The Young Hegelians

The name given to the radical or “left” wing of the Hegelian school. The most prominent of the Young Hegelians were Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach (before the development of his materialist tendencies), David Strauss, and F. Richter. Under the conditions of the political backwardness of Germany in the 1830’s–1840’s, the disputes between the Left-Hegelians and the “right” wing of the school over such questions as God, immortality, the nature of Christ and the origin of the Gospels were conducted in a mystical form. Problems touching the historical development of Germany, the role of the individual and his relation to the people were also cast in this form. The Left-Hegelians tried to show the dynamic character of historical phenomena and applied Hegelian dialectics in criticizing the Prussian political system. However, their criticism did not go beyond “liberal” illusions based on the expectation of constitutional reforms and the uniting of dismembered Germany under Friedrich Wilhelm IV. These illusions are reflected in perhaps their clearest form in the work of Bruno Bauer. For Marx and Engels, at the beginning of their philosophical development, the Left-Hegelian doctrine of self-knowledge was the starting point of emancipation from the obscurities of theology. However, in such early works as The Holy Family and The German Ideology, they subjected the idealism as well as the liberal illusions of the Left-Hegelians to relentless criticism. Marx and Engels showed that the Left-Hegelians, “in spite of their allegedly ‘world shattering’ statements, are the staunchest conservatives… that they are only fighting against phrases… [and that] the only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few… elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history.” (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 6.)