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The Neo-Hegelian Tradition in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

David Watson
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Extract

Hegel, in the posthumously published Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837), saw America as “the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.” Such enthusiasm was reciprocated in a curious and revealing manner both by American philosophers and by the representatives of other American social institutions, as I hope to show in this article. American neo-Hegelianism was, like its British counterpart, belated but significant in its influence on academic or “professional” philosophy. However, in contrast to the story of Anglo-Hegelianism as we know it through the lives and work of such figures as Benjamin Jowett, T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley and their followers, academic influence in America was short-lived, while its general cultural significance, as measured through the history of institutions other than the university, was much more profound.

In the bulk of this article I shall try to support these contentions as follows. First, I shall offer a definition of the philosophical position adopted by neo-Hegelian groups in Great Britain and the United States, beginning in the 1860s. Secondly, I shall give an outline of the career of Absolute Idealism (and Hegelianism in particular) in America up to the First World War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , August 1980 , pp. 219 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

David Watson is Pricipal Lecturer in Humanities at Crew + Alsager College of Higher Education, Alsager, Cheshire, ST7 2 HL. Earlier versions of parts of this article were read to the Becentennial Symposium of Philosophy in New York (October 1976) and the University of Sussex Philosophy Society (February 1979). He is grateful to participants on both occasions for their comments and advice.

1 Quoted in Goetzmann, William H., The American Hegelians: An Intellectual Episode in the History of Western America (New York, 1973), p. 20Google Scholar.

2 On the cross-national comparison, see Watson, David John, “Idealism and Social Theory: A Comparative Study of British and American Adaptations of Hegel, 1860–1914” (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), esp. pp. 170–216Google Scholar.

3 The main sources of this account are as follows: Anderson, Paul R., Platonism in the Midwest (New York and London, 1963)Google Scholar; Crites, Stephen D., “Hegelianism,” The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (ed. Edwards, Paul, New York, 1967), 3, 451–459Google Scholar; Dewey, John, “From Absolutism to Experimentalism,” in Adams, G. P. and Montague, W. P. (eds.), Contemporary American Philosophy (New York, 1962), 2, 13–27Google Scholar, and “The Development of American Pragmatism,” in Studies in the History of Ideas (New York, 1925), 2, 353–77Google Scholar; Easton, Lloyd D., Hegel's First American Followers: The Ohio Hegelians (Athens, Ohio, 1966)Google Scholar; Goetzmann; Muirhead, John H.. The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America (London, 1931)Google Scholar; Murphey, Murray G., “Kant's Children: the Cambridge Pragmatists,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 4 (1968), 3–33Google Scholar; Pochmann, Henry A., German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences (Madison, Wisconsin, 1957)Google Scholar; Schneider, Herbert W., A History of American Philosophy (2nd ed., New York and London, 1963)Google Scholar. See also Watson, pp. 88–115; Reck, Andrew J., “Idealism in American Philosophy since 1900,” in Howie, John and Buford, Thomas O. (eds.), Contemporary Studies in Philosophical Idealism (Cape Cod, Mass., 1975), pp. 17–52Google Scholar; and the useful section on “Amateur Philosophizing” in Kuklick, Bruce, The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860–1930 (New Haven and London, 1977), pp. 46–62Google Scholar.

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8 For biographical details on Stallo, Willich, Kaufmann, and Conway see Easton, pp. 41ff., 139ff; 161ff. See also Stallo, Johann B., General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature, with an Outline of some of its Recent Developments among the Germans, embracing the Philosophical Systems of Schelling and Hegel and Oken's System of Nature (Boston, 1848)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaufmann, Peter, The Temple of Truth, or the Science of Truth, or the Science of Ever-Progressing Knowledge (Canton, Ohio, 1858)Google Scholar; The Cincinnati Republikaner (which lasted until 1860); Conway, Moncure, Autobiography, Memories and Experiences (2 vols. New York, 1904)Google Scholar. Stallo was later to repudiate many of his Hegelian conclusions in the influential Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (Cambridge, Mass., 1881)Google Scholar. David Herreshoff discusses Willich's contribution to the American left-Hegelian or Marxist tradition in his American Disciples of Marx: from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (Detroit, 1967), pp. 31–78Google Scholar.

9 For general histories of the St. Louis Society see: Pochmann, pp. 257–94; Forbes, Cleon, “The St. Louis School of Thought,” in the Missouri Historical Review, 25 & 26 (1930–1931), 83–101, 289–305, 461–73, 609–22, 68–77Google Scholar; Riedl, John O., “The Hegelians of St. Louis, Missouri, and their Influence in the United States,” in O'Malley, J. J. et al. (eds.), The Legacy of Hegel: Proceedings of the Marquette Hegel Symposium of 1970 (The Hague, 1973), pp. 268–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snider, Denton J., A Writer of Books in his Genesis (St. Louis, 1910), pp. 294–346Google Scholar, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, Literature, Education, Psychology, with Chapters of Autobiography (St. Louis, 1910), passimGoogle Scholar; Watson, pp. 5–19. On the foundation of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy see Leidecker, Kurt F., Yankee Teacher: The Life of William Torrey Harris (New York, 1946), pp. 324–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snider, , Writer of Books, p. 326Google Scholar; and Thayer, James B., The Letters of Chauncey Wright (Cambridge, Mass., 1878), p. 87Google Scholar.

10 Pochman has a short list of “prominent” members with occupational details, pp. 274–81. William Schuyler has a more complete list in his “German Philosophy in St. Louis,” The Bulletin of the Washington University Association, 2 (1904), 72–3Google Scholar.

11 Pochmann, pp. 263, 281–94.

12 McCosh, James, Philosophical Papers (New York, 1869), p. 171Google Scholar. The distance between Transcendentalism and the “intuitionism” of this brand of Scottish realism has perhaps been overstressed.

13 John Dewey, “From Absolutism to Experimentalism,” p. 383; Hall, G. Stanley, “Philosophy in the United States,” Mind, 4 (1879), 89–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Schneider, pp. 387, 400. See also Howie and Buford, pp. 1–16.

15 See Gardiner, H. N., “The First Twenty-Five Years of the American Philosophical Association,” Philosophical Review, 35 (1926), 145–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Kuklick, Bruce, Josiah Royce: An Intellectual Biography (Indianapolis and New York, 1972), Ch. 2Google Scholar, and The Rise of American Philosophy, Ch. 8.

17 For statements of these views of Royce see Roth, John K. (ed.), The Philosophy of Josiah Royce (New York, 1971), pp. 277, 281, 293, 297Google Scholar. Examples of historical analyses made by the St. Louis Hegelians can be found in Harris, , “The Theory of American Education,” N.E.A. Proceedings and Addresses (1870), pp. 177–91Google Scholar; Snider, Denton J., Social Institutions in their Origin, Growth and Inter-Connection, Psychologically Treated (St. Louis, 1901), pp. 428–40, 489–90Google Scholar; J. K. Hosmer,

18 Murphey, “Kant's Children,” pp. 8–9. See also his The Development of Peirce's Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)Google Scholar; A History of Philosophy in America (with Elizabeth Flower) (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; “Toward an Historicist History of American Philosophy,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 15 (1979), 3–18Google Scholar.

19 A good eye-witness account of the Concord School is provided by Warren, Austin, “The Concord School of Philosophy,” The New England Quarterly, 2 (1929), pp. 199–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the section in Pochmann, pp. 294–304, and his New England Transcendentalism and St. Louis Hegelianism: Phases in the History of American Idealism (Philadelphia, 1948)Google Scholar. For description of the curriculum and personnel at Davidson's schools see Knight, William, Memorials of Thomas Davidson, the Wandering Scholar (Boston and London, 1907), pp. 55–79Google Scholar.

20 Fisch, Max, “Philosophical Clubs in Cambridge and Boston,” Coranto, 2 (1964), no. 1, pp. 12–23Google Scholar, no. 2, pp. 12–25, and 3 (1965), no. i, pp. 16–30. Everett was the author of The Science of Thought: A System of Logic (Boston, 1870)Google Scholar, in which he acknowledged the inspiration of “Prof. Gabler, a disciple of HEGEL, at Berlin, and afterwards in the works of HEGEL himself,” p. ix.

21 Pochmann, pp. 302–3.

22 Gardiner, pp. 149–51, 155.

23 See for example the treatment of Hugo Münsterberg by Harvard, detailed by Bruce Kuklick in his chapter on “Philosophers at War,” The Rise of American Philosophy, pp. 435–47Google Scholar. Also White, Morton G., Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (Boston, 1957), pp. 147–60Google Scholar.

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26 For a detailed account of the “Course of Study” see Harris, , Psychologic Foundations of Education: An Attempt to Show the Genesis of the Higher Faculties of the Mind (New York, 1898), Ch. 36Google Scholar.

27 Harris, “The Theory of American Education,” p. 184.

28 Ibid., pp. 182–3.

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30 Harris, , “Industrial Education in the Common Schools,” Education, 5 (1886), 607–611Google Scholar.

31 Harris, , “The Separation of the Church from the Tax-Supported School,” Educational Review, 26 (1903), 222–35Google Scholar.

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35 Curti, Merle, “William T. Harris, The Conservator,” in The Social Ideas of American Educators (rev. ed. Paterson, , New Jersey, 1965), pp. 310–47Google Scholar.

36 Howison, , “The Duty of the University to the State,” in Buckham, J. and Stratton, G. (eds.), George Holmes Howison, Philosopher and Teacher (Berkeley, 1934), pp. 369–380Google Scholar; Woerner, William F., J. Gabriel Woerner: A Biographical Sketch (St. Louis, 1912), pp. 73–75Google Scholar; Woerner, J. Gabriel, Treatise on the American Law of Administration (Boston, 1889)Google Scholar and Treatise on the American Law of Guardianship (Boston, 1897), passimGoogle Scholar; Snider, , Social Institutions, pp. 330–35Google Scholar.

37 James, William, “Hegel and his Method,” from A Pluralistic Universe (1909)Google Scholar, reprinted in McDermott, John J. (ed.), The Writings of William fames (New York, 1968), pp. 512–29Google Scholar.

38 Fisch, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 29. See also his “American Pragmatism Before and After 1898,” in Shahan, Robert W. and Merrill, Kenneth R., eds., American Philosophy from Edwards to Quine (Norman, Oklahoma, 1977), pp. 78–110Google Scholar.