Historical Excursus: Marx and The Young Hegelians

Emmanuel Chaput

Johns Hopkins University, 2024

In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas famously wrote that “Hegel inaugurated the discourse of modernity; the Young Hegelians permanently established it, that is, they freed the idea of a critique nourished on the spirit of modernity from the burden of the Hegelian concept of reason” (1990, 53, our emphasis). As such, they inaugurated, avant la lettre, a new conception of philosophy. Naturally this transformation would not have been possible without the rise of both Kant’s critical philosophy and Hegel’s notion of a Verwirkluchung and Verweltlichung of philosophy in history. The realization of philosophy as the realization of reason in an all too irrational world becomes a practical, if not a political program with the Young Hegelians and the young Marx. But at the same time, and as Habermas rightly points out, they also initiated “the triumphant gestures or mutually surpassing one another” that still prevailed until recently in philosophy (especially, but not exclusively, in “continental” philosophy). A gesture that makes us as well “the contemporaries of the Young Hegelians” (1990, 53).

As such, the Young Hegelians would have the distinct, yet ambiguous, honor of being the founding figures of a social philosophy (Fischbach, 2022) or a social theory (Marcuse, 1970) aiming at the actual realization of reason through political and social action or praxis. And at the same time, by their incessant need to criticize each other’s approaches or even the emerging social movements (either deemed reformist or naively revolutionary), they also initiated an escalation of critical gestures that often left the impression of petty squabbles detrimental to the very purpose of (their) philosophy. The attempt to realize philosophy soon gave way to its decline as a sociopolitical project.

Marx is often seen as the sole victor of this sad story, precisely because he abandoned the residual Young Hegelian trope claiming that “Philosophy cannot realize itself without transcending the proletariat, the proletariat cannot transcend itself without realizing philosophy” (Marx, 1985: 73). On the contrary, following Althusser’s alleged ‘epistemological break’ (Althusser, 1965: 25), Marx seemed to embrace a new approach to social problems grounded on the material socio-economic reality of the growing social movements and claimed that the working class could well liberate itself without the help of philosophy. The question remains however how much the Young Hegelian tropes influenced or not the young Marx and what remains of this influence (if anything) in his later works.

More generally, it poses the issue of Marx’s relation to philosophy. Contrary to Althusser’s stance, a concurring narrative (since at least Engels, 1888) considers Marx and Marxism as the sole true heirs of German classical philosophy and, as such, as the one true realization of philosophy through socialism. It is unclear however whether Marx himself subscribed to such a view or whether he considered the attempt to ‘realize philosophy’ as thoroughly vain. Whichever is the case, this alleged ‘realization’ of philosophy under Marxism is, in fact, sometime considered as its greatest downfall and de-realization. As Adorno argues (2007: 3), philosophy, as “critical thinking” was in effect “choked” under the weight of orthodox Marxism. But “philosophy” precisely “lives on because the moment to realize it was missed” (Adorno, 2007: 3).

As such, the Frankfurt school, taking up, in a sense, the Young Hegelians’ project on its deathbed, could be seen as a final attempt to keep its last spark alive precisely in the form of a Critical Theory preserving philosophy from either becoming instrumental to an established political ideology or disintegrated into a purely academic discourse detached from social reality. One of the goal of the present conference is to further support this possible relation by taking an interest in figures such as B. Bauer, L. Feuerbach, M. Hess, D.F. Strauss, E. Bauer, A. Ruge, M. Bakunin, M. Stirner, A. Cieszkowski, etc.

Another goal is to discuss the very ambitious, yet ambiguous project of realizing philosophy in a time of crisis. Between Hegel’s claim that philosophy “is its own time apprehended in thoughts” (Hegel 2008, 15) and Marx’s famous eleventh thesis according to which the point is not to interpret the world, but “the point is to change it” (Marx 1985, 158), both the Young Hegelians and Critical Theory seems to hold a similar position, one that is particularly in tune with our own historical situation. In the wake of the environmental, social and political crisis (or crises), there is a crying need for change. Yet, these changes should be grounded on an accurate diagnosis of our time. Philosophy, as Hegel argued, can help us with such a diagnosis, but is it an adequate vessel for practice? This question takes on a renewed sense of relevance today and brings us closer in a sense to the Young Hegelians who lived in a time not unlike ours: a period of both social, political (and in our case ecological) turmoil and critical lucidity, that yet seems unable to translate itself into concrete action. An inability that should not however be misjudged too hastily as a failure – as Engels argued against the Young Hegelians, or Lukács against the Frankfurt School (1974, 22), both from a Marxist standpoint – since the prior attempt to ‘realize philosophy’ by mean of a sociopolitical movement may itself be considered has an historical failure that leaves open the way for a new reflection on how to (or even why try to) realize philosophy.

References:

Adorno, Theodor W. (2007). Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton. London: Routledge.

Althusser, Louis (1965). Pour Marx. Paris: François Maspero.

Fischbach, Frank (2022). Les Jeunes hégéliens. Paris: Gallimard.

Habermas, Jürgen (1990). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F.G. Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hegel, G.W.F. (2008). Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lukacs, Georg (1974). The Theory of the Novel, trans. A. Bostock. London: Merlin Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1970). Reason and Revolution. New York: Beacon Press.

Marx, Karl (1985). Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan. Oxford: Oxford Univerisity Press.