Young Hegelians - Left and Right Hegelianism

Left and Right Hegelianism

The German philosophers who wrote immediately after the death of Hegel in 1831 can be roughly divided into the politically and religiously radical 'left', or 'young', Hegelians and the more conservative 'right', or 'old', Hegelians. The Right Hegelians followed the master in believing that the dialectic of history had come to an end (Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit reveals itself to be the culmination of history as the reader reaches its end). This meant that reason and freedom had reached the absolute maximum and were embodied by the Prussian state which, although possessing extensive civil service, good universities, some industrialization and high employment, was actually rather politically backward compared with the far more liberal constitutional monarchies of France and Britain. The Young Hegelians drew on Hegel's veneration of Reason and Freedom as the guiding forces of history, and his idea that the 'Spirit' overcame all that was opposed to these and to itself. They believed Hegel's apparent belief in the end of history conflicted with other aspects of his thought and that it was painfully obvious that the dialectic was not complete given the irrationality of certain (later all) religious beliefs and the empirical lack of (especially political and religious) freedom in Prussian society as it existed at the time. It is important to note that the groups were not as unified or self-conscious as the labels 'right' and 'left' make them seem. The term 'Right Hegelian', for example, was never actually used by those it was ascribed to, Hegel's direct successors at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), and was actually first used by David Strauss to describe Bruno Bauer (who is, confusingly, a typically 'Left' Hegelian).