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The French Revolution and the Problem of German Modernity: Hegel, Heine, and Marx Author(s): Harold Mah

Source: New German Critique, No. 50 (Spring - Summer, 1990), pp. 3-20 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488208 Accessed: 13/03/2010 08:41
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and the Problem Revolution TheFrench of GermanModernity: Hegel, Heine, and Marx
Harold Mah

The response of German intellectuals in the late 18th century to the French Revolution was various and changing. Some were immediately suspicious of the Revolution's intentions and prospects. Goethe showed a skeptical reserve; Schiller doubted its ability to bring about a free society.' Others who at first welcomed the Revolution quickly became disillusioned when it yielded war, regicide, and Jacobin dictatorship. Klopstock's initial poetic celebrations gave way to expressions of bitter disappointment.2 Gentz travelled from one extreme to the other: the Revolution's energetic apologist in 1789, he had become by 1792 one of its most vociferous critics.3 But if not all German intellectuals were initially or continuously sympathetic to the Revolution, there was nonetheless a significant number who embraced it as the beginning of a new and better era.4
1. General works on the German response to the French Revolution are Jacques et la revolution fran9aise Droz, L'Allemagne (Paris:Presses Universitairede France, 1949); Revolution Deutschland und die Franzsische Voss, (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1983); Jurgen de 1789 vuepar les ecrivains se contemporains aUemands Maurice Boucher, La Revolution (Paris: and theFrench Revolution M. Didier, 1954); G.P. Gooch, Germany (London: F. Cass, 1965); und Deutungen Revolution: Berichte deutscher Horst Gunther, ed., Diefranzisische Schriftsteller der undHistoriker Deutscher ClassikerVerlag, 1985);Alfred Stem, Der Einfluss (Frankfurt: Geistesleben Revolution (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta'scheBuchhandlung, franzisischen aufdasdeutsche 1928). On Goethe and Schillerspecificallysee Stem 129-144; Gooch 175-207, 214-229; and Droz 172-186, 207-320. 2. Gooch 119-126; Rudolf Vierhaus, " 'Sie und nicht Wir': Deutsche Urteile uber den Ausbruch der Franzosischen Revolution," in Voss, 1-2. 3. Gooch 91-103; Droz 371-392. 4. See the generalworkscited in note 1, especiallySter 3-16. Also see Vierhaus 1-15.

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And although some of these intellectuals later deplored its violence and authoritarianism, a prominent group, including Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, remained loyal to what they identified as its original impulse. For these thinkers, the Revolution was a welcome and irreversible historical breakthrough.5 According to Hegel, the Revolution cleared away an anarchic mass of antiquated social and political institutions and allowed the most advanced moral and political tendencies in Europe to assume concrete form. In France, it abolished aristocratic privilege and arbitrary royal authority, founding in their places social equality and constitutional, representative government.6 Carried by Napoleon's armies into central Europe, the Revolution led to the removal of a moribund empire and remnants of feudal privilege and servitude, and it helped to establish rational legal codes, freedom of property and person, and equal access to government service (PH 456). Because the Revolution eliminated traditional obstacles to social equality and constitutional government, German intellectuals could view it in particular as the realization of the Enlightenment and in general as the achievement of unfettered reason.7 Or as Hegel said, invoking the significance of the Revolution in his lectures on the philosophy of history, "Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around him had it been perceived that man's existence centers in his head, i.e., in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality" (PH 447). For Hegel and other Germans, the Revolution replaced a decaying and obsolete social and political order with rational institutions. In characterizing the Revolution as the heroic consolidation of rational social and political forms, these Germans (and many commentators today) identified it as the decisive arrival of "modernity."8 And although these German thinkers and writers did not want to emulate the abrupt and violent manner in which the French constructed modernity, they nonetheless hoped that Germany would follow the Revolution by
5. On Kant, see Gooch 126-282; on Fichte, Gooch 283-295; on Hegel, see below. 6. G.W.F. Hegel, ThePhilosophy trans.J. Sibree (New York:Dover Publicaof History, tions, 1956) 446-447. Hereaftercited in the text with the abbreviationPH followed by page number(s). 7. Vierhaus 8-9. 8. See, for example, M. Rainer Lepsius, "Soziologische Theoreme iiber die SozialReinhar Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,1977) 12. This view is indirectlycriticized by Rolf Reichhardt, "Die franzosische Revolution als Ma1tab des deutschen 'Sonderwegs'?," in Voss, 322-324.
struktur der 'Modeme' und 'Modemisierung,' " Studienzum Beginn der modernenWelt,ed.

Harold Mah

creating its own real world of reason.9 Faith in the Revolution's historical validity as the breakthrough of modernity, and in its relevance for Germany, was not easily held, for understanding the Revolution in this manner left German intellectuals with considerable problems. Perceived as the achievement of universal reason, the Revolution offered a model of social and political principles that rational people everywhere were obligated to follow.10 Yet it was not at all clear that Germany could meet this standard of reason and modernity. There was no comparable social and political change in Germany." The Napoleonic conquest precipitated social and political reform, notably in Prussia, but that reform ultimately proved ambiguous in its results and was followed furthermore by varying degrees of political reaction.'2 It was also uncear what the Revolution as a measure of social and political progress implied for German culture. 18th-century German intellectuals had freed themselves only recently from what they had perceived to be their tutelage to French culture.13 From Sturm und Drang, through classicism and romanticism to idealism, German intellectuals had steadily gained a sense of autonomy and accomplishment, so that in the opinion of many tum-of-the-century German thinkers, Germany was of now a privileged realm of spirit and intellect, the nation par excellence the Dichterand the Denker. "It is a national characteristic only among the Germans," Friedrich Schlegel wrote in 1799, "to honor art and learning as divinities just for the sake of art and learning themselves."14
9. Vierhaus 10-12. 10. The rationalprinciples of the Revolution could be and were separatedfrom the means used to realize them; the former were considered essentialand universalprecepts that did not have any necessaryconnection to the particular,"contingent"or accidental conditions of their realization. See Vierhaus 8. 11. Vierhaus 12; and Jurgen Voss, "Vorwort,"in Voss, viii-ix.
12. Reinhart Koselleck, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1975); Walter Simon, TheFailureof the Prussian ReformMovement (Ithaca, NY: Corell UP,

1955). 13. See Madame de Staie, De L'Allemagne(Paris: Libraire de Firmia-Didot, 1876) 112-113; Vierhaus 8.
14.

Princeton UP, 1963) 62, and see 45, 55, 148; Droz 183-185, 483-485, 487-488. In De Madame de Stael did her best to fix the new German cultural identity in L'Allemagne, the minds of the rest of Europe, repeatedly emphasizing that by nature and tradition Germans were an impracticalpeople, lovers of abstraction;Germany was "the country of thought" (11), "the metaphysical nation par excellence" (363). See also 10, 85, 408, 468, 481, 489. The construction of this new cultural identity aided and was aided by the university reform of the early 19th century. See the articles of R. Steven Turner: "The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 - Causes and Context," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1972):137-182;

and the National State (Princeton: Quoted in Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism

in Society,ed. Lawrence Stone, v. 2 and Professorial Scholarship," The University

"University Reformers

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Those German intellectuals who believed in the Revolution's reason and modernity were part of this efflorescence of intellectual activity and they shared in its new sense of cultural autonomy and accomplishment. Yet the cultural politics of turn-of-the-century Germany threatened to invalidate their claim to membership in Germany's new cultural identity. For German writers and thinkers opposed to the Revolution now argued that Germany's unique culture - its special spiritual nature - distinguished it from France in particular and from social and political modernity in general.15 To align oneself with the modernity of the Revolution was to decare oneself alien to authentic German spirituality. Intellectuals who both supported the principles of the Revolution and wanted a stake in Germany's new cultural identity therefore needed to show that that identity could be reconciled with the essential impulses of the Revolution. They had to figure Germany's cultural achievement into the equation that defined the meaning of the moder age. This paper examines the evolution of this attempt to incorporate Germany's new cultural identity into a general discourse of modernity defined by the French Revolution. By focusing on key writings of Hegel, Heine, and Marx, I hope to show how this project, difficult from its beginning, became ever more problematical during the first half of the 19th century. From Hegel to Heine and from Heine to Marx, there emerged a growing disquiet with Germany's ability to meet the new standard of modernity and a growing skepticism about the accomplishments of German culture. By mid-century, the project of aligning Germany's cultural identity with the putative modernity of the French Revolution had collapsed. And in its collapse, it paradoxically yielded the concusion it was initially designed to prevent: that Germany was deeply and intractably resistant to modernity.16
PrincetonUP, 1974) 495-531; "The Bildungsbiirgertum and the LearnedProfes(Princeton: sions in Prussia, 1770-1830: The Origins of A Class," Histoiresocial/Social History8 (1980):105-136. 15. Droz 483-487; Stail 85, 408, 465; Vierhaus 14. The notion of an inherent antipathy between German culture and a putativesocial and political modernity was powerful throughout the 19th and early the 20th centuries. See Fritz Ringer, TheDecline oftheGerman Mandarins: TheGerman Academic 1890-1933 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Community, UP, 1969). In this paper, I discuss one countercurrentto this trend;the attempt to integrate Germanculture into a generaldiscourse of modernity. In a recentbook, JeffreyHerf outlines another countercurrent,the converse of the one I discuss. He analyzesthe early 20th-centuryattempt to integrateaspects of modernity (i.e., technology) into a general discourse of a privileged German culture. See Herf, Reactionary Modernism: CulTechnology, in Weimar and the Third Reich(Cambridge:Camridge UP, 1984). ture,and Politics 16. This view of the Germans has been almost a truism of German studies.

Harold Mah

Hegel: Aligning France and Germany In his lectures on the philosophy of history, delivered in the 1820s in Berlin, Hegel notes that what underlies and empowers the Revolution's achievements of social equality and representative constitutional government is the principle of the "absolute will." The absolute will, Hegel claims, is purely formal; it acts without regard for particular individual or social concerns (PH 442). Unrestrained by prior desires, interests, morality, religion, history, or politics, it strives for a complete autonomy. And in seeking to free itself from all given constraints, the will aspires to an abstract universality. It wills that unconstrained willing be made a general principle (PH 442-443). Hegel asserts that both the achievements of the Revolution and its descent into terror, dictatorship, and continuing political instability derive from this abstract and universalizing will (PH 450-453). In the form of the French Revolution, the principle of the absolute will made a spectacular entry onto the historical stage. But, Hegel notes, that development is not unique to the French; the principle of the absolute will is not exclusive to a particular nation. On the contra- "thelast stage ry, it defines a broader condition, a generalized present in history,"Hegel writes, "our world, our time" (PH 442). The absolute will, in other words, must also have realized itself in Germany. But, as Hegel recognizes, no similar political change, no equivalent political transformation in accordance with the absolute will has occurred in Germany (PH 443). To bring Germany under the purview of the principle of the absolute will, Hegel therefore seeks its manifestation in German developments he considers equivalent to the political developments of the French Revolution. Hegel, in other words, resorts to an interpretive strategy of creating homologies or plotting parallelisms between diverse forms of phenomena. This strategy assumes that homologous or parallel forms necessarily express the same principle or essence. In France, Hegel observes, the abstract and universalizing will assumed a "practical effect" in the form of the Revolution. But in Germany, the absolute will appeared in a different shape, in "no other form fordUP, 1984)has recentychallenged thisview.One of the aimsof my essayis to understand how and why 19th-century whatEley Germans themselves cameto embrace and Blackbourn as a problematic of German identify history.From conceptualization this paper,I hope it will be evidentthat such a theoretical choice was by no means as manysuggest, but a productof historical and circumstance self-evident, empirically of different an anxiety-ridden theoretical and cultural manipulation assumptions.
History of German (Oxford: OxGeoffrey Eley's and David Blackbour's ThePeculiarities

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than that of tranquil theory" (PH 443). More specifically, Hegel asserts that the absolute will "obtained speculative recognition" in "Kantian philosophy" (PH 443); Kant achieved for Germany what the Revolution accomplished in France.17 By assertinga homology between the disparateforms of philosophy and politics, Hegel aligns Germany with the French Revolution: the Germans have accomplished in "theoretical abstraction" what the French have accomplished in practice (PH 444). In drawing this parallelism between German theory and French politics, Hegel implicitly makes a claim for Germany'sparticipationin modernity. Germans are no less advanced in their thinking than are the French in their politics. Hegel thus establishes a measure of German modernity, but as he himself recognizes, this attempt to align Germanywith the French Revolution in a unified vision of the present immediately leads to a further, pressing question: "... why did the French alone and not the Germans set about realizing [the principle of the absolute will] ?" (PH 443). Why France,not Germany,for the will's practicalrealization?To answer this question, Hegel looks to what many German intellectuals identified as the source of Germany's distinctive spiritual character, namely, the Reformation.Accordingto Hegel, Lutherdetached German consciousness from external authority and forced it to rely on itself. Since Luther,Germanthought has been characterizedby an increasingly introspectiveand soulful inner life, by a constant deepening of inwardness (Innerlichkeit). of Hegel assertsthat this unique German characteristic conditions Germany's acceptance of modernity. enhanced Innerlichkeit Because of the Reformation,he argues, Germanydeveloped a broad and an inner life that could absorb the exertions of the absecure spirituality, solute will (PH 444, 449). Thus the firstexpressions of the absolutewill in the German Enlightenment were entirely compatible with religion, indeed, were "conducted in the interestof theology" (PH 444). In France, however, the absence of a Reformation resulted in a weak and fragmented spirituality.Consequenty, the absolute will, making its appearance in the Enlightenment,entered into an intense and external conflict with the Catholic Church. The French never established a general, harmonious spirituality; the will was channeled into an adversarialpolitics the situation in Germany,in Francethere was no Unlike 444, (PH 449).
17. For Hegel the idea of the absolute will is at the center of both Kantian epistemology in its notion of a transcendental ego and of Kantian ethics in its notion of an uncompromising good will. See PH 343.

Harold Mah

to render the agitations of soothing and all-encompassing Innerlichkeit will social institutions into against pure agitations within thought. Innerlichkeit to German to Hegel's appeal explain why Germany had a theoretical,ratherthan political, modernity is an extraordinaryvindication of the new German culturalidentity.At least since the Reformation, Their Hegel argues, Germanshave become spiritualpeoplepar excellence. not has on the but, special spirituality precluded modernity contrary,has allowed them to attainit without succumbing to the excesses of the Revolution. Hegel not only claims for German culture a share in modernity, but furtheremploys the former to banish the potential social and political problems of the latter. German culture offers a safe passage to modernity, a way of realizing the absolute will while avoiding the violence and war that accompanied the arrivalof political modernity in France. Hegel goes on to say that no revolution can make lasting political gains without a preceding Reformation,for no revolution can establishfree institutionswithout firstcultivatinginward spirituality (PH 453). An endurcan be founded on an established Innerlichkeit.'8 ing modernity only With his strategy of plotting parallelisms or creating homologies, Hegel redeems German culture for the modem age and, even more, identifiesit as the preferredform of modernity. But at the same time that Hegel justifies Germany'sculturalidentity and protects its claim to modernity, he also recognizes that German culture remains an incomplete embodiment of modernity. He cannot be content with Innerlichkeit alone. if of For the freedom the will is limited to the inner life of human beings, a disjunction could arise between internal states of mind and external statesof objective social existence. The will cannot be trulyor fully free if its domain is confined to thinking.To avoid this potentialdissonance between thought and reality,Hegel's answerto the question of why the will realizes itself in France,not Germany,ultimatelyleads to a second assertion about the nature of German politics. Hegel returnsfrom Innerlichkeit to political reality. He proceeds by claiming that the Reformationhas brought some social and political reform, particularly in areasassociatedwith the Church and with the religiousfoundations of government (PH 445). These developments are harbingersof furtherand deeper change: "Thus the principle of thought was already so far reconciled [in German religion];also
18. Also see G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979) 328-364. Here Hegel gives a fuller account of the link between will, Enlightenment, religion, the Terror, and Kantian philosophy.

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that in the earlierdevelopedreconciliathe Protestantworldhad the consciousness tion the principlewas presentfor thefurtherformation of right" (PH 445).19

The Reformation and the creation of an intensive German spirituality promise future social and political improvement. From the homology between the French Revolution and German Innerlichkeit, Hegel projects another harmonizing alignment of German politics. Indeed, without this promise the original parallelism is unstable; it threatens to and collapse into fixed dichotomies of thought and being, Innerlichkeit and France. In this both the sense, political reality, Germany original parallelism and Germany's claim to modernity are sustained by the promise of reform. That promise ultimately guarantees the coherence of Hegel's interpretation of the modernity of German culture.20 and Preserving Heine:Reconstructing Culture German In 1834, the dissident political poet Heinrich Heine published in Parisian exile "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany." In this writing, Heine intended to educate the French about German culture, particularlysince he believed the Germans had been misinformed by the conservative Madame de Stael in her earlier work De But Heine's writing also served another end: it continued L'Allemagne.21 Hegel's project of aligning Germany with France, of integrating the new German cultural identity into a unified view of modernity. Although Heine followed Hegel in serving this general cause, he did so under altered circumstances. In the decade after Hegel's lectures, a strengthening conservatism dominated politics in Germany. A representative constitution was never established in Prussia; liberal movements, particularlyfollowing the 1830 revolutions in France and elsewhere, were subject to intensified censorship and repression. The dwindling of political reform on the German horizon led, in fact, to Heine's decision to transplant himself to Paris. His attempt to align
19. This is a modified version of Sibree's translation. The original reads: "So war das Prinzip des Denkens schon so weit versbhnt; auch hatte dieprotestantische in ihr Welt das Bewusstsein, dassin derfriiher das Prinzip zurweiteren des Versihnung explizierten Ausbildung
Rechtsvorhandensei." G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophieder Geschichte(Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam,

Karl Marx and the Crisis of the YoungHegelians (Berkeley and ophy,the Origin of "Ideology".

1961) 591. 20. On the specifics of Hegel's political program see Harold Mah, TheEndofPhilos-

vue des deux Mondes (15 September 1854) 1173.

Los Angeles: U of California P, 1987) 20-45. 21. See Heinrich Heine, "Die romantische Schule," Beitrdge zur deutschen Ideologie, ed. Hans Mayer (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1971) 116-117; and "Les Aveux d'un Poete," Re-

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Germany with France could therefore no longer rely on the promise of imminent political reform; the unfolding of events had invalidated Hegel's simple "guarantee." Preserving a claim to modernity required the German cultural identity be made to address the more clearly constrained political situation of the time. To save German culture for modernity Heine now found that he had to reconstruct it. Heine begins by telling his readers that Germany's present social and political situation is equivalent to France's before the Revolution. The German people are still dominated by an authoritarian Christianity and the institutions of the old regime. Germany is thus socially and politically retrograde, far behind the developments of contemporary France.22 But like Hegel before him, Heine does not believe that this discrepancy between German and French politics signifies a total lack of modernity in Germany. Setting out an interpretive strategy similar to Hegel's, Heine points to a "remarkable parallelism" between German philosophy and the French Revolution (RP 200). Like Hegel, Heine sees this parallelism appear in particularly striking form in Kantian philosophy. With Kant's Critiqueof Pure Reason, Heine writes, "there began in Germany an intellectual revolution which presents the most striking analogies to the material revolution in France and which must seem ... just as important" (RP 200). The German revolution in thought and the French revolution in politics passed through the "same stages." Where Robespierre and the Terror overthrew all past forms of political authority and abolished the monarchy, Kant criticized all previous epistemological authority and did away with deism. Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, found a German alter-ego in Fichte's world-creating Ich. Schelling's nature philosophy, and his ultimate turn to Catholicism and absolutism mirrored restoration in France. The overthrow of the restoration and the resulting political situation in France found its equivalent in the defeat of conservative Naturphilosophieby Hegel and his followers. Hegel, Heine notes, "closed" the "great circle" of philosophical revolutions (RP 199-240). By asserting this homology between German thought and French politics, Heine the poet and thinker can claim for German culture a
22. Heinrich Heine, "Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Gerand Other School Essays,eds. J. Hermand and R.C. Holub (New many," in TheRomantic York: Continuum Books, 1985) 129. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation zur RP followed by page number(s). The German edition is found in Mayer, Beitrdge deutschen Ideologie.

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share of modernity. But for Heine the political dissident, Germany's cultural analogue to France's political modernity is deeply unsatisfying. In the end, he is still in exile and his fellow Germans continue to live under unconstitutional rule and censorship. In other words, by establishing the homology between German thought and French action, Heine approaches the same issue that Hegel was forced to confront: the further synchronization of German politics with a modern German culture. The problem for Heine, as it was earlierfor Hegel, is how to demonstrate that German practice will align with German theory. Here Heine reversesHegel's procedure. Hegel argued that reason was increasinglypresent in history,assuming in Germanyintrovertedspiritual forms that in turn createdan inner disposition for rationalpoliticalreform. Heine, however, argues that spiritualor idealisticdispositions are inherently authoritarian,distractingone from the concrete concerns of politics and hence implicitly providing support for tyranny.To this he contrastssensualism - the glorificationof matter,the concern with sensuous satisfaction- as the radicalagent of history:it focuses one's attention on the real world of politics (RP 146-147, 167, 177-181). To establish the possibility of political change in Germany, Heine must now locate a source of sensualism in German institutions and traditions. In France, he argues, sensualism appeared in the uncompromising materialistphilosophies of the Enlightenment (RP 168-169); in Germany, it assumed a more mystical form, rooted in that country's pagan past. It appeared as pantheism, as a belief in the unity of the divine and the natural, of god and matter (RP 137). Heine's argument for the possibility of political change in Germany follows a differenttackfrom Hegel's; the two, in fact, seem to proceed in different directions. To maintain the possibility of political change in Germany,Heine identifiesin Germany'spast a radicalsensualism,thereGerman spirituality.By by repudiating Hegel's belief in a characteristic one concude that Heine also extension, might repudiates Germany's new cultural identity. The notion of the German poet and thinker as must seem to him hopelessly reactionary. privilegedvessels of spirituality But Heine in fact does not repudiate the German cultural identity. Against the conventional emphasis on German spirituality,he identifies
a different content i.e., sensualism in German culture, but he

places this new content into the same forms of German culture that Hegel determined as the defining manifestationsof German spirituality. Heine, in other words, retainsthe progressionof culturalforms that conventionally defined Germany'snew culturalidentity. He adheres to the

HaroldMah

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conventional terms that add up to a special German culture, but he gives those terms a new substance and consequence. With Hegel, Heine sees Luther's Reformation as a watershed in the development of Germany in particularand of humanity in general. It marks a qualitative advance in freedom. But in direct opposition to Hegel, Heine identifiesthe Reformation'sprogressiveaspect in Luther's "sensualism," in his recognition of the legitimacy of ordinary, material life.23 Luther's sensualism passes into the pantheistic philosophy of Spinoza, and through Spinoza enters German philosophy, finding its highest manifestationsin Schellingand Hegel. Pantheismthus entrenches itself in German religion and philosophy. And because Hegel has "closed" the "greatcircle"of philosophical revolutions, because pantheism has reached its highest point in theory, it will now, accordingto Heine, necessarilyempty into reality. "Because of these doctrines," Heine forces have developed that are only waitingfor the writes, "revolutionary day when they can break out and fill the world with terror and with admiration" (RP 242). Heine concludes "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" with a prediction of imminent revolution in Germany,warning the French that, if they should interfere,the coming bloodbath in Germany will engulf them as well (RP 244). Like Hegel, Heine establishes a parallelism between German culture and the French Revolution in order to preserve the former's historical legitimacy. Germany's new cultural identity - the German as the poet - also participates in modernity. But given and thinker par excellence of the decade political reaction following Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history, Heine can no longer guarantee that relation by simply asserting the imminence of the synchronization of German politics with German theory. To argue that German culture presages or will issue in further political improvement now requires a reworking of the that would at once meaning of German culture, a Hegelian Aufhebung transform that culture, render it more compatible with the radical requirements of the age, yet preserve its customary, defining forms. In Heine's rewriting of the German cultural identity, Germany remains unique and praiseworthy for the increasing depth and sophistication of its religious and philosophical achievements, but those achievements are no longer to be seen as substantively spiritual. The conventional
23. This appears, according to Heine, in Luther'sorigins, blunt personality,repudiation of celibacy for priests, and abandonment of miracles, among other things (RP 152-162).

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signifiers of Germany's cultural identity represent, behind their apparent spirituality, a deeper, subversive sensualism. Heine's attempted renovation of the project to align Germany with the French Revolution indicates that that project had become ever more problematical since Hegel's lectures in the 1820s. German culture's claim to modernity had become increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of German politics's apparent hostility to the rational principles of the French Revolution. That Heine experienced considerable difficulty in carrying out this project of cultural legitimation is evident as well in another, striking way. In the course of reconstructing a modem German cultural identity, he betrays an unsettling anxiety that such a project is ultimately untenable. In a burst of ironic self-criticism, he in fact defeats his own attempt to preserve the modernity of German culture. As we have seen, Heine's argument has two steps. First, he argues that Germany's philosophical development - from Kant to Hegel mirrors France's political development; this establishes Germany's participation in modernity. Second, to get from thinking to acting, Heine argues that the revolution in German thought marks the culmination of the development of a pantheism that is inherently revolutionary. Now that the theoretical revolution is over, moder pantheism will pour into the real world. Heine never fully explains, however, this passage from theoretical pantheism to revolutionary action. He does not show how it will happen empirically or institutionally, but merely asserts the development as a kind of logical deduction that follows necessarily from the internal workings of pantheist consciousness.24 But this assertion is difficult to accept. It is neither logically self-evident nor, as Heine shows, justified by how his pantheists actually behaved. Few pantheists were revolutionaries. Heine tells us that some, such as the romantics and Goethe, were politically conservative or at best politically indifferent. And he recognizes that Schelling, one of the most accomplished pantheists of Germany's philosophical revolution, became increasingly conservative in politics and religion, ultimately converting like other romantic pantheists to Catholicism (RP 237-239). Brooding over Schelling's apparent political backsliding, Heine notes that not just Schelling but also Kant and Fichte "can be accused of desertion." In
24. Heine: "In my opinion, a methodical people like us had to begin with the Reformation, only after that could it occupy itself with philosophy, and only after completion of the latter could it go on to political revolution. I find this sequence very rational" (RP 242).

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their later years, according to Heine, they became apostates of their own philosophies (RP 239). Heine's extended reflection on Schelling's actual political behavior thus spirals into a refutation of his argument about pantheism's revolutionary potential, and hence denies German culture's claim to modernity. To put this another way, Heine "deconstructs" the elaborate system of interpretation he is simultaneously erecting. As he dwells on the real consequences of pantheism, his carefully demarcated system of oppositions (spiritualism vs. sensualism, conservatism vs. radicalism) and affinities (Germany and France, thought and action) begins to collapse into a confusion of categories: sensualism can lead to political conservatism, modern philosophy consorts with retrograde romanticism, thought repudiates action. Heine thus works towards contradictoryaims. He both argues for a position and undermines it. In "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,"this contradictory,self-negatingprocedure abruptly results in a rhetoricalstalemate:Heine suddenly cuts off the flow of his exposition. Immediately after claiming that Germany'sgreat pantheists have so frequently turned "apostate,"he interjects:"I don't know why this last sentence has such a depressingly paralyzing effect on my feelings that I am simply unable to communicate here the remaining bitter truths about Mr. Schelling as he is today" (RP 239). Heine then tries to make his way back to his argument about the essential radicalism and ultimate modernity of German pantheism. He arbitrarilysuppresses his doubts and turns to happier thoughts: "Instead [of dwelling on the
late Schelling] let us praise that earlier Schelling . . . for the earlier

Schelling, like Kant and Fichte, represents one of the great phases of our philosophical revolution, which I have compared in these pages with the phases of the political revolution in France"(RP 239). Forcibly fixing his attention on the more promising youth of pantheism, Heine continues his argument about the inherent political radicalism of German theory. His answer to his anxieties is to evade them. But his evasions catch up with him. In the 1852 preface to the second edition of "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany," Heine in effect repudiates the central argument of his study. He admits that he was wrong to claim practicalpower for what he had identified as the most radical of German philosophies. Hegel's radicalfollowers, he
points out, have proved incapable of changing reality (RP 5).25 Even in
25. Also see Heine, "Les Aveux" 1169-1206. In "On the History of Religion and

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its most developed form, then, German pantheism does not empty automatically its energies into reality. With this striking confession in his preface, the entire argument of the subsequent text is fatally damaged and, even more clearly than in Hegel's case, Germany's cultural identity again runs the risk of being cut adrift from the modernity of the French Revolution. Marx: German Culture Acknowledgedand Overcome In the decade following Heine's "On Religion and Philosophy in Germany," German liberals and radicals made few gains. The 1840 accession of Frederick William IV to the Prussian crown ultimately brought about a renewed wave of political repression, which in 1843 led the young Karl Marx to make his way to Paris. Here, like Heine before him, Marx reconsidered the cultural and political situation in Germany, measuring it against the standard of modernity identified with the French Revolution. Marx's only published writing in Paris, the "Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," shows how a further 10 years of political conservatism had left the earlier hopes of Hegel and Heine in complete ruins. Like Hegel and Heine before him, Marx measures contemporary Germany against the French Revolution and finds it politically wanting. Germany, Marx states bluntly, is "an anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of generally recognized axioms."26 Indeed, German conditions are so retrograde that even abolishing them would not bring Germany up-to-date: "If I negate the German state of affairs in 1843, then, according to the French computation of time, I am hardly in the year of 1789, and still less in focus of the present" (IN 176). But again like Hegel and Heine, Marx concedes that Germany is not altogether without modernity; he agrees that modernity has manifested itself in German thought. "We are the philosophical contemporaries of the
Philosophy in Germany," Heine in fact contradictshimself in his assessment of Hegel. He characterizes Hegelian theory as radical and even potentially bloodthirsty, yet at another point refers to Hegel as a moderate spirit (RP 237). And in another writing he compares Hegelian theory to Orleanistgovernment,which is full of rivalpoliticalgroups. This would also suggest that Hegelian theory might have a characterother than the revo-

26. KarlMarx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introv. 3 (New York:International duction," KarlMarx and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Publishers, 1976) 78. Hereafter cited in the text with the abbreviation IN followed by page number(s).

the Nobilityin lutionary one he imputes to it. Heine, "Introduction" to KahldoifConcerning Lettersto Count M. von Moltke,in The RomanticSchooland OtherEssays 246.

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present," Marx writes, "without being its historical contemporaries" (IN 180). Modern politics has appeared in Germany as modern philosowhat other nations did" (IN 181). phy: "In politics the Germans thought To determine Germany'splace in modem history, Marx begins with the same interpretivemove used by Hegel and Heine: he constructs a homology or parallelismbetween French politics and German thought. But he deploys this tactic in the service of a quite different strategy. Hegel and Heine drew their parallelism in order to align German culture with the putative modernity of the French Revolution. Germany could thus justifiably claim a share of modernity. To sustain this parallelism, these thinkersthen argued that modem German ideas were harbingers of modem political reform. The modernity of German thought pointed to the imminence of a modern German politics. Marx, however, sets the assertions of Hegel and Heine against themselves. He accepts the new German culturalidentity - the idea that the
German Dichterand Denkerare of a special nature - and with Hegel and

Heine, he grants that identity a modern character.But then departing from the earlierinterpretivepattern, he refuses to take the next step; he refuses to predict a subsequent harmonization of German politics with German theory. And in an ironic reversalof Hegel's and Heine's earlier reasoning, Marxjustifies this refusal by appealing to the modernity of German thought: in Marx'sview, the modernity of German cultureprecludesthe possibility of a modern German politics. For Marx, the parallelismbetween German thought and French politics no longer portends a fulfilled German political modernity. On the contrary, this parallelism suggests to Marx that Germany is irredeemably anachronistic.Where Hegel and Heine argued for the modernity of German theory despite the backwardnessof German politics, Marx argues that the theory is advanced precisely because the politics are retrograde. "The abstraction and conceit of [Germany's] thought," he writes, "alwayskept in step with the one-sidedness and stumpiness of its
reality.... The status quo of German politicaltheoryexpresses the imperfec-

tionofthemodem state,the defectiveness of the flesh itself' (IN 181). German philosophy, in short, is the way Germans make up for a bad reality - it compensates in thought for an inadequate politics. Marx sees German philosophy and politics locked in an inverse relationship: as politics becomes increasingly retrograde, theory compensates by becoming increasinglymodern. And as theory continues to develop an advanced modernity, it allows politics to become more deeply and perversely anachronistic. The current state of German culture

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The FrenchRevolutionand German Modernity

and politics now begins "to combine the civilizedshortcomings of the modthe ern world . . . with the barbaric ancien deficiencies regieme"(IN 183). It of

shares "the restorations of modern nations" without sharing "their revolutions" (IN 176). "Germany," Marx predicts, "will one day find itself on the level of European decadence before ever having been on the level of European emancipation" (IN 183). Against Hegel and Heine, Marx does not believe that German philosophy foreshadows a modern German politics or works to realize it. On the contrary, the modernity of German philosophy depends entirely on its inverse, the backwardnessof political reality.The existence of the former presupposes the latter. For Marx in 1843, the issue is not whether German reality can catch up to German theory and thereby match the political modernity of other nations. The perverse symbiosis between the modernity of German thought and its retrogradepolitical practice precludes that possibility. Germany, in short, has no chance of ever reaching the present. In Marx'sview, Germany'snew cultural identity merely shows that it is hopelessly anachronistic;bound to a retrogradepolitics, this identity ensures that German conditions remain "below the level of history" (IN 177). Germany is stranded in time, its theory fixed to the present, its politics to the past. In the last pages of the "Introduction," Marx in fact goes on to say that Germany lacks the usual resources for concrete historical development - its petty states and enervated classes are inadequate agents of change (IN 184-85).27

Germany's only hope for rejoining the historical mainstream is to repudiate the past and the present, and Marx insists they they must do this without appealing to anything considered characteristicallyGerman - neither to German culture, nor to German politics and society. Marx looks within Germany for an agent of history that owes nothing to German culture and institutions. He in fact paradoxically defines this new historical actor by its exemption from the society and culture
that generated it; it is a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society; an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere . . which can no but only a humantitle, which does not longer invoke a historical stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in an allround antithesis to the premises of the German state... (IN 186).
v. 5, 193-196.

27. See also KarlMarx and FriedrichEngels, TheGerman in Collected Ideology, Works,

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With this obscure, paradoxical formulation, Marx for the first time calls on the proletariat to assume a decisive role in history. The proletariat in its first manifestation as an agent of history is to serve as Germany's redeemer.28 The End of a Discourse The movement from Hegel to Heine and then to Marx does not mark a simple shift from idealism to materialism. All three thinkers are in a sense materialist; each recognizes Germany's problem in the 19th century as social and political, a lack of what they believed to be modern social and political institutions. Rather, the movement from Hegel through Heine to Marx suggests the progressive erosion of a particular attempt to legitimate the new cultural ideal of German intellectuals, which was established at the turn of century and projected through it. From Hegel to Heine to Marx, the German cultural identity - the German as poet and philosopher par excellence- became increasingly untenable when measured against the putative modernity of the French Revolution. Hegel and Heine erected a parallelism between contemporary French politics and German thought in order to justify a German claim to modernity; in this way, Germany could be counted as part of the avant-garde of history. They self-consciously erected this parallelism because of Germany's apparent lack of modernity. But while this interpretive strategy acknowledges that it derives from the absence of political modernity in Germany, it also denies that absence, asserting that the current homology between French politics and German theory must lead to further homologous developments in German politics. The modernity of German thought renders a modern German politics
28. Marx's description of the proletariathere is clearly at odds with his description and other works, he speaks of of it in subsequent writings. In the Communist Manifesto the proletariat as strictly a class, rather than also an estate. He further drops the obscure notion that it is not part of society, making it instead one of the polarities in the defining conflict of modern society. In the "Introduction," Marx seems to identify the emergence of the proletariat as the unique answer to Germany's particular cultural and political situation, but it is unclear how it fits into the development of other, more consistently "developed" countries. In later writings, of course, he removes the proletariatfrom a unique German situation and integratesit into the "normal" evolution of all industrial societies. At the same time, Marx in particularand German socialism in general progressively ignore the peculiarities that Marx originally saw in Germany. In other words, as Marxism becomes increasingly systematized, both the proletariatand Germany are fitted into a general, uniform development of industrial capitalism.

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The FrenchRevolutionand German Modernity

inevitable.The parallelismbetween Frenchpolitics and Germanthought therefore seeks to rectify its own political preconditions - to overthrow the given of Germany's political "backwardness." The apparent continued resistanceof Germany to a political modernity ultimately undermined the optimistic belief that German politics would soon harmonize with German culture. As the prospect of political reform disappearedfrom the horizon, the attempts to ground it in a putative German cultural modernity became increasinglystrained. By the mid-1840s, Marx no longer expected the inverse relation between German thought and German realityto correctitself in favor of the modernity of thought. In 1843, he turns the project of aligning German culture with the French Revolution against itself. For Marx, German thought is as advanced as French modernity, but that does not prefigure a moder German politics. On the contrary,Germany'sculture has made great achievements in order to forget its retrogradepolitics; the German cultural identity is constructed on a wishful suppression of its political preconditions. The inverse relation between German thought and German reality is necessary and inescapable, for German thought is modem precisely because German reality is backward. In turning the interpretivestrategyof Hegel and Heine against itself, Marx provides an ironic commentary on his predecessors. In Marx's account, the attempts to justify the modernity of German culture are second-order manifestations of German perversity. They are faltering, self-deceived attempts at historical self-consciousness. They recognize Germany's anomalous place in history but then seek to escape it in wish-fulfillment,in the delusion of an imminent and necessarypolitical harmonization, in a false faith in a coming and uniform modernity. The self-consciousness of Hegel and Heine therefore ends up reproducing the condition it hoped to overcome; it issues a powerless and isolated affirmation of the modernity of German culture. By turning upon the interpretivestrategythat he himself deploys, Marx brings to a close in his "Introduction"a multi-generationaldiscourse that strove to fit German culture into a general system of modernity. His contribution to that discourse ironically condemns it: he accuses it of complicity in rendering Germany anachronistic.

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