Douglas Moggach (BA Toronto, MA and PhD Princeton) is a professor at the University of Ottawa and life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He is Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, [1] [2] and has held visiting appointments at Sidney Sussex College and King's College, Cambridge, [3] the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, Queen Mary University of London, [4] the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa., [5] and the Fondazione San Carlo di Modena, where he taught a graduate seminar in Italian on German Idealism. [6] He lectured on Marx and German Idealism as Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University in 2013 and 2015. [7] Moggach has also held the University Research Chair in Political Thought [8] at the University of Ottawa. In 2007, he won the Killam Research Fellowship [9] awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. He was named Distinguished University Professor [10] at University of Ottawa in 2011. [11]
Moggach has written on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schiller, Bruno Bauer, aesthetics, Republicanism, and history of ancient and modern political thought. [12]
Moggach's research falls into three principal areas: analysis of the philosophy, politics, and economic thought of the Hegelian School; the historical development of German idealism from Leibniz to Hegel; and aesthetics and politics. His archival research led to the discovery and publication of lost texts by Bruno Bauer, a leading figure in the Hegelian School of the 1830s and 1840s. Moggach argues that the political thinking of the German Hegelians represents a specific variant of republicanism, which recognizes modern social diversity and alienation. [13] His works in German Idealism have focused on the foundational importance of Leibniz for Kant and Hegel, and trace the origins of Kant's juridical thought in the German Enlightenment debates about freedom, perfection, and state economic direction. [14] Moggach has also published on aesthetics and politics, notably on Schiller and Bauer, developing the concept of an aesthetic republicanism based on an aesthetic version of Kant's moral idea of autonomy. [15] Moggach also traces the relations between German idealism and various strands of Romanticism, and contributes to conceptions of universality, freedom and republicanism in European political thought. [16] Moggach wrote the chapter on Karl Marx in The Impact of Idealism, ed. N. Boyle and J. Walker, vol. 2 (CUP 2013) [17] and the chapter on "Romantic Political Thought" in Oxford Companion to European Romanticism, ed. P. Hamilton (OUP, 2016). [18] He also wrote the chapter "Aesthetics and Politics" in the Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought [19] and the entry "Bruno Bauer" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . [20]
Moggach discovered an unpublished manuscript by Bruno Bauer, which had been awarded the Prussian Royal Prize in philosophy by a panel headed by Hegel in 1829. [21] This manuscript, written in Latin, is held in the archives of the Humboldt Universität, Berlin, but had not been recognized before. Moggach shows how after attending Hegel's lectures on logic in 1828, Bauer applies this logic to the categories of aesthetic judgement that Kant had developed in his Third Critique. Starting from the Hegelian premise of the unity of thought and being, Bauer wants to show that the separation of subject and object in Kant's Critiques of Pure and of Practical Reason remains a feature of the Critique of Judgement. Bauer argues that Kant does make efforts to bridge the gap, and he opens the path that Hegel will follow, but Kant does not finally succeed in this objective. What prevents him from succeeding is his faulty treatment of the categories involved in making aesthetic judgements. Moggach thinks that in this early text Bauer also lays the foundations for his later theory of infinite self-consciousness, and for his specific type of ethical and historical idealism. An Italian edition, Sui Principi del Bello, with additional interpretative materials, was released by University of Palermo in 2019. [22]
Moggach's book The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (CUP, 2003) [23] is the first major study in English of Bruno Bauer (1809–82), a student of Hegel and a leader of the Hegelian School in Prussia. The book establishes Bauer as a representative of German republicanism, and traces the emergence of this movement from philosophical and religious polemics of the 1830s and 1840s, its relation to Kant and Hegel, and its assessment of political and economic change, especially the French Revolution and its impact on German states. This work was short-listed for the 2004 C. B. Macpherson Prize, awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association. [24] It was reviewed by Frederick Beiser in The Times Literary Supplement, 24 September 2004; Choice, November 2004; and other journals. [25] A German translation was published in 2009. [26] A Chinese translation appeared in 2022. [27]
Moggach's edited volume, The New Hegelians (CUP, 2006), [28] is intended to show that after Hegel's death in 1831, members of his school developed his philosophy in new directions in order to understand the evolution of modern society, along with the modern state and economy. The Hegelians were not mere imitators of their teacher, but creative thinkers about modernity and its problems, especially social cohesion and the conflict of individual interests. According to Moggach, many of these New or Young Hegelians found a solution to these conflicts in republican ideas of virtue, rethought so that they are compatible with modern institutions. Moggach applies the idea of republican rigorism, introduced by other historians of political thought, to outline these solutions. For the Hegelians, this concept involves changing the boundaries between morality and legality that Kant had established. Kant had claimed that the legal sphere concerns the external aspects of action alone, but not its motivating principles or maxims. For the Hegelians, though, political action has to promote, or at least not hinder, the external freedom of others, but it must also have the right kinds of internal ethical motivation: this means not acting exclusively from private interest, but from an idea of the general good. In this way Kant's idea of autonomy is related to political as well as moral action, and to republican ideas of freedom as non domination. [29]
In a subsequent edited volume, Politics, Religion, and Art: Hegelian Debates (Northwestern UP, 2011), [30] Moggach and his colleagues continue to establish the importance of the Hegelians of the 1830s and 1840s as innovators in theology, aesthetics, and ethics, and as creative contributors to foundational debates about modernity, state, and society. The political significance of religious and aesthetic debates, and the German contributions to republican political thought, receive further attention in this volume, which also draws heavily on archival material.
With Gareth Stedman Jones, [31] Moggach edited a Cambridge University Press volume, The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought, 2018. The book examines political debate in France, England, Netherlands, the German and Italian territories, and Eastern Europe before and after the revolutions. Subjects treated include democracy and representation, state and economy, nationalism and religion. Even if the revolutions failed to win their immediate goals, they set the agenda for later developments. [32]
In the bilingual (German and English) volume Perfektionismus der Autonomie (2020), edited by Moggach with Nadine Mooren and Michael Quante, [33] the contributors study major figures in a tradition identified in Moggach's previous work as post-Kantian perfectionism, a type of perfectionist ethics that can withstand Kant's criticism of earlier forms. The objective is to promote the material, institutional and legal conditions for free action, and not any predefined idea of the good life or happiness. Progressive reform of political and economic institutions to make them conform to the evolving demands of reason is now the aim. The book deals with Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Fichte, Schiller, Hegel, and members of the Hegelian school including Karl Marx. Other chapters examine Nietzsche, neo-Kantianism, and T.W. Adorno. The book concludes with systematic reflections and outlines of future research. [34]
Moggach, Beiser, and other interlocutors debated Schiller's republicanism in a special issue of Inquiry (2008). [35] Moggach produced a critical discussion of multiculturalism, in a published conversation with Charles Taylor, Jeremy Waldron, James Tully, and others. [36] Moggach contributed the entry "Hegelian School" to the Encyclopædia Britannica. [37]
Selected Books
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and theologian. As a student of G. W. F. Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism. Bauer investigated the sources of the New Testament and, beginning with Hegel's analysis of Christianity's Hellenic as well as Jewish roots, concluded that early Christianity owed more to ancient Greek philosophy (Stoicism) than to Judaism.
Johann Kaspar Schmidt, known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism and individualist anarchism.
German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Johann Gottlieb Fichte, his mentor in his early years, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his one-time university roommate, early friend, and later rival. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is regarded as difficult because of its evolving nature.
German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.
A subset of absolute idealism, British idealism was a philosophical movement that was influential in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The leading figures in the movement were T. H. Green (1836–1882), F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), and Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923). They were succeeded by the second generation of J. H. Muirhead (1855–1940), J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925), H. H. Joachim (1868–1938), A. E. Taylor (1869–1945), and R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943). The last major figure in the tradition was G. R. G. Mure (1893–1979). Doctrines of early British idealism so provoked the young Cambridge philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell that they began a new philosophical tradition, analytic philosophy.
Absolute idealism is chiefly associated with Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher who was greatly influenced by Hegel's work, and the British idealists.
In late modern philosophy, neo-Kantianism was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the thing-in-itself and his moral philosophy.
The Right Hegelians, Old Hegelians (Althegelianer), or the Hegelian Right were those followers of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. They are typically contrasted with the Young Hegelians, who interpreted Hegel's political philosophy as supportive of left-wing and progressive politics or views on religion.
Robert Buford Pippin is an American philosopher. He is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the college at the University of Chicago.
Influences on Karl Marx are generally thought to have been derived from three main sources, namely German idealist philosophy, French socialism and English and Scottish political economy.
Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Focusing on modern European thought from Kant and Hegel to Adorno and Heidegger, Hammer’s research includes critical theory, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology, German idealism, social and political theory, and aesthetics. He has also written widely on the philosophy of literature and taken a special interest in the question of temporality.
Edgar Bauer was a German political philosopher and a member of the Young Hegelians. He was the younger brother of Bruno Bauer. According to Lawrence S. Stepelevich, Edgar Bauer was the most anarchistic of the Young Hegelians, and "...it is possible to discern, in the early writings of Edgar Bauer, the theoretical justification of political terrorism." German anarchists such as Max Nettlau and Gustav Landauer credited Edgar Bauer with founding the anarchist tradition in Germany. In the mid-1840s, Marx' and Engels' critique of the Bauer brothers marked the beginning of their collaboration and an important stage in the development of Marxist thought. Edgar Bauer participated in the Revolution of 1848. Subsequently he became a conservative.
The following is a list of the major events in the history of German idealism, along with related historical events.
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians (Linkshegelianer), or the Hegelian Left, were a group of German intellectuals who, in the decade or so after the death of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 1831, reacted to and wrote about his ambiguous legacy. The Young Hegelians drew on his idea that the purpose and promise of history was the total negation of everything conducive to restricting freedom and reason; and they proceeded to mount radical critiques, first of religion and then of the Prussian political system. They rejected anti-utopian aspects of his thought that "Old Hegelians" have interpreted to mean that the world has already essentially reached perfection.
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew from various sources, and the official philosophy in the Soviet Union, which enforced a rigid reading of what Marx called dialectical materialism, in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied as aesthetics, ethics, ontology, epistemology, social philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought. The theory is also about the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie.
Paul Redding is an Australian philosopher and emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney. He is known for his research on Hegel's philosophy and the tradition of German idealism more generally. In particular he has pursued the relation of Hegel's logic to the approach to logic in analytic philosophy and pragmatism and, more recently, the tradition of Platonism. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Italian idealism, born from interest in the German movement and particularly in Hegelian doctrine, developed in Italy starting from the spiritualism of the nineteenth-century Risorgimento tradition, and culminated in the first half of the twentieth century in its two greatest exponents: Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile.
Terry P. Pinkard is an American philosopher and professor at Georgetown University. His research and teaching focus on the German tradition in philosophy from Kant to the present.