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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2018
Why study the history of modern German-speaking Central Europe? If pressed to answer this question fifty years ago, a Germanist would likely have said something to the effect that one studies modern German history to trace the “German” origins of Nazism, with the broader aim of understanding authoritarianism. While the problem of authoritarianism clearly remains relevant to this day, the nation-state-centered approach to understanding it has waned, especially in light of the recent shift toward transnational and global history. The following essay focuses on the issue of authoritarianism, asking whether the study of German history is still relevant to authoritarianism. It begins with a review of two conventional approaches to understanding authoritarianism in modern German history, and then thinks about it in a different way through G. W. F. Hegel in an effort to demonstrate the vibrancy of German intellectual history for exploring significant and global issues such as authoritarianism.
1 I prefer the term authoritarianism to fascism for the sake of clarity and precision. The latter is a manifestation of the former, as the word fascism itself suggests: Fascio derives, of course, from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods with an axe that was publically displayed in ancient Rome as a symbol of a magistrate's authority.
2 Key here are Rousseau's notions of amour propre (vanity) and amour de soi-même (self-love or self-preservation); the former, he suggests, refers to the egoistic desire to be admired by others as superior in some way. This desire—as for Hegel, so, too, for Rousseau—can only be satisfied when others acknowledge or recognize an individual as, in fact, superior. The other major predecessor to Hegel in this respect is Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, rev. ed., ed. Tuck, Richard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 62–75Google Scholar; idem, Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive), ed. Gert, Bernard (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1991), 111–13Google Scholar. See Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The “Discourses” and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Gourevitch, Victor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
3 For an analysis of articles published in Central European History (CEH) since 1989, see Port, Andrew I., “Central European History since 1989: Historiographical Trends and Post-Wende ‘Turns,’” CEH 48, no. 2 (2015): 246Google Scholar. It is important to point out, however, that what might appear to some as “traditional” intellectual history is very vibrant in continental philosophy. The distinctions between continental philosophy and intellectual history are not necessarily clear-cut (nor should they be), since continental philosophy, by definition, engages in philosophical questioning precisely through the analysis of philosophical texts from the past. See, e.g., Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert M. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Neiman, Susan, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Benhabib, Seyla, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 This Hegelian point has not been fully explored in the extensive literature on authority and authoritarianism. See, e.g., the literature discussed in Kohns, Oliver, van Rahden, Till, and Roussel, Martin, eds., Autorität: Krise, Konstruktion und Konjunktur (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2016), 7–21Google Scholar. The main exception is Kojève, Alexandre, The Notion of Authority (A Brief Presentation), trans. Weslati, Hager (New York: Verso, 2014)Google Scholar.
5 This question is ripe for historical analysis insofar as any regime of authority draws on socio-cultural narratives, traditions, and conventions—as Hegel emphasizes by stressing the inherently social or relational nature of authority itself.
6 Considerable debate among scholars turns, of course, on their definition of modernity. One can generally distinguish between Marxist, Weberian, and Foucauldian interpretations of modernity within the “modernity narrative.” (These distinctions are not comprehensive, however, because Arendt and Theodor Adorno interpreted Nazism from the perspective of “modernity,” but their work does not fit easily into any of these three interpretations of modernity.) The Sonderweg narrative is also shaped by its own interpretation of modernity––namely, modernization theory—but the most distinguishing feature between it and the modernity narrative concerns the geographic context in which the problem of authoritarianism is situated. See Dickinson, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse about ‘Modernity,’” CEH 37, no. 1 (2004): 1–48Google Scholar; Roseman, Mark, “National Socialism and Modernisation,” in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts, ed. Bessel, Richard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 197–229Google Scholar.
7 Krieger typically did not write directly on the Nazi period, but the rise of Hitler played a significant role in his interpretation of German history: “For those of us who were raised politically on the vicarious experience of National Socialism, its graduation into an apparently successful and overpowering regime was a cataclysm of unparalleled proportions.” See Krieger, Leonard, “Nazism: Highway or Byway?,” Central European History 11, no. 1 (1978): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition from the Reformation to 1871 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1957)Google Scholar. Also see Jürgen Kocka's essay on the Sonderweg debate in this commemorative issue.
8 Krieger, German Idea of Freedom, 6.
9 Ibid., 130.
10 The unquestioned assumption of liberalism concerns the primacy of the individual. This liberal assumption can be traced to Thomas Hobbes, who viewed self-interest as the founding principle of civil society and thus of the state. According to Hobbes, the social compact built around interest in one's own safety can engender a political order of freedom for all to do as they wish—so long as it does not encroach on the freedom of others. In response, Karl Marx suggested that a society of egoistic self-interest would hardly lead to a political order of freedom. See Hobbes, Leviathan; idem, Man and Citizen; Marx, Karl, Ökonomish-philosophische Manuskripte: Kommentar von Michael Quante (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2009)Google Scholar.
11 Arendt's definition of authoritarianism seems to include totalitarianism as a total manifestation of domination (totaler Herrschaft). She nevertheless wished to claim that totalitarianism leads to the total elimination of human freedom, so that one cannot voluntarily recognize the authority of a given regime. Yet, she suggets that Adolf Eichmann recognized certain regimes of authority, not least Hitler's authority as head of the Nazi state. See Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1979)Google Scholar; idem, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 2006)Google Scholar.
12 Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 323.
13 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 143.
14 Arendt, Hannah, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 73–103Google Scholar; idem, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1977)Google Scholar.
15 For passing mentions of recognition, see Arendt, Hannah, “What is Authority?,” in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1993), 93Google Scholar; idem, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, 1970), 45Google Scholar. Krieger does not deal with recognition at all; see, e.g., Krieger, Leonard, “The Idea of Authority in the West,” American Historical Review 82, no. 2 (1997): 249–70Google Scholar.
16 See Neuhouser, Frederick, “Desire, Recognition, and the Relation between Bondsman and Lord,” in The Blackwell Guide to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Westphal, Kenneth R. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), 37–54Google Scholar.
17 Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 113Google Scholar.
18 The former can be found in the work of Robert Pippin and Frederick Neuhouser, the latter in the work of Alexandre Kojève. Perhaps influenced by Kojève's interpretation of Hegel, Michael Forster and Charles Taylor also suggest the overcoming of individuality in the universal community. See Pippin, Robert B., Hegel's Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neuhouser, Frederick, Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Kojève, Alexandre, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, ed. Bloom, Allan, trans. Nichols, James H. Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, Hegel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forster, Michael N., Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
19 Hegel, Phenomenology, 110–12.
20 For an attempt to explore different, nonimperial ways of engaging with otherness, see Marchand, Suzanne L., German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
21 See Steinmetz, George, The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.