Abstract
In the unpublished preface to the Prolegomena, Cieszkowski explained his reasons for undertaking a critical revision of Hegel’s system:
From the moment when I became familiar with the Hegelian philosophy of history I perceived both the important treasures and the insufficiencies it contains, not simply within the Hegelian system itself but outside it. That is, I found his philosophy of history not completely adequate to his philosophical standpoint in general either in form, method or content. Moreover, I found his philosophy itself inadequate to the absolute standpoint of world history1.
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Notes
‘Nicht veröffentlichte Vorrede Cieszkowskis zu seiner Schrift Prolegomena zur Historiosophie’, in Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 430–431.
Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 6, 2nd February 1839, Ibid. p. 378.
Unless otherwise stated, all references to the Prolegomena refer to the original German edition of 1838 and in this section are abbreviated immediately following citation as PzH.
Philosophy of Mind, paragraph 554, p. 292.
Philosophy of History, p. 173.
Philosophy of History, p. 6: “But what experience and history teach is this — that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations, connected with itself, and itself alone”.
See Ostrowski, op. cit., p. 53 for a discussion of these views citing Łukasiewicz and Kotarbinski.
In the Prolegomena p. 31, Cieszkowski refers to Hegel’s essay, ‘The Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General’, citing “Gesammelte Werke I,” pp. 311–315. This work has been proven to be Schelling’s. See Xavier Tilliette Schelling: une philosophie en devenir, Paris, 1970, p. 296.
For instance, in the Philosophy of History: “This new principle (i.e., God recognized as Spirit) is the axis on which the History of the World turns. This is the goal and the starting point of History” (p. 319). Hegel makes it equally clear that the appearance of Christ is unique, in contrast to Cieszkowski’s expectation of a second, comparable event: “The appearance of the Christian God involves further its being unique in its kind; it can occur only once, for God is realized as Subject, and as manifested Subjectivity is exclusively One Individual” (p. 325).
A brave defence of Hegel’s philosophy of nature, not so much on its own terms as on historical principles and in relation to the integrity of Hegel’s system, has been carried out by J. N. Findlay in Hegel: A re-examination, New York, 1962, chapter 9, as well as in his Foreword to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, being part two of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford, 1970.
Croce, op. cit., p. 155.
Most generally perhaps in the very conclusion of the Encyclopedia. See Philosophy of Mind, paragraph 575, p. 314: “Nature standing between the Mind and its essence, sunders itself, not indeed to extremes of finite abstraction, nor itself to something away from them and independent — which, as other than they, only serves as a link between them: for the syllogism is in the Idea and Nature is essentially defined as a transition-point and negative factor, and as implicitly the Idea”.
As will be shown below, this comparison appealed immensely to Cieszkowski’s readers. For a similar statement by Hegel, see Philosophy of History, p. 15: “It was for a while the fashion to profess admiration for the wisdom of God as displayed in animals, plants, and isolated occurrences. But if it be allowed that Providence manifests itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in Universal History?”
The Introduction to the Philosophy of Right, pp. 21–29, carefully develops the notion of the will as the unity of pure indeterminacy and the particularization of the ego, thus distinguishing between the will which is but implicitly free, the natural will — presumably corresponding in a general way to Cieszkowski’s pre-theoretical will — and that will which has had reflection brought to bear on impulse — the post-theoretical will for Cieszkowski.
For instance Cieszkowski prefaces Chapter III of the Prolegomena with an epigrammatic paraphrase of a well-known verse from Goethe’s Faust: “Spirit helps me! Suddenly I see and write in confidence: at the end will be the deed!” The term appears in Hegel also but without any overtones. For instance, in the Philosophy of Mind, p. 277, paragraph 459: “This movement (of a nation passing into universal history — AL) is the path of liberation for the spiritual substance, the deed by which the absolute final aim of the world is realized in it…” (emphasis mine — AL).
Philosophy of History, p. 30; PzH, p. 39, states: “Great men stand in relation not only to their own time but reach beyond to future and past ages. When a great man is to appear on the scene of the world we feel his need from afar. When he leaves we profit long from his activity’s fruits; hence, a long awaiting of him in the past, dominant influence in the present and fame in the future”.
PzH, Ibid., “The whole expanse of history is necessarily calibrated in terms of such personalities… Humanity can in no way do without them. Their incommensurability depends on the incommensurability of the positions which they occupy, and particularly on the fact that their magnified spirit leaves little, often nothing to do for those of normal stature other than the finishing of their own work”.
In Hegel’s Philosophy of History, the world historical individuals are themselves driven by passion: “They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labour and trouble; their whole nature was nought else but their master passion” (p. 31). A few pages earlier he asserts: “Nothing great has been accomplished in the world without passion” (p. 23). Most generally he declares: “The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole springs of action — the efficient agents in this scene of activity” (p. 20). Cieszkowski takes this to mean that men’s desires are only the first and not the ultimate springs of action but this is a somewhat arbitrary interpretation of Hegel’s remarks which Cieszkowski does not develop. Findlay has pointed to the inadequacy of Hegel’s treatment of volition, hence Cieszkowski can perhaps be forgiven for having misunderstood him. Forward to Philosophy of Mind, p. xviii.
There are some eight references to Herder in the second and third chapters of the Prolegomena. Cieszkowski speaks of Herder and Montesquieu; in the context of environmental influences in history then discusses Herder with Schiller as having attained only an aesthetic concept of history; finally, he criticizes Herder for not having seen the necessity but only the possibility of historical development. For a recent analysis of Herder’s thought see F. M. Barnard, Herder’s Social and Political Thought, Oxford, 1965. For a summary of his Ideen…, see Chapters II and III of G. A. Wells, Herder and After, Gravenhage, 1959.
Lukács, op. cit., pp. 107ff.
Among the earliest entries in the Diaries that dated 9th August, 1832, appears to be a comment on a reading of Fichte: “All that exists seems to come under two influences, an external universal one from the world, and an inner individual one from one’s ego…” Diary I, p. 25. Also Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter number 3, 18th March 1837, Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 364–365.
J. E. Erdmann, A History of Philosophy, translated by W. S. Hough, 4th ed., New York, 1897, vol. II, p. 497.
Cieszkowski to Michelet, letter nr 3, 18th March 1837, Kühne, op. cit., pp. 364–365.
J. G. Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age, translated by William Smith, London, 1847, pp. 3–17.
Xavier Leon, Fichte et son Temps, Paris, 1929, vol. II, p. 433.
Fichte, op. cit., pp. 244–250 and 267.
This anguish is no less intense in being less apparent. One can apply to the present age what Cieszkowski states in another context: “If the contradiction between art and philosophy is less striking than other contradictions of lower order, it is only the more important,… contradictions are lowest where they only seem highest. This is why the quiet despair of the heart and inner psychic contradictions are so intensive and difficult, since they appear least openly” (PzH, p. 110).
J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, translated by William Smith, London, 1849, p. 131.
J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, translated by William Smith, London, 1849, p. 131.
J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, translated by William Smith, London, 1849, p. 109.
Die Wissenschaftslehre in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse, cited in Kühne, op. cit., p. 32.
Compare Cieszkowski’s appeal to Cuvier and the argument about the knowability of an organism from a single tooth cited above with Fichte, Vocation of Man, p. 37: “Give to nature the determination of one single element of a person, let it seem ever so trivial — the course of a muscle, the turn of a hair, and she could tell thee all the thoughts which could belong to this person during the whole period of his conscious existence”.
Baczko, op. cit., p. 250, discusses Cieszkowski’s borrowing of the difference between Tatsache and Tathandlung. Baczko also points out the analogy between Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre ending in the Weisheitslehre and Cieszkowski’s raising of a philosophy of history to a historiosophy.
Fichte, Vocation of Man, p. 44, speaks of freedom in terms of active self-creation: “To be free… means that I myself will make myself whatever I am to be… I am as a thinking being, what I am as an active being. I create myself…”
Lukàcs, op. cit.
Ibid., p. 111.
Ibid.
Avineri and MacLellan, op. cit., both recognize Cieszkowski’s primacy in the development of the concept of praxis, but they are not very clear on the way in which Cieszkowski’s praxis differed from, and marked a step beyond the notions of the Young Hegelian mainstream.
Hilmann, op. cit., p. 182.
Karl Friedrich Biedermann, Fundamental Philosophie, Leipzig, 1838, p. 411.
Karl Friedrich Biedermann, Fundamental Philosophie, Leipzig, 1838, p. 471.
Karl Friedrich Biedermann, Fundamental Philosophie, Leipzig, 1838, p. 411.
Biedermann was a liberal deputy in 1848, a precursor of the Arbeiterschulbewegung, and a great advocate of female education; in sum, an inveterate liberal and idealist. See Neue Deutsche Biographie, Vol. II, p. 224.
Philippe Joseph Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 60.
Philippe Joseph Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 71.
Quoted in Gaston Castella, Buchez Historien, Fribourg, 1909, p. 38.
Quoted from Saint-Simonian Doctrine by Walicki in ‘Francuskie inspiracje…’ op. cit., p. 133.
Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 66.
Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 240.
Diaries I, p. 4.
See Jean Baptiste Duroselle’s Les débuts du catholicisme social en France, Paris, 1951, for a splendid treatment of the phenomenon and definitions of Social Catholicism.
Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 7–40.
Quoted in Castella, op. cit., p. 28.
Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843, 1st ed., Paris, 1833; Vol. I, p. 74 and 170.
Diary I, p. 11: “The world is the body of God. God is the soul of the world… all things are limited by God’s organs but they do not constitute His essence as our members do not constitute ourselves… Naturally, when a collision takes place between a finite being and an infinite being it is like a collision occurring within and among the organs of the body. God is pained and, just as our heart or head aches, so we ache God (in the original: Bóg choruje na nas — AL). The result is that God’s state of bliss or happiness is dependent on the history of the world and absolute harmony of God is only to be established when we have reached the harmonious era of society”. Cieszkowski defends this concept by a specific appeal to Hegel: “Is the notion of God becoming happy less probable than the Hegelian postulate of His becoming conscious in human consciousness?” Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 2nd ed., 1843 This idea is repeated in the Ojcze Nasz, vol. III, 2nd edition, p. 190.
Walicki ‘Francuskie inspiracje…’, and previously Kowalski, op. cit. It is difficult to refer to Fourier’s numerous and widely scattered texts here. For some suggestions, substantive and bibliographical, on Fourier’s theodicy, see Selections from the Works of Fourier, trans, by J. Franklin, introduction by C. Gide, London, 1921, pp. 47–50.
Lobkowicz, op. cit., p. 202, is quite correct in criticizing Cieszkowski for confining his illustration of “social practice” to “a bashful reference to the system of Fourier”. I am suggesting that Cieszkowski quite intentionally did not spell out the meaning of social practice: first, in order to avoid the pitfalls of utopianism; second, not to alienate himself unnecessarily from his Hegelian readers.
This omission cannot be explained as resting on the assumption that his readers would have read Fourier themselves. On the contrary, although Gans had mentioned Fourier in his Rückblicke auf Persone und Zustände, p. 115, the first German studies on Fourier appeared in 1840, prompted by a wave of interest in non-Saint-Simonian socialism following Blanqui’s abortive coup of 1839. Cornu, Moses Hess…, op. cit., p. 45. In fact, Cieszkowski seems consciously to avoid defending any specific Fourierist notions. His exhortations to read Fourier rest on his conviction that Fourier’s concerns themselves are important.
Although Cieszkowski refers to Saint-Simon frequently in his Diaries there is only one indirect and critical allusion in the Prolegomena (p. 127) to Saint-Simonianism, more specifically to its doctrine of the rehabilitation of matter. Cieszkowski’s borrowings from Buchez, however, constitute a specifically Saint-Simonian element. Walicki, “Francuskie inspiracje…”, op. cit., p. 135, emphasizes that “the critique of Hegel by the author of the Prolegomena coincided with the Saint-Simonian critique of Christian spiritualism and philosophic rationalism”, and affirms that “generally speaking Cieszkowski’s conceptions were closer to the Saint-Simonians (than to Fourier’s), ibid., p. 144. He does not explain why the latter is cited and recommended to the readers of the Prolegomena while the former are not mentioned. I am suggesting that in 1838 Saint-Simonianism, well past the peak of its popularity, already belonged to the past. Fourierism, on the other hand, unknown and more “modern” or emergent, was a more appropriate symbol of the theory of the future. In terms of substantive theory both schools could have served equally well inasmuch as they both claimed scientific status and emphasized the practical and social sphere over the theoretical.
Both in his Diaries and in the Prolegomena Cieszkowski had expressed his ambivalence regarding the Hegelian dictum “What is real is rational and what is rational is real”. In the former he had written: “It is only a half-truth… what should be should not be precisely because it only should be and is not… what should be truly, if it really should be, would be for it would have strength, right and reason…” Diaries II, p. 31. In the latter he wrote more explicitly: “What is rational as well as what is real are nothing other than instances of development. In other words, at certain stages of the spirit reason and reality coincide so that subsequently one precedes the other dialectically. Hence the eras of perplexity in history. Reality ceaselessly adjusts itself to reason and their two-sided process of development only falls into two so as to unite at a higher level”. PzH, pp. 145–146.
PzH, p. 148: Cieszkowski writes of “the essential errors which make of Fourier’s system to this day an utopia… the basic error of utopia is that instead of developing with reality it tries to enter into reality, which it will never be allowed…” On the other hand, in his Diaries Cieszkowski had written: “What are Utopias? They are longings which cease ever more to be longings, becoming the dreams of mankind and (then) the deductions of reason’s calculations”.
Diary, II, p. 35: “Today’s Utopians, the so-called communists, want to abolish property. They are terribly wrong in this. In this they are terribly wrong; this great negation qua negation is false and only as the negation of a negation or a true affirmation does it belong to truth. It is not all a question of abolishing property but of renewing and universalizing it…”. Compare this to Marx’s IInd Paris Manuscript of 1844, on the relation of private property, Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans, and ed. by T. B. Bottomore, New York — London — Toronto, 1963, pp. 136–144.
PzH, p. 148: “Utopias never sin in being too rational for reality but in not being rational enough. Instead of approaching reality, as it imagines it is doing, utopia withdraws from reality. One can never be sufficiently ideal in developing any truth, for the true good is only the other side of truth…”
Ibid.: “Fourier is the greatest Utopian but also the last… it is not the future which belongs to Fourier’s system as he imagines but rather the system itself belongs to the future…”.
Ibid.
Cieszkowski is trying to use the concept of utopia as a tool to overcome the dichotomy between facts and values, a dichotomy unacceptable within his Hegelian framework. He had struggled with the problem in his Diary II, p. 7: “True reality must develop in the area of facts. The role of today’s theory is to lay the fundamental idea, open the horizons of the new system and sow the seeds which are to impart life. Theory is the servant of facts but it must precede them as well as follow them and direct them but it must never prejudice facts because life develops out of life and theory must not change living phenomena into dead formalism”. Utopia satisfies the need for a theory which can lead facts but not impose itself upon them.
Allgemeine preussische Staatszeitung, 12th October 1838, pp. 1167–1168.
Ibid.
Garewicz, op. cit., p. 215, compares the Allgemeine preussische Staatszeitung to the Parisian Monitor and attributes the early inclusion of this review to “powerful influences”.
Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, November 1838, nr 99, pp. 785–792 and nr 100, pp. 793–798.
Although Cieszkowski’s vita in Kühne, op. cit., p. 426, puts him down as having studied modern philosophy with Erdmann, it is probable that, in view of his close relation with Michelet, he was kept aware of the contents of the latter’s lectures in the period 1832/34 which constituted the basis of the Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie.
See Cieszkowski-Michelet correspondence in Kühne, op. cit., passim and Diary, II, p. 9.
Michelet’s summary explains Cieszkowski’s claim to having brought the theory of history to completion. It mentions his praise as well as his criticism of Hegel. Then it passes on to a discussion of the future in the Prolegomena and a detailed exposition of the categories of spirit — the logical, physical, pneumatic — and the triarchic division of history as it appears in Cieszkowski. Michelet’s review may be useful to the reader as a supplement to the summary contained in the first section of this chapter.
Michelet, Jahrbücher…, op. cit., p. 794.
Ibid., pp. 794–795.
Ibid., p. 795.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 797, quoting PzH, p. 134.
Ibid., p. 786. Michelet is wrong about the success of Hegel’s system abroad or at least misled. In France, no work had yet appeared about Hegel in spite of a prize offered in 1836 by the philosophical section of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for a critical study of Kant and Hegel. In Russia, Hegel was only becoming fashionable but, in any case, it is unlikely that Michelet would have recognized Russian Hegelianism as the system he professed. Thus, Michelet’s proselytizing enthusiasm seems to be making much out of what was actually very little. See Illeana Bauer, “Einige Bemerkungen zur Geschichte der Hegel Beschäftigung in Frankreich” in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, XVIII, 1970, p. 861.
Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst, 11th March 1839, nr 60, pp. 476–488. For information regarding this journal see chapter I, section ii of this work. Julius Frauenstadt was later to become a leading Schopenhauer scholar. In 1838 he was writing a book entitled Freiheit des Menschen und die Persönlichkeit Gottes and in 1842 he published one of many Young Hegelian criticisms of Schelling’s Berlin lectures.
Frauenstadt, Hallische Jahrbücher, op. cit., p. 479.
Ibid.: “It is the task of the poet to seek and find in the natural the symbol of the spiritual but the symbol is very far from the concept of the thing which is the concern of philosophy… the concept is different from the symbol in that the concept is immanent to the thing itself while the symbol points to a third object”.
Ibid., p. 487.
Garewicz, op. cit., p. 219, concludes from his examination of the German reaction to the Prolegomena that the Hegelian Left rejected the work while the Centre “accepted it without qualification”. I have tried to show that this conclusion is incorrect for, in fact, the Prolegomena’s attempt to stand above party divisions led to its being rejected by all parties, the Centre included.
There are several short but adequate studies on Moses Hess. See Cornu’s Moses Hess et la Gauche hégélienne, op. cit., and Sir Isaiah Berlin’s The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess, London, 1959. A more substantial biography is Edmund Silberner’s Moses Hess: Geschichte seines Lebens, Leiden, 1966. For a Hess anthology see Horst Lademacher ed., Moses Hess: Ausgewählte Schriften, Cologne, 1962. Garewicz, op. cit., discusses Hess’ relation to Cieszkowski in some detail, pp. 226–241.
Moses Hess, Die Europäische Triarchie, Leipzig, 1841, abridgement in Lademacher, op. cit., p. 84.
Moses Hess, Die Europäische Triarchie, Leipzig, 1841.
Hess referring to PzH, pp. 124, cited in Garewicz, op. cit., p. 231.
Lademacher, op. cit., pp. 84–85: “The author of the Prolegomena goes to extraordinary pains to remove this prejudice (regarding the possibility of cognition of the future-AL). Alone this seems almost superfluous: the thing speaks for itself and requires no external argumentation…”
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 85.
Berlin, Moses Hess; Cornu, Karl Marx, as quoted in Garewicz, op. cit., p. 229. Cornu also writes in his Moses Hess, p. 27, of the singular lack of success of the Heilige Geschichte: “Its only effect was to aggravate the disagreement between Hess and his father, unhappy with his son’s unorthodox interpretation of Judaism and critique of property”.
Adam had been followed by a flood; Christ by a flood of nations; Spinoza by a flood of ideas. The main difference with Cieszkowski is that Hess substitutes Spinoza for Hegel’s role in the Prolegomena. In anticipation of the Our Father, it is interesting to observe that Hess also calls the three eras the age of the father — an era of passivity, social harmony — the age of the son — consciousness of union of spirit and nature — and that of the holy spirit — where reason re-establishes social harmony. The underlying idea is that of progressive revelation of God. See excerpts from the Heilige Geschichte in Lademacher, op. cit., pp. 59–61, and Cornu, Moses Hess, p. 13.
Cornu’s discussion of the influences inspiring the Heilige Geschichte reveal further similarities with Cieszkowski particularly in respect to the influence of Fichte, Schelling and the Schellingian interpretation of Spinoza recalling Cieszkowski’s attachment of Spinoza’s notion of the connection between the spiritual and the natural order. Even though the Heilige Geschichte appeared (anonymously) a year before the Prolegomena it should be remarked that Cieszkowski had not read the work and Hess himself seems to maintain that Cieszkowski came to hold views similar to his own independently. See Lademacher, op. cit., p. 84.
Die Europäische Triarchie, Leipzig, 1841, appeared anonymously also and was originally to be called the Europäische Wiedergeburt. Its final title was chosen in polemical retort to an Europäische Pentarchie, Leipzig, 1839, by an unknown Goldmann, a Russian police official. The “Pentarchist” urged a union of the five European powers with Russia especially, and Austria — the two most reactionary states — at its head. Hess’ triarchy consisted of the three liberal and potentially revolutionary powers: primarily England, then France and Germany. The Triarchie takes a stand on all the political issues concerning the Young Hegelians at the time: the fear of war with France, the Archbishop of Cologne affair. In fact, Hess excuses himself for mixing “talk of the kingdom of God on earth with such very mundane matters”. Cited in Garewicz, op. cit., p. 231; for further information on the Triarchie, see Silberner, op. cit., p. 79.
‘Die Philosophie der Tat’ appeared in Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz, Zurich, 1843, again anonymously. This article set the tone of the whole volume. Contributors included Herwegh, Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Engels. See Silberner, op. cit., pp. 123ff, for a summary and study of the development of the concept of the deed in Hess.
It is very important to keep track of the dates at which these various works appeared. The Prolegomena was original and even daring in 1838. By 1843 its concepts were self-evident and outmoded. It must be remembered that the Heilige Geschichte, which pays the most homage to Cieszkowski, was largely already written in 1839 though it did not appear until 1841. Hess had re-studied Fichte thoroughly after having written the Triarchie and Silberner discerns a strong Fichtean influence in the article ‘Philosophy of the Deed’, ibid.
Garewicz, op cit., p. 227. Hess’ later Zionism is treated in the discussion of Hess’ Rom und Jerusalem: die letzte Nationalfrage (1862), in Silberner, op. cit., pp. 388–445. Garewicz explains the affinity between Hess and Cieszkowski by maintaining that the former was “never really a Young Hegelian sensu stricto”, p. 227, and connecting this with his earlier assertion that Cieszkowski also remained excluded from the left Young Hegelians. He thus suggests that they share the fate of being outsiders. This argument seems unconvincing to me inasmuch as it denies that Hess, in spite of the poor philosophical training he had, influenced profoundly the Young Hegelian movement, see Cornu, op. cit., passim. There is no indication that Cieszkowski met Hess, although a letter to Cieszkowski from the latter’s secretary informs him of the content of the Triarchie, Kühne, op. cit., p. 196, and both were members of the Philosophische Gesellschaft in the 1860’s
Garewicz, op. cit., p. 240 makes the interesting comment that perhaps Hess may be seen as moving from a Saint-Simonian to a Fourierist position whereas Cieszkowski’s thought evolves in the contrary direction. The comment is provocative, as he himself points out, but unproven.
Marx to Engels, 12th January 1882, Marx-Engels Werke, XXXV, p. 35. The “Swiss Bürkli” had reproached Marx for not mentioning Cieszkowski’s work on credit.
Engels to Marx, 13th January 1882, Ibid., p. 37. Engels is, in fact, mistaken about Cieszkowski’s collaboration in these journals.
See Stepelovich, op. cit., pp. 50–53, concerning Werder whose pupils included Bakunin; Diary II, p. 9, for Cieszkowski’s comments on Werder.
See Cornu, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels, vol. II, pp. 106–228, passim.
See Liebich, op. cit., p. 1503.
See H. Opitz, Philosophie und Praxis: eine Untersuchung zur Herausbildung der marxschen Praxisbegriff, Berlin, 1967
also R. Panasiuk, Lewica heglowska, Warsaw, 1969, esp. pp. 54–93, passim, as well as Lobkowicz, op. cit., esp. chapter 14.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1968, p. 30.
This thesis is more or less explicitly stated in Ostrowski and Lobkowicz, op. cit.
For instance, Garewicz and Opitz, op. cit. The latter writes, p. 26: “According to Cieszkowski, praxis is but the reproduction of the spirit from thought to being. This conception gave birth among many Young Hegelians to the naive faith — which perfectly suited the German Spiessburgers — that through pure reflection, through the correction of false notions in ‘the calm of cognition’ or through the purely theoretical critique of evils they could transform an existing reality and suppress present wrongs”.
Most recently, this has been the balanced assessment of L. Kołakowski, Główne Nurty Marksizmu, vol. I, pp. 89–92. A similar view has been expressed in less reserved form by Avineri, op. cit., pp. 124–131, who rightly points out that Cieszkowski differs from Marx in that in the Prolegomena “he does not envisage an historical subject that can carry out his postulate of radical change, and hence he cannot, in the last resort, develop a theory of social action” (p. 130).
The best account of the atmosphere of Hegelianism in Russia remains V. Annen-kov’s The Extraordinary Decade, trans, by I. Titunik, Ann Arbor, 1968. Sir Isaiah Berlin’s Encounter articles cite some of Herzen’s ironical retrospective comments on this period from the latter’s memoirs, My Past and Thoughts, trans, by G. Garnett, London 1924–27 revised by H. Higgins, New York 1968. Especially part IV, succeeds in recapturing the mood of the period.
Nikolai Vladimirovitch Stankevitch (1813–40) and Nikolai Platonovitch Ogarev (1813–77) were among the leaders of Russian Hegelianism with Stankevitch exercising a particularly strong personal influence on his entire generation. Stankevitch wrote in his last letter to Bakunin, dated 7 May 1840: “The idea must of necessity become the deed, conscious and delighting in the deed. There is a brochure by Cieszkowski Prolegomena zur Historiosophie… his division (of history) is not good, since it does not rest on the idea of history, but the last thought, that knowledge must pass into the deed and realize itself, in it is correct. A general striving expresses itself today towards the highest unification of separate categories…” Quoted in Čyževskij, op. cit., p. 212. Stankevitch connects this to Feuerbach’s materialism in the same letter, see Walicki, ‘Cieszkowski a Hercen’, op. cit., pp. 180ff. Herzen’s letter to Ogarev about the Prolegomena has not survived but the latter’s reply has: “The Prolegomena is an important study, thank you for it… the Historiosophie is a remarkable book. Katkov & Co. consider the analogy between material nature and history to be far-fetched; I do not agree with that”. Russkaya Mysl, 1888, nr 11, pp. 2 and 5, cited in Walicki, op. cit., p. 154. Bakunin should have heard of the Prolegomena not only from Stankevitch but also from his tutor, K. Werder. Bakunin probably met Cieszkowski himself in 1848. Benoit Hepner, Bakounine et le Panslavisme révolutionnaire, Paris, 1950, pp. 162 and 265.
The best general biography on Herzen is Martin Malia’s Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, Cambridge, Mass., 1961. Most complete for the period under consideration here is Raoul Labry’s Alexandre Ivanovic Herzen 1812–1870; essai sur la formation et le développement de ses idées, Paris, 1928. The Cieszkowski-Herzen relation was first explored by Gustav Shpet in Filosofskoe Mirovozzrenie Gercena, Petrograd, 1921. Its most thorough treatment is in the Walicki article cited above.
Herzen to A. L. Vitberg, 28th July 1839, in A. I. Gercen: Polnoe Sobranie Socinenii i Pism, ed. Lemke, vol. XXII (additions), Leningrad, 1925, p. 33. Aleksandr Lavrentevitch Vitberg (1787–1855) was primarily an architect in the classical style though with Masonic and mystic inclinations. See Bolsaja Sovetskaja Enciklopedija, 1951, vol. 8, p. 191.
Labry, op. cit., p. 247.
Walicki points to this in comparing the Prolegomena’s, “Christ is the central point of the past ages… however significant the reforms begun in the XVth century, they do not constitute an extreme opposition or a radical turnover in all relations of life like those two opposite periods” with Herzen’s ‘Letters on the Study of Nature’: “Many consider the three last centuries to be as cut off from the middle ages as the middle ages are from antiquity. They are not correct; the ages of reformation and enlightenment are the last phase of the development of Catholicism and feudalism”, in Walicki, op. cit., pp. 164–165.
Ibid., Herzen was particularly fascinated by the analogy between the end of antiquity and the present day. This is a theme throughout the Our Father and is present as a sub-theme in the Prolegomena. Walicki attributes both Cieszkowski’s and Herzen’s inspiration in this respect to Pierre Leroux.
Labry, op cit., pp. 203–204, referring to the Cuvier analogy, claims that “in this demonstration of Cieszkowski, Herzen found the very substance of his spirit”.
Ibid.; see also Ogarev-Herzen letter cited above.
Walicki, op. cit., pp. 171 and 186.
It might be misleading to suggest that Cieszkowski and Herzen shared a common standpoint here. The former after having studied Hegel had discarded romanticism and rejected Schelling perhaps even before knowing him thoroughly. Herzen, on the other hand, did not yet know Hegel and was moving away from Schelling under other influences. See Labry op. cit., passim.
See Walicki, op. cit., passim. Herzen attempted to come to terms with Hegel critically in his articles ‘Dilettantism in Science’, (1843), published in Lemke, op. cit., vol. III. Petrograd, 1919, pp. 163–234.
Even Bakunin advocated reconciliation — indeed more ferociously than his colleagues. See Cyzevsky, op. cit., and Annenkov, op. cit., esp. chapter 4.
‘Buddhism in Science’ in Lemke, op. cit., vol. III, p. 218. Compare also with Cieszkowski’s views in Gott und Palingenesie.
This is Walicki’s conclusion in ‘Cieszkowski a Herzen’. He writes, op. cit., p. 171, that the closest single point of contact between Cieszkowski and Herzen lies in the conclusions they drew regarding the free and creative deed from Schiller’s conciliation of immediacy and reflection. See also Labry, op. cit., passim.
Both were well acquainted with Cuvier, Herbart, Schelling and Bacon and maintained a lively interest in the discoveries of the natural sciences. Herzen had also read Buchez, Fourier, Saint-Simon and George Sand; Pierre Leroux particularly appears to be important to both, see Walicki, op. cit., passim, and Alexandre Koyré, La Philosophie et le problème national en Russie au début du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1928.
Shpet, op. cit., p. 79, notes that “the possible influence of Cieszkowski is restricted only to the formal side of his ‘practical’ deductions. In content, Herzen is as little bound with Cieszkowski as the left Hegelians”. At the same time, however, Shpet lists four points of influence: Cieszkowski fortified Herzen’s inclination “to translate philosophy into life”; Herzen borrowed some terms; Herzen drew his criticism of Hegel from Cieszkowski at least partially; Cieszkowski provided a link between Hegel and the Young Hegelians for Herzen.
My Past and Thoughts, part V.
“Buddhism in Science” in Lemke, op. cit., vol. III, p. 22. “German philosophers have seemed somehow to forsee that activity and not science is the aim of man. This was often a brilliant, prophetic inconsistency, forcefully pushing its way into severe and passionless logical constructions”.
Quoted by Volodin, op. cit., p. 274, from Gercen A. I., Sobranie sočinenii v tridsati tomah, vol. XXX, Moscow, 1962, pp. 487–488.
Edgar Quinet had written in 1831 of the reaction to philosophy in the form not of a
rejection of the principles of philosophy but of the vita contemplativa. Stuke, op. cit., p. 50, citing Quinet’s Revue des Deux Mondes, article quoted already. He had also realized the importance of Strauss’ work. As the French translator of Herder, Quinet could have been particularly predisposed to accept the importance of Cieszkowski’s Prolegomena. See Henri Tronchon, La fortune intellectuelle de Herder en France, Paris, 1920.
See especially Z. L. Zaleski, ‘Edgar Quinet et Auguste Cieszkowski’ in Mélanges d’histoire littéraire générale et comparée offerts à Fernand Baldensperger, vol. II, Paris, 1930, pp. 361–374.
Henryk Kamieński, Filozofia ekonomii materialnej ludzkiego społeczeństwa, 1st ed., 1843, ed. B. Baczko, Warsaw, 1959, p. 139, calls Cieszkowski a “German writer” in obvious scorn. Karol Libelt, later a political ally of Cieszkowski, is even more explicit in his disapproval and connects it with alienation from the Polish nation, an abstract position, etc., in Samowladstwo Rozumu i Objawy Filozofji Słowiańskiej, 1st ed., 1845; ed. Andrzej Walicki, in Biblioteka Klasyków Filozofii, Warsaw, 1967, pp. 268ff.
Henryk Kamieński (1813–1865) and Edward Dembowski (1822–1846) were, coinci-dentally, first cousins. For an introduction to their thought, see Baczko’s article about the former and Ładyka’s article about the latter in the volume Filozofia Polska, vol. II, ed. B. Baczko, Warsaw, 1967.
Dembowski, ‘Rys rozwiniecia sie pojeć filozoficznych Niemczech’, originally published in Przeglad Naukowy, 1842, reprinted in Dembowski’s Pisma, vol. I, Warsaw, 1955, p. 405.
Dembowski, ‘Rys rozwiniecia sie pojeć filozoficznych w Niemczech’, originally published in Przeglad Naukowy, 1842, p. 409.
Dembowski, ‘Rys rozwiniecia sie pojeć filozoficznych w Niemczech’, originally published in Przeglad Naukowy, 1842, pp. 410–411.
Dembowski, ‘Rys rozwiniecia sie pojeć filozoficznych w Niemczech’, originally published in Przeglad Naukowy, 1842, pp. 410–411.
Dembowski, ‘Rys rozwiniecia sie pojeć filozoficznychw Niemczech’, originally published in Przeglad Naukowy, 1842, p. 412.
Dembowski, ‘Kilka myśli o eklektyźmie’, Rok, IV, 1843, reprinted in Pisma, vol. III, p. 341.
Kamieński, op. cit., p. 140.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 144.
Diary II, p. 10, entry for 24th August — 9th September records his trip to Heidelberg for his doctoral promotion without explaining why he chose to be promoted there rather than at Berlin. On 3rd November, he records a letter from Heidelberg awarding him the doctorate, Diary II, p. 12. The dissertation itself appears to have been lost. Kühne, Graf August Cieszkowski, pp. 431–440, has published pp. 9–16 of the German manuscript. An unfinished, but most complete version available is the Polish translation in Biblioteka Warszawska, I, 1841, pp. 287–306 and 536–561, entitled ‘Rzecz o filozofii jonskiej jako wstep do historii filozofii’. This is the version I shall cite as LP. It is reprinted in Walicki and Garewicz, eds., Prolegomena do Historiozofii…, op. cit., pp. 245–291. The pages published by Kühne continue the Polish version thus providing a reasonably complete, if not very homogeneous, whole.
Hegel’s exposition of logic comes in two distinct versions: the Science of Logic and the so-called Lesser Logic, which is part one of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans, by William Wallace as the Logic of Hegel, 2nd ed. revised, London, 1892. I have consulted only the latter and I believe that Cieszkowski is also referring to the Lesser Logic although he at no time specifically says so. I have found W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel, London, 1924, Dover ed., 1955, to be an invaluable guide through the arguments of the Logic.
Hegel discusses the Ionians in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, part I, section I, first period, first chapter.
‘Notes to German manuscript of the Dissertation’, Kühne, op. cit., p. 435.
Ibid., p. 438.
Ibid., p. 439.
Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, para. 337–376, pp. 272–441.
Walter Kaufmann, op. cit., pp. 167–176, gives an excellent evaluation of the actual role of the triad in Hegel. See also the ‘Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit’ with Kaufmanns comments, ibid., pp. 428–439. Kaufmann concludes that whereas Hegel has a certain predilection for triads he himself refuted the empty and schematic formalism of those who would erect the triad into a dogma.
It may be recalled that in the Prolegomena Cieszkowski draws on paragraph 554 of the Encyclopedia to show that religion encompasses all other spheres of absolute spirit. It is more consistent with Hegel’s general position, however, to see religion as a moment in the development of absolute spirit subordinate to philosophy. See Gray, ed., op. cit., passim. This is also the position of the Ionian Philosophy which treats the birth of philosophy as a progress over religion.
In describing the reconcilation between faith and knowledge which Christ effected, Ionian Philosophy, p. 539, Cieszkowski is simply repeating the position of Hegel’s ‘Introduction’ to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, in Gray, ed., op. cit., pp. 271–272 and passim.
Hegel, ibid., in Gray, ibid., p. 311: “We have altogether two philosophies — the Greek and the Teutonic…” etc.
Cieszkowski-Michelet, letter nr 1, 30th June 1836, Kühne, op. cit., p. 358. In this letter Cieszkowski also writes: “In his (i.e., Hegel’s logic) as you have asserted yourself, one could undoubtedly make several changes in the presentation of its categories… nevertheless the structure is entirely built”. One could perhaps look for the germ of Cieszkowski’s redefinition of Hegel’s logical categories here but the purely concessive character of Cieszkowski’s statement and his immoderate praise of Hegel’s logic which immediately precedes the quoted section set the dominant tone.
Hegel, ‘Introduction’ to Lectures on the History of Philosophy in Gray, op. cit., p. 250, chides Brucker and Ritter for leaping to conclusions from limited evidence. At the same time, however, the work on the Ionians by Heinrich Ritter. Geschichte der Ionischen Philosophie, Hamburg, 1821, is praised by Hegel as “carefully written and… on the whole… cautious not to introduce foreign matter” in Gray, ed., op. cit., p. 249. Cieszkowski polemicizes on several minor points with Ritter-e.g., for failing to see that the difference between Thaïes and Anaximander is precisely what unites them; for misplacing Anaximenes by putting him immediately alongside Thaïes; for taking Anaximander out of his generally recognized middle position in the Ionian school etc.
Diary I, p. 7.
Diary I, p. 4.
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Liebich, A. (1979). Die Prolegomena zur Historiosophie. In: Between Ideology and Utopia. Sovietica, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9383-9_3
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