. There is, in Hegel, a remarkable consistency in the development of his thought, in which the elements that comprised his final system can be detected in his earliest efforts—and it is only in this sense that one can speak of an “Early” or a “Later” Hegel. That his final expression was indeed the result of an effort, a struggle to fuse and clarify seemingly disparate elements, is the thesis of Professor Crites. In this case, the specific disparate elements that are considered are those which confronted Hegel from his earliest days as a student of theology, those elements expressed in the “Christian Drama.” Crites sets out the eight revered acts of this drama: the creation, the fall, God’s covenant with Israel, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Church, and the last judgment. It is his contention that Hegel “critically engaged the claims of this mythos and the social practices associated with it.” And so, the essence of Crites’s well-written and well-researched study is to set out how this drama served as a “template that affected the way he framed other topics in the ever-widening range of his philosophical inquiry.” It is to his credit that Crites does not consider his own explication of Hegel’s preoccupation with the gospels as some sort of a “secret” key that could unlock the full meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, but nevertheless, as he rightly stresses, this preoccupation cannot be ignored—for it ultimately exercised a crucial role in the formation of that which is now taken as Hegel’s mature thought.Unlike most studies of Hegel’s development—and there are more than a few—Crites avoids taking a retrospective posture, a concluding a priori stance which would allow him to point out where and why this or that particular element was rejected or retained by Hegel, His method is historical, intent upon following Hegel’s own sometimes tortured development, until, finally in this course, we reach a point where we suddenly see that Hegel “shows clear signs of becoming what we can only call a Hegelian—or better still, he shows signs of being Hegel!”The source of this inner development begins, and is traced from, Hegel’s initial appearance as “The Model Pupil of Stuttgart” to that moment in when he stands revealed as embodying that Absolute Knowledge which concludes the Phenomenology. This path from Stuttgart to Jena, which Hegel himself might have had in mind when he spoke of the philosophical “highway of despair” is detailed by Crites with a sure hand. Every stumbling block is noted, and every new resolution ıs marked, from those first essays composed during the bitter days as Hauslehrer, through the steady advances [End Page 540] of “the Jena ‘Philosophy’ ” until the passage completes itself in the Phenomenology and its termination in the “Recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit.”More than half of Crites’ extensive study is devoted to explicating how the subject of religion is dealtwith in the course of the Phenomenology. In this survey of Hegel’s most well-known work, its fundamental leitmotif emerges clearly into focus: the identification of the “portentous power of the negative” with the Death of God. This death, which is philosophically reflected in dialectical negativity, is the central moment of the gospel drama. In this act, Absolute Spirit must itself suffer and die, for “Not only the Christian God incarnate, but the absolute spirit suffers, suffers its Golgotha and dies.” It is only from this sacrifice that new life can arise—for out of it comes “the resurrection of a new human-divine totality.” What Hegel has retained of the gospel... (shrink)

In defining the Wise Man, the Man of absolute Knowledge, as perfectly self‐conscious – i. e., omniscient, at least potentially – Hegel nevertheless had the unheard‐of audacity to assert that he realized Wisdom in his own person.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason by Henry Silton HarrisLawrence S. StepelevichHenry Silton Harris. Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason. Pp. xvi+ 658. Volume II: The Odyssey of Spirit. Pp. xiii + 909. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Cloth, $150.00, the set.This commentary upon Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the concentrated result of over three decades of sustained study by one of the most (...) renowned of contemporary Hegelian scholars.The Phenomenology stands in the course of philosophic history as (depending upon one’s point of view) either an opportunity or an obstacle—an unavoidable Sphinx. Both admirers and detractors of this famous work will often assign themselves or, more readily, their students, the task of reading it as a introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. However, what occurs is not usually what is intended. After a short perusal, the reader finds that the Phenomenology itself needs an introduction. This need has not been lost on scholars, and their various introductory observations, when expanded and duly annotated, are entered into the ever-growing list of commentaries upon the Phenomenology. Needless to say, given the hundreds of studies which, either in whole or in part, are devoted to commenting upon this work, there are some grand failures, as Lowenberg’s elegantly vapid Dialogues on the Phenomenology, or Heidegger’s inconclusive “critical debate with Hegel.” There are also a few successes, such as Jean Hyppolite’s Genesis and Structure. Without doubt, Harris’s commentary is a success, and surely the most successful of all Anglophone commentaries upon the Phenomenology. [End Page 473]Hegel’s Ladder, which assumes a learned readership, embarks upon the same long and tortured path facing any reader of the Phenomenology. It is no small thing to follow where one thinks Hegel leads, as he had a somewhat perverse tendency to avoid both clarifying examples and a tendency to, as J. N. Findlay described it, “wanton obscurity.” To make matters worse, there is also the complex ordering of the text itself, a palimpsest character which has led more than a few commentators to take the work as a disorderly juvenalia, best left ignored in favor of the more lucid Encyclopaedia. And finally, there is also the extratextual matter of whether or not one “buys into” Hegel’s thought—which Harris does. In any case, a superficial reading will not do, and readers will be reminded of Hegel’s own “path of despair” when they follow the course of Harris’s 1,500-page commentary. It is not an “easy read,” nor could it be.Professor Harris is well aware of the problems confronting any commentator, but addresses them in an way which would assure the reader that the commentary is directly linked to the text, and does not simply follow “paths of one’s own, offering variations, elaborations, and applications instead of faithful analysis” (xii). To this end, a “logical commentary” is developed, one which follows a serial paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text. Each paragraph-analysis is referenced to the Phenomenology, which allows the reader a direct reference to Hegel’s own words. These “safe” and constrained analytic paragraphs are each followed by an extensive and free-ranging commentary. The intention of this procedure is not only to assure the reader that Harris’s commentary is textually grounded, but to convince the reader that Harris’s contention regarding the nature of the Phenomenology is correct—that it is a profoundly cohesive and extended logical argument. In short, for Harris, the Phenomenology is exactly what what Hegel claimed it to be: a science of experience. Most commentators have not accepted this claim of either the unity or the logical course of the text, but this “received view” is, for Harris, the “view that I want to challenge and, if possible, to overthrow. If I am right, an acceptably continuous chain of argument, paragraph by paragraph, ought to be discoverable in the text” (xii).In the total context of Hegel’s philosophy, Harris understands the Phenomenology to be the “necessary preamble to speculative logic.” Once this is accepted, then “we ought to know at once, by the simplest of... (shrink)

Knowing that this work developed out of a doctoral dissertation presented to the history department at Harvard in 1973, no reader should then be surprised to find Hegelianism treated principally as a sociohistorical epiphenomenon, and taken more as a creation of the Zeitgeist than as a logical expression of Hegel's philosophy. Indeed, as the title of the first chapter reveals, Toews will establish a hermeneutic somewhere between Freud and Marx. But, in any case, the study will eschew any overt philosophical (...) viewpoint, and there will be no "judgment of Hegelian thought according to allegedly objective criteria of rational coherence and empirical verifiability". (shrink)

Now, as soon as man suspects that he has another side of himself Jenseits] within himself, and that he is not enough in his mere natural state, then he is driven on to divide himself into that which he actually is, and that which he should become. Just as the youth is the future of the boy, and the mature man the future of the innocent child, so that othersider Jenseitiger] is the future man who must be expected on the (...) other side of this present reality. Upon the awakening of that suspicion, man strives after and longs for the second other man of the future, and will not rest until he sees himself before the shape of this man from the other side. This shape fluctuates back and forth within him for a long time; he only feels it as a light in the innermost darkness of himself that would elevate itself, but as yet has no certain contour or fixed form. For a long time, along with other groping and dumb others in that darkness, the artistic genius seeks to express this presentiment. What no other succeeds in doing, he does, he presents the longing, the sought after form, and in finding its shape so creates the - Ideal. For what is then the perfect man, man's proper character, from which all that is seen is but mere appearance if it be not the Ideal Man, the Human Ideal? The artist alone has finally discovered the right word, the right picture, the right expression of that being which all seek. He presents that presentiment - it is the Ideal. 'Yes! that is it! that is the perfect shape, the appearance that we have longed for, the Good News - the Gospel. The one we sent forth so long ago with the question whose answer would satisfy the thirst of our spirit has returned!' So hail the people that creation of genius, and then fall down - in adoration. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a projected series of translations intended to acquaint the English-language reader with a representative survey of some of the better articles and reviews appearing in recent German journals. It will also feature original articles by German authors as well as reviews and opinions by international scholars concerned with German thought.

One of the main difficulties facing the scholarly exegetist in regard to Hegel is that Hegel was in the habit, so appropriate to the philosopher and so frustrating to the exegetist, of continually and more or less subtly revising his thought and writings. In most cases, the scholarly damage inflicted upon his work by this philosophical "bad habit" is easily contained within academic groves, as only academicians in the main are concerned with explicating such topics as his logic or his (...) aesthetic theory. But the case is different when Hegel's social and political philosophy, his Rechtsphilosophie, is brought onto the scene, for there can be little question but that his work in this area shares, along with Hobbes's Leviathan and Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, a constant and pervasive influence upon the actual course and conduct of political praxis and moral history. In this case, the exact presentation of Hegel's theory in the face of his own philosophical development becomes a more pressing and practical matter. (shrink)

This brief introduction to Hegel’s system is intended to lead the reader to “an immediate gestalt of the whole system, for the elements of the system only make sense in the context of its totality”. But immediately the focus expands beyond the system to encompass its methodology, and so the question to be answered is, “How are we to grasp the sweep of the dialectic and the system?” To this end, the author selects what he considers to be a readily (...) available paradigm, or “microcosm” which can serve as “the first rung of the ‘ladder’ into the system,” and this “critical portion or moment of the dialectic” is taken to be the “dialectic of the finite and infinite.”. (shrink)